Till Örebro universitet

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present how my positionality as a researcher aligned with the works of Latour in terms of methodological inspirations and allowed me to develop a critical vantage point and simultaneously adopt a heterogeneously rather than hierarchically informed approach to ordering the world, which I argue serves as a basis for a more inclusive study of management systems.

Design/methodology/approach: I reflect on my own positionality as a researcher and share how my interpretation of Latour's ontology through some of his ideas and concepts, particularly symmetry, power, translation and agency, allowed me to incorporate and organize heterogeneous actors depicted in different empirical materials into space-time contexts and subsequently theorize organizing and management practices as agential, multiple and becoming.

Findings: A base in Latour's ontology has equipped me with openness towards empirical settings, which I argue retains a democratic approach to theorization, i.e. theorization, which remains mindful of inadvertent assumptions about power, hierarchy or the taken for granted. This approach has also given me a form of personal resilience as a researcher.

Originality/value: The originality of this paper lies in presenting and developing the concept of method as democratizing. I argue that Latour's approach to the empirical allows for at least two forms of active democratizing, one relating to the researcher as self and the other in how it incorporates the empirical actors into research, making possible the inclusivity of heterogeneity in analyses of organizations and organizing.

Qualitative researchers experience a myriad of emotions during fieldwork. Yet, a reluctance to display and openly discuss emotions in relation to research practice means little insight on how these can inform the research process exists. In this paper, we explore the researcher’s emotions in an organizational ethnography of an emergency department during the COVID-19 pandemic. We identify three emotional triggers (uncertain field access, disrupted research practices, and researcher exposure) and discuss the researcher’s embodied experiences and reflexive responses. We present four ways in which the researcher’s emotions can be used as a resource for embodied reflexivity: (i) deepening field engagement through a focus on collective experiences, (ii) using the researcher’s agency to refocus data collection and enhance creativity, (iii) merging inward and outward focus to reframe the research project, and (iv) visualizing emotions throughout the research process to avoid mind-body dualisms. This paper joins recent discussions on qualitative methods and reflexivity and answers calls for making the researcher’s field presence visible in qualitative research. We contribute by delineating ways in which emotions, as a resource for embodied reflexivity, can inform qualitative research.

This paper uses the notion of material affordances to show that a focus on how people engage with materials helps understanding how organizations transit toward sustainability. Material affordances refer to the enablements and constraints afforded by materials to someone engaging with an environment for a particular purpose. Based on a qualitative study of a company's efforts at becoming circular, we show that material affordances are evolutive as organizational members shift focus from the development of products to the establishment of a circular business model. We also show that affordances are distributed across the company's circular ecosystem. Between what they enable and prevent, they invite humans to a dynamic engagement with materials that decenters human agencies to incorporate material agency in such efforts. A key contribution of the notion of material affordances is to put the relationships of humans and materials at the core of a transition toward circularity and sustainability.

Qualitative researchers are exposed to a myriad of emotions associated with experiences from the field. Yet, little insight on how these are intertwined with the research process exists. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between researcher and researched by looking closer at the challenges encountered during an organizational ethnography of an emergency department during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors engaged in peer debriefing sessions to construct a reflective account of the research process. Drawing on Barad’s ontology, the paper discusses the need to recognize the entanglement of researcher and researched and how the researcher can actively gauge and redirect emotions into methodological impetus to inform and sustain research focus despite unforeseeable events. The paper answers calls for making researchers’ emotions visible in qualitative research and organizational ethnography and contributes by articulating and visualizing the mutually constitutive relationship between researcher and researched.

This paper presents a review of 100 empirical papers studying corporate codes of ethics (CCEs) in business organizations from the time period mid-2005 until mid-2016, following approximately an 11-year time period after the previous review of the literature. The reviewed papers are broadly categorized as content-oriented, output-oriented, or transformation-oriented. The review sheds light on empirical focus, context, questions addressed, methods, findings and theory. The findings are discussed in terms of the three categories as well as the aggregate, stock of empirical CCE studies in comparison with previous reviews, answering the question “where are we now?” Content and output studies still stand for the majority of the studies, whereas the transformation studies are fewer. Within these areas, two new trends are found to have emerged: discursive analyses and a focus on labor conditions. The review finds that (a) the content of CCEs is still predominantly self-defensive, (b) that CCEs are insufficient in themselves in terms of protecting workers’ rights, (c) that CCEs are likely to encounter tensions when implemented across national and organizational boundaries, and (d) that while perception of CCEs is generally positive, CCEs may lead to both positive and negative outcomes. Based on these findings, potential areas for further exploration in the area of CCE research are suggested.

Denna rapport delger lärdomar och kunskap förvärvad inom ett ettårigt Vinnovaprojekt (diarienummer 2018-04685) som sökt beskriva och analysera möjligheter och hinder för en omställning till en cirkulär ekonomi utifrån ett företagsekonomiskt perspektiv. I detta samverkansprojekt har tre huvudaktörer drivit arbetet; forskare från Handelshögskolan vid Örebro universitet och dess Centrum för hållbart företagande (CSB), den ideella föreningen CradleNet som syftar till att accelerera den cirkulära ekonomin samt det privata företaget Econova  med mångårig erfarenhet inom återvinning och återanvändning av restmaterial och avfall. I projektet har vi arrangerat fyra interaktiva kunskapsmoduler där aktörer med intresse för en övergång till cirkulär ekonomi samlats och tillsammans diskuterat nuvarande praktiker samt vägar framåt. I projektet har vi arbetat med en bred definition av cirkulär ekonomi; definitionen inbegriper hantering av material med målet att minimera avfall, samt en materialhantering som är miljömässigt, socialt och ekonomiskt ansvarstagande. Rapporten summerar de viktigaste lärdomarna från projektet och beskriver olika sätt som företag –tillsammans med andra – kan påbörja resan mot en cirkulär ekonomi.

Sustainability innovation research suggests that when the managers of small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) perceive sustainability as strategic, they undertake sustainable innovation. Educationalinterventions are, in turn, suggested to foster such views among these managers. But in the interactionbetween educators and managers, power matters for how knowledge is conveyed and educational interventionsare understudied, especially when they are university-led. This article examines how actors’power affects the translation of knowledge between educators and SME managers. A conceptualframework combining translation and power-dependency theory is introduced and applied to the casestudy of a University-led competence development program offered to construction company managersin Sweden. The analysis reveals how imbalanced dependencies and power within interactions accumulatedover time and came to interfere with the program’s learning objectives. The study contributespractically by suggesting how mutual goals, time management, and relationship building can create abetter context for educator-SME interactions and SME sustainability. The scientific contribution lies inintroducing a new perspective on educational interventions for SMEs and providing a conceptualframework for future studies thereof.