French-Australian workshop about management and organization studies

The next OAP will take place in December 2015 at UTS (Sydney) in Australia. It will be about "Managerial techniques and materiality in management and organization studies". Co-chairs will be François-Xavier de Vaujany (université Paris-Dauphine), Nathalie Mitev (LSE), Stewart Clegg (UTS), Karl Kautz (Wollongong University) and Stephen Smith (Macquarie University). To get the CFP and more information about the event, click here.

Objectives

The first OAP workshop was launched in May of 2011 at Université Paris-Dauphine with the goal of facilitating discussions among scholars from various disciplines (e.g. management, anthropology, sociology, organization studies, ergonomics, philosophy, psychology…) who collectively share an interest in Science and Technology Studies (STS) in the context of organization and organizing. OAP deals with topics such as Materiality, Technology, Practices, Sociomateriality, Performativity, Iconography, Process, Time, Space, Legitimacy, Symbolic artifacts and Managerial Techniques in the context of organization and organizing. It draws on various theoretical perspectives (phenomenology, pragmatism, institutionalism, design, post-marxism, critical realism, among others).

The fifth session will concentrate on the subject of managerial techniques, i.e. the social and material assemblage used by some actors to ‘guide’ (i.e. channel, facilitate, make meaningful, rationalize…) the collective activity of other actors.
Managerial techniques ‘are’ now everywhere in organizations. They are designed and diffused by actors such as IT and management consultants, publishers and engineers. Many institutional systems produce and diffuse a growing amount of more or less standardized managerial techniques.

OAP 2015 will particularly explore the valuation and legitimation practices or processes involving managerial techniques, their modalities and specificities. More generally, it will be devoted to the performativity of managerial techniques, their sociomaterial nature and the role of calculative devices in organizing processes. Practice-based, neo-institutional, phenomenological, activity-based, pragmatic, foucaldian, cultural, political, symbolic approaches, among others, will be welcome.

This fifth workshop will also aim at shedding light on the following topics, among others:- Managerial techniques and their sociomateriality;
- Managerial techniques and their performative dimension;
- The role of managerial techniques in managerial control;
- Fads and fashions in managerial techniques adoption and the place of materiality in this process;
- The symbolic dimension of managerial techniques;
- The relationship between organizational space and managerial techniques;
- The relationship between managerial techniques’ adoption and organizational legitimacy;
- The entanglement or imbrication between the material and social dimensions of managerial techniques;
- The affordance of managerial techniques;
- Historical perspectives on managerial techniques and their material underpinnings.

Of course, OAP 2015 will also be open to more general contributions about Science and Technology studies, sociomateriality, anthropology of technology or more general theoretical and empirical work about materialization and performativity processes in organizations and organizing.

Location and registration

The 5th OAP Workshop will take place at UTS in Sydney, just before APROS 2015 (more information can be found at this address: http://workshopoap.dauphine.fr/ or http://workshopoap.wordpress.com).

Registration is open - it is free of charge. Registration can be done online.

• For more information: [email protected]