Dr Sylwia Ciuk

Drawing on the paradox literature, this article considers its relevance for those working in a UK University. First, through focusing on a strategic change programme that constituted the University, staff and students as ‘little boxes’, it empirically examines the paradox of centralized empowerment.  Second, we argue that centralized empowerment is a manifestation of the wider neoliberal project confronting universities and its paradox of controlled freedom.  Finally, we extend a critical understanding of paradox by exploring how power operates in simultaneously repressive and productive ways.

Advancing, both conceptually and practically, the equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) agenda, which is notoriously difficult to implement, this paper addresses the under-researched area of global diversity management (GDM) in multinational companies (MNCs). Drawing on Harrison and Klein’s (2007) conceptualisations of diversity (separation, variety, and disparity) and two core concepts (fluidity and reciprocity) that reflect recent developments in the EDI literature, we propose a two-step framework for implementing the EDI agenda through GDM. We argue that to achieve inclusion, we first need to think differently about diversity and differences (i.e. view diversity in a positive light and recognise and appreciate diffe­rences as fluid), in order to act differently (i.e. promote reciprocal effort to leverage diversity). We illustrate our framework with the specific case of linguistic diversity, a diversity dimension that is particularly salient, but also often neglected in MNCs, and discuss the implications of the proposed framework for EDI theory as well as HRM policies and practice.

Purpose.
Drawing on socio-cognitively orientated leadership studies, this paper aims to contribute to our understanding of host country employees’ (HCEs) negative perceptions of successive expatriate leadership by exploring how their memories of shared past experiences affect these perceptions. Contrary to previous work which tends to focus on HCEs’ attitudes towards individual expatriates, the authors shift attention to successive executive expatriate assignments within a single subsidiary.

Design/methodology/approach.
The paper is based on an intrinsic case study carried out in a Polish subsidiary of an American multinational pharmaceutical company which had been managed by four successive expatriate General Managers and one local executive. The authors draw on interview data with 40 HCEs. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with staff who had been managed by at least three of the subsidiary’s expatriate leaders.

Findings.
The authors demonstrate how transference triggered by past experiences with expatriate leaders as well as HCEs’ implicit leadership theories affect HCEs’ negative perceptions of expatriate leadership and lead to the emergence of expatriate leadership schema.

Originality/value.
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that explores the role of transference and implicit leadership theories in HCEs’ perceptions of successive executive expatriate assignments. By focussing on retrospective accounts of HCEs who had been managed by a series of successive expatriate leaders, our study has generated a more nuanced and contextualised understanding of the role of HCEs’ shared past experiences in shaping their perceptions of expatriate leadership. The authors propose a new concept – expatriate leadership schema – which describes HCEs’ cognitive structures, developed during past experiences with successive expatriate leaders, which specify what HCEs believe expatriate leadership to look like and what they expect from it.

Over recent decades critical scholars have quite rightly warned of the control implications of new management initiatives. There is a danger, however, of treating control in a ‘distal’ way or as an ‘end’. Through drawing on proximal (Cooper and Law, 1995) theorising, we make explicit what is often implicit in such accounts, which is that control is best understood as unfinished, in process, for it is inherently contingent and unpredictable. Viewed in this way, control becomes elusive as it always has to be achieved. The article draws on ethnographic research conducted in a back office of a manufacturing organisation to illustrate this understanding of management control. It highlights tensions between staff and management and between multiple layers of management that can thwart control.

Leadership development programmes increasingly encourage plural forms of leadership to counteract the pitfalls of individualistic approaches. This paper contributes to our understanding of the role of context in developing and spreading leadership across hierarchies. Working within an omnibus approach to context, previous research has highlighted the role of institutional forces in the emergence of distributed leadership in the public sector, yet so far neglected the influence of the discrete organisational context. Drawing on an in-depth case study of a private sector organisation trying to recover from a turbulent past through an in-house leadership development initiative, we show how the omnibus and discrete organisational contexts jointly facilitate and constrain the development and spread of leadership and how they are instrumentalised in this process. We surface how social and political dynamics associated with socio-material relationships and institutional arrangements, together with wider omnibus forces, influence the aim of an inhouse LDP and its potential to impact perceptions and practice of distributed leadership in organisational settings. We argue that a nested approach to context – encompassing the interconnected omnibus and discrete contexts – is required for a deeper understanding of the factors that facilitate and constrain the development and spread of leadership.

Why is resistance a pervasive feature of organisations? We seek to add to the established ways of understanding resistance by arguing that it may emerge due to the rationality and irrationality, order and disorder that imbues organisations. We explore how such conditions create ambivalent situations that can generate resistance which is ambivalent itself as it can both facilitate and hinder the operation of organisations. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in a manufacturing organisation, we introduce the concept of pragmatic resistance as a means to grasp the everyday resistance that emerges through and reflects cracks in the rational model of organisations. Rather than being anti-work, we demonstrate how pragmatic resistance is bound up with organisational disorder/irrationality, competing work demands and the prioritisation of what is interpreted as 'real-work'. Overall, the concept of pragmatic resistance indicates that resistance may be far more pervasive and organisations more fragile and vulnerable to disruption than is often assumed to be the case.

Purpose. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to cross culture training (CCT) literature by exploring the HR managers roles in CCT provision and the reasons affecting the given role enactment. Design/methodology/approach. This exploratory study is based on in-depth interviews with 15 Israeli HR managers in charge of the provision of CCT in their respective companies and five interviews with CCT professionals who provide CCT training for a wide range of companies operating in Israel. Findings. The study highlights the significant impact of HR managers’ awareness and perceptions of CCT on its provision and discusses a related self-perpetuating cycle of current practice reinforcement that limits the likelihood of practice improvement. Research limitations/implications. The limitations of the exploratory design of the study call for further research on HR roles in CCT provision. Practical implications. The findings suggest that HR managers partly design and implement practice according to what they believe are unmet expatriate needs and what they perceive as effective HR tools. The authors discuss the practical value of raising their awareness not only of CCT designs and methodologies, but also of the complexities of expatriate adjustment and the opportunities offered by rigorous evaluation of current practice. Originality/value. The study departs from the dominant focus in the literature on the content and methodologies of CCT and instead explores the neglected role of HR managers in CCT provision.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the work-family interface of two non-traditional forms of expatriation. The paper contributes to existing research by comparing and contrasting the experiences of international business travellers and rotational assignees, pointing out the similarities in their experiences but also showing considerable differences in how the work-family interface plays out in these two groups.

Design/methodology/approach– In line with the exploratory nature of the research, the authors carried out a qualitative case study drawing on interview data with rotators and international business travellers (n=20). In order to get more in-depth insights into the experiences of these two groups of assignees, the authors also used the photo-elicitation technique, which corresponds with the recent recognition that the evolving nature of international assignments requires alternative methods of inquiry to enhance the understanding of the challenges faced by them.

Findings– The study points to four major factors affecting the work-family interface: time spent away, unpredictability of work schedules, limited ability to exercise control over it as well as limited availability of organisational support. The findings illustrate that while these factors impact international business travellers and rotators alike, their intensity varies considerably in the experiences of these two groups.

Research limitations/implications– The research is based on a single case study and a small sample which needs to be considered when discussing the implications of the findings. Future research can valuably extend and build on the here reported observations.

Practical implications– A number of practical implications are discussed, notably pertaining to the ways in which organisations can mitigate the challenges encountered by international business travellers and rotators.

Against the background of a marked lack of studies exploring the role of language and more particularly interlingual translation in the travel of ideas and practices across organisational contexts, this article provides an analysis of an attempt by a group of managers to translate a set of corporate values into Polish from English. The findings reported serve to demonstrate the relevance of such translation processes to the transfer of knowledge and practices within multinationals. By prompting sensemaking around a value-laden text, the studied translation exercise is shown to have encouraged discussions around understandings of local needs and preferred meanings which served to trigger debates and reflections around local identity and affinities with the parent company. In doing so, it provided a ‘situated platform’ through which participants exercised a collective agency aimed at establishing what were perceived to constitute appropriate and productive accommodations between local and extra-local pressures. At the same time, the translation is shown to have been very much shaped by material interests and priorities, notably the performance expectations embedded in the subsidiary’s relationship with its parent. As a result, care needs to be taken not to overstate the role of such translations in facilitating locally driven cultural adaptations.

This article is a reflection on organizational oblivion, viewed as an archetypical antonym of learning. The consequences of this kind of forgetting for organizational identity construction are described as a narrative project. We refer to the image of Lethe, an archetype of forgetting, to depict how forgetting directly affects the process of identity narrative construction. In this perspective, drinking from the waters of Lethe implies not just the loss of knowledge or memories of how things are done, but the loss of identity so that the individuals do not know who they are anymore. In this context, forgetting disrupts organizational narrative which ceases to be a coherent story and results in organizational identity loss.