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Book part
Publication date: 23 September 2024

Thomas Lopdrup-Hjorth and Paul du Gay

Organizations are confronted with problems and political risks to which they have to respond, presenting a need to develop tools and frames of understanding requisite to do so. In…

Abstract

Organizations are confronted with problems and political risks to which they have to respond, presenting a need to develop tools and frames of understanding requisite to do so. In this article, we argue for the necessity of cultivating “political judgment” with a “sense of reality,” especially in the upper echelons of organizations. This article has two objectives: First to highlight how a number of recent interlinked developments within organizational analysis and practice have contributed to weakening judgment and its accompanying “sense of reality.” Second, to (re)introduce some canonical works that, although less in vogue recently, provide both a source of wisdom and frames of understanding that are key to tackling today’s problems. We begin by mapping the context in which the need for the cultivation of political judgment within organizations has arisen: (i) increasing proliferation of political risks and “wicked problems” to which it is expected that organizations adapt and respond; (ii) a wider historical and contemporary context in which the exercise of judgment has been undermined – a result of a combination of economics-inspired styles of theorizing and an associated obsession with metrics. We also explore the nature of “political judgment” and its accompanying “sense of reality” through the work of authors such as Philip Selznick, Max Weber, Chester Barnard, and Isaiah Berlin. We suggest that these authors have a weighty “sense of reality”; are antithetical to “high,” “abstract,” or “axiomatic” theorizing; and have a profound sense of the burden from exercising political judgment in difficult organizational circumstances.

Details

Sociological Thinking in Contemporary Organizational Scholarship
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83549-588-9

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Available. Open Access. Open Access
Article
Publication date: 10 July 2017

Louise Christensen

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a study of a practice can lay the foundation to describe this very practice whilst transformations of it were taken place. Descriptions…

10901

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a study of a practice can lay the foundation to describe this very practice whilst transformations of it were taken place. Descriptions of changes to the practice of social work which was observed empirically serve as a starting point for experimenting with how social scientists, though often exploring transformative study objects, can remain focused on describing the object, under study.

Design/methodology/approach

The study was done through circa one year of fieldwork conducted with participant observation in two Danish municipal units offering services to socially marginalized people and interviews with social workers and employees in drug/alcohol treatment and psychiatric units.

Findings

The object of study within social sciences, though changing, is able to be described. Through the theories of “Social Navigation” (Vigh) and “Strategy and Tactics” (de Certeau), the practice of social work can be described as one concrete bounded practice but one which is performed within a transformative/changeable environment that are capable of influencing it. In this case, the experience of a changeable seascape might serve as a metaphor for how study objects change within an environment of change; how they can be viewed as “motion within motion” (Vigh).

Originality/value

Even though fields such as anthropology and organizational studies seem to rid themselves from their objects of study (culture and organization, respectively) and dissociate themselves from descriptions thereof these objects might still be of value to us. Even though the objects of study in postmodern anthropology and organizational studies are defined as unbounded, anti-essential, ephemeral, ever-changing non-objects, this might not be the entire picture. Despite their ever-changing shape, we might still be able to study and describe them if we take their changeable form and environment into account.

Details

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 6 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6749

Keywords

Available. Open Access. Open Access
Book part
Publication date: 23 September 2024

Abstract

Details

Sociological Thinking in Contemporary Organizational Scholarship
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83549-588-9

Available. Content available
Book part
Publication date: 16 October 2017

Abstract

Details

The Experience of Democracy and Bureaucracy in South Korea
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-471-2

Available. Content available
Book part
Publication date: 15 April 2021

David Arditi

Free Access. Free Access

Abstract

Details

Streaming Culture
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83982-768-6

Available. Content available
Book part
Publication date: 2 May 2012

Abstract

Details

Reinventing Hierarchy and Bureaucracy – from the Bureau to Network Organizations
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-783-3

Available. Content available
Book part
Publication date: 1 January 2012

Abstract

Details

Managing ‘Human Resources’ by Exploiting and Exploring People’s Potentials
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-506-7

Available. Content available
Article
Publication date: 1 September 2006

Andrew Sturdy, Irena Grugulis and Hugh Willmott

1380

Abstract

Details

European Journal of Marketing, vol. 40 no. 9/10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0309-0566

Keywords

Available. Content available
Book part
Publication date: 8 October 2018

Abstract

Details

Bureaucracy and Society in Transition
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-283-3

Available. Content available
Book part
Publication date: 21 March 2017

Abstract

Details

Grassroots Leadership and the Arts for Social Change
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78635-687-1

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