Academic work and imagination: Reflections of an armchair traveler

In this paper, I offer an autoethnography of academic work and imagination. I write as an “armchair traveler” who joins others in research endeavors that they have initiated. Imagination takes center stage in what I do: I use my imagination in analyzing empirical materials and in theorizing and writing meaningful research. Together with others, I engage in studies where I am close to the subject of inquiry and feel sameness, but also in research that for me is grounded in difference and otherness. Through my autoethnography, I elucidate the potential and limits of imagination in different research initiatives. Reflecting on my experiences and learning, I discuss how imagination relates to ethico-politics in doing research. I argue that imagination thrives in small acts of generosity in research collaboration, which harbor a sense of togetherness and solidarity. This has implications for understanding academic work that is obsessed with performance in publishing.


Introduction
In a moment of self-reflection, I realized that I have not done any research interviews for ages.I could not recall when I last did ethnographic work in an organization.Nor have I done archival work lately, searching for corporate or media materials for research purposes.I used to do a lot of field work with great enthusiasm but noticed that I am not doing it anymore.What am I doing, then?
I realized that I have become comfortable in doing research in a way that is very different from how I first learned to do it.Rather than getting my hands dirty and engaging in producing (as in interviews) or collecting (as in media or social media stuff) empirical materials for analyses, I sit back and wait for others to do it.I join my colleagues in all sorts of exciting qualitative research endeavors that they have initiated.These collaborations take me to people I have never met and to places where I have never been.
Realizing that I have changed as an academic was my "epiphany."It shapes my life as I see it, to paraphrase Norman Denzin's (2013) definition of epiphanies in autoethnographic work.Epiphanies do not need to be spectacular or dramatic.They "prompt us to pause and reflect" and "encourage us to explore aspects of our identities, relationships and communities that, before the incident, we might not have had the occasion to explore" (Adams et al., 2017: 7).This is what happened to me.
After my initial anxiety had turned into a sense of wonder, I started to ponder what I am doing, how, and why.I started to look back.I figured that I am imagining things, as I have always done.However, it is only now that imagination has taken center stage in what I do.My academic work is about using my imagination in analyzing empirical materials and in theorizing and writing meaningful research together with others.Thinking this through led me to craft this text, which turned into an autoethnography.
As a method of inquiry, autoethnography is grounded in personal experience.It acknowledges and accommodates subjectivity, emotionality, and the influence of the researcher on what is researched (Ellis and Bochner, 2000).It illuminates social phenomena, experiences, and identities that would be difficult to capture otherwise (see e.g.McDonald, 2016;Tienari, 2019).Autoethnography is thus well suited for sharing my experiences and for inviting others to discuss imagination in academic work.
Thinking through my experiences I soon found that I could not say what I wanted to say without the help of a metaphor.As an academic, I figured, I have become an "armchair traveler."I use this metaphor to denote a specific role that can be taken up in collaborative research.I do not refer to purely theoretical or conceptual work, or just reading and thinking in my "armchair" (cf., Thomas, 2020), but a role that comprises empirical analyses as well as theoretical work.In my case, armchair traveling makes use of my prior experiences in academic writing, and it involves taking responsibility in "writing up" our joint research.Through reflections on my collaborations with many different researchers, I share ideas in this paper on what armchair traveling can mean and why this notion may be useful for making sense of academic work and imagination more broadly.
Of course, this is just one way to understand imagination in academic work.There are many others.Imagination can be openly political in critiquing universities that "invisibilize, surveil, audit, and discipline" us-and in imagining "a New University characterized by radical hope" of decolonization (Bell et al., 2020: 849).Engaging in dialogue about imagination in academic work, I cannot pretend to be what I am not.I am a privileged white cis man who is a professor and who can "afford" to imagine in particular ways.As such, this paper is not about seeking "easy closure in the face of mystery and uncertainty" (Gabriel, 2018).I wish it to remain open.It is an invitation, and perhaps a provocation, for conversing what imagination can mean and how we can use it to make the university a better place for all.
In this paper, I highlight how imagination is for me an essential element of doing and learning about qualitative research in organization studies.I explore how it plays out in research collaboration and in writing that is a crucial (and, in terms of publishing, arguably over-emphasized) part of academic work today.I share ideas on what it means to do research by imagining what is and what could be and by taking responsibility for writing up the fruits of our joint imagination.
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows.Next, I reflect on autoethnography as a method of inquiry to explore imagination in academic work.I then offer examples of my research collaboration with others.I move onto theorizing imagination as something that is psychological and social, or about relations between self and society, and discuss how it is mediated and determined by language.Finally, I consider the opportunities and limits of imagination in academic work through its ethico-politics, or the politics of knowledge and the ethics of producing it (Ahonen and Tienari, 2015).

Am I imagining it?
Together with two female feminist colleagues, I engaged in studying younger versions of myself, that is male business school academics.These men are up-and-coming and on the tenure track.They are ambitious and, thus far, successful at work.My colleague interviewed many of these men and told us that she was surprised and even astonished.She had expected to talk to sharp-elbowed selfish careerists but found her interviewees to be different from what she expected.These young men supported their partners who were pursuing careers outside academia and took on caring responsibilities at home if they had children.However, pressures at work did not allow them to do as much care work as they said they wished.
My colleague's experiences in the interviews called for discussions among our research team.After having engaged with gender studies for a long time by studying women (together with my female colleagues), I now thought I was close to the "empirical materials" and could use my imagination in acting as an interpreter or translator of the masculinities that figured in the lives of these young men.We realized that what we were witnessing in the interviews was not only about gender relations and whiteness but also about social class.These men were distinctly middle class, like me, and this informed the way they could talk about themselves.I felt that I could relate to, and imagine, their lives.
I read and re-read the interview transcripts and imagined how the young men experienced life and work.I knew most of them personally.I wanted to get under their skin and speak in their voice so that (what I imagined to be) the complexities in their lives as academics and as men became explicit.Many of these men were fathers and they talked a lot about juggling between "caring" and more "traditional" masculinities.I became a father relatively late in life, and I am in a similar life stage.I, too, am struggling to juggle my responsibilities at home and at work.By imagining what this struggle can mean for our research participants I brought something into our collaboration that was not otherwise possible.As a result, we could study in-depth how different masculinities intertwined in young male business school academics' talk and offer a novel argument to a gender studies audience.I think we, the three researchers, all learned that we need each other in such joint research initiatives.We need our different positionalities vis-à-vis our subject of inquiry-and our imaginations.And, like the three of us did, we must learn to trust each other in what we do.By being open to our differences and by supporting each other-practicing generosity (cf., Diprose, 2002)-we developed ways of working where we could turn our different positionalities into a source of inspiration throughout the research process.
This is an example of how I work with imagination.It is a relatively safe example, because I am close to the subject of inquiry in that the focus is on people who are in some ways like me.I feel confident with these imaginings.My examples in this paper-I offer plenty more below, including more unsettling ones-are autoethnographic reflections of academic work done together with others in business school settings.I write about these collaborations through my own experiences and in a personalized style, as an autoethnography (Ellis et al., 2011).These are introspective, retrospective, and reflexive tales (Boyle and Parry, 2007), turning embodied experiences into insider accounts (Bell and King, 2010) that illuminate social phenomena (McDonald, 2016;Tienari, 2019).Autoethnography enables me to focus on my own experiences while taking a wider ethnographic gaze (Reed-Danahay, 1997;Sparkes, 2000).In Denzin's (2013) words, it offers me "a way of writing my way out."By writing this paper I deal with the anxiety and sense of wonder following my epiphany.
However, autoethnographies are subject to sometimes harsh criticism.Andrew Sparkes (2000) offers advice on doing autoethnography as he recalls his experiences in crafting one, submitting it to a journal, receiving reviewers' comments, and working on a revision.He elucidates how autoethnographies can evoke mixed reactions among those who evaluate them, and how these lead to mixed feelings for the author.No-one doing autoethnography is safe from suspicions of narcissism and self-indulgence.Sparkes shows how, at least to some extent, engaging with theory can "save" us from these "charges" (see also e.g.Anderson, 2006).I see this in myself as I am constantly drawn to earlier research to frame my experiences, to back up my examples, and to convince readers that I know what I am doing and saying.
In autoethnographies, there are also concerns with authenticity, believability, and the (sufficiently) evocative nature of the text (see e.g.Ellis and Bochner, 2000).Without getting into philosophical discussions about how "writing the self" invariably involves "writing the other," it is important to consider to whom the autoethnography speaks.I hope to invoke active rather than passive readers, readers who are engaged rather than unengaged.Autoethnographies are read from multiple positions, but they must somehow connect with the readers, and excite, provoke, or unsettle them.I hope to do this with my paper, although there is no room here to discuss my examples of academic work and imagination with such depth and richness that I would like.
There will always be different viewpoints, contradictions, tensions, and conflicts of interpretation about what the criteria are for assessing the meaning and quality of an autoethnography.However, as Sparkes (2000) argues, different viewpoints can be seen as invitations to deepen our understanding and to sharpen our judgments.As such, I invite readers-those who do academic work and can relate to my examples-to imagine with me, but not necessarily in the same way and coming to the same conclusions.I guess that my autoethnography is of the "analytical" type (Anderson, 2006) as I end up attempting to theorize my experiences and examples, and thereby point to possible connections with others.
Through my reflections on how I have changed as an academic, I realized how important imagination is for me.We all have our own ways of trying to stay afloat in the dire working conditions of contemporary universities.I talk from a privileged position of an academic who has opportunities (at least relatively speaking) to choose what he does.I have turned to imagination to find meaning in my work and to help other scholars in their pursuits.Imagination is my escape into a world where academic work can be a bit nicer and where I can be useful for others, too.For others, it can be something very different.Next, I offer examples (vignettes) describing my experiences in "armchair traveling" in a variety of research initiatives.

Putting imagination to work
My first examples are close to home in that they-like the one presented above-involve the study of universities, academic work, and academic workers.They are about closeness to the subject of inquiry and the risks that this poses for imagination.The second set of examples is about studying corporate management, that is people whom I have researched for a long time and who seem familiar to me.In this sense, it is about (assumed) sameness and its implications for possibilities of imagination.The third set is about reaching out and studying people and places that are not familiar to me.It is about difference and otherness.It is about consciously limiting my imagination.

Close to home
I have engaged in many research initiatives that are close to "home."In different ways, with different people, and through different angles and theoretical perspectives, I have studied people in academic milieus that are changing and, it seems, increasingly forcefully managed and measured, putting pressure on those who do academic work.
I recently joined an initiative where we focus on business school faculty members, that is, women and men in different academic positions.I joined a team of researchers-we are five-in studying academics who were forced to move from their historical campus to a new one.We began to contemplate the spatial and place-related aspects of being an academic (i.e.place-based academic identity) and what this means for resisting the way academics are managed.My colleagues interviewed our mutual colleagues on their experiences of not being listened to and of being forced to move to a new location and premises.I was close to our subject of inquiry but so were the others in our team (we had all worked in the university we studied, but most of us had left it).We looked at it from different academic positions.I did not contribute to generating the data but used my imagination in analyzing it.In a team of five, we had different experiences, viewpoints, concepts, and theoretical perspectives to offer.
While the other team members hesitated, together with another team member I took responsibility for writing up the first version of our joint paper.When others found it difficult to put words on paper, the two of us could move the process forward for all.I noticed how I think (or, rather, imagine) while I write, and how I need to be careful in writing about what I am imagining, and not force my own views on the paper at the expense of others.I felt strongly about the forced move (I was annoyed and disappointed and decided to leave as a result) and was mindful not to imagine that others necessarily shared the same sense of resistance.I learned to control my urge to speak with my own voice, rather than that of our research participants.In writing up the paper with one of the team members, I also tried to keep an open mind to the many differences that characterize our collaboration.
Perhaps the most puzzling experience for me in studying academics has been an initiative together with a colleague who is not only an academic but a strategy consultant, too.I have known her for a long time, and I have seen how she has combined these two positions admirably.She is one of the few people I know who are fluent in two languages: academic and practitioner.Still, it has not been easy for her to find a place in academia.We talked about her experiences as a researcher-consultant, and I found that she had begun to work on an autoethnographic paper where she reflected on what I was interested in: inclusion and exclusion in social interaction.I read her paper draft and was struck by its emotional power.
My colleague asked me to join her in developing the paper.I suggested that I "become her" for a few days, step inside her skin, and try to imagine what happened in the vignettes of her experiences that she shared with me.So, I did that and worked on turning the paper into a collaborative autoethnography.We submitted it to a journal but got rejected.My colleague took the rejection hard.The paper has been sitting on her shelf, and she has not talked about polishing it or submitting it into another journal.It seems that the rejection confirmed her sense of being marginalized and excluded in academia.My stakes were lower, but my stomach turns whenever we talk about this joint experience.I feel our shared disappointment-and I sense the limits of my imagination.I tried to act generously in helping my colleague to tell her story and to say something important about inclusion and exclusion, but I think I failed in doing so.

With corporate management
As a business school academic I am socialized into working with corporate people.I have studied companies and corporate management since I worked on my doctoral dissertation.I am used to talking to corporate decision-makers to the extent that I think that I understand many of the challenges they face and the pressures they are under.I have joined my colleagues who have carried out ethnographic (or ethnographically inspired) work and generated unique materials on the lives of corporate executives.
Another colleague of mine used to be a corporate executive.After completing her PhD, she decided to stay in academia.She wrote her thesis based on empirical work carried out in the company where she worked.My colleague is intelligent and reflective, and she asked me to join her in revisiting the huge amount of data that she had produced and collected for her PhD project.While I have worked with large companies in a range of industries, this one was relatively new to me.Having seen the data that was still "unused," I decided to join in.The setting was a strategic transformation of the company.We came up with a theoretical framing that satisfied both of us.Again, I could let my imagination go: I found myself becoming a sparring partner to my colleague who wanted to develop her theorizing skills as an academic, and who was moving back and forth between her previous corporate role (and the experiences and competences she had accrued) and her current position as a researcher; academically curious and creative.
I became a coach of sorts, but not only that.I became a "ghost writer" to my colleague who was part of the empirical materials.I tried to get under the skin of managers working to transform the company and in many ways failing to do so.I felt for these people who included my colleague, and I wanted to share their "authentic" voices in our paper.I relied on my colleague's materials and interpretations, however, and will never really know how they resonate with the other actors in our study.In remaining open to my limitations, and in appreciating others' experiences, generosity was again a key part of my imagining.I felt that I could help my colleague in her transition to an academic and, in return, get new insights into the stressful world of corporate executives.Generosity was a mutual experience.
While the previous example concerned a multinational corporation with its headquarters in the city where I live, a little later I joined three colleagues in studying one that originates from another country.The empirical materials were generated by one of them for her PhD.I learned that she had taken on consultative tasks while producing and collecting an impressive set of empirical materials so she, too, was straddling practitioner and academic language.I helped the team to imagine more critical theoretical perspectives for analyzing the data.Gradually I took more and more responsibility for writing our paper.A curious sense of sameness characterized this research initiative, too.I had a feeling that I could dive into the world of corporate executives at the headquarters who were struggling in "executing" their global (or local, depending on how you look at it) vision and strategy.I could also imagine life in the subsidiaries where the policies and practices set by the HQ were challenged and resisted.As an outsider, but someone sympathetic to both subjects of inquiry (people at HQ and in the subsidiaries), I felt I could imagine both sides of what seemed to be a fundamental tension in the global organization.
However, I was puzzled about how to write about it in a way that did justice to the complexity in what was happening but did not compromise my colleague's position in revealing stuff that could be considered confidential.I imagined a lot of things that we ended up not including in our paper.The picture we painted about the company was in some ways partial, as all research is.In all previous versions of the paper, I was marked down as the first author but for the final version I offered this position to my colleague who did the ethnography.I think she deserved it, and I later learned that this became an important career paper for her.
As the next example shows, my research collaborations are varied.I was visiting professor for a time in a university in a neighboring country and got to learn about many intriguing research projects there.I ended up joining an initiative that I thought was particularly timely and relevant.This was the ongoing PhD-project of a researcher who had done what I thought to be a fantastic ethnographically inspired study among corporate executives and managers who were extremely conscious of their healthy lifestyles, sports achievements, and appearances.I was happy when she asked me to join her in working on a paper.We discussed possible theoretical lenses, and I helped the PhD researcher to tease out what we thought were the most interesting findings from her empirical analyses.She had challenges in choosing what she wanted to say and in articulating it clearly.Using my imagination, I could help her.I could also help her see how our different positions vis-à-vis the subject of inquiry could be turned into a strength in our joint research.
I persuaded the PhD researcher to include another colleague in this initiative, and we ended up working on our paper as a team of three.For me, this research started out as sameness-after all, what the participants in the empirical study did for a living was quite familiar to me.However, it came to be more and more about difference.In some way I understood these executives and managers.Their jobs are very demanding, and it is understandable that they want to be in excellent shape to survive and succeed.However, I was put off by the way they seemed to force others in their organizations to live their lives like they did-and excluded those who did not.I was disgusted about some of the examples.I felt powerless anger imagining what the lives of those who could not subject to the obsessive health and fitness norms set by the sporty executives and managers must be like.My imagination took a critical turn, and I learned that I was on the boundary of sameness and difference.

Encountering others, as the other
I have made conscious attempts to develop my understandings and to move beyond my comfort zone.This has led me into some intriguing research collaborations that have made me increasingly conscious of the limits of my capabilities.I have stretched my imagination until I cannot stretch it anymore.
Some time ago I studied an online community involving women in their 20s, based in my home country.A PhD researcher from the university next door had generated a lot of data on a community where young, predominantly white women interacted.She had conducted a netnography on an online media platform.At the time, she was in her late 20s and part of the community.She invited me and another colleague to join her in taking a new angle to her research and materials.My senior female colleague and I were happy to join in, and we became a "diverse" team of three in terms of age and gender.The PhD researcher took us outsiders to witness the life of young women who were interested in fashion, but who were also societally conscious and engaged with contemporary issues of various kinds.What I saw and learned resonated with me.
With help from the young woman whose research initiative this was, I could imagine what it must be like to be a young woman on social media today.I could see and feel (I know this may sound crazy) their struggles in constructing their identities at the crossroads of many contradictory forces in society putting pressure on them.In our insider-outsider team, we discussed the identity struggles these young women were facing.While our collaboration was smooth and rewarding, I had a nagging feeling that I was stretching the boundaries of my imagination a bit too far.I felt unsure of myself and worked to ensure that we did not depart from the interpretations of the young woman whose initiative this was and who, after all, was part of the community we studied.We experienced what feels like a mutual sense of generosity as we helped each other in the different aspects of the research.We agreed that this mutuality fostered our togetherness.A sense of solidarity developed and, looking back, such solidarity has in my view been a key characteristic of all my "armchair travels." This feeling was very much present in a collaboration that led me to study a social media site in a far-off country.A PhD researcher in my business school wanted to talk to me.It turned out that she had intriguing materials from social media commentary and discussions that she had followed for some time.Only they were in a language that I could not understand.The commentary and discussions were by male drivers in an online ride hailing company in an Asian country where I have never been.The PhD researcher is a "native" of this country, doing her doctorate abroad.We had many fascinating discussions and she talked me into this community of men who were struggling to make ends meet and to retain their sense of masculine dignity in working for a platform company.The PhD researcher was kind enough to translate examples of her materials into English so that we could interpret them together.After our discussions and agreement on a potential theoretical framing the PhD researcher carried out a systematic analysis of her social media materials.I became a coach again: I asked questions, tested ideas, and encouraged her to share hers.
Here, too, one of my primary roles was to write up what she had found and what we had created together.I was determined to help the PhD researcher publish her first article as I imagined driving around a huge, crowded Asian city, looking for clients and being at the mercy of their whims and sometimes abusive behavior.I imagined the pressures the drivers were facing when their sense of pride as men providing for their families was threatened.They struggled and I felt empathy for them.However, I was consciously careful with my imagination, especially as I had no access to the original materials.The men we studied were so different from me that I could not pretend to imagine what their lives are "really" like.Yet, together with the PhD researcher, we could give them a voice and treat them with openness and respect.I guess I will never know whether it is a voice that the men-our subjects of inquiry-could identify with.
Finally, a theater in turmoil.The colleague in a neighboring country who earlier took me to study health-conscious corporate executives invited me to join her in studying a performing arts organization.By now, she had completed her PhD and landed a position in another university.She continued to spot intriguing settings for research.She had done ethnographic research in a theater in the Global North that had a policy of diversity and inclusion and had recruited different kinds of people, but where tensions and conflicts had arisen that were related to race and ethnicity.She invited a third colleague, someone we both know well, into our collaboration.This is an ongoing research initiative, but I have learned more about modesty in research; I tread lighter with my imagination than I did in the research on academic work and corporate executives.This study is about people who are labeled minorities and "different" or "diverse" in the organization due to their color of skin and (assumed) ethnic background.This includes people who have lived in this country all their lives but are still considered outsiders.
It feels like this research initiative, too, is based on a mutual sense of generosity.We work hard to help each other in making sense of what we are studying.This helps me to imagine.As a representative of the majority in society I am not able to share the experiences of our research subjects.An open mind is not enough.As an immigrant and ethnic minority member who has lived in the country for a long time, my colleague shares some of the background of our research subjects and she can guide us in the research process.The imagination I bring into this research initiative is limited and, again, a lot about writing up the research in ways that capture the interest and curiosity of our (assumed) academic audience.I listen to my colleague carefully and "adjust" my imagination so that I do justice to the complex lived bodily experiences of our research participants who are in the minority and struggle to be treated fairly.Time will tell where we end up.

Theorizing imagination?
Now that I have shared my experiences, an encounter with those who have studied and written about imagination is in order.I feel a need to discuss some of the ways in which it has been understood by others to offer a grounding for theorizing on imagination in academic work.This is important for autoethnographic inquiry, particularly of the analytical kind.In the following, I aim to engage in dialogue between what I think are key issues in earlier research and my experiences in research collaboration and "armchair traveling."C. Wright Mills (1959) offers a starting point for such dialogue.For him, "sociological imagination" was the means to understand relations between self and society.Following Mills, imagination is a way to try to understand "us" (and "them") in our (their) social environments, at the mercy of wider social and historical forces.I can never do justice to Mills' ideas of individuals and in what ways they (or we) exist in societies.But I observe others-and I observe myself observing others.I shift between perspectives in working with different people and on different subjects of inquiry.I imagine what is and what could be.Imagining in research collaboration, with others, has become a significant part of my work.
Yiannis Gabriel (2018) draws our attention to what he calls "critical theoretical imagination."Interpreting C. Wright Mills, Gabriel suggests that imagination is a restless state of the mind that pressingly and persistently asks the questions "Why?," "What if?" and "So what?"With imagination, Gabriel ponders, we can shift perspectives from the specific to the general and vice versa and seek theoretical openings in analogies and metaphors (I return to imagination and language in the next section).This resembles "imaginative creativity," a concept that Emma Bell and Hugh Willmott (2020) refer to in describing our "crafty treading on paths of indeterminacy" in research, specifically, in empirical situations requiring imaginative interpretation and curiosity by embodied researchers.I feel these paths of indeterminacy, not knowing where they lead.Yet, in joining others in their research endeavors, I am in a position to ask the questions Gabriel (2018) puts forth.I can complement others' imagination so that we can tread the paths together and find shared meaning in what we do.
There are many ways to capture imagination in our field, including some rather fundamental and philosophical ones.Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou and Marianna Fotaki ( 2015) imagine what they call a "theory of imagination" for organization studies.With an eye on organizations and organizing, they argue that imagination is "where it all begins" and it is thus an "inexhaustible psychosocial force" (p.321).Komporozos-Athanasiou and Fotaki (2015) posit that imagination is where the "institutionalization process" related to organizations and organizing is set in motion.Their focus is not on academia and academic workers, but I appreciate theorizing imagination as something that is both psychological and social, and their intertwinement.I am reminded of connections between individuals and communities, and how this is part of each research initiative described above, taking different forms in different circumstances.Komporozos-Athanasiou and Fotaki (2015) draw on philosopher, social critic, economist, and psychoanalyst Cornelius Castoriadis' ideas.Castoriadis (1987) suggested that some imaginations reproduce the dominant institutional order while others challenge it.He talked about instituted (conforming, perhaps) and instituting (more daring) imagination.Christian De Cock 1 (2016) argues for the value of Castoriadis' ideas in organization studies.De Cock reminds us how Castoriadis was concerned with the key question of how the "new" can come into being.This made him focus on imagination.For Castoriadis, De Cock suggests, imagination is not a single act producing an imaginative output, rather, it is a vital process of communication whereby we pass beyond ourselves toward what is other than ourselves.My experiences show that I am never alone in imagining; it always involves others as collaborators and as research participants.And it is never complete.We take imagination from one research initiative to the next.
To understand imagination, then, we need to look beyond individuals and acknowledge the instituted and instituting dimensions through which we humans organize ourselves collectively (De Cock, 2016).Castoriadis' idea of imagination is that it is both profoundly individual and profoundly social, with neither being reducible to the other.De Cock suggests that it is the permanent tension between the two that gives imagination its essentially undetermined character.While any human being can, in principle, re-imagine what another human being has imagined, this is always mediated (De Cock, 2016).With these thoughts I am back to the position from which I imagine and write.With a particular place in the institutionalized order of the business school, I am entangled in the power relations 2 of academia.My imagination is enabled and limited by these relations.Yet, as I have tried to make explicit above, positionalities through which researchers engage in collaboration vary and shift.The power relations can turn out such that I end up in a subject position where I am directed and guided rather than directing and guiding the research initiative (cf., Foucault, 1980).As my examples above show, these shifts give rise to different imaginings, some more confident than others.Berti et al. (2018) turn our attention to where imagination takes place as they chart "the sociomaterial imaginaries and realities" of a new business school building.This reminds me that like knowledge (Haraway, 1988), imagination is situated and located, and that it happens in a given place at a given time.It is not only my position as an academic, then, that determines my positionality but also the place from which I imagine and write.Unsurprisingly, perhaps, I found it increasingly challenging to imagine the further I traveled in my armchair from my business school "home."Place intertwines with time, and it is noteworthy that all the research initiatives described above are contemporary.Digging into archives or the ground is what many scholars in fields such as history and archeology do, and inhabiting the distant past requires a different sort of imagination, I expect.Page et al. (2014) engaged in "dreaming fairness and re-imagining equality and diversity."They argued that their "article's originality lies in its analysis of poetic writings, dreams and visual artefacts created in the context of participative inquiry" in revitalizing equality and diversity practices in the organization.It seems that imagination was at play in two ways here: as content (a "new" way to look at a given phenomenon) and as form (a "new" way to present research findings).My experiences show how exciting research endeavors can end up conforming to established academic conventions.The research can be exciting in terms of content, but blander in the form it takes in academic research reports such as article manuscripts.This is yet another way in which language plays into imagination in academic work, discussed further in the next section.
Finally, and relatedly, there are well-known pieces by "canonized" scholars that show how imagination in academic work is always at the mercy of the prevailing system.Karl Weick (1989) wrote about "theory construction as disciplined imagination."However, his text was notably detached from what researchers do when they do research.Weick was on the lookout for "useful theories" and complained how "methodological strictures" hemmed our theorizing.Weick called for emphasizing the contribution that "imagination, representation, and selection" make to processes of theorizing.He posited that theory construction involves imagination disciplined by the processes of "artificial selection."It seems to me that Weick's (1989) argument was more about discipline than imagination.He wrote in a factual tone and "interpreting imaginary experiments" (p.519) was pretty much the only explicit reference to imagination in his text.
Ten years later, Karl Weick talked about "theory construction as disciplined reflexivity" (Weick, 1999).He commented on articles published in an issue of the Academy of Management Review (AMR) and complained about the safeness of the choices organization theorists tend to make.Imagination was, at best, between the lines.Perhaps the particular-disciplined, I would say-way in which Weick treated imagination becomes understandable against its backdrop.AMR, the outlet in both of Weick's pieces, is among the most prestigious North American journals in our field.It is well-known for advancing "rigorous" work to the detriment of more critical inquiry.Based on his troubled experiences as (now a former) editor, for example, Hugh Willmott (2022) calls the journal "orthodox" as it actively avoids more "heterodox" forms of scholarship.In journals such as AMR, Willmott argues, academic conventions and "conventional wisdom" guide thinking and writing.Overall, the contemporary academic system tends to favor discipline over imagination, no matter how we toss and turn it.
This short journey into imagination as a concept and subject of inquiry suggests that there is more to imagination than the psychological and the social and their intertwinement.Academic work is about language and using language in particular ways.Metaphor and metaphoric language offer a way to dig deeper into what imagination means and what it can mean.I realize that my imagination is linguistically mediated-and perhaps even determined-by language.

Imagination and language: entangled and indeterminate
There are different ways to engage with imagination and language.My aim here is to highlight how language plays into academic work and imagination.Academic work is a lot about writing and especially about writing for publication.It is about using metaphors and other tropes to understand phenomena and to engage and persuade readers.However, language is indeterminate, and it masks and conceals as well as illuminates and reveals.
Gareth Morgan (1986) offers a starting point for making sense of this.In Images of Organization, he discusses the art of "reading" the situations we are trying to make sense of and organize.For Morgan, this is an intuitive process learned through experience.It is not mystique but based on openness and the ability to develop deep appreciation of the situations being addressed.In "reading" situations we engage with images or metaphors as particular ways of thinking and seeing.We imagine when we read and when we write.I am engaging with language when I imagine in the different research initiatives described above-and when I write this autoethnography.Through my experiences, I have developed capabilities in "reading" situations that I am not directly involved in.This helps me to use my imagination when doing and writing up research.
The idea of "reading" situations comes close to how C. Wright Mills (1959) wrote about the sociological imagination as an ability to "see the context" that shapes our individual experiences.Imagination for Mills was about understanding ourselves by understanding our circumstances: connecting "personal troubles of milieu" (such as getting our research collaboration going and persuading other academics to take note of our work) to "public issues of social structure" (such as the competitive neoliberal academia and the pressures to perform it puts on us).The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society.In a profound sense, this is about intellectual craftmanship where the key is to be able to trust-and yet be skeptical of-our experience (Mills, 1959).I keep coming back to the notion of "context," and how verbalizing, and thus constructing, "contexts" (e.g.close to "home," assumed sameness, and difference and otherness) is a crucial element of my imagination and of writing about my experiences.My capabilities in "reading" and "seeing" contexts are relative and limited.
I am not laying claim to any great originality or individual creativity here.In Castoriadis' (1987) parlance, I am perhaps prone to more instituted (conforming, perhaps) than instituting (more daring) imagination.I am more inclined to reproduce the system than to fundamentally challenge it.This shows in our writing and the language we use.Writing and publishing have become an essential and inescapable part of academic work.In writing I have put my imagination to work in a material as well as embodied sense.Together with my collaborators I have engaged in writing up ideas, in writing as co-creating, and in writing as imagining together.Yet, it seems that conventions of what academic writing should be like burden our expression and stifle our "love" for writing (Kiriakos and Tienari, 2018).
In taking responsibility for writing-using my imagination in and through language-I have guided our expression and made it to cater for the assumed expectations and whims of our target audiences (academic journals).I have influenced our choices for outlets, and especially in the case of junior and PhD researchers, perhaps inadvertently influenced their outlook on academic work and its (lack of) meaningfulness.I have contributed to revising our papers based on the feedback received, sometimes watering down our original and more radical ideas.Together we have "confronted the unknown" but ended up reproducing the academic system rather than challenging it in any significant manner (cf., Bell and Willmott, 2020).Institutionalized language has in some ways determined imagination in our work.
While "writing up" our research conforms to the norms of academic writing, it is important to note that a reflexive dialogue is built into all the research initiatives that I described above.Within the different author teams, we discussed our "insider" and "outsider" statuses vis-à-vis our subject of inquiry.We also reflected on how we discuss our (possibly different) assumptions and negotiate meanings, and how it affects the (possibly new) meanings we "discover" together and the ways we choose to represent whatever it is that we think we are studying.I dare say that our research practices are "inherently reflexive" as we try to cope with the indeterminacy or complexity and vagueness of academic work and producing knowledge (Bell and Willmott, 2020).We are open to alternative readings of our findings and claims.We try to avoid closure in argumentation-to the extent possible in the journals where we have submitted our work.We have occasionally tried to "write differently" (Grey and Sinclair, 2006), too, but we have noticed how difficult it tends to be.
Finally, language plays a crucial role in how I can reflect on imagination in this autoethnography.This is where metaphor and metaphoric language again come to the fore.Joep Cornelissen (2006) argued that at the heart of Karl Weick's argument about "disciplined imagination" lies the role played by metaphor as the vehicle through which imagination takes place.Cornelissen took up Weick's suggestion that as theorists "conducting and interpreting imaginary experiments," we rely upon metaphors.Metaphors provide us with vocabularies and images to represent and express organizational phenomena that are often complex and abstract.As such, Cornelissen (2006) set out to trace how metaphor works, how processes of "metaphorical imagination" play into theory construction, and how researchers can select insightful metaphors and build theoretical representations.
"Armchair traveler" is a metaphor 3 with which I not only aim to arouse the curiosity of my readers but to verbalize something that is difficult to pin down and theorize.The metaphor allows me to share my concerns over what I do when I imagine and how my imagination takes different forms."Armchair" refers to my position where I have an overall sense of control over my work, although I feel lost at times."Traveling" denotes activities where I am moved and moving; departing from my other activities (such as teaching and administration, which is more local and less imaginative, perhaps) and returning to these activities from my travels.Imagination draws from language and thrives in written and spoken linguistic expressions.We negotiate interpretations and ideas by making our own available to others by means of language.I like Cornelissen's (2006) idea about metaphor, and I see myself using metaphorical language when I write about my experiences in imagining and writing.
However, as all language, metaphoric language is necessarily limited.I realized this early on when I tried to write about how imagination plays into my academic work.Gareth Morgan (1986), among many others, argues that metaphors frame our understandings in distinctive but always partial ways.A way of seeing created through a metaphor is also a way of not seeing."Armchair traveler" is a metaphor that allows me to write about my experiences in ways that make sense to me.In highlighting certain interpretations of my academic existence and travels, however, it pushes others into the background.I turn a blind eye to something that may be relevant, but I fail to imagine.Morgan (1986) also reminds us that metaphors are inherently paradoxical and that they always create distortions.Metaphors use evocative images to create "constructive falsehoods" that, when taken to the extreme, turn out to be absurd rather than anything else.This is the case with "armchair traveler," too, I'm sure.
To summarize, for me, academic work is about imagining in the sense that it is about seeing connections, trying to understand the world a little bit better, and talking and writing about these (assumed) connections and understandings.Based on my autoethnography, and in dialogue with extant research, I am tempted to understand imagination in "armchair traveler" academic work as something where the psychological, social, and linguistic intertwine.It is about what is imagined and the perceived distance to it (whether at "home," close or far); about how the interaction with collaborators and research participants plays out (e.g. in terms of seniority and closeness to who and that which is studied); and about the forms it can take in talking and especially in academic writing.This idea of imagination sees it as situated (done in specific positions, places, and times) and highlights the institutional and political conditions where it is (not) able to flourish.

Concluding remarks, or on the ethico-politics of imagination
I began this paper by wondering how I have turned into an "armchair traveler" academic.Rather than engaging in producing or collecting empirical materials for analyses, I join others in research that they have initiated.My academic work is about using my imagination in creating meaningful research together with others.Through an autoethnography, I have discussed how imagination is psychological, social, and linguistic, and elucidated how closeness to the subject of inquiry, (assumed) sameness, and difference and otherness offer different vantage points for imagination and condition how it plays out.The different relations I have with those we study (and those I collaborate with) show how there are many possibilities for imagination in academic work-but also limits.Now I wish to broaden the discussion to ethico-politics of academic work and imagination.This is important because it brings my relations with, and obligations to, others to the foreground.I argue that the ethico-politics of imagination play out in small acts of generosity, which harbor a sense of togetherness and solidarity in research.
It has become increasingly clear to me how academic language and conventions steer my-and "our," I dare say-imagination in particular ways.As such, I (we) have engaged with what Bell andWillmott (2020: 1366) refer to as the "ethico-political process of co-constituting knowledge."The focus here is on "ethics-in-practice" or how I (we) address the complexities in doing research and account for my (our) choices, when I (we) do what I (we) do, not in some magical way detached from the doing.These complexities are marked by vulnerability and events that often escape my (our) prediction and control, as the reflections on writing and publishing above show.Politics refer to how I (we) mobilize material and symbolic resources to produce and disseminate knowledge, and how I (we) do this in given institutional contexts (Bell and Willmott, 2020) and within specific power relations (Pullen and Rhodes, 2014) that I (we) typically end up reproducing rather than transforming.Ethico-politics, then, refers to ethics that informs our actions as researchers (Pullen and Rhodes, 2014).It refers to the politics of knowledge and the ethics of producing it (Ahonen and Tienari, 2015).
What are the ethico-politics of imagination in "armchair traveler" academic work?In all the research initiatives described above, my point of departure has been to be open and empathic not only to those I work with but also toward those whose actions and experiences we study.For me, ethico-politics of imagination is grounded in learning to embrace both similarities and differences in terms of subjects of inquiry (those I/we research) and collaborators (those I/we do research with).It is about learning to be open and generous to others (Diprose, 2002), whether assumedly similar or different.I am not sure that my ethics counts as embodied or "corporeal" in that it would be grounded in the body before the mind (cf., Diprose, 2002;Pullen and Rhodes, 2014), but it is in a constant state of becoming, as I have tried to show with my examples.It is in constant flux as I strive to be ethical in the research initiatives I join and help to develop.Through my different experiences, I have learned not only to "see" contexts (cf., Mills, 1959) and"read" situations (cf., Morgan, 1986) and to realize my limits in such work, but to be sensitive to the research process in hand and mindful of how I actively take part in shaping it.As such, I am advocating generosity to my collaborators and respect to our subjects of inquiry whose lives are imagined.
While I have remained an "outsider" in most of the research initiatives described above, my collaborators can in different degrees be considered as "insiders."This insider-outsider dynamic is inherent in my travels.I have challenged insiders' views in our collaborations through imagining what could be but, crucially, I have tried to foster mutual generosity with them in researching and writing together.For example, I never consider myself as the first author for a paper.Even when I have been offered this position by my collaborators, I have insisted on not taking it.I have learned how toning down my own status as author has affected our joint processes of producing (or "coconstituting") knowledge.The need to tone down was gut feeling at first, based on my early and not so positive experiences of research collaboration and co-authoring a long time ago, but it has turned into a deliberate part of my collaboration with others.I have found that it takes the edge off potential political conflicts throughout the research process.It enables mutual generosity-openness to each other's experiences, views, and contributions-to blossom in a sense of togetherness and solidarity.
I also attempt to be generous toward those we study.I have tried to respect our research participants and subjects of inquiry in how we study and write about them.Challenging insiders' views in our research collaborations has led to negotiating with them about what we can (not) say and why.For me, this is a way to constantly cope with feelings of taking my imagination too far.The ethico-politics of producing knowledge concerns our research participants, too.Treating people in different circumstances and positions with respect-and, hopefully, on their own terms-is in my view crucial.This is, of course, not specific to the kind of research I discuss in this paper.These are fundamental ethical values in doing ethnographically inspired research more generally (assuming those we study do not do serious harm to others and/or the environment).Perhaps specific forms of inquiry where people are encountered only through texts and images make those who do it particularly sensitive to such ethical questions."Armchair traveling" offers a specific way to comprehend the value of mutual generosity in research initiatives.It provides an alternative for understanding contemporary academic work that is obsessed with performance in publishing.
Finally, my take on academic work and imagination can be contested.A different reading of my examples could focus on gendered and racialized power relations in research collaboration, writing, and publishing.Other voices could be heard, by my collaborators and those we have studied, for example, and these voices could challenge my assumptions, views, and claims.The institutionalized context where I work is gendered (Benschop and Brouns, 2003;Katila and Meriläinen, 1999;Lund and Tienari, 2019) and racialized (Gabriel and Tate, 2017), and my imagination is colored by my privilege as a white cis male academic.I imagine and speak from a particular position.While my experience in gender studies and knowledge of its potential pitfalls for men like me explains why I am relatively confident in researching gender relations in organizations, I am much more hesitant to use my imagination in studying ethnic and racial minorities.The distance seems harder to bridge with imagination.I have tried to be open and reflective about this, but this is not enough.Those who fight to gain a voice in academia, and those who are forced to generate publications where they are first author to survive and succeed in the academic "game" (cf., Butler and Spoelstra, 2020), cannot afford the luxury of what I am describing here.Their imagination grows out of necessity and courage.Hearing their voices and experiences is paramount in continuing the conversation on academic work and imagination.