Culture and Organization Journal
Call for Papers
Special Issue on: Neophilia and Organization
Guest Editors: Carl Rhodes and Alison Pullen
University of Technology, Sydney
Neophilia is a fetishistic love of all that is new. Those afflicted with
neophilia become excited about novelty; they crave newness. Newness to
neophiliacs is a virtue to be upheld and a goal to always strive for. The
development of the modern world saw the excitement for the new become a
mainstay of western culture. In a temporal reversal, it seems that today
we have inherited neophilia from the passing of modernity – a condition that
permeates management practice and management theory. Management practice has
long been afflicted with the love of the new, whether it is for the creation
of new forms of organizations, a pathological desire for change and its
management, the scrambling after the latest management fashion, or the
strategic demand for re-invention. The ‘heritage’ of neophilia is also
present in postcolonial global order in which organizations increasingly
operate. The assumption of the necessity for western style progress the
world over, the division of the globe into the ‘new’ and ‘old’ world, the
violent imposition of democracy, and the disavowal of traditional cultures
and peoples can all be traced to a culture of neophilia. Management theory
is not immune to novelty either: indeed, it is often in the vanguard of both
its promotion and demise. Those of us engaged in this practice are under
constant pressure to define our work in terms of ‘new knowledge’ in the
assumption of an ever incremental path of progress and accumulation, lest we
be considered old-hat luddites who fail to move with the times. Mainstream
management scholarship articulates this, inter alia, in terms of creativity,
change management, innovation, development and growth. Those who theorize
with a critical bent likewise lack immunity from the lure of the new – such
‘progressive’ theories venture into becoming, emergence, utopia, and in days
gone by even revolution.
The special issue seeks contributions that trouble organization and
management in relation to both its neophiliac roots and its location in
tradition. We call for an appraisal of the value and values of newness in
our dynamic fields of practice and theory, and an exploration of the
intertwined relation between newness, change and novelty on the one hand,
and tradition, permanence and inheritance on the other. Submissions to the
special issue should consider neophilia in relation to management practice,
management theory and/or the politics of management. Papers might consider
the following issues, although this list is far from exhaustive:
• Avant-gardism in management theory and practice
• The rhetoric and aesthetics of newness in management writing
• Management as a new academic discipline and its relationship with older
scholarly traditions
• Old vs. new scholarly values in management research
• The business school and the new university
• The manager as neophiliac
• Organizational change and the pleasures of the new
• Postcolonialism, organization and neophilia
• Management fads and fashions
• The new managerial classes and social control
• The new men and women of organizations
• Resistance to the new and resistance to the old in organizations
• Newness, identity and self-(re)creation in organizations
• Nostalgia and the striving for a new future in an imagined past
• Neophilia and organizational becoming
• Progress, the myth of progress and neophilia
• Neophilia as old-fashioned
Full paper should be submitted to Carl Rhodes ([log in to unmask]) and
Alison Pullen ([log in to unmask]) by 31 December 2008. The issue is
scheduled for publication in 2009.
People considering in submitting papers to this special issue may also be
interested in attending the The 3rd Australasian Caucus of the Standing
Conference on Organizational Symbolism (ACSCOS), the theme of which is also
neophilia and organization. This conference will be held at the University
of Technology, Sydney, Australia on 26-28 November 2008, see
http://www.business.uts.edu.au/management/acscos/index.html for details.
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