Organization & Management

This paper emphasizes the contribution of Michel Foucault and Pierre Hadot to discussions of workplace spirituality. It is argued that their understanding of spirituality differs significantly from the mainstream management contributions: they view spirituality as a distinct form of post-...

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to advance the methodological self-understanding of the emerging field of organizational space and architecture by employing concepts and frameworks from multi-paradigm and mixed methods research. Design/methodology/approach -The paper presents a methodological re-reading of a recent research process that analyzed the spatial and architectural dynamics in a Finnish university organization.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to report a study of architectural development and organizational meanings and uses of space in a Finnish university. Design/methodology/approach -The paper draws from actor-network theory and Lefebvre's spatial-social approach to shed light on the organizational assumptions of the various building phases and how current employees use and make sense of the architectural space in the case organization. The methods used include participant observation, interviews of employees and architects, and interpretation of planning documents, architectural statements and administrative representations of the complex. Findings -It took over 30 years to build the campus. The original plans for the university buildings were substantially revised as architectural and organizational paradigms changed over time. However, regardless of the more recently built state-of-the-art facilities, the early architectural design ideas have persisted as material-social forces that participate in the ongoing production and reproduction of organizational space. Originality/value -Despite of the recent surge of writings on organizational space and architecture, there are relatively few empirical studies done on the topic. In particular, analyses investigating the travel of design ideas from architectural planning to actual physical constructions and further to the everyday organizing practices of employees have so far been rare in organizational literature. This paper partially fills this gap.

The discourse on Strategic Human Resource Management implies that the role of the personnel function and personnel specialists has changed, or is changing, in organizations. As a part of personnel management becoming more business minded, HR managers are transformed into strategically oriented actors, located closer to the top management than before. Research has shown that this promise has not been realized and that although some HR managers have gained status in corporate hierarchy, the overall image of personnel matters is still that of operational and fragmented rather than strategic and coherent. This state of affairs has been interpreted as a sign of underdevelopment of HRM in real life firms and organizations. However, it is also possible to seek for reasons of failure from the HRM discourse itself. This paper explores the latter avenue by analyzing the rhetorical tactics of a group of Finnish personnel managers. The study focuses on the way various contradictions and tensions are treated and enacted by the HR managers as they tell about their work and HRM. The results indicate that when talking about the external world of organizations, HR experts were capable of competently turning the discursive situation to their favor. In contrast, themes related to their own membership in managerial elite exposed managers to various problems and resulted in an unfavorable picture of HRM. This suggests that HR managers are probably in the middle of a repositioning process following their recent entry into general management and that they lack cultural resources to compete with other managerial professions.

Despite the enthusiasm that surrounds the knowledge creation approach, most knowledge management programs fail in organizations. The underlying reason for this can be the inadequate implementation of the model or the lack of the supporting organizational mechanisms. However, an explanation can also be found from the absolutist and colonizing assumptions that the widely used knowledge-learning literature makes about the human agency and social organization. Using both Foucauldian and Derridean perspectives, the paper contributes to the latter view by examining how 'subjectivity' and 'truth' are constructed in the key texts of the knowledge creation discourse and how notions generally regarded as 'common sense' can be seen as political and normative. The argument of the paper is that the inconsistency between the benevolence of the knowledge creation and learning 'theory' and the blunt managerialism of the knowledge management 'practice' is not coincidental but expected and that trying to control and level off ambivalence and plurality makes the approach unrealistic and flimsy.