Arne Carlsen

Management Learning 53(1) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076211057650

Management learning is increasingly and rightfully called upon to address societal challenges beyond narrow concerns of economic performance. Within that agenda, we describe the generative aims of a special issue devoted to interweaving positive and critical perspectives in management learning and teaching. The five articles that comprise the issue describe the prospects for such interplay across a range of empirical and theoretical contexts. Together, these contributions suggest a way forward for work that is at once critical, positive, and reflexive. We identify key themes for future directions: the generative potential of contrarian learning dynamics, an ethics-first focus on ecological and human well-being, and the prospects of scholarly practice for systemic activism.

European Management Journal 38(6) p. 829-835 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2020.03.006

Research on organizational creativity tends to emphasize fairly static notions of coercive power as positional authority and control over scarce resources. The field remains largely silent about power as a positive and generative phenomenon that can produce creativity. We seek to break that silence by amplifying and integrating the work of Mary Parker Follett and Michel Foucault in concert with recent practice-based approaches to creativity. Power in organizational creativity, we suggest, should first of all be explored as processes of connection, abundance and collective agency. We show that whereas established ideas of positional power over is related to assumptions of linearity and singularity of creativity, ideas of power with and power to are associated with a more dynamic, relational and process-based perspective. The latter set of views implies more attention be paid to processes of interactional framing through which people jointly attend to situations, reach new integrations and produce new social realities.

Project Management Journal 51(4) p. 357-366 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/8756972820929479

Research on projects has to a limited degree taken issue with how projects are chief producers of meaning at work. We develop the concept of narrative capital as a basic mechanism for how people can engender meaning in and through projects in organizations. Narrative capital is derived from experiences that people appropriate into their individual and collective life stories, retrospectively, as adding to a repertoire of accumulated learning and mastering, and prospectively, in terms of living with purpose and hope. We chart implications for meaning making in projects as expanding ownership, expanding connections of impact, and extending narrative possibility.

Harvard Business Review France

Harvard Business Review July-August p. 136-145

Havard Business Review Brasil

Journal of Business Ethics Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04266-w

How and why could some stories be construed as sacred in organizations, and what functions does the sacred have in organizational values work? Research has shown how values can be made formative of a range of organizational purposes and forms but has underscored their performative, situated, and agentic nature. We address that void by studying the sacred as a potentially salient yet under-researched realm of values work. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of a faith-based health care organization and the ethical philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, we describe how the sacred is figured in two sets of tales that were lived and told with surprising intensity and consistency: the parable of the Good Samaritan and the tale of the legacy bestowed by the organization’s founder. We theorize how this figuring of the sacred in story and in action recasts values work from a centralized and unitary process to a two-way learning dialectic between the ongoing creative imitation of action and narrative. Values in the shape of stories of the sacred do not achieve their meaning as unchangeable cores or sanctioned beliefs. Rather, they come to life in a process of ongoing moral inquiry that co-evolves with moral agencies. In the latter regard, the sacred primarily becomes manifest in everyday work in the form of questioning and creative acts of care. People become moral agents when they feel and respond to the sacred in the call of the other.

Organization Studies Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840619831054

How can a desire for rebellion drive institutional agency, and how is such desire produced? In this paper, we develop a theory of minor rebellion as a form of institutional agency. Drawing from the work of Deleuze and Guattari as well as from notions of social inquiry and the sociology of punk, we qualify and illustrate minor rebellion as a lived-in field of desire and engagement that involves deterritorializing of practice in the institutional field. Three sets of processes are involved: (i) minor world-making, through establishing the aesthetics and relations of an outsider social network within a major field, including the enactment of cultural frames of revolt and radicalism; (ii) minor creating, through constructing and experimenting with terms, concepts, and technology that somehow challenge hegemony from within; and (iii) minor inquiring, through problematizing social purposes and the related experiential surfacing of the desirable new. Minor rebellion suggests a new solution to the paradox of embedded agency by describing institutional agency as shuttling between political contest and open-ended social inquiry, involving anti-sentiments, but also being for something. The paper also contributes to recasting institutional agency as a process resulting from emergent collective action rather than preceding it. To illustrate our theorizing, we describe the emergence of Robin Hood Asset Management, a Finnish activist hedge fund. At the end of the paper we discuss how minor rebellion raises new questions about the multiplicities and eventness of desiring in institutional agency.

Creating psychologically healthy workplaces p. 251-269 Doi: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788113427.00021

How can people in organizations be relational agents for creating better workplaces? We explore this question based on data from an educational program where executives experimented with a range of strategies for fostering high-quality connections at work. Beyond immediate rewards of being able to create more quality and energy in their relations, we unexpectedly noted the emergence of a more foundational capacity in some of the executives. We understand this as the growth of relational agency; a reflexive and purposive capacity to initiate and carry out actions for improving relationships in the workplace. Based on a sample of seven cases we describe how such agency may be manifest in three ways: (1) being able to turn around situations; (2) lifting individual others; and (3) building collective capacity for positively influencing work relations more broadly. Relational agency has both collective and individual elements. It is anchored in a self-understanding that points back at a repertoire of previous experiences, points forward to a sense of what is desirable and possible and unfolds as a creative capacity in the contingencies of the moment.

Harvard Business Review Turkiye

Harvard Business Review Korea

Human Relations 71(10) p. 1295-1318 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717741530

How is it that researchers can engage with those they research ethically? In response to the challenge of this question, we articulate an ethics of research engagement based on vulnerability and generosity. This is explored with a special focus on the practicalities of organization studies research. Building on developments in reflexive methodology, we draw on Emmanuel Levinas’ relational ethics to consider how research can be approached as receiving a ‘teaching of the other’. Such teaching involves a radical openness to other people’s difference such that knowledge arises from being affected by those others rather than claiming to know them in any categorical sense. The possibility that emerges is that of a reflexively ethical position from which to conduct research premised on letting go of the egotistical comforts of one’s own epistemic authority. Self-reflexivity becomes rendered subservient to other-vulnerability in embodied research encounters that are open and generous. The promise for research is a deepening of our corporeal, affective and aesthetic engagement with others and an enlarged sense of the ethical meaning of research.

Human Relations 72(8) p. 1369-1397 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718806349

How do we understand the nature of organizational creativity when dealing with complex, composite ideas rather than singular ones? In response to this question, we problematize assumptions of the linearity of creative processes and the singularity of ideas in mainstream creativity theory. We draw on the work of Bakhtin and longitudinal research in two contrasting cases: developing hydrocarbon prospects and concepts for films and TV series. From these two cases, we highlight two forms of work on ideas: (i) intertextual placing, whereby focal ideas are constituted by being connected to other elements in a larger idea field; and (ii) legitimating imaginings, where ideas of what to do are linked to ideas of what is worth doing and becoming. This ongoing constitution and legitimating is not confined to particular stages but takes place in practices of generating, connecting, communicating, evaluating and reshaping ideas, which we call idea work. The article contributes to a better understanding of the processual character of creativity and the deeply intertextual nature of ideas, including the multiplicity of idea content and shifting parts–whole relationships. Idea work also serves to explore the neglected role of co-optative power in creativity

Management and Organization Review 13(3) p. 675-685 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/mor.2017.17

M@n@gement 20(3) p. 221-238 Doi: https://doi.org/10.3917/mana.203.0221

This paper contributes to the literature on workplace creativity by combining insights on epiphanies with theory on the embodied and relational nature of understanding. We explore and develop the concept of epiphany, defined as a sudden and transient manifestation of insight. Primarily, we are interested in the implications of the concept’s artistic and philosophical origins for organizational creativity. We start from a consideration of the importance of epiphany in the literary works of Joyce, who underlined the crucial aspect of the conjunction of different human senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching). Next, we draw up upon the theory of insights as embodied, experientially felt qualities, as described by Mark Johnson (2007) and predecessors in pragmatism. Using three sets of empirical snippets as aids to reasoning, we arrive at renewed understanding of epiphany as a phenomenon in creativity that is experientially multi-sensuous and collective rather than merely cognitive and individual. Epiphanies are typically manifest as a series of felt occurrences arising within collective practice, follow from a history of preparation, and do not solely involve breakthrough ideas but can also include feelings of doubt, movement, opening up or disconfirmation. Understanding epiphanies in this way extends research on organizational creativity as collective practice. The article suggests further attention be paid to the transient and noetic qualities of work on ideas in organizations, such as visual and material stimuli in sensorial preparations of creativity and the use of openness in marking felt insights.

The Cambridge Handbook of Workplace Training and Employee Development p. 471-494 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316091067.022

What is the impact of training and development activities at work? In this chapter we argue that such a question should not only be an academic concern but also one that gets is built into all decisions about training. The purpose of our chapter is to investigate how training can contribute to development of systems thinking of trainees as seen through three lenses of building impact; the realm of business impact, the realm beneficiary impact and the realm of societal impact. We thus contribute to a system thinking training by developing and illustrating a framework where we deepen, reorient and expand systemic approaches along these three sets of systemic realms. We reason from three main sets of contrasting empirical examples.

Management Learning

Produktiv motivasjon i arbeidslivet p. 214-232

Hva driver og motiverer personer som skaper ekstraordinære prestasjoner i organisasjoner? Hovedsvaret jeg undersøker her, er en brennende higen etter livsberikelse – en skapende kraft som kommer i mange varianter, og som ikke kan forstås uten at en tar for seg de fortellingene som gir mening til våre liv. Hvorfor fortellinger? La oss starte enkelt. ”Per klipper plenen.” Det er et tilsynelatende selvbærende og lett forståelig utsagn. Men hvorfor klipper Per plenen, og hva får han igjen for det? Den posisjonen jeg utforsker her tar utgangspunkt i at Pers motiver for plenklipping ikke kan forstås uten å tolkes inn i en eller flere fortellinger. Per kan tenkes å klippe plenen fordi naboen nettopp har gjort det, eller som en del av en ambisjon om å komme i sommerform og hvor dette er en sped start. Per kan klippe plenen fordi det er jobben hans. Per kan klippe plenen som en del av oppladningen til en romantisk aften med en partner som verdsetter denne type innsats som innledende kurtise. Eller Per kan klippe plenen som et siste og avgjørende ledd i testingen av en revolusjonerende ny gressklipperteknologi han selv har vært med på å utvikle. Forhåpentligvis er det klart fra dette eksempelet, lett inspirert fra MacIntyre (1981), at motivasjonen for Pers plenklipping arter seg vidt forskjellig ut i fra hvilket narrativ vi plasserer erfaringen innenfor. Et av MacIntyres hovedpoeng er at adferd kan ikke forstås uavhengig av motiver (MacIntyre bruker som oftest begrepet ”intensjon”), og videre at motiver ikke kan ses 2 adskilt fra den større kontekst hvor adferd utspiller seg, inkludert den konteksten som gir menneskers liv sammenheng og mening. Dette kapitlet tar for seg motivasjon i organisasjoner fra et narrativt perspektiv. Jeg bruker parallellen fra MacIntyre til å utforske det vi kan kalle et situert vokabular for motivasjon (Mills, 1940) i organisasjoner – situert både i forhold til personers livshistorier, kollektiv praksis og den kontekst denne utspiller seg i. Jeg bygger i hovedsak på narrativ psykologi, særlig knyttet til empiriske arbeidet til Dan McAdams (McAdams, 1993, 1999) og kollegaer, og også narrative teoretikere som Sarbin (1986b), Crites (Crites, 1971), Ricoeur (Ricoeur, 1980, 1991) og Bruner (Bruner, 1986, 1990). Jeg relaterer meg også til forskningsstrømmer innen organisasjonsstudier som har innslag fra narrative identitetsteori og/eller forskere som bruker et eksplisitt prosess- og utviklingsperspektiv på identitet og samtidig berører motivasjonsspørsmål (Carlsen, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2016; Dutton, Roberts, & Bednar, 2010; Ibarra, 1999; Roberts & Dutton, 2009; Roberts, Dutton, Spreitzer, Heaphy, & Quinn, 2005; Strauss, Griffin, & Parker, 2012). Det overordnede resonnementet er som følger: Vår opplevelse av sentrale livskvaliteter som mening, spenning, håp, hensikt og bidrag til andre er nært knyttet til våre livshistorier og hvordan vi kontinuerlig beriker dem, griper dem og skriver dem om i de aktiviteter vi lar være meningsbærende. Vår opplevelse av å leve vel er selve motivasjonens krybbe. Arbeidslivet er for de fleste av oss en hovedarena for slik livsberikelse. Livsberikelse handler om meningen med livet i dypest forstand, og jeg foreslår at det er når det synger i livsnerven at motivasjonskraften er sterkest i organisasjoner. For å skjønne styrken i motivene for Pers plenklipping må vi forstå i hvilken grad aktiviteten har en slik meningsbærende resonans. Jeg starter med et par korte teoretiske grunnriss om narrativer, identitet og meningsdanning før jeg diskuterer tre sett av prosesser for å generere motivasjon i et narrativt perspektiv - drama, håp og skapende bidrag (eng, ”generativity”). Eksempler fra andres og egen tidligere forskning – blant annet i Arkitektkontoret Snøhetta, med Statoils oljeletere og i analyseselskapet 3 Point Carbon (Carlsen, Clegg, & Gjersvik, 2012) – brukes som illustrasjoner underveis.

Capitalizing on creativity at work: Fostering the implementation of creative ideas in organizations p. 335-344

Edward Elgar Publishing

Capitalizing on creativity at work: Fostering the implementation of creative ideas in organizations p. 1-13

Culture and Organization 22(2) p. 107-135 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/14759551.2013.875016

Capitalizing on creativity at work: Fostering the implementation of creative ideas in organizations p. 141-152

Management Learning 46(4) p. 373-390 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507614533756

Knowledge and Process Management 22 (2) p. 88-98 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/kpm.1469

We provide a first qualitative empirical investigation of the dynamics of high-quality connections in organizational knowledge creation through a comparative analysis of two organizations involved in management consulting and oil exploration. The study combines approaches from positive organizational scholarship with practice-based studies. We found three types of positively deviant practices for knowledge creation where high-quality connections play a major role: (i) Intensifying collaboration is a response to felt urgency and mutual dependency in high-stakes projects and involves expanding the types of interactions and the emotional intensity in knowledge creation. (ii) Caring questioning unfolds when inviting, open-ended and appreciative questions enable joint dwelling on problems and stimulate help-seeking and help-giving. (iii) Getting physical takes place when the making of collaborative space and use of shared visuals and artifacts enlarge the sensory-motor connectivity in knowledge creation. The paper contributes to both the literature on high-quality connections and knowledge creation, showing how the two phenomena are mutually shaping in positively deviant practice. We shed new light on knowledge creation as informal social processes emerging in daily work. Unlike previous research on high-quality connections, we show how they are first of all ignited by the pull dynamic of high-stakes projects, with caring questioning and getting physical as the fuel that keeps the fire burning.

Language and Communication at Work: Discourse, Narrativity, and Organizing (Perspectives on Process Organization Studies) p. 327-350 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198703082.003.0013

This chapter takes a process approach to language use, power relations, and the ethics of response in organizational research. The chapter starts with a discussion of reflexivity in research and show how it needs a radical contestation of the subjectivity–objectivity divide that is key to the process philosophy of pragmatism. A reflexive approach still harbors the danger of an excessive one-sidedness that fails to account for the alterity and reflexivity of the other and also continues to serve power asymmetries privileging the researcher. In response, and following in particular Lévinas, the chapter explores the possibilities that are open to researchers if they approach the research process from a position of other-vulnerability. The chapter uses two illustrative examples and discuss implications for research collaboration, conversations, and participation in theorizing.

Journal of Management Inquiry 23(3) p. 294-313 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492613511152

Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion 10(4) p. 358-379 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/14766086.2013.801024

Theology and Science 11(3) p. 304-316 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2013.809953

The wonderful human has been turned into un-wonderful matter and movement. We seek to recover wonder about the human by examining moments of its recognition, kindling, and suppression. First recognized in Greek philosophy and celebrated in the medieval scholasticism that saw the human in the total reality of divine creation, wonder is diminished today because it has been robbed of transcendence by a scientism that mistakes facts for truth and good and by a postmodernism that denies ultimate meaning. We close on the hopeful note that a diminished wonder cannot last because the divine mystery of human being abides.

Idea work. Lessons of the extraordinary in everyday creativity p. 138-153

Idea work. Lessons of the extraordinary in everyday creativity p. 86-102

Idea work. Lessons of the extraordinary in everyday creativity p. 12-38

Idea work. Om profesjonell kreativitet p. 170-185

Idea work. Lessons of the extraordinary in everyday creativity p. 186-200

Idea work. Om profesjonell kreativitet p. 54-69

Idea work. Lessons of the extraordinary in everyday creativity p. 54-69

Idea work. Om profesjonell kreativitet p. 186-200

Idea work. Lessons of the extraordinary in everyday creativity p. 120-137

Idea work. Lessons of the extraordinary in everyday creativity p. 156-169

Idea work. Om profesjonell kreativitet p. 138-154

Idea work. Om profesjonell kreativitet p. 156-189

Idea work. Om profesjonell kreativitet p. 86-102

Idea work. Om profesjonell kreativitet p. 40-53

Idea work. Lessons of the extraordinary in everyday creativity p. 104-119

Idea work. Om profesjonell kreativitet p. 70-84

Handbook of Organizational and Managerial Innovation p. 219-236 Doi: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781781005873.00016

Idea work. Om profesjonell kreativitet p. 12-38

Idea work. Lessons of the extraordinary in everyday creativity p. 40-53

Cappelen Damm Akademisk

Cappelen Damm Akademisk

Idea work. Om profesjonell kreativitet p. 120-137

Idea work. Lessons of the extraordinary in everyday creativity p. 170-185

Idea work. Om profesjonell kreativitet p. 104-119

Idea work. Lessons of the extraordinary in everyday creativity p. 70-83

The Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship p. 288-303 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199734610.013.0022

Research Alive: Exploring Generative Moments in Doing Qualitative Research p. 12-24

Research Alive: Exploring Generative Moments in Doing Qualitative Research p. 34-36

Copenhagen Business School Press

Research Alive: Exploring Generative Moments in Doing Qualitative Research p. 214-235

Research Alive: Exploring Generative Moments in Doing Qualitative Research p. 236-246

The Sage Handbook of Organizational Behavior, Vol 2: Macro Approaches p. 456-477

The Oxford Handbook of Sociology and Organization Studies p. 421-443

Exploring positive identities and organizations. Building a theoretical and research foundation p. 77-98

Journal of Positive Psychology 3(1) p. 55-75

Managing and Organizations: An Introduction to Theory and Practice p. 404-405

Faglighet og tverrfaglighet i den nye kunnskapsøkonomien p. 157-177

Managing and Organizations: An Introduction to Theory and Practice p. 371-371

International Encyclopedia of Organization Studies p. 1298-1301

Organization science 17(1) p. 132-149

APROS 11: Asia-Pacific Researchers in Organisation Studies 11th International Colloquium p. 399-412

Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice 11(3) p. 239-255

Living Knowledge. The dynamics of profession service work p. 1-19

Palgrave Macmillan

Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

Living Knowledge. The dynamics of profession service work p. 40-66

Intelligent Management in the Knowledge Economy

This chapter tries to improve our understanding of so-called knowledge-intensive firms. We base our discussion on three blocks fo theory; literature on 'knowledge-intensive work', the concept of 'commnuities of practice' (CoPs) and what is frequently referred to as 'activity systems' within activity theory. Our case is a diversified engineering consluting firm, ICG, within which we have analyzed four communities of workers. We discuss how five identifyable work practices span organizational boundaries, and how workers belonging to specific CoPs may participate in many such practices. This leads us to a closer look at practices organized as 'project types', which we equate with activity systems. Two such activity systems are contrasted, exemplifyinghow knowledge is mobilised in different contexts.

Multicriteria Analysis p. 539-548

Praktisk økonomi og ledelse 10(3) p. 117-122

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 25(03) p. 201-2011 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1006/jeem.1993.1043

The ranking of hydropower projects under the Norwegian Master Plan for Water Resources is used to derive implicit government preferences for a number of environmental attributes described by ordinal scores for each project. We apply ordinal logistic regression to the ranks using the scores of the attributes as explanatory variables. As expected, we find that higher negative scores are generally associated with greater implicit willingness to pay to avoid the environmental damage tied to the attribute, caused by hydropower development. We derive total (ordinary economic and implicit environmental) costs for each project and find that environmental costs per capacity unit generally are lower than economic costs for projects ranked for early exploitation and higher for projects ranked for later development. Our derived implicit long-run marginal cost curve for Norwegian hydropower development is generally upward sloping, but not uniformly so.