EPHEMERA WORKSHOP: THE DISJOINTEDNESS OF TIME
In times in which the imperative of chance is ubiquitous and in which continuous and intense reforms permeate public and private sectors, little attention is given to the small traces and minor struggles of the past, which continues to linger at the boundary of organization and management. This seminar explores the disorderly, the unexplainable, the uncanny qualities of reform processes and of organizational life more generally. It attends to all the different sorts of ‘absent-presences’ that haunt, disrupt, distort, trouble, and bother the smooth functioning of work life and of linear conceptions of time.
Important questions include:
- How may new visions, policies and agendas be haunted by the values, habits and routines they aim to exorcise?
- How do professionals experience dilemmas between an innovated, improved and more efficient future organization offered to them by new reform initiatives and the professional and the professional values offered to them by tradition and experience?
- How does an attention to ghostly matters re-introduce questions of justice in organizational contexts by reminding us about the conditions of (im)possibility, i.e. of equality, business ethics or corporate social responsibility?
- Digitalization and haunted/ haunting data: How new technologies make possible new sorts of disjointments between futures, presents and pasts and returns of forgotten and excluded debates?
Confirmed speakers and preliminary program
9.00-9.30 Coffee and tea
9.30-10.00 Welcome
10.00-11.00 ‘Haunted or haunting data’, Lisa Blackman, Goldsmiths, University of London.
11.15-12.15 ‘Ghosts of management’ Monika Kostera, The Jagiennonian University, Cracow/ Universty of Bradfordand and Jerzy Kociatkiewicz, University of Sheffield/SWPS, University of Social Sciences and Humanities.
12.15-13.30 Lunch
13.30-14.30 ‘The psychogeographical maps of public schools: working with ghosts’ Sybille Peters, HafenCity University Hamburg.
14.45-15.45 ‘Local Government Chief Executives’ Everyday Hauntings: Towards a Theory of Organizational Ghosts’, Kevin Orr, University of St Andrews.
16.00-16.30 Concluding discussion
16.30 - Drinks
Organization and contact
This ephemera workshop is hosted by the CBS Private-Public platform at Copenhagen Business School. Seats are limited. To participate sign up by email to Justine Pors, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, jgp.mpp@cbs.dk.
The workshop is related to the call for papers for a special issue on ‘Ghostly matters in organization’ in ephemera: theory and politics in organization: http://www.ephemerajournal.org/content/ghostly-matters-organization.
Picture: Asbjørn Skou "Dyschronia
(Total order secretly longing for its own destruction)