Business and Management INK

Stewart Clegg on Relationships in Organizations

October 8, 2014 1472

valentines-day-theme-1-1413274-mStewart Clegg, widely acknowledged as one of the most significant contemporary theorists of power relations, recently collaborated with Miguel Pina e Cunha, Arménio Rego, and Joana Story on their article “Powers of Romance: The Liminal Challenges of Managing Organizational Intimacy” from Journal of Management Inquiry.

The abstract:

Problematic organizational relationships have recently been at the core of highly visible media coverage. Most analyses of sexual relations in organizations have been, however, JMI_72ppiRGB_powerpointsimplistic and unidimensional, and have placed insufficient systematic emphasis on the role of governmentality in the social construction of organizational romance. In this article, we proceed in two theoretical steps. First, we elaborate a typology of organizational romance that covers different manifestations of this nuanced process. We think of these as organizational strategies of governmentality. Second, we elaborate and identify liminal cases that fall into the interstices of the four predominant ways of managing sexual relationships in organizations. We think of these as vases of liquid love and life that evade the border controls of regulation by governmentality. Finally, we relate these issues to debates about the nature of the civilizational process and suggest hypotheses for future research.

You can read “Powers of Romance: The Liminal Challenges of Managing Organizational Intimacy” from Journal of Management Inquiry for free by clicking here. Want to know about all the latest research like this from Journal of Management Inquiry? Click here to sign up for e-alerts!

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