Organizing Failure

Coupling Social Infrastructures and Personal Experiences

Martin Hájek

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2025
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9798216259152
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

In this book, the authors offer a unique perspective on failure, treating it as an intentional and routine result of organizational activity rather than an event to be avoided.
Through case studies in different organizational domains-including start-up entrepreneurship, platform work, and public policy-contributors analyze the social processes and mechanisms through which failure is organizationally produced as a reality for the actors involved. Based on conceptual reflection and empirical research, the authors argue that the organization of failure takes place in the interaction of actors who take on the roles of sponsors, contractors, and evaluators of a particular activity. Sponsoring and evaluation rely on evaluative infrastructures (procedures and narratives) that are often made invisible or opaque to the contractors carrying out the activities and the research reveals the critical role of sponsors' subjective involvement in organizing failure. The book ultimately demonstrates that focusing on the organization of failure rather than its causes can contribute to a deeper understanding of organized activities in contemporary society.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Part I: Conceptual Framework for Failure: Activities, Infrastructures, and Experiences
• Chapter 2: Sociology of Failure: Mission (Im)possible?
• Chapter 3: Failure in Projects: A Theory of Failure Organization
• Part II: Organizing and Experiencing Failure in Profit-Driven Organizations
• Chapter 4: Failure as a Legitimizing Discourse in Start-Up Cultures
• Chapter 5: Ever- and Never-Failing Adventurers: Fail-Proof Subjectivity in the Start-Up Environment
• Chapter 6: Failure Organization and Experience on Digital Labor Platforms
• Chapter 7: Overemphasizing and Silencing Failure as a Governmentality Principle in For-Profit Organizations
• Part III: Organizing and Experiencing Failure in Value-Based Nonprofit Organizations
• Chapter 8: Questioning the Virtue Narrative: Advocating for a Pluralistic Notion of NGO Failure
• Chapter 9: Failure in Environmental Education NGOs
• Chapter 10: Failure in International Development Projects: Evidence from the Sport for Development and Peace Field
• Chapter 11: A Hard-Earned Non-Failure: Tensions and Ambiguities in the Field of Nonprofit Project Organization
• Part IV: The Organization of the Failure in Policy Implementation
• Chapter 12: Unfulfilled Hopes and Broken Promises: Theoretical Perspectives on the Failure of Diversity Management in Organiza ional Contexts
• Chapter 13: Failed Moral Panic and Justification: An Analysis of a Lockdown Event in China
• Part V: Failure in Comparative Perspective: Differences and Similarities in the Business, NGO, and Public Policy Sectors
• Chapter 14: Unexpected “Family Resemblances” in Organizing and Experiencing Failure
• Index
• About the Editor
• About the Contributors