Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 17:24:51 +0100
From: "Tony O'shea" <tony.oshea-AT-sunderland.ac.uk>
Subject: MB: Conference call


Dear list members,
Apologies for the lateness of this call.  Abstractsof no more than 500
words, or at least an outline of the suggested paper, should be
submitted to Jo Brewis by 31st Oct.
Thanks,
Tony

THE PASSION OF ORGANIZING: CALL FOR PAPERS

Stream for the Critical Management Studies Conference 2001, Manchester,
July 12-14.

Convenors: Jo Brewis (University of Essex) Stephen Linstead (University
of Sunderland) Anthony O'Shea (University of Sunderland) Burkard Sievers
(University of  Wuppertal) David Boje (New Mexico State University)

Motivation, intention, expression, need,  purpose, objectives,
actualization. These and other associated concepts seem to have fallen
out of fashion in recent years in organization studies research,
perhaps as a result of the shift in emphasis from teleological
approaches towards more genealogical ones in critical social science.
Yet these core concepts are uncritically applied to the processes of
managing at every level from the everyday to the postgraduate
curriculum, even though they conspicuously fail to get to grips with
desire at all, when desire may well be the underlying force that
"motivates" us to act. Motivational theory also fails to consider
passion - in both its senses of pleasure and pain.

Motivation theory therefore seems ripe for transgressive readings that
reconsider desire, joy, passion, humour and so on as possible grounds
for behaviour beyond some simplistic need fulfillment.

This stream then has four main objectives:

? to critically reread existing theory
? to examine how motivational concepts are currently deployed
? to critically examine the concept of desire
? to incorporate embodiment into retheorising motivation

The first "objective" of this stream is to bring these still significant
concepts into a renewed critical focus from a perspective informed by a
full range of contemporary social and psychological theory.

The second of our objectives is a reflexive one - to examine how these
concepts are still deployed, in actuality, even in those approaches
which appear to reject them. Every social theory is in some sense a
theory of motivation

We need to consider how this is evident in current approaches, what
implicit theories are being deployed and what are the consequences?
What, for example, would Deleuzian,  Foucauldian  or Habermasian
theories of motivation look like? How does Nietzsche's Will-to-Power
constitute a theory of motivation?

The third objective is to examine the concept which might be said to
underpin all of these other social concepts - that of human desire. We
wish to encourage a wide ranging approach which takes in the historical
development of concepts of desire - at least from Hegel onwards, perhaps
as far back as Plato.  Is desire motivated by lack of an object, or is
it a ceaseless and circular flow? What motivates Deleuzian
desiring-machines? Is there an ergonomics of desire, as Jackson and
Carter have argued?

Possible readings of desire might stem from Hegel - the drive to become
self-aware, desire as lack; from Kojève - animal/ biological drives
versus the human desire for recognition, desire as lack;  from Freud -
desire for the absent object or other often unconsciously displaced on
to another cathected object - desire as lack and misrecognition; from
Lacan - the subconscious as the site for desire and desire as the
difference between demand for love and need, desire as lack; from
Nietzsche via Bataille to Deleuze and Guattari - a force that overwhelms
and opens up transgression (and others ... Adorno, Benjamin, Foucault,
Sartre, Hyppolite, Derrida, Cixous, Kristeva etc etc)

Specific issues which seem pertinent include the issue of whether
Foucault is right to see desire as an effect of power, or are Bataille
and Deleuze more correct in seeing it as will to power? Is desire
reactive, and hence manifests itself as a lack, or is it an active and
productive force?  If it is only reactive then does motivation become a
drive for a nihilistic moral good?  If it is active then motivational
theories must explain how we affirm and produce ourselves without
recourse to an idea of "lack".  Or is Bataille right - desire is the
decentred war of forces that is the Will-to-Power - desire as both
active and reactive force?  Does desire "motivate" us to risk death, to
peer into the abyss - a reversal of the Freudian death drive, death and
life implied in and inextricable from each other; desire as a
productive, non-negating force - or does our fear of death limit desire?

The  fourth objective here is to incorporate "embodiment" into
theorizing of the motivational process - sexual desire, passion, pain,
anger, rage, jealousy - and the significance of recent
reconceptualisations of the body for the physicality of motivation. Are
these secondary functions of desire or are they alternate forms of
force?  Can passion, pain, anger, rage and jealousy act on desire or do
they only come into being as effects of desire?  If they are effects
then how do we come to experience them through desire? If they are forms
of force how do they act on each other to constitute and motivate us?

Overall we wish contributions to consider whether the human condition
should be considered as a desire to affirm everything that we can be, or
an unfulfillable desire for death. In either case desire grounds our
identity.  It operates either as the ground from which we spring forth
or the bounded space that we cannot escape. Furthermore, if we know
ourselves through language, and we accept Lacan's argument that desire
manifests itself not in language but in the spaces, fissures, holes
between what we say and what we mean, this suggests that desire
continually forces meaning to deconstruct. That is to say, desire
continually escapes language; desire and the human condition are never
contained within a context but continually exceed it; we are forever
coming to writing, coming to an understanding of a possible identity.

What then of workplace language, knowledge and organizational identity
in the information age? Language might also re-introduce the unseen, the
underbelly of the organization, a side that completes and transcends it
by transgression - a side that the traditional rational theory of
motivation ignores, forgets or wants to keep hidden but without which an
organization remains incomplete. So, do organizational stories, myths
and jokes merely represent an organization or do they seek to subvert it
through repetition?

What we seek then are papers that re-introduce desire, passion, joy,
pain, sacrifice, selflessness, the non-rational and unreasonable,
laughter and humour as forces that motivate the human condition, that
recognize organizational life as a lived and livable experience rather
than some flat, dull homogeneous existence that we merely endure before
we die, a context in which quite literally 'all human life is here'. In
particular we seek arguments that transgress rather than extend present
theories of motivation.  They may consider alternative theories of what
desire is, how desire motivates and forms the human condition, how we
attempt to understand ourselves, our motivations and desire. They may be
empirical studies of how attempts to rationalise and understand
workplace motivation are undone or subverted. They may also be
theoretical or empirical works on how rationality attempts to
reterritorialise desire.

Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words to Jo Brewis at
jbrewis-AT-essex.ac.uk. Jo can also be contacted for informal discussion of
the stream at this e-mail address, or by phone on +44 1206 873813

 Please note: there are many other streams running at CMS 2001. Full
details of each can be obtained by contacting stream convenors, as shown
below:

Art and aesthetics in management and organisation studies Philip
Hancock, Glasgow Caledonian University (p.hancock-AT-gcal.ac.uk) Adrian
Carr, University of Western Sydney (a.carr-AT-uws.edu.au)
Change and organisations Andy Sturdy, University of Bath
(mnsajs-AT-management.bath.ac.uk) Chris Grey, Judge Institute, University
of Cambridge (cjg38-AT-cam.ac.uk)
constructing knowledge: alternative modes of investigation in
organisation studies Cynthia Hardy, University of Melbourne
(c.hardy-AT-ecomfac.unimelb.edu.ac), Bill Harley, University of Melbourne
(b.harley-AT-ecomfac.unimelb.edu.ac), Graham Sewell, University of
Melbourne (g.sewell-AT-ecomfac.unimelb.edu.ac), Steve Maguire, McGill
University (smaguire-AT-management.mcgill.ca), Harvie Ramsay, Strathclyde
University (h.e.ramsay-AT-strath.ac.uk), Dora Scholarios, Strathclyde
University (d.scholarios-AT-strath.ac.uk)
consumers and providers Marek Korczynski, University of Loughborough
(m.korczynski-AT-lboro.ac.uk) Ran Lachman, College of Management, Tel-Aviv
(rlachman-AT-colman.ac.il)
countries, organisations and individuals in transition Mihaela Kelemen,
Keele University (mna05-AT-mngt.keele.ac.uk) Eduardo Ibarra, Mexico State
University (eic-AT-xanum.uam.mx)
creation and dissemination of management knowledge Thomas Armbruester,
University of Reading (t.armbruester-AT-reading.ac.uk) Mike Chumer, Rutgers
University, (chumer-AT-scils.rutgers.edu)
economics and institutions Mick Rowlinson, Royal Holloway, University of
London (m.rowlinson-AT-rhbnc.ac.uk)
education Jeanie Forray, Eastern Conneticut State University
(forrayj-AT-ecsu.ctstateu.edu), Ann Cunliffe, University of New Hampshire
(annc-AT-christa.unh.edu), David Knights, University of Keele
(d.knights-AT-keele.ac.uk)
future of work Mike Rose, University of Bath (hssmjr-AT-bath.ac.uk)
gender Albert Mills, Saint Mary’s University (amills-AT-husky1.stmarys.ca)
humour and irony Ulla Johansson, Lund University
(ulla.johansson-AT-fek.lu.se), Jill Woodilla, Central Connecticut State
University (jillwoodilla-AT-snet.net), Deborah R. Litvin, Simmons College,
Boston (litvin-AT-simmons.edu), David Collinson, University of Warwick
(irobdc-AT-wbs.warwick.ac.uk)
language of the new capitalism Pete Thomas, University of Central
Lancashire (p.thomas-AT-uclan.ac.uk) Norman Fairclough, University of
Lancaster, Nelson Phillips, McGill University
(phillips-AT-management.mcgill.ca) Phil Graham, University of Queensland
(phil.graham-AT-mailbox.uq.edu.au)
management and goodness Heather Höpfl, University of Northumbria
(h.hopfl-AT-unm.ac.uk) Ronnie Beadle, University of Northumbria
(ron.beadle-AT-unm.ac.uk)
manufactured futures Rick Delbridge, University of Cardiff
(delbridger-AT-cardiff.ac.uk) Jon Morris, University of Cardiff
(morrisjl-AT-Cardiff.ac.uk)
marketing Michael Saren, Strathclyde University
(michael.saren-AT-strath.ac.uk)
narratives of oppressors and narratives of oppressed Yiannis Gabriel,
University of Bath (mnsyg-AT-management.bath.ac.uk) Ato Quayson, University
of Cambridge (laq10-AT-cus.cam.ac.uk)
operations management and production Steve New, Hertford College Oxford
(steve.new-AT-hertford.oxford.ac.uk) Roy Westbrook, St Hugh's College
Oxford (roy.westbrook-AT-sbs.ox.ac.uk)
organisational misbehaviour Stephen Ackroyd, University of Lancaster
(s.ackroyd-AT-lancaster.ac.uk) Paul Thompson, University of Strathclyde
(p.thompson-AT-strath.ac.uk)
postcolonialism Anshuman Prasad, University of Newhaven
(aprasad-AT-charger.newhaven.edu)
strategy Glenn Morgan, University of Warwick
(irobgm-AT-rapier.wbs.warwick.ac.uk)
the management of creativity and creative industries Paul Jeffcutt,
University of Queens at Belfast (p.jeffcutt-AT-queens-belfast.ac.uk)

Please also view the conference web site at
http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/hr22/cms2001

The conference secretary is:
Mrs Helen Dean
Manchester School of Management
UMIST
PO Box 88
Manchester M60 1QD, UK
e-mail: Helen.Dean-AT-umist.ac.uk
tel: +00 44 161 200 3472