International Center for Research in Organisational Discourse, Strategy & Change

Leadership Change Management Approaches in Social Sector Organizations in Pakistan
The aim of this research is to study leadership change management approaches in the social sector of Pakistan. The specific objectives are: to identify the nature of the change management; to assess and analyze the leadership strategy for managing the change; and to assess the impact of the leadership of the change management on the various stakeholders involved. A qualitative study of three case studies will be conducted in order to identify insights (strengths and weaknesses, success stories and failures, facilitation and exploitation of human capital) into change management practices. Interviews will be conducted with leaders to find out relevant information about their change management approach; focused group discussion will be conducted to engage other team members to find out their concerns; while interviews will be conducted with key stakeholders. The different cases will then be subjected to comparative analysis to identify factors related to different leadership success and failures

Dean Pierides
d.pierides@unimelb.edu.au

Categories, classification and emergent forms of life: Organizing in medico-legal management
The emergence of biotechnologies that entangle genetics with institutions (such as law, medicine and the market) has raised concerns about human life in almost every professional arena. One only has to briefly consider related new industries, as part of or resulting from various genome projects or the ubiquity of forensics for example, to gauge the enormity of this matter. My study begins with a specific scholarly concern about how the practices surrounding categories and classification (a proxy for organizing) feature in one such arena, that of managing the work of medical examiners. As a juncture-of medicine, law and the public good-which is cut by emergent technologies and forms around issues of life (as well as death), this arena invites a mode of inquiry that is currently in the making as 'anthropology of the contemporary'. Staged this way my study is, thus, also about anthropos and logos in the present, recent past and near future.

Leanne Cleghorn
l.cleghorn@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au

Make Hay while the sun shines: Professional identity development of secondary teacher career changers
There are many studies about teachers' professional identity during their tenure, but far less is known about the role that personal and professional identity plays at the time of their decision to leave the profession, and in relation to engaging a new career. Leanne's PhD research examines the transition of personal and professional identities of ex-secondary teachers, and their decision making processes to exit the teaching profession. Through the use of discourse analysis, the research will explore the processes of social construction of new identities, through individuals' career change experiences. A discursive level of analysis aims to show the complexity of moving into new fields, and the broader influence of power relations and social control. The research aims to provide insight into the experiences of those teachers who have left the profession and to assist future teachers considering leaving, as well as to provide key stakeholders such as employers, career counsellors and unions with an identity approach to understanding teacher turnover.

Dinuka Wijetunga
d.wijetunga@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au

The social construction of technology in a consumer culture
Current literature on the social construction of technology is predominantly focused on processes that are assumed to be moving towards the stabilization of an artefact with regard to its meaning and functions. In this research, it is argued that a technology could also develop through processes that perpetuate interpretative flexibility; where the artefact never really stabilizes. It is also argued that this phenomenon could be prominently visible in the context of a consumer culture; where the market and consumption plays a dominant role in social processes. The symbolic aspects of consumption characteristic of a consumer culture provide many avenues to increase the interpretative flexibility of an artefact. Technological products in particular have associated connotations of novelty and progress that support the perpetuation of interpretative flexibility. Both marketing and consumption contribute to this meaning creation. Hence, this research will study the dynamics between marketing and consumption in relation to the social construction of mobile telephones.

Heather Round
hround@unimelb.edu.au

Organisational Creativity
Understanding creativity and innovation has become increasingly important for organisations operating in a dynamic and increasingly competitive environment. Much of the research to date has adopted a positivist approach, focusing on the products of the creative process as well as measuring factors that influence these products. To complement this understanding of organisational creativity this study aims to explore organisational creativity and innovation from a social constructionist perspective. The case study investigation uses direct observations, document analysis and interviews how creativity is defined, the social process of producing a creative artefact and the unintended consequences of this process.

Shelley Domberger (Melbourne)
s.domberger@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au

The social construction of career: A comparative case study
The definition of a career has been a source of continuous debate within the careers literature. Researchers have often assumed that career is synonymous with advancement in an organisational hierarchy. More recently, it has been suggested that a career can encompass a more varied set of work experiences, including those which occur outside organisations. My thesis will explore how the concept of career comes to take on such meanings. Particularly, I will compare how two occupational groups – life coaches and counselling psychologists – socially construct the meaning of career. I will also explore how individuals within these two groups create a story of their own career, and to what extent they must negotiate with prevalent meanings of career in the telling of this story.

Lauren Gurrieri
gurrieri@unimelb.edu.au

The social construction of cool: implications for organisations and consumers
Cool has become one of the dominant ideologies of contemporary consumer capitalism and the favoured language of popular and consumer culture. However despite its pervasiveness, cool remains an elusive concept. Based on a conceptualisation of cool as a social construct, established and maintained in part by language, this thesis aims to understand how meanings of cool can be constructed in organisational and consumption discourses. The particular actors that are the focus of this research are cool hunting agencies, a new type of marketing organisation that purports to be able to interpret youth and consumer culture and use this knowledge to construct a brand as being cool, the organisational clients that employ them and the consumers who are the focus of their efforts. The research has two primary aims. Firstly, to integrate the wide and fragmented literatures on cool, so as to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the topic. And secondly, to overcome the gap between the growing recognition of the importance of cool for practitioners and the limited number of academic studies on the topic.

Belinda Allen
allenbc@unimelb.edu.au

Examining the identity processes of professsionals who are temps: Behavioural and attitudinal implications for work and careers
Belinda's PhD research examines how temporary employment affects the professional identity, performance, affective reactions and careers of individuals. Utilising a role identity framework, the primary goal of the research is to integrate the literature on employment status and role identity to achieve a more comprehensive analysis and understanding of temporary workers' perceptions and experiences of their daily work practice. The research also seeks to explore the subjective process of sense making which leads to individual constructions of identity and career, with specific attention being given to exploring the notion of a "boundaryless" career. It is hoped that ultimately results of the research will be able to be used to generate theories that better reflect the contemporary work experiences of individuals, in particular those individuals who are employed on a temporary basis.

University of Sydney

Sebastian Kinne

Discourse and the Construction of Corporate Culture: Professional Service Firm Amalgamations
Sebastian's thesis explores the role that discourse plays in the social construction of corporate cultural change. Professional Service Firm Amalgamations have been chosen as the context for the study for two reasons. First, Professional Service Firms, due to their unique features and characteristics are believed to exhibit "strong cultures". Second, organisational amalgamations are seen as among the most intense moments of organisational/cultural change. A distinct analytical focus on language and how social realities like culture are brought to life through its use is believed to enhance our understanding not only of organisational cultural change processes during Professional Service Firm Amalgamations, but may also yield insights that could contribute to organization culture literature more generally.

Sujatha Rao

The impact of professional contractural work on knowledge management practices within organisations
Sujatha's PhD thesis seeks to explore the knowledge sharing behaviours of professionals employed as contractors within organisations. In the contemporary wokplace there is an increasing reliance on knowledge workers while at the same time there is an increased prevalence of non-standard employment practices including contract work, particularly among professionals. This research aims to integrate the literature on professional work, transient employment and knowledge management, by determining the conditions under which organisations can capture and utilise the knowledge of professional contractors contribute to the knowledge of the organisation. It is expected that this study will contribute to a better understanding of the changing nature of employment and knowledge management practices of professionals within organisations.

Maurizio Floris

Discourse Analysis: A Third Dimension in Strategy Development
Mainstream strategy development methodologies appear to focus on the exploration of time and context ("space"), ie these methodologies analyze either longer time frames, broader (or richer) contexts, or both. Discourse analyisis brings a very different and complementary approach through its analysis of the constructed nature of core concepts of strategy, eg. market segments, needs, capabilities etc. In mainstream strategy theory these concepts are often either taken for granted or the full impact of their constructed nature is not understood. Maurizio aims to explore in his PhD research whether both the theory and practice of strategy development can be meaningfully understood against these three different dimensions of strategy development. Maurizio, who is a member of faculty at Melbourne Business School is conducting his PhD under the auspices of the University of Sydney.

Paul Scifleet

Making Sense of the Digital content Object: A Common Denominator for Discourse
Project description coming soon

Catherine A. Hardy

Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) for the Adoption of e-Business: Heterogeneous Networks, Social Praxis and Context
Project description coming soon

Janine Holgate

Governance Arranegements for Enterprise Information Protection: An Australian Critical Infrastructure Perspective
Project description coming soon

Susan V. Keyes-Pearce

IT Value Management in Leading Firms: The Fit Between Theory and Practice (Awarded the 2006 ACPHIS Information Systems PhD Medal)
Project description coming soon

N. Nurmuliani

Investigating Requirements Volatility During Software Development PRojects: an Empirical Study
Project description coming soon

International PhD's

Ashley Roberts (Cardiff Business School)

Strategic Identity Construction: Knowledgable Actors in the Recruitment Process
Employees may express cynicism towards managerially prescribed organizational cultures. Studies documenting cynicism have, however, tended to be based within organisations.This study however, offers insights into the cynical behaviour of individuals' in liminal states, specifically, at each stage of the graduate recruitment process into the I.T Company WebCo. Drawing on ethnographic methods, this study argues that the candidates' cynical distancing enables them to engage in identity work. Here, the knowledgable graduates engage in strategic identity construction at each recruitment stage, and hence, illustrate surface level compliance to the managerially desired organisational values. The claimed 'strong organizational culture' therefore remains unchallenged.

Kim Field ( Cambridge )
K.field@jbs.cam.ac.uk

Institutional Sources of Competitive Advantage
Kim's research examines how institutions differentiate market participants. Institutional theorists have often linked institutional change to positive economic outcomes, while characterising institutions as blocking progress. This research examines the importance of institutional persistence in enabling growth and identifies conditions in which institutions act as critical resources. The research uses discourse analysis to deconstruct meanings of R&D and examine R&D as a source of institutional differentiation amongst participants in the global pharmaceutical market.

Recent PhD Students

University of Melbourne

Steve Jaynes
jaynes@deakin.edu.au

A discursive approach to strategic change
This study develops a discourse approach to examine how processes of change are shaped and effected in strategy. This approach is based on a model of change that is designed to investigate how discourses construct an organizational 'reality' and produce identities and subject positions for employees. This model is applied to study a financial services organization, in which the acceptance, appropriation, and rejection of strategy discourse is explored in the context of a strategic change program. These discursive processes are viewed as central to the enactment of change. The development of a discursive approach is argued to bring explanatory value and critical insight to the study of strategic change in organizations, which is not provided by the mainstream approaches. The contribution that this approach promises lies in its study of language to explore how discourses pervade and inform the lives and experiences of people in organizations, in ways that are often taken for granted.

Daniel Nyberg
nyberg@unimelb.edu.au

Organizational Culture as Practices
Understanding organizational culture has become increasingly important for organizations after recent corporate scandals and the entrance of the term into corporate law. The dominant perspectives on organizational culture are unable to satisfactorily explain the production and reproduction of organizational culture. This research aims to respond to these weaknesses by researching organizational culture as practices. This shifts the focus from stable and static symbols to fluid and dynamic nexuses of actions. The case study investigation uses direct observations, document analysis and interviews to explore how organizational culture processes are produced and maintained over time.

Raffaele Rufo (Melbourne)
r.rufo2@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au

Performing Resistance: A Study in Social Transformation
My research investigates power relations and resistance practices from a critical/postmodernism perspective in the attempt to understand how subjects can activate social transformation in an organization site. To achieve this objective I will analyse: how resistance becomes manifested; how resistance becomes intentional; how subjects become aware of the potential effect of their practices on the broader organizational discourse; and how space for social action is generated. Given the importance of the body in generating awareness and intentionality, the analysis endeavours to overcome the mind/body dualism. This requires enlarging the empirical scope beyond discursive practices (what we say/write) to include social embodied performance (i.e. what we do) inside and outside language.

Zelinna Pablo (Melbourne)
z.pablo@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au

Towards a power based interpretation of ICT in organizations
This study draws from social constructionism from a critical perspective to argue that ICT in organizations is not predominantly a material phenomenon, but is largely subjectively interpreted and appropriated through emergent patterns of use that are underpinned by socially negotiated meanings. It is also argued that ICT in organizations is continuously socially constructed, such that the dichotomy between design and implementation is analytical rather than ontological; that resulting interpretations are heterogenous and conflicting (albeit coexisting) rather than consensual; and that such interpretations are (re)created based on power dynamics among different stakeholders. It is proposed that the study be grounded through an ethnographic study of specific areas of the Development Gateway, which is a web-based, knowledge-intensive virtual organization enmeshed in a complex network of stakeholder relationships.

Primo Garcia (Melbourne)
p.garcia@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au

Shifting organizational identities in a university: A discursive perspective
The mainstream literature has portrayed organizational identity in functionalist terms, despite claims of identity being social. It is argued that the theoretical and empirical depictions of organizational identity are problematic. They marginalize the social construction processes involved in organizational identity construction and organizational identification processes. In this way, they ignore the fragmentation, instability, and complexity of organizational identity, as well as the role of power in identity construction. To address these problems, this research will adopt discourse analysis to investigate the nature of organizational identities and identifications in a university setting; unpack the relationship between individual and organizational identities; and identify the material practices that arise from the identity construction and identification processes.

Susan Ainsworth - Department of Management & Marketing. University of Melbourne

Susan Ainsworth has rejoined the University Melbourne after five years in in the School of Business at the University of Sydney. Her PhD, awarded in June 2004, examined the way in which the identity of the "older worker" is constructed through the use of a wide range of discourse analytic techniques to the texts of a royal commission. Susan has published a number of papers from her thesis in leading journals, including Gender Work & Organization, Critical Discourse Studies, Discourse and Communication, Human Relations and Organization.

Nuzhat Lotia - University of Melbourne, Department of Management

Nuzhat's PhD research examined the learning process within collaborations from a critical perspective and attempted to explore the implications of power for the process of learning. The central argument was that the processes of collaboration and learning within collaborations are inherently influenced by dynamics of power that result as a consequence of the interactions among collaborating organizations. The research presented a theoretical basis for considering the impact of power on the learning process at the collaboration level and set forth some propositions that provide an agenda for future research.

Peter Fleming - Queen Mary, University of London

Peter Fleming completed his PhD in 2004, being awarded the Chancellors Award for Excellence in the PhD Thesis, University of Melbourne. Before joining the Judge Institute, Peter held academic positions at the University of Otago (New Zealand) and the University of Melbourne (Australia). His research interests include the historical, economic and cultural dimensions of contemporary work patterns, with a special emphasis on the critical analysis of organizational politics, conflict and democracy.

Andre Spicer - University of Warwick Business School

Andre Spicer is an Assistant Professor in Organization Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. He gained his PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2004. It examines the rise and contestation of globalisation discourse in Australia's largest public broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He has published in Organization, Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Ephemera and Philosophy and Management. The main focus of his research is examining organizations as spaces of political movement and struggle. This involves a number of research projects including the developing a 'post Foucauldian' theory of power and resistance, examining the mobilisation of discourse during port disputes, charting the organization of new social movements, and looking at the struggle around organizational space.

University of Sydney

Sarah Kim
s.kim@econ.usyd.edu.au

Post Merger Integration in Professional Service Firms
Sarah's doctoral research relates to post-merger integration in professional service firms. Over the past decade, there has been a wave of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) across a number of industries. However, the relevant literature suggests that almost two-thirds of all merger deals fail to deliver their intended benefits. A key theme of the existing literature is that the way in which the integration process is managed can have a significant impact on the relative success of merger and acquisitions. The object of Sarah's thesis is to investigate the role that post-merger integration phase plays in determining merger outcomes in professional service firms - specifically accounting and consulting firms-, and examine the factors associated directly or indirectly with the integration that impact on overall merger success. It is expected that this study will provide insights into post-merger integration process both in the professional service firms and more generally.

Jane Gyung-Sook Lee (Sydney)
j.lee@econ.usyd.edu.au

The Experiences of Immigrant Female Korean Workers in the Australian
Labour Market: A Narrative Analysis
Jane's research explores the labour market experiences of Korean migrant women in Australia, aiming to hear their otherwise unheard accounts. Through discourse and narrative analysis of interviews with 30 women in their native language, the research both resists and embellishes existing conceptions of barriers to labour market participation for Asian migrant women. Existing research suggests two main barriers to the Australian labour market for these women: English language skills and cultural and historical notions of identity and femininity. The research investigates to what degree these two barriers are a discernable external reality, limiting and shaping the behaviour of Korean migrant women in Australia. It also aims to hear their individual stories and interpretive realities (perceptions) to allow for alternative conceptualisations of the Australian labour market.

Tony Stapledon (Sydney)
stapenco@bigpond.net.au

Offices as Tools for organizational Sustainability
This cross-disciplinary doctoral research explores links between organizational sustainability and office-based working environments. It investigates key areas of concern to directors and managers seeking competitive advantage through development of sustainability as an organizational competency and an intangible asset: organizational purpose; culture, identity and image; change; learning and innovation; and corporate social responsibility. The research is centred on a case study of the world's leading firm in corporate sustainability, examining its search for sustainability and how it is using a major new office collocation project to enhance those characteristics common to sustainable firms. Its approach is compared and contrasted with that of other high rating firms within Australia, using data derived from approximately 40 semi-structured interviews with employees at executive and senior management levels and with the firms' design and workplace consultants, and from various publications of and about the firms.