Dear Colleagues,

With usual apologies for cross-postings, please circulate if you know
people who 'still' bear the brunt of overwork and/or would dare to engage
with us critically and - Heaven forbid - prescriptively.

Thanks,

Gianluca Andresani



CALL FOR PAPERS

Forswink/Forswunk


4th International Critical Management Studies Conference (www.cms4.org) 4th-
6th July 2005 Cambridge University, UK


CONVENORS
Norman Jackson, The Management Centre, University of Leicester, UK
Email: [log in to unmask]

Pippa Carter; The Management Centre, University of Leicester, UK
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Peter Pelzer, Independent Consultant, Frankfurt, Germany
Email: [log in to unmask]

Marianne Afanassieva, The Business School, University of Hull, UK
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Gianluca Andresani, The Business School, University of Hull
Email: [log in to unmask]

Shi-Wei (Bill) Hsu, School of Management, University of Newcastle,
Email: [log in to unmask]

Stream Description
These words mean, respectively, ‘to exhaust by labour’ and ‘overworked’.
They originate from the 13th century but are still extant and there is even
a web address at forswunk.  Overwork, it seems, is not a new problem but it
is a problem that remains.
CMS has flourished as a scholarly activity for more than 2 decades, yet
what has been its impact on practice?  Arguably, the more critique there
is, the worse ‘organisations’ become.  Is there a ‘paralysis of analysis’?
Should we be turning our attention to prescription?  This stream seeks to
explore the issues raised by these questions.
Prescription is, of course, a very thorny issue.  How do we go about
prescribing?  What is the role of the knowledge producer?  How should
knowledge claims be assessed?  How is legitimacy established?  What areas
can, or should, prescription address?  What are the risks, and what the
prizes? Who should be the beneficiaries? These are big questions!
Our primary interest is in developing the idea of what we call ‘labour
extensification’.  We are taking our usage from agriculture, where it is
well understood that there are benefits to be gained by deliberately
reducing the productivity of resources below what is theoretically possible
(as opposed to Marx’s usage, which refers to increasing labour
exploitation).  If this is desirable for land and animals when considered
as resources, is it not extensible generally to ‘the human resource’?  What
might be the costs and benefits?  How might such extensification be
achieved?  There is no doubt that there are many well-documented costs
arising from the problem of overwork, but, in the current state of (the
critique of) organisational and managerial activity, where are the
mechanisms that would enable an organic, evolutionary solution to the
problems of overwork to emerge?  Are there any?  Given that it is known
what the problem is, and its effects, not only are solutions lacking, but
the constant mantra is that we should all work harder.  So perhaps it is
time for critical management studies to develop a more openly prescriptive
approach.
However, overwork is obviously not the only issue that might be addressed
by a prescriptive approach.  Nor are the questions about the very
possibility of prescription resolved.  How and about what one might be
prescriptive may differ from one discipline to another.  What seems to be a
solution from one perspective may itself seem to be a problem from
another.  The problems, and the solutions, may, or may not, vary across
different global locations.  We would particularly welcome contributions
from a range of disciplines.
Call for Papers
We invite papers that engage with one or more of the following areas:
• labour extensification (which could include costs/benefits,
arguments for and/or against, possible forms and mechanisms, potential
sources of resistance, desirability, issues arising at, e.g., personal,
organisational, social, global, etc., levels of analysis, etc.).
• prescription (which could include hows, whys, whos, about whats,
arguments for and/or against, already existing examples, to whom
prescription is and/or should be addressed, paradoxes of prescription,
ethics of prescription, etc.).
• implications of (prescription about) overwork from  perspectives
other than organisation theory (which could include economics, ethics,
development studies, production management, IT, finance, occupational
health, gender, culture, etc., also studies based on the particular
conditions in a geographic area, etc.).
• applicability of prescription to other aspects of organisation
(which could include areas which are already prescriptive, areas which
might benefit from a prescriptive approach, paradoxes of prescription,
ethics of prescription, etc.).
These examples are intended merely to indicate possibilities, and papers
addressing other aspects of the issues are also welcome.
Timeline
Abstracts to Convenors (e-mail)
  1 October 2004
Feedback to authors communicated
  1 December 2004
Full papers to Convenors (e-mail)
  1 April 2005
Abstracts should fit the following requirements:
• Submissions in Word
• Arial Font
• Maximum Length 1500 Words
• Including:
Title
Authors (affiliation, contact details)
Body of Text
References


http://www.dialspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/hr22/cms2005/index.htm