Dear colleagues,
You are cordially invited to the research seminar given by Dr Victoria Pagan at Birmingham Business School on 24 April 2024. Please see the details below.
Birmingham Business School, Department of Management Research Seminar Series 2023/2024
Dr Victoria Pagan (Newcastle University)
Non-disclosure agreements and other practices of silencing within organisations
Date: 24 April 2024 (Wednesday)
Time: 1-2pm
Venue: Room 111, University House, University of Birmingham
A lunch buffet and refreshments will be provided before the seminar from 12.30.
In person event, but hybrid also available. Join Zoom Meeting: https://bham-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/82374837655
Abstract
This seminar will invite discussion around practices of silencing within organisations in relation to the use of non-disclosure agreements and other silencing practices, their effects and implications for epistemic justice. The research draws on two data sets: the UK Parliament Women and Equalities Committee Inquiry into the use of non-disclosure agreements in Discrimination Cases (Women and Equalities Committee, 2019); and the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales (IICSA, 2023). The seminar discussion will be structured around the following areas of complete work and work in progress:
1) Gagging (Pagan, 2022): It is proposed that NDAs have been used in a continuum of tools to silence women who seek justice in response to the misconduct of those in authority. There is a connection to be made between the use of these non-corporeal organizational processes and the historic use of the scold’s bridle, a corporeal instrument of control applied to physically silence. Both are on a continuum of violence from the antiquated, overt and embodied, to the present day, covert and epistemic with embodied effects. This work analyses the accounts of women who submitted evidence of their experiences to the WEC inquiry.
a) Value: This work in progress seeks to consider the place of value in relation to workers and their acts in the context of religious organizations and settings and abuses committed therein. Drawing on the evidence to IICSA it is theorized that value frames may provide a lens for understanding how workers’ accounts are privileged over those of victims in cases of abuse. It is suggested that three example value frames potentially enable such privileging: worker-family-community; trust; marginalization and minimization.
2) Incomplete suppression (Pagan, 2021): Whilst NDAs can be considered epistemically violent in their intent to kill knowledge of instances of misconduct and discrimination in organizations, again using an analysis of WEC inquiry material, it is proposed that the death of this knowledge is not absolute. it becomes a ghostly presence that both haunts the victim and enables them to reclaim some epistemic justice by becoming a haunter, warning others of the threats that survive them.
a) Temporal disregard: This work in progress, also using the IICSA material, considers the notion of ‘moving on’ as being mobilised in certain contexts as ‘good’ and/or ‘for the best’, whilst in practice it may be anything but. ‘Moving on’ is frequently considered beneficial e.g. linked to progress/development and resilience, achievement, personal and/or professional growth, celebrated when adversity has been faced. However, aspects of the experiences may be masked rather than fully accounted for, with negative impacts for restorative justice. There may be a shift of responsibility and/or blame such that if someone does not ‘move on’ they are failing, deflecting attention from the deficiencies of others and any sort of request to answer for the past may be dismissed as being unimportant.
References
IICSA. (2023). The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. https://www.iicsa.org.uk/index.html
Pagan, V. (2021). The murder of knowledge and the ghosts that remain: non-disclosure agreements and their effects. Culture and Organization, 27(4). https://doi.org/10.1080/14759551.2021.1907389
Pagan, V. (2022). 21st century bridling: Non-disclosure agreements in cases of organizational misconduct. Human Relations. https://doi.org/10.1177/00187267221119129
Women and Equalities Committee. (2019). The use of non-disclosure agreements in discrimination cases inquiry. UK Parliament. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmwomeq/1720/172002.htm
Biography
Victoria is currently Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University Business School, and is Director of EDI there. Her research focuses on social justice at work, ethics and emotions, and how knowledge is generated and used in workplaces. She has published research on non-disclosure agreements and decision-making in global business elites recently in Human Relations and Journal of Business Ethics.
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/business/people/profile/victoriapagan.html
Thank you!
Best wishes,
Fuk Ying Tse
Dr Fuk Ying Tse
Assistant Professor in Organisation, Work and Employment
Department of Management
Birmingham Business School
University of Birmingham
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/business/staff/profile.aspx?ReferenceId=202606&Name=fuk-ying-tse
Preferred first name: Ying
Preferred pronouns: she/her
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