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Papers by Carolyn Hunter

Research paper thumbnail of Constructing girlhood: Abject labour in Magazine Offices

Girls’ magazines act as important texts through which meanings of childhood, girlhood and womanho... more Girls’ magazines act as important texts through which meanings of childhood, girlhood and womanhood are mediated and constructed. However, previous research has focused on either the conditions of work practices or cultural production of the magazine as a product. Separately in each context women or girls have been described as abject. The paper will argue that employees working on girls’ magazines experienced a simultaneous double abjection: in the gendered working practices and as an outcome of the construction of girlhood they produced. Two studies of all female teams producing teenage and pre-teen magazines were used including interviews and observations. Our approach engaged with the difficulty of examining abjectivity in working practices, as present but marginalised, silenced or othered. As a result of scrutinising the gendered embodiment in these studies, the findings suggest there is a relation between the working practices and gendered cultural production, forming a process of abjection. This process was threefold: a marginalisation of a particular gendered embodiment, the cracks or leaks where abjectivity became apparent and the silencing of those leaks. This study will be of value to scholars interested in gendered embodiment in workplaces, abjectivity and cultural production, noting the interrelation between these areas.

Research paper thumbnail of Temporal and spatial shifts within playful work

Journal of Organizational Change Management, 2010

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a qualitative study of software e... more Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a qualitative study of software engineers' playful behaviors at work. Design/methodology/approach -The interviewed software engineers come from two European and three American companies. The research is based on ethnographical data, gathered in two longitudinal studies 2005-2008. The methods used in the study include open-ended unstructured interviews, participant observations, stories collection, and shadowings. Findings -It is found that the currently dominant theory of normative control explaining software engineers workplace diminishes leisure and entertainment attributes of knowledge work. Fun at workplace is discovered to be an important, if not crucial, element of everyday programmers' job. Originality/value -The study contributes to the literature by replying to the call for more research on high-tech organizational practices, and on non-job related behaviors at workplace. It reveals playful performance as a constituent for knowledge work and may contribute towards a better understanding of the role played by fun and playful behavior in creative problem-solving and inventing.

Conference Presentations by Carolyn Hunter

Research paper thumbnail of Crises of meaning at the fringes of economy

Research paper thumbnail of Emotions, objects and meaning in organizations

For over 30 years the ideas of emotional management, emotional work and emotional labour (Hochsch... more For over 30 years the ideas of emotional management, emotional work and emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983) have been used in organisation studies to explore how emotions are linked to power and control (Hancock and Tyler, 2001; Fineman, 1999 Fineman, , 2008, the body (Hassard et al, 2000) and experiences of customers, colleagues and communities, bosses and workplaces. This has been characterized as a shift from "bounded rationality" (cf. Simon, 1976) to "bounded emotionality" (Mumby and Putnam, 1992). Traditionally emotions have been studied within service interactions (see Ladhari and Bigné, 2016), where the customer appears to be driving emotional management (Hochschild, 1983), and this has been expanded into the study of aesthetic labour and bodily displays of emotion (Hassard et al, 2000). Yet, there are new possibilities for understanding emotions outside of service interactions, in particular in the knowledge economy in areas such as academia, professional industries and the creative industries. For these fields, concepts of creativity, innovation and knowledge are key and reliant on the employees' expertise. However, the worker's own emotions and the link to the context, in particular the objects which relate to that context, are often underexplored. Gagliardi (1990, iv) highlights how in organizations objects 'speak, although we seldom listen, and through them we communicate and act, even if unawares". Sensemaking explored through objects can shed light on organizational meaning since these often combine personal, emotional, aesthetic and instrumental signifiers (Rafaeli and Vilnai-Yavetz, 2004).

Research paper thumbnail of Constructing girlhood: Abject labour in Magazine Offices

Girls’ magazines act as important texts through which meanings of childhood, girlhood and womanho... more Girls’ magazines act as important texts through which meanings of childhood, girlhood and womanhood are mediated and constructed. However, previous research has focused on either the conditions of work practices or cultural production of the magazine as a product. Separately in each context women or girls have been described as abject. The paper will argue that employees working on girls’ magazines experienced a simultaneous double abjection: in the gendered working practices and as an outcome of the construction of girlhood they produced. Two studies of all female teams producing teenage and pre-teen magazines were used including interviews and observations. Our approach engaged with the difficulty of examining abjectivity in working practices, as present but marginalised, silenced or othered. As a result of scrutinising the gendered embodiment in these studies, the findings suggest there is a relation between the working practices and gendered cultural production, forming a process of abjection. This process was threefold: a marginalisation of a particular gendered embodiment, the cracks or leaks where abjectivity became apparent and the silencing of those leaks. This study will be of value to scholars interested in gendered embodiment in workplaces, abjectivity and cultural production, noting the interrelation between these areas.

Research paper thumbnail of Temporal and spatial shifts within playful work

Journal of Organizational Change Management, 2010

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a qualitative study of software e... more Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a qualitative study of software engineers' playful behaviors at work. Design/methodology/approach -The interviewed software engineers come from two European and three American companies. The research is based on ethnographical data, gathered in two longitudinal studies 2005-2008. The methods used in the study include open-ended unstructured interviews, participant observations, stories collection, and shadowings. Findings -It is found that the currently dominant theory of normative control explaining software engineers workplace diminishes leisure and entertainment attributes of knowledge work. Fun at workplace is discovered to be an important, if not crucial, element of everyday programmers' job. Originality/value -The study contributes to the literature by replying to the call for more research on high-tech organizational practices, and on non-job related behaviors at workplace. It reveals playful performance as a constituent for knowledge work and may contribute towards a better understanding of the role played by fun and playful behavior in creative problem-solving and inventing.

Research paper thumbnail of Crises of meaning at the fringes of economy

Research paper thumbnail of Emotions, objects and meaning in organizations

For over 30 years the ideas of emotional management, emotional work and emotional labour (Hochsch... more For over 30 years the ideas of emotional management, emotional work and emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983) have been used in organisation studies to explore how emotions are linked to power and control (Hancock and Tyler, 2001; Fineman, 1999 Fineman, , 2008, the body (Hassard et al, 2000) and experiences of customers, colleagues and communities, bosses and workplaces. This has been characterized as a shift from "bounded rationality" (cf. Simon, 1976) to "bounded emotionality" (Mumby and Putnam, 1992). Traditionally emotions have been studied within service interactions (see Ladhari and Bigné, 2016), where the customer appears to be driving emotional management (Hochschild, 1983), and this has been expanded into the study of aesthetic labour and bodily displays of emotion (Hassard et al, 2000). Yet, there are new possibilities for understanding emotions outside of service interactions, in particular in the knowledge economy in areas such as academia, professional industries and the creative industries. For these fields, concepts of creativity, innovation and knowledge are key and reliant on the employees' expertise. However, the worker's own emotions and the link to the context, in particular the objects which relate to that context, are often underexplored. Gagliardi (1990, iv) highlights how in organizations objects 'speak, although we seldom listen, and through them we communicate and act, even if unawares". Sensemaking explored through objects can shed light on organizational meaning since these often combine personal, emotional, aesthetic and instrumental signifiers (Rafaeli and Vilnai-Yavetz, 2004).