Special issue on all we are saying, is give theoretical pluralism a chance (a rather unusual, fairly comprehensive and challenging, yet modest and prudent call for papers)
Article Type: Call for papers From: Journal of Organizational Change Management, Volume 25, Issue 5
Most theorists in cross-cultural management would support the idea that one of the purposes of their efforts is to improve understanding, co-operation and dialogue and reduce misunderstanding and intolerance between cultures (any culture, including academic ones). Unfortunately, if we consider cross-cultural and comparative management as a cluster of academic cultures, we do not see the same co-operative sentiments. At the most extreme are the cross-culture wars epitomised by the ``jungle war'' that broke out between McSweeney and Hofstede beginning in 2002.
Paradigms operating within cross-cultural management research satisfy most criteria for being ``cultures'', even tribal ones. They share underlying assumptions and operate as speech communities that appear to use the same connotations, metaphors and other tropes, narratives and ideologies/mythologies. Like all good myths, the latter tend to disguise their ideological nature through their presentation as tacitly ``natural'', as commonsensical or as``going without saying'' (Barthes, 1996) within a community of believers.
The main barriers to theoretical pluralism continue to be the phlegmatic incommensurabilities between paradigms. In our view these have persisted for a variety of reasons. Firstly, we consider that they operate at embodied,discursive and cognitive levels. Much of the examination of them has been at the cognitive level. What we have not seen much of are explorations in terms of barriers of embodiment (in terms of the immediate perceptions, intuitions and emotions) or from the discursive barriers (that form separate, self-contained and mutually exclusive speech communities) between paradigmatic traditions. In terms of ``embodied'' barriers, we invite explorations of the rather unexplored possibility that academic tribes are formed by non-rational, emotional and ineffable prejudice. In terms of discursive barriers, we invite explorations of the role of denotative and connotative signification in sustaining paradigms as speech communities. How, for example, do the connotations within paradigms transmitting meaning through tropes, narratives and stories sustain a barrier of paradigmatic differentiation and an ideology of exclusion?
Apart from the above suggestions, we invite commentary on the validity and consequences for theoretical pluralism within cross-cultural and comparative management of Hatch's chronological progression of organization theory and /or the potentials and limitations of Capra's (1996) ``kite'' or a dedicated revisiting of the ideas of Magoroh Maruyama (2004). Apart from these ideas, we invite and welcome suggestions and arguments not covered in the paper, critical of the paper or providing alternative approaches, interpretations, challenges and arguments. Our paper is meant as a provocation, a call for papers disguised as a paper.
Here are some of the issues we are specifically interested in:
- 1.
Power matters: why don't we replace the culture of power with the power of culture in democratizing and de- managerializing our organizations? Don't paradigms prosper in peace?
- 2.
Symbolic authorities count; democratic charisma can and should be built bottom-up in reinvigorated creative commons of culturally sustainable networks. What is the symbolic utopia of sustainable growth?
- 3.
Sustainable solidarities involve a less non-egalitarian management of meaning in organizations so that a collective cooperative action becomes possible. What did you do to increase academic solidarities?
- 4.
Wikileaks or Facebook, Assange or Zuckerberg; who is the cultural hero and icon of the new digital commons and symbol of free spirit leading us towards a future explosion of creative collaboration?
Abstracts should be sent to:
Dr Sid LoweE-mail: S.Lowe@kingston.ac.uk
Before 1 January 2013
