The invisible wand: Magic circles of play and work in a high-tech organization

Guest lecture by Anca Metiu organised by the Department of International Business Communication

Friday, November 18, 2016 - 11:00 to 12:30

Anca Metiu, The invisible wand: Magic circles of play and work in a high-tech organization

On the 18th of November we have the opportunity to welcome the Senior Editor of Organization Science, Anca Metiu, Professor of Management at ESSEC, Paris. She will share with us her work in progress entitled ‘The invisible wand: Magic circles of play and work in a high-tech organization’.

Based on an ethnographic study of a high tech organization, we examine the way work is done in highly playful organizational culture. We show playfulness to take the form of ‘true play,’ i.e. volitional, intense, and non-work related. We also found playfulness to be spatially and temporally interlaced with work episodes. We identify both the mechanisms that enable people to move between the two types of activities, work and play, and the cues that trigger the transitions. We thus provide an explanation of the way work gets accomplished in a play-intensive organization, and for the role of playfulness in collective creativity.

Anca Metiu is a Professor of Management at ESSEC Business School and the Associate Dean of the PhD Program. She earned her PhD from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and her MBA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research examines collaboration, innovation, and communication processes in collocated and distributed teams. Some of her current research projects examine the role of written communication in virtual collaboration, the culture of high-tech organizations, the process of knowledge transformation in a development context, and the gender dynamics in the free and open source software community. Her book (with Anne-Laure Fayard) The Power of Writing and Organizational Communication: From Letters to Online Interactions appeared in 2012. Her research has been published in the leading management journals: Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Organization Studies, and Oxford Review of Economic Policy. She is a senior editor at Organization Studies and a member of the Editorial Board of Organization Science.

Organized and sponsored by the IBC Academic Area Communication in Organizations. Further information about the event: Liana Razmerita, lr.ibc@cbs.dk.  

All are welcome; please register with Merete Borch, mb.ibc@cbs.dk.

The page was last edited by: Department of Management, Society and Communication // 03/01/2017