Keynote Speakers:
Prof. Stephen Ackroyd and Prof. Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin

 

Opening keynote

ayckroyd Prof. Stephen Ackroyd

Stephen Ackroyd is Professor of Organisational Analysis at Lancaster University Management School, one of the only centres for research in management in the UK consistently rated at the highest level in the research assessment exercises. He is a founder member of the Society for Advanced Management Studies (SAMS), a member of the European Group for Organisational Studies (EGOS) fellow of the British Academy of Management (BAM) and was a member of the BAM Council 2002 – 5. He serves on the editorial boards of some of the leading management and organisational journals in Europe, including Organisation Studies and Journal of management Studies. Stephen’s early research was into organisational behaviour and especially misbehaviour and was completed whilst an organisational consultant. After spending much time after this, researching public sector organisation and the professions (especially medicine, the law and management consultancy), his current work is concerned with the activities and strategies of the largest British companies. His recent books include: ‘Organisational Misbehaviour’ (Sage, 1999); ‘Realist Perspectives on Management and Organisation’ (written and edited with S. Fleetwood, Routledge, 2000); The Organisation of Business (Oxford, 2002). ‘The New Managerialism and the Public Service Professions’ (with Ian Kirkpatrick, Palgrave 2005). In 2006, he co-edited and co-authored with R. Batt and others ‘The Oxford Handbook of Work and Organisations’. In 2007, he edited with Dan Muzio and J-F Chanlat, ‘Redirections in the Study of Expert Labour’.  

Keynote Talk: "Conviviality: a system requirement"
In the last two decades there has been a remarkable transformation of the field of organisational behaviour. Today, there is no great problem with absenteeism, as there was, say, twenty years ago. Instead employees are encouraged to work from home. There is not nearly so much a problem of work limitation, as there was in the past, so much as a concern about problems arising from over-commitment, such as stress and burnout. Where do these fundamental changes spring from? My answer is in the forms of the modern corporation and its associated business systems.
So how have the demands of business organisations and their systems changed organisational behaviour? On obvious starting point is to recognise that business information systems put managerial and organisational criteria first. But these systems are becoming increasingly extensive. To those of us trying to study business structures we find that, modelled and measured in terms of their network properties, contemporary large corporations, their subsidiaries and affiliates, actually are quite spare: analytically they look very like traditional bureaucracies (they have low network density). But, in order for these extensive structures to be made to work effectively, they have to be augmented by social relationships and the linkages and connections supplied by employees and their social skills (which have high network density). So it is that, as business affiliations and systems become more extensive, so there is an increased demand for knowledgeable and well-connected employees actively using their skills in their work. Employee community and conviviality, in short, have become almost insatiable demands of business systems. This is often not perceived as being onerous by participants; but since the ability of people to sustain social relations - their networking capacity - is actually limited, modern business systems can be seen to be actively corrosive of other types of relationships. An increasing proportion of employee's social relations tend to be demanded by their work-roles. Such observations help to explain why it is that the demands of the economy are crowding out and trivialising both political and civil relationships. As we know, being economically relatively rich (from having a good job) also tends to equate to time and emotional poverty (from not having a life).

 

 

Closing keynote

micheal Prof. Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin is Professor of Music at the University of Limerick, and Director of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin is well known internationally for his unique Irish piano style, which he has developed throughout his many recordings. His very first recording issued by Gael Linn in 1975 boldly experimented with Irish traditional music played on five keyboard instruments (including mini-moog synthesiser!). The piano won out, and several albums later his classic recording The Dolphin’s Way (Virgin Records 1987) established him and his style as an unmistakeable voice in Irish music. The next stage revealed itself in 1989 with the release of Oileán /Island (Virgin Records) – his first of many collaborations with the Irish Chamber Orchestra. His most recent albums are Becoming (Virgin 1998) and Templum (Virgin 2001).
New work includes a masque entitled Madison’s Descent, commissioned by Montclair State University, New York, due to be first performed in New York and Dublin in May 2006. This evening marks the release by the Irish Film Institute of a DVD of his music (recorded by the RTECO under Proinsias Ó Duinn) for the 1925 silent movie Irish Destiny.
Having developed the Irish Music Programme at the Music Department, University College Cork, he was appointed the first Professor of Music at the University of Limerick in 1994 where he established the Irish World Music Centre. Ten years on, this has now become the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance with nine postgraduate taught programmes, one undergraduate programme, and doctoral research programmes with some 200 students from over twenty countries. Several of these programmes are the first of their kind in the world.
As well as his musical performances, he is a frequent guest speaker at international conferences and gatherings taking him in recent years to China, Kenya, India, Cuba, Mexico as well as Europe and North America. In March 2005 he was appointed by Minister John O’Donoghue at the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism as the first Chair of Culture Ireland, a new body set up by the Irish Government to promote Irish Arts internationally.
In June 2005, the National University of Ireland awarded him an Honorary D.Mus at his Alma Mater, University College Cork. In October 2005, Boston College awarded him Honorary Alumnus status “for providing the genesis of the Boston College Irish Music program, as well as conceiving the premiere Irish Music archive in North America”.

For additional information including a full discography can also be found here.

Keynote Talk: "TUNES: The Irish traditional music session as organizational model"
Various music-making models have been proposed as useful for understanding possible human organizational structuring. The Western classical orchestra with its strict hierarchical cannon has been put forward because of its unified sonic power and its prescriptive force.
This address turns our attention to the Irish traditional session and queries its apparently anarchical structure. How does it work? Is there a leader? Why are there no rehearsals? How come it is so difficult to commodify, and what is lost in any such commodification?
The unique balance between individual and group is proposed as a key to understanding the dynamic at the heart of this experience. Individuality within set team work parameters is prized, and subtle levels of improvisation are encouraged as an essential contribution to the shared creative process.