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Turbulence is usually considered a negative property of an organization's environment. Yet turbulence is also a feature of an organization's internal dynamics and may be useful for productivity. This article argues that interactions between the formal and informal management of trouble produce relational turbulence that may mobilize resources and collective action, or conversely lead to dysfunction and crisis. The author links relational psychoanalytic theory with social constructionist perspectives in exploring intersubjective dynamics of trouble and its repercussions of turbulence. Based on a longitudinal interorganizational ethnography, an atypical mental healthcare organization is described – a democratic therapeutic community – in which turbulence plays a central function, but in two very different ways. In a restorative mode, turbulence generates formative spaces that are creative and have a regulating function, useful for organizational productivity. Conversely, a perverse mode is destructive and may produce intractable perverse spaces, leading to organizational dysfunction, crisis and even collapse. This is theorized by extending the psychoanalytic concept of liminal, transitional space. In contrast to the notion of transitional space as a safe, protective area, the author develops a model of distinct formative and perverse spaces created by relational turbulence in organizations. In human service organizations, where the generation, trading and management of trouble are inherent in an organization's internal dynamics, turbulence may be a valuable resource, but one that, in the perverse mode, can be immensely destructive.

Kinship is understood dynamically and processually but kinship terminologies are remarkably stable idea systems. They provide cultural continuity over time and are more resistant to modification than many types of cultural instantiations. Miskitu speakers in Nicaragua, however, have adopted new kin terms that appear to have fundamentally changed the idea system used to generate their kin terms historically. The shape of the changes that have occurred in Miskitu kin terminologies over time are the result of powerful economic, political and social forces introduced, in part, as a consequence of the geography of Mosquito Coast economies, migrations and political processes. We argue that the current use of kin terms is atypically hybrid and is not the result of a single, algebraically derivable idea system. Rather than negating the validity of mathematical approaches to kinship terminologies, the case of Miskitu kinship terminology suggests that core idea systems, although subject to change over time, move between informationally economical forms adapted to socioeconomic changes.

Kinship is understood dynamically and processually but kinship terminologies are remarkably stable idea systems. They provide cultural continuity over time and are more resistant to modification than many types of cultural instantiations. Miskitu speakers in Nicaragua, however, have adopted new kin terms that appear to have fundamentally changed the idea system used to generate their kin terms historically. The shape of the changes that have occurred in Miskitu kin terminologies over time are the result of powerful economic, political and social forces introduced, in part, as a consequence of the geography of Mosquito Coast economies, migrations and political processes. We argue that the current use of kin terms is atypically hybrid and is not the result of a single, algebraically derivable idea system. Rather than negating the validity of mathematical approaches to kinship terminologies, the case of Miskitu kinship terminology suggests that core idea systems, although subject to change over time, move between informationally economical forms adapted to socioeconomic changes.

This article explores contrasting forms of 'knowledge leadership' in mobilizing management research into organizational practice. Drawing on a Foucauldian perspective on power–knowledge, we introduce three axes of power–knowledge relations, through which we analyse knowledge leadership practices. We present empirical case study data focused on 'polar cases' of managers engaged in mobilizing management research in six research-intensive organizations in the UK healthcare sector. We find that knowledge leadership involves agentic practices through which managers strive to actively become the knowledge object – personally transposing, appropriating or contending management research. This article contributes to the literature by advancing the concept of knowledge leadership in the work of mobilizing management research into organizational practice.

Have generic management texts and associated knowledges now extensively diffused into public services organizations? If so, why? Our empirical study of English healthcare organizations detects an extensive presence of such texts. We argue that their ready diffusion relates to two macro‐level forces: (i) the influence of the underlying political economy of public services reform and (ii) a strongly developed business school/management consulting knowledge nexus. This macro perspective theoretically complements existing explanations from the meso or middle level of analysis which examine diffusion processes within the public services field, and also more micro literature which focuses on agency from individual knowledge leaders.