Organization Studies : Moving Entrepreneurially Ahead

Building on a Tradition of Being Inventive

Since its inception, OS has consistently brought innovations to the traditional format of the academic paper: Vita Contemplativa (2003), Peripheral Vision (2004), Perspectives, Essays (since 1989, and Essai since 1997), ‘X’ and Organization Studies (2013) and alternative models of book reviews. We have a strong tradition of special issues as a way to institutionalize the generation and incubation of new or unusual approaches to understanding organizational topics. In particular, our annual special issue that is tied in with the OS Summer Workshop is a space where new ideas can be tested, refined and brought to the fore. OS remains entrepreneurial even though it has matured into a more complex organization. We see that it is important to perpetuate our tradition of creative-experimental thinking now and into the future because it is a critical component of creative reflection to continually question ‘where we want to go next’ and to show ‘this is our way’. As part of this strong tradition, we see that OS must continually cultivate an entrepreneurial spirit by drawing on its capacity to stay on the move.

For OS, this ongoing attention to reinvention means that we must build upon the journal’s ever strengthening emphasis on complex multidisciplinary thinking, societal relevance and social embeddedness. Now more than ever, it is critical to continually remind ourselves and others that OS is a journal that seeks to ‘deepen our understanding of the complexity of organizations as social and political objects, through the mobilization of wide social sciences agendas and knowledge’. (Courpasson, Arellano-Gault, Brown, & Lounsbury, 2008, p. 1384). Studies published in OS are about organizations in society, and OS continues to lead the way by re-investigating the links among organizations, policies and politics. Doing so requires cross- and interdisciplinary research that moves beyond the instrumental, acontextual, or disembodied. OS publications typically try to navigate between the Scylla of esoteric-elitist academic thinking and the Charybdis of journalistic search for effect by developing critical-creative knowledge with care and relevance for people in organizations in societies. We believe that OS must continuously reinvent its capacity to be a journal that is at the forefront of such research questions about life and work in organizations, and interrelationships among organizations, about organizing and the organized in and between societies. OS is an important force and source of nourishment for cultivating a community of scholars that nurtures such ambitions and brings us challenging ideas that can inspire theoretical creativity and imagination, helping organization studies to move on.

The most recent editorial team, Frank den Hond and Robin Holt, together with Trish Reay, has continued to work in this innovative tradition that can be traced all the way back to our first editor, David Hickson (Hickson et al., 1980). Over the years, this creative-critical-imaginative-entrepreneurial spirit has been fortified with increased attention to experimentation and courage (Holt & den Hond, 2013). Studying, writing on and reading about organizations, organizing and the organized requires a taste for the problems that come with arranging people, resources and forces in particular ways. We concur that OS must be concerned with ‘the condition of organization, how and why it occurs and how we might make sense of lives being continually organized’ (Holt & den Hond, 2013, p. 1588), as well as with how organizations are created as entrepreneurial initiatives. We add that generosity is as important as curiosity for intellectual progress; the community-dimension of OS as a journal embedded in the greater EGOS family is central. We believe that a strong sense of community has historically characterized scientific progress – somewhat in contrast to a more individualistic set of choices that can be associated with a strong focus on publishing. We see knowledge as a social source of enhanced possibilities that can spring from an open, multidisciplinary conversation among diverse groups of people.

We thus add to what other editors before us have said by emphasizing the point that it is the people organizing and organized by work who are important (Barley & Kunda, 1992). People who engage in entrepreneurial activities and take on managerial or leadership roles, and people who inhabit institutions (Fine & Hallett, 2014; Hallett & Ventresca, 2006) are important; they are critical to the heteroglossia (or multi-voicedness) that is organization studies. We encourage more research that builds on these ideas. We are also intrigued by and welcome research investigating attempts to create organization where it is lacking; such research highlights various forms of entrepreneurship in terms of the nature of a problem to be solved, or an opportunity to be pursued. A start-up, or the launch of a venture, is an organization-creation process that makes the emergent organization into the existing organization (Katz & Gartner, 1988).

As an important component of organization studies, we encourage scholarship showing how knowledge concerning organizations, organizing (including organization-creating processes) and the organized can best be developed. We refer to this as falling within the domain of method/ology. Resulting questions and avenues of research relate to finding or making a way (Greek hodos, as in methodos) that we see as increasingly important in relationship to (social) media events that challenge reflexive reasoning from research-based knowledge and the value of such knowledge for society. We believe that OS has a role to play in defending the strength of the weak, the vulnerability of the open society and its tendency to opt for the long road of knowledge rather than the short route of force or simple rule of thumb (Foucault, 2007; Popper, 2003). Method/ology is indeed sometimes seen as the ‘long road’ to knowledge, and perhaps increasingly so in a society that praises speed and immediate effect. Also for this reason, we believe that method/ology papers make an important contribution to our role as providers of research-based knowledge.

Staying true to the roots of OS that are grounded in diversity, we enthusiastically endorse the importance of respecting multiple disciplines. Previous Editors have stressed the role of economics, psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, philosophy, cognitive science and political science in building this interdisciplinary engagement that places the study of organization today at society’s centre stage. Consistent with the mandate of EGOS and the breadth of interests held by EGOSians, we seek to ‘embrace complexity rather than reduce it’ (Tsoukas, 2003, p. 1007) and our attention to questions of method/ology fits well in this regard.

We feel aligned with those who hold deep suspicion of calls for a unifying paradigm or establishing a ‘proper’ discipline (of organization studies). We believe that OS must continue to take inspiration from its multidisciplinary ‘foundation’ by maintaining a child-like enthusiasm for life, always rejoicing in the interruption of stabilizing efforts, and finding new reasons to move onward (as Kierkegaard would have it; 2006, p. 31). The clear presence of multiple disciplinary and theoretical perspectives in OS helps prevent us from inward-looking attempts to form total theories. We suggest that organization studies is a polyphony – a choir with many distinct voices (Bakhtin, 1984) that allows for surprise and change. This polyphony can help to avoid the development of a strong discipline-identity that smothers disagreement and conversation; instead, OS must continue to attract and support scholars with a parrhesiastic tint who encourage the ongoing critical examination of our own ways (Foucault, 1997; Butler, 2001; Butler, 2009).

We find ourselves at home in a world of multi-, inter- and cross-disciplinarity, and as a result, we stress that new and evolving approaches to the study of organization, organizing and the organized should spring from such cross-fertilization. We look forward to the papers that are developed in response to this year’s theme of ‘Surprise’ at EGOS 2018. This focus matches well with our emphasis on the importance of ongoing organizational creation that is associated with unusual knowledge-creating processes, and with interests in art, aesthetics, philosophy and even play (see our forthcoming special issue on Organizational Creativity, Play and Entrepreneurship). We believe it is the sometimes-unexpected combining of different traditions that sets out a mosaic style of disciplinary ‘landscape’ in which OS gracefully moves. We are strongly committed to continuing this multi-, inter and cross-disciplinary approach as OS moves forward with debated issues of method and methodology, arguments for feminism or process studies, examining the importance of time and space, accounts of institutional change or stability, opening up thinking to include practices, bodies, ethics, or affect, and other topics.

Organization Studies benefits immensely from conversing not only with our intellectual siblings in sociology, physical sciences, political science, history, anthropology, ethnology, economics, human geography and psychology, but also studies in philosophy, art and literature, historically more distant and silent voices in organization studies’ debates and ongoing knowledge-creation processes. When we describe the colourful paintings that the canvas of OS attracts from its contributors, there is a conscious humanities-tint to our image. The use of metaphorical expressions is also intended. As many have pointed out long ago (Nietzsche, 1873; Wittgenstein, 1953; Lyotard, 1979; Burrell & Morgan, 1979; Morgan, 1980; 1983; Rorty, 1980) concepts are metaphors (function metaphorically) in that they (like models) acquire descriptive or explanatory power by presenting one thing in terms of another (Morgan, 1980; Czarniawska, 1998, p. 29; Eco, 1992, p. 140; Collins, 1976). If we are ‘aware of the reality-shaping rather than mere representational function of language’ (Tsoukas, 2003, p. 1007) we, as scholars, can also seek a more affirmative relationship with our own inventiveness. A ‘dare to know’ attitude (Holt & den Hond, 2013) resonates with what has characterized OS since its birth. An inventiveness supported by a multidisciplinary conversation is both a product of who we are and an important force in shaping the ‘undisciplined’ discipline we call organization studies.

We thus want to emphasize that thinking creatively is at the heart of scholarly work. But thought is also ‘governed’ by forces that direct its movements and impacts upon its connective capacity. Constructing concepts (Suddaby, 2010) is a creative addition to the world (Massumi, 2002), a temporary pushing back against the continuous and chaotic falling apart of the world and the reductive and simplifying use of universal templates for handling or dealing with it. Thinking uses concepts to move and connect; conceptual development and theory construction helps us to expand our thinking. Method/ology is an important element in learning to master these processes, which makes such articles important in OS, a journal that stresses contribution to theory.

Concepts are in this sense important for theory construction as long as they lead to generating new thinking, or creating openness for thinking to freely move in/to. Relevance is not reducible to usefulness in a specific and often more instrumental problem-solving-horizon; it is always a question of the challenging, provoking, opening-up, connective and creative capacity of concepts. Relevance also relates to the knowledge made possible in the context of use and the context in which concepts have emerged. This is where critical knowledge and theory makes a difference. If we understand ‘critical’ as the thinker’s insistence to know her knowledge (Foucault, 1997; Butler, 2001), reflexivity is bound to all knowing, and method/ology, as a knowledge of the way to knowledge, is bound to reflexivity. To the extent that organization studies, broadly understood, can be said to form part of social sciences, and social sciences cannot be thought of independently from philosophical concepts (Winch, 1958; Burrell & Morgan, 1979; Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2000), philosophy matters. When ‘critical’ means we claim to know our knowledge and want that knowledge to matter vis-a-vis what we have studied, philosophy becomes a resource for thinking (creative use of concepts) if we understand philosophy as ‘the movement of thought to the virtual fringe of things’ (Massumi, 2002, pp. 241–242). If we are interested in theory construction (Cornelissen, 2006; Suddaby, 2010; Weick, 1989), thinking must move us; such movement is the creation of new relationships between concepts that enables new theory to form, allowing us to imagine new practices.

OS holds a strong history of embracing multi-, inter- and cross-disciplinary studies, locating itself in society rather than outside society, and seeing its disciplinary pluralism as a strength. This resulting identity is consistent with ongoing initiatives to urge readers and contributing writers to engage in creative thinking; we join previous voices highlighting the importance of questions concerning how we create knowledge through multiple processes and especially through writing. We believe that OS is an excellent venue for renewing attention to what we understand by method/ology and what we understand by an academic text. We push these ideas forward as part of a broader discussion about knowledge creation and the voice of scholars in society. We can now move on to briefly elaborate on (the future of) publishing in OS.

Publishing in OS Now and in the Future

First and foremost, we publish empirical articles that push organization theory forward through research studies based on qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods. Second, and continuing a strong tradition that dates back to the founding of OS, we publish conceptual articles that are distinct from empirical articles by developing theory without reliance on empirical data. Third, OS publishes essay-style articles now under the label ‘X and Organization Studies’ that are meant to be provocative pieces exemplifying a ‘daring to know’ and even ‘daring to be surprised’ attitude. We see that ‘X and OS’ pieces can provide a space for respecting diversity of thought and perspective, in addition to building bridges that connect us with other disciplines Fourth, we publish Perspectives that are virtual issues giving focused attention to a particular scholarly topic (e.g. Strategy-as-Practice was the topic of our first Perspectives) with a descriptive and engaging overview article together with examples of previously published OS articles that have contributed to developing the topic. Fifth, we more specifically invite methodology articles. We explain in more detail below why we find this important and how we see both methods and methodology as integral to meeting the overall aims of OS as a scholarly journal.

Below we provide information about each type of submission, and encourage authors to visit the OS website (https://journals-sagepub-com.web.bisu.edu.cn/home/oss) for more details.

Empirical research studies: Empirical studies can be based on qualitative, quantitative or mixed research methods. Articles must be grounded in and make a contribution to organizational theory. A Senior Editor is assigned based on both content and methodological expertise.

Conceptual papers: Conceptual (Theory) papers develop (or challenge) theory without the use of empirical data. There is no particular formula; however, a clear contribution to theory is required. Conceptual, theory-developing papers are important sources of renewing and challenging how we approach, describe, think about and analyse organizations. As such, they affect what organizations are, how organizations work and how they change; they also impact what society is and how societies work and change. This means that such papers must acknowledge the complex, contextual, relational and often multidisciplinary nature of theory development.

‘X’ and Organization Studies: These are essay-type papers that are provocative, concise and to the point. They may deal with more marginal, repressed or overlooked topics. They may also provide a vehicle for attention to concepts that cross disciplinary boundaries. Alternatively, they may address topics that need attention because of current trends or events. We encourage authors to briefly discuss potential ideas with one of the EICs to avoid overlap with already published or in-progress articles.

Perspectives: These articles are written to provide a focused overview of a particular topic that helps to acquaint readers with key concepts. Authors draw attention to relevant articles previously published in OS and other outlets and explain how the focal topic has developed over time. In addition, authors should raise concerns or gaps in knowledge, and suggest avenues for future research. Our first Perspectives article was focused on Strategy-as-Practice (Seidl & Whittington, 2014) and serves as a notable exemplar. The Perspectives article is published in a regular OS issue, and also published online together with the previously published OS articles as part of a virtual issue. Interested authors should discuss their ideas with one of the EICs.

Methods and Methodology: Method/ology articles provide space for discussion and development of concepts concerning methodology and methods. We invite such articles that legitimize their place in the journal by tackling issues concerning the generation of data for analysis in organization studies. Such topics can include study design, analytical strategies, dilemmas of interpretation, how to construct theory, critique of established methods, as well as knowledge-sociological and philosophical questions. Contributions should not deal simply with method/ology problems as such; instead we encourage thoughtful studies that are developed with reference to, and in the context of, organization studies and the related method/ology challenges.

We see that Methods and Methodology papers should further strengthen the position and voice of OS in the wider scholarly community. Empirical research relies on methods and methodology that is appropriately grounded in clear understandings concerning principles of knowledge generation, typically including relationships to philosophy, history, cultures, art and contemporary societal concerns (such as the present debate on facts in media). Quantitative research has a long history that is associated with clear precedents and expectations regarding ontology, epistemology and selection of appropriate methods. Qualitative research is also situated on strong foundations that, for example, in the case of hermeneutics can be traced back to Schleiermacher and Dilthey (Winch, 1958; Tool, 2014) and the distinction between social (or cultural) science and natural science in the 1880s. We are convinced that the emerging and intensifying discussion of rigour and relevance (Hodgkinson & Rousseau, 2009; Kieser & Leiner, 2009; Langley & Tsoukas, 2017; Vermeulen, 2005) and newer methodological approaches such as visual analysis in management research is one to which scholarly journals such as OS should contribute, given our strong tradition and experience with qualitative method/ology in particular. We encourage the submission of articles that tackle ongoing methodological concerns, or provide helpful advice about how to engage with newer approaches related to quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods.

We see Methods and Methodology (thus method/ology) in the broad sense indicated by hodos in the Greek methodos, meaning a way to organize in this sense the knowledge-creation process. As such, it is subject to questions of style (aesthetics), ideology (worldview), pragmatics (what works in the field), method (how empirics are generated), politics and ethics (who gets to say what, when and how) and writing (how ideas are communicated). Methods and Methodology is thus also the domain of author subjectification, and can lead to specific ways of becoming an author and a subsequent fixation on templates, off-the-shelf tools and standard operating procedures. In contrast to such tendencies, we see method/ology as integral to questions about how authors craft themselves and take account of the many choices involved (Nietzsche, 1891) in writing.

Method is always about crafting, and as such relies on a continued sensibility towards the material at hand. Scholars develop new knowledge through studying a phenomenon, event, situation, text, archive, story or lived practices, to name a few possibilities. It is through a process of crafting that they move towards a text that makes the studied understood; scholars must engage with existing concepts and theoretical frames to get beyond or deepen the already known (Burrell & Morgan, 1979; Morgan, 1980, 1983; Tsoukas, 1989; Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2000; Law, 2004). This process might also require the creation of new concepts. Knowledge creation, the generation of meaningful, beautiful, interesting, critical, useful, relevant, practical, provocative and/or challenging insights is of course an important role for scholars to pursue and take on (Lyotard, 1979; Rorty, 1980). Scholars are written as they write, by the conventions they use, by the styles they further, by the schools of thought that bestow authority on those that align with them. We agree with Rhodes (2009) who stresses that researchers and writers work always for knowledge and not only with knowledge for society, or with knowledge for organizations. It is our responsibility to learn to know our knowledge (Foucault, 2007), i.e. to learn to critically work for knowledge, for organizations, in societies.

There is a risk that method becomes a question of applying templates or instruments in a standard or conventional manner. Templates for organizing knowledge creation help, but they can also be deceptive or seductive. The ‘way’ (hodos) can become a comfortable autobahn-drive where we lose sensitivity before the material at hand, focusing only on the road and the speed, not on where to go or what you see. Instrumental, unreflective ways of using methods (like templates in need of no further explanation or legitimation) is sometimes the reason why the pursuit of meaningful new knowledge looks like a mason adding bricks to a great wall. In such cases, no matter what we have studied, it ends up in the shape of a brick due to the tools in use and the pursuit of finding a hole to fill. Bringing the ‘missing stone’ is deemed as a sign of having done something significant: identified the gap in the existing wall of knowledge and chipped off the odd shapes of your own brick to make it fit nicely into that w/hole as defined by existing work (Sandberg & Alvesson, 2010). In a big boat there is more boat to attend to than sea to worry about (Tolbert & Zucker, 1996), and we are thus easily led to think the brick should match the wall rather than tell us something about the soil of which it was made. Instead, we are calling for critical-creative-reflexive discussions of method/ology that are contextually sensitive and that emerge as a concern due to struggles with finding a way. Making the knowledge-creation process open to the reader and helping us to know our knowledge is precisely what method/ology can do. No matter the stringency of method, no matter how rigorously it is applied, whether in qualitative, quantitative or mixed method studies, if it is not used reflexively and critically, there is a danger that method does violence to the material studied (Barthes, 1982). Massumi says that the scientific method can be ‘the institutionalized maintenance of sang froid in the face of surprise’ (Massumi, 2002, p. 198). This can mean that method holds our hand and helps us maintain objectivity if we think of this in the context of quantitative methods, but it can also mean that method prevents us from seeing what is new and unique if we think of this in the context of qualitative method.

OS is a journal that encourages scholars to be thrilled by and to pause in wonder at the skilfully crafted text that exemplifies scholarship deeply related to creative writing (de Cock, 2000; de Cock & Land, 2006; Rhodes, 2001). As part of this appreciation of writing as a creative act, and writing as central to the research process, OS commits to a view of multidisciplinary conversations as being important sources of such creative writing (Butler, 2009; Tsoukas, 2003). This means that both a broader and more diverse social science conversation than is typically seen in management journals can fruitfully be incorporated into the creation of relevant knowledge in organization studies. Also this is intensified in what we call critique, to the extent that we aspire to practise critique as an ongoing learning to know our knowledge (Butler, 2001; Foucault, 1997). It is important to note, as Butler does (2001), that this desubjugation co-emerges with self-formation ‘when a mode of existence is risked which is unsupported by what he [Foucault] calls the regime of truth’ (pp. 3–4). OS is committed to supporting versions of such risk-taking in writing. We stress that method/ology papers are particularly well suited to give room to such creative-critical writing (which goes for all the papers which OS publishes) that springs from the kind of risk we associate with more experimental and provocative writings.

Method/ology can thus contribute to the ‘genres’ of papers that are published in OS. We have tried to show above that this is consistent with and affirms what has previously been said on publishing in OS by editors-in-chief before us. We realize that a passionate scholarship (Courpasson, 2013) and a ‘daring to know attitude’ (Holt & den Hond, 2013) are important. However, we draw attention to what we see as lying at the heart of excellent work – creative-critical writing that can take risks and entrepreneurially make sensitive use of material in reflexive ways that opens the knowledge-creation process to the reader. Such texts are more ‘writerly’, Barthes (1974) noted, as they enable the reader to go on writing them.

In Closing – Towards Writing

We recognize that this critical-creative style is resonant with Geertz’s (1973) anthropological work (Greenblatt, 1997) and that of Barthes, mentioned above. In contrast to some interpretations of disciplined imagining (Weick, 1989), we stress ‘imagining’ as much as ‘disciplined’. We suggest that more experimenting and entrepreneurial approaches will help to keep OS beyond a Kantian enlightenment ideal. We encourage articles that are edgy and push the boundaries of current thinking. And with this approach, we also encourage a sense of playfulness. Nietzsche challenges us to avoid becoming so serious that we do not know how to laugh, play and dance (Deleuze, 2006). We want to take up that challenge as journal editors by publishing articles that are appropriately grounded in theory and contribute to research in critical-creative ways. But in addition, we ask for engaged, beautiful, provocative and playful writing that can move us to new ways of thinking.

Writing, as we have emphasized, is the most central part of how ‘what organization studies researchers do’ does its work (to paraphrase Foucault). Style, tone, address, choice of words, poetics and composition are an important part of the writing process. We believe that emphasizing writing, expression and style opens up important ideas about how success can be achieved in the pursuit of publishing a research paper or essay. Rather than merely representing a studied reality correctly while making language and writing secondary, a more performative understanding stresses that we can add to and change the world when we write, no matter whether studies are based on quantitative or qualitative data. We write as researchers to communicate and we communicate to persuade the reader. We agree with Van Maanen (1995) who suggests that the persuasive is the successful, and we understand this as a question of having moved the reader from one position to a new one. A critical aspect of such ability to move is a question of affect – a quality of writing that we aspire to cultivate.

Disciplined imagining (according to Weick, 1989) should result in theoretical work that is plausible, interesting, aesthetically pleasing, high in narrative rationality, and describes relationships in the world that enables us to learn something new. Success is of course also accuracy in explanations and is related to how much constructive work a theory can do for us as scholars trying to understand human behaviour. Moving towards greater theoretical accuracy, Weick reminds us, is an aim ‘directed at the explainer rather than the objects being explained’. This resonates with Geertz’s (1973; see also Greenblatt, 1997) concept of thickness in descriptions. However, as Greenblatt points out, a well-chosen object, act, event or story to describe will be a richer source to the extent that we become acquainted ‘with the imaginative universe within which their [people in any culture] acts are signs’ (Geertz, 1973, p. 11). Accuracy and precision are questions related to writing that we call imaginative, critical-creative theorizing. Such writing can move us between the local story and the bigger conceptual picture in ways that still resonate with what we have empirically in focus. When we want imagining to be important, it is essential that theorizing goes hand-in-hand with philosophy’s joy for reaching the fringe. Perhaps we are brought back to Nietzsche’s ‘becoming child’ (Weiskopf & Steyaert, 2009): ‘I name you three metamorphoses of the spirit: how the spirit shall become a camel, and the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child’ (Nietzsche, 1891/ 1978, p. 54). OS is a journal that acknowledges the importance of the heavily loaded Camel (tradition, the erudite, scholarly) that has often provided fodder for the fire that roars in the Lion’s ‘no’ (critique, resistance), but is also a journal that continues to fuel up its capacity to affirm and wonder before the child’s sacred ‘yes’ (becoming, movement) that allows inventions of new possibilities. Ultimately, the aim is not to merely contribute to theory, but to change the way we see the world. Being a journal that publishes studies of organizations in societies, this is important to OS.

We reiterate our commitment to continue the OS traditions of diversity with respect to gender, geography and content. We encourage the continuation of multi-, inter- and cross-disciplinarity. Although we recognize the ongoing entrepreneurial spirit associated with OS, we endeavour to bring this creative-critical-imaginative-entrepreneurial approach to the fore. Within this approach, we continually remind ourselves that people are at the heart of organizations, organizing and the organized within and between societies; they must not be overlooked. We hope to exercise both stewardship and entrepreneurship in bringing OS through an exciting, imaginative and renewing stage of becoming by building on and building up the vitality of relationships and interactions with readers and writers. This is an exceptional responsibility and a fantastic opportunity that we believe can only be enacted through a solid grounding in tradition together with the generosity and generativity of the OS community – all of which provides the foundation for us to move entrepreneurially ahead.