The Post-it Note Economy: Understanding Post-Fordist Business Innovation through One of Its Key Semiotic Technologies

Wilf, Eitan

doi:10.1086/688952

Cited by 33 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…The theoretical combination of the perspectives of gendered practices (Bruni et al, ; Gherardi, ; Gherardi & Poggio, ; Martin, , ; Poggio, ), and micro‐politics of power and resistance (Parsons & Priola, ; Thomas & Davies, , ), and the particular reference to the characteristics of pragmatic ambiguity (Giroux, ; Wilf, ) enabled me to propose an empirically embedded conceptual contribution by coining the term gendered practices of public ambiguity. This conceptualization simultaneously captures and emphasizes the routine, ambiguous, public and performative elements of gendered power practices in organizations, refining our understanding of how routine elements of ambiguity are strongly related to publicity in constructing gendered interactions in organizational space.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I rely on the concept of pragmatic ambiguity to analyse polysemic practices with clear public visibility but ambiguous content, allowing for power multidirectionality. Pragmatic ambiguity refers to the ‘condition of admitting more than one course of action’ (Giroux, , p. 1228) or ‘signs that point to a wide spectrum of potential objects for those who are supposed to interpret them’ (Wilf, , p. 733). My argument is that passing notes is a way to preserve ambiguity, and therein lies much of the power of this gendered practice.…”

Section: Gendered Practices and Micro‐politics Of Power And Resistancmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Note passing as gendered practices of public ambiguity in a hyper‐masculine organization

Karazi‐Presler

2020

Gender Work & Organization

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This article explores a surprising and seemingly mundane organizational practice: passing notes during professional meetings. Based on 34 in‐depth interviews with women in a hyper‐masculine organization — the Israeli military — this study focuses on what I term gendered practices of public ambiguity. It demonstrates how these practices shed light on three interrelated paths to power at work: (i) practices of public intimacy between men; (ii) practices of women's degradation by men; and (iii) practices of recognition claims by women. The tension between the publicity inherent in the routine passing of notes and the ambiguity of their contents calls for a more nuanced theorization of gendered power practices, which transcends the accepted dichotomy of doing and undoing gender, reproducing or challenging the symbolic gender order. The findings show that gendered micro‐practices can become polysemic symbolic spaces in which women redirect the flow of power, if only temporarily and locally, and turn it into a multidirectional and multi‐agentic resource. The conceptual contribution of these findings is discussed in terms of the positioning of women in hyper‐masculine environments as pragmatic subjects who (re‐)construct mechanisms of power out of the restricted repertoire available to them.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Gendered Practices and Micro‐politics Of Power And Resistancmentioning

confidence: 99%

Note passing as gendered practices of public ambiguity in a hyper‐masculine organization

Karazi‐Presler

2020

Gender Work & Organization

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“…The present moment of formulating conjectures is a fast-moving situation (Luck, 2014). Practitioners need to coordinate their interactions in order to make visible conjectures into more meaningful, itemized and publicly observable pseudo-data they can revisit later (in different times, places, contexts and with different people) (Luck, 2010; Wilf, 2016). Nevertheless, doing so in the present creates a tension between participating in immediate conversation, as a speaker or listener, and engaging in an activity to keep account (e.g.…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imagining Futures: Theorizing the Practical Knowledge of Future-making

Thompson

Byrne

2021

Organization Studies

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The study of future-making – how practitioners make and enact imagined futures – has become a cornerstone for understanding the temporal dynamics of organisation, strategy and entrepreneurship. This article investigates the texture of practical knowledge that enables entrepreneuring practitioners to jointly address the challenges inherent to future-making. We conduct a video ethnography of a business modelling programme producing 79 hours of audio-visual recordings. Using multimodal conversation analysis, we unpack different forms of practical knowledge that simultaneously binds practitioners in a web of mutual expectations and establishes modes of thinking and acting for the creation of imagined futures. This contributes to existing studies by demonstrating that the discursive, embodied and material dimensions of future-making are fundamentally entangled within textures of practical knowledge. Consequently, we shift the mode of theorizing towards non-representationalism, which opens up new frontiers for future research to observe, participate and reflect with practitioners on the textures of practical knowledge constitutive of future-making in different circumstances and contexts.

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“…The idea of going to users, of creating empathy with them and of using that understanding to drive product decisions spread from anthropologists and the anthropologically minded to other professionals and became a more instituted approach. These sorts of ideas and methods have become formalized in practice philosophies such as 'Design Thinking' and 'Human-centered design' (for an ethnographic account and anthropological critique of the Design Thinking method, albeit without a discussion of the research methods often associated with the method, see Wilf 2015Wilf , 2016. Such philosophies have all but assimilated a core tenet of ethnography, namely that by creating empathy with ordinary people through real-life interactions with them our knowledge of those people is enhanced and the solutions created will be more authentic and ultimately, more successful.…”

Section: The Influence Of Ethnographic Methods Outside Of Academiamentioning

confidence: 99%

People Are Not Users

Hale¹

2018

jba

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Ethnographic methods have filtered from academia to product development, particularly in the technology industry, and into the broader ‘human-centered’ design practice. In the process, the ethnographic influence has entered the toolkits of other practitioners. This article argues that, despite an overall positive impact, the implementation of ethnographic methods has had less of an impact on the tendency to think of people primarily in relation to a specific product or service as “users”, “customers” or “clients”, which results in both a simplistic and individualistic view of human experiences. I argue that there is untapped potential in our discipline’s holistic thinking as applied to our work outside of academia. One existing avenue that lends itself to translating holism into design is service design, a field of practice that shifts the focus from the design of one-off solutions (material products, digital products and others) to the design of a system of products, interactions and processes intended to serve ordinary people, often with the objective of improving their lives and well-being. These services can encompass, but are not limited to any one, digital interactions, physical products, communication materials or human interactions, and address the behind-the-scenes organizational change that must occur to support the creation and maintenance of services focused on people. Anthropologists can bring a special perspective to service design through their attention to understanding whole systems and, in the process, can counteract the individualism inherent in some design practices and corporate frameworks. The examples used here reflect my own experiences as the anthropologist informing service design projects.

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The Post-it Note Economy: Understanding Post-Fordist Business Innovation through One of Its Key Semiotic Technologies

Abstract: In focusing on the idea-generation aspect of business innovation, this essay leaves out other, equally important aspects, such as market analysis, feasibility considerations, regulatory issues, and organizational politics and resources.

Cited by 33 publications

References 35 publications

Note passing as gendered practices of public ambiguity in a hyper‐masculine organization

Note passing as gendered practices of public ambiguity in a hyper‐masculine organization

Imagining Futures: Theorizing the Practical Knowledge of Future-making

People Are Not Users

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