Reminder: Organization / Literature: Beyond Equivalence and Antinomy, CMS,
Lancaster, UK, 7-9 July 2003 - Call for Papers

Apologies for Cross-posting

Reminder of the Call for Papers
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 18 October 2002


Organization / Literature: Beyond Equivalence and Antinomy

A stream at the 3rd Critical Management Studies Conference ‘Critique and
Inclusivity: Opening the Agenda’, Lancaster, UK, 7-9 July 2003.
(www.CMS3.org)


In recent years, writers on organization have increasingly been turning
their attention to the question of ‘writing’. Variously this has taken the
form of an enquiry into the nature of organizing as a mode of inscription,
the study of specific organizational texts, the analysis of writing on
organization, or the generalized application of a textual metaphor to all
things organizational. This broad textual turn in organization studies
inverts the previously assumed antinomy between literature and social-
scientific writing. In doing so organization itself is reconfigured as a
mode of inscription, and writing on organization becomes a form of literary
endeavour. From being in a relationship of opposition, literature and
organization have thus moved to a position of undifferentiated equivalence,
a position equally as problematic as the traditional facile distinction
between fact and fiction.

This stream seeks an escape from this binary bind by reconsidering the
relationship between organization and literature more symmetrically. To
this end, the stream will emphasise both the organization of literature and
the literature of organization:

· The literature of organization. We encourage papers that eschew an
instrumental view of literary theory and instead seek a critical engagement
with ways of writing organization. As well as reconsidering the literary
conventions of academic writing on organization, this move necessitates an
opening onto literature itself as a force, not simply as a resource to be
plundered for new ideas about organizing and managing.

· The organization of literature. We also encourage papers that address the
ways in which literature is organized.  Such papers might include a socio-
political analysis of publishing industries, for example a discussion of
the political economy of the Booker prize, or prospect the
similarities/differences between canonization processes underlying best-
sellers from Hamel and Prahalad to Harry Potter.

Within these two broad divisions, suggested themes include:
· The organization of publication
· The work of interpretation
· Technologies of writing – could we build a Literature Machine?
· History and literature – shifting canons
· The value of trash? Labours of division in the production of literature
· Literature as art, literature as method
· Conventions of academic writing
· Management science-fiction – writing the future of work
· Writing gender – inscribing bodies at work
· Autobiography and hagiography in the case study method
· A literature of ‘the other’ – postcolonial writing on organization
· When words are not enough – writing the unspeakable

We are particularly keen to encourage any papers that seek a critical
engagement with the field of literary theory, an encounter that has the
potential to inform ways of writing and organizing from a variety of
perspectives. For example, pursuing the debates surrounding literary
criticism will enable participants in the stream to reflect upon the role
of critique and the critic in the pursuit of a Critical Management Studies.
As well as addressing the conference theme of inclusivity, this approach
will enable a critical encounter with the inscription and epistemology of
organization and management.

Proposals for papers should be in the form of an extended abstract of no
more than 1500 words, to be submitted to the convenors by the 18th October
2002. Selections will be made by 13th December 2002, with full-length
papers to be submitted by 15th April 2003.

Submissions and enquiries should be addressed in the first instance to:
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Convenors:
Steffen Böhm, University of Warwick ([log in to unmask])
Christian De Cock, University of Exeter ([log in to unmask])
Chris Land, University of Warwick ([log in to unmask])
Nidhi Srinivas, The New School ([log in to unmask])