Social scientists are increasingly interested in the new organizational forms known as epistemic communities, knowledge networks, or communities of practice, depending on the discipline. These forms are made possible by new communication technologies, but they can be difficult to study qualitatively, often because their human, social, cultural, or symbolic capital is transmitted over significant distances with technologies that do not carry the full range of human expressions that a researcher using participant observation or ethnography hopes to experience. Qualitative methods are desirable for rendering rich data on human interaction but alone are ill equipped for studying community life conducted in diverse formal and informal organizations and over many new media. Social network analysis is desirable for rendering an overarching sketch of social interaction but alone is ill equipped for giving detail on incommensurate yet meaningful relationships. I propose `network ethnography' as a synergistic research design that synthesizes these two methods, using the strengths of each to make up for the weaknesses of the other. Network ethnography uses social network analysis to justify case selection for ethnography, facilitating the qualitative study of the varied organizational forms of knowledge networks.

Cultural differences are often used as explanations of organizational problems following mergers. This paper argues that this literature is to a large extent based on a realist epistemology where too little emphasis has been placed on the constructive processes. To partially bridge this gap, this study adopts a sensemaking approach to studying the (re)construction of cultural conceptions in the merger context. The study is based on extensive ethnographic material from eight cases of Finnish-Swedish mergers and acquisitions. The analysis of this material leads to a specification of three concurrent cultural sensemaking processes through which the top decision makers involved in the post-merger integration processes make sense of and enact cultural conceptions. First, this cultural sensemaking involves a search for rational understanding of cultural characteristics and differences. Second, cultural sensemaking also includes more or less suppressed emotional identification with either of the merging sides. Third, cultural sensemaking also involves purposeful manipulation of the cultural conceptions for more or less legitimate purposes. Based on this distinction, this study leads to specific propositions concerning how cultural conceptions are formed in post-merger organizations.

Research on emotion has just started to investigate emotions on higher levels of social interaction and aggregation, e.g. organizations or distributed work environments. For a long time the focus has been on the interrelation of cognition and emotion in individuals. But as more and more research is conducted on emotional effects in social interaction, aggregation, and emergence, it becomes obvious that the results are also important for emotional agents (both, natural and artificial) in human-computer interaction. Until now, computer scientific studies – mainly inspired by cognitive science – have designed sophisticated emotional architectures for dyadic interactions. But as emotional agents are increasingly required to engage in social interactions within larger aggregates, either as embodied systems or via multimodal interfaces, the need arises to precisely consider the social-structural peculiarities of emotion. Unfortunately, within the social sciences there is no integrative theory of emotion that interrelates various cognitive and sociological aspects and that computer scientists could use to design improved emotional agents and emotion supporting systems. Therefore, we propose a way to integrate sociological and cognitive theories to analyze emotions on three levels of abstraction: cognitive, interactional, and social structural. We illustrate various reciprocal causes and effects of emotion on the different levels and relate them to urging questions in emotional agents design and human-computer interaction.

The general phenomenon of interest here is the dysfunctional or neurotic organization – specifically, if and how members of neurotic organizations perceive and define the neurosis of the organization, how the patterns of neurotic structure and culture impact their perception of self, other and the collective, and how they structure and constrain organizational dialogue. The idea of dysfunction and neurosis originates in the psychoanalytic literature and has found limited application in the study of organizations over the past 3 decades. Generally, the neurotic organization is seen as one that reflects a rigid form of obsession or compulsion in its structure, culture and behavioral patterns. Kets de Vries, one of the prominent authors in this area, suggests that healthy people have a number of neurotic pre-occupations. We only speak of neurosis when one of them becomes prominent, i.e. when the person or in this case, the organization becomes rigidly focused on one issue, one question, one fantasy or fear which then structures and guides everything that happens in the organization. I am interested in neurotic organizations not only out of personal experience but also because I think that the concept provides a critical challenge to the “healthy ” organization

To my father, for providing me with the means of surviving in a twisted world: a twisted sense of humour. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The time has come to look back and reconstruct the process of how this dissertation came about. The task has not always been an easy one, and at times I almost doubted that I would finish. Without certain turning points during the process, in terms of particular individuals, events and other resources, it could not have been done. Having started as a PhD student at Hanken, Guje Sevón offered me the chance to join the ‘lama-project ’ (a project on the Finnish 1990s recession funded by the Academy of Finland), which is something I am tremendously grateful for. The topic of the thesis that arose from being involved in the project has never ceased to be interesting to me, which is one important reason for why I managed to stick with it until the very end. Guje, your enthusiasm, creative mind and wise comments lured me into reading, questioning and forced me to stretch my mind in order to understand what I was actually out to grasp. I can never thank you enough.

This paper investigates a taken-for-granted assumption in the emotions literature that taking care of emotional needs of employees contributes to company performance. Although previous studies demonstrated the impact of emotions on individual performance, the linkages between emotions and company performance still remain to be empirically examined. In an attempt to shed light onto this relatively unexplored area, we analyzed the role of positive emotional climate for overall company performance. Specifically, we hypothesized that an entrepreneur's intention to maintain a positive emotional climate would have a positive impact on the company's a) revenue, b) strategic growth, and c) outcome growth. To test these hypotheses, we analyzed a longitudinal data collected from entrepreneurs and small business owners operating in Greater Vancouver, British Columbia. In the first wave of our study, we asked respondents a series of questions regarding their intention to maintain a positive emotio...

Illinois. He is developing databases for scrutinizing organizational changes in higher education pursuant to completing a book on mathematical and computational models of academic systems. Allen’s research interests also include the sociology of science, the theoretical development of academic disciplines, and comparative higher education systems. Since Emile Durkheim, sociologists have been concerned with changes in the division of labor in society. 1 One reason for their scrutiny is the assumption that abrupt changes in the division of labor often reflect or signify transformations in occupational

The municipal courthouse is an organizational context that is overflowing with a wide-range of emotions, usually negative. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of emotional expression and its intersections with power and professionalism in the work of municipal court judges. The findings suggest that there are differences in the emotions that judges claim to express and the actual emotions that emerge in observations and court recordings. This study extends previous research by revealing how power and professional work are interestingly related to the judges ’ emotional control in the courtroom. Anger and Power 3 Some people sit there and you can just read on their face you know I hadn’t thought about it that way, and that’s the kinds where I feel good, that I’ve explained something, others it’s just, I’m just tolerating the SOB because he’s in the black robe and I’m down here, and you can just read that body language. I’m not really happy with what I hear but I gotta take my licks and get out of here. Some people walk out of the courtroom and you hear bullshit and you hear the f-word as they storm out of the courtroom under their breath because they’re mad. But there’s just a whole range of emotions in there.- Judge Adams, Municipal Court Judge, 4 years The municipal courthouse is an organizational context that is overflowing with a widerange

The article considers the discourse surrounding culture change programmes in two British manufacturing organisations. The analysis of organisational discourse is pursued as a means of revealing the indeterminacy of organisational experiences and the problems inherent to the introduction of generic change approaches such as TQM (Total Quality Management) and BPR (Business Process Reengineering). An examination of the discourse used in the case companies will show an intricate set of structural, cultural, economic, and personal pressures passing through the TQM/BPR concepts. Organisational actors from all hierarchical levels are shown to be “disciplined ” by the change discourse to various degrees. Three discursive movements are examined: the imposition / introduction of a hegemonic discourse, the resistance to this discourse, and the appropriation of the discourse by line managers to reconstitute their actions and those of senior management. The outcome of these movements is a contested set of stories, full of contradiction and ambiguity. If the change discourse is to be embodied in local practices it cannot remain purely monologic, but has to engage in a dialogic relationship with existing and emerging concepts and meanings.

The effect of emotional intelligence on salesperson's behavior and customers ' perceived service quality