Materiality in organising

Understanding more-than-human influences, processes and effects within the world of organising and organisations.

Research pertaining to organisations generally looks at what people say and think, whether as individuals or in teams or larger entities. As part of the research we are doing, we also look into the role of the material in organising.

For example, we examine how technology plays a role in organising and producing outcomes, how organisations visually display themselves, and how animals become a part of organising processes. These studies are connected in an effort to decentralise the role of the human as an autonomous actor and instead examine the interdependencies and entanglements among humans and “more-than-human” actors and agencies.

By studying the role of materiality in organising, we can better understand the complex ways humans and (in)tangible subjects and objects interact to create organisational processes and identities, ultimately helping us to examine how power processes and inequalities are (re)produced in and through organising. This research draws on multiple different streams and philosophers, such as sociomateriality, postphenomenology, practice theory, Barad, Butler, Schatzki and Verbeek.

Our researchers

Collaborators

Featured publications

• Vu, M. C., & Shin, H. (2026). Proverbs as other-than-human actants in corporate social responsibility communication: A ventriloquial analysis of corporate-community dialogues. Human Relations, 1–34.
• Shao, K., Janssens, M., & Greenwood, M. (2025). Messing up visual management studies: A problematizing review. Journal of Management Studies, 62(7), 3118–3152.
• Greenwood M. and Wolfram Cox J. (2022) Seductive mediation? How moral agency is mediated by the invisibility of everyday technologies. Organization Studies, 44(4), 523-543.
• Jack, G., Plahe, J., & Wright, S. (2022). Development as freedom? Insights from a farmer-led sustainable agriculture non-governmental organisation in the Philippines. Human Relations, 75(10), 1875-1902.
• Wolfram Cox, J., Madison, K., & Eva, N. (2022). Revisiting emergence in emergent leadership: An integrative, multi-perspective review, The Leadership Quarterly, 33(1), 101579.
• Eva, N., Wolfram Cox, J., Tse, H., & Lowe, K. (2021). From competency to conversation: A multi-perspective approach to collective leadership development. The Leadership Quarterly, 32(5), 101346.
• Hales, S., Riach, K., & Tyler, M. (2021). Close encounters: Intimate service interactions in lap dancing work as a nexus of ‘self-others-things’, Organization Studies, 42(4), 555-574.
• Visser, L. M., & Davies, O. E. (2021). The becoming of online healthcare through entangled power and performativity: A posthumanist agential realist perspective. Organization Studies, 42(12), 1817-1837.
• Davies, O., & Riach, K. (2019). From mainstream measuring to multispecies sustainability? A gendered reading of bee‐ing sustainable. Gender, Work & Organization, 26(3), 246-266.
• Greenwood, M., Jack, G., & Haylock, B. (2019). Toward a methodology for analyzing visual rhetoric in corporate reports. Organizational Research Methods, 22(3), 798-827.
• Greenwood, M., Jack, G., & Haylock, B. (2019). Toward a methodology for analyzing visual rhetoric in corporate reports. Organizational Research Methods, 22(3), 798–827.
• Hales, S., Riach, K., & Tyler, M. (2019). Putting sexualized labour in the picture: Encoding ‘reasonable entitlement’ in the lap dancing industry. Organization, 26(6), 783-801.
• Wolfram Cox, J., & Hassard, J. (2018). From relational to relationist leadership in critical management education: Recasting leadership work after the practice turn. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 17(4): 532-556.

Ongoing projects

• A paper on how to use Arts-Based Research as a method. Any study that takes materialism seriously (whether through a sociomaterial, posthuman or Feminist New Materialist lens) has to grapple with how to adequately examine the ‘more-than-language’. This research, led by Dr Laura Visser, in collaboration with Dr. Noortje van Amsterdam (Utrecht University, the Netherlands), is discussing the promise of arts-based research as a method for studying materiality.
• Folk Imaginary as a source as a source of social responsibility. Led by Mai Vu, this project explores how folk art shapes local understandings of social responsibility. It focuses on how artists, artisans, workshop owners, and community members interpret folk drawings as material and cultural forms through which responsibilities toward family, community, heritage, and society are organised and communicated.

Funding agencies

Stead, N., Wolfram Cox, J., Gusheh, M., Cooper, B., & Orr, K. (2020-2022). Architectural Work Cultures: Professional identity, Education and Wellbeing, Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, LP190100926.

This project involves the full spectrum of Australian architectural education and practice. With the ambition to cover all stages of the career continuum from the first day of architecture school until the day of retirement, it will also attempt to capture the experiences of workers in small, medium, and large practices.

This project’s partners include NSW Architects Registration Board, The Association of Architecture Schools of Australasia, the Australian Institute of Architects, the Association of Consulting Architects Australia, BVN Architecture Pty. Ltd., SJB Architects, Fulcrum Agency, The trustee for the Elenberg Fraser Investment Trust, Hassell Ltd., Designinc Limited.

To see more, visit Architectural Work Cultures.