Overflow management: Strategies and practices of handling abundance
Our project revolves around two main themes. First is the emergence of overflow: Does it arise spontaneously, or can it be produced - intentionally or not? In all cases the process of defining is of crucial importance: What is defined as overflow, who has the power of definition, and to whom will the definition apply? Our second theme concerns management - on different levels. Here the notion of framing is central, as it means defining, imposing borders, but also choosing ways of managing overflow. The term managing has a double meaning: controlling, but also coping. To define something as an overflow is already a way to control it, while living with it might be a way of reproducing or even magnifying it. Does dealing with overflow generate new competences, routines, and new coping strategies for organizations as well as individuals? The aim of the project is to arrive at a theory of the emergence and management of overflows.
Project P14-0708:1: Managing overflow: Strategies and practices
Since the time of our half-way report from 1 August 2016, we have mostly worked with our two final products: a special issue of a journal, and an edited volume.
The Special Issue of European Management Journal (vol. 35, issue 6, December 2017), “Managing Overflows” was a result of a conference of the same title held at the University of Warsaw, 1–2 September 2016. The keynotes at the conference were delivered by Orvar Löfgren and Barbara Czarniawska. The editors of the special issue were Barbara Czarniawska, Jonathan Metzger and Prof. Grażyna Wieczorkowska, psychologist and our host in Warsaw.
The issue began with an introduction authored by Barbara Czarniawska and Jonathan Metzger, “Managing overflows: How people and organizations deal with daily overflows”. It contained an article by Elena Raviola, “Meeting between frames: Negotiating worth between journalism and management”. Also our earlier collaborators in the program, Johan Hagberg, Hans Kjellberg and Franck Cochoy contributed an article on “Managing leaks: Shoplifting in US grocery retailing 1922–1996”. Our colleague from GRI, Andreas Diedrich, contributed an article on “Validation of immigrants’ prior foreign learning as a framing practice”.
Our efforts at internationalization brought about a fascinating paper by Jean Hiller, “No place to go? Management of non-human animal overflows in Australia”, and an article by Samuel Kirwan, Morag McDermont and Sue Evans on “Triaging overflow: A case study of the ‘Gateway Assessment’ in the UK Citizens Advice Service.
The remaining four papers and the Afterword were authored by the Polish psychologists and focused on the psychological aspects of overflow. I am enclosing journal’s front cover at the end of the report.
Our edited volume, “Overwhelmed by overflows? How people and organizations create and manage excess”, edited by Barbara Czarniawska and Orvar Löfgren, is being processed by Manchester University Press in collaboration with Lund University Press (cover design enclose at the end of the report).
The book begins with the Introduction by Orvar Löfgren and Barbara Czarniawska. The first chapter is called “Consumer and consumerism under state-socialism:
Demand-side abundance and its discontents in Hungary during the long 1960s” and has been authored by György Péteri. The chapter is a result of a study conducted by Péteri during two Fall terms (2016 and 2017) in National Library and the National Archives of Hungary. Apart from official documents from the period, Péteri included in his analysis satirical media and sociological and economic literature from the period.
The second chapter (“Metamorphoses, or ho self-storage turned from homes into hotels”) presents Helene Brembeck’s study of Humlan, a Swedish self-storage organization, against the historical and international background of this institution. Brembeck has also presented this chapter at European Sociological Association Conference (ESA), Copenhagen, 5-6 September 2018.
In the third chapter, “Moving in a sea of strangers: Handling urban overflows”, Orvar Löfgren presented historical and contemporary description of various ways of handling crowds in cities and at the airports.
The fourth chapter, “Too much happens in the workplace” by Karolina Dudek, is the effect of Warsaw conference, at which the study was presented for the first time.
Elena Raviola told the story of the company that owns Göteborgs-Posten and its oscillation between financial and professional ups and downs in the fifth chapter.
Jonathan Metzger in his chapter “Overflowing with uncertainty: Controversies regarding epistemic wagers in climate-economy models” have preceded the 2018 Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, making its laureate one of the main authors in his analysis. As a result, his work has become of great interest to the media. Aftonbladet dedicated to it an article “Katastrof för klimatet” on 14 October 2018. Metzger was interviewed 4/5 December by Vetenskapsradio (”Kritiserad ekonomipristagare räknar på klimatuppvärmningen”) and on 10 December by weekly ETC. On 9 December Dagens Nyheter published a debate article “Oroväckande att den allvarliga kritiken förtigs”.
Our Scottish collaborator, Sabina Siebert, authored together with Robert Insall and Laura Machesky the seventh chapter in the volume, “More means less: Managing overflows in science publishing”. It is worth emphasizing that their analysis concerned natural sciences.
Lars Norén and Agneta Ranerup, the authors of the eight chapter, analyzed “Guides and overflow of choices” in contemporary Sweden. Agneta Ranerup extended the topic in her Open Access article co-authored with Helle Zinner Henriksen, “Enrolling citizens as informed consumers in quasi-markets”, Information, Technology & People. (2019, in press).
In the eight chapter, Barbara Czarniawska compared the present times digital bureaucracy to the “red tape”. The volume ends with “Afterword: A surplus of ideas” by Richard Wilk.
The participants of the program have also propagated its result in various keynotes and presentations.
On 9 February 2017, Elena Raviola gave a talk “When professionals meet lay people: Organizing news work in the age of social media” at a Research Seminar at SCORE, Stockholm University and Stockholm School of Economics.:
On 8 May 2017, Barbara Czarniawska delivered a keynote at the conference "Managing the Unintended: Externalities, Side-Effects and Overflows in Everyday Life", organized by Institute of Social Sciences, University of Warsaw. The conference has been inspired by our project.
Elena Raviola co-organized sub-theme 38 at EGOS Conference in Copenhagen, 6-8 July 2017. She also presented a paper “Mediatizing field-configuring events. The case of the Gothenburg Book Fair”, co-authored with Maria Grafström, Jaan Grünberg, Josef Pallas, Claes Thorén, and Karolina Windell.
On 20 September 2017, Orvar Löfgren held a keynote “Mine is yours? The home as moral economy” at on overflow themes at the opening of the 41. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde, at Philipps-Universität Marburg.
On 15 November 2017, György Péteri presented his findings in a talk with the title “Consumerism in communist-era Hungary: Demand-side abundance and its discontents during the Kádár era” in the Cold War Studies Seminar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University.
On 12 December 2017, Orvar Löfgren presented the program at the University of Copenhagen. He has also presented it on 25 April, 2018 at the University of Freiburg, and on 10 June, 2018, at Aalborg University.
On 22 October 2018, Elena Raviola held a Seminar on Business and Design during the Open Design Week, Academy of Design and Crafts, University of Gothenburg.
On 12 November 2018, György Péteri held a seminar and talked on “Soft power within.
Modern everyday and the party-state apparatus class under communism” at the Institut für Geschichtswissenschaft, Universität Bonn.
Additionally, the participants in the program published (or are working on) various other texts, related to the program. They are indexed in the alphabetical and chronological order in the publication list.