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Should business school scholars engage in intellectual activism? This article explicates the origin, the intellectual tradition and politics of intellectual activism, making a case for why management scholars might want to become intellectual activists. Intellectual activism has been elaborated in Patricia Hill Collins' contributions and the work of other black feminist intellectuals and activists such as Angela Davis. Together with the writings of Antonio Gramsci and Judith Butler, intellectual activism is reframed here as a particular type of critical performativity to help scholars make a difference in the world. This article invites scholars to answer the challenges posed by the crisis of neoliberalism, and to re-articulate the values of equality, freedom and solidarity by embodying an academic praxis that is progressive, intersectional, critical and concretely engaged in the service of social, economic and epistemic justice. The article also provides examples of intellectual activism by showcasing the activities of the critical management association, Vida.

'Partnership' is a buzzword for agents delivering policy solutions, funding and implementation strategies for effective international development. We call such an ensemble of policies and practices the 'partnership discourse'. We explore the value of the term 'partnership' in international development with an empirical focus on the African context and issues of equality in relations between international and national non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are routinely characterized as partnerships. The results of our research in Uganda indicate that a hiatus exists between the rhetoric and reality of such partnerships. Partnerships on the ground reproduce relations of inequality characterized by subordination and oppression. The retroductive explanation we offer for such an emergent picture is to recast partnerships not as neutral management tools, but as political processes actualized in a terrain that is contested and uneven. Our theoretical contribution is to develop a political theorization of inter-organizational relations that allows us to explore the social consequences, specifically on inequality, associated with the partnership discourse. Our substantive contribution is to elaborate the value of the term 'partnership' in the international development domain. Its value is to smooth over antagonism and co-opt dissent by proposing a solution to effective development that is both ethically and managerially good.

This paper critically addresses the coherence, reception, and dissemination of "situated learning theory" (Lave and Wenger 1991). Situated learning theory commends a conceptualization of the process of learning that, in offering an alternative to cognitive theories, departs radically from the received body of knowledge on learning in organizations. The paper shows how elements of situated learning theory have been selectively adopted to fertilize or extend the established terrain of organizational learning. In this process, we argue, Lave and Wenger's embryonic appreciation of power relations as media of learning is displaced by a managerial preoccupation with harnessing (reified) "communities of practice" to the fulfillment of (reified) corporate objectives. We illustrate our argument by reference to Orr's (1990, 1996) study of photocopier technicians, which is very widely cited as an example of the "new," situated conceptualization of learning in communities of practice. We commend a revitalization of situated learning theory in which learning practices are understood to be enabled and constrained by their embeddedness in relations of power; and, more specifically, by the unstable institutionalization of power relations within capitalist work organizations.

This article is a critique of the broad ensemble which we identify as `learning discourse' and its pervasive ideological content which determines learning as a `good thing for all'. We consider how the signifier `learning' works as a nodal point which constitutes (legitimizes and sustains), yet glosses over, antagonistic and contradictory organizational and social practices. With our critique we endeavour to go beyond a simple rebuke or rebuttal. We, rather, point out the problematic nature of the truths engendered in `making the social' and constituting the promise of a learning society whose ambit encompasses learning in general, the learning organization and the political economy of the `knowledge economy'. By doing so we expose the political character of the learning discourse which, we argue, works as the surface of intelligibility pro-posing the reality of work, self-hood, citizenship and society. We antagonize its `no alternative' trope by questioning the equivalence it creates between social inclusion, competitiveness, employability, empowerment and personal development. Our critique makes explicit how it is possible, and why it is important, to be `against learning'.

MNCs' politics has been considered a 'contested terrain' and further research is needed into the dynamics between the Head Office's drastic restructuring decisions and local responses to understand how collective resistance is performed, and on what conditions. A neo-Gramscian approach is developed to analyse two plants in France facing drastic restructuring, including shutdown. We trace the dynamics of forces significant in aligning resisting subjects. We identify two structural processes – chains of equivalence and chains of difference – which were significant to the constitution of resistance. This article contributes to the development and refinement of a neo-Gramscian approach to management and organization studies in general and to multinational corporations' politics in particular. It refines the study of multinational corporations' politics by explaining how collective resistance is constituted and organized, what favours and limits the possibility of creating a collective antagonistic front and the role of local managerial resistance.

The articles in this special issue celebrate the late arrival of Jacques Lacan into organization studies. Each article takes up ideas from Lacan in order to read organization and organizations studies differently, taking on questions as diverse as enjoyment, creativity, stress and identity through to the very nature of the human and the endeavour of organization theory. Our introduction to this special issue aims to un/tangle three key points. First, we aim to provide a basic compass, which might enable those unfamiliar with Lacan's territory to release themselves of any existing fears about language and about consciousness, and prepare themselves for the real shock of an encounter with Lacan. Second, we situate Lacan with organization studies, which will involve asking why organization studies always seems to arrive late to the scene of theoretical crimes and, moreover, asking what it is about organization studies that has delayed the entry of Lacan until now. Third, we introduce the six contributions to the special issue.

This article discusses the nature of volunteering by exploring the features of the exchanges involved and their precise meanings. The context for this analysis is the U.K. music festival industry, where volunteers are offered specific "exchange deals" for providing their work efforts. The article argues that it is in such exchanges, and in their inherent meanings, that the nature of volunteering can be appreciated as a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon. By theorizing volunteering as possessing Janus-face features represented by its symbolic and economic faces, this research demonstrates that the practice of volunteering is inherently hybrid. This article advances conceptual knowledge on volunteering by showing the irreducibility of the concept to either of these symbolic or economic dimensions. It offers a new perspective that addresses apparently incompatible readings of volunteering, recognizing volunteers' different experiences and how they feel about the nature of their exchange.