Critical Management Studies, 2009. Warwick University, UK
Call for Papers:
‘Whole Lives’
We propose to explore the emerging interest in the integration of ‘whole lives’ into
critical management scholarship by inviting contributions to this stream. Central to our
argument is that people’s lives and experiences cannot be kept separate from their ‘work
lives’ as there is a mutually constitutive relationship between them. In this stream we call
for papers which explore this relationship.
Today, social and cultural boundaries are deemed to be increasingly blurred set against an
era of technological change and globalization. Different linguistic and cultural traditions
meet, collide, merge and/or adapt as the ongoing interplay of globalized flows of
knowledge and information creates precarious and multilayered channels through which
communications flow and organizations take form. Yet, even those ostensibly cyber or
networked organizational forms with their dispersed knowledge communities still need to
work jointly in some way to meet their objectives. In all this apparent complexity and
fragmentation, individuals and groups still need to interact with multiple and diverse
individuals, groups and inanimate ‘things’ to keep everything going on. The processes
entailed in such complexity may well be transitory and precarious, but somewhere, ‘there
are people doing things’. They are people with whole lives and hence different linguistic
and cultural traditions, different assumptions and expectations and so on, and who are
increasingly ‘thrown back upon themselves’ to locate - we propose - themselves within
this era. The ways they give shape or voice (or not) to particular or alternative socialmoral trajectories to make sense of it all is an important topic, especially in light of
depleting resources and changes beyond organization (e.g., sustainability) and nation
states (e.g., the climate). In other words from the perspective of the individual, sense
must be made of such occurrences/events and their respective relationships in the context
of their ‘whole’ or broader life experiences and responsibilities
Academic research and practitioner interest continues to focus on the ’individual at work’
and on quite specific or bounded organizational-cultural contexts. Yet individuals make
sense of work, in all its complex and diverse forms, by drawing on their whole life
experience. If we reduce understanding of work to their experiences/sense-making within
a work context, or, mark effectiveness and efficiency as primarily due to what the
organizational context makes available, then we both deny and lose ‘whole lives’ and an
array of potentialities benefiting the individual, groups, communities and organizations.
Our ‘worker’ may be a manager, retail assistant, corporate lawyer but they may also be a
mother, sister, ‘green campaigner’, ‘boozer’, and always a ‘citizen’. Where is this
complexity to be found in Management and Organization Studies?
In this stream we want to explore how, as researchers and practitioners, we can address
the notion of ‘whole lives’ and include it in our projects. Set against this
proposed/assumed contextual backdrop of complexity and diversity, we call for
contributions – empirical, conceptual, theoretical – which:
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Seek to encompass more holistic approaches and examine the ways work and
workplaces have benefited (or not) from individuals drawing upon (or not) an
ethics, aesthetics, values/beliefs-as-done and which arise from other ‘world’
domains
Examine the shape or (dis)configurations of identity arising from this complexity
and beyond narrow organizational forms and hence, the identity-work being done
or curbed when at work (and perhaps taking specific account of this as an
interactional accomplishment)
examine the ways location and dislocations between home and work, public and
private, local and global, centre and periphery etc. are managed
explore hierarchical dimensions of the broader landscape of individual existence
with respect to work experience and vice versa. In particular the frequently
assumed centrality of work experience and devaluation of private/personal
experience
outline methodological issues (onto-epistemological) as well as particular
methods and techniques conducive to capturing and enriching our understanding
of whole lives
draw attention to, or argue for, inter- or multi-disciplinary research, such as from
the humanities and literary studies
highlight the potentialities and/or the dangers inherent in embracing the ‘whole
lives’ approach. For example, increasing power differentials in terms of the
organizations’ reach into private/personal domains
focus on particular topics or issues which deal with networked, dispersed and
fragmented forms of knowledge
We invite you to submit your abstracts (maximum of 1000 words, A4 paper, single
spaces, 12 point font) to all three conveners by 1. November 2008.
The conveners:
Julia Richardson (jrichard@yorku.ca);
Dalvir-Samra Fredericks (Dalvir.samra-fredericks@ntu.ac.uk)
Susanne Tietze (Susanne.tietze@ntu.ac.uk).