Crafting organization

The recent shift in attention away from organization studies as science has allowed for consideration of new ways of thinking about both organization and organizing and has led to several recent attempts to \u27bring down\u27 organizational theorizing. In this paper, we extend calls for organization to be represented as a creative process by considering organization as craft. Organizational craft, we argue, is attractive, accessible, malleable, reproducible, and marketable. It is also a tangible way of considering organization studies with irreverence. We draw on the hierarchy of distinctions among fine art, decorative art, and craft to suggest that understanding the organization of craft assists in complicating our understanding of marginality. We illustrate our argument by drawing on the case of a contemporary Australian craftworks and marketplace known initially as the Meat Market Craft Centre (\u27MMCC\u27) and then, until its recent closure, as Metro! &Dagger; Stella Minahan was a board member and then the Chief Executive Officer of the Metro! Craft Centre.<br /

Management Ideologies and Organizational Spirituality: a Typology

The topic of spirituality is gaining an increasing visibility in organization studies. It is our contention that every theory of organization is a theory of organizational spirituality. Based on Barley and Kunda’s 1992 Administrative Science Quarterly article, we discuss the evolution of management theories as spirituality theories. From such analysis, we suggest that there may be both a meaningful/liberating and an instrumental/exploitative side in the relationship between organizations and spirituality. Such a possibility is illustrated with a typology that advances four possible types of organizations regarding spirituality: the soulful organization, the holistic organization, the ascetic organization, and the professional organization. The expression of spirituality in each of these forms is discussed with the aim of contributing to a theoretically-based analysis of organizational spirituality.N/

Leadership as purpose: Exploring the role of purpose in leadership practice

This article initiates a long overdue discussion regarding purpose within leadership, an integral yet often taken-for-granted and subsumed function of leadership. Specifically, the article problematicizes the manifestation of purpose in everyday organizational leadership practices through the work of the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. The article argues that purpose requires greater attention if it is to become manifest in both the corporate and the societal orientations of leaders in organizations. In support of this argument we identify the implications of singularly focusing upon corporate purpose to the exclusion of societal purpose against the backdrop of the credit crunch aftermath. The article develops a theoretical argument that, when conceptualized as a process of sensemaking, leadership can provide an opportunity for notions of societal purpose to come to the fore in countervailing balance with corporate purposes. We conclude by suggesting a research agenda centred on further explicating and developing the idea of leadership as purpose