[eccr] towards a cultural studies of organizations

CALL FOR PAPERS

INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP:
TOWARDS A CULTURAL STUDIES OF ORGANIZATIONS

10-11th November 2005, The Management Centre, University of Leicester

Coordinators:
Martin Parker
University of Leicester
Carl Rhodes
University of Technology, Sydney

Background
For more than 20 years now the field of organization studies has taken as 
one of its mainstays the study of culture.  When culture is considered, 
however, it is almost exclusively done so in terms of corporate culture, 
organizational culture or cultural diversity at work.  It seems that while 
the culture of 9 to 5 has been discussed exhaustively, relatively little 
thinking has gone in to the relationship between work and the culture of 5 
to 9.  Elsewhere, in cultural studies, organizations and industry have also 
received significant attention. There, much of the focus has been on the 
practices of the 'culture industries' and how they relate to the control of 
cultural production and consumption.  Attention has also been paid to the 
relationship between the commodification of culture and the preservation of 
social and economic structures. What falls in the gap between these two 
important areas of study is the relationship between popular culture and 
the experience and organization of work.  This workshop seeks papers that 
explore this relationship.

Although there is little currently in the way of a cultural studies of 
organizations, such a possibility does have some important antecedents - 
both established and recent.  As far back as 1956 William H. Whyte 
bolstered his thesis on The Organizational Man by devoting two chapters to 
an exploration of this 'man' in the cinema, novels and popular 
magazines.  It has even been suggested that Max Weber might be best 
understood as "less a classical management theorist and rather more a 
student of culture, practicing what today we would call 'cultural studies'" 
(Clegg, 2005).  More recently popular culture has been implicated with 
organizations in relation to detective novels (Czarniawska, 1999), science 
fiction films (Smith et al, 2001), popular cinema (Hassard and Holliday, 
1998), animated cartoons (Rhodes, 2000, 2002) and popular music (Rehn and 
Sköld, 2004; Rhodes, 2004).

Despite such developments, the creation of a 'cultural studies of 
organization' is still very much nascent.  It is our hope that this 
workshop will serve to further such a form of study. We seek to go beyond 
the assumption that the production of mass culture is purely economic 
and/or exploitative so as to explore the potency of popular culture's 
ambivalence and hostility to organizations (Parker, 2002). We also wish to 
explore the possibility that a materialist cultural studies might begin to 
transcend the disciplinary and intellectual boundaries between production 
and consumption, as was the case with some of the work from the Centre for 
Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham in the 1970s (Willis 1977).

We welcome papers that address the general issues outlined above.  Specific 
topics could include, but are not limited to:
·       The consumption of popular culture by people at work
·       Critical representations of work and organizations in popular culture
·       Popular culture as a site of resistance to management
·       If or how popular culture offers an expression of the cultural 
meaning of work
·       The relationship between the 'critique of culture' and the 
'critique in culture'
·       Popular management texts as forms of popular culture
·       Popular culture as a shaper of professional identity (eg police, 
lawyers, doctors)
·       The creative use of popular culture at work (eg re-worked song 
lyrics, use of cartoon images to caricature management)

Abstracts
Abstracts of no more that 500 words should be sent to (m.parker /at/ le.ac.uk) no 
later than Friday 1 July 2005. Please submit abstracts in MS Word or Rich 
Text Format.  Acceptance will be notified by August 2005. This will be a 
small, single stream workshop with between eight and twelve papers, so we 
will be selective about acceptance. Please also note that we intend to 
approach a publisher with a proposal for an edited volume after the 
workshop, so are primarily interested in papers that have not been 
published elsewhere.

Conference Fee and Organization
The conference fee will be in the region of £160, including accommodation 
and dinner. Exact prices, further details and registration information will 
be available by late August 2005, but places will be limited. Please 
contact (j.hern /at/ le.ac.uk) for details at that time.

References
Clegg, S.R. (2005, in press) Puritans, visionaries and survivors, 
Organization Studies
Czarniawska, B. (1999) Management she wrote. On parallels between detective 
novel and organization theory. Studies of Cultures, Organizations, 
Societies, 5(1): 13-42.
Hassard, J. and Holiday, R. (eds.) (2001) Organization Representation: Work 
and Organization in Popular Culture, London: Sage.
Parker, M. (2002) Against Management, Cambridge: Polity.
Rehn, A. and Sköld, D. (2004) 'Makin' It': The entrepreneurial discourses 
of hip-hop culture, 6th International Conference on Organizational 
Discourse: Artefacts, Archtypes and Architexts, 28-30 July 2004, Amsterdam.
Rhodes, C. (2001) D'Oh: The Simpsons, popular culture and the 
organizational carnival, Journal of Management Inquiry, 10: 374-383.
Rhodes, C. (2002) Coffee and the business of pleasure: The case of Harbucks 
vs. Mr. Tweek, Culture and Organization, 8: 293-306.
Rhodes, C. (2004) 'Utopia in Popular Management Writing and the Music of 
Bruce Springsteen: Do You Believe in the Promised Land?', Consumption, 
Markets and Culture. 7(1): 1-20.
Smith, M., Higgins, M., Lightfoot, G. and Parker, M (eds.) (2001)  Science 
Fiction and Organization. London: Routledge.
Whyte, W. (1956) The Organization Man, New York: Simon and Schuster.
Willis, P (1977) Learning to Labour, Farnborough: Saxon House.


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