Organization and Management Research Seminar: Lindsay Hamilton (University of York)

Biography:
Lindsay Hamilton is Deputy Dean of the School for Business and Society at the University of York. She has authored several books on multispecies ethnography, including 'Ethnography after Humanism' (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017) and 'Animals at Work' (Brill, 2013). 

Abstract: 
The imagery of the sea abounds in commercial discourses of ‘drowning in paperwork’, or projects becoming fatally ‘holed under the water’. Managers refer to ‘headwinds’ that restrict the ‘glide path’ of their strategic endeavours.  Yet there are more than metaphoric equivalences between organisations and oceans, both are ‘projects bound into complex relations of maintenance and repair’ that ‘drift laterally so that the object is never quite the same from one day to the next’ (O’Doherty, 2017: 20). While drawing on the reflective and metaphoric potential of such devices, this seminar/workshop is concerned by the physical features of the ocean, and specifically the intertidal zone as spaces of wonder, curiosity, surprise or fear when ‘the ongoing ebb and flow of agency’ (Barad 2003: 817) enables or constrains human foraging and sets the physical conditions through which the species can meet (Haraway 2008). Here, the activity of rockpooling - a playful and family-centred activity -  nonetheless holds potential for considering bigger questions of human organisation, particularly in relation to environments and ecosystems where nonhumans dwell. The theory of charisma (already familiar to business and management) is applied to consider the ‘relatedness’ of social actors through unseen affective influences during rockpooling.  Charisma (as presented here) is not concerned with human actions alone, but as a descriptor of the peculiar forms of affect emerging between humans and animals (crabs, fish) and vegetable life (seaweed, shells). Charisma helps understand how the physical features of nonhuman entities relates to how they come to be perceived, known and thus treated. Extending this into 'dry land' settings, like call-centres, offices and corridors, it serves as a valuable theoretical context for making sense of the micro-cosmic interactions in everyday acts of organising and managing. This thinking is useful for developing ideas on work, management and - at a broader level - for underpinning the ways that 'others' can and should be treated.

The lecture is open to all and free of charge.