Special Issue of Research in the Sociology of Organizations on Technology and Organization: Essays in Honour of Joan Woodward.

Dorothy Griffiths, Imperial College London (d.griffiths@imperial.ac.uk)
Nelson Phillips, Imperial College London (n.phillips@imperial.ac.uk)
Graham Sewell, Imperial College London (g.sewell@imperial.ac.uk)

It is now 35 years since the death of Professor Joan Woodward, one of the founding figures of organization studies. Professor Woodward died in 1971 at the age of 54 after a relatively brief but highly distinguished career as a management researcher and teacher, and just six years after the publication of her landmark book Industrial Organization. At the time of her death, Professor Woodward was the Chair in Industrial Sociology at Imperial College London, having been elected as only the second women professor at the College in 1970. She had joined the Production Engineering and Management Section of Imperial in 1958 and the majority of her most important work was published during this period. Prior to this she had spent a number of years at the South East Essex College of Technology where she conducted much of the empirical work that informed her significant contributions to the field. The purpose of this forthcoming volume of Research in the Sociology of Organizations is to critically re-engage with Joan Woodward's contributions to organizational scholarship, while carrying forward the spirit of her thinking on the complex interaction between the social and technical realms.

Special Issue of Organization Studies on Institutional Entrepreneurship (Vol. 28, 7, 2007)

Raghu Garud (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
Cynthia Hardy (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Steve Maguire (McGill University, Canada)

We are delighted to introduce this special issue of Organization Studies, the purpose of which is to develop a deeper understanding of the concept of institutional entrepreneurship and to offer new avenues for future research. This concept has been attracting considerable attention in recent years, as was reflected in the record number of papers that were submitted the largest number that this journal has received for any of its special issues to date. As a result, the selection process has been stringent and we are very pleased to present the eight articles in this special issue, all of which survived the demanding review process. Each of these articles contributes important insights to our understanding of institutional entrepreneurship and, collectively, they provide an important benchmark for subsequent research on this phenomenon. In different ways, they explore how actors shape emerging institutions and transform existing ones despite the complexities and path dependences that are involved. In doing so, they shed considerable light on how institutional entrepreneurship processes shape or fail to shape the world in which we live and work.

Special Issue of New Technology, Work and Employment on the Organisational Impacts of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (Vol 21, 3, 2006).

David Grant (University of Sydney, Australia)
Bill Harley (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Chris Wright (University of Sydney, Australia)

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems – integrated organisation-wide systems for monitoring, planning and reporting on a range of organisational inputs and outputs – are an increasingly pervasive feature of contemporary organisational life. In spite of their widespread adoption, there is little research which has explored their impacts on organisational practices and the way managers and employees’ work is affected by them, with most research focusing on technical aspects of ERPs. Thus, many questions have remained unanswered. For example, do such systems increase managerial capacity for surveillance and monitoring of staff? Do employees and managers perceive them as having positive or negative impacts? How do organisational members resist the implementation of ERPs and how do they shape the systems to meet their needs? This special issue brings together a series of contributions from Europe, Australia and the United States which seek to contribute to understanding the social and political impacts of ERPs within contemporary organisations.

Special Issue of Journal of Applied Behavioral Science on ICTs and Organizational Change (Vol 42, 3, 2006)

Michael Barrett (Judge Institute of Management, University of Cambridge)
David Grant (University of Sydney, Australia)
Nick Wailes (University of Sydney, Australia)

This special issue focuses on the connections between Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and organizational change. The term ICT is adopted because it incorporates a range of the new technologies and new media impacting on organizations. While it focuses on the issue of organizational change, the special issue takes a broad conception of change to include not just the changes that stem from introduction of ICTs, but also the extent to which organizational change initiatives are enabled (or indeed impeded) by ICTs. Papers in the special issue examine the relationship between ICTs and organizational change from a variety of perspectives including narrative analysis. The collection includes a number of empirical studies of ICTs and change.

Special Issue of Management Communication Quarterly on Resistance in Organizations: Processes, Forms and Discourses (Vol 19, 8, 2005)

Leanne Cutcher (University of Sydney, Australia)
David Grant (University of Sydney, Australia)
Grant Michelson (University of Sydney, Australia)
Linda Putnam (Texas A&M, USA)

This special issue focuses on the role of discourse in the production, dissemination, and consumption of resistance both in terms of how resistance itself is organized, as well as resistance in organizations. The papers in the special issue examine the concept of resistance itself and explore the inter-relationships or connections between resistance as discourse, and resistance and organization. They adopt either a theoretical or empirical (including case study) approach to the discursive study of resistance and organization. In so doing, they take a variety of critical discursive perspectives and methodologies as well as conventional language centred perspectives. Consequently the special issue can be seen as highlighting and debating the differences between such perspectives and how they affect our understanding of resistance.

Special Issue of Academy of Management Review on Language and Organization: The Doing of Discourse (Vol 29, 4, 2004)

David M. Boje (New Mexico State University, USA)
Cliff Oswick (University of Leicester, UK)
Jeffrey D. Ford (The Ohio State University, USA)

Language is not only content; it is also context and a way to recontextualize content. We do not just report and describe with language; we also create with it. And what we create in language "uses us" in that it provides a point of view (acontext) within which we "know" reality and orient our actions. The purpose of this special issue (published in October 2004 29/4) is to expand on the second point of view of language by looking at organizations as phenomena in and of language. Rather than consider organizations as some "thing" that exists independent of language and that is only described and reported on in language, the contributors to this issue start from the point of view that organizations can be understood as collaborative and contending discourses. As such, we can consider organizations as material practices of text and talk set in currents of political economy and sociohistory-in time and space. From this point of view, what an organization is and everything that happens in and to it can be seen as a phenomenon in and of language. There are, however, differing ways of engaging with organizations and organizing as linguistic/discursive phenomena, which are explored in this special issue.

Special Issue of Organization on Alternative Perspectives on the Role of Text and Agency in Constituting Organizations (Vol 11, 3, 2004)

Linda Putnam (Texas A&M University, USA)
François Cooren (Université de Montréal, Canada)

Organizational discourse analysis, as an area of research, has grown in the past decade. Most scholars posit that language, regardless of the discursive form, is critical to the very nature of an organization. This Special Issue shows that discourse is more than an artifact or a reflection of an organization; rather it forms the foundation for organizing and for developing the notion of organization as an entity. The articles in this volume published in 2004 (11/3) present different perspectives on the role of text and agency in contributing to the constitution of organizations. Although the concept of text has different meanings in these articles, it refers, in general, to the medium of communication, collection of interactions, and assemblages of oral and written forms. Whether influenced by interaction analysis, structuration theory, text/conversation analysis or textual agency, these essays demonstrate how textuality in all its various forms participates in the production and reproduction of organizational life.

Special Issue of Organizational Studies on Organizational Discourse (Vol 25, 1, 2004)

Cynthia Hardy (University of Melbourne, Australia)
David Grant (University of Sydney, Australia)
Tom Keenoy (King's College, University of London, UK)
Cliff Oswick (University of Leicester, UK)
Nelson Phillips (University of Cambridge, UK)

This special issue of Organizational Studies, published in January 2004 (volume 25/1), contains six articles. Rick Iedema and colleagues examine the discursive manoeuvres in which doctors engage so as to fulfil their dual and often conflicting identities as both manager and professional. Linda Putnam explores organizational negotiations by showing the different ways in which discourse constrains disputants or enables them to transform the nature of their disputes. Patrizia Zanoni and Maddy Janssens study how the discourse of HR managers constructs diverse identities that relate to race, gender and disability. Frank Mueller and colleagues examine how the rhetorical strategies of protagonists shape the 'reality' of new public management. Andrew Brown investigates how reports of public enquiries are made authoritative in ways that depoliticises disaster events and legitimates certain social institutions. Steve Maguire examines the discursive construction of scientific 'facts' that lead to product substitution and technological evolution. David Grant and Cynthia Hardy wrote the introduction - on the theoretical, empirical and reflexive struggles associated with organizational discourse; while Tom Keenoy and Cliff Oswick wrote the afterword on Organizing Textscapes. The special issue was conceived with two ideas in mind: to show how studies of organizational discourse provide important insights into processes of organizing; and to take advantage of an opportunity to reflect on research practice at a time when discourse analysis is becoming increasingly influential within organizational studies.

Special Issue of Journal of Business Ethics on Ethics Investment and Corporate Social Responsibility (Vol 52, 1, 2004)

Nick Wailes (University of Sydney, Australia)
Grant Michelson (University of Sydney, Australia)
Sandra Van der Laan (University of Sydney, Australia)
Geoff Frost (University of Sydney, Australia)

There is a growing body of literature on ethical or socially responsible investment across a range of disciplines. This special issue, published in June 2004 (52/1), highlights the key themes in the field and identifies some of the major theoretical and practical challenges facing both scholars and practitioners. One of these challenges is to understand better the complexity of the relationship between such investment practices and corporate behaviour. Noting that ethical investment is seldom characterised by agreement about what it actually constitutes, and that much of the extant research focuses on a narrow set of issues, the special issues shows that there are benefits associated with examining ethical investment as a process.

Special Issues of Journal of Organizational Change Management Management on Discourse and Organizational Change (Vol 18, 1, 2004)

David Grant (University of Sydney, Australia)
Grant Michelson (University of Sydney, Australia)
Cliff Oswick (University of Leicester, UK)
Nick Wailes (University of Sydney, Australia)

Drawing on discourse analysis, papers in these two special issues, seek to provide innovative analyses of organizational change, especially research that places a greater focus on the concept of change itself and which explores the inter-relationships or connections between change as discourse and change as strategy, as process and as a set of outcomes or forms. In adopting a discursive approach, the published papers adopt both critical discursive perspectives, as well as conventional language centred perspectives. The special issues which were published in 2005 (18/1 and 18/6), also demonstrate and debate the differences between such approaches and how they affect our understanding of organizational change.

Special Issue of Strategic Change on Rethinking Organizational Change (Vol 11, 5, 2002)

David Grant (University of Sydney, Australia)
Nick Wailes (University of Sydney, Australia)
Grant Michelson (University of Sydney, Australia)
Richard Hall (University of Sydney, Australia)
Ann Brewer (University of Sydney, Australia)

Papers in this special issue explore the different meanings of organizational change and the interrelationships between them across a diversity of organizational settings. Adopting both theoretical and empirical approaches to the analysis of sources of change, the selection of change strategies and the factors that shape the strategy implementation process, they demonstrate that the notion of change itself is contested, suffused with multiple meanings and in need of re-conceptualization. Papers in the special issue examine these issues from a variety of perspectives including discourse analysis.