Affective Arrangements: From a Social to a Relational Understanding of Emotions and Other Affective

About the seminar topic

While organisational scholars have recognised the collective and socially binding qualities of emotions and their role in shaping institutional and organisational dynamics, extant research on the social nature of emotions continues to centre on emotions as concrete and nameable feeling states that can be collectively shared yet are still held by individuals. This overlooks important affective phenomena that are more diffuse and emerge relationally, not only in interactions between human beings but also through the materials, technologies and spaces that are central to their practices. To advance organisational theory that has sought to incorporate a social understanding of emotions by primarily drawing on the sociology of emotions, we propose moving towards a relational approach. We argue that our mobilising of Slaby’s concept of “affective arrangements” enables us to both deepen current understanding and also broaden the scope of affective phenomena that ought to be considered when we move away from the traditional (social) psychological approach to emotions. In doing so, we contribute to the organisational theory in three ways: we (a) de-centre the individual in favour of dynamic intra-actions between persons, things, spaces and discourses as generative of affects that precede and give rise to (social) emotions; (b) offer a holistic framework through which a broad range of emotions and other affective phenomena that have been shown to be important in organisations can be understood and studied relationally; and (c) suggest ways in which this framework can help connect seemingly disparate research streams in organisational theory that have engaged what has become known as “the affective turn”.

Co-authors: Jaco Lok, Eriselda Danaj

Speaker bio

Professor Eric Knight completed his DPhil at Oxford University as an Australian Rhodes Scholar and is a leading researcher in the field of organisational theory and strategic management. He is particularly interested in how strategy processes unfold and incorporate different, complex types of meaning. Recent highlights with his collaborators include papers published on the embodied process of atmospheres in strategy workshops (published in AMJ in 2025), the use of PowerPoint in strategy making (published in SMJ in 2018), how different types of narratives allow entrepreneurs to pivot across multiple product failures (published in AMJ in 2025), and theoretical work using quantum physics as a metaphor to understand how strategies balance paradoxical demands (published in AMR in 2021). He has served as Global Chair of the Strategy Practice interest group of the Strategic Management Society and is Chair of the Strategizing Activities and Practices (SAP) interest group of the Academy of Management. Professor Knight has had the privilege of applying his research interests practically through several university leadership roles: he served as Professor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research-Enterprise & Engagement) at the University of Sydney (2017-2020), Executive Dean of Macquarie Business School (2020-2024) and now serves as Deputy Vice Chancellor (People and Operations) since 2024. Amongst other things, earlier in his career he worked for BCG, co-founded his own start-up, and his teaching curriculum entitled Design-led Strategy: Design Thinking for Business Strategy and Entrepreneurship has attracted over 87,000 students on Coursera.

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