4th INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL MANAGEMENT STUDIES CONFERENCE
4 – 6 July 2005
Cambridge University, UK
Second Call for Papers
Stream Title: TALK AND TEXT: RHETORIC, REALITY AND RESEARCH
Stream Description:
This conference stream invites papers and interactive sessions from those wishing to explore, in a critical way, the relationship between language, reality, and research.
Recent debates in Organization Studies raise questions about the nature of language, moving its role from a taken-for-granted periphery to a problematic centre. Postmodern, poststructural, and social constructionist scholars are amongst those seeking to replace notions of language as a means of representing an external reality, with notions of language as constituting reality. Language is viewed in a multiplicity of ways, as eliding, evoking, literal, metaphoric, rhetorical, a ‘game’, dramatic, poetic, unstable, transparent, creative … all bringing the complexities and uncertainties of language to the
fore. Such views have had far reaching implications for the way we conceptualize and thus research organizational life. If we accept that we cannot step outside language to explain our experience – that the very act of speaking and explaining give order to experience – then how can we possibly hope to say anything meaningful about the management of organizations?
Organization theorists employing a linguistic perspective address this question by taking a wide variety of theoretical and analytical approaches, from interpretive analyses of the variety of implicit meanings in discourse, to poststructuralist analyses of the instability of text, and postmodern analyses of discourse as a process of discipline and control. What ties these research streams together is their underlying sensitivity to a relationship between language and reality and an ongoing effort to re-present organizations and organizing through this link. In this stream, we will continue these conversations.
We are interested in papers, panels, or interactive sessions that explore the philosophical, theoretical, and practical aspects of linguistic approaches to conceptualizing, researching, and managing organizations. We encourage the submission of interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary papers (i.e. from communications, poststructuralism, sociology, psychology, education, organization studies, philosophy, public administration, political science, and other cognate areas). Papers may also explore the ontological, epistemological, and/or methodological aspects of language from a variety of perspectives, including; semiotic, discursive, textual, ethnomethodological, deconstructive, narrative, and poetic.
Possible areas for critical inquiry may include:
® Philosophical and conceptual debate underpinning textual, linguistic, and discursive approaches
® Challenges and possibilities for research approaches, methods, and practices.
® Implications of textual, linguistic, and discu
rsive approaches for re-conceptualizing organizational life
® Language and identities; Language and culture; Language and power
® Managing and organizing as discursive practices
® Writing and speaking in organizations and about organization(s)
® Language, knowledge, and learning
® Research utilizing linguistic or discursive approaches that illuminate these issues within social and/or organizational contexts
Details of the Conveners:
Ann L. Cunliffe, Anderson Schools of Management, University of New Mexico, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001, USA. (510) 885 2268. Email:
cunliffe@mgt.unm.edu
Jeanie M. Forray, Department of Management, Western New England College, 1215 Wilbraham Road, Springfield, MA 01119, USA. (413) 796 2068. Email:
jforray@wnec.edu
Cliff Oswick, The Management Centre, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK. +44 (0)116 252 3955 Email:
c.oswick@le.ac.uk
Timeline:
Abstracts to Ann Cunliffe (
cunliffe@mgt.unm.edu) 1 October
2004
Decisions on acceptance/rejection communicated 1 December 2004
Full papers to Ann Cunliffe (
cunliffe@mgt.unm.edu) 1 April 2005
Abstracts should fit the following requirements:
- Submission in Word
- Arial Font
- 1000 – 1500 words
- Including Title
Authors (affiliation, contact details)
Body of Text
References
CMS Website: http://www.cms4.org