Tag Archives: pragmatism

Transformative possibilities in the everyday: habit, affect, and the unconscious. A talk by Prof Carolyn Pedwell.

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Prof Carolyn Pedwell gave an overview of her book Revolutionary Routines at the Complexity and Management Conference, 2025. You can watch her presentation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niWTBSKABmM&t=12s

In her talk she covered a number of topics which privileged the every day, local and emergent interactions between humans, which is also the subject/object of our research community.

In response I re-presented some of the themes she covered from a complexity perspective, not as a form of critique, but as a way of bringing to light what it was I saw in her book when I first read it. I thought she would be a great speaker for our conference. Carolyn’s book and the perspective of perspectives we term complex responsive processes have family resemblances.

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Further thoughts on the similarities and differences between CMS and complex responsive processes

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At this year’s conference Hugh Willmott, Research Professor of Organization Studies at Cardiff University, gave a key note on the financialized organisation during which he made a strong argument for the rehabilitation of political economy as a focus of research in organization studies. Additionally, he began engaging with complex responsive processes noting similarities and differences with critical management studies (CMS).

In this post and the next I will try to continue this discussion, noting points of overlap and contrast as a way of exploring the difference that makes a difference. One of the difficulties of doing this is that CMS is a broad and diverse church which contains a spectrum of opionion. So the basis of the exploration will be the latest edition of Hugh’s book co-written with Mats Alvesson, Making Sense of Management: a Critical Introduction. This post develops the input I gave at the June conference. Continue reading →