A group of feminist scholars met and collectively read feminist texts aloud. As an alternative to hegemonic modes of theorizing dominant in Management and Organization Studies (MOS), we propose 'readinglistening' as a feminist intervention: a practice in which collective reading aloud and embodied listening are re-conceived as acts of curiosity, joy, and relationality. Refusing the instrumentalization of reading and its privileging of theoretical abstraction, knowledge can emerge not only in words but in resonant voices and affective, communal presence. We conceptualize readinglistening as a practice that resists the normative pursuit of universal clarity, privileging theorization grounded in lived experience and enabling the emergence of theory through heterogeneous media and collaborative engagement. Readinglistening is offered as both inquiry and an invitation: for feminist theory to make sense in new ways, sustaining political and creative engagement with the world.

This paper examines how diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives (DEI) hinder better outcomes for the workforce labelled as diverse. Fieldwork in three Australian organisations demonstrated that the lack of progress towards equality was not just caused by the persistence of inequality but by how the practice of equality perpetuated a repressive status quo. Bringing together Joan Acker's 'inequality regimes' and Herbert Marcuse's 'repressive tolerance' explains how the understanding and enactment of equality constrain workplace change. From this, 'repressive equality regimes' is developed to explain how the ensemble of culturally organised sets of practices that seemingly promote DEI prevent achieving meaningful progress towards equality. 'Repressive equality regimes' registers the disassociating and segregating processes that create and maintain hierarchies of difference, limit the tolerance of 'others' and bound equality to an unchallengeable practice. To address structural inequalities and embed sustainable change at work it is essential to illuminate the political in DEI.

This article presents a collective, multilingual writing experiment that explores decolonial un/learning in management and organization studies and management education. Grounded in embodied encounters and dialogue across borders, the text was produced through a workshop-based, relational practice of writing and writing-with difference, including moments that resist translation and refuse easy representation. We show how writing can democratize knowledge production by foregrounding 'outsider-within' vantage points, attending to intersectional positionalities and making space for affective, situated and marginalized epistemologies. The article examines the dominance of English and the politics shaping academic visibility, highlighting how colonial standards sustain epistemic exclusion and epistemicide. We argue that decolonial learning must extend beyond curriculum reform to disrupt form, voice, language and the spaces where academics meet. We invite scholars and educators to cultivate plurivocal, ethically reflexive, politically engaged practices that expand what counts as learning and contribution in management and organization studies.

This paper addresses how corporeal ethics can lead to progressive change in the name of justice and equality through the assembly and recognition of bodies in political action. Building on research in corporeal ethics and organizations, the paper focuses on the relations between situated bodies that are organized in acts of political assembly. The discussion attends to how this ethics, while arising in each body, gains effect when mobilized through collective organization. Assembly is one such mobilization. The gathering of people, however, is not enough. The power of assembly comes when it serves a dialogic purpose; one that seeks to destabilize and temporalize the firm footings of injustice to enable the possibility of social progress. Through assembly, a radical politics of dialogized corporeal ethics lends itself to a form of connectedness where interdependence and difference come together as a meaningful force in the struggle for social justice.

This paper takes its departure from Rebecca Solnit's idea that there should be "hope in darkness" as we work towards a shared preferred future that resists gendered and racial inequities and oppressions. We put forward "actionable" hope which embodies hope as an everyday action, an activism enacted by "tempered radicals" (Meyerson & Scully, 1995). This thinking about the relationship between hope and activism emerged through our coming together and was bound by our learning and privileging of Indigenous knowledges and a strengths and hope perspective. The paper is presented in the form and style of polyphonic writing conveying the openness and generosity of spirit that the strengths and hope perspective carries for tempered radicals. Our "insider" and "outsider" positionings unfold as we engage in unsettling discussions of "privilege." Our practices give recognition to being sensitive to issues of belonging, care, and collective hope, while working towards transformative social change that addresses systemic inequalities. Belonging is seen as essential for collective everyday activism which requires affective actional hope for realizing shared preferred futures.

This piece reflects on the untapped potential of feminist theories and activist practices to address vital organizational issues and societal challenges such as inequality, sustainability and care for the environment. While we recognize and briefly review the progress on gender issues in organization studies achieved over the last decades, our focus is on identifying the critical and underutilized strands of feminist thinking offering fresh responses to these problems, including decolonial feminism, feminist ethics of care, posthuman feminism and ecofeminism. By way of illustrating our theoretical arguments, we discuss how five different papers recently published in Organization Studies address some of these issues, including the uncovering of hidden entanglements of power and performativity in a global bank and in the beauty industry by paying attention to body and affect, the underrepresented struggles of women in the Global South as they disrupt gendered practices through consciousness raising, contesting gender regimes at organizational social events and, finally, how the social media operate at the intersection of gender and occupation. We conclude by outlining future directions for research as we discuss the contributions of anti-racist feminist theory and decolonial feminist practice to completing the unfinished project of social change while making our scholarship more reflexive and inclusive.

Touch mediates relations between self-other, writers, and readers; it is material and affective. This paper is the outcome of writing touch as a collaborative activity between eight women writers across different times and locals. In sharing experiences of touch during and beyond the pandemic, we engage with collaborative writing articulated here as colligere, involving the assembling of writing in a holding space. The meanings and feelings of touch arise from our distinct writer positionalities as we think, work, and write in and about life, research, organizations, and organizing. We suggest that writing that reflects on/through touch presents epistemic vulnerability and openness to unknowing in the nexus of intercorporeal relationships. Writing touch contributes to writing and doing academia differently, particularly by offering sensorial encounters that reframe the ethico-political conditions of academic knowledge creation.

Each of the chapters in this volume, from the introduction to this end(ing), engaged in a conversation about producing knowledge in, about, with "organization studies" at a time when we (us, the human inhabitants of this Earth) are facing calamitous conditions, probably leading to our/its destruction, and (some more than others) are wondering what is to be done. As members of the management and organization studies (MOS) scholarly community, all the authors in this project are deeply concerned about the "knowledge" our common field is producing as "legitimate", for it seems not only inadequate for addressing those calamitous conditions but also that this kind of knowledge may be implicated in reproducing the harms we all decry. The aim here has not been to critique the field on the basis of what it produces but to acknowledge conditions perpetuating the production of those forms of knowledge more generally, and to offer positive alternatives which may make a difference in what is produced, perhaps contributing to a better world… over and over again. The message this chapter and all other chapters hope to convey is the possibility of "thinking, saying and doing otherwise". But can we truly question the very notion of "the human" supporting "legitimate knowledge"? Can we truly focus on producing processual knowledge with indefinite aims? In other words, is the becoming of an organization studies produced with feminist new materialisms possible? Responding to those questions, and following the original proposal for this volume, this chapter is the voice of the collectivity articulating 'the-world-and-beyond' as envisioned in each of the prior chapters. Taking this approach resonates as well with new materialisms: "'a doing with' which cannot be a 'doing alone' -more like a world of on-going assembling".

As Organization celebrates its 30th Anniversary, this paper asks: what might it mean to be a good business school? The paper reviews research published in this journal to assess the current state of business schools, revealing a somewhat dismal picture of institutions beholden to instrumental managerialism, top-down hierarchical control, obsession with metrics, and narrow and elitist research agendas. This state of affairs is re-assessed though Raewyn Connell’s idea of The Good University. Through this analysis, we are able to identify the good business school as one serves society by educating citizens and creating knowledge that leads to shared prosperity, social equality and human flourishing.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is among society’s most pernicious and impactful social issues, causing substantial harm to health and wellbeing, and impacting women’s employability, work performance, and career opportunity. Organizations play a vital role in addressing IPV, yet, in contrast to other employee- and gender-related social issues, very little is known regarding corporate responses to IPV. IPV responsiveness is a specific demonstration of corporate social responsibility and is central to advancing gender equity in organizations. In this paper, we draw upon unique data on the IPV policies and practices of 191 Australian listed corporations between 2016 and 2019, that collectively employ around 1.5 M employees. Providing the first large-scale empirical analysis of corporate IPV policies and practices, we theorise that listed corporations’ IPV responsiveness reflects institutional and stakeholder pressures which are multifaceted and central to corporate social responsibility. Our findings identify greater IPV responsiveness among larger corporations, as well as those corporations with higher proportions of women middle managers, greater financial resources, and more advanced employee consultation on gender issues. This paper concludes that there is a need for further research on corporate IPV responsiveness, to further illuminate corporate motivations, organizational support processes, and employee experiences.

In this paper, we offer a collective, multi-vocal reflection on using poetry for research purposes. These were reflections on an online sub-plenary session organized as a workshop, which was held at the European Group for Organization Studies conference in 2021. During this workshop, the first three authors presented a step-by-step method for doing poetic inquiry and invited participants to apply it to their own empirical data or research praxis. The method was created in response to the marginalization of affect and embodiment in mainstream research in organization studies. Poetic inquiry aims to formulate specific practices of "writing differently" that assist researchers in their attempts to analyze and articulate their findings in embodied and affective ways. In this paper, we describe the method and bring together multi-vocal reflections from the participants and organizers of the workshop on the affects of poetic inquiry and the (ethical) questions that it poses.

This chapter walks with feminist new materialism in the ruins of the corporate university in crisis to let the air in. Walkingwritingthinking with feminist care is an act of survival and resistance and which requires staying with the trouble. Embodied entanglements of walking with nature and non-human others stand in contrast to the erosion of academic values, freedom of speech and the production of knowledge. This is a writing beyond ego-centric accounts of the self, a writing that requires staying with the ruins. Becoming ethically and affectively ruined and responding in generous and curious ways has the capacity to see universities as agents of social change.