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Crossing Chronotopes in the Polyphonic Organisation: Adventures in Experience
Sullivan, Paul W. Madill, A. Glancy, M. Allen, P.
Sullivan, Paul W.
Madill, A.
Glancy, M.
Allen, P.
Publication Date
2015-08-17
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© 2015 TAMARA: vol 13 issue 1-2, website: http://tamarajournal.com/ : reproduced with permission from the publisher.
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2015-08-15
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Crossing Chronotopes in the Polyphonic Organisation: A dialogical analysis of the comedy industry
Abstract
The ‘Polyphonic Organisation’ is an emerging root-metaphor for the multiple voices that
constitute an organisation. In this article, we explore the narrative concept of the
‘chronotope’ as a feature of the ‘polyphonic organisation’. The ‘chronotope’, in a general
sense, refers to the matrix of time-space-value in organisations. We argue that the
chronotope is important because it introduces boundaries between voices within
organisations and helps to explain the difficulties in getting to dialogue with voices in
different spaces in the ‘Polyphonic Organisation’. More particularly, there are multiple
kinds of chronotopes which lead to different kinds of time-spaces matrices within the
polyphonic organisation. Our aim is to examine chronotope crossings within polyphonic
organisations as part of the work of being heard. This is a theoretical argument drawing
significantly from Bakhtin’s work on chronotope. To examine the argument in practice we
draw on original fieldwork within the comedy industry. Here we found three kinds of
chronotopes: 1) The comedy-offense boundary; 2) The commissioning landscape 3)
Platform spaces. We also found that moving within and between these involved a variety
of adventures in experience (such as hope and disappointment), which also have their own
specific chronotopes. Overall, we argue that the polyphonic organisation is significantly
enhanced as an organisational concept through a turn to the role of chronotope. This is
because chronotope helpfully describes the barriers and porous boundaries between voices
Version
published version paper
Citation
Sullivan PW, Madill A, Glancy M and Allen P (2015) Crossing Chronotopes in the Polyphonic Organisation: Adventures in Experience. Tamara Journal for Critical Organizational Inquiry. 13(1-2): 55-65.
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Article