Speaker: Valérie Michaud, École des Sciences de la Gestion, Université du Québec à Montréal

Title: Le commerce comme prétexte? Sites internet comme outils de médiation de la tension entre visées sociales et économiques dans une entreprise sociale

Summary: Malgré la reconnaissance, croissante, de l’omniprésence des tensions et paradoxes organisationnels, peu de recherches ont porté sur les pratiques associées à leur gestion, ou plutôt devrait-on dire à leur acceptation. Ma présentation, basée sur l’un des articles de ma thèse (Médiation des tensions dans une coopérative de solidarité : des chiffres et des lettres, soutenue à l’ESG UQAM le 25 octobre 2011), traitera des pratiques textuelles déployées par une entreprise sociale dans son énoncé de mission et sur ses sites Internet pour “gérer” la tension entre visées sociales et économiques, laquelle s’articule entre développement/ancrage communautaire et développement commercial. L’entreprise sociale étudiée est une coopérative opérant un commerce de détail de produits écologiques et équitables doublé d’un espace café. La coopérative assure une présence double sur le web, gérant à la fois un site régulier et un site de ventes en ligne (transactionnel).

Alors qu’une première analyse des sites internet laisse présager que les pôles en tension sont associés à deux sites distincts (un site régulier, plus communautaire, et un site transactionnel, commercial), une analyse plus approfondie révèle les micro-stratégies utilisées pour reformuler et reconnecter les deux pôles de façon novatrice. Le magasin (en ligne et physique) apparaît comme “plus qu’un magasin”, et les communautés sont multiples et mouvantes tant en termes territoriaux que dans leur composition. L’analyse, inspirée de l’approche du paradoxe, démontre comment “le social” et “l’économique” sont inter-reliés, mais aussi comment chacun recèle aussi des tensions “intra-pôle”. Les sites internet apparaissent donc comme des “sites d’action” qui permettent à la fois de révéler (à travers la présence web en deux espaces distincts) et d’accepter (à travers les liens créés entre les pôles au sein dans/entre les textes) les tensions, tout en constituant une organisation animée à la fois par des visées sociales et des visées économiques.

Bring your lunch, coffee and juice will be served

Title: From Outlaw to Hero: a Process Study of Middle-Manager Deviance within a Bureaucracy

Invited speaker: Céline Legrand, Professeur, Audencia-Nantes School of Management

This paper constitutes an exploratory study of the implementation of strategic change within a large French bureaucratic organization. The objective was to empirically study creative ways that change can be implemented by middle managers under bureaucratic constraints in relation with performance. Our analysis highlights the notion of deviance as a key factor in understanding successful implementation of change. One middle manager who was initially considered to be an Outlaw (negative deviance) changed position and finally became a Hero (positive deviance), giving direction for successful implementation of change. Our results demonstrate that both performance according to organization standards and the organization’s support are required for deviance to qualify as being positive by the organization. The paper also explains the conditions under which such a reversal of perception occurred in the organization and discusses its unique contribution to change and deviance studies and its relevance for managers.

Coffee and juice served, bring your own lunch

Room: Hélène Demarais, 1st floor (blue section), 3000, Côte-Ste-Catherine

Invited speaker: Steve Floyd, Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachussetts at Amherst.

Title: Organizational routines and strategy rituals: Opportunities for a practice perspective in organization studies

Micro-processes and social practices occupy an increasingly prominent position in the literatures of strategic management and organization studies. But much remains to be done in order to connect these micro-level phenomena to organizational-level outcomes like capability building and realized strategy. This presentation will describe efforts to make such links based on recent theoretical developments in the study of organizational routines and theories of ritual and ritualization. Juxtaposing overviews of routines and rituals in a single presentation highlights differences in practices as they manifest in “everyday” organizational reality on one hand and as they appear in “special” times and places on the other.  The presentation also intends to stimulate discussion and critique of the practice perspective and to illustrate opportunities for future practice-based research.

Bring your lunch, coffee and juice served

In order to help qualitative researchers improve their understanding of the expectations of editorial teams of high impact journals, HEC Montreal’s Strategy as Practice Study Group (GéPS) in collaboration with the Journal of Management Studies is hosting half-day event featuring a master class on publishing qualitative research (involving an in-depth study and analysis of a paper that has gone through an entire editorial process at the Academy of Management Journal with both the author and editor present) as well as a panel discussion with editors and experienced reviewers of five major journals in management: Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Science, Organization Studies and Strategic Organization.

Guest speakers include:

• Kevin Corley, Arizona State University, (Associate editor, Academy of Management Journal)
• Samer Faraj, McGill University, (Senior editor, Organization Science)
• Karen Golden-Biddle, Boston University (author of Composing Qualitative, Research, Sage Publications, 2007)
• Jennifer Howard-Grenville, University of Oregon (2011 AMJ best reviewer award)
• Ann Langley HEC Montréal (Coeditor, Strategic Organization and Senior Editor, Organization Studies)
• Davide Ravasi, Bocconi University, (Associate editor, Journal of Management Studies)

The event is FREE but registration is required (space is limited). If you have not done so already, please register before May 28, 2012 at www.jmsmasterclass.eventbrite.ca. For additional information please contact charlotte.cloutier@hec.ca

-

Dates: 21-23 June 2011, Kos, Greece

Conveners:
François Cooren, Université de Montréal, Canada
Eero Vaara, Hanken School of Economics, Finland
Ann Langley, HEC Montreal, Canada
Haridimos Tsoukas, University of Cyprus, Cyprus & University of Warwick, UK

Keynote Speakers:
David Boje, Professor of Management, New Mexico State University, USA, author of Storytelling Organizations
Lillie Chouliaraki, Professor in Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK, co-author of Discourse in Late Modernity
Jonathan Potter, Professor of Discourse Analysis, Loughborough University, UK, co-author of Discursive Psychology

Click here for the full call for papers.

Deadline for submissions 31st January 2012

For more details, visit our website: http://www.process-symposium.com/

To register and for information, go to http://web.hec.ca/geps/talktexttools/index.html

In 2010, the Academy of Management Meeting will be held in Montréal (August 6-10), a city that is also home to the first research group on strategy as- practice to be established in North America. This is thus the perfect occasion for the GéPS (Groupe d’études sur la pratique de la stratégie/ Strategy as Practice Study Group) to invite you to a special event to be held at HEC Montréal, immediately preceding the AOM meeting. This workshop is intended as an opportunity to take stock of recent SAP research and consider new directions.

So far, SAP scholars have explored the question of what strategists “do”, providing at least three different types of answers to this question: strategists talk, they write texts and they use various kinds of tools—models, methodologies, etc. The pervasiveness of ethnographic research in the area has led to a predominance of studies dealing with strategic talk and agency. There is still realtively little research on the production and use of texts and tools; we believe that there is a need to bring to the fore the textual, intertextual and material aspects of strategy as practice. In addition, research on the connections between talk, texts and tools would be very welcome: how do managers talk about texts and tools? How are texts and material objects mobilized during the flow of conversations? How do strategists “textualize” their conversations and their use of tools? How are the choice and usage of tools related to other aspects of the practice of strategy? And finally, what are the best methodologies for answering these questions?

The workshop is co-organized and sponsored by the Canada Research Chair in Strategic Management in Pluralistic Settings.