In this editorial we introduce the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and his concept of polyphony, and discuss ways in which polyphony has been interpreted and applied in organization studies. It is important to appreciate that two streams seem to emerge in this body of work: the use of polyphony as a textual strategy in writing research narratives and as a tool for analysing organizations as discursive spaces where heterogeneous and multiple voices engage in a contest for audibility and power. We conclude this editorial by briefly introducing each of the papers in this themed section

This article provides insights into the role of minority employees in reproducing and contesting the discourse of meritocracy in contemporary organizations. It also discusses the effects the contestation of meritocracy, or the lack thereof, has on organizational power relations and on the situation of individuals who are the target of meritocratic policies. Empirically, we address the experiences of a growing category of workers-women academics of non-UK origin-employed within UK business schools. Based on the analysis of narratives focusing on the career trajectories of our research participants, we show how the belief in, and paradoxically the questioning of, meritocratic principles contribute to the reproduction of inequalities. We conclude that, as a result of the overarching perpetuation, and only limited challenging of, extant power relations in organizations, both the current definitions of merit and the application of meritocratic principles remain unchanged.

This article explores the experiences of a growing but hitherto under-researched category of academics employed within UK higher education: women of non-UK origin. Drawing on an intersectional approach, we examine how gender and foreignness act as dynamic, interrelating categories in producing particular subjectivities in the context of UK business schools. We employ a qualitative methodology based on narrative interviews with 31 foreign women academics. In the analysis, we outline the broader global forces that have shaped their trajectories in choosing the UK as their destination, and the place of gender and foreignness in the participants' narratives of their experience. Our findings point to how the discourse of internationalization conceals intracategorical differences among non-national staff, further supported by a merit-based system that promotes an individualized view. However, participants' narratives provide examples of how gender and foreignness are mobilized in different ways by different actors -including themselves -in the production of social locations. As such, the paper contributes to critical debates regarding the academic workplace and the changing conditions of UK academia.

The aim of this paper is to examine the effects of evaluations of non-native speaking staff's spoken English in international business settings. We adopt a sociolinguistic perspective on power and inequalities in linguistically diverse organizations in an Anglophone environment. The interpretive qualitative study draws on 54 interviews with non-native English speaking staff in 19 UK business schools. We analyze, along the dimensions of status, solidarity and dynamism, the ways in which nonnative speakers, on the basis of their spoken English, are evaluated by themselves and by listeners.We show how such evaluations refer to issues beyond the speaker's linguistic fluency, and have consequences for her or his actions. The study contributes to the literature on language and power in international business through offering fine-grained insights into and elucidating how the interconnected evaluative processes impact the formation and perpetuation of organizational power relations and inequalities. It also puts forward implications for managing the officially monolingual, yet linguistically diverse organizations.

The leadership literature is full of stories of heroic self-sacrifice. Sacrificial leadership behaviour, some scholars conclude, is to be recommended. In this article we follow Keith Grint’s conceptualization of leadership as necessarily pertaining to the sacred, but—drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s notion of profanation—we highlight the need for organization scholars to profane the sacralizations embedded in leadership thinking. One example of this, which guides us throughout the article, is the novel A Wild Sheep Chase, by the Japanese author Haruki Murakami. By means of a thematic reading of the novel, we discuss how it contributes to profaning particular notions of sacrifice and the sacred in leadership thinking. In the novel, self-sacrifice does not function as a way of establishing a leadership position, but as a way to avoid the dangers associated with leadership, and possibly redeem humans from their current collective urge to become leaders. Inspired by Murakami’s fictional example, we call organization scholars to engage in profanation of leadership studies and, in doing so, open new vistas for leadership theory and practice.