
Mats Alvesson
Professor

The hegemonic ambiguity of big concepts in organisation studies
Author
Summary, in English
The use of concepts is a vital part of the research process. Many researchers overexploit popular concepts by adding more and more vague and poorly defined meanings to them, thereby making their boundaries unclear and the concepts increasingly unwieldy. We will refer to these types of concepts as hembigs – an acronym for hegemonic, ambiguous, big concepts. The article demonstrates the problem in three domains: leadership, strategy and institution. It suggests ways to mitigate the problems with dominant scientific concepts, overloaded with more or less incoherent meanings.
Department/s
- Strategy
- Organizational Studies
Publishing year
2022
Language
English
Pages
58-86
Publication/Series
Human Relations
Volume
75
Issue
1
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Topic
- Business Administration
Keywords
- institutional theory
- leadership
- method
- organization studies
- reflexivity
- strategy
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0018-7267