Research seminar | Institutions, slow violence and the strategic construction of historical events - 07 Feb 2024

We are excited to welcome you to a research seminar with Professor Roy Suddaby from the University of Victoria, University of Liverpool & Washington State University. Register now to secure your seat!

Start time: 2024-02-07 at 12:00

End time: 2024-02-07 at 13:30

Location: Stockholm School of Economics. Registration required.

Paper title and abstract

Institutions, slow violence and the strategic construction of historical events

Abstract: In September of 2019, after learning that she might be imprisoned by the Islamic Republic for sneaking into a football stadium to watch a match, Sahar Khodayari, a 29 year old Iranian woman set herself on fire and died. Sahar Khodayari’s death received global media coverage and sparked widespread condemnation against Iranian government. Later that month FIFA mandated Iran to allow women full stadium access based on ticket demand. In October 2019, 4,000 women watched a match against Cambodia in Azadi Stadium.

Because institutions change slowly, the violence they exert is often so deeply woven into the culture that it becomes so cognitively legitimate, so taken-for granted by both the community, and the victim, that the violence and the victim are made invisible. And because institutions exert their power so broadly, embedding into everyday social practices, customs, processes and social structures, it is often extremely difficult to attribute causality to the perpetrator, even when the victim and the violence are revealed.

In this paper I apply the convergent insights of social movement theory, rhetorical history, and institutional theory, to theorize the strategic responses of marginalized actors to institutional violence. I hypothesize institutional factors that determine whether a deliberately constructed event will assume the status of a historical event or, alternatively, vanish from collective memory.

About Roy Suddaby

Roy Suddaby is the Winspear Chair of Management at the Peter B. Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria, Canada, Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Carson College of Business at Washington State University, USA and Chair in Organization Theory at the University of Liverpool Management School, UK. Professor Suddaby is an internationally regarded scholar of organizational theory and institutional change. His work has contributed to our understanding of the critical role of symbolic resources – legitimacy, authenticity, identity and history – in processes of entrepreneurial change and innovation. His current research examines the rhetorical use of the past to mobilize resources for entrepreneurial change.

Roy is a past editor of the Academy of Management Review and is or has been an editorial board member of the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, and theJournal of Business Venturing. He has won best-paper awards from the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative.