SWG 12 – Craft and Emerging Forms of Organizing

Coordinators

Daniel Hjorth, Lund University, Sweden
Elena Raviola, Gothenburg University, Sweden
Marta Gasparin, Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Denmark
Emma Bell, The Open University, United Kingdom
Luca Pareschi, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy
Nicole Ferry, Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Denmark
Jean Clarke, emlyon Business School, France
Yutaka Yamauchi, Kyoto University, Japan
Jochem Kroezen, Erasmus University, Netherlands
Monika Zebrowska, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Max Ganzin, Macquarie University, Australia

There are several ways in which organizational research on craft can build a new domain of research with research questions central to organizational research’s capacity to contribute to a more sustainable – economically, socially, ecologically, and ethically – future society. The broader aim of SWG 12 "Craft and Emerging Forms of Organizing" is to provide an arena for this in the EGOS Colloquia setting and, with that as basis, attach this to the greater logistics that has been built for this domain to flourish and publish its researchers’ results in top class journals and outlets.

The background of this Standing Working Group (SWG from here on) includes emerging societal trends that have resulted in a symbolic initiative on EU-level called The New European Bauhaus (NEB). This 2 political vision – beautiful |sustainable | together – has resulted in policies that drive research and development in the European Union today. Hundreds of millions of Euros have been dedicated to stimulate, support, research and develop a more enriching, sustainable, and inclusive life for citizens (Ibid.) As an example, as this proposal is written (early October 2022) a new €50 million call is launched by the European Urban Initiative to support ‘innovative proposals aimed at urban development’ described as perfect for translating into practice the core values of The New Bauhaus vision. Emerging trends sustaining the NEB vision are: an increasingly digitalized society and creative economy (with subsequent developments of innovative business models and new organizational challenges; Amit and Zott, 2012; McKinlay & Smith, 2009; Raviola, 2017), climate changes urging us to seek out new modes and models for production and making such that a more sustainable economy and society can be achieved (Bouchard, 2012; Johnsen, Olaison & Sørensen, 2018; Duxbury, 2021), and the related surge of interest in craft-based making of food, beverages, and things, which is often tied in local, sustainable production, re-use economy, and the concern for quality that follows from this (Bell and Vachhani, 2020; Gasparin and Neyland, 2022).

In terms of organization studies, this is interesting and important for several reasons. Firstly, these trends or tendencies in society and the economy drive and are driven by relatively new forms of organizing that we may call rhizomatic and operating in more assemblage-like modes (Hjorth and Holt, 2022). As such, they seem to draw upon the recent development of a more process-oriented knowledge, theory and methodology in organization studies (Helin, Hernes, Hjorth and Holt, 2014; Langley and Tsoukas, 2017). Secondly, they do also reflect a tendency – manifest primarily in the design boom experienced during the last two decades – that the aesthetic-economy relationship has become increasingly important for users’/citizens’/ consumers’ judgment of what is valuable (Austin, Hjorth, & Hessel, 2018; Islam, Endrissat & Noppeney, 2016; Stigliani & Ravasi, 2018; Cacciatore & Panozzo, 2022). Thirdly and finally, these trends point us to a more than two decades long evolution of more local- and community-based forms of organizing the economy, in which craft culture and craft businesses play a central role. Together we see these converge into a crossroad where a future of potentially more inclusive, sustainable and creative organizations and society are at stake.

We find organizational research on craft is moving into a second wave, where not only the aesthetic-economic relationship is important, but also the cultural-historical perspective, and the ecological in terms of craft as a model for making and a source of community and localregional identity (Wadhwani et al, 2019).

There are three streams of research, each having drawn loose boundaries around their sets of questions that might allow us to refer to them as fields of research of relevance for the proposed SWG. However, we define such fields – social-psychological, ordering-dominating, or inter-organizationally institutionalized – the domain that ‘Craft and Emerging Forms of Organizing’ covers is one that brings multiple fields of study together. Here we use fields as broader and domain as more specific. In this sense, Craft and Emerging Forms of Organizing ties together:

A few decades of interest in aesthetics and business creativity
A well-established field of sustainable economy, including ecological, social, ethical, and political sustainability; and, thirdly,
A field of research on communities, localregional economies and especially the role of public-private partnerships for the thriving of communities.

We find that these three fields are tied together in the recent interest in what we describe here as the domain of Craft and Emerging Forms of Organizing.

In an organizational research context, and in the context of the institutional importance of EGOS, what this domain can do is to strengthen the links between these three fields in particular, and support EGOSians as researchers that can contribute to the development of a more existentially sustainable organizational future. In addition to this, the domain of Craft and Emerging Forms of Organizing can, we propose, add unique research questions and knowledge to organizational research.

Craft research brings together research interests in aesthetics, design, artful making. It also brings together research interests in an ecological and heterodox economy, a postgrowth economy and a more socially and ethically sustainable future. It also brings together research interests from the perspectives of new materialism and posthumanism and its relationships to process- and practice oriented methodological approaches. There is a dominance of field-based, qualitative research, but research on industry-formation and market-creation often operate with meso- and macro-level data and therefore include quantitative methods and statistical-driven analyses. The proposed SWG is of course open to paradigmatic plurality, is firmly based in a multi- and inter-disciplinary tradition, and welcomes methodological plurality.

References

Amit, R., & Zott, C. (2012): “Creating Value through Business Model Innovation.” MIT Sloan Management Review, Special Ed, 36–44.
Austin, R., Hjorth, D., and Hessel, S. (2017): “How aesthetics and economy become conversant in creative firms,” Organization Studies, 36 (8): 1095-1114.
Bell, E., & Vachhani, S. J. (2020): “Relational Encounters and Vital Materiality in the Practice of Craft Work.” Organization Studies, 41 (5), 681-701.
Bouchard, M.J. (2012): “Social innovation, an analytical grid for understanding the social economy: The example of the Québec housing sector.” Service Business, 6 (1), 47-59.
Cacciatore S., & Panozzo, F., (2022): “Models for Art & Business Cooperation” Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy, 2, 179-207.
Duxbury, N. (2021): “Cultural and creative work in rural and remote areas: an emerging international conversation.” International Journal of Cultural Policy, 27 (6), 753-767.
Gasparin, M., & Neyland, D. (2022): “Organizing Tekhnē: Configuring processes and politics through craft.” Organization Studies, 43(7), 1137–1160.

Helin, J., Hernes, T., Hjorth, D., & Holt, R. (Eds.). (2014): The Oxford handbook of process philosophy and organization studies. Oxford University Press.

Hjorth, D. (2022): "Toward a More Cultural Understanding of Entrepreneurship", In Lockwood, Christine and Soublière, Jean-Francois (Eds.) Advances in Cultural Entrepreneurship (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 80), Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, 81-96.
Islam, G., Endrissat, N., & Noppeney, C. (2016): “Beyond ‘the Eye’ of the Beholder: Scent innovation through analogical reconfiguration.” Organization Studies, 37 (6), 769–795.
Johnsen, C. G., Olaison, L., & Sørensen, B. M. (2018): “Put Your Style at Stake: A New Use of Sustainable Entrepreneurship.” Organization Studies, 39 (2–3), 397–415.
McKinlay, A., & Smith, C. (2009): Creative labour: Working in the creative industries. Palgrave Macmillan.
Raviola, E. (2017): “Meetings between frames: Negotiating worth between journalism and management.” European Management Journal, 35 (6), 737-744.
Stigliani, I., & Ravasi, D. (2018): “The Shaping of Form: Exploring Designers’ Use of Aesthetic Knowledge.” Organization Studies, 39 (5–6), 747–784.
Wadhwani, R. D., Suddaby, R., Mordhorst, M., & Popp, A. (2018): “History as Organizing: Uses of the Past in Organization Studies.” Organization Studies, 39(12), 1663– 1683.

About the Coordinators

Daniel Hjorth is Professor in the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, Lecturer at Lund University School of Economics and Management, Sweden, and Adjunct Professor at Graduate School of Management, Kyoto University, Japan.

Elena Raviola is Söderberg Professor in Design Management at the Design Unit, Gothenberg University, Sweden, and Deputy Head of Department at the Academy of Art and Design.

Marta Gasparin is an Associate Professor at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. She is the PI of the €4 million EU-grant on Craft and New Technologies (starting 2023).

Emma Bell is Professor of Organisation and Leadership at the Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden. Her research explores questions related to materiality, embodiment and meaning in organizations and leadership using qualitative methods of inquiry. Emma has published in journals including Organization Studies, British Journal of Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Academy of Management Learning & Education, and Human Relations, among others. She has authored or co-edited nine books, including several on methodology and methods.

Luca Pareschi is Associate Professor of Business Organisation at Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, Italy. His research focuses on the management of arts and culture, in its material and symbolic aspects. Luca is interested in issues related to the relationship between time, spaces, and meanings for cultural organizations, which he analyses through qualitative research techniques – such as case studies, ethnography, qualitative text analysis, and semi-automatic content analysis, together with analysis of archival data. His research was published in Scandinavian Journal of Management, Poetics, Cultural Sociology, and Accounting History.

Nicole Ferry is an Assistant Professor at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. She draws on her background in cultural studies and critical theory to explore the ideological and gendered discourses of leadership and leadership development in a variety of contexts. Nicole has published in Journal of Business Ethics, Leadership, Management Learning, and Gender, Work and Organization. Her current research focuses on the competitive and cultural dynamics of the leadership industries as well as contemporary approaches to gender-based leadership development.

Davide Ravasi is Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and Director of the UCL School of Management, University College London, United Kingdom. His research primarily looks at how culture and identity affect organizational change or are affected by it. He is also interested more generally in socio-cultural processes surrounding design, craft, and innovation. Davide’s research has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Annals, Organization Science, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Strategic Organization, Journal of International Business Studies, and Journal of Business Venturing, among others.

Jean Clarke is a Professor of Entrepreneurship and Organization at Emlyon Business School in France. Her research explores how language and other cultural resources are used by entrepreneurs to create meaning and develop legitimacy. She also has an interest in craft particularly how workers in low-skilled roles can use craft to carve out more autonomy and recognition at work. Her work has been published in leadings international journals including Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Business Venturing, Organizational Research Methods, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies. She was Senior Editor at Organization Studies from 2017-2022.

Yutaka Yamauchi is Professor at Graduate School of Management, Kyoto University. His research revolves around culture of organizing from the humanities perspective. Prior to joining Kyoto University in 2010, he was a researcher at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) since 2004. He is currently the PI leading a €2 million program on creativity, aesthetics and culture. He has organized the EGOS workshop in Kyoto in 2019, among others. Yutaka and Daniel Hjorth organize the International Workshop on Craft and Emerging Forms of Organizing in Kyoto every April.

Jochem Kroezen is an Associate Professor at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, the Netherlands. His work on craft, history and other issues in organization studies has appeared in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Annals, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies and Business History. He has co-edited special issues on craft for Organization Studies and Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal.

Monika Zebrowska

Max Ganzin is an Assistant Professor at Macquarie Business School, Australia. His research focuses on materiality, craft, and organizational theory. His research has been published in Organization Studies, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, Business Strategy and the Environment, European Management Journal,and Australian Journal of Management. He has served as a Special Issue Guest Editor in Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, and Journal of Business Ethics.