• HOSTED BY
• GUEST SPEAKERS
• ORGANISING COMMITTEE
• BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION
• CALL FOR PAPERS
• PRACTICALITIES

Mario Biagioli - Harvard University
History of science

Jacques Fontanille - Université de Limoges
Semiotics

Nigel Thrift (TBC)- University of Warwick
Geography

 

Paolo Quattrone  - IE Business School
François-Régis Puyou - Audencia, Nantes School of Management
Chris Mclean  - Manchester Business School 

Following the success of the 1st Imagining Business Workshop (Oxford, 2008), this second event seeks to explore in further detail the impact of images, pictures, and signs on everyday organizational life. Inspired by the principle that any social activity results from how various organisational actors are tied together (Latour’s idea of ‘socie-ties’), this workshop intends to examine how various organisational performances and material objects of all kinds (e.g. information technologies, forms, charts, plans, models, etc.) help to construct unstable although durable links between organizational actors. This includes exploring how they contribute to the creation of business visions, images and visualizations in ways which allow organizings and organizations to ‘succeed’ (i.e. to happen), as well as ‘fail’.

Images and visuals enter our lives in many different forms and through various events and occasions. As we walk down the street of a new city, we navigate our way around through an assortment of practices and objects (e.g. maps, signs, people giving directions, coloured lines, roads, lights, tom toms, etc.), as we listen to the media, we are bombarded with different images and ideas relating to our everyday lives (e.g. with regards to health we experience no smoking signs, graphs showing links between heart disease, obesity and what we eat, problems of alcohol abuse, x-rays, scans, etc.), and finally, within the workplace, each and every day we engage in many different practices of imagining (e.g. graphs, accounts, organizational trees, plans, models, reports, etc). A focus on imagining business has shifted our attention beyond the text (i.e. the dominance of written records both in the area of research and the analysis of everyday practice) and towards the visual. In this second edition of the Imagining Business workshop we wish to develop this further by exploring many other diverse ways and different aspects related to this imagining process. This may include the role of material and aesthetic artefacts, oral/aural and olfactory relations, sensations and affect, as well as many other possibilities. For an exploration of imagining and organizing beyond text allows us to consider a plethora of other expressions and we can begin to provide a new space for rethinking such activities, relations and outcomes.
 

This workshop thus provides an interdisciplinary arena in which academics and practitioners from a wide range of subject areas can come together to debate issues of imagining. For instance, some examples where a study of imagining business has or would provide interesting reflections and contributions include (but should by no means be limited to):

• the role of images, standards and visual management in the organizing process and how this links to ideas of relational entities and distributed action;
• the role of management practices in creating certain visions of organization and strategy;
• the role of Information & Communication Technologies in prompting action and accountabilities;
• the role of educative and pedagogical discourses in the creation of entrepreneurial mindsets;
• different ideas of design with multi-sensory research agendas relating to an ‘architecture of the senses’ (e.g. hearing, smell, taste, and touch) and alternative ways of engaging in the design process;
• ways of mapping controversies in science, technology and policy making;
• the role of images, signs and icons in policy making and governmental decision making;
• reflexions on notions of time and space and on practices and techniques for making connections (e.g. the role of media services in creating ‘a contact zone’ for diasporas) inspired by geography, urban planning or topology;
• visual semiotics and different approaches to visible forms (pictures, videos, objects…) and alternative regimes of truth (e.g. within scientific, managerial, or medical contexts);
• occasions of inclusions and exclusions whereby certain subjects and objects become foregrounded and others appear diluted, assuaged and melt away into darkened spaces (e.g. the potential tyranny of transparency associated with accounting practices in the name of accountability) ;
• interdisciplinary approaches to imagining (e.g. the articulation of experiences and issues relating to the diagnosis and treatment of serious illness through artwork and images, with neuroscientists, computer experts and artists working together to create different ways of visualising and articulating the brain and various forms of imagery relating to the mind and cognition) ;

While this provides a diverse list relating to the study of practices and objects with regards to imagining business and organizing, this is merely a snapshot of possible examples as clearly the potential list is much more extensive.

Therefore, we would welcome abstracts (1500-2000), extended abstracts (2000-3000 words) and draft papers. The format for discussion will include both traditional paper presentations and alternative and non-traditional forums (e.g. performance, exhibition, panel, discussion group, etc).

Submission deadline is November 15, 2010
To be acceptable, proposals MUST only be submitted through this website !!!

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT

Notification of acceptance will be sent in January 2011. 
 

LOCATION

The workshop will be held in IE University Business School - Segovia

FEE - REGISTRATION - ACCOMMODATION

Details will be provided soon