Hervé Corvellec

Lund University | LU · Department of Service Management

Resources are a core concept in debates about socio-ecological transformations and post-growth societies, but as a concept they are rarely problematised. Drawing on a resourcification approach in which resources are understood as outcomes of various social processes, this study analyses how resources are conceptualised and understood in degrowth sc...

Drawing on selected discourses of non-essentialist ecofeminism this article proposes and substantiates an ecofeminist position. This distinct position is shown to bring with it a capacity to challenge widely-uncontested, corporate-produced truths regarding the benefits and the legitimacy of certain commercial activities. Three historical cases info...

In times of major global interconnectedness and environmental change, the pressure to identify, create, and exploit new resources is certain to intensify. Given that there are unavoidable trade-offs, conflicts, and arenas for violence involved when increasingly more material and immaterial things are turned into resources, we call for explicit rese...

This paper uses the notion of material affordances to show that a focus on how people engage with materials helps understanding how organizations transit toward sustainability. Material affordances refer to the enablements and constraints afforded by materials to someone engaging with an environment for a particular purpose. Based on a qualitative...

This paper presents a reasoned account of the critiques addressed to the circular economy and circular business models. These critiques claim that the circular economy has diffused limits, unclear theoretical grounds, and that its implementation faces structural obstacles. Circular economy is based on an ideological agenda dominated by technical an...

Overuse of resources is accelerating current negative trends in climate change, ecosystem destruction, and biodiversity loss. The ultimate outcome is that contemporary human society is reaching or exceeding the limits of planetary boundaries. It is therefore imperative to articulate a new theoretical understanding of resources and the ethical, poli...

Means–ends decoupling, the institutionally induced implementation of ineffective practices, has become increasingly common. Extant theory suggests that means–ends decoupling has real consequences, which makes it unstable and difficult for organizations to sustain. Yet little is known of how, and with what outcomes, firms organize such means–ends de...

This study shows that the production of industrial and commercial waste should form part of normal organisational practices. When asked about waste prevention, representatives of food, textile, electronics and construction companies in Sweden have difficulties highlighting concrete waste-prevention objectives, measures and outcomes. Instead, they h...

Preprint version of "Introduction to the Special Issue on the Contested realities of the Circular" January 7, 2020 The definitive version was published in Culture and Organization, Vol 26, No.2, pp. 97-174. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/gsco20/26/2?nav=tocList

This chapter report presents a case study of how Accus, a small Swedish company, worked on developing a circular business model for light sign production and installation to become more sustainable. Drawing on Actor Network Theory (ANT), the Accus case shows that circular business model development is a cooperative endeavor that rests on bringing t...

This paper explains how corporations can develop market-based activities to influence environmental policies. The empirical focus is on how Swedish apparel retailers qualify take-back systems for used clothes and textiles as steps toward creating circular fashion. An analysis of the qualities that retailers attach to take-back systems shows how qua...

This article coins the term ‘scatolic’ to suggest a new way for organizations to think about and engage with waste. Scatolic engagement draws on Reno’s analogy of waste as scats and of scats as signs for enabling interspecies communication. This analogy stresses the impossibility for waste producers to dissociate themselves from their waste and emp...

Explains the shortcomings of current waste prevention policies. Suggests to adopt an ethical rather than technical stance to waste prevention

This In Memoriam presents the life of Simone Veil, an influential French politician, remembered for a law that made abortion legal in 1974. Simone Veil's contribution to the rights of women is featured as an instance of parrhesia (Foucault, 2011) that was able to establish a new regime of truth about the body, sexuality, and reproductive capacities...

This report summarises the most important lessons learned from the research project 'From waste management to waste prevention'. In the research project, researchers from Lund University and the University of Gothenburg, but also Umeå University and the Royal Institute of Technology, have studied waste prevention. The aim of the project has been...

We are pleased to recognize some of our top reviewers for 2017. In 2017, the journal requested external reviews for 1186 manuscripts and 5429 external reviews were submitted, with some reviewers providing as many as 11 reviews. As co-editors-in-chief, we extend our sincere thanks to all of our reviewers. In this issue, we are pleased to recognize 3...

Following on the reiterated claim that accounting inscriptions make action at a distance possible, we draw on post-mathematical topology to explain that this distance work is dependent on inscriptions acting on distances. By adopting a relational understanding of space, we show that accounting inscriptions by themselves create the distances across...

This paper presents an analysis of European and Swedish national and municipal waste prevention plans to determine their capability of preventing the generation of waste. An analysis of the stated objectives in these waste prevention plans and the measures they propose to realize them exposes six problematic features: (1) These plans ignore what dr...

Purpose This paper aims to demonstrate the relevance of identifying lock-ins that characterise a service, showing how lock-ins or impediments reinforce the status quo and prevent change. It provides an understanding of the factors hindering the development of value co-creation in this service. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on 19 s...

Drawing on the concept of decoupling, from institutional theory in organizational studies, this paper explains how organizations mitigate demands for circularity. Seven Swedish apparel companies that have started collecting used clothes as a form of engagement with circular business models serve as case studies. The paper shows how outsourcing and...

Combining neo-institutionalism, actor network theory, and Gabriel Tarde’s sociology, Czarniawska considers the key driver of organizational change to be imitation but an imitation that rests on translation. Organizations emulate one another by translating fashionable ideas according to their understanding, traditions, needs, and means. As translati...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY PURPOSE OF THIS REPORT Plastic waste that ends up in the oceans as marine litter is a tangible and urgent environmental pressure reaching even the most remote parts of the global oceans. It impacts marine life from plankton to whales and turtles to albatrosses. Public awareness on how the modern lifestyle and the use of plastics i...

Combining neo-institutionalism, actor network theory, and Gabriel Tarde’s sociology, Czarniawska considers the key driver of organizational change to be imitation but an imitation that rests on translation. Organizations emulate one another by translating fashionable ideas according to their understanding, traditions, needs, and means. As translati...

This paper adopts a waste-centric analysis of Product-Service Systems (PSSs) to demonstrate that they do not automatically contribute to a dematerialization of the economy, a decoupling of production from material and energy consumption, and thus a transition toward sustainability. A qualitative analysis of various Nordic fashion PSSs that uses a c...

The book was inadvertently published with the incorrect chapter title. This information has been updated as “Barbara Czarniawska: Organizational Change – Fashions, Institutions, and Translations”.

This report uses a relational theory of risk within which risk is understood as a relationship between a risk object and an object at risk where the risk object threatens the value embedded in the object at risk. A case study of risk management in railway planning examined through a relational understanding of risk demonstrates how riskwork is cond...

The increasing importance being placed on waste prevention in European waste governance raises the question of how waste prevention is defined in practice. This paper presents a qualitative analysis of a sample of fifty-one Swedish waste prevention initiatives with the purpose of identifying which kind of actions are imagined, promoted, and set int...

This article introduces the notion of sustainability objects as a label for objects that come with a claim of promoting a more sustainable mode of living. The purpose is to show that organizations that develop such objects construct a performative definition of sustainability. A case study of the development of a facility for the pre-treatment of f...

This paper adopts a waste-centric analysis of Product-Service Systems (PSSs) to demonstrate that they do not automatically contribute to a dematerialization of the economy, a decoupling of production from material and energy consumption, and thus a transition toward sustainability. A qualitative analysis of various Nordic fashion PSSs that uses a c...

This article presents an overview of the narratives in and about organizations. It is structured as follows. The first section introduces the idea that organizational members are Homo Narrans or storytelling beings; the second section describes the tenets of narrative enquiry in organizational settings; and the third section discusses the pros and...

This report uses a relational theory of risk within which risk is understood as a relationship between a risk object and an object at risk where the risk object threatens the value embedded in the object at risk. A case study of risk management in railway planning examined through a relational understanding of risk demonstrates how riskwork is cond...

This article presents a research agenda about waste management from the perspective of management and organization studies. The agenda suggests that scholars should draw upon research on waste governance, lean management, the circular economy, and sustainable consumption. It also suggests, in a crossdisciplinary spirit, that scholars should heed re...

This article introduces the notion of sustainability objects to label objects that come with a claim to promote a more sustainable mode of living. The purpose is to show that organizations that develop such objects contribute to defining sustainability. A case study of the development of a food waste-based biogas and biofertilizers production facil...

What constitutes a potentially hazardous object is often debated. This article analyses the polemic construction and negotiation of risk in the Swedish controversy over the use of antibacterial silver in health care and consumer products. This debate engages the media, government agencies, parliament and government, non-governmental organizations a...

Although waste prevention is considered the best possible option in the European waste-hierarchy model, it is not always clear what is meant by “waste prevention”. This chapter presents three cases of waste prevention, selected to illustrate the variety of these practices: a waste-management company selling waste-prevention services, the opportunit...

This article contributes to the ongoing discussion, revived by the service-dominant logic thesis, on value propositions in service organizations. Against a backdrop of understanding value as a pluralistic social construct that takes place across different institutionalized practices of valuation or regimes of value, we argue that value propositions...

This article explains how infrastructures with a sustainability record may evolve over time into a lock-in that slows the emergence of more sustainable urban infrastructures. A study of waste incineration in the Göteborg Metropolitan Area, Sweden, serves as an illustrative case. Taking leads from Unruh (2000; 2002), four rationales of lock-in are i...

This chapter shows, based on the case of a Swedish municipal waste management company, that waste management companies participate in a decisive manner to the design of the socio-materiality of waste and that this participation gives them a particularly important role for urban development. In the chapter three successive waste governance regimes a...

Introduction In this chapter, we demonstrate that waste management companies participate in a decisive manner in the design of the sociomateriality of waste, and that this participation gives them a particularly important role for urban development. The sociomateriality of waste refers to the way organisations and individuals engage with the materi...

The first section of this chapter describes the production of food waste and examines why it can be considered an overflow. The next section demonstrates how waste management companies frame the production of biogas as a solution to the issue of food waste. The third section presents George Bataille’s economic theory of destruction and applies it t...

Municipal solid waste is a central concern for environmental policy, and the sociomateriality of waste-the ways in which waste is socially defined and dealt with-is an important issue for sustainability. We show how applying the European Union's waste policy through the European Waste Hierarchy (EWH) affects the sociomateriality of waste. The EWH r...

In their own view, public transportation companies make a very hospitable offer to commuters: if you are ready to travel with us, we will take you for a reasonable price nearly anywhere, every day and almost at any time of the day, under good conditions of comfort and safety. Please, step onboard. But commuters resist being reduced to the thankful...

This paper describes how the business model of two leading Swedish municipally owned solid waste management companies exposes them to four different but related markets: a political market in which their legitimacy as an organization is determined; a waste-as-material market that determines their access to waste as a process input; a technical mark...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to show that organizational change depends on societal narratives – narratives about the character, history, or envisioned future of societies. Design/methodology/approach A case study of a Swedish municipal waste management company serves as an illustration. Findings Swedish waste governance is powered by two...

In contradistinction to generic and formal risk governance models such as the IRGC framework, this paper advocates the relevance of a contextual and practice-based approach to organizational risk governance. Three cases illustrate the socially situated dynamics of risk governance practice: public transportation management, river management, and rai...

This paper describes the business model of two influential Swedish municipal waste management companies. A comparative study of these case companies shows that they combine three types of activities: public service activities that take in waste from households and industry; processing activities that transform this waste; and marketing activities t...

This paper describes the business model of municipally-owned MSW (municipal solid waste) companies in Sweden. A comparative study of two of these companies shows that they combine three types of activities: public service activities that collect solid waste from households, commercial establishments, and industry; processing activities that transfo...

In this article, the author considers such risk warning signs as ' Stand behind the yellow line' paradigmatic of risk accounts and approaches these signs in the light of narrative theory, more specifically structural and post-structural narratology. There are three related purposes for this approach. First, it is to demonstrate the relevance of nar...

The production of waste is a central concern for environmental policy, and waste management is a critical urban infrastructural service. The social and material presence of waste – the socio-materiality of waste – is a pressing issue for urban sustainability. This article shows how the European Union waste hierarchy affects the socio-material statu...

Organisational change depends on societal narratives, which are narratives about the character, history, or envisioned future of societies. Swedish waste governance is a case in point. Swedish waste governance is powered by two main narratives A farewell to landfill and A farewell to wastefulness. A farewell to landfill has been the dominant narrat...

This paper outlines a relational theory of risk. According to this theory, risk emerges from situated cognition that establishes a relationship of risk between a risk object and an object at risk, so that the risk object is considered, under certain contingent circumstances and in some causal way, to threaten the valued object at risk. This relatio...

Two observations serve as starting points for this paper. First, conventional risk assessment techniques provide sophisticated ways to identify and estimate hazards, but eschew the fact that there is no risk unless something of value is considered to be at stake. Second, what managers consider as being of value follows from how they organize their...

In contrast to risk management studies on organisations that overtly deal with risk, this article explores organisational risk management in a context in which risk is more or less absent from managerial vocabulary or organisational communication. It presents a single case study of a Swedish public transportation authority in which managers actuall...

Risk is a key topic in the communication between developers of infrastructure projects, permit-granting authorities, and civil society. The nature of risk communication is contested among academics, however. Whereas some scholars conceive of risk communication as a matter of effectively communicating expert knowledge on factual matters to the publi...

Risk is a key topic in the communication between developers of infrastructure projects, permit-granting authorities, and civil society. The nature of risk communication is contested among academics, however. Whereas some scholars conceive of risk communication as a matter of effectively communicating expert knowledge on factual matters to the publi...

The starting point of this paper asserts that managers who elicit and select projects have a moral responsibility. Correspondingly, its purpose is to provide a means for project selectors to appreciate this responsibility so that it can be put into practice. A model of the moral responsibility involved in project selection is presented. This model...

In seeking to advance the understanding of the production, diffusion and negotiation of meaning in and between organisations, we introduce below the notion of mise-en-sens. Mise-en-sens refers to the performing art term of mise-en-scène and builds on the French term sens denoting meaning as well as direction. Starting from a qualitative analysis of...

The moral philosophy of Levinas offers a stark prospectus of impossibility for corporate ethics. It differs from most traditional ethical theories in that, for Levinas, the ethical develops in a personal meeting of one with the Other, rather than residing in some internal deliberation of the moral subject. Levinasian ethics emphasises an infinite p...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the way organizational actors argue to obtain a license to operate for new ventures. Design/methodology/approach The design, which addresses the issue at the industry level, consists of a case study of the ways in which power developers argue for the development of wind energy in Sweden. Findings Th...

Purpose – Braiding organization theory and argumentation theory, the paper seeks to unfold how organizations act as social loci for the production, diffusion and development of arguments. Design/methodology/approach – A Swedish association dedicated to the defense and promotion of nuclear power, Miljövänner För Kärnkraft (approximately Environment...

F�r att befr�mja en omst�llning av energisystemet har den svenska riksdagen fastst�llt ett m�l f�r produktion av vindkraftsel som inneb�r en kraftig utbyggnad av vindkraftskapaciteten. Denna utbyggnad ger upphov till lika m�nga lovord och f�rv�ntningar som den v�cker kritik och farh�gor. Syftet med denna text �r emellertid inte att lista dessa och...

Artikeln börjar med en historisk tillbakablick över företagsetikens tillkomst som akademiskt och praktiskt ämne. Etiken kan ses såväl som en teknik ämnad åt att förbättra lönsamhet och som grunden för en kritik av nutidens företagande. En annan anledning till att intresset för etik är stort idag är att man ställs inför nya krav – bla. etiska – när...

This article is intended to be an introduction to narrative analysis. It introduces key terms in narrative theory (e.g. story and plot), discusses various types of narratives relevant for social studies and features three selected analytical approaches to narratives: a poetic classification, a tripartite way of reading and a deconstructive analysis...

This article intends to contribute to the conceptualising of organisational sensegiving. Based upon a qualitative analysis of how Swedish wind farm developers manage the permit application process for their projects, we describe in a first order analysis how they contextualise and ontologise their projects and defend them against criticisms. To emp...

Braiding organization theory and argumentation theory, I unfold in this article how argumentation contributes to organizational sense-making and how organizations act as social loci for the production, diffusion and development of arguments. A Swedish association dedicated to the defense and promotion of nuclear power, Miljövänner För Kärnkraft (ap...