1st Edition
Pierre Bourdieu in Studies of Organization and Management Societal Change and Transforming Fields
There is increasing academic interest in how Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology can be applied to management and organization studies (MOS). In a context of increasing complexity faced by organizations and those who work in them due to globalization, neoliberalism, austerity, financial crisis, ecological issues, populism and developing technologies, there is untapped potential to use Bourdieu’s theoretical inventions to arrive at greater understandings of how change, transition and crisis shape work, organizational life as well as relations between different organizational and sectorial fields.
This book aims to take a specific focus on the relational nature of Bourdieu’s work and its relevance for contemporary organizations. It provides empirically-grounded examples that showcase the explanatory strength of Bourdieu´s intellectual concepts, such as field, habitus, capital, hexis, hysteresis, symbolic power, symbolic violence, doxa, illusio as applied to the current challenges within MOS. Such challenges include issues resulting from globalization, neoliberalism, financial crisis, ecological crisis, populism and developing technologies, to name but a few; and added to those, a global pandemic. The twelve chapters presented in this book study a great variety and range of organizational phenomena that are organized into three thematic sections: ‘Neoliberalism, fields and hysteresis’, ‘Global and national movements as sites for competition and symbolic domination’ and the ‘The emergence and transformation of professional fields’. The chapters show a concern with the challenges and opportunities such developments offer to MOS scholars and to managers and employees in public and private sector organizations.
It will be of interest to researchers, academics and students in the fields of organizational studies, critical management studies, human resource management and sociology.
Introduction: Taking Bourdieu further into studies of Organizations and Management
Sarah Robinson, Jette Ernst, Ole Jacob Thomassen, and Kristian Larsen
Part I Neoliberalism, fields and hysteresis
1. Caught between times: Explaining resistance to change through the tale of Don Quixote
Henrik Koll & Jette Ernst
2. Recalling or Reactivating the Past? A Habitus-based Conceptualization of Temporality in Organizations
Ole Jacob Thomassen and Ansgar Ødegård
3. ‘The human bottom line’: New institutionalism and Bourdieu’s field theory on the growing prominence of healthiness in Nordic work organizations
Kristian Larsen and Ivan Harsløf
Part II Transnational and national movements as sites for competition and symbolic domination
4. Converting capital? A Bourdieu perspective of wasta in careers in the insurance sector in Jordan and the implications for symbolic power
Susan Sayce, Mohammad Ta’Amnha and Olga Tregaskis
5. Appropriating symbolic space: the Camp for Climate Action occupation of the Royal Bank of Scotland corporate campus
Ron Kerr and Sarah Robinson
6. ‘Capital breeds capital’ – Bourdieu and the Cross-National Importation of Organizational Models
Ruomei Yang, Charles Harvey, Frank Mueller and Mairi Maclean
7. Crafting Globalization – A Bourdieusian Historical Approach to Studying International Organizations and Global Governance in Education
Christian Ydesen
Part III The emergence and transformation of professional fields
8. Professional habitus and fields
Erna Nairz-Wirth and Klaus Feldmann
9. Homologies between sets of healthcare professionals’ collaborative working practices in hospitals
Anette Hindhede and Vibeke Andersen
10. Structuring the alternative weddings entrepreneurial field in France
Paul Lasalle and Eleanor Shaw
11. "You will never be able to be as good as we are": Male midwives’ career boundaries, condition, and chronology
Thomas M. Schneidhofer, Stephanie Kainrath and Katrin Preuner
12. In the midst of a storm: forging future paths for Bourdieu inspired Organizational and Management Studies
Kristian Larsen, Jette Ernst, Ole Jacob Thomassen and Sarah Robinson
Biography
Sarah Robinson is Professor in Management and Organization Studies at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, Scotland.
Jette Ernst is Associate Professor at the Department of Business and Social Sciences, Roskilde University, Denmark.
Kristian Larsen is Professor at the University of Copenhagen and Research Leader at The University Hospitals Centre for Health Research (UCSF), Denmark, and Adjunct Professor at OsloMet University, Norway.
Ole Jacob Thomassen is Associate Professor in the School of Business, Department of Economy, History and Social Sciences at the University of South-East of Norway, Norway.
