Stewart CleggThe University of Sydney
Stewart Clegg
Doctor of Philosophy
About
242
Publications
38,773
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
6,473
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
interests are many: Power, organization studies, project management, strategy, qualitative research, social theory
Publications
Publications (242)
Project management research has evolved over the past five decades and is now a mature disciplinary field investigating phenomena of interest to academics, practitioners and policymakers. Studies of projects and project management practices are theoretically rich and scientifically rigorous. They are practically relevant and impactful when addressi...
This chapter presents a holistic investigation into construction culture from an organisation studies as well as project management perspective, mobilising the concept of toxic project cultures as a novel conceptual lens to explore new ways to transform the construction industry into a more dynamic, innovative, and socially responsible sector. All...
This chapter explores the alignment of construction projects with strategy through several case studies and offers insights for the development of project portfolio management (PPM) capabilities in construction. Most PPM research occurs in industries associated with innovation and new product development, including manufactured products, service pr...
This research investigates the impact of project finance on the ability of Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) to deliver infrastructure Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects. The research reports on data that was collected through 46 in-depth interviews with senior executive practitioners involved in PPPs in Australia. Analysis of this data confir...
Management Learning is a centre of scholarship, and thoughtful scholars strive to achieve exemplary publications – those that make a difference to both theory and practice as well as being frequently cited. Adopting the poststructuralist idea that scientific texts are literary constructions, applying this focus to translation and diffusion effects...
To the surprise of many in the West, the fall of the USSR in 1991 did not lead to the adoption of liberal democratic government around the world and the much anticipated “end of history.” In fact, authoritarianism has made a comeback, and liberal democracy has been on the retreat for at least the last 15 years culminating in the unthinkable: the in...
The organization is traditionally assumed as the principal context of work. This assumption no longer holds in post-industrial and post-bureaucratic settings. Conducting meetings from home while juggling household responsibilities can be characterized as a form of organizing, but such contexts are not well accommodated by organizational perspective...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate and discuss stakeholder issues faced by renewable energy megaprojects and in particular solar and wind power projects and their relevance to socioeconomic evaluation of megaprojects.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses secondary data collected from the recent literature published on stakeh...
Project leadership increasingly occurs in the context of ecological risks, whether from a viral pandemic or an anthropogenically changing climate. It requires adaptability to change, especially as projects grow in complexity, becoming seen as interventions into wider systems. In this paper, we take a socialized perspective, synthesising recent work...
The introduction of a neo-normative discourse in a (post)bureaucratic organization can result in tensions between the neo-normative injunction to be authentic and exhortations to fit with the ideal (post)bureaucratic organizational subject. Focusing on how shopfloor workers subjectively experience the tensions between neo-normative and (post)bureau...
Paradoxical inertia is an organization condition that has received far less attention than organizational change. We investigate, ethnographically, an Australian Intellectual Property service firm, whose Board members proved to be unable to respond strategically to a rapidly changing environment that threatened their organization’s survival. In the...
Please see our Call for Papers for a Special issue of Business History on 'Organizations in Time: Paradox and History'.
Deadline for Submission: 1st September 2022
Guest Editors:
Stewart Clegg
University of Stavanger Business School
s.clegg@uts.edu.au
Miguel Pina e Cunha
Nova School of Business and Economics
miguel.cunha@novasbe.pt
Charles H...
To achieve effective stakeholder governance in the context of international social accountability certification (SA8000) requires constructing a network of agreement. In a case study of a small-to-medium-sized enterprise (SME), we examine managers’ attempts at enrolling participants in the supply chain to investigate how they strive to engage these...
Drawing on Actor-Network Theory and the cartography of controversies, we present a method for ANTi-History research to investigate the implementation of a contract between a labour services company and a public university hospital in Brazil. The research question focuses on how the past is enacted in the present. The method is a general guideline b...
The abrupt outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic sent unprecedented shockwaves across the globe, creating an unparalleled crisis in terms of our health, severely impacting the way we live and work. Measures such as social distancing and travel restrictions, have disrupted production and supply chains, reinforcing a demand shock. In the midst of this pa...
MAD statement
This leading article aims at Making a Difference (MAD) by inspiring to engage in new conventions for leadership and organizational change at a time when there is an opening for new practices to emerge. The COVID-19 pandemic upended much of what we take for granted, making us more aware of the ambiguity and multiplicity of reality, of...
We examine the historical phenomenon of truces, as these occurred during a period of intense warfare during World War I, around Christmas 1914. These were processes of resistance that could not have been planned (otherwise they would obviously have been thwarted by authority) and that occurred in a setting with continuously changing conditions. Our...
The paper contributes to literatures on settlements and institutional maintenance work. It does so by unpacking post-settlement legitimation efforts required to maintain contentious institutions between previously conflicting actors. Settlements often necessitate the maintenance of institutions from the past whose legitimacy is dubious for the new...
MAD statement
This leading article is setting out to Make a Difference (MAD) through catalysing the further exploration and development of leadership theory and practice by facilitating the reimagining and reframing of challenges and solutions ahead. It does so by integrating the academic concerns of the current literature with the issues raised by...
Nosso objetivo é construir uma proposta de método para os ANTi-historiadores, tomando a análise da
controvérsia como ponto de partida. Apesar do desenvolvimento teórico e metodológico da abordagem ANTi-história para o estudo do conhecimento do passado e a criação de sua história, há espaço para o desenvolvimento de um método com base na análise de...
Despite increasing studies on IT monitoring, our understanding of how the relationships between the watcher and watched are affected by IT-mediation has remained limited in two areas. First, contradictory views exist on the relationships between the watchers and the watched. Studies either adapt traditional actor-centric frameworks assuming pre-def...
We are now entering a new phase in the establishment of
historical organization studies as a distinctive
methodological paradigm within the broad field of
organization studies. This book serves both as a landmark in
the development of the field and as a key reference tool for
researchers and students.
It evaluates the current state of play, advanc...
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand how historical materialities might
play a contemporary role in legitimation processes through the memorialization of history
and its reproduction in the here-and-now of organizations and organizing.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors briefly review the existing Management
and Organization...
In this essay, four leading scholars provide critical commentary on an article entitled ‘Protective or Connective Professionalism? How Connected Professionals Can (Still) Act as Autonomous and Authoritative Experts’ (Noordegraaf, 2020, Journal of Professions and Organization, 7/2). Of central concern to all four commentators is Noordegraaf’s use of...
Purpose
Existing public–private partnership (PPP) literature that explicitly adopts neo-institutional theory, tends to elucidate the impact of isomorphic pressures and organizational fields and structuration on PPP projects. This paper advances this literature by presenting the institutional work and micro-level dynamics through which actors initia...
Research on organizational creativity tends to emphasize fairly static notions of coercive power as positional authority and control over scarce resources. The field remains largely silent about power as a positive and generative phenomenon that can produce creativity. We seek to break that silence by amplifying and integrating the work of Mary Par...
The increasing ubiquity of interactive technologies such as crowdsourcing is one of the major forces underpinning the emerging concept of open strategy. The large-scale interactive functionality afforded by such technologies offers unparalleled possibilities for including actors across the entire organization in co-creative efforts to respond to st...
Positive Organizational Behaviour: A Reflective Approach introduces the most recent theoretical and empirical insights on positive organizational practices, addressing emerging topics such as resilience, job crafting, responsible leadership and mindfulness. Other books on positive approaches tend to gloss over the limitations of the positive agenda...
This article examines how agency should be conceptualized to manage the pressing problems of the Anthropocene in support of sustainable change. The article reviews and analyzes literature on agency in relation to planetary boundaries, advancing the relational view of agency in which no actors are granted a primary ontological status, and agency is...
Neste paper procuramos debater alguns dos problemas que afetam a pesquisa positivista em contabilidade, e como a adoção da teoria organizacional baseada em métodos qualitativos pode frutiferamente contribuir para o avanço da pesquisa nesta área. Para este fim nos baseamos em pesquisas que conduzimos em hospitais públicos Portugueses para discutir c...
Large-scale construction projects increasingly have powerful and knowledgeable clients as project owners with whom professionals, such as architects, must interact. In such contexts, clients may have a significant impact on the constitution of a coherent and stable professional identity. Based on qualitative interviews with 50 architects across fou...
We consider the emergence of design innovations in process, emerging around the form of polyarchy. This is done by using a case study of innovation conducted by a production organization’s project that was embedded in and hosted by a bureaucratic public institution, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The research reported here was part...
This article examines how agency should be conceptualized to manage the pressing problems of the Anthropocene in support of sustainable change. The article reviews and analyzes literature on agency in relation to planetary boundaries, advancing the relational view of agency in which no actors are granted a primary ontological status and agency is n...
How do we understand the nature of organizational creativity when dealing with complex, composite ideas rather than singular ones? In response to this question, we problematize assumptions of the linearity of creative processes and the singularity of ideas in mainstream creativity theory. We draw on the work of Bakhtin and longitudinal research in...
At the turn of the nineteenth century scientific management sought to make work as robotic and automatic as possible; by the early years of the twenty‐first century the use of artificial intelligence and robotics made android dreams real. In between management sought to manage the twin aims of efficiency and commitment. Contemporaneously, however,...
There are few qualitative organizational accounts that explore the constitution of scientific fields in management. We developed a methodology for understanding the academic modes of scientific knowledge production in management research from the perspective of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) and actor-network theory (ANT). SSK and ANT...
The originality of this paper lies in the ways in which it explores how the depiction of organised crime within Andrey Kurkov’s novel Death and the Penguin can inform our understanding of organisational modularity. This non-orthodox approach might open up new avenues of thought in the study of organisational modularity while further illustrating ho...
Purpose
This paper aims to describe the hidden presence of improvisation in organizations. The authors explore this presence through George Perec’s notion of the infra-ordinary applied to the study of the learning organization and its paradoxes.
Design/methodology/approach
Most studies of paradox and improvisation are qualitative and inductive....
For junior professionals, notions of professional identity established during their education are often called into question in the early stages of their professional careers. The workplace gives rise to identity challenges that manifest in significant emotional struggles. However, while extant literature highlights how emotions trigger and accompa...
This paper presents an in-depth and processual case study of a major infrastructural innovation project involving diverse private and public-sector organizations. The case study shows how organizing developed recursively in response to diverging temporal requirements, induced by the temporal institutional complexity facing the project. We introduce...
Project portfolio management (PPM) bridges strategy and project management. Traditional research in PPM has primarily investigated the rational, top-down and structural aspects of strategizing. By doing so, it has failed to focus on the underlying practices that are triggered by the strategy and how these practices frame strategy implementation. Pr...
In this conceptual essay, we review the field of organizational conflict to unpack how it has been constructed genealogically and with what consequences by investigating three major shifts in theorization that have occurred over the past six decades. First, a move away from viewing conflict as dysfunctional to viewing it as constructive. Second, a...
The work of Zygmunt Bauman, insofar as it addressed the organizational world, saw it initially as a total institution, one in which the organization, as a specific entity defined by those activities it envelops, was focused on the central task of liquidation (Bauman, 1989). du Gay (2002) critically interrogated the bureaucratic character of this to...
Purpose
This paper seeks to demonstrate the role of power relations in initiating and blocking accounting change that involves increased ‘responsibilization’ and ‘incentivization’, and to understand how institutional entrepreneurship is steered by power strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
An in-depth case study was carried out between 2010 a...
The temporality of organizations is increasingly at the heart of organization studies research. Nonetheless, there have been few research reports that explore the issue of time in the context of ongoing research practices and their performativity. Indeed, research practices in management are frequently bounded as successive waves in time and space....
Drawing on empirical research conducted in Australia’s Public Service with Departmental Secretaries, we address the research question: how have contemporary management ideas influenced Departmental Secretaries and their work? Contemporary management ideas, the majority of which are various forms of managerialism, introduced by New Public Management...
This article outlines a novel approach to the role of models in innovation processes: showing how innovative architectural outcomes result from the strategic management of multiple physical models in a design process. Drawing on actor-network theory, we explore architect Frank Gehry’s designing in action to trace the work done in translating design...
We chart the sociomaterial imaginaries and realities of a new Frank Gehry–designed University of Technology Sydney Business School as both a space and a place. We review the broad sociological literature on space, considering its philosophical and conceptual parameters. Lefebvre’s work is central to such discussion, a centrality that we do not so m...
Researchers have extensively studied how large firms and SMEs use business and political ties to obtain tangible and intangible resources in transition economies. However, how SMEs establish these ties in the context of power-imbalanced dependence by using unethical and illegal “strategic practice” such as bribery remains underexplored. Furthermore...
A common lament is that business history has been marginalized within mainstream business and management research. We propose that the remedy lies in part with more extensive engagement with organization theory. We illustrate our argument by exploring the potentialities for business history of three cognitive frameworks: institutional entrepreneurs...
Diverse and often unacknowledged assumptions underlie organizational conflict research. In this essay, we identify distinct ways of conceptualizing conflict in the theoretical domain of organizational conflict with the aim of setting a new critical agenda for reflexivity in conflict research. In doing so, we first apply a genealogical approach to s...
The East India Company can lay claim to being the world's first company whose operations involved systematic organization of multiple countries. It was a pioneer and innovator: It was one of the first companies to offer limited liability to its shareholders; it laid the foundations of the British empire; it spawned Company Man; it developed its own...
In this article, we explore what happens in professional formation when the locus of its meaning, as it has been formed, is increasingly contradicted by professional practice. Specifically, we explore the problematic nature of architects’ professional identity that is constituted in terms of the primacy of design aesthetics, in contexts where pract...
This paper contributes to the literature on workplace creativity by combining insights on epiphanies with theory on the embodied and relational nature of understanding. We explore and develop the concept of epiphany, defined as a sudden and transient manifestation of insight. Primarily, we are interested in the implications of the concept's artisti...
The promise of a closer union between organizational and historical research has long been recognized. However its potential remains unfulfilled: the authenticity of theory development expected by organization studies and the authenticity of historical veracity required by historical research place exceptional conceptual and empirical demands on re...
The rise of modern corporations has been accompanied by an expansion of salaried executives who have replaced owner-managers. With this expansion, the new class of managers/executives came to regard themselves as stewards of large and complex corporations, and not principally or exclusively as agents for the owners. Emerging as a self- styled ‘prof...
This article examines four contemporary treatments of the problem of organizational conflict: social psychological, anthropological, neo-Darwinian, and neo-Machiavellian. Social psychological treatments of organizational conflict focus on the dyadic relationship between individual disputants. In contrast, anthropological treatments take a more soci...
Projects
Project (1)
This project gathers all the Call For Papers of the Organizations, Artifacts & Practices (OAP) workshop from 2011 till today. OAP is an annual event focused on ontological and philosophical discussions about organizing in a digital age. It gathers researchers from organization studies, management, philosophy, anthropology, history, among other fields. It covers topics such as the materiality, temporality, historicity and spatiality of organizing in a digital age. OAP has been founded in 2011 by François-Xavier de Vaujany and Nathalie. It is co-chaired each year by different convenors constituting gradually its team of 'coordinators'. OAP has a very open governance inspired by open science practices. It has no 'members'. Is part of OAP whoever feels part of it. All OAP events are free, open to all and collectively documented.