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This study explores the politics of ideology in the process of sensegiving and sensemaking at a Japanese retailer in Hong Kong. Studies on power and politics are scarce despite key role of power and politics in understanding the factors behind the conflict between the management's policy legitimization (sensegiving) and employees' policy interpretation (sensemaking). By using the three dimensions proposed in the critical sensemaking approach (discourse, rules and contexts), this paper explores the complex mechanism of power and politics in sensemaking and sensegiving.

Using 15 months of participant observation as a salesperson, this paper discusses how the Japan-centric customer service philosophy (dominant discourse), customer service policies and practices (organizational rules) and asymmetric power structure between the Japanese global headquarters and Hong Kong subsidiaries (formative contexts) are presented and perpetuated through the sensegiving–sensemaking process.

Dominant discourse was observed in the management's sensegiving, which placed the Japanese style of customer service over others. This ethnocentric dominant discourse informed the creation of customer service policies, although the realization of the discourse was determined by the employees' conflicting interpretations of the organizational rules. As a formative context, an asymmetric power structure was present that positioned the Hong Kong subsidiary as subservient to the global headquarters in Japan. This shows that the political process of sensegiving and sensemaking deeply implicates the dominant discourse, organizational rules and power structure as central forces that determine the level of perpetuating ideology.

This research illustrates the wider implications of power and politics in sensegiving–sensemaking studies and provides a complex picture of ethnocentric management.

This article aims to report on the findings from a research project that explored a school’s changing ideological storyline with the appointment of a new Principal and the Board of Trustees’ intention to move towards a strengths-based approach to education. Following the school’s dialogue and decision-making over a three-year period enabled the identification of a range of competitive processes between the dominant and an emergent ideology within the school.

Using an ideological framework proposed by Meighan et al. (2007), the research focussed on the development and maintenance of shared understandings within each ideology. For the purpose of this article, the participants have been limited to those in school governance, the school’s senior leadership team and some teachers across a three-year period. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews, online surveys and informal observations and analysed through interpretive and hermeneutic processes.

The findings show the subtleties and nuances of two dominant and competing ideologies that represented different philosophies for education: a deficit discourse of progressive ideals and a strengths-based ideology of education. The existing and dominant ideology is challenged by the determination and moral purpose of the principal with the unanimous support from those in governance. In due process, the school emerged into a creative enterprise through the adoption of shared understandings that were underscored by a strengths-based ideology.

It is incumbent upon school principals to notice the shifting organisational storylines within their schools and communities and act in a manner that realises the moral imperative of schooling for the students (Fullan, 2011). This article opens specific ideological processes that have appreciatively moved a school towards pedagogical excellence and a repurposing of the organisation for the students’ sake.

More pluralistic approaches have recently emerged in entrepreneurship, yet the discipline remains disinterested in the ideological influences underpinning its research and teaching practices. Following Louis Althusser’s work on interpellation, the process by which ideology enrols and consummates its subjects, the chapter examines the interpellation of entrepreneurship-as-practice researchers and draws attention to the powerful nature of ideology. Critical reflexivity is put forward as an exercise to explore the researchers’ beliefs and identity and to tease out their relationship with the discipline. Finally, using three autoethnographic accounts, the chapter argues that the boundaries of the entrepreneurship discipline can only be shifted if and when researchers learn to recognise themselves as ‘the person in the mirror’. The reflexive spotlight also allows researchers to spot ideological breaks and engage in acts of ‘ideological resistance’.

The study of managerial ideologies focuses exclusively on the emergence of American models and their dissemination in other societies. Argues that the a‐political, scientific and rational façade on which these models are premised is often incommensurate with the industrial experience of “non‐western” societies. Based on the historical case study of Palestine Potash Ltd (PPL), this study explores the development of managerial ideologies within the political and cultural context of pre‐state Israel in its formative stage (1920‐1948). While elaborating on the undocumented management history of Israel, demonstrates that American managerial ideologies were indeed imported, but their logic and casting were subordinated to national objectives. Furthermore, shows that Socialist‐National, idiosyncratic political ideology became a dominant ideology of employment management ‐ even in capitalistic firms ‐ allowing managers to acquire legitimation, control workers and increase profits of industrial enterprises.

The central concern of this discussion is the relationship between belief and action. The underlying problem is how belief ‐ intellectualised as ideology ‐ affects or even determines social behaviour. As Talcott Parsons puts it, “While believing is not, ipso facto, doing, what one believes has much to do with what one does”(1).

An important component of managers’ behaviour is their perceptions of power. Suggests that an examination of managerial resistance might be one way in which questions relating to managers’ behaviour can be answered, particularly during periods of imposed organizational change. By applying the concept of ideology to both organizational and psychological structures, a comprehensive theory of managerial resistance is proposed that provides an integrated explanation of what, how and why managers resist. Tests this theory empirically by using individualism to examine the content of a number of interviews with middle managers. From the results, it appears that the development of such a framework is possible but it will need to be tested against the other ideologies of importance to the managers, managerialism, professionalism and gender. The complex interrelationships, both synergies and conflicts, between these will need to be explored in developing this theory further.

This chapter explores dominant ideologies theoretically in an organizational setting. A framework is developed to advance our understanding of how ‘dominant ideological modes of rationality’ reflect predictability through the reproduction of accepted truths, hence social order in organization. Dominant ideological modes of rationality constitute professional identity, power relations, and rationality and frame prevailing mentalities and social practices in organization. It is suggested that members’ categorization devices structure and constrain social practices. Supplementing the existent power literature, the chapter concludes that professional identity produces rationality, power and truth – truth being the overarching concept assembled through the rationalities assembled in professional members’ categorization devices. Research and managerial implications are discussed.

The aim of the research is to examine the legal ideologies of planning law proposed by Patrick McAuslan in 1980 and their operation in one key aspect of modern-day planning law in England and Wales in order to assess the balance between these ideologies today.

In order to achieve this, the philosophical and theoretical foundations of the respective legal ideologies are revisited. The approach that follows is a mixed doctrinal and socio-legal one. The content of the law in certain key areas is established and then analysed against the framework of McAuslan's ideologies in order to establish the social context balance of the law.

The paper concludes that, despite much change in law and policy, the balance between the three competing ideologies in the area of development control in the planning regime of England and Wales remains similar to that in 1980.

For publication as a research paper, the scope of the examination was necessarily restricted. Certain areas scrutinised by McAuslan are of less relevance today, but, nonetheless, there is clearly scope to revisit some of the other aspects of planning law considered in 1980 and, indeed, to expand the scope of analysis to other areas of environmental law.

The paper takes a framework of legal ideologies that was proposed over 30 years ago and applies it to elements of the modern-day planning regime. The paper will be of value to both legal academics and those in the town planning discipline.