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PDW 01: Process Writing Workshop

Convenors:
Henrika Franck
Aalto University School of Business, Finland
Nancy Harding
Bradford University School of Management, United Kingdom
Jenny Helin
Uppsala University, Sweden
Viviane Sergi
Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Canada

Call for Applications

Purpose

This PDW aims to help scholars, especially at PhD and early career stages, in finding their personal way in processual writing.
 
Process philosophy encourages us to follow the flows of activities that shape organizing. Organization is here understood as an ongoing process of “relating” (Cooper, 2005), and “world making” (Chia & King, 1998); always becoming. A major consequence for scholars is that any description of organization has to transcribe the continuity of organizational process while refraining from attempts to isolate one stage from another. The craft of writing up research in this manner thus involves following the going-on with things, rather than trying to capture and stabilize them.

Writing up process studies, and particularly empirical ones, can hence pose challenges for researchers:

  • How can we capture this on-going-ness in our own writing?

  • Does the journal article format, with its limited space, hinder processual writing, or can it catalyze it?

  • What other forms of writing than the traditional canons of scientific writing can we experiment with, in order to better seize with words the processuality of organizational phenomena?

  • If other materials, like images, photos and video, can complement our writing, how can we integrate them in our texts?


These are some of the questions we wish to explore with this PDW. And these are important questions, as they directly call into question our practices of writing, with the aims of exploring new ways of communicating and sharing the fruits of our inquiries.
 
This workshop is a part of the EGOS Standing Working Group (SWG) 10 “Doing Process Research” and has three aims:

  • First, to find ways of writing that travel, ideas that suggest multiple rather than singular meanings.

  • Second, to learn about your personal writing process through exercises and creating new texts.

  • Third, to start building a community of scholars who understand what process studies research is, and what it entails to write empirical process studies articles.

 

Format

We will do reading and writing exercises coupled with experiences from skillful and knowledgeable scholars. We will rehearse free writing, creative writing, and disciplined writing in smaller groups. The participants will get readings and some pre-exercises prior to the workshop.
 

Application

Please submit – via the EGOS website! – a single document of application (.doc, .docx or .pdf file) that includes:

  • On the first page: a cover page including full details of name, address (postal address, phone & email), and affiliation;

  • A short letter of motivation;

  • A description of empirical work that you are working on;

  • 1-page reflection on things that you struggle with in your own writing.

 

We will accept a maximum of 25 people.
 

Henrika Franck is a post-doctoral researcher at the Aalto University School of Business, Finland. Her research focuses on ethics and the action of employees in the context of strategic/organizational change. Employing mainly field methodologies and qualitative data, she examines individuals as agentic moral actors inside organizations. Henrika has been published in ‘Strategic Management Journal’ and ‘Scandinavian Journal of Management’ as well as in books and book chapters. She currently serves as a member of the Editorial Board of ‘Organization Studies’.
Nancy Harding is Professor of Organization Theory at Bradford University School of Management, UK. Her research and teaching focuses on critical approaches to understanding organizations, particularly working lives. Her papers have appeared in many of the expected academic journals. Her books include “A trilogy exploring the manager” (Routledge, 2003), “The Employee” (Routledge, 2013) and “The Organization” (2017/18 and counting). She co-authored books on “The Social Construction of Dementia” (Harding & Palfrey, 1997), “Leadership as Identity” (Ford, Harding & Learmonth, 2008) and, with Marianna Fotaki, on “Bringing Feminism into 21st Century Organization Studies” (Routledge, forthcoming). Her greatest accolade to date comes from her younger grandson, who thinks she is ‘amazing’. His older brother is more discriminating, and no longer thinks she walks on water.
Jenny Helin is an Associate Professor at the Department of Business Studies, Uppsala University, Sweden. Based on collaborative inquiry methods, her research interests lie at the intersection of process philosophy and dialogue, and in the potentiality of academic writing. She has international experience of doctoral teaching, workshops and seminars on academic writing, with a special interest in the process of writing. She has also published books and articles on academic writing.
Viviane Sergi is an Associate Professor in Management in the Department of Management and Technology as ESG UQAM in Montréal, Canada. Her research interests include process thinking, performativity, organizing, leadership, and the practice of academic writing. Her recent studies have explored how communication is, in various settings, constitutive of organizational phenomena, such as work, strategy and leadership. Her work has been published in ‘Academy of Management Annals’, ‘Human Relations’, ‘Scandinavian Journal of Management’, ‘Long Range Planning’, ‘Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management’ and in the ‘International Journal of Managing Projects in Business’, amongst others.