A volume in Qualitative Organization ResearchSeries Editor(s): Jean M. Bartunek, Boston College; Kimberly D. Elsbach, University of California - Davis and John A. Wagner, Michigan State UniversityOver the past ten years, the Davis Conference on Qualitative Research hasbecome the world's leading conference for qualitative researchers inorganizational studies. The authors of the "Best Presentation Awards" at the Davis Conference from the past fouryears have contributed chapters to this volume. These papers cover topics ranging from organizational namechanges and organizational afterlife, to the use of written letters to build relationships and the use of a "creativefoil" to improve one's leadership image. Yet all of these papers are similar in that they benefited from thecommunity of over 100 scholars developed through the Davis Conference, and represent qualitative research atits very best.

Social scientists develop knowledge that is directly pertinent to global challenges and crises and need to be included in initiatives taken to address them. This book is a step towards such presentation and involvement. Global crises are crucially intertwined with our relationships, groups, organizations, communities, institutions, how they collaborate with each other, how they compete with each other, and the dynamics intermingled with these. These dimensions are inadequately addressed by scientists and insufficiently recognized by other stakeholders. With contributions from a global array of respected social scientists, this shortform book contributes to deep understandings of social phenomena associated with global crises. In illuminating interventions via those dealing with challenges and crises first-hand, the book also shows the ongoing personal development required to address global crises in productive ways. This book will be of interest to social scientists, researchers, academics, organizational consultants and students in the fields of management, especially those focusing on global challenges and crises. It will also be a useful resource for practitioners and policy makers.

Impact is of increasing importance to all researchers, given its growing centrality to those who fund, assess and use research around the world. Delivering Impact in Management Research sets out a detailed and nuanced analysis of how research impact is best delivered in practice. Starting with a rich conceptualisation, the authors move on to discuss models through which meaningful impact is framed and delivered. The book explains processes, skills and approaches to impact, along with examples and insights into potential pitfalls and solutions. Examples are drawn from around the world and systems such as the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) are discussed as part of a key contribution to primary debates globally. A significant contribution to the long-standing discussion about relevance in business, management and organisation studies research, this concise book is essential reading for scholars and university administrators seeking to advance their understanding of delivering and demonstrating world-class research that matters.

Social scientists develop knowledge that is directly pertinent to global challenges and crises and need to be included in initiatives taken to address them. This book is a step towards such presentation and involvement. Global crises are crucially intertwined with our relationships, groups, organizations, communities, institutions, how they collaborate with each other, how they compete with each other, and the dynamics intermingled with these. These dimensions are inadequately addressed by scientists and insufficiently recognized by other stakeholders. With contributions from a global array of respected social scientists, this shortform book contributes to deep understandings of social phenomena associated with global crises. In illuminating interventions via those dealing with challenges and crises first-hand, the book also shows the ongoing personal development required to address global crises in productive ways. This book will be of interest to social scientists, researchers, academics, organizational consultants and students in the fields of management, especially those focusing on global challenges and crises. It will also be a useful resource for practitioners and policy makers.

Impact is of increasing importance to all researchers, given its growing centrality to those who fund, assess and use research around the world. Delivering Impact in Management Research sets out a detailed and nuanced analysis of how research impact is best delivered in practice. Starting with a rich conceptualisation, the authors move on to discuss models through which meaningful impact is framed and delivered. The book explains processes, skills and approaches to impact, along with examples and insights into potential pitfalls and solutions. Examples are drawn from around the world and systems such as the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) are discussed as part of a key contribution to primary debates globally. A significant contribution to the long-standing discussion about relevance in business, management and organisation studies research, this concise book is essential reading for scholars and university administrators seeking to advance their understanding of delivering and demonstrating world-class research that matters.

Jean M. Bartunek, the 2001-2002 President of the Academy of Management, has written an excellent scholarly book on organizational and educational change. Using a joint insider/outsider approach, this book tells the story of a change agent group--a group of teachers--that was creating change in its organization setting, a Network of Independent Schools. The group's focus was on empowerment and professional development for teachers in the Network. The book describes virtually everything that happened in the group over its first seven years and summarizes what happened during its final two years. It explores the identity, work, and evolution of change agent groups in organizations, with particular emphasis on teachers and educational change. Through the book's extensive quotations and narrative account, the reader is enabled to enter into the world of the teacher group studied over the course of its nine-year history. In addition, the book includes analysis of the underlying processes involved in the change, focusing on the change agent group's identity, its actions and relationships with stakeholders as they jointly evolved over time, and their impacts on the vitality of the change effort. It contributes a new understanding of fundamental processes involved in organizational change, especially when viewed from the perspective of change agents. In addition, the book provides practical implications for change agents, specifically change agents in schools. As such, this account will be useful for graduate students and researchers in organizational change, educational leadership, and professional development. It is a part of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates growing series in organization management.

Jean M. Bartunek, the 2001-2002 President of the Academy of Management, has written an excellent scholarly book on organizational and educational change. Using a joint insider/outsider approach, this book tells the story of a change agent group--a group of teachers--that was creating change in its organization setting, a Network of Independent Schools. The group's focus was on empowerment and professional development for teachers in the Network. The book describes virtually everything that happened in the group over its first seven years and summarizes what happened during its final two years. It explores the identity, work, and evolution of change agent groups in organizations, with particular emphasis on teachers and educational change. Through the book's extensive quotations and narrative account, the reader is enabled to enter into the world of the teacher group studied over the course of its nine-year history.
In addition, the book includes analysis of the underlying processes involved in the change, focusing on the change agent group's identity, its actions and relationships with stakeholders as they jointly evolved over time, and their impacts on the vitality of the change effort. It contributes a new understanding of fundamental processes involved in organizational change, especially when viewed from the perspective of change agents. In addition, the book provides practical implications for change agents, specifically change agents in schools. As such, this account will be useful for graduate students and researchers in organizational change, educational leadership, and professional development. It is a part of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates growing series in organization management.

Qualitative research encompasses all forms of field research performed with qualitative data, that is, data that is presented in non-numeric form. Purely quantitative organizational researchers should find Advances in Qualitative Organizational Research valuable as a source of grounded insights and testable hypotheses. The need for an annual series such as this grows out of the absence of a periodic outlet offering the physical space per manuscript required to write a meaningfully deep description of qualitative data and, at the same time, a sufficiently detailed theoretical interpretation and conceptual conclusion.

A volume in Qualitative Organization ResearchSeries Editor(s): Jean M. Bartunek, Boston College; Kimberly D. Elsbach, University of California - Davis and John A. Wagner, Michigan State UniversityOver the past ten years, the Davis Conference on Qualitative Research hasbecome the world's leading conference for qualitative researchers inorganizational studies. The authors of the "Best Presentation Awards" at the Davis Conference from the past fouryears have contributed chapters to this volume. These papers cover topics ranging from organizational namechanges and organizational afterlife, to the use of written letters to build relationships and the use of a "creativefoil" to improve one's leadership image. Yet all of these papers are similar in that they benefited from thecommunity of over 100 scholars developed through the Davis Conference, and represent qualitative research atits very best.

Church Ethics and Its Organizational Context is the first book to provide a broadly interdisciplinary approach to understanding the leadership crisis in the Catholic Church in the wake of the sex abuse scandal and how it was handled. Well-known scholars, religious clergy, and laymen in the trenches of church formation and leadership come together from the disciplines of organizational behavior, theology, sociology, history, and law, to foster the creation of a new code of ethics that is both ecclesial and professional. Touching on issues of governance, authority, accountability, and transparency, this volume goes on to specifically explore whether and how professional ethics can shape the identity and actions of Church leaders, ministers, and their congregations. While evoked by the sex scandal in the Church, the essays in this book raise questions that have implications far beyond this current issue, to much broader issues such as the role of professionalism in ethics and what it means for an organization to engage in moral action.

Church Ethics and Its Organizational Context is the first book to provide a broadly interdisciplinary approach to understanding the leadership crisis in the Catholic Church in the wake of the sex abuse scandal and how it was handled. Well-known scholars, religious clergy, and laymen in the trenches of church formation and leadership come together from the disciplines of organizational behavior, theology, sociology, history, and law, to foster the creation of a new code of ethics that is both ecclesial and professional. Touching on issues of governance, authority, accountability, and transparency, this volume goes on to specifically explore whether and how professional ethics can shape the identity and actions of Church leaders, ministers, and their congregations. While evoked by the sex scandal in the Church, the essays in this book raise questions that have implications far beyond this current issue, to much broader issues such as the role of professionalism in ethics and what it means for an organization to engage in moral action.

"Kolb and Bartunek's Hidden Conflict in Organizations picks up where earlier works left off. . . . They provide some much-needed conceptual elaboration and empirical detail--elaboration and detail that earlier contextualist perspectives have not provided. . . . Despite being an edited volume, this book is surprisingly well focused and delicious to consume. . . . In directing our attention to the usual darkened and easily overlooked corners of organizational strife, this book provides a particularly compelling documentation of the social contextualist thesis. By documenting how minimal most organizational actors' awareness of context is, coupled with active processes of denial, avoidance, and discounting, this book reminds us just how important it is to attend occasionally to the perceptual ground within which a figure is embedded. . . . The book does a beautiful job at articulating the importance of social context." --Negotiation Journal "What a timely and much needed volume for the field of conflict research! We believe wholeheartedly in the book's continuous theme about there being a 'hidden' side to conflict--a side which we feel is hidden to scholars, not to disputants or even practitioners. . . . The volume's contributors clearly illustrate that unexplored gaps exist between the 'conflict' studied by scholars and the multifaceted experience of those knee-deep in organizational conflict. . . . The reward for this focus is a richer and more dynamic picture of the experiences and functions of conflict in the organization. . . . This volume will and, indeed, should make us more aware of our own ways of constructing other's disputes and, hence, the field's current theories and prescriptions and proscriptions. This work will really have its impact when it significantly transforms our ways of studying and understanding conflict and eventually leads us to develop innovative and more effective ways for people to deal with (resolve or stimulate) their disputes in the workplace. We thank the editors and the authors for a wonderful beginning." --Journal of Organizational Behavior "Necessary reading for anyone interested in a comprehensive understanding of conflict theory. The dominant strength of this book is that it looks beyond the sometimes fraudulently tidy constructs of conflict theory to the messy and often irrational nature of social intercourse. . . . The succinct recapitulation of organizational theory that is relevant to conflict studies, and the extensive notes and bibliographical references in the book give the reader quick and effective access to the conflict resolution literature. The case-study approach makes the book attractive as supplementary reading." --Canadian Journal of Communication "Scholarly works that invite--or force--critical reexamination of assumptive frameworks are especially valuable. Hidden Conflict in Organizations is such a work. . . . The authors of the present volume go beyond early contributions, however, by providing much needed conceptual elaboration and empirical detail regarding precisely how conflicts remain hidden in organizations and the consequences of such 'hiddenness.'. . . The conceptual contributions made by these diverse individual efforts become most obvious when they are viewed against the backdrop of mainstream conflict theory and research. . . . Hidden Conflict does a service by reminding us also of the many ways in which conflict is embedded in larger, more complex social contexts and cultures. . . . This is the kind of book that reminds you of the pleasures of subtlety and that prompts a more nuanced understanding of a phenomenon. Good scholarly works, like good poetry, often bring to light lacunae. They allow one to feel the textures and contours of a landscape that often escape the eye. This is such a book." --The Academy of Management Review "The book represents a thoughtful collection of recent research and provocative thinking about very different kinds of disputes, mostly covert and informal, and how they are managed or left to fester in very different kinds of organizational settings. . . . This is a unique contribution to the study of conflict in organizations. . . . The authors have made a major contribution to a vast body of knowledge and opened up new avenues for applied research. . . . The authors are to be lauded for raising our awareness of hidden conflicts, their pervasiveness, and destructiveness in organizations of all kinds. . . . If you are a student of conflict and are seeking a scholarly work, this book is for you. It . . . will broaden your perspective, tell you something you didn't know, and give you plenty to think about." --Personnel Psychology "This book lends a refreshing perspective on an old theme." --Stern's HR Management Review "This is a much needed and delightful book about the hidden side of organizational life. The wide variety of settings in which hidden conflicts are observed and the high quality of the authors and their writing makes this not only an important but eminently readable book." Edgar H. Schein, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology "The individual essays are excellent and well written. . . . Each of the essays, in addition to descriptive material, offers a useful theoretical framework for understanding informal dispute resolution. The essays would provide useful supplemental reading for a course in dispute resolution theory and also could be used as examples in a practice course." --The Alternative Newsletter Conflict is a persistent fact of organizational life. In the midst of daily activities, disputes arise over a host of work and other issues. In contrast to the findings in traditional studies of conflict in organizations, most organizational conflict never becomes public. Rather, it is expressed during routine social and work-related interactions among members, and occurs in ways that reflect the specific organizational structures and cultures in which the interactions are embedded. This examination richly details some of these less public forms of conflict, which may take the form of avoidance, toleration, gossip, and vengeance. A collection of ethnographic studies of conflict management, Hidden Conflict in Organizations illustrates the use of these behind-the-scenes approaches in a wide variety of organizational settings, including a police department, start-up biotechnology firm, and labor-management negotiation. The contributors make it clear that, far from being an occasional occurrence in organizations, conflict is embedded in their very fabric. They draw on theory developed in other fields--disputing in legal contexts, deconstruction of texts, and ideological critique, among others--to examine conflictual processes in organizations. Adding a new dimension to the study of organizational conflict, this volume looks at the frequency of conflict, shows how conflicts are "really" handled in organizations, and suggests that these conflicts can be better managed for organizational effectiveness.