Department of Organization (IOA)
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Abstract: This PhD thesis is an ethnographic exploration of strategy work in practice. The academic contribution of the thesis is positioned in the overlap between Critical Approaches to Strategy and Strategy as Practice. This implies a critical position that does not take strategy for granted and which emphasizes a philosophical understanding of the practice concept. Other studies have adopted a similar Critical Strategy as Practice position, but very few ethnographic studies of strategy work have been conducted from this point of departure. Thus, the thesis aims to contribute two-fold to the existing Critical Strategy as Practice literature: One, to strengthen the tradition theoretically through the development and mobilization of a conceptual braid of practice, narrative, and performativity; and two, to provide an extensive empirical analysis of strategy work from this perspective. The case for the thesis is strategy work in the Stakeholder Department of a multinational biotech corporation, which is here called Bioforte. The thesis explores the dual aspects of the title as “making strategy-work”—the specific doings of crafting strategy; and “making Strategy work”—finding ways for strategy, as a concept, to function in the context of an organization. Building on the double entendre of the title, the guiding research question for this exploration is quite simply: What does strategy work do? The answer to this question is, however, not simple, because as the ethnographic exploration demonstrates, strategy work in the Stakeholder Engagement Department at Bioforte has a range of performative effects. Through narratives of everyday practice, the thesis demonstrates how strategy work contributes to organizing the organization by shaping The Strategy Working Group, the department, the work, and the selves of the people working with strategy. The organizing force of strategy work is partly achieved through the continual collective creation and maintenance of distinctions such as strategic/operational and left brain/right brain. In this sense, the thesis argues that the organizing forces of strategy is to be found in the performative nature of strategy work. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8663 Files in this item: 1
Marie_Mathiesen.pdf (5.342Mb) -
An empirical study of enacted sensemaking in everyday conflict at workNaima Mikkelsen, Elisabeth (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This study is about everyday conflicts that occur at work; how meaning and action interact in processes of conflict handling in organisational conflicts that arise naturally in every arena of daily life when people meet in social interactions. I approach the phenomenon of conflict by exploring those social processes of organisational sensemaking that arise when conflict occurs in a nonprofit organisation, my own processes of sensemaking of the research process about conflict, and conflict research literature’s sensemaking of the concept of conflict. Weick argues that “[t]he basic idea of sensemaking is that reality is an ongoing accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create order and make retrospective sense of what occurs” (1993, p. 653). Accordingly, sensemaking is conceptualised as a process of social construction where individuals attempt to interpret and explain sets of cues, or signals from their environments. The term can also be applied to the craft of research as sensemaking, in which researchers as sensemakers actively analyse the empirical material and generate representations of how reality is (Weick, 1989). Accordingly, in this study, I basically aim to understand conflict at work and understand research about conflict at work; that is, how conflict, as a social phenomenon, plays out in organisational cultures and group dynamics, and how conflict is conceptualised in conflict research literature. The study examines the following research questions from a sensemaking perspective: 1) How is conflict conceptualized in conflict research literature? 2) How do staff and management experience and act out conflicts in the nonprofit organisation of NGO Plus and how does changing conflict sensemaking affect conflicts at work? 3) What is my process of theorizing in conflict research? URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8609 Files in this item: 1
Elisabeth_Naima_Mikkelsen.pdf (1.476Mb) -
A five-act Spestrale on Online Communication, Collaboration & OrganizationTunby Guldbrandsen, Ib (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
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Assorted notes on the metaphysical notion of ‘sharing’Schmidt, Kjeld (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: In CSCW, phrases such as ‘shared goal’ or ‘shared understanding’ are often used to denote what is taken to be a defining feature of cooperative work or at least what is thought to be an essential precondition of the orderliness without which cooperative work in practice is impossible; that is, these terms are used in an explanatory function [e.g., 1; 6]. To take but one example: In one of her articles on ‘situation awareness’ the muchcited Mica Endsley posits: ‘In a smoothly functioning team, each team member shares a common understanding of what is happening on those [Situation Awareness] elements that are common — that is, they have shared situation awareness, which refers to the overlap among the SA requirements of the team members.’ However, she prudently adds, ‘The concept of shared mental models is not universally heralded’ and ‘The development of shared mental models has not been the subject of much research’ [4, pp. 48, 52 f.]. A ‘shared situation awareness’? A ‘shared mental model’? What does she mean? URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8567 Files in this item: 1
Schmidt_2012.pdf (201.0Kb) -
Framing Research Collaboration Through ScreensBjørn Vedel, Jane (København, 2011)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: In recent years, research collaboration between academic and corporate scientists has become a matter of concern for policy makers as well as research managers in academia and industry. Often, both in public research policies and in university and company strategies, science-industry collaboration has been presented as a catalyst for advancing science for the benefit of society as well as for the involved collaborators. The same policies and strategies, however, often emphasize that science-industry collaboration is difficult and demanding due to inherent and often incommensurable differences between the respective goals and processes of academia and industry. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8561 Files in this item: 1
Jane-Vedel-2011.pdf (257.8Kb)
