Peter Fleming’s research while affiliated with University of London and other places

A number of recent high-profile studies of robotics and artificial intelligence (or AI) in economics and sociology have predicted that many jobs will soon disappear due to automation, with few new ones replacing them. While techno-optimists and techno-pessimists contest whether a jobless future is a positive development or not, this paper points to the elephant in the room. Despite successive waves of computerization (including advanced machine learning), jobs have not disappeared. And probably won’t in the near future. To explain why, some basic insights from organization studies can make a contribution. I propose the concept of ‘bounded automation’ to demonstrate how organizational forces mould the application of technology in the employment sector. If work does not vanish in the age of AI, then poorly paid jobs will most certainly proliferate, I argue. Finally, a case is made for the scholarly community to engage with wider social justice concerns. This I term public organization studies.

Human capital theory – developed by neoclassical economists like Gary Becker and Theodore Schultz – is widely considered a useful way to explain how employees might enhance their value in organizations, leading to improved skill, autonomy and socio-economic wellbeing. This essay argues the opposite. Human capital theory implies that employees should bear the costs (and benefits) of their investment. Highly individualized training and work practices are an inevitable corollary. Self-employment, portfolio careers, the ‘gig economy’ and on-demand business models (including Uber and Deliveroo) faithfully reflect the assumptions that inform human capital theory. I term this the radical responsibilization of the workforce and link it to growing economic insecurity, low productivity, diminished autonomy and worrying levels of personal debt. The essay concludes by proposing some possible solutions.

Why are some serious cases of corporate irresponsibility collectively forgotten? Drawing on social memory studies, we examine how this collective forgetting process can occur. We propose that a major instance of corporate irresponsibility leads to the emergence of a stakeholder mnemonic community that shares a common recollection of the past incident. This community generates and then draws upon mnemonic traces to sustain a collective memory of the past event over time. In addition to the natural entropic tendencies toward forgetting, collective memory is also undermined by instrumental ‘forgetting work’, which we conceptualize in this paper. Forgetting work involves manipulating short-term conditions of the event, silencing vocal ‘rememberers’ and undermining collective mnemonic traces that sustain a version of the past. This process can result in a reconfigured collective memory and collective forgetting of corporate irresponsibility events. Collective forgetting can have positive and negative consequences for the firm, stakeholders and society.

Outlaw organizations are neglected in organization studies. This is understandable given the presumption of illegitimacy they attract. Our article challenges the presumption by positing the concept of ‘bandit organizations’, demonstrating how some can build impressive levels of legitimacy among their audience. The case of Christopher ‘Dudas’ Coke, a philanthropic Jamaican drug cartel leader, and his ‘Shower Posse’ gang, is used to investigate how contemporary bandit organizations foster legitimacy. By placing ‘shadow economy’ organizations like this in the spotlight, we seek to extend scholarship on organizational legitimacy, while avoiding any undue romanticization of criminal organizations.

This article argues that recent calls in this journal and elsewhere for Critical Management Studies scholars to embrace rather than reject performativity presents an overly optimistic view of (a) the power of language to achieve emancipatory organizational change and (b) the capability of lone Critical Management Studies researchers to resignify management discourses. We introduce the notion of failed performatives to extend this argument and discuss its implications for critical inquiry. If Critical Management Studies seeks to make a practical difference in business and society, and realize its ideals of emancipation, we suggest alternative methods of impact must be explored.

I will draw on the contributions of Courpasson (2016) and Hardy (in press) to reflect on the nature of resistance in contemporary organizations and extend the discussion by focusing on why and how actors might resist today. In particular, I propose that some types of resistance are motivated by what I label post-recognition politics rather than traditional struggles to be recognized, heard, and listened to. Hence the prominent theme of exit, escape, and social independence in emancipatory discourses designed to refuse work and employment today.

This presenter symposium focuses on the role of inter-organizational power in strategy formation. Long dormant, research on inter-organizational power is currently experiencing a veritable reinvigoration. However, core challenges towards a theory of inter-organizational power and strategy remain. The purpose of this symposium therefore is to present and to critically evaluate some of the major theoretical perspectives on inter-organizational power as applied to strategy and management. We want to showcase theory lenses that we consider particularly generative for strategy scholars. To this end, the symposium brings together leading scholars to present and discuss both classic and emerging theoretical perspectives on strategy and inter-organizational power. • "Social Movements, Organizations, and Power" • Presenter: Edward T. Walker; U. of California, Los Angeles • Rhetoric in Contested Institutional Settings • Presenter: Wesley Helms; Brock U. • The Market that Never Was: Turf Wars and Failed Coalitions in Mobile Payments • Presenter: Pinar Ozcan; Warwick Business School

This paper reviews and evaluates the concept of power in management and organization science. In order to organize the extant literature on this topic, we develop a framework that identifies four faces of power (i.e. coercion, manipulation, domination, and subjectification) and four sites of power (i.e. power enacted “in”, “through”, “over”, and “against” organizations). This allows us to evaluate assumptions both shared and contested in the field. Building on the review, the paper then points to potentially novel areas of research that may extend our understandings of organizational power in management and organization science.

This review article suggests the English publication of Foucault's lectures on biopower, The Birth of Biopolitics (2008), might be useful for extending our understandings of how organizational power relations have changed over the last 20 years. Unlike disciplinary power, which constrains and delimits individuals, the concept of biopower emphasizes how our life abilities and extra-work qualities (bios or 'life itself') are now key objects of exploitation - particularly under neoliberalism. The term biocracy is introduced to analyse recent reports on workplace experiences symptomatic of biopower. Finally, the conceptual weaknesses of biopower for organizational theorizing are critically evaluated to help develop the idea for future scholarship.