Apologies for cross-posting
Call for Papers:
First EIASM Workshop on
Imagining Business
Reflecting on the visual power of
management, organising and governing practices
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, UK,
26-27 June 2008
Keynote Speakers: Paolo Fabbri, Donald Mackenzie & Nigel Thrift.
Organizations are saturated with images, pictures, and signs that
impact on many different aspects of everyday organizational life. A
moment of reflection can produce a long list of examples relating to:
budgets and accounting tools, advertising literature, design
specifications, public relations leaflets, standard operating
procedures, schedules, reports, graphs, charts, organizational
hierarchies, and maps, to name but a few. This raises the question of
how we study the role of images in performing all kinds of activities
that keep us busy and attentive? Do we focus on images as signs and
inscriptions that can be viewed as mediators making others do things
(Latour, 2005)? How does this relate to ideas of intensities, affect,
engagement, beliefs and passions? Can we explore the difference and
multiplicity that underlies such performances in terms of techniques
and practices of managing and organizing, and how do images relate to
various issues of agency, accountability and responsibility?
Furthermore, imagination as representation is not the focus of this
call. Rather than limiting the debate to the role that images have in
representing ‘businesses’ of all sorts, we need to explore the role
of images as 'forces' in performing business, and enabling
possibilities in terms of thinking about and enacting particular
orderings.
While images, signs and visualization have been studied from a wide
range of perspectives and fields of study (e.g. history, religious
iconography, art and visual studies, literature and communication
studies, philosophy, sociology, geography, visual anthropology,
semiotics, architecture, science and technology studies), within the
areas of business, management and organization studies the level of
interest has been less evident. A particular focus of this workshop
therefore involves bringing together an eclectic assembly of scholars
to enable an imaginative forum for discussion and debate in this area
of enquiry. We welcome papers and extended abstracts (2500–4000
words) from scholars from a wide range of disciplines that seek to
explore theoretical and empirical issues from a diverse set of themes.
Submission deadline: 28th February 2008
For more information go to:
http://www.eiasm.org/frontoffice/event_announcement.asp?event_id=555
or contact the organising committee:
Lucy Kimbell
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Christine McLean [log in to unmask]
François-Régis Puyou
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Paolo Quattrone
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For practicalities contact:
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