Crafting organization

The recent shift in attention away from organization studies as science has allowed for consideration of new ways of thinking about both organization and organizing and has led to several recent attempts to 'bring down' organizational theorizing. In this paper, we extend calls for organization to be represented as a creative process by considering organization as craft. Organizational craft, we argue, is attractive, accessible, malleable, reproducible, and marketable. It is also a tangible way of considering organization studies with irreverence. We draw on the hierarchy of distinctions among fine art, decorative art, and craft to suggest that understanding the organization of craft assists in complicating our understanding of marginality. We illustrate our argument by drawing on the case of a contemporary Australian craftworks and marketplace known initially as the Meat Market Craft Centre ('MMCC') and then, until its recent closure, as Metro! ‡ Stella Minahan was a board member and then the Chief Executive Officer of the Metro! Craft Centre.

Dialysis-dependency: the reformulated or remnant person

Being dependent on dialysis is a potentially overwhelming experience where life as previously known is permanently altered. A dialysis-dependent individual may reformulate their identify or perceive that they are a remnant if their former self. This paper will explore and expand Morse and Penrod's (1999) model as a useful way to understand how a person might reconstruct their identify. Grounded in a narrative methodology, interviews if those on haemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis were thematically analysed. It was found that dialysis dependency brings an acknowledgment if a lost past, an inescapable present and an unknowable future, filtered through hope and despair. Nurses need to understand the suffering, wrought by such a struggle,to facilitate the positive re-envisioning if those who are dialysis dependent.

Testing the Fit of the BANKSERV model to BANKPERF data

To date, financial institutions have no recognised publicly available and standard scale to measure the quality of their services (Bahia and Nantel, 2000). Much of the service quality literature has focused on two measures, SERVQUAL and SERVPERF. Although debate continues about the pros and cons of these individual measures, the reality is that neither is industry specific. The BANKSERV instrument was developed to measure service quality in retail banking as perceived by customers. It was designed to allow customers to reflect on their expectations and perceptions in single statements. This paper reports the results of a confirmatory factor analysis conducted to test the fit of the BANKSERV model to data collected using a perceptions-only measure (BANKPERF). Data were collected via questionnaire, with a sample of 348 banking customers being obtained. Findings suggest that the ‘goodness of fit’ of the BANKSERV model to the observed data was ‘marginal’.

Defining emotional levels and climate as context and events

Recent work by Fisher highlighted the importance of making distinctions in levels of measurement of affect. She argued that general measurement of an individual's emotions represents the emotional experience in a person as a single point, or as a summary score of the individual's emotional experience over a period of time. Within-level emotion comparisons, in contrast, are made by assessing the emotional state of an individual at several points in time and then making comparisons between those points, thus, keeping intact the individual's pattern of emotional experience over time. The present argument extends the within/between distinction raised by Fisher at the individual level of analysis to the group or organization level analysis. That is, although affective climate is typically considered as relatively stable or trait-like characteristics of an organization, it can also be thought of as the aggregate measure of people's experiences over time.

Exploring the relationship between customer loyalty to the service worker and customer citizenship behaviors to the service organization

This paper conceptualizes the positive relationship between customer loyalty to the service worker (personal loyalty) and customer citizenship behaviors to the service organization including: positive word of mouth; suggestions for improvements; customer participation in activities; benevolent acts of service facilitation; customer policing; customer flexibility; customer voice and displays of relationship affiliation.

Organization, decoration

While organizational decoration has been of interest to those who study organizational artefacts, we suggest four ways in which decoration is worthy of fuller attention in organizational studies. First, decoration, ornament and embellishment are not only what we see, but also what we do as managers, consultants, writers and designers of both physical and project spaces. Second, and drawing on the art/craft debate, we note that decoration occupies contested and even liminal aesthetic position and that ‘decorative art’ lies betwixt and between fine art and craft. Neither fully accepted nor fully marginalized, decoration is ‘only applied’ and embodies shifting tensions between form and function. Third, we review the particular negotiations of these tensions at the Bauhaus, a controversial and highly influential aesthetic organization in early 20th century Germany. Fourth, we suggest that decoration, like disorganization, provides a source of complication for organizational studies that are neither pure nor parsimonious.

Organizational decoration : a new metaphor for organization development

The authors call for the introduction of a new metaphor, organizational decoration, to provide a way of conceiving organizational development (OD) as an aesthetic endeavor. First, this is a response to recent calls for fresh and more interdisciplinary approaches to thinking about the practice of OD. Second, it is a provocation, for their choice of decoration is also a call for greater humility in OD’s ambitions. Rather than seek a more strategic or architectural role for OD, organizational decoration works instead at the surface and in the realm of the aesthetic. And within that realm the authors have deliberately chosen decoration over design (a term far more familiar to OD) because decoration more closely represents the ordinary and often temporary contributions that the authors advocate. Implications of moving OD down-market are discussed.

Excess and mimesis in organization theory: emancipation from within?

In organizational analysis it can be argued that 'radical separatism'—in the guise of the original 'agenda' for Radical Organization Theory (see Benson, 1977a; Burrell and Morgan, 1979; Clegg and Dunkerley, 1980) or more recently that for Critical Management Studies (see Alvesson and Willmott, 1992; Fournier and Grey, 2000; Casey, 2002; Grey, 2004)—has failed to breach the hegemony of functionalist orthodoxy, and notably so when it comes to practice. Given this failure, we speculate, upon the potential for a different emancipatory approach, one based theoretically on the fluid process of 'undecidability'. Unusually our approach attempts to undermine the conventions of functionalist organization theory from within. In brief, we speculate upon the adoption and enactment of Luce Irigaray's (1985, 1991) strategy of mimicry as a means to illuminate the notion of 'excess' in organization theory. To liberate the feminine, Irigaray mimics the symbolic representation of the female body to excess so as to expose the contradictions of phallocentric discourse. When applied to organization theory, this sees a deliberate mimicking of critiques of radical separatism so as to make explicit the latter's imprisonment within functionalism. Through excessive mimicking of the functionalists' critique, the radical/critical organization theorist may become cognizant of, but perhaps not so subjugated by, the hegemony of functionalist discourse.

Ties to the past in organization research : a comparative analysis of retrospective methods

This paper addresses a traditionally neglected area of management and organizational studies—retrospective research. It identifies, describes and analyses four positions on retrospective research: Controlling the Past, in which attempts are made to maximize accurate recall or to reveal potential sources of error or bias; Interpreting the Past, in which understanding of the present is informed by the construction of past reality; Co-opting the Past, in which causal explanations link the past and the present; and Representing the Past, which involves the problematization of time and research on time. These positions are compared in terms of, for example, method, philosophy, examplars and potential contribution. Finally, implications are drawn for the practice of retrospective research in management and organization studies.

Personal-organizational values fit and organizational commitment in Australian domestic and international students

This study examines the relationship between affective organizational commitment and the personal and perceived organizational values of international and domestic students in an Australian university. Results provide support for the values factors found by Abbott, White & Charles, 2005), and consistency with Schwartz's (1992) pan-cultural values hierarchy. Both groups of students rated their personal values as consistent with the rankings of the major pan-cultural values and perceived organizational values were drivers of affective commitment. This study highlights the need for higher education institutions as well as global organizations to address profit for values such as benevolence, self-direction, and universalism to encourage higher levels of student and employee commitment to their organizations and increase effectiveness.