People

Dr Pasi Ahonen

Senior Lecturer
EBS - Management and Marketing
Dr Pasi Ahonen
  • Email

  • Telephone

    +44 (0) 1206 873472

  • Location

    EBS.3.80, Colchester Campus

  • Academic support hours

    You can find details of Academic Support hours on the EBS UG and PG information page on Moodle or by calling EBS Student Services on 01206873911

Profile

Biography

I joined Essex Business School, University of Essex, in November 2014. At Essex my academic home is the Management and Marketing Group on the Colchester campus. I have also worked at Prifysgol Abertawe/Swansea University, in Cymru/Wales, the Bristol Centre for Leadership and Organizational Ethics at the University of the West of England, and at Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland. As a researcher, my overall aim is to understand how it is we have become subjects that are managed and that manage. Much of my work has taken place within the subfield of diversity and its management where I have investigated the ways in which attempts to diversify workforce, organisational practices and management knowledges operate and that their conditions of possibility are. In addition, I have an enduring interest in the media and how organisations represent themselves in the media, are represented by the media and how the media, in a way, our sense of produce organisations and what they do. My educational background is long and varied. Over the years, I have studied, for varying lengths of time, at Lappeenranta University of Technology, University of Victoria (Canada), University of Saskatchewan (Canada), University of Georgia (USA) and University of Turku (Finland). In 2009-2010 I was a Visiting Scholar at Laurentian University (Canada). Outside of academia I have worked for a Finnish location technology SME in London, UK, and for a regional development agency in Southeastern Finland on various EU-funded projects. I welcome PhD proposals on diversity and inclusion related topics (particularly forms of racialisation and whiteness in management and organisations), those examining the relationship between organisations and the media and mediatisation of organisations and those aiming to examine management (including/and leadership) as a set of ideas and practices from a historical and/or cultural perspective.

Qualifications

  • DSc (Economics and Business Administration), School of Business, Lappeenranta University of Technology (Finland)

  • Phil Lic, Department of History, University of Turku (Finland)

  • MA, Department of History, University of Turku (Finland)

Appointments

University of Essex

  • Associate Director of Research (Management/Marketing), Essex Business School, University of Essex (20/2/2023 - present)

  • Associate Director of Postgraduate Research (Management/Marketing), Essex Business School, University of Essex (1/9/2021 - present)

  • Associate Director of Research (Management/Marketing) (Acting), Essex Business School, University of Essex (1/9/2021 - 16/1/2022)

  • Associate Director of Education (Management/Marketing and Organisation Studies/HRM), Essex Business School, University of Essex (15/1/2018 - 25/4/2021)

  • Assistant Undergraduate Programme Director (Organisation Studies/HRM), Essex Business School, University of Essex (15/8/2016 - 31/8/2018)

  • Undergraduate Programme Director (Management/Marketing and Organisation Studies/HRM) (Acting), Essex Business School, University of Essex (21/3/2016 - 14/8/2016)

Research and professional activities

Research interests

Management of diversity and difference in organisations

Open to supervise

History, memory and temporality in and of organisations

Open to supervise

Leadership, power and ways of leading

Open to supervise

Organisations, the media and representation and mediatisation of organisations

Open to supervise

Current research

History and memory in organizational restructuring and change

Situatedness and ethico-politics of knowledge on diversity and its management

Coloniality in management and organization studies

Roles of language, culture and power in leadership

Historiographical theories and methodologies in management and organization studies.

Conferences and presentations

Involved professional fathers: An investigation of work-family balance dynamics. Paper presented at 11th International Critical Management Studies Conference, 27-29 June 2019

11th International Critical Management Studies Conference, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, 29/6/2020

Beyond ordering Others: A postcolonial feminist framework for diversity and its management

Gender, Work and Organisation International Interdisciplinary Conference, 13-16 June 2018, Sydney, Australia, 16/6/2020

Who does the work?: Epistemology and representation in inclusion

Invited presentation, ‘Gendered Inclusion in Contemporary Organisations’ ESRC Funded Seminar Series 2015-2018, Seminar 7: Drawing conclusions and setting research agenda for Critical Inclusion Studies, London, United Kingdom, 1/6/2020

Organisational death and remembering: Newspapers as mediators of organizational memory and makers of mnemonic communities

The 33rd EGOS Colloquium, 6-8 July 2017, Copenhagen, Denmark, 7/7/2017

Caveman meritocracy: Misrepresenting women managers online

Invited presentation, Challenging Gendered Media Mis(s)Representations of Women Professionals and Leaders, Seminar 5: Multi-disciplinary Approaches: Analysing Media Text and Visual Methods, an ESRC Funded Seminar Series 2014-2017, Bradford, United Kingdom, 15/3/2016

Emma Watson, HeForShe and the discontents of feminist organizing

The 9th Critical Management Studies Conference 2015, 8-10 July 2015, Leicester, United Kingdom, 2015

The culturally different subject in management knowledges

The 31st EGOS Colloquium, 4-6 July 2015, Athens, Greece, 2015

Imagined bodies: Reflections on leadership and embodiment of globalization

The 29th EGOS Colloquium EGOS Colloquium, 4-6 July 2013., Montreal, Canada, 2013

Whats the difference? Postcolonial interventions in diversity and its management

The 15th Asia-Pacific Researchers in Organisation Studies Conference, 15-17 February 2013., Tokyo, Japan, 2013

The Voikkaa Case and politics of history: Historyless futures, selective memories and news of a towns death

Organizational Death, Memory and Loss Workshop, 4-5 October 2012, Newcastle-under-Lyme, United Kingdom, 2012

Realignments of leadership, gender and embodiment in organizational death

British Academy of Management 2012 Conference, 11-13 September 2012, Cardiff, United Kingdom, 2012

Leadership, ethics and modalities of power

28th EGOS Colloquium EGOS Colloquium, 5-7 July 2012, 2012

Strategy in the Public: Mediation of strategy in public debate

The 7th Critical Management Studies Conference 2011, 11-13 July 2011, Naples, Italy, 2011

Managing postcolonialism: Towards disciplinary revolutions

The 2nd Biennial Conference of Postcolonial Studies Association, 7-8 July 2011., Birmingham, United Kingdom, 2011

Shifting roles of media and politics of history: A comparison of two industrial shutdown cases in the pulp and paper industry in Finland

The 24th EGOS Colloquium, 10-12 July 2008, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2008

Framing Voikkaa: A media discourse perspective on a corporate shutdown

The 19th Nordic Academy of Management Meeting, 9-11 August 2007, Bergen, Norway, 2007

On the discursive construction of industrial shutdowns: A discursive perspective on the Voikkaa case

The 5th Critical Management Studies Conference, 11-13 July 2007., Manchester, United Kingdom, 2007

Industrial shutdown and discursive realignments of gender, race and class in the global economy: A case from Finland

The 23rd EGOS Colloquium, 5-7 July 2007, Vienna, Austria, 2007

Regional open innovation system as a platform for SMEs: A survey

Paper presented at the International Association for Management of Technology IAMOT, 13-17 May 2007., Miami, United States, 2007

Canned diversity: Transnational cooperation in an EU project

EURODIV Conference on Qualitative diversity research: Looking ahead, 19-20 September 2006, Leuven, Belgium, 2006

A pre-racist society in a postcolonial world? An analysis of contemporary Finnish racial discourse in the pages of Helsingin Sanomat

Racism, Postcolonialism, Europe Conference, 15-17 May 2006, Leeds, United Kingdom, 2006

Publications

Journal articles (7)

Greedharry, M., Limki, R., Johansson, M., Johnson, JL. and Ahonen, P., (2023). Race difference and power: Recursions of coloniality in work and organization. Gender, Work and Organization. 30 (2), 457-468

Ahonen, P., Blomberg, A., Doerr, K., Einola, K., Elkina, A., Gao, G., Hambleton, J., Helin, J., Huopalainen, A., Johanssen, B., Johansson, J., Jääskeläinen, P., Kaasila-Pakanen, A-L., Kivinen, N., Mandalaki, E., Meriläinen, S., Pullen, A., Salmela, T., Satama, S., Tienari, J., Wickström, A. and Zhang, L., (2020). Writing resistance together. Gender, Work and Organization. 27 (4), 447-470

Schedlitzki, D., Ahonen, P., Wankhade, P., Edwards, G. and Gaggiotti, H., (2017). Working with Language: A Refocused Research Agenda for Cultural Leadership Studies. International Journal of Management Reviews. 19 (2), 237-257

Ahonen, P., Tienari, J., Merilainen, S. and Pullen, A., (2014). Hidden contexts and invisible power relations: A Foucauldian reading of diversity research. Human Relations. 67 (3), 263-286

Ahonen, P. and Tienari, J., (2009). United in Diversity? Disciplinary Normalization in an EU Project. Organization. 16 (5), 655-679

Ahonen, P., (2009). ‘The World Has Changed’: Discursive Struggles over an Industrial Shutdown in the Media, a Case from the Finnish Pulp and Paper Industry. Competition & Change. 13 (3), 289-304

Torkkeli, M., Kotonen, T. and Ahonen, P., (2007). Regional open innovation system as a platform for SMEs: a survey. International Journal of Foresight and Innovation Policy. 3 (4), 336-336

Book chapters (6)

Greedharry, M., Ahonen, P. and Tienari, J., (2021). Colonialism as Context in Diversity Research. In: Routledge Companion to Organizational Diversity Research Methods. Editors: Nørholm Just, S., Risberg, A. and Villesèche, F., . Routledge. 13- 23. 9780367211486

Greedharry, M., Ahonen, P. and Tienari, J., (2020). Race and identity in organizations. In: The Oxford Handbook of Identities in Organizations. Editors: Brown, AD., . Oxford University Press. 654- 668. 9780198827115

Tienari, J. and Ahonen, P., (2016). Caveman Meritocracy: Misrepresenting Women Managers Online. In: Gender, media, and organization: Challenging mis(s)representations of women leaders and managers. Editors: Elliott, C., Stead, V., Mavin, S. and Williams, J., . Information Age Publishing. 133- 151. 9781681235332

Greedharry, M. and Ahonen, P., (2015). Managing Postcolonialism. In: What Postcolonial Theory Does Not Say. Editors: Bernard, A., Elmarsafy, Z. and Murray, S., . Routledge. 49- 66. 9780415857970

Ahonen, P. and Tienari, J., (2015). Ethico-politics of Diversity and its Production. In: The Routledge Companion to Ethics, Politics and Organization. Editors: Pullen, A. and Rhodes, C., . Routledge. 271- 287. 978-0-415-82126-1

Ahonen, P. and Tienari, J., (2011). There is no alternative–or is there? A critical case study approach for international business research. In: Rethinking the Case Study in International Business and Management Research. Editors: Piekkari, R. and Welch, C., . Edward Elgar. 85- 106. 0857933469. 9780857933461

Thesis dissertation (1)

Ahonen, P., (2014). Between Memory and Strategy: Media Discourse Analysis of an Industrial Shutdown

Grants and funding

2017

Reorganizing race: Racialization and organization

British Academy

Contact

pasi.ahonen@essex.ac.uk
+44 (0) 1206 873472

Location:

EBS.3.80, Colchester Campus

Academic support hours:

You can find details of Academic Support hours on the EBS UG and PG information page on Moodle or by calling EBS Student Services on 01206873911

More about me