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Articles and Chapters by Pasi Ahonen

The Routledge companion to ethics, politics and organizations, May 29, 2015

In this chapter, we explore the ethico-political character of diversity and its production in and... more In this chapter, we explore the ethico-political character of diversity and its production in and for organizations. Our focus is on the politics of diversity as a form of knowledge, and on the ethics of the means by which that knowledge is produced. The ethical dynamics of diversity research and its politics is an issue that has thus far not received a great deal of attention. However, different approaches and ways of researching diversity lay claim to particular moral and ethical considerations, although the ethical underpinnings of the different approaches to diversity are more often than not left unarticulated and unspecified. We are particularly interested in the scholarly practices that turn difference in its multiplicity and ambiguity into categorized or categorizable diversity. What drives these practices? More importantly, what are their epistemological and ethical effects? We are interested in the political dimensions of the ethics that are deployed, implicitly or explicitly, in the production of diversity knowledge. At the centre of this discussion is the ethico-politics of the making of the ‘diverse subject’. How does this subject come to be and what are the ethico-politics of that becoming?

What Postcolonial Theory Doesn’t Say, May 31, 2015

Recent laments and discussions about the future of postcolonialism in the humanities specifically... more Recent laments and discussions about the future of postcolonialism in the humanities specifically may be just another way of perpetuating the colonial illusions of Western epistemology. We worry about interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity at a moment when the postcolonial project might have its greatest impact because of its spread across disciplinary lines. However, like many other tasks in postcolonial scholarship, it is a case of using disciplinarity against the grain—which is always going to be a fraught task for the disciplinarian in practice. Trained in one discipline, and naturally concerned about its future (and the future of one’s career within the discipline), how do we put aside such concerns in order to work the postcolonial edge?

From the journal: "This article joins recent critical diversity studies that point to an urgent n... more From the journal: "This article joins recent critical diversity studies that point to an urgent need to revitalize the field, but goes further by showing the inherent contextual issues and power relations that frame existing contributions. Based on a theoretical reading inspired by Michel Foucault, diversity is presented as discourse that is not independent of the particular research exercise of which it is part but, rather, remains contingent on the prevailing forms of knowledge and choices made by researchers. By attending to more refined understandings of power and context within diversity discourse, this article makes visible and calls into question the categorization and normalization of diversity and its management. It contributes to existing research by suggesting that the knowledge produced by mainstream and critical diversity scholars alike is biopolitical and governmental. To do diversity research differently or ‘otherwise’ requires finding ways to develop theorizations and practices that turn this modality of power against itself."

Managing diversity has emerged as a timely issue in organizations operating in the global economy... more Managing diversity has emerged as a timely issue in organizations operating in the global economy. We contribute to the critical literature on diversity and its management in transnational organizations by exploring ways in which diversity is discursively (re)constructed in a European Union Framework Programme project. We draw on Michel Foucault's insights on the specificity of the relations and mechanics of power, and the connections between disciplinary power, normalization and knowledge. We conceptualize the EU Framework Programme system as a disciplinary apparatus (dispositif)--a network of time-, place- and field-specific disciplining discursive practices--and approach diversity in an EU project as a technology of normalization. Managing diversity becomes thus understood both as an enabling and a limiting exercise of disciplinary power.

Competition and Change, Sep 1, 2009

This paper is a critical analysis of media discourse on a corporate restructuring case in the pul... more This paper is a critical analysis of media discourse on a corporate restructuring case in the pulp and paper industry in Finland. The analysis indicates that discursive struggles over the legitimacy of corporate restructuring initiatives, especially industrial shutdowns, are highly contextual processes, deeply embedded in the socio-historical specificities of the locations where they occur. Legitimation of the various restructuring measures is a political and a fundamentally historical process. It is argued that analyses of legitimation strategies need to deploy a processual, historical approach to be able to effectively engage with the practice of legitimation. The importance of, and the differences in, nationalist discourses in securing or challenging the legitimacy for drastic restructuring measures is analysed in the specific context of Finland.

International Journal of Foresight …, Jan 1, 2007

Emerging changes in the knowledge era has brought out the idea of open innovation, suggesting tha... more Emerging changes in the knowledge era has brought out the idea of open innovation, suggesting that ideas for innovations can emerge or go to market from outside the company as well as inside. A regional open innovation system, the innovation network comprised of different actors working towards a creation of innovations in a certain region, can offer a favourable platform for collaboration between companies. We examine a concept for a regional innovation system as a cooperational platform enabling the open innovation approach from the SMEs' point of view. Results from a survey of 175 SMEs in four EU regions are reported in order to highlight the situation of the collaborative field of the regional innovation system to map the potential of external sourcing and exchanging of innovations in these regions. Based on the results of the survey, suggestions of an efficient model for open innovation empowering collaboration inside the regional innovation system are presented.

Rethinking the Case Study in International Business and Management Research, Jan 1, 2011

REGIONAL REVIVAL: PERSPECTIVES ON …

Conference Papers by Pasi Ahonen

Given the need to operationalise effective leadership in fast changing organizational times and o... more Given the need to operationalise effective leadership in fast changing organizational times and often within states of economic, political and social crisis, the practical as well as epistemic challenges that leaders face require serious academic scrutiny. In this stream we perform such analysis by contesting the continued theorization and research of leadership as disembodied, and instead paying critical attention to the corporeal nature of leadership itself.

old.nhh.no

In this paper, we explore the shutdown of an industrial site by a multinational corporation (MNC)... more In this paper, we explore the shutdown of an industrial site by a multinational corporation (MNC) from a critical discursive perspective. Through an analysis of media texts, we focus on recurring themes and motifs -or tropes -in the media coverage to understand the various ways in which the shutdown is legitimated and resisted. Tropes present particular discursive framings and patterns for making sense of the shutdown and, in this way, they offer a novel way for approaching contradictory actions by MNCs in the global economy.

The Routledge companion to ethics, politics and organizations, May 29, 2015

What Postcolonial Theory Doesn’t Say, May 31, 2015

Competition and Change, Sep 1, 2009

International Journal of Foresight …, Jan 1, 2007

Rethinking the Case Study in International Business and Management Research, Jan 1, 2011

REGIONAL REVIVAL: PERSPECTIVES ON …

old.nhh.no

The management of people is central to organisational success and competitive advantage. To effec... more The management of people is central to organisational success and competitive advantage. To effectively manage people the relationship between the individual and the organisation requires full attention. This involves critically exploring the meaning of work and appreciating the processes, structures and dynamics affecting people. This module will critically discuss the fundamental issues of managing people in theory and practice.

This module examines power and organisation. Power is integral to interacting and organising; it ... more This module examines power and organisation. Power is integral to interacting and organising; it defines, constitutes and shapes both people and activities in organisations. As competition, power is intrinsic to our economic system. In the relationships between organisations and the wider society, power takes the forms of regulation of, influence on and ordering of human activities.

Understanding the nature and dynamics of power is crucial for future managers. In this module, we will investigate the ways in which power takes form, functions and has effects in and through organisations. You will be asked to identify, analyse and question power and power relations both in terms of theory and in organisational practice. Discussions on, for example, how power and rationality, power and knowledge or power and organisational routines are related inform our examination of power in the organisational context.

We will explore a number of attempts to systematically conceptualise and analyse power to understand its heterogeneous nature. The aim is that we bring together developments on analysis of power from across the social sciences to management and organisations. The module should appeal to those who want to critically explore power as a vehicle for improving their organisational and management skills as well as interested in power as a phenomenon in organisations and the society at large.

CFP for Gender, Work, and Organization 10th Biennial International Interdisciplinary Conference S... more CFP for Gender, Work, and Organization
10th Biennial International Interdisciplinary Conference
Sydney, Australia
13-16 June 2018

Reflexivity has become ‘a major methodological preoccupation’ for scholars in the field of organi... more Reflexivity has become ‘a major methodological preoccupation’ for scholars in the field of organization studies in recent years . In this subtheme we will explore connections between reflexivity, ethics and work that considers subjects to be constituted by the knowledges that are available to them in their time and place.

by stuart murray, Ziad Elmarsafy, Anna Bernard, Mrinalini Greedharry, Simon B Obendorf, John C Hawley, Pasi Ahonen, Cristina Sandru, Eva Bischoff, Jennifer Wenzel, and Sharae Deckard

This book reclaims postcolonial theory, addressing persistent limitations in the geographical, di... more This book reclaims postcolonial theory, addressing persistent limitations in the geographical, disciplinary, and methodological assumptions of its dominant formations. It emerges, however, from an investment in the future of postcolonial studies and a commitment to its basic premise: namely, that literature and culture are fundamental to the response to structures of colonial and imperial domination. To a certain extent, postcolonial theory is a victim of its own success, not least because of the institutionalization of the insights that it has enabled. Now that these insights no longer seem new, it is hard to know what the field should address beyond its general commitments. Yet the renewal of popular anti-imperial energies across the globe provides an important opportunity to reassert the political and theoretical value of the postcolonial as a comparative, interdisciplinary, and oppositional paradigm. This collection makes a claim for what postcolonial theory can say through the work of scholars articulating what it still cannot or will not say. It explores ideas that a more aesthetically sophisticated postcolonial theory might be able to address, focusing on questions of visibility, performance, and literariness. Contributors highlight some of the shortcomings of current postcolonial theory in relation to contemporary political developments such as Zimbabwean land reform, postcommunism, and the economic rise of Asia. Finally, they address the disciplinary, geographical, and methodological exclusions from postcolonial studies through a detailed focus on new disciplinary directions (management studies, international relations, disaster studies), overlooked locations and perspectives (Palestine, Weimar Germany, the commons), and the necessity of materialist analysis for understanding both the contemporary world and world literary systems.

Contents:

Introduction Anna Bernard, Ziad Elmarsafy, and Stuart Murray Part 1: Disciplinary Constellations: New Forms of Knowledge
1. Capitalizing on English Literature: Disciplinarity, Academic Labor and Postcolonial Studies Claire Westall
2. Dangerous Relations? Lessons from the Interface of Postcolonial Studies and International Relations Simon Obendorf
3. Managing Postcolonialism Mrinalini Greedharry and Pasi Ahonen
4. Postcolonial Modernism: Shame and National Form John C. Hawley
Part 2: Case Studies: Geocultures, Topographies, Occlusions
5. Gaps, Silences and Absences: Palestine and Postcolonial Studies Patrick Williams
6. Facing/Defacing Robert Mugabe: Land Reclamation, Race and the End of Colonial Accountability Ashleigh Harris
7. Staging the Mulata: Performing Cuba Alison Fraunhar
8. Amongst the Cannibals: Articulating Masculinity in Postcolonial Weimar Germany Eva Bischoff
9. Postcolonial Postcommunism? Cristina Sandru
Part 3: Horizons: Environment, Materialism, World
10. Neoliberalism, Genre and the "Tragedy of the Commons" Rob Nixon
11. Reading Fanon Reading Nature Jennifer Wenzel
12. Towards a Postcolonial Disaster Studies Anthony Carrigan 13. If Oil Could Speak, What Would It Say? Crystal Bartolovich 14. Inherit the World: World-Literature, "Rising Asia" and the World-Ecology Sharae Deckard

In 2006 UPM was able to gain a level of social legitimacy that allowed it to carry out one of the... more In 2006 UPM was able to gain a level of social legitimacy that allowed it to carry out one of the largest industrial restructuring programmes in Finnish industrial history, shut down major operations in Finland and still appear to be functioning in the interests of the nation as well as itself. This study considers and examines various contexts of this shutdown with the aim of demonstrating how profoundly mediated such organizational events are though they appear to be produced primarily through strategic company decisions.

The study aims to examine the processes of mediation at two levels. At one level, through close analysis of press releases and newspaper reports in local and national newspapers, the
study presents a discursive analysis of the Voikkaa case. The discursive analysis focuses on providing historical contexts for understanding why this organizational event was also an
occasion for reimagining the past and future of the Finnish nation; spatial contexts for understanding the differing struggles over the meaning of the event nationally and regionally; and the temporal dynamics of the media reports.

At another level, the study considers and refines methods for reading and analyzing mediation in organization studies. Bringing together recent research of media text–based legitimation studies, emerging research on organizational memory and organizational death and a Foucaultian analytics of power, this work suggests that organizational research needs to be less concerned with particular typologies and narratives of shutdowns, and more curious about the processes of mediation through which organizational events are imagined and remembered.

Routledge eBooks, May 28, 2015

Introduction Diversity emerged as a concept in the United States in the 1980s to provide a means ... more Introduction Diversity emerged as a concept in the United States in the 1980s to provide a means of discussing what seemed like ever increasing dimensions of difference in society, from race and gender to age to sexual orientation and beyond (Cox and Blake, 1991; Johnston & Packer, 1987). Social inequities identified by the civil rights, feminist, and gay rights movements in the preceding decades were being addressed—at least to an extent—and there was an apparent need to move from emphasizing social divisions to the positive aspects of difference (Benschop, 2011; Kelly & Dobbin, 1998). The notion of diversity was borrowed from biology to do the task (Litvin, 1997). Thirty years on, a domain of diversity knowledge has developed that not only encompasses relevant differentiating ‘factors’ at both societal and personal level but also seems to render these differences governable and manageable through various mechanisms and techniques.

Organization, Aug 20, 2009

Managing diversity has emerged as a timely issue in organizations operating in the global economy... more Managing diversity has emerged as a timely issue in organizations operating in the global economy. We contribute to the critical literature on diversity and its management in transnational organizations by exploring ways in which diversity is discursively (re)constructed in a European Union Framework Programme project. We draw on Michel Foucault’s insights on the specificity of the relations and mechanics of power, and the connections between disciplinary power, normalization and knowledge. We conceptualize the EU Framework Programme system as a disciplinary apparatus (dispositif)—a network of time-, place- and field-specific disciplining discursive practices—and approach diversity in an EU project as a technology of normalization. Managing diversity becomes thus understood both as an enabling and a limiting exercise of disciplinary power.

Routledge eBooks, Oct 13, 2020

Diversity management practice and research are both direct responses to the conditions European c... more Diversity management practice and research are both direct responses to the conditions European colonialism of other parts of the world has produced. We argue that diversity research thus functions within a colonial episteme, a way of thinking and producing knowledge about the world that is structured by colonial logic. Taking colonialism seriously as a context is not only about acknowledging culturally different ways of knowing, but also about recognizing and undoing the authority of the West to determine what diversity is around the world and what constitutes diversity research. We propose there may be other ways to conceptualize the relationship between difference and diversity and offer some provisional ideas about how we can begin to do this in our research.

Gender, Work & Organization

This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Condition... more This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. and sustain those differences and, consequently, how to eradicate the negative consequences of racial differences in organizations." This sorry state has all but continued to this day. Recently, Nkomo has yet again drawn attention to the "lack of significant progress in making race a core analytical concept in MOS" (Nkomo, 2021, p. 213). Following Nkomo's provocations, we suggest that a possible explanation for this situation is MOS's inattentiveness to how power operates through the analytic of race even though many other operations of power have been analyzed closely.

Nothing could be counted on in a world where even when you were a solution, you were a problem.'-... more Nothing could be counted on in a world where even when you were a solution, you were a problem.'-Toni Morrison, Beloved In his classic exposition of life as a black man in a colonized world, Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon (1967: 82) writes: 'I came into the world imbued with the will to find a meaning in things, my spirit filled with the desire to attain to the source of the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects.' If identity is the process of finding meanings in things, in the world, and in the self, Fanon is one of the first critics to articulate the fact that identity work for those who have been racialized, or turned into 'an object in the midst of other objects' (p.82), should challenge our understanding of how identity work occurs. Although much of Black Skin, White Masks is concerned with the ways that colonized and racialized people do creatively and persistently engage in the work of making themselves into subjects rather than objects, Fanon's argument is not that race happens to be the particular content of a universal, existential process of becoming a self. In a critique of Sartre's (2004) theorization that racial identity is a minor term that will be transcended in the historical progression of the dialectic towards common humanity, Fanon (1967: 103) insists, 'black consciousness is immanent in its own eyes. I am not a potentiality of something, I am wholly what I am. I do not have to look for the universal.' Poignantly, Fanon's work continues to be highly relevant in thinking about race and identity in organizations, and in organization and management studies in broader terms, because the question of how we can research and write about race as a formative rather than circumstantial

International Journal of Management Reviews, 2016

Gender, Work & Organization, 2020

This piece of writing is a joint initiative by participants in the Gender, Work and Organization ... more This piece of writing is a joint initiative by participants in the Gender, Work and Organization writing workshop organized at Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland, in June 2019. This is a particular form of writing differently. We engage in collective writing and embody what it means to write resistance to established academic practices and conventions together. This is a form of emancipatory initiative where we care for each other as writers and as human beings. There are many author voices and we aim to keep the text open and dialogical. As such, this piece of writing is about suppressed thoughts and feelings that our collective picket line allows us to express. In order to maintain the openended nature of the text, and perhaps also to retain some 'dirtiness' that is essential to writing, the paper has not been language checked throughout by a native speaker of English.

This track will explore the relationship between difference, diversity and diversity management. ... more This track will explore the relationship between difference, diversity and diversity management. In particular we wish to consider how the many manifestations of difference and diversity are, both theoretically and practically, becoming subsumed by diversity management, and thereby subjected to managerial control. This is achieved through constituting diversity as a particular kind of object, one that can be addressed, ordered and organized through management techniques and mechanisms (Ahonen &Tienari, 2009). ...

[Extract] The first decade of this century has witnessed a plethora of failures in leadership wit... more [Extract] The first decade of this century has witnessed a plethora of failures in leadership with varying consequences. Amidst the various scandals and crises, increases in top management and key specialist pay and bonuses have continued to rise in ways that, it could be argued, are far from justified by corporate performance1. Such inequities, as well as the apparent offloading of losses onto the taxpayers through bank bailouts, have made organizational and leadership ethics issues of significant public interest.

Human Relations, 2013

This article joins recent critical diversity studies that point to an urgent need to revitalize t... more This article joins recent critical diversity studies that point to an urgent need to revitalize the field, but goes further by showing the inherent contextual issues and power relations that frame existing contributions. Based on a theoretical reading inspired by Michel Foucault, diversity is presented as discourse that is not independent of the particular research exercise of which it is part but, rather, remains contingent on the prevailing forms of knowledge and choices made by researchers. By attending to more refined understandings of power and context within diversity discourse, this article makes visible and calls into question the categorization and normalization of diversity and its management. It contributes to existing research by suggesting that the knowledge produced by mainstream and critical diversity scholars alike is biopolitical and governmental. To do diversity research differently or ‘otherwise’ requires finding ways to develop theorizations and practices that tu...

Human Relations, 2014

This article joins recent critical diversity studies that point to an urgent need to revitalize t... more This article joins recent critical diversity studies that point to an urgent need to revitalize the field, but goes further by showing the inherent contextual issues and power relations that frame existing contributions. Based on a theoretical reading inspired by Michel Foucault, diversity is presented as discourse that is not independent of the particular research exercise of which it is part but, rather, remains contingent on the prevailing forms of knowledge and choices made by researchers. By attending to more refined understandings of power and context within diversity discourse, this article makes visible and calls into question the categorization and normalization of diversity and its management. It contributes to existing research by suggesting that the knowledge produced by mainstream and critical diversity scholars alike is biopolitical and governmental. To do diversity research differently or 'otherwise' requires finding ways to develop theorizations and practices that turn this modality of power against itself.

How do reflexive practices work to transform the subject at work? We invite paper proposals for t... more How do reflexive practices work to transform the subject at work?
We invite paper proposals for the sub theme 'Organizing Subjects' of EGOS 2015 on the following topics:
• Difference and the possibility of (new) organizational subjects
• Disreputable knowledges and organizing subjects
• Postcolonial transformations
• Diversity discourses, reflexivity and subject formation
• Workplace spiritualities and reflexivity
• Histories of subjects at and in work
• Reflexivity and organizational transformation
• Ethics and practices of making (up) organizational subjects