Suchergebnisse

AbstractKnowledge and knowledge management have become two of the latest buzzwords in the management literature. However, the literature presents primarily normative, undersocialized models of how knowledge could be administrated and developed as an organizational resource, and does not sufficiently recognize the social, political and emotional aspects of knowledge. In general, the knowledge of knowledge management is not situational. For instance, in what respect does the notion of knowledge take gender issues into account? This paper presents a study of clinical research activities in a major multinational pharmaceutical company and it suggests that the processes of knowing are always embedded in existing social and political, gendered assumptions and beliefs. Therefore, knowledge management needs to be further developed to avoid general problematic positions. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

AbstractThis article draws attention to the social context and working methods in crisis management. Based on 1000 interviews with business leaders in Swedish small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), we analyze crisis management in practice and ask: What social contexts do business leaders use in crisis management, and what working methods do they rely on? Most companies in this study do not have any form of crisis group; rather, they deal with issues reactively as they occur. Few of the companies work continuously with a crisis plan and only slightly more than half of those that have crisis plans report that it has been helpful in dealing with the COVID‐19 situation. The study concludes that Swedish SMEs seem reliant upon a process that has an emerging nature whereby decisions are largely based on gut feeling. However, the companies in our sample that experienced a significant revenue decline due to the COVID‐19 situation report that they employ a more centralized and deductive approach with reports and documents as a basis for their work. The study contributes to a developed understanding of how crisis management works in practice.

PurposeTo discusss the first concept car development project in the automotive industry managed by female engineers and designers.Design/methodology/approachAn abiding concern in feminist discourses is to understand how and why women are excluded from certain positions and activities and how organizations become gendered. Drawing on the Russian literature theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, exceptional events such as concept car development projects in the automotive industry may be examined as a form of carnival wherein the predominant social order is overturned for a period of time and thereafter restored.FindingsExploring the "all female" project at Volvo Cars as a carnival event captures the double nature of such "affirmative" activities; on the one hand, they are giving space to marginal groups, while, on the other hand, being events that differ from the everyday work life order, they therefore risk being marginal activities with limited sustaining impact.Originality/valueIn theoretical terms, the paper has integrated feminist theory and Bakhtin's writing on the carnival as an institutionalized way to mediate conflict and discontent.

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on self-reflexivity and, in particular, explore the notion of context in relation to men's reflexivity in academic work.


Design/methodology/approach
– The paper is a commentary on an earlier paper published in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion addressing the issue of reflexivity in organization studies and commented on by three different scholars.


Findings
– Relating specifically to men doing gender studies research, the authors argue that they are always men in context, and their "privilege" (and reflections on it) needs to be accounted for in situ; in relation to the assumptions, relations, and practices at hand, rather to some abstract and vague "privileges" contained in, and carried by, men as a general category.


Originality/value
– The paper seeks to advance a novel understanding of reflexivity not so much anchored in the willful capacity to reflect on scholarly work but as engagement with experiences of exclusion or unexpected outcomes in fieldwork and in interacting with other researchers.

Information and communication technologies play a key role in contemporary organizations. Supported by a longitudinal study of changes in purchasing practices, owing to the implementation of an e-business system at a large, global corporation, this article shows the interplay between the technology and the role of the users. We argue that the introduction of the e-business system increased the hierarchy and bureaucracy but also that the purchasers' professional identities and established work procedures were threatened by the technology being used. The results indicate how a technological artifact is by no means detached from the broader reformulating of managerial procedures and practices, instead reflecting and embodying some of the managerial virtues of predictability and hierarchy. Since technology is playing an increasingly key role in most industries and domains, it is also suggested that the intersection between technology and professions be examined in more detail.