Dr. S.B. Ybema (Sierk)

Tuesday and Friday, contact through e-mail

Politics, identity and sensemaking in organizational settings.

• Organizational Sciences (master)
• Kernthema’s Organisatiewetenschappen (1st year bachelor & premaster)
• MSc Thesis (thesis subjects)

Sierk Ybema’s research revolves around processes of organizational politics, identity, discourse and sensemaking. His ethnography of an amusement park and of the editorial staffs of two newspapers examine the internal struggles over organizational change. He published on a variety of issues, including culture and conflict, relational and temporal identity talk, managerial discourse and ‘postalgia’, cross-cultural collaboration, inter-organizational relationships, organizational change and crisis, and organizational ethnography. How organizational actors present themselves and others and, vice versa, how they are ‘identified’ by others, is a primary interest in his teaching and research activities. Such a focus on identity questions directs attention to what people find essential about their organization, their profession, their position, their culture, and their work.

• Member of European Group for Organization Studies EGOS, Academy of Management AoM, Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism SCOS, and Institute for Organization Studies VU University
• Research Associate Advanced Institute of Management (www.aimresearch.org)
• Member Editorial Board Organization. The Critical Journal of Organization Theory and Society
  

Publications (Source: METIS VU)

• Ybema, Sierk, Dvora Yanow & Ida Sabelis (eds.) (2011) Organizational culture. Two volume set research collection. Northampton Mass.: Edward Elgar. www.e-elgar.co.uk/bookentry_main.lasso?id=13903
• Ybema, Sierk (2010) ‘Talk of change: Temporal contrasts and collective identities.’ Organization Studies 31(4): 481-503.
• Ellis, Nick & Sierk Ybema (2010) ‘Marketing identities: Shifting circles of identification.’ Organization Studies 31(3): 279-305.
• Ybema, Sierk, Dvora Yanow, Harry Wels & Frans Kamsteeg (eds.) (2009) Organizational ethnography: Studying the complexities of everyday life. London: Sage. www.sagepub.com/books/Book232255
• Ybema, Sierk, Tom Keenoy, Cliff Oswick, Armin Beverungen, Nick Ellis, & Ida Sabelis (2009) Articulating identities. Human Relations 62(3): 299-322.
• Ybema, Sierk & Hyunghae Byun (2009) Cultivating cultural differences in asymmetric power relations. International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management 9(3): 339-358.
• Ybema, Sierk (2004) Managerial postalgia: Projecting a golden future. Journal of Managerial Psychology 19(8): 825-841.
  

 PhD projects

• Leonora Reijn ‘Identity at work: Control and commitment in postbureaucratic organisations’. Completed in 2008
• Hyunghae Byun-van Bladel Project 1: Culture and hierarchy: Japanese-Dutch encounters on the work-floor, NIOD/COM; Project 2: From loyalty to flexibility? The effects of a new managerial regime in Japan on employees’ organizational identification, NWO Mozaïek grant
• Greetje Corporaal ‘Transnational collaboration: Japanese-Dutch encounters in a Japanese multinational’.
  

News

• The paper "Marketing identities" (Ellis and Ybema 2010) is the most downloaded article in 2010 in Organization Studies (of all articles published in 2009 and 2010).
• In 2012 the department of Organization Sciences hosts the 10th International Conference on Organizational Discourse on "Process, Practices, and Performance".