Seminar with Professor Mats Alvesson, Lund University
The Art of Less: How to Focus on What Really Matters at Work.
Alvesson & Spicer’s new book highlights a problem most people are familiar today. At work, employees often feel weighed down by too many initiatives, meetings, trainings, targets, regulations and demands for documentation. Overzealous leaders and staff people, interfering consultants, and stakeholder groups with competing demands frequently get in the way of “real work.” As a result, people feel overloaded while at the same time less productive.
A key focus of the research talk is the definition of “sludge” – a mix of processes, rules, and requirements that restrict people’s ability to act. Once caught in this sludge, workflows break down or slow to a crawl, making it difficult to focus on core tasks and value creation. The seminar provides concrete examples of how companies and public organisations become overcomplicated, offering too many products or services as well as regulations, which eventually blocks efficient operations. It explains the background of sludge and shows ways of “de-sludging” organisations.
The seminar is based on the recently published book The Art of Less: How to Focus on What Really Matters at Work, Bloomsbury, with André Spicer.
Mats Alvesson, professor at Lund University and at the University of Bath and also affiliated with City University of London, is the author or co-author of more than thirty books, including the widely discussed The Stupidity Paradox as well as Reflexive Methodology (with Sköldberg), The Triumph of Emptiness, Return to Meaning (with Gabriel and Paulsen) and Reflexive Leadership (with Blom and Sveningsson). He has published many journal articles (Academy of Management, British Journal of Sociology, Human Relations, Journal of Management Studies etc) and often writes for Swedish newspapers.
The seminar will be held in English.
This seminar is organised by Leadership and Organisation group. No pre-registration required.
Join us in person or online via Zoom:
https://lnu-se.zoom.us/j/61437832824?pwd=sfPqbmsXzAgzqJVMrdLpfpCvU7yLki.1