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Sub-theme 20: Alternative Organization at a Crossroads: Which Routes Forward?

Convenors:
Genevieve Shanahan
Cardiff Business School, United Kingdom
Sara Dahlman
Roskilde University, Denmark
Emil Husted
Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

Call for Papers

As a field of research, organization and management studies has always been concerned with alternatives. From Follett’s (1918) seminal work on neighbourhood groups and Selznick’s (1949) account of grassroots organizing to Rothschild-Whitt’s (1978) study of collectivist cooperatives, scholars have sought to explain the dynamics of anti-establishment organizations. In the course of the past decade, this longstanding interest in alternativity has become increasingly recognized as a distinct sub-field of organization studies, with dictionaries, anthologies, special issues, workshops, and conference panels dedicated to its fruition. Following from the establishment of alternative organization studies as a sub-field with an identified empirical domain as well as a defined theoretical purview, recent literature has begun to question how we might continue to move scholarship of alternative organizations forward. Arguably, we now find ourselves at a crossroads regarding the future development of alternative organizations scholarship.
 
One such choice regards how alternative organizations should be defined. As Dahlman et al. (2022) argue, two distinct approaches to settling that issue are dominant in the study of alternatives to date. One approach identifies alternatives as organizations that operate according to a number of core principles such as autonomy, solidarity, and responsibility (e.g. Parker et al., 2014; Daskalaki et al., 2019). The other approach identifies alternativity as constituted by particular organizational practices such as horizontal decision-making, open meetings, or artistic self-expression (e.g. Kokkinidis, 2015; Reedy et al., 2016). Both approaches involve normative commitments to certain predefined criteria, limiting the researchers’ ability to discover alternativity in unexpected places (Husted, 2021). In contrast to these static definitions of alternative organizing, a burgeoning stream of research adopts a processual approach that focuses on the relationship between ‘the mainstream’ and ‘the alternative’ (Böhm et al., 2010; Jensen, 2021). Here, alternative organizations may be defined in terms of their difference from dominant institutional arrangements (Cheney & Munshi, 2017), their freedom from the latter’s constraints (Dahlman et al., 2022; Shanahan, 2022), or their intention to modify these constraints (Clarence-Smith & Monticelli, 2022; du Plessis & Just, 2021).
 
Another important question for the future of alternative organization studies is how scholars should relate to the organizations they study (Just et al., 2021). Parker and Parker (2017) distinguish between an antagonistic stance drawn from the critical management studies tradition, which emphasizes critique of organizations that claim to be alternative to the status quo (Fleming & Banerjee, 2016; King & Learmonth, 2015; Butler, Delaney & Spoelstra, 2018), and an accommodationist stance that aims to render scholarship impactful and performative by working with organizations that are imperfectly alternative (Spicer et al., 2009; Wickert & Schaefer, 2015). In identifying the limits of both approaches, Parker and Parker (2017) advocate an agonist stance, pursuing performative engagement with organizations, which are recognized to be necessarily imperfect alternatives to the mainstream (King, 2015; Monticelli, 2018).
 
We invite contributions that address how alternative organizations scholarship should move forward at these, and related, junctions. Specific questions participants may wish to address include but are not limited to:

  • How do alternatives to mainstream organizations and institutions emerge?

  • How do alternative organizations and their mainstream counterparts interact over time?

  • What can alternative organizations that do not conform to the above-named principles and practices teach us about the possibilities and implications of alternatives? And how might scholars engage with alternative organizations that do not conform to established definitions?

  • What are the implications for critical performativity of a processual definition of alternative organizing? And what methodological challenges are associated with such definitions?

  • How do different alternatives, defined in relation to a given mainstream current (or multiple such currents), interact with one another?

  • How do digital technologies affect the relationship between an alternative and the mainstream? And between different types of alternatives?

  • What other junctures do alternative organizations studies face today? Do we find ourselves at a crossroads regarding, for instance, digitization, the relationship between the organization and the individual, the role of the state, the climate crisis or global justice?

 

References

  • Böhm, S., Dinerstein, A.C., & Spicer, A. (2010): “(Im)possibilities of Autonomy: Social Movements in and beyond Capital, the State and Development.” Social Movement Studies, 9 (1), 17–32.
  • Butler, N., Delaney, H. & Spoelstra, S. (2018): “Risky business: Reflections on critical performativity in practice.” Organization, 25 (3), 428–445.
  • Cheney, G. & Munshi, D. (2017): “Alternative Forms of Organization and Organizing.” In: J.R. Baker, J. Keyton, T. Kuhn & P.K. Turner (eds): The International Encyclopedia of Organizational Communication. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 59–66.
  • Clarence-Smith, S., & Monticelli, L. (2022): “Flexible institutionalisation in Auroville: A prefigurative alternative to development.” Sustainability Science, 17 (4), 1171–1182.
  • Dahlman, S., Mygind du Plessis, E., Husted, E., & Just, S.N. (2022): “Alternativity as freedom: Exploring tactics of emergence in alternative forms of organizing.” Human Relations, 75 (10), 1961–1985.
  • Daskalaki, M., Fotaki, M., & Sotiropoulou, I. (2019): “Performing Values Practices and Grassroots Organizing: The Case of Solidarity Economy Initiatives in Greece.“ Organization Studies, 40 (11), 1741–1765.
  • Fleming, P. & Banerjee, S.B. (2016): “When performativity fails: Implications for Critical Management Studies.” Human Relations, 69 (2), 257–276.
  • Follett, M.P. (1918): The New State. Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government. London, UK: Longmans, Green and Co.
  • Husted, E. (2021): “Alternative organization and neo-normative control: Notes on a British town council.” Culture and Organization, 27 (2), 132–151.
  • Jensen, P.R. (2021): “Alternative logics: A Discursive approach to normative and alternative organizing.” Human Relations, 74 (8), 1156–1177.
  • Just, S.N., De Cock, C., & Schaefer, S.M. (2021): “From antagonists to allies? Exploring the critical performativity of alternative organization.” Culture and Organization, 27 (2), 89–97.
  • King, D. (2015): “The possibilities and perils of critical performativity: Learning from four case studies.” Scandinavian Journal of Management, 31 (2), 255–265.
  • King, D. & Learmonth, M. (2015): “‘Can critical management studies ever be ‘practical’? A case study in engaged scholarship’.” Human Relations, 68 (3), 353–375.
  • Kokkinidis, G. (2015): “Spaces of possibilities: Workers’ self-management in Greece.” Organization, 22 (6), 847–871.
  • Monticelli, L. (2018): “Embodying Alternatives to Capitalism in the 21st Century.” TripleC, 16 (2), 501–517.
  • Parker, M., Cheney, G., Fournier, V., & Land, C. (2014): “The question of organization: A manifesto for alternatives.” Ephemera, 14 (4), 623–638.
  • Parker, S. & Parker, M. (2017): “Antagonism, accommodation and agonism in Critical Management Studies: Alternative organizations as allies.” Human Relations, 70 (11), 1366–1387.
  • du Plessis, E.M., & Just, S. N. (2022): “Mindfulness—it’s not what you think: Toward critical reconciliation with progressive self-development practices.” Organization, 29 (1), 209–221.
  • Reedy, P., King, D., & Coupland, C. (2016): “Organizing for Individuation: Alternative Organizing, Politics and New Identities.” Organization Studies, 37 (11), 1553–1573.
  • Rothschild-Whitt, J. (1976): “Conditions Facilitating Participatory-Democratic Organizations.” Sociological Inquiry, 46 (2), 75–86.
  • Selznick, P. (1949): TVA and the Grass Roots: A Study in the Sociology of Formal Organization. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
  • Shanahan, G. (2022): “‘No decision is permanent!’: Achieving democratic revisability in alternative organizations through the affordances of new information and communication technologies.” Human Relations, 76 (10), 1661–1686.
  • Spicer, A., Alvesson, M. & Kärreman, D. (2009): “Critical performativity: The unfinished business of critical management studies.” Human Relations, 62 (4), 537–560.
  • Wickert, C. & Schaefer, S.M. (2015): “Towards a progressive understanding of performativity in critical management studies.” Human Relations, 68 (1), 107–130.
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Genevieve Shanahan is an Early-career Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Management, Employment and Organization at Cardiff Business School, United Kingdom. Her research focuses on how alternative organizations can contribute to building a more just and sustainable society. She is am particularly interested in how novel technologies might make possible new ways of coordinating social change efforts democratically. Genevieve’s research has been published in ‘Human Relations’, ‘International Journal of Human Resource Management’, ‘Frontiers in Sociology’, and ‘International Review of Applied Economics’. She has also contributed chapters to scholarly books on Universal Basic Income and Business Ethics.
Sara Dahlman is a Post-doctoral Researcher in the Department of Communication and Arts at Roskilde University, Denmark. Her research focuses on processes of alternative organizing, where she is especially interested in the establishment and maintenance of alternativity. Theoretically, her interest ranges from affect theory, feminist theories and contemporary utopian thinking to open new understandings of alternative organizing. Sara’s work has been published in ‘Human Relations’, ‘Journal of Business Ethics’, and ‘Big Data & Society’.
Emil Husted is an Associate Professor in the Department of Organization at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. Hs research focuses on the intersection of politics and organization, often with a focus on the role of digital technology in mediating this relationship. Empirically, he focuses on a number of different political organizations such as political parties, social movements, and activist networks. Emil’s research has been published in international journals, such as ‘Organization Studies’, ‘Human Relations’, ‘Organization’, ‘The Information Society’, and ‘Culture and Organization’. He is also the author of a recent textbook on Digital Organizing (with Ursula Plesner).