Reconciling Opposites in Organisation Studies: An Aristotelian Approach to Modernism and Post-modernism

In view of the current fragmentation in management and organisation studies, we argue that there is a need to elaborate techniques that help reconcile contradictory and superficially incommensurable standpoints. For this purpose, we draw on ‘pre-modern’ Aristotelian epistemological and methodological sources, particularly the idea of ‘saving the appearances’ (SA), not previously introduced into organisation studies. Using SA as our starting point, we outline a methodology that helps to develop reasonable and acceptable intermediary positions in contemporary debates between ‘modernism’ and ‘post-modernism’. We illustrate the functioning of SA in the case of three issues in the philosophy of science where ‘modernist’ and ‘post-modernist’ scholars seem to have incommensurable standpoints: the nature of scientific knowledge; the conception of causality; and the epistemology of practice. We show in particular how to use the logics of ‘qualification’, ‘new conception’, and ‘complementary combination’ to form the basis for mediating positions which could then be accepted by less extreme proponents of both ‘modernism’ and ‘postmodernism’.

Struggles over legitimacy in global organizational restructuring: A rhetorical perspective on legitimation strategies and dynamics in a shutdown case

Critical organization scholars have focused increasing attention on industrial and organizational restructurings such as shutdown decisions. However, we know little about the rhetorical strategies used to legitimate or resist plant closures in organizational negotiations. In this paper, we draw from New Rhetoric to analyze rhetorical struggles, strategies and dynamics in unfolding organizational negotiations. We focus on the shutdown of the bus body unit of the Swedish company Volvo in Finland. We distinguish five types of rhetorical legitimation strategies and dynamics. These include the three classical dynamics of logos (rational arguments), pathos (emotional moral arguments), and ethos (authority-based arguments), but also autopoiesis (autopoietic narratives), and cosmos (cosmological constructions). Our analysis adds to the previous studies explaining how organizational restructuring as a phenomenon is legitimated, how this legitimation has changed over time, and how contemporary industrial closures are legitimated in the media. This study also increases our theoretical understanding of the role of rhetoric in legitimation more generally.

Between West and East: A Social History of Business Journalism in Cold War Finland

The Cold War era was characterized by ideological struggles that had a major impact on economic decision-making, and also on management practice. To date, however, these ideological struggles have received little attention from management and organizational scholars. To partially fill this research gap, we focus on the role of the media in these ideological struggles. Our starting point is that the media both reflect more general societal debates but also act as an agency promoting specific kinds of ideas and ideologies. In this sense, the media exercise significant power in society; this influece, however, is often subtle and easily dismissed in historical analyses focusing on political and corporate decision-making. In this article, we focus on the role of business journalism in the ideological struggles of the Cold War era. Our case in point is Finland, which is arguably a particularly interesting example due to its geo-political position between East and West. Our approach is socio-historical: we focus on the emergence and development of business journalism in the context of the specific struggles in the Finnish political and economic fields. Our analysis shows how the business journalists struggled between nationalist, pro-Soviet and pro-West political forces, but gradually developed into an increasingly influential force promoting neo-liberal ideology.

Conflicts when Competitors Cooperate: Exploring Elements of Conflicts from a Business Network Perspective

Most of the existing research within the business network approach is based on companies that are operating on different levels within the same value chain, as a buyer and a supplier. Intercompetitor cooperation, i.e. cooperation between companies occupying the same level within different value chains, has not been studied to the same extent. Moreover scholars within the business network approach have usually described industrial relationships as long term, consisting of mutual commitment and trust. Industrial relationships are not static, but dynamic, and they contain situations of both harmony and conflict. There is consequently a need for more research both concerning intercompetitor cooperation and conflicts. The purpose of this study is to develop our theoretical and empirical understanding of the nature of conflicts in intercompetitor cooperation from a business network perspective. The focus of the study lies on issue and intensity of conflict. The issue of a conflict can be divided into cause and topic, while the intensity comprises the importance and outcome of a conflict. The empirical part of the study is based on two case studies of groups of cooperating competitors from two different industries. The applied research method is interviews. According to the findings of this study causes of conflicts in intercompetitor cooperation can be divided into three groups: focus, awareness and capacity. Topics of conflict can be related to domain, delivery, advertising or cooperation. Moreover the findings show that conflict situations may be grouped into not important, important or very important. Some conflicts may also be of varying importance, meaning that the importance varies from one point of time to another. Based on the findings of the study the outcome or status of a conflict can be analyzed both on a concrete and general level. The findings also indicate that several conflicts are partly hidden, which means that only one or some of the involved actors perceive the conflict. Furthermore several conflict situations can be related to external network actors.

Collective Network Capability in International Project Business Networks - A Case Study of the Business Network for the Ashanti Electrification Project in Ghana

Despite thirty years of research in interorganizational networks and project business within the industrial networks approach and relationship marketing, collective capability of networks of business and other interorganizational actors has not been explicitly conceptualized and studied within the above-named approaches. This is despite the fact that the two approaches maintain that networking is one of the core strategies for the long-term survival of market actors. Recently, many scholars within the above-named approaches have emphasized that the survival of market actors is based on the strength of their networks and that inter-firm competition is being replaced by inter-network competition. Furthermore, project business is characterized by the building of goal-oriented, temporary networks whose aims, structures, and procedures are clarified and that are governed by processes of interaction as well as recurrent contracts. This study develops frameworks for studying and analysing collective network capability, i.e. collective capability created for the network of firms. The concept is first justified and positioned within the industrial networks, project business, and relationship marketing schools. An eclectic source of conceptual input is based on four major approaches to interorganizational business relationships. The study uses qualitative research and analysis, and the case report analyses the empirical phenomenon using a large number of qualitative techniques: tables, diagrams, network models, matrices etc. The study shows the high level of uniqueness and complexity of international project business. While perceived psychic distance between the parties may be small due to previous project experiences and the benefit of existing relationships, a varied number of critical events develop due to the economic and local context of the recipient country as well as the coordination demands of the large number of involved actors. The study shows that the successful creation of collective network capability led to the success of the network for the studied project. The processes and structures for creating collective network capability are encapsulated in a model of governance factors for interorganizational networks. The theoretical and management implications are summarized in seven propositions. The core implication is that project business success in unique and complex environments is achieved by accessing the capabilities of a network of actors, and project management in such environments should be built on both contractual and cooperative procedures with local recipient country parties.

Network Knowledge versus Cluster Knowledge- The Gordian Knot of Knowledge Transfer Concepts

Both management scholars and economic geographers have studied knowledge and argued that the ability to transfer knowledge is critical to competitive success. Networks and other forms for cooperation are often the context when analyzing knowledge transfer within management research, while economic geographers focus on the role of the cluster for knowledge transfer and creation. With the common interest in knowledge transfer, few attempts to interdisciplinary research have been made. The aim of this paper is to outline the knowledge transfer concepts in the two strands of literature of management and economic geography (EG). The paper takes an analytical approach to review the existing contributions and seek to identify the benefits of further interaction between the disciplines. Furthermore, it offers an interpretation of the concepts of cluster and network, and suggests a clearer distinction between their respective definitions. The paper posits that studies of internal networks transcending national borders and clusters are not necessarily mutually exclusive when it comes to transfer of knowledge and the learning process of the firm. Our conclusion is that researchers in general seem to increasingly acknowledge the importance of studying both the effect of and the need for geographical proximity and external networks for the knowledge transfer process, but that there exists equivocalness in defining clusters and networks.

Current Debates on Classifying Diversity Management: Review and a Proposal

This paper discusses various theoretical approaches to diversity management, analysing their similarities and differences. I start with a review of certain previously presented classifications, and then proceed to describing the different approaches in more detail. In this paper, I propose that the various viewpoints can be categorized into three groups: 1) practitioner/consultant approach, 2) mainstream approach, and 3) critical approaches. Although there are differences within these groups, in particular regarding the critical approaches, these differences appear less significant than those between the groups. Those representing the first group are mainly interested in how to get most out of a diverse workforce, while those in the second group focus on the effects of diversity on performance or work group functioning. While some of the mainstream writers can be rather critical towards earlier research, they hardly ever discuss or even recognize the wide ranging criticism put forward by critical scholars. The critical researchers, then, remain a rather scattered group who do not always share much more than a conviction that the mainstream research keeps missing highly significant issues. Nonetheless, in order to increase our understanding of how different persons can and do work together, more dialogue is required between the varying standpoints.

Pietismin kuva - ikkuna yksityiseen hengellisyyteen : Johann Arndtin opetukset pietistisen embleemin perustana

The image of Pietism a window to personal spirituality. The teachings of Johann Arndt as the basis of Pietist emblems The Pietist effect on spiritual images has to be scrutinised as a continuum initiating from the teachings of Johann Arndt who created a protestant iconography that defended the status of pictures and images as the foundation of divine revelation. Pietist artworks reveal Arndtian part of secret, eternal world, and God. Even though modern scholars do not regarded him as a founding father of Pietism anymore, his works have been essential for the development of iconography, and the themes of the Pietist images are linked with his works. For Arndt, the starting point is in the affecting love for Christ who suffered for the humankind. The reading experience is personal and the words point directly at the reader and thus appear as evidence of the guilt of the reader as well as of the love of God. Arndt uses bounteous and descriptive language which has partially affected promoting and picturing of many themes. Like Arndt, Philipp Jakob Spener also emphasised the heart that believes. The Pietist movement was born to oppose detached faith and the lack of the Holy Ghost. Christians touched by the teachings of Arndt and Spener began to create images out of metaphors presented by Arndt. As those people were part of the intelligentsia, it was natural that the fashionable emblematics of the 17th century was moulded for the personal needs. For Arndt, the human heart is manifested as a symbol of soul, personal faith or unbelief as well as an allegory of the burning love for Jesus. Due to this fact, heart emblems were gradually widely used and linked with the love of Christ. In the Nordic countries, the introduction of emblems emanated from the gentry s connections to the Central Europe where emblems were exploited in order to decorate books, artefacts, interiors, and buildings as well as visual/literal trademarks of the intelligentsia. Emblematic paintings in the churches of the castles of Venngarn (1665) and Läckö (1668), owned by Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, are one of the most central interior paintings preserved in the Nordic countries, and they emphasise personal righteous life. Nonetheless, it was the books by Arndt and the Poet s Society in Nurnberg that bound the Swedish gentry and the scholars of the Pietist movement together. The Finnish gentry had no castles or castle churches so they supported county churches, both in building and in maintenance. As the churches were not private, their iconography could not be private either. Instead, people used Pietist symbols such as Agnus Dei, Cor ardens, an open book, beams, king David, frankincense, wood themes and Virtues. In the Pietist images made for public spaces, the attention is focused on pedagogical, metaphorical, and meaningful presentation as well as concealed statements.

Conditionally One of 'Us' : A Study of Print Media, Minorities and Positioning Practices

This study deals with how ethnic minorities and immigrants are portrayed in the Finnish print media. The study also asks how media users of various ethnocultural backgrounds make sense of these mediated stories. A more general objective is to elucidate negotiations of belonging and positioning practices in an increasingly complex society. The empirical part of the study is based on content analysis and qualitative close reading of 1,782 articles in five newspapers (Hufvudstadsbladet, Vasabladet, Helsingin Sanomat, Iltalehti and Ilta-Sanomat) during various research periods between 1999 and 2007. Four case studies on print media content are followed up by a focus group study involving 33 newspaper readers of Bosnian, Somalian, Russian, and 'native' Finnish backgrounds. The study draws from different academic and intellectual traditions; mainly media and communication studies, sociology and social psychology. The main theoretical framework employed is positioning theory, as developed by Rom Harré and others. Building on this perspective, situational self-positioning, positioning by others, and media positioning are seen as central practices in the negotiation of belonging. In support of contemporary developments in social sciences, some of these negotiations are seen as occurring in a network type of communicative space. In this space, the media form one of the most powerful institutions in constructing, distributing and legitimising values and ideas of who belongs to 'us', and who does not. The notion of positioning always involves an exclusionary potential. This thesis joins scholars who assert that in order to understand inclusionary and exclusionary mechanisms, the theoretical starting point must be a recognition of a decent and non-humiliating society. When key insights are distilled from the five empirical cases and related to the main theories, one of the major arguments put forward is that the media were first and foremost concerned with a minority actor's rightful or unlawful belonging to the Finnish welfare system. However, in some cases persistent stereotypes concerning some immigrant groups' motivation to work, pay taxes and therefore contribute are so strong that a general idea of individualism is forgotten in favour of racialised and stagnated views. Discussants of immigrant background also claim that the positions provided for minority actors in the media are not easy to identify with; categories are too narrow, journalists are biased, the reporting is simplifying and carries labelling potential. Hence, although the will for the communicative space to be more diverse and inclusive exists — and has also in many cases been articulated in charters, acts and codes — the positioning of ethnic minorities and immigrants differs significantly from the ideal.

Many Faces of Mao Zedong

The main aim of this work was to explore the use of Mao Zedong s (毛泽东, 1893—1976) visual image in contemporary Chinese art during the years 1976—2006. Chairman Mao is the most visually reproduced person in the People's Republic of China (PRC), and the presence of his image is still unquestionable at many levels. Although several scholars have provided insightful observations on this topic, research focusing on Mao's visual image has been neglected. Employing the interdisciplinary approach of visual studies and using image as the main concept, this research combines different theoretical frameworks, deriving from art history, image studies and social sciences, for each chapter in order to explain the origins, intentions and major strategies of the contemporary Chinese artists. The focus of this research was to elucidate how Mao's visual image, deriving from the Maoist era, is re-created and negotiated in contemporary Chinese art works. The material reproductions - the visual images in contemporary art - are created to be juxtaposed with the immaterial mental images of Mao that were created during the Maoist era through the original visual images of Mao. This complex interaction between visual and mental images is further exemplified by art works that do not include Mao's visual image, but still imply his mental image. The methods used derive from both sinology and art history. The research is based on extensive fieldwork in China, which was crucial for gathering new information and materials from this vigorous art scene. The topic is approached through a Chinese cultural, political and historical perspective that is necessary for a further understanding of how the original visual images of Mao obtained their omnipotent status and what kind of iconography was created. Close structural analysis, taking into account the format, style, techniques, composition, colors, materials and space used in the art works, is employed to demonstrate the great variety of visual images created. The analysis is further placed in a continuous dialogue both with the contemporary art works of Mao and with the original visual images of Mao from the past. In this study it is shown that contemporary Chinese art relating to Chairman Mao is a more versatile and multilayered phenomenon than is generally assumed. Although some of the art works seem to fit into the definition of superficial art, the study demonstrates that this reading of the art works is not adequate. The author argues that employing Mao's visual images in contemporary Chinese art is based on three main strategies used by artists: to create a visual dialogue with a traumatizing past, to employ transcontextual parody, and to explore the importance of Tian'anmen through site-dependent art. These strategies are not exclusionary, but instead interdependent and many art works employ more than one of them. In addition, these three main strategies include versatile methods used by artists that make the use of Mao's visual images even more multifaceted.

Jac. Ahrenberg ja historian perintö : Restaurointisuunnitelmat Viipurin ja Turun linnoihin 1800-luvun lopussa

Jac. Ahrenberg and Patrimony Restoration Plans for Viipuri and Turku Castles at the End of the 19th Century This dissertation examines the unrealized restoration plans for two castles in the Grand Duchy of Finland one located at Viipuri (Vyborg, nowadays in Russia), the other at Turku (in Swedish, Åbo) during the last decades of the 19th century. Both castles were used as prisons, barracks and warehouses. From the middle of the 19th century on, their restoration and transformation into museums and "national monuments" were demanded in the newspapers. The prison reform in the 1860s stimulated the documentation and debate concerning their future, but it was only at the beginning of the 1880s when their restoration became an official state-run project. The undertaking was carried out by Johan Jacob (Jac.) Ahrenberg (1847 1914), architect of the National Board of Public Buildings. By combining written sources with drawings and photographs, this dissertation examines the restoration projects, the two castles' significance and the ways in which they were investigated by scholars. The plans are analyzed in connection with restoration practices in France and Sweden and in the context of contemporary discussions concerning national art and patrimony. The thesis argues that these former castles of the Swedish crown were used to manifest the western roots of Finnish law and order, the lineage of power and the capacity of the nation to defend itself. However, because of their symbolism, their restoration became a politically delicate question concerning the role of the Swedish heritage in Finland's nation-building process. According to Jac. Ahrenberg's plans, the two castles were to be restored to their assumed appearance at the time of the Vasa dynasty. Consequently, the structures would have resembled castles in Sweden. It is suggested that one aim of the restoration plans was to transform the two buildings into monuments testifying to the common history of Sweden and Finland. They were meant to consolidate the Swedish basis of Finnish culture and autonomy and thus to secure them against the threatening implications of Russian imperialism. It seems that along with the changing ideals of architectural restoration and the need for an original Finnish architectural heritage, the political connotations associated with the castles were one reason why Jac. Ahrenberg's restoration plans were never realized.

Evil Gods and Reckless Saviours : Adaptation and Appropriation in Late Twentieth Century Jesus-Novels

Late twentieth century Jesus-novels search after a completely new picture of Jesus. Novels written for instance by Norman Mailer, José Saramago, Michèle Roberts, Marianne Fredriksson, and Ki Longfellow provide an inversive revision of the canonic Gospels. They read the New Testament in terms of the present age. In their adaptation the story turns often into a critique of the whole Christian history. The investigated contrast-novels end up with an appropriation that is based on prototypical rewriting. They aim at the rehabilitation of Judas, and some of them make Mary Magdalane the key figure of Christianity. Saramago describes God as a blood thirsty tyrant, and Mailer makes God combat with the Devil in a manichean sense as with an equal. Such ideas are familiar both from poststructuralist philosophy and post-metaphysical death-of-God theology. The main result of the intertextual analysis is that these scholars have adopted Nietzschean ideas in their writing. Quite unlike earlier Jesus-novels, these more recent novels present a revision that produces discontinuity with the original source text, the New Testament. The intertextual strategy is based on contradiction. The reader wittnesses contesting and challenging, the authors attack Biblical beliefs and attempt to dissolve Christian doctrines. An attack on Biblical slave morality and violent concept of God deprives Jesus of his Jewish Messianic identity, makes Old Testament law a contradiction of life, calls sacrificial soteriology a violent pattern supporting oppression, and presents God as a cruel monster who enslaves people under his commandments and wishes their death. The new Jesus-figure contests Mosaic Law, despises orthodox Judaism, abandons Jewish customs and even questions Old Testament monotheism. In result, the novels intentionally transfer Jesus out of Judaism. Furthermore, Jewish faith appears in a negative light. Such an intertextual move is not open anti-Semitism but it cannot avoid attacking Jewish worship. Why? One reason that explains these attitudes is that Western culture still carries anti-Judaic attitudes beneath the surface covered with sentiments of equality and tolerance. Despite the evident post-holocaust consciousness present in the novels, they actually adopt an arrogant and ironical refutation of Jewish beliefs and Old Testament faith. In these novels, Jesus is made a complete opposite and antithesis to Judaism. Key words: Jesus-novel, intertextuality, adaptation, slave morality, Nietzsche, theodicy, patriarchy.

Examining effectiveness of an immigrant labor market integration intervention. The role of acculturation, discrimination, self-efficacy, outcome expectances, action and coping planning.

The designing of effective intervention tools to improve immigrants’ labor market integration remains an important topic in contemporary Western societies. This study examines whether and how a new intervention tool, Working Life Certificate (WLC), helps unemployed immigrants to find employment and strengthen their belief of their vocational skills. The study is based on quantitative longitudinal survey data from 174 unemployed immigrants of various origins who participated in the pilot phase of WLC examinations in 2009. Surveys were administered in three waves: before the test, right after it, and three months later. Although it is often argued that the unemployment among immigrants is due either to their lack of skills and cultural differences or to discrimination in recruitment, scholars within social psychology of behavior change argue that the best way of helping people to achieve their goals (e.g. finding employment) is to build up their sense of self-efficacy, alter their outcome expectances in a more positive direction or to help them to construct more detailed action and coping plans. This study aims to shed light on the role of these concepts in immigrants’ labor market integration. The results support the theories of behavior change moderately. Having positive expectances regarding the outcomes of various job search behaviors was found to predict employment in the future. Together with action and coping planning it also predicted increase in job search behavior. The intervention, WLC, was able to affect participants’ self-efficacy, but contrary to expectations, self-efficacy was found not to be related to either job search behavior or future labor market status. Also, perceived discrimination did not explain problems in finding employment, but hints of subtle or structural discrimination were found. Adoption of Finnish work culture together with strong family culture was found to predict future employment. Hence, in this thesis I argue that awarding people diplomas should be preferred in immigrant integration training as it strengthens people’s sense of self-efficacy. Instead of teaching new information, more attention should be directed at changing people’s outcome expectances in a more positive direction and helping them to construct detailed plans on how to achieve their goals.

Legal Reasoning in Context

This study in EU law analyses the reasoning of the Court of Justice (the Court of Justice of the European Union) in a set of its preliminary rulings. Preliminary rulings are answers to national courts questions on the interpretation (and validity) of EU law called preliminary references. These questions concern specific legal issues that have arisen in legal disputes before the national courts. The Court of Justice alone has the ultimate authority to interpret EU law. The preliminary rulings bind the national courts in the cases giving rise to the preliminary reference, and the interpretations of EU law offered in the preliminary rulings are considered generally binding on all instances applying EU law. EU law is often described as a dynamic legal order and the Court of Justice as at the vanguard of developing it. It is generally assumed that the Court of Justice is striving to realise the EU s meta-level purpose (telos): integration. Against this backdrop one can understand the criticism the Court of Justice is often faced with in certain fields of EU law that can be described as developing. This criticism concerns the Court s (negatively) activist way of not just stating the law but developing or even making law. It is difficult to analyse or prove wrong this accusation as it is not in methodological terms clearly established what constitutes judicial activism, or more exactly where the threshold of negative activism lies. Moreover, one popular approach to assessing the role of the Court of Justice described as integration through law has become fairly political, neglecting to take into consideration the special nature of law as both facilitating and constraining action, not merely a medium for furthering integration. This study offers a legal reasoning approach of a more legalist nature, in order to balance the existing mix of approaches to explaining what the Court of Justice does and how. Reliance on legal reasoning is found to offer a working framework for analysis, whereas the tools for an analysis based on activism are found lacking. The legal reasoning approach enables one to assess whether or not the Court of Justice is pertaining to its own established criteria of interpretation of EU law, and if it is not, one should look more in detail at how the interpretation fits with earlier case-law and doctrines of EU law. This study examines the reasoning of the Court of Justice in a set of objectively chosen cases. The emphasis of the study is on analysing how the Court of Justice applies the established criteria of interpretation it has assumed for itself. Moreover, the judgments are assessed not only in terms of reasoning but also for meaningful silences they contain. The analysis is furthermore contextualised by taking into consideration how the cases were commented by legal scholars, their substantive EU law context, and also their larger politico-historical context. In this study, the analysis largely shows that the Court of Justice is interpreting EU law in accordance with its previous practice. Its reasoning retains connection with the linguistic or semiotic criteria of interpretation, while emphasis lies on systemic reasoning. Moreover, although there are a few judgments where the Court of Justice offers clearly dynamic reasoning or what can be considered as substantive reasoning stemming from, for example, common sense or reasonableness, such reasons are most often given in addition to systemic ones. In this sense and even when considered in its broader context, the case-law analysed in this study does not portray a specifically activist image of the Court of Justice. The legal reasoning approach is a valid alternative for explaining how and why the Court of Justice interprets EU law as it does.

Struggles Over Legitimacy in Global Organizational Restructuring: A Rhetorical Perspective on Legitimation Strategies and Dynamics in a Shutdown Case

Critical organization scholars have focused increasing attention on industrial and organizational restructurings such as shutdown decisions. However, little is known about the rhetorical strategies used to legitimate or resist plant closures in organizational negotiations. In this article, we draw from New Rhetoric to analyze rhetorical struggles, strategies and dynamics in unfolding organizational negotiations. We focus on the shutdown of the bus body unit of the Sweden-based Volvo Bus Corporation in Finland. We distinguish five types of rhetorical legitimation strategies and dynamics. These include the three classical dynamics of logos (rational arguments), pathos (emotional moral arguments), and ethos (authority-based arguments), but also autopoiesis (autopoietic narratives), and cosmos (cosmological constructions). Our analysis contributes to previous studies on organizational restructuring by providing a more nuanced understanding of how contemporary industrial closures are legitimated and resisted in organizational negotiations. This study also increases theoretical understanding of the role of rhetoric in legitimation more generally.