As part of a future postdoc at HEC Montreal Virginia received a post doc stipend from Per & Eivors Wikströms foundation. At HEC Virginia will continue her research on organizational routines in the healthcare industry.
Björn has been holding two presentations about his Everest experience 2016. The first presentation was held during the annual Umeå Climbing club christmas dinner. In this presentation he talked about the research team, what we can learn from studying these kinds of extreme contextual settings and of course Everest as such. The second presentation was held for the department of Business administration where he shared some of his insights from collecting data and doing field work in extreme contexts.
For some time now Markus has been working on a podcast dedicated to learning from people involved in and with extreme contexts. The idea is to take seriously such individuals experiences and translate it to more ordinary settings and organisations. A plethora of different settings and themes will be covered but the first few episodes deals with high altitude mountaineering and how it may be applicable to i.e. project management. You find the podcast at www.extremecontexts.com
Everyday life in extreme contexts:
The roles of identity, routines and emotions
Together with the principal researcher Linda Rouleau, and researchers Sebastien Arcand, Stephanie Gagnon, Markus is involved in a project given to Linda and funded by the government of Canada.
Summary
In a global world characterized by risks, catastrophes and accidents, organizations have to deal with extreme events that can provoke loss or damage. Examples include major political collapses (e.g., Quinn & Worline, 2008), disasters (e.g., Majchrzak, Jarvenpaa & Andrea, 2007), catastrophic environmental accidents (e.g., Shepherd & Williams, 2013), death during mountaineering expeditions (Elmes & Frame, 2008), emergency situations (e.g., Cornelissen, Mantere & Vaara, 2014), and so on. Such extreme events are generally the sites of retrospective inquiries investigating what went wrong (Brown, 2003; Boudes & Laroche, 2009). However, as Buchanan (2011: 273) states, “following an accident, crisis, disaster or other extreme events, the recommendations from investigations and inquiries are often not implemented.” One of the multiple reasons explaining this statement is that those conducting these inquiries focus on unpacking these events without knowing the processes and dynamics through which life within organizations was previously structured and ordered. Instead of mainly concentrating our efforts on extreme events when it is too late, we propose to examine the processes and dynamics characteristic of the extreme contexts in which extreme events are likely to occur more or less frequently. To develop efficient tools and intervention strategies, and even to improve prevention policies, there is a need to better understand the way managers and organizational members play their roles, tinker with the limited means they have, and live with the emotional pressures in the everyday life of extreme contexts. This is the aim of this research project.
Last night Markus gave a presentation in the unscientific lecture series for the students. The presentation was based on some of the recent research on the effects on boredom and how it could be managed in a temporary organisation – such as a mountaineering expedition.
Honestly, there’s time for work and there is time for play. Tonight it was the latter. Parts of the group were enjoying some food together, life as an academic, methods and why we fo what we do. In addition of life in general and bag pipe manufacturing.
Together with Cecilia Hammar Wijkmark (MSB), Oscar and Markus was at the kickoff of the larger S&S test arena where they have a sub-project focused on developing operational command scenarios for the blue light services. It was a couple of interesting days with approximately 40 participants from academia, business and public organisations.
The photo describes the general idea behind the project.
Together with professor Malin Tillmar (Linköping university) and Johanna Rein (Uppsala University) Markus co-convened a track at FEKIS (the Swedish association for business studies researchers) that focused on among other things extreme contexts. Opportunities such as frame breaking, increased access, juxtaposition and tweaking of existing theories were discussed. Challenges such as the ethics of becoming immersed in other, what could be, criminal activities (e.g. Sudhir Venkatesh – Gangleader for a day (great book!), language, cultural and social norms were also discussed. The picture is from the debate on business studies and ethics.
Markus has been invited to give a presentation at a university-wide student presentation initiative on the topic of “on Boredom – in which parties are held on Mount Everest, and amusement is the key to survival”. The presentation will be based on studies on Everest from 2013 and 2016. The full presentation schedule is available here
The other day we had the pleasure of listening to a very interesting seminar with Dr. Katharina Dittrich from University of Zürich. Katharina presented a paper on the ecology of routines – or how routines fits together and influences each other as they are performed. This is a very hot and important topic and it will be very interesting to follow Katharina´s and others work on it!!
Katharina spent two days in Umeå interacting with the team and offering valuable insights on the work on organizational routines and practice theory.