Author: Wolfgang H Guettel
Last saved by: Elena
Company: Uni Kassel

Antonacopoulou, E. P., Güttel, W. & Pesqueux, Y. (2010) Practising Socializing and Institutionalizing: Perspectives on the Societal, Organizational and Individual effects of Staff Induction Practices. Guest Editor’s Introduction to Special Issue. Society and Business Review Journal. 5(1)
Editorial
Practising Socializing and Institutionalizing:
Perspectives on the Societal, Organizational and Individual effects of Staff Induction Practices
Elena Antonacopoulou, Wolfgang Güttel & Yvon Pesqueux
This special issue is dedicated to one of the biggest challenges socially conscious businesses face; namely to take stock of the impact of their socialization practices. Given the orientation of SBR to advance ideas that can directly enhance the contribution and commitment of businesses in society, we present in this two part special issue fresh insights on the impact of socialization practices of businesses across a range of industries and countries. Leading scholars across a range of disciplinary backgrounds come together to voice and illustrate theoretically and empirically the importance of socialization practices in the ways in whcih staff induction practices specifically are performed. The various papers in this two volume special issue collectively make a distinctive contribution in that they provide innovative ways of understanding how the ways in which induction practices are performed in different contexts. 
This focus on a practice perspective which has captured a renewed attention in recent years in what has been termed as re-turn to practice (Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina & Von Savigny, 2001) has provided a useful basis for rethinking a number of social complexities across a number of levels including the individual, the collective and the institutional level (Giddens, 1984; Bourdieu, 1990; Turner, 1994; Schatzki, 1996; Seo and Creed, 2002). Perhaps of particular importance is the way a practice orientation provides a basis for responding to wider calls in social sciences in general (see Emirbayer, 1997), for a relational analysis of action as not the product of inter-actions, but action as emanating from trans-action where the relations and the entities creating these actions are not isolated but are seen to co-evolve in ongoing negotiation as constitutive of each other and of the possibilities their interrelationships can productively create. A focus on unpacking some of the inherent tensions that practices reveal as Antonacopoulou (2008a) argues, provides the opportunity to integrate insights from pragmatism (Dewey, 1927), critical realism (Sayer, 1992; Archer, 1995) and various branches of phenomenology - from Husserl’s, (1939) transcendental phenomenology; to Heidegger’s (1927) hermeneutic phenomenology, to Schutz’s (1932) phenomenology of the social and not least Merleau-Ponty’s (1945) phenomenology of perception. This phenomenological orientation other than drawing attention to tensions as endemic to the social character of practices it also shifts our orientation to the dynamic nature of practices in the ways in which they are performed relationally. 

This focus on the ways in which practices are performed, introduces to the debate a greater attention to practising as a powerful process fuelling both the ways in which practices are formed, performed and transformed (Antonacopoulou, 2007). Practising is reflective of the dynamic and emergent nature of practice. This perspective that embraces as central to practice their becoming also acknowledges that becoming is tentative and ongoing. It is not merely a process punctuated by events and activities. It is a movement that develops and unfolds through the intensity of connections that drive the process of becoming based on trying things out, rehearsing, refining, and changing different aspects of practice and the relationships between them. Practising therefore, has been defined as the deliberate, habitual and spontaneous repetition (Antonacopoulou, 2007). Practising is a process of repetition embraces the multiplicity of possibilities hence, is distinct from the process of replication. Replication implies institutionalisation in the process of re-presentation and re-production. Repetition on the other hand, implies re-hearsing, re-viewing aspects of practice. As Deleuze (1994) points out repetition is perfection and integration. Repetition is transgression. It forms a condition of movement, a means of producing something new in history. This means that at the core of practising a practice is actively learning and unlearning different aspects of a practice in a proactive way that does not only rely on routines of habit but different ways of embodying a practice. Repetition allows for spontaneity in the way practitioners respond to intended and unintended conditions that shape their practice. This orientation promotes a practise-centred research approach (Antonacopoulou, 2008b) to researching practice which does not only focus on what is a practice and how is practice performed. It also seeks to understand the role and power of practitioners in shaping their practice by virtue of the choices they make through their practical judgments and modes of knowing (phronesis). Practitioners phronesis reflects their insights, their identity and identification with the practice, their passion and personality. This provides us a richer understanding of human nature and is fundamental in extending our undersanding of socialization and institutionalization.

The papers in the first volume of the special issue on practising, socializing and institutionalizing present cutting edge insights on all these processes and through a practice perspective illustrate some of the nuances that contribute and affect how socialization and institutionalization take place. 

To ensure that readers have a basic backdrop to fully appreciate the way these empirically informed contributions extend the debate on practice, socialization and insititutionalisation, the first two papers present an up-to-date review of the relevant literatures. 

The first paper of this special issue by Yvon Pesqueux and Elena P. Antonacopoulou entitled “The Practice of Socialization and the Socialization of Practice“ provides a thorough theoretical introduction into practice research and its application for analyzing induction practices and socialization. The paper introduces a dynamic practice perspective where interaction between social actors is perceived as a series of tensions between competing priorities that are constantly negotiated. Therefore, the performance of practices enables active change and reconfiguration instead of a simple evolution. 

The second paper by Elena P. Antonacopoulou and Wolfgang H. Güttel entited “Staff Induction Practices and Organizational Socialization: A Review and Extension of the Debate” analyzes the state of the field of conceptual and empirical research on staff induction and socialization. Surprisingly, most of the literature is conducted in a psychologist tradition and is focused primarily on the newcomer despite the fact that induction and socialization are the main mode by which organizations and their idiosyncratic character survive due to the continuous integration of new employees. Moreover, owing to the lack of multi-level analysis of staff induction, the underdeveloped link between staff induction and HRM systems is missing. Equally scant are investigations of the contribution of staff induction for organizational recreation. The paper outlines future research directions and presents the case for ways in which a practice perspective can usefully inform the future research agenda. In some respects whilst the first two paper set the stage and the agenda, subsequent papers take this agenda on and present empirical findings around the issues idenfied as critical. 
The three papers that follow are devoted to staff induction (one in a bank, one in a bank and in a consultancy company and one devoted to three different centres for medically assisted reproduction). They all end on a conceptualization of the notion of practice according to the collected empirical data.
Kjersti Bjorkeng and Stuart Clegg have worked on staff induction in an Australian bank (DragonBank). They have followed newcomers and their learning to become Customer Service Officers (CSOs) with a description of processes of situated learning (DragonBank’s induction course and in the bank’s branches posterior to this formal induction course). They particularly explored what they have labelled authoring acts in which the inductees make sense of themselves in relation to their practice and the performative acts constructing practice. This article suggests a constructive role on behalf of the inductees in the shaping their practice, and emphasises a dual dependency between becoming a practitioner and constructing a practice. 
Jérôme Méric and Rémi Jardat have worked on induction as an institutionalized and institutionalizing practice in retail banking and consultancy in France. Their research on the same practice in two different companies from two distinct activities has led them to consider that two dimensions within this multiplicity are particularly relevant to understand why change in practices can occur or not (coordination of persons and resources in order to exert specific functions). But their case studies also help emphasize the role of the institutional dimension and articulates the analysis of ostensive and performative aspects of induction practices. This shows how active and constant interrelations produce a pattern of organizational immobility. They finally discuss the research outcomes as a specific expression of institutionalization processes that interact with organizational devices.
Silvia Gherardi and Manuela Perotta have empirically studied three different centres for medically assisted reproduction in Italy between May 2005 and March 2006, using qualitative data collection and analysis techniques – specifically participant observation and interviews. The centres selected were Sisma, a public university centre of medium size (around 300 infertility treatments a year), Beta, a private centre of small size (around 60 treatments a year) and Bioartlife, a network connecting a large centre with six satellite centres of medium and small size (for a total of 1500 treatments a year, of which half at the main centre). The three case studies illustrate three different models of induction. They conclude by pointing out that the ‘same’ practice assumes very different situated features, and that a practice-based approach is able to bring out the ecology of actors that locally stabilize a situated practice and reciprocal power relations. With regard to various types of organization, this study shows that induction is not the effect of solely an encounter between individual and organization, for two other agents are involved in the process: the profession and the peer group.

A last paper has been added to this issue. David Pick, Kandy Darayam and Bella Butler analyze the tensions between regional development and global capitalism on an empirical basis: the case of the Pilbara, WesternAustralia, according to the wave of increasing prosperity due to a rapid rise in the global demand for natural resources, particularly from China. The Pilbara case (a key natural resource region in Australia for minerals, oil and gas) is located in the national context for direct global economic engagement and in turn to the wider neo-liberal policy reform agenda that has been employed by successive Australian governments over the two past decades. In this paper it is argued that the unleashing of global markets forces as a key element of regional development policy can be understood as part of a neo-liberal rationality of government termed ‘New Regionalism’. Pilbara may be considered as an epicentre of global natural resource extraction where there is significant and on-going agglomeration of international capital in the form of resource extraction, processing and transport infrastructure.
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