Abstract
This paper explores how prevalent contemporary problematizations of organizations coincide with a widespread assessment that Organization Studies (OS) has run out of steam. This impasse, the paper argues, is largely due to the emergence of an organization-phobia that has come to seize several strands of theorizing. By attending to the wide-ranging and far-reaching history of this organization-phobia, the paper argues that OS has become increasingly incapable of speaking about its core object. I show how organizations went from being conceptualized as entities of major importance to becoming associated with all kinds of ills. Through this history, organizations as distinct entities have been rendered so problematic that they have gradually come to be removed from the center of OS. The costs of this have been rather significant. Besides undermining the grounds that gave OS intellectual credibility and legitimacy to begin with, the organization-phobia resulting from this history has been implicated in dismantling organizations, and in making OS progressively irrelevant to a wider public.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Publication date | 2014 |
Number of pages | 30 |
Publication status | Published - 2014 |
Event | XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology 2014: Facing an Unequal World: Challenges for Global Sociology - Yokohama, Japan Duration: 13 Jul 2014 → 19 Jul 2014 Conference number: 18 https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2014/cfp.cgi |
Conference
Conference | XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology 2014 |
---|---|
Number | 18 |
Country/Territory | Japan |
City | Yokohama |
Period | 13/07/2014 → 19/07/2014 |
Internet address |