CfP: Social Studies of Management and Organizations

See below:

Dear All,

We are organizing a PhD conference with a track on Social Studies of Management and Organizations.

The idea of this track/theme is to received papers that builds on Science and Technology Studies and advance the study of management and organizational topics from this perspectives. For example we expect contributions that use the concepts like ‘market devices’/’organising devices’ and the STS oriented literature on objects. A second example is papers that use conceptualizations like performativity and reflexivity and their impact on the management and organization studies. Finally, we also welcome other actor-network approaches; anthropological, ethnographic and sociological studies of organisations that open up common questions that had been visited (or not) by the broad range literature on science and technology studies.

This track is part of day event in the broad field of Critical Management Studies named: ‘Who and what is management for?’

Respondents

Daniel Neyland, Senior Lecturer, Lancaster University Management School

Daniel Neyland’s research interests cover governance, accountability and ethics in the form of science, technology and organization. He draws on ethnomethodology, science and technology studies, constructivism, Actor-Network Theory and the recent STS turn to markets.

Javier Lezaun, Lecturer, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford

Javier Lezaun’s research interests focus on the legal, political and social dimensions of techno-scientific change, particularly in the life sciences and biomedicine.

The University of Leicester School of Management is running a one day BSA postgraduate conference on 10 January 2013.

Abstracts of 300-500 words should be submitted to events@britsoc.org.uk by 8 October 2012, or on the BSA website, including the name and date of the conference. Conference papers should be 6,000 – 8,000 words.

Please download a call for abstracts here.

Date

10 January 2013.

Contact

Please contact Juan Espinosa Cristia for more information

About

The conference is broadly themed around Critical Management, based on the multi-disciplinary ‘Leicester Model’ that draws from across the social sciences. Unlike mainstream Business Schools, at Leicester we are concerned with challenging the status quo and giving voice to those individuals, groups and societies who are traditionally overlooked in global management.

Costs and Travel Grants

The costs to BSA members is £10, and £25 to non-BSA members. This money goes towards lunch and drinks for all attendees.

Thanks to generous support from the Graduate Dean at the University of Leicester, we can also offer up to ten PhD travel grants of £50 each. To apply for these please include a short grant application statement (50-100 words) stating your travel costs and needs.

Please feel free to contact me if you have questions of any type.

Juan Espinosa C.

Organization Team

School of Management

University of Leicester

Material participation

Economy and Society special issue on “Materials and Devices of the Public,” edited by Noortje Marres & Javier Lezaun (h/t STS Oxford):

This introduction provides an overview of material- or device-centred approaches to the study of public participation, and articulates the theoretical contributions of the four papers that make up this special section. Set against the background of post-Foucauldian perspectives on the material dimensions of citizenship and engagement – perspectives that treat matter as a tacit, constituting force in the organization of collectives and are predominantly concerned with the fabrication of political subjects – we outline an approach that considers material engagement as a distinct mode of performing the public. The question, then, is how objects, devices, settings and materials acquire explicit political capacities, and how they serve to enact material participation as a specific public form. We discuss the connections between social studies of material participation and political theory, and define the contours of an empiricist approach to material publics, one that takes as its central cue that the values and criteria particular to these publics emerge as part of the process of their organization. Finally, we discuss four themes that connect the papers in this special section, namely their focus on (1) mundane technologies, (2) experimental devices and settings for material participation, (3) the dynamic of effort and comfort, and (4) the modes of containment and proliferation that characterize material publics.

STS seminars at Oxford

Two interesting seminar series in STS coming up at Oxford:

Visiting Speakers Series, Hilary Term 2009
Governance, Accountability and Innovation in Turbulent Times
James Martin Institute Seminar Room
Saïd Business School
Tuesdays, 16.00 to 18.00

Javier Lezaun is the convenor of an interdisciplinary seminar series to explore the contemporary nexus of innovation, accountability and governance. How can we begin to conceptualise the emerging balances, and imbalances, between innovation dynamics, forms of accountability, and governance structures? Speakers will address problems and examples from the world of financial markets, innovation systems, risk management, policy-making, and environmental governance.

03 February
Noortje Marres (Goldsmiths College)
Invisible, nontoxic but not exactly odourless? Experiments in carbon-based living and postcalculative forms of engagement

10 February
Rob Hagendijk (University of Amsterdam)
Building National Innovation Systems in the Global South: Accountability, Politics and Democracy

17 February
Perri 6 (Nottingham Trent University)
Making people more responsible? The Blair governments’ programme for changing citizens’ behaviour

24 February
Mike Power (London School of Economics)
Risk Management as a Moral Order

03 March
Karel Williams (University of Manchester)
Governance, Conjuncture and Financial Innovation

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Science and Technology Studies
Lunchtime Seminars
Hilary Term 2009
James Martin Institute Seminar Room
Saïd Business School
12.00 to 14.00

The Science and Technology Studies group at the JMI invites you to a series of irregular, informal but nevertheless substantial lunchtime seminars during Hilary Term. Three leading scholars in the field will be presenting their work in progress.

24 February
Kaushik Sunder Rajan (University of California, Irvine)
Intellectual Property, Pharmaceutical Logics, and Ideologies of Innovation in Indian Biomedicine

02 March
Fabian Muniesa (Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, Ecole des Mines de Paris)
Elements of Performativity in the Pedagogy of Business

19 March
Geoffrey Bowker (Santa Clara University)
Political and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology Studies – Stories from the Field