4th International Critical Management Studies Conference

'Critique and Inclusivity: Opening the Agenda'

4-6 July 2005
Judge Institute of Management,
University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

The Conference is organized as a series of streams. 

Stream: 

Recontextualising and Reconceptualising

Delineations and Infusions of Militarization

in Organizational Theory and Lives

CONVENORS

Ryan Bishop; The National University of Singapore, Singapore

Email: ellrb@nus.edu.sg

John Phillips, The National University of Signapore, Singapore

Email: elljwp@nus.edu.sg

Peter Stokes; Edge Hill College (Lancaster University), UK

Email: stokesp@edgehill.ac.uk

Stream Description

In the contemporary moment, particularly post-Vietnam, attitudes within academic enquiry regarding military and “militarily infused” events and affairs are, in most instances, subject to only a reticent engagement and an almost automatic invocation of certain commonly perceived representations. In its popular cultural form (Hassard and Holliday, 1998), the systematic marginalisation of the effects of militarization on organisations and wider society typically aims to account for military impacts in terms of a set of stereotypical images (sic: harsh disciplinary regimes, fascist figures embedded in archaic hierarchical power structures). As such the normative representation of the military is presented as being an organisational form and experience which is distant and remote from other organizations and other modes of being in the world. These representations not only overlook and eclipse many potentially fruitful opportunities for analysis and comment but also lead to a generalized perception that the military is largely a self-contained body that has little influence on social and cultural formations. In those instances where militarised contextualisation is invoked in organizational texts, these accounts tend to examine (in an ossified manner) military events, histories and  discourses in order to transport and graft these experiences onto business settings.(See Fineman and Gabriel’s (1996) brief but illuminating remarks and concerns on this issue.) This approach distils, in a not altogether irrelevant, but nevertheless simplistic manner, lessons which can be gleaned from military contexts and concepts in order to ensure heightened effectiveness or success in terms of some form of competitive advantage for business. Similarly, militarized presentations are commonly used as lenses for cultural interpretation in which business and warfare become analogues for understanding international business interactions, especially between North American/European Countries and Asian Countries, with the latter being delineated as markedly martial.

Call for Papers

We invite papers which:

• Explore, challenge and address petrified conceptual and contextual notions of militarization of wider organizational sociologies and which consider the multifarious manners in which military ideas, experiences, technologies/technicities and organizations, historically and contemporaneously, infuse and affect organizational lives. (A perception of a hermetic separation between military and non-military (traditionally termed “civilian”) appreciations and understandings of organizations may be somewhat artificial and overplayed. Consequently, there are many possibilities to reflect on what may be broadly represented as military, quasi-military and non-military organizations.)
• Consider, in the broadest sense, militarization in relation to issues of inter alia: identity; resistance; oppression, alienation; collaboration; complicity; emotion; labour process; gender; feminism; ethnicity; competing sociologies; modernism; postmodernism; politics; economics; ethics; art; literature; aesthetics; technology/technicity. It is anticipated that the stream will encompass the widest possible range of organizational settings and contexts.
• The Stream welcomes all modes of enquiry, disciplinary/cross-disciplinary perspectives and approaches to this very underexamined field of study. It invites a spectrum of structures and styles of paper presentation. A more comprehensive indication of themes is available as an extended form of the call for papers here:

Extended Call for Papers

Timeline

Abstracts to Convenors (e-mail)	1 October 2004
Decisions on acceptance/rejection communicated	1 December 2004
Full papers to Convenors (e-mail)	1 April 2005

Abstracts should fit the following requirements:

· Submissions in Word

· Arial Font

· Maximum Length 1500 Words

· Including:

Title

Authors (affiliation, contact details)

Body of Text

References

CMS4 Homepage

City as Target