Unpacking Performativity Processes in Organizations
Appel à communications pour un colloque sur les processus de
performativité dans les organisations qui se tiendra à l”Ecole des Mines les
19 et 20 mai 2014.
Unpacking Performativity Processes in Organizations
Research Seminar @ MINES ParisTech, Paris
19th to 20th MAY 2014 (Social event / welcoming: Sunday 18th May evening)
Extended deadline for the abstract: April 10th, 2014.
Please send the proposals to: performativity.mines2014@gmail.com
The performativity thesis formulated by French sociologist Michel Callon and colleagues such as Donald MacKenzie and Yuval Millo according to which
theories (such as economics) can perform and shape the external world is attracting a growing interest among organizational scholars. Along with Latour who suggested in 1996 that management sciences are the most performative of all sciences as they design their objects, performativity scholarship is moving beyond work in the anthropology of markets (Callon,1998, 2007), sociology (Cochoy, Giraudeau & McFall 2010) and social studies of finance (MacKenzie & Millo, 2003) to study how theories shape organizational practices (Cabantous et al. 2012); and the sociomaterial dimensions of performativity (Barad, 2003; Orlikowsky & Scott 2008; MacKenzie & Millo, 2003).
This research seminar is dedicated to scholars who want to further our understanding of performativity processes ? i.e., processes through which theories, ideas or ideologies, are turned into social reality in and across organizations. It is open to perspectives that refine the discursive, social-material or practice-based dimensions of performativity, such as the communicative constitution of organization (Cooren, 2004),the concept of performative praxis (Cabantous & Gond 2011), and the performativity of management devices (Doganova & Eyquem-Renault 2009).
Little is known on the specific processes, devices and routines of theory performation in organizations. Contributions are thus welcomed on the role of management tools an technologies in the performation and transformation of practices. This issue can be addressed at different levels:
– At the industry level, as for instance in the micro-processor industry where a specific cross-organizational setting design technological roadmaps that frame the technological trajectory of the industry, according to the Moore?s law (Miller & O?Leary 2007),
– At the inter-organizational level, to understand the mechanisms and platforms by which new institutional settings are experimented and finally performed, e.g. the structuration of carbon markets,
– At the firm level, to understand how organizational design, routines and processes encapsulate theoretical propositions, e.g. the performation of the genetic selection theory through the implementation of breeding technologies and organizational routines (Labatut, Aggeri & Girard 2012).
We therefore encourage papers from researchers and practitioners that address, but are not limited to, the questions of the underlying mechanisms and processes of performation in and across organizations.
We welcome submissions in which a variety of research strategies and methods for collecting and analysing data are used, and which cover one of the following settings: strategy* theories (e.g. scenario planning, balanced scorecard); management theories (e.g. HRM systems); organization theories (e.g. systems, institutional); accounting and calculability (e.g. discounted cash flow and cost/benefit analyses); technology management and innovation (e.g. technology roadmaps, business models)?
Authors should submit an extended abstract (max 5 pages) by April 10th, 2014.
Please send the proposals to: performativity.mines2014@gmail.com
Conveners:
Franck AGGERI, Centre de Gestion Scientifique, Mines ParisTech, franck.aggeri@mines-paristech.fr
Laure CABANTOUS, Cass Business School, City University London, laure.cabantous.1@city.ac.uk
Emmanuel COBLENCE, ISG Paris & Mines ParisTech, emmanuel.coblence@isg.fr
Liliana DOGANOVA, Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, Mines ParisTech, liliana.doganova@mines-paristech.fr
Jean-Pascal GOND, Cass Business School, City University London, jean-pascal.gond.1@city.ac.uk
* Please also note a Call for Paper on the Performativity of Strategy in
Long Range Planning. Guest editors: L. Cabantous, J.-P. Gond, A. Wright.
Deadline for abstract: 30 Sept. 2014; deadline for full papers: 15 March
2015. Contact the guest editors: performativity.strat@gmail.com/.
See also: http://www.strategie-aims.com/main_events/393/
References:
Barad, K. 2003. Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3): 801-831.
Cabantous, L. & Gond, J.-P. 2011. Rational decison-making as performative praxis: explaining rationalitys éternel retour. Organization Science 22/3: 573-586.
Cabantous, L., J-P. Gond, & M. Johnson-Cramer. 2010. Decision theory as practice: Crafting rationality in organizations. Organization Studies 31/11: 1531-1566.
Callon, M. (ed.) 1998. The Laws of the Market. Oxford: Blackwell.?
Callon, M. 2007. What does it mean to say that economics is performative in “Do economists make markets”. MacKenzie, F. Muniesa, and L. Siu (eds), 311-357. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Cochoy F., Giraudeau M., McFall L. 2010. Performativity, economics and politics: An overview, Journal of Cultural Economy, 3(2): 139-146.
Cooren, F. 2004. Textual agency: How texts do things in organizational settings. Organization, 11(3): 373-393.
Doganova, L. & Eyquem-Renault, M. 2009. What do business models do ? Innovation devices in technology entrepreneurship. Research Policy 38 (10): 1559?1570.
Labatut, J., Aggeri, F., & Girard, N. (2012). Discipline and change: How technologies and organizational routines interact in new practice creation. Organization Studies, 33(1), 39-69.
Latour, B. 1996. Que peuvent apporter l’histoire et la sociologie des sciences aux sciences de la gestion? (The use of science studies to renew a few questions of management sciences). Paper read at XIII Journées nationales des IAE, at Toulouse.?
MacKenzie, D., & Millo, Y. 2003. Constructing a market, performing a theory: the historical sociology of a financial derivatives exchange. American Review of Sociology, 109(1): 107-145.
Miller, P., & O?Leary, T. (2007). Mediating instruments and making markets: Capital budgeting, science and the economy. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 32(7), 701-734.
Orlikowski, W., J., & Scott, S. V. 2008. Sociomateriality: Challenging the separation of technology, work and organization. Academy of Management Annals, 2(1):433-474.