XI ANPAD Organizational Studies Conference - EnEO 2022
EnEO 2022

Cities, as a junction of physical spatial structures, rules and rights, actors, networks and knowledge, cultures and differences, design and technologies, have presented themselves in an increasingly fruitful way in the field of Organizational Studies, expanding the solid interdisciplinary academic production on urban space. In the scope of this proposal, and continuing the theme of interest of the previous years, we highlight some aspects associated to the relation between City and Organizational Studies: the historical perspective, which places the intricacies of the reflection on time in the construction of urban spaces of history and memory; the economic perspective, in which management and creativity are highlighted as central aspects; the perspective of the margins that shelters multiple bundles associated to knowledges and existences produced at the margins of the hegemonic; and, finally, the processes related to the organization of educative territories in the construction of educating and inclusive cities. We invite researchers to submit empirical and/or theoretical-conceptual articles on this topic of interest from different epistemological and methodological positions that have Cities and Organizational Studies as their axis in the following themes and topics, not exhaustive of the theme:

 

• Cities, history, memory and urban heritage.
• City and its interfaces with management and creative economy.
• Socio-urban dynamics: experiences, sociabilities, rights, mobilities and territorialities.
• Practices of urban space: actors, bodies, culture, aesthetics and organization.
• Margins and peripheries in/of the city: bodies, existence, resistances, knowledge, cultures and non-hegemonic dynamics.
• Facets of the urban from an organizational perspective: global cities, dead cities, dormitory cities, threat cities, garden cities, tired cities.
• Processes of permanent construction and reconstruction of an education city, or a school in the city that educates.

This theme aims to discuss social inequalities produced in the world of work and in organizations, as well as the privileges of groups considered hegemonic, considering mainly the following categories of oppression and exploitation: race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and social class. We favor studies that start from an intersectional perspective, considering not only how differences constitute inequalities, but also how they are articulated at work and in organizations, generating mechanisms of exclusion, discrimination, and privileges. Such discussions have gained academic and political prominence, given the growing concern with the construction of a work environment, management, and democratic and inclusive organizations. We emphasize the interest in researches that evidence power relations and dynamics, emphasizing the political dimension of differences in ideological, socio-historical, and cultural terms. The vision of work adopted includes discussions related to the world of productive and reproductive work, organizations, management, and public and private administration. In the same sense, the concept of the organization includes public and private organizations, non-governmental organizations, associations, social movements, among other multiple organizational dimensions of social life. We invite studies that address how social inequalities have been constructed and reproduced at work, focusing on both historically constituted and subordinate groups (women, Black people, indigenous people, LGBT, people with disabilities, etc.), and those who occupy privileged places (masculinities, whiteness, etc.). This debate includes analyzes of inequalities in the labor market at the national and/or international level; the role of social movements and organizational experiences on how differences and inequalities are experienced at work, as well as on management practices aimed at confronting this scenario. We also highlight the interest in works on various epistemological, theoretical, and methodological perspectives, such as decolonial and Afro-centered debates, incursions into new research agendas, or other categories that mark differences not explained in this proposal.

The theme explores the political, economic, and psychosocial relationships between subjects, organizations, and societies from a historical-temporal perspective. We invite works investigating management and organizations from any epistemological or ontological paradigms. We understand organizations more broadly, encompassing companies, but also social movements, everyday life in work, family, or educational organizations.

We highlight the experience of people and organizations in time and the representations of subjects about history, including their life history. We also expect manuscripts using biographical methods or life history in their approaches. It is about the record of personal and collective memories, experiences, and trajectories rescued for the transformation, emancipation, and visibility of collectivities and subjects.

We welcome works revisiting classics of Brazilian social thought and structuring themes of the country's reality. Also, works investigating concepts dear to history or memory. Additionally, we invite psychosociological theories dealing with biographies, history, and life history, among other aspects.

We welcome studies that:

- Analyze how historical sources and archives contribute to understanding organizational phenomena and their articulation with social and political aspects;

- Stimulate debates on historical research in management and organizational studies;

- Discuss the uses of the past in organizational studies and investigate how organizations create and manage their collections and documental archives, building meanings from disputes between official memories and silenced memories;

- Are based on sources such as public, private, and/or business archives, period newspapers; films; documentaries;

- Use the theoretical-methodological approaches of Life History and/or Oral History, in which the following stand out: the centrality of the subject and their lived experience, the importance of orality, the valuation of individual and social memory for the understanding of organizations, work, and society;

- Restore the relationships

The theme is aimed at a theoretical and methodological deepening that contributes to the understanding of the relationship between organizations and subjectivity situated at the intersection between culture/tradition, language and social change. We start from the ontological assumption that human reality is socially constructed and conditioned by practice, especially that mediated by linguistic interaction. This implies adopting the epistemological point of view of interpretive, historical and dialogical theoretical matrices, from which the adoption of qualitative methods based on hermeneutics and criticism stems. In this sense, it is necessary to highlight the broad notion of language, seen from the perspective of the philosophy of language and where the communicative aspect of the socio-linguistic ontology stands out. For this reason, an approach very close to the current of research called “Communication Constitutions Organization” is assumed.

 

Having established the onto-epistemological premises of the topic of interest, space is opened for works sensitive to contemporary social issues under three prisms: i) the perspective of change and emancipation; ii) the presupposition of language as an articulator of the social and of the historical moment, whether in the construction of domination processes or in the ideation of possibilities for overcoming them; and iii) administrative and organizational practice as a rhetorical practice.

 

Another important point for this theme are the social issues called 'grand challenges' or 'wicked problems', recognizing the need to involve the scientific-academic field of administration and organizations in the construction of possible ways of overcoming and articulating social change. Some themes that can be related to this point are the issue of fake News, the articulation/organization of civil society through digital media mechanisms, the creation of departments and organizations specialized in discourse for the emancipation of minorities and the fight against different forms intolerance, among other issues.

Technological innovations, as tools of neoliberalism, have produced a new economic and social order based on covert practices of extracting, predicting and selling data. This data exploration allows the maximization of the organizations profit and potentializes the expropriation of rights and the capture of human experiences, resulting in a discourse of technological neutral solutionism, indispensable for the growth and productivity of organizations. This technological rationality has allowed the reconfiguration of labor relations and the disarticulation of workers, as well as the control of actions and power struggles through service applications, social media and algorithmic management.

In this sense, this phenomenon presents as a side effect: the accentuation of the (re)production of inequality, exclusion and social discrimination. Problematizing the ethics of digital technologies, unveiling their predispositions to (re)produce privileges and their commitments to maintain hegemonic logics, becomes a necessary agenda that contributes to the discussion of discrimination by gender, race, among other important issues denounced in social relationships.

The call intends to bring together plural approaches and methods and aims to instigate the development of research on the digitalized world and organizational studies, focusing on power asymmetries between users, workers, digital platforms, such as the role of the State in mediating and controlling these relations.

 

For this, six main themes are proposed:

1) Surveillance capitalism, data colonialism and algorithmic mediation;

2) Digitized work, surveillance culture and algorithmic management;

3) Digitalization as a tool for inequality, exclusion and discrimination (social, racial, gender positions, among others);

4) Power and techno-resistance;

5) Social Media and identity;

6) The relationship between digitization and atypical contexts, such as the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, and its repercussions on and through digital technologies.

Since their genesis, universities are subjected to transformation processes and movements that put their reasons of being in check. Efforts to justify their relevance have required capacity of reconfiguration, which contemplates the preservation of their original responsibilities and suggests new challenges. However, the historiography of the university allows us to state that its transformations were never able to fully satisfy the expectations of the society. Given the centrality of an institution whose commitments go beyond the fields of teaching, research and outreach/extension, the intention of this theme is to encourage the debate about the university, especially the public one. In this sense, it is expected to receive articles on the following topics: higher education as a universal human right; academic autonomy and freedom; ethical and political limits of the university; contemporary university management; forms of protection against the mercantilist, corporatist and denial university; emerging issues about internationalization, rankings and its implications; budgetary limitations and standards of excellence in the production and dissemination of knowledge; responsibilities regarding social inclusion and reduction of inequalities; dysfunctionalities and obsolescence zones; interdisciplinarity; relationship between education and citizenship and the democratization of access allied to the challenges of student retention; responsibilities of technical and administrative staff in university management and in core activities, notably in research and outreach/extension; as well as learning from university architectures and the new institutional arrangements created from REUNI, a Brazilian Federal Program aimed at the restructuring and expansion of the public university. It is expected that the articles favor the understanding of deliberated and/or emerging paths for the network of higher education institutions in times of growing demands, scarcity of resources and uncertainties - enhanced by new social relations, production and communication technologies and post-pandemic health restrictions.

This thematic proposal aims to bring together articles and research results involving topics related to organizations, political economy, and global governance. In particular, it is expected that these (i) be based on an economic and macro-management basis, (ii) from critical-reflexive perspectives, (iii) consider the integration interfaces between organizations and society, especially the relationship between development models and management models.

Discussions can range from the construction of political arrangements and their respective power blocs to studies that seek to analyze the process of integrating organizations into capitalism. The scope of the approach permeates the local, national, regional, or global level, making use of theories of imperialism and the world system.

In these terms, it is intended to make room for organizational approaches that go beyond idiosyncratic dynamics or that are especially focused on functional and institutional aspects, also taking into account the unequal power relations, class conflicts, political-ideological and institutional issues of the projects of development and its implications on the social relations that sustain social reproduction.

Finally, starting from this perspective, we seek to discuss the limits and possibilities of building counter-hegemonic experiences of organizations in different political contexts, in addition to learning from alternative experiences, founded, especially, on ideals of solidarity.

The following topics are of interest:

• Imperialism;
• Dependency theory;
• Democracy, participation, and organizations;
• Global governance;
• Development models and management models;
• Political administration;
• Theory of regulation;
• International political economy;
• Criticism of neo-corporatism;
• Economic sociology;
• World-System Theory;
• Power and conflict in organizations;
• Environment, organizations and counter-hegemonic forms of governance;

Each of these lines can be broken down into different sub-themes. We welcome theoretical and empirical works that discuss the perspectives listed here.

The national academic environment has already assimilated the need for reflection on the production of scientific knowledge about organizations and administrative practice. Epistemology is inserted as a specific discipline, or as a particular topic of discussion in most curricula of the Graduate Programs in Administration. Epistemology is also a central theme of scientific events, as in the case of the International Colloquium on Epistemology and Sociology of Science in Administration, and several times it has already received editions entirely dedicated to its discussion from periodicals in the area. Within the scope of ANPAD, the Theme was created in 2009, in the DTR, and, in 2010, in the DOS. As a methodical and reflective study of knowledge, of its organization, of its formation, of its development, of its functioning and of its products, epistemology occupies an extremely important place for the critical examination of our own production of sciences and knowledge, helping us, thus, in making critical awareness of our daily practice.

For the EOR Division, the proposal is that the theme is dedicated to epistemology in organizational studies and seeks to focus the reflection on the production of knowledge and scientific knowledge of organizational and administrative phenomena, as well as to discuss the social conditions of production of this knowledge, always with in order to promote dialogues between epistemologies and disciplines. With these objectives, the theme contemplates the diverse epistemic approaches (positivism, functionalism, structuralism, institutionalism, interpretativism, critical theory, marxism, pragmatism, post-structuralism, critical realism, post-criticism, among others), from contributions of disciplines such as administration, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, history, semiotics and psychoanalysis. Ontology and methodology can be approached, but from the articulation of these with the epistemologies, building principles, arguments, hypotheses, procedures, results, interpretations and practices to critically analyze the different epistemological approaches or currents.

The present work group aims to promote, visualize and articulate researches on organizational practices that break, destabilize or open gaps and fissures to the neoliberal work logic, especially those referring to the universe of what is said "popular": business, commerce, arts, parties, informal economies, people`s invisible things that somehow resist the globalized world system.

We propose to encourage reflection on the processes of production and organization of different spaces, knowledge and powers: the house, the street, the city, groups, popular organizations. The gaze turns to the other ways of existing and organizing that are often ignored or actively invisible within a mainstream of management and that constitute multiple possibilities of breaking with totalizing thoughts and practices in the area.

At a time when devices and machinery of power seek to control and give life a unique shape amid global capitalism the resistance intensifies precisely on the forms of life, survival and creation of other ways of being and organizing that escape, slip and invert the rules of the game (FOUCAULT, 2017, LAZZARATO, 2014). In this scenario, as indicated by Pelbart (2000, 2003, 2016), mapping other modes of existence becomes a relevant project, emphasizing multiplicities that do not allow to be encompassed by the totalizing machinery of power. In Organizational Studies, other ways of organizing that constantly survive and recreate themselves in everyday life form a reservoir of lesser knowledges and potentialities for overcoming the status quo.

In this way, we propose to contribute to a possible "fenomenologia da dispersão anárquica do poder" (FOUCAULT, 1998, p.48). By means of smaller, local, every day, popular, even if specific and singular, sometimes also temporary management experiences, we intend to find, map and share clues, detours, escape routes and expand the possibilities of doing.

Different markets and their processes, such as competition, cooperation, risk, evaluation and valuation, impact organizations, their strategies, structures, and governance. Power, politics, morality, laws, and interests are also relevant aspects for understanding the construction of markets and how organizations relate to them. Furthermore, institutional diversity is strongly influenced by economic agents. Taking these phenomena into account, Economic Sociology is one of the areas that has contributed the most and still has great potential to stimulate new theories in the field of Organizational Studies. This branch of sociology has broadened the understanding of economic action, mainly by transposing the rationalist assumptions of Traditional Economic Theory and privileging cultural, social, cognitive, and political aspects in the dynamics of markets and organizations. We understand that the distinctive character of Economic Sociology, among many other theories in Organizational Studies, is the concept of socially immersed economic action and its relationship with markets, organizations, and institutions. Therefore, aiming to deepen knowledge in the area of ​​Organizational Studies about the relationship between Markets, Organizations, and Institutions, we emphasize that theoretical and empirical works and essays from various theoretical perspectives, such as Economic Sociology, Sociology, are welcome on this topic of Markets, Political Economy, Socio-Economy, New Institutional Economics, Institutional Theory, Comparative Institutional Analysis, Field Theory, Social Network Analysis, and Political Science. The theme is open to works of both qualitative and quantitative nature.

The COP26 - where the IPCC Report on Climate Change was discussed - raised a red flag of the urgency of sustained cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and the need to act “glocally” in order to, at least, mitigate (and adapt to) the negative effects of the Anthropocene. Some authors have argued that the term “Anthropocene” could be a “Capitalocene” (Moore, 2016) or an “Econocene” (Norgaard, 2013), a “Technocene” (Hornborg, 2015) or even a “Plutocene” (Glikson, 2017), among others, to represent the inequalities embedded in current global capitalism where nature exploitation and greenhouse gas emissions are “justifiable” for the benefit of a few (Ergene et al., 2020). Extinctions, ecocides, disasters, climate and health crises are examples of organizational practices marked by human exceptionalism, bounded individualism, inequality and environmental racism. We also argue that organizations (organizing, organized human action) are great agents of destruction of nature (Banerjee, 2008; Shrivastava, 1994) and little has been done in terms of real effective changes in order to tackle that and the ways businesses have been conducted. The same can be said about theorizing efforts about this (Kallio and Nordberg, 2006; Cunha et al., 2008; Banerjee, 2011; Heikkurinen et al., 2016; Jermier and Forbes, 2016; Ergene et al., 2018). That said, while we are invited to “stay with the trouble” (Haraway, 2016) posed by the Anthropocene, we call for papers that critically reflect upon the role of different actors (humans, non-humans, and multispecies collectives) in climate change; food, water and energy (in)security; alternative, resilience, resistance and (re)existence ways of organizing; environmental conflicts; critical CSR and corporate sustainability theories; as well as papers that encourage the use of non-mainstream methodologies and epistemologies for empowering silenced voices and realities in society, especially from the South.

This thematic proposal aims to contribute to Organizational Studies by demystifying the concept of “work" as restricted to the so-called “productive” sphere. By approaching this thematic, we hope to give visibility to the female, undervalued work, in the terms of Jules Falquet, carried out by impoverished, racialized, and proletarianized women who, around the globe, carry out poorly (or unpaid) reproductive work. Social reproduction is the material basis of patriarchy culture. As Heleieth Saffioti explains, patriarchal culture is discarded as the ultimate source of explanation for discrimination against women under capitalism. From the unitary theory perspective, as explained by Cinzia Arruzza, we understand the relations that generate oppression of gender, class, and race as integral elements of capitalist society that, throughout historical processes, dissolved previous forms of social life to meet the needs of the ruling classes in each context. In a period of a global economic crisis in which the neoliberal speculative fury accentuates the ideological dictates of fiscal austerity and budget cuts of public policies essential to social reproduction, there is full compatibility between economic liberalism and moral conservatism. The thematical proposal, in this sense, aims to promote and discuss academic papers with themes such as the romanticization of motherhood, domestic work, reproductive control, access and conditions for women to remain in school, reinforcement of gender stereotypes, the genocide of populations indigenous peoples and black youth, advancing colonized liberal practices and discourses, increasing the mass incarceration of racialized and proletarianized people (especially women) around the globe and who therefore constitute criticisms of poverty management instruments used to mask the need in the current neoliberal context to push racialized and proletarianized people (especially women) into compulsory reproductive work and/or imprisonment, to mask the essentially predatory and discriminatory face of the social order.

The political-social role played by organizations has gained attention from authors in organizational studies with the themes of entrepreneurship (Battilan, Leca, & Boxenbaum, 2009), leadership (Yuan & Woodman, 2010) and human rights (Barros, 2018). Some studies have already researched corruption and the direct relationship with the private sector (Collins, Uhlenbruck, & Rodriguez, 2009; Chowdhury, Audretsch, & Belitski, 2015). This is due to recent corruption scandals (Coelho & Barros, 2020), as well as environmental crimes and disasters (Pereira, Barros & Rezende, 2020). Recent research has explored the need and failure of corporate governance policies, integrity/compliance programs (Aldeguer et al. 2020; Couto & Carrieri, 2020; Zattoni & Cuomo, 2008) and corporate social responsibility (Bansal, & Song, 2017). While disclosing their social actions, organizations hide irresponsible and even illegal actions such as corruption, corporate crimes, environmental crimes and discrimination based on gender, race and age (Costa & Borin, 2018). In this theme, papers with different perspectives of analysis are welcome, as well as different ontological, epistemological, methodological and theoretical approaches that discuss the political-social function of organizations. Research may include, but is not limited to, the following topics: -The role of organizations in promoting or violating human rights; -Political activism and non-market strategies (electoral-party relations); -Political activism with society (discursive constructions of the corporate image and dissemination of discourses on diversity); -Business transparency towards society in cases of scandals; -CSR as neoliberal discourse and other critical perspectives; -Alternative theoretical, epistemological and methodological approaches to analyze the political and social function of organizations; -Involvement of organizations in historical political turning points and moments; -Organizations facing sustainability, the environment and society; -Reflections on corporate irresponsibility events; -Encouraging critical thinking about CSR and CPA.