Culture and Organization

Special Issue of Culture and Organization

Feeling the power: Electricity and organizations

Special issue editors:

Victoria Pagan, Newcastle University [email protected]

Jenny Davidson, Newcastle University [email protected]

Anne-marie Greene, University of York [email protected]

Carolyn Hunter, University of York [email protected]

What is a soul? It's like electricity - we don't really know what it is, but it's a force that can light a room. (Ray Charles)

Electricity plays a crucial role in human existence as the driving force behind various physiological and cognitive processes.  It is the electrical impulses and signals which transmit information through synapses and between neurons. It also affects our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. In organisations, electricity is power, energy and force that makes things happen. It is the buzz in the atmosphere and the excitement behind an idea. Electricity, we argue, plays a central symbolic and material role in getting things done in an organization.

Early philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato explored the concept of electricity as a form of energy, while later thinkers such as Descartes and Leibniz argued that electricity was a form of matter. Hegel and Marx considered the implications of electricity for the development of industrialisation and the emergence of modernity. 20th century philosophers such as Deleuze explored the implications of electricity for the development of technology and its impact on human life, while Lefebvre has argued energy is part of the core triad of space-time-energy shaping social and material relations. In addition, there are many examples of electricity as the inspiration for, as well as the form and substance of artistic works: Korean visual artist Nam June Paik, known as ‘the father of video art’, famously said that ‘Without electricity, there can be no art’ (c1976). Electricity has revolutionised the way we live, work, play, interact and organize. It has enabled us to develop new technologies, to explore new ways of working and to create new forms of communication. From communication devices to transportation, electricity is the foundation of all these inventions.

We invite papers which explore the implications of electricity for the way we understand and organise management, work, organisations, society and our interaction with our natural and anthropogenic world. This could include examining and critiquing the idea of electricity as a form of power, control, communication, and transformation. Energy can be conceptualised both as generative, a stimulus, and destructive, an annihilator. Such explorations and provocations seem ever more relevant at this moment in our existence with the recent explosion of AI which is more sophisticated and capable of performing a wide range of tasks that were once considered exclusive to human intelligence.

We welcome contributions from a range of theoretical and qualitative methodological perspectives, including but not limited to:

• Electricity shaping management and leadership of organisations
• The electric and its positive (and masculine) organisational resonances: “energising” leadership, “stimulating” strategies, “powerful” management
• Electricity, work and organizations over time and space
• Impact of electricity on the structure and functioning of organisations
• Electricity’s impact on organisational dynamics
• Electricity and its role within way we work and the nature of work itself
• Electrical metaphors in work and/or organizations, education, learning and/or development
• Electricity and relational, sensory and/or embodied knowing
• Electricity as enlivening, electricity as destructive, electrickery
• Kinetic energy, embodied electricity, the way we feel electricity
• The relationship between electricity and space, the configuration of space and access to electricity
• Any other submissions relating broadly to the themes of organization and electricity, and related concepts such as energy, power, currents, charge, shocks, magnetisms, light, etc.

We welcome submissions that explore these and related questions, as well as those that consider the implications of electricity for other aspects of organisational life such as energy, power, technology, culture, identity and inequality.

This special issue is closely linked to the SCOS Conference in Newcastle (9-12 July 2024), authors of papers presented at the Conference are encouraged to submit their work to this Special Issue, although it is not a requirement for consideration for the Issue.

Example conversations for reference

Boyer, Dominic. "Anthropology electric." Cultural Anthropology 30, no. 4 (2015): 531-539.

Gooday, Graeme. Domesticating Electricity: Technology, Uncertainty and Gender, 1880-1914. Routledge, 2015.

Lewis, Jamal, Diana Hernández, and Arline T. Geronimus. "Energy efficiency as energy justice: addressing racial inequities through investments in people and places." Energy efficiency 13 (2020): 419-432.

Melville, Emilia, Ian Christie, Kate Burningham, Celia Way, and Phil Hampshire. "The electric commons: A qualitative study of community accountability." Energy Policy 106 (2017): 12-21.

Owens, Bradley P., Wayne E. Baker, Dana McDaniel Sumpter, and Kim S. Cameron. "Relational energy at work: Implications for job engagement and job performance." Journal of Applied Psychology 101, no. 1 (2016): 35.

Styhre, Alexander, Björn Remneland-Wikhamn, Anna-Maria Szczepanska, and Jan Ljungberg. 2016. “Masculine Domination and Gender Subtexts: The Role of Female Professionals in the Renewal of the Swedish Video Game Industry.” Culture and Organization 24 (3): 244–61

Vaujany, François-Xavier de, and Nathalie Mitev. 2015. “The Post-Macy Paradox, Information Management and Organising: Good Intentions and a Road to Hell?” Culture and Organization 23 (5): 379–407.

Wang, Zhenyuan, and Yunhui Xie. "Authentic leadership and employees’ emotional labour in the hospitality industry." International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 32, no. 2 (2020): 797-814.

Winther, Tanja, Margaret N. Matinga, Kirsten Ulsrud, and Karina Standal. "Women’s empowerment through electricity access: scoping study and proposal for a framework of analysis." Journal of Development Effectiveness 9, no. 3 (2017): 389-417.

Wittel, Andreas. 2013. “Counter-Commodification: The Economy of Contribution in the Digital Commons.” Culture and Organization 19 (4): 314–31.

Young, Miriama. Singing the body electric: The human voice and sound technology. Routledge, 2016.

Please submit the special issue title when submitting your paper to ScholarOne.

The window for submissions of full manuscripts is July 2024 – January 2025.

We anticipate a publication date for the SI in May 2026.

If you have any questions, please reach out to Dr Victoria Pagan [email protected]

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