Cardiff Organisational Research Group

CORGies seeks to advance scholarship and coordinate a varied range of research activities on organising and organisations.

The Cardiff Organisational Research Group (CORGies) provides a welcoming, supportive and inclusive context to discuss the broad themes of organisations and organising from a multi-disciplinary, multi-paradigm and multi-methods perspective.

CORGies is based in the Management, Employment and Organisation Section of Cardiff Business School but also includes other scholars with an interest in organisations as well as visiting national and international scholars.

Reflecting a broad range of topics on the subject of organisations and organising the group’s research interests span a variety of themes including:

Critical leadership and management studies
Emotions and organisations
Identities and inequalities in organisations and organising – gender, ethnicity, age and disabilities
Ethics and organisations – sustainability, organisational deception, whistle-blowing
Conceptualising power elites and expert authority
Power and organisations – the role of social media and big tech
Social movements research – resistance and activism
New forms of organisations and organising – cooperatives, social enterprises, coliving

The research group provides a vibrant, engaging and varied programme of activities which take place at least once a month and includes a wide range of participants and contributions. These include the following activities:

Book Readings

We discuss and review books which represent both new topics of inquiry as well as re-visiting classical texts in the field of organisations, in recent years this has included the following texts:

Zuboff, S. (2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Hochschild, A. R (1983) The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling
Jackall, R. (1988) Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers
Gouldner, A. (1955) Wild Cat Strikes

External and internal research presentations

Colleagues are encouraged to present their research at whatever stage of development to gain insights and feedback from the group.

Some of the themes covered recently include:

Robin Burrow and Rebecca Scott – The Blood and Bruises of Organisational Life
Tom Entwistle and Heike Doering – Whistleblowing: The Mid-Staffs Case
Sarah Gilmore – Universal Basic Income
Cara Reed and Mike Reed – De-legitimising Expertise
Sarah Gilmore and Nancy Harding – Organisational Socialisation
Leighton Andrews - Unleadership and the COVID pandemic
Karel Musilek – Work/life Relations in Coliving spaces
Marcus Gomes – Platform Activism

In addition, CORGies welcomes presentations from external scholars from the UK and internationally and have includes the following speakers:

Alistair Mutch (Nottingham Trent University) – Rethinking Institutional Logics
Martin Parker (Bristol University) – The Future of the Business School
Mark Learmonth and Kevin Morrell (Durham University) – Critical Perspectives of Leadership
David Courpasson (Visiting Professor EM Lyon, France) and Mike Reed (Cardiff University) – Cannibals in Suits: Some Stories and Some Reflections
Morgana Martins Krieger (Fundação Getulio Vargas – EAESP Brazil) - Urban Conflict and Collective Action in Latin America: Struggle, Engagement and Agreements towards the Right to the City.

PhD student mini-conference

Every year we hold a mini-conference for PhD students to showcase their research. Students present their research to colleagues in a supportive context which helps to build and strengthen connections between their research and the wider research group.

Reading groups

To connect to broader discussions in the field of organizations and social sciences more broadly we also engage in extended discussions based on journal articles.

These have included:

CMS and Brexit – Bristow and Robinson (2018)
Does BREXIT mean the end of Critical Management? – Chris Grey (2018)
More recently, we assessed some of the lessons for the study of organizations in C Wright-Mills’ Sociological Imagination based on the review by Gane and Back (2012).

Extended Debates and Discussion

Annually CORGies organizes a day of extended discussion and debate on a selected topic which integrates the varied research interests of the group. Members participate in presentations on the theme which have included the following topics:

Identities and Organizations
10 years on from the GFC: Implications for Organisations and Organising
The COVID Pandemic: Confronting the Challenges of Organising and Organisation.

Selected publications

Hassard, J. and Morris, J. 2022. The extensification of managerial work in the digital age: middle managers, spatio-temporal boundaries and control. Human Relations 75 (9), pp.1647-1678. (10.1177/00187267211003123)
Ferns, G. , Lambert, A. and Gunther, M. 2022. The analogical construction of stigma as a moral dualism: the case of the fossil fuel divestment movement. Academy of Management Journal 65 (4), pp.1383-1415. (10.5465/amj.2018.0615)
Harding, N. , Gilmore, S. and Ford, J. 2022. Matter that embodies: agentive flesh and working body/selves. Organization Studies 43 (5), pp.649-668. (10.1177/0170840621993235)
Gilmore, S. and Harding, N. 2022. Organizational socialization as kin-work: a psychoanalytic model of settling into a new job. Human Relations 75 (3), pp.583-605. (10.1177/0018726720964255)
Morris, J. et al. 2021. Understanding managerial work in the modern Japanese firm: The influence of new organizational forms and changing human resource management practices. Economic and Industrial Democracy 42 (4), pp.1378-1406. (10.1177/0143831X19875785)
Ferns, G. and Amaeshi, K. 2021. Fueling climate (in)action: how organizations engage in hegemonization to avoid transformational action on climate change. Organization Studies 42 (7), pp.1005-1029. (10.1177/0170840619855744)
Daudigeos, T. et al., 2021. Elusive domination and the fate of critique in neo-participative management: a French pragmatist approach. Organization Studies 42 (3), pp.453-471. (10.1177/0170840619856027)
Doering, H. et al. 2021. Organizational identity threats and aspirations in reputation management. Public Management Review 23 (3), pp.376-396. (10.1080/14719037.2019.1679234)
Reed, C. and Thomas, R. 2021. The generation game: governing through bio-politics. Management Learning 52 (1), pp.47-64. (10.1177/1350507620938926)
Courpasson, D. , Younes, D. and Reed, M. 2021. Durkheim in the neoliberal organization: taking resistance and solidarity seriously. Organization Theory 2 (1), pp.1-24. (10.1177/2631787720982619)
de Lima, F. A. , Neutzling, D. M. and Gomes, M. 2021. Do organics standards have a real taste of sustainability? A critical essay. Journal of Rural Studies 81 , pp.89-98. (10.1016/j.jrurstud.2020.08.035)
Galazka, A. 2021. From ‘dirty wound care’ to ‘woundology’: a professional project for wound healing clinicians. Sociology of Health and Illness 43 (1), pp.99-115. (10.1111/1467-9566.13200)
Reed, C. and Thomas, R. 2021. Embracing indeterminacy: on being a liminal professional. British Journal of Management 32 (1), pp.219-234. (10.1111/1467-8551.12385)
Andrews, L. 2021. Mortality, blame avoidance and the state: constructing Boris Johnson’s exit strategy. In: Price, S. and Harbisher, B. eds. Media, and the Covid-19 Pandemic: framing public discourse. Routledge
Burrow, R. and Williams, R. 2020. Stressed, depressed and exhausted: Six years as a teacher in UK state education. Work, Employment and Society 34 (5), pp.949-958. (10.1177/0950017020903040)
Andrews, L. and Iosifidis, P. 2020. Regulating the Internet intermediaries in a post-truth world: Beyond media policy?. International Communication Gazette 82 (3), pp.211-230. (10.1177/1748048519828595)
Jenkins, S. and Delbridge, R. 2020. Exploring organizational deception: Agency, context and social relations. Organization Theory 1 (2), pp.1-24. (10.1177/2631787720919436)
Delbridge, R. , Endo, T. and Morris, J. 2019. Entrepreneurs or employees? The emergence of "disciplining entrepreneurialism" in subsidiary organizations at cyberagent. In: Sydow, J. and Berends, H. eds. Managing Inter-organizational Collaborations: Process Views. Vol. 64, Research in the Sociology of Organizations Emerald. , pp.163-183. (10.1108/S0733-558X20190000064012)
Reed, M. and Burrell, G. 2019. Theory and organization studies: the need for contestation. Organization Studies 40 (1), pp.39-54. (10.1177/0170840617745923)
Butler, N. and Stoyanova Russell, D. 2018. No funny business: precarious work and emotional labour in stand-up comedy. Human Relations 71 (12), pp.1666-1686. (10.1177/0018726718758880)
Alves, M. A. and Gomes, M. V. P. 2018. Failure or success? Defensive strategies and piecemeal change among racial inequalities in the Brazilian banking sector. In: Briscoe, F. , King, B. G. and Leitzinger, J. eds. Social Movements, Stakeholders and Non-Market Strategy. Vol. 56, Research in the Sociology of Organizations Emerald. , pp.317-348. (10.1108/S0733-558X20180000056012)
Hassard, J. and Morris, J. 2018. Contrived competition and manufactured uncertainty: understanding managerial job insecurity narritives in large corporations. Work, Employment and Society 32 (3), pp.564-580. (10.1177/0950017017751806)
Gill, M. J. and Burrow, R. 2018. The function of fear in institutional maintenance: Feeling frightened as an essential ingredient in haute cuisine. Organization Studies 39 (4), pp.445-465. (10.1177/0170840617709306)
Farrell, C. and Morris, J. 2017. Neo-bureaucratic organisational forms, technology, control and contingent work: the case of UK TV. New Technology, Work and Employment 32 (2), pp.115-130. (10.1111/ntwe.12088)
Finkel, R. et al., 2017. Diversifying the creative: creative work, creative industries, creative identities. Organization 24 (3), pp.281-288. (10.1177/1350508417690167)
Jenkins, S. and Delbridge, R. 2017. Trusted to deceive: A case study of 'strategic deception' and the normalization of lying at work. Organization Studies 38 (1), pp.53-76. (10.1177/0170840616655481)

Sarah Jenkins is the Wales Lead for the UK Centre for Evidence Implementation in Adult Social Care (IMPACT). This is a newly funded centre by the ESRC/Health Foundation, the centre will be funded for six years from 2021-2027 with an award of £15m to focus on the establishment of an implementation centre to develop a programme of innovations and best practice to improve adult social care outcomes. IMPACT is a collaboration based on Universities representing the four UK nations, the centre is based in Birmingham University and led by Prof Jon Glasby.

Tim Edwards is the Principal Investigator for the ESRC's Global Challenges Research Fund (up to £60,000) to look at the challenge of sustainable development in the Atlantic Forest of Sao Paulo state, Brazil. Tim leads a team of social and computer scientists from Cardiff Business School and Cardiff School of Computer Science and Informatics working alongside social, computer and natural scientists from Fundação Getulio Vargas, UNICAMP and the Federal University of San Carlo, Brazil. The aim is to develop a responsible innovation approach to citizen science that builds the necessary socio-technical infrastructure to support sustainable development goals in the local community.