Kate Kenny
Biographic Data
| ID | 3998235 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kate Kenny |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kate |
| FAMILY NAME | Kenny |
| SIGNATURE | KENNY K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ollscoil na Gaillimhe – University of Galway |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6781-1786 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 174 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
When whistleblower retaliation backfires: Reprisal reversal and racialized retaliation at Amazon
Can aggressive whistleblower retaliation be turned back upon the employer? Existing scholarship on whistleblower retaliation in organizations has largely examined its destructive effects on individual whistleblowers. In this article, we foreground the opposite dynamic: the capacity for whistleblowers and their supporters to counter retaliation so that employer attacks ultimately backfire. Drawing on Martin’s backfire framework—derived from studie…
‘You can’t buy my silence’: Five lessons on resistance and organizational silence amidst the expanding use of non-disclosure agreements
Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are increasingly used by powerful organizations to silence victims of workplace abuse, discrimination and misconduct. While originally designed to protect intellectual property, NDAs have evolved into tools that suppress resistance, conceal unethical and sometimes criminal behaviour and reinforce organizational silence. This Acting Up piece draws on the experiences of Zelda Perkins – co-founder of the global campa…
Whistleblowing as Disclosure Injustice: Testimonial and Structural Barriers to Being Heard
Are all whistleblowers able to raise disclosures effectively and safely? Or do some workers encounter unfair disadvantage because of who they are? Thus far, the concepts we use in whistleblowing scholarship fail to capture whether and how a whistleblower's gender, race, class, or ethnicity might shape their experience of disclosure. We address this discrepancy by interrogating how a specific social category, gender, intersects with whistleblowing…
Regulators of Last Resort: Whistleblowers, the Limits of the Law and the Power of Partnerships
Strangers in conversation: Judith Butler with gender, work and organization
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study
The Costs and Labour of Whistleblowing: Bodily Vulnerability and Post-disclosure Survival
Whistleblowers are a vital means of protecting society because they provide information about serious wrongdoing. And yet, people who speak up can suffer. Even so, debates on whistleblowing focus on compelling employees to come forward, often overlooking the risk involved. Theoretical understanding of whistleblowers’ post-disclosure experience is weak because tangible and material impacts are poorly understood due partly to a lack of empirical de…
Whistleblower as activist and exile: The case of Edward Snowden
Whistleblowing is an important form of radical political activism, influencing social reform by fundamentally changing the way we see our world. This article contributes to understandings of whistleblower-activism in cases of wrongdoing on the part of state institutions. Extant theorizations of organizational whistleblowing fall short in explaining such instances. In contrast, this article develops four key dynamics of state whistleblower-activis…
Troubling organizational violence with Judith Butler: Surviving whistleblower reprisals
How do workers who encounter violence by deviating from organizational norms make sense of their experiences? Our article engages with Judith Butler's work on vulnerability and troubling to address this. Inspired by these concepts while analyzing empirical data gathered from whistleblowers in financial services, we propose a framing termed “aggression‐troubling”. Aggression‐troubling encompasses an awareness of: the vulnerability and relationalit…
Feminist social movements and whistleblowing disclosures: Ireland's Women of Honour
Feminist social movements based on workers disclosing sexual harassment and sexual violence have had a dramatic impact on workplaces worldwide. But what are the specific dynamics shaping organizations founded on acts of disclosure? Organizational whistleblowing research has overlooked this topic, while literature on feminist social movements has not, to date, focused on whistleblowing disclosure as a shared experience prompting collective action.…
Whistleblowing advocacy: Solidarity and fascinance
What role does difference play in relationships between partners in solidarity? In this article we add to debates on difference-in-solidarity by proposing fascinance as a critical aspect of intersubjective relations in solidarity networks. We build upon extant feminist and affect theory scholarship in doing so. Our novel approach is informed by our analysis of in-depth empirical data from a special case of solidarity – whistleblowing advocacy gro…
Power and politics in public inquiries: Bloody sunday 1972
What are the dominant framings by which public inquiries understand and analyze power dynamics in the events they examine? We draw on unique data from the Saville Inquiry into the killing of 13 people by British soldiers at acivil rights demonstration in Northern Ireland in 1972. Juxtaposing an analysis of the actions of senior military figures with the final Inquiry report, we show how an approach of ‘sufficient rationalization’ dominated apubli…
How to Whistle-Blow: Dissensus and Demand
Organizational form and pro-social fantasy in social enterprise creation
Why do social entrepreneurs retain their faith in social entrepreneurship despite the organizational tensions and anxieties inherent to this field of practice? In this article, we employ the psychoanalytic concept of fantasy to advance knowledge on social enterprise creation. The research analyses qualitative data relating to the adoption of the Community Interest Company, a bespoke organizational form for social enterprise. We argue that social …
Judith Butler and performativity
This chapter explores the work of Judith Butler and the approach to studying identification and subjection in organizations that emerges from her ideas, including her theory of performativity. I begin by introducing Butler, her work and her practical commitments to intellectual thought. Next, I outline her approach to identification and subjection which, overall, is conceptualized as affective recognition. I describe specific ideas within this, a…
Censored: Whistleblowers and impossible speech
What happens to a person who speaks out about corruption in their organization, and finds themselves excluded from their profession? In this article, I argue that whistleblowers experience exclusions because they have engaged in ‘impossible speech’, that is, a speech act considered to be unacceptable or illegitimate. Drawing on Butler’s theories of recognition and censorship, I show how norms of acceptable speech working through recruitment pract…
Thinking critically about affect in organization studies: Why it matters
Affect holds the promise of destabilizing and unsettling us, as organizational subjects, into new states of being. It can shed light on many aspects of work and organization, with implications both within and beyond organization studies. Affect theory holds the potential to generate exciting new insights for the study of organizations, theoretically, methodologically and politically. This Special Issue seeks to explore these potential trajectorie…
Work-worlds colliding: Self-reflexivity, power and emotion in organizational ethnography
While organizational ethnographers have embraced the concept of self-reflexivity, problems remain. In this article we argue that the prevalent assumption that self-reflexivity is the sole responsibility of the individual researcher limits its scope for understanding organizations. To address this, we propose an innovative method of collective reflection that is inspired by ideas from cultural and feminist anthropology. The value of this method is…
From gendered organizations to compassionate borderspaces: Reading corporeal ethics with Bracha Ettinger
In this article, we propose a new way of approaching the topic of ethics for management and organization theory. We build on recent developments within critical organization studies that focus on the question of what kind of ethics is possible in organizational contexts that are inevitably beset by difference. Addressing this 'ethics of difference', we propose a turn to feminist theory, in which the topic has long been debated but which has been …
Affective disruption: Walter Benjamin and the ‘history’ of Ireland's industrial schools
What role do organizations play in writing history? In this paper, I address the part played by organizations in the enactment of large-scale violence, and focus on the ways in which the resulting histories come to be written. Drawing on the case of Ireland's industrial schools, I demonstrate how such accounts can act to serve the interests of those in power, effectively silencing and marginalizing weaker people. A theoretical lens that draws on …
Dangerously empty? Hegemony and the construction of the Irish entrepreneur
In this article we build on Jones and Spicer’s (2009) conceptualization of the entrepreneur as an empty signifier. We explore the function of the signifier ‘entrepreneurship’ within a social context marked by crisis: Ireland 2007–2010. In doing so, we show how its articulation by government acted to legitimize the continuation of market logics and, relatedly, the existing political status quo. Theoretically, we demonstrate the usefulness of Lacla…
Some Good Clean Fun’: Humour, Control and Subversion in an Advertising Agency
This article explores the relation between humour and control, drawing on participant observation in an organization in which humour was central to daily life. Keys is a leading advertising agency whose staff spent an unusually large amount of time sending humorous e‐mails. Examining these e‐mails in some depth, we unpack the role of humour in subverting various forms of control, including gender norms and managerial authority. We find the relati…
When care is left to roam: Carers’ experiences of grassroots nonprofit services in Ireland
Beyond ourselves: Passion and the dark side of identification in an ethical organization
How are organizational discourses enacted by people at work? In this article, instead of treating subjects as somewhat distinct from such discourses, I argue that the two are inescapably intertwined. The concept of ‘ek-stasis’ helps us to understand this. Ekstasis invokes an idea of the ‘self ’ that, through processes of identification, is always located outside of itself, embedded in a wider sociality. I explore this dynamic through an in-depth …
Frames of war: When Is Life Grievable
The performative surprise’: Parody, documentary and critique
Can parody help us to ‘re‐imagine’ the organizations and institutions we live with (Du Gay 2007 Du Gay, Paul. 2007. Organizing identity: Persons and organizations after theory, London: Sage. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 13)? Or, like many forms of critique, does parody risk being incorporated: becoming part of the power it aims to make fun of? In this paper, drawing on Judith Butler’s work, I argue that certain circumstances enable parody to de…
Work-worlds colliding: Self-reflexivity, power and emotion in organizational ethnography
While organizational ethnographers have embraced the concept of self-reflexivity, problems remain. In this article we argue that the prevalent assumption that self-reflexivity is the sole responsibility of the individual researcher limits its scope for understanding organizations. To address this, we propose an innovative method of collective reflection that is inspired by ideas from cultural and feminist anthropology. The value of this method is…
Beyond ourselves: Passion and the dark side of identification in an ethical organization
How are organizational discourses enacted by people at work? In this article, instead of treating subjects as somewhat distinct from such discourses, I argue that the two are inescapably intertwined. The concept of ‘ek-stasis’ helps us to understand this. Ekstasis invokes an idea of the ‘self ’ that, through processes of identification, is always located outside of itself, embedded in a wider sociality. I explore this dynamic through an in-depth …
From gendered organizations to compassionate borderspaces: Reading corporeal ethics with Bracha Ettinger
In this article, we propose a new way of approaching the topic of ethics for management and organization theory. We build on recent developments within critical organization studies that focus on the question of what kind of ethics is possible in organizational contexts that are inevitably beset by difference. Addressing this 'ethics of difference', we propose a turn to feminist theory, in which the topic has long been debated but which has been …
Censored: Whistleblowers and impossible speech
What happens to a person who speaks out about corruption in their organization, and finds themselves excluded from their profession? In this article, I argue that whistleblowers experience exclusions because they have engaged in ‘impossible speech’, that is, a speech act considered to be unacceptable or illegitimate. Drawing on Butler’s theories of recognition and censorship, I show how norms of acceptable speech working through recruitment pract…
Organizational form and pro-social fantasy in social enterprise creation
Why do social entrepreneurs retain their faith in social entrepreneurship despite the organizational tensions and anxieties inherent to this field of practice? In this article, we employ the psychoanalytic concept of fantasy to advance knowledge on social enterprise creation. The research analyses qualitative data relating to the adoption of the Community Interest Company, a bespoke organizational form for social enterprise. We argue that social …
Some Good Clean Fun’: Humour, Control and Subversion in an Advertising Agency
This article explores the relation between humour and control, drawing on participant observation in an organization in which humour was central to daily life. Keys is a leading advertising agency whose staff spent an unusually large amount of time sending humorous e‐mails. Examining these e‐mails in some depth, we unpack the role of humour in subverting various forms of control, including gender norms and managerial authority. We find the relati…
The performative surprise’: Parody, documentary and critique
Can parody help us to ‘re‐imagine’ the organizations and institutions we live with (Du Gay 2007 Du Gay, Paul. 2007. Organizing identity: Persons and organizations after theory, London: Sage. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 13)? Or, like many forms of critique, does parody risk being incorporated: becoming part of the power it aims to make fun of? In this paper, drawing on Judith Butler’s work, I argue that certain circumstances enable parody to de…
Frames of war: When Is Life Grievable
Feminist social movements and whistleblowing disclosures: Ireland's Women of Honour
Feminist social movements based on workers disclosing sexual harassment and sexual violence have had a dramatic impact on workplaces worldwide. But what are the specific dynamics shaping organizations founded on acts of disclosure? Organizational whistleblowing research has overlooked this topic, while literature on feminist social movements has not, to date, focused on whistleblowing disclosure as a shared experience prompting collective action.…
Strangers in conversation: Judith Butler with gender, work and organization
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study
Affective disruption: Walter Benjamin and the ‘history’ of Ireland's industrial schools
What role do organizations play in writing history? In this paper, I address the part played by organizations in the enactment of large-scale violence, and focus on the ways in which the resulting histories come to be written. Drawing on the case of Ireland's industrial schools, I demonstrate how such accounts can act to serve the interests of those in power, effectively silencing and marginalizing weaker people. A theoretical lens that draws on …
When care is left to roam: Carers’ experiences of grassroots nonprofit services in Ireland
Troubling organizational violence with Judith Butler: Surviving whistleblower reprisals
How do workers who encounter violence by deviating from organizational norms make sense of their experiences? Our article engages with Judith Butler's work on vulnerability and troubling to address this. Inspired by these concepts while analyzing empirical data gathered from whistleblowers in financial services, we propose a framing termed “aggression‐troubling”. Aggression‐troubling encompasses an awareness of: the vulnerability and relationalit…
Power and politics in public inquiries: Bloody sunday 1972
What are the dominant framings by which public inquiries understand and analyze power dynamics in the events they examine? We draw on unique data from the Saville Inquiry into the killing of 13 people by British soldiers at acivil rights demonstration in Northern Ireland in 1972. Juxtaposing an analysis of the actions of senior military figures with the final Inquiry report, we show how an approach of ‘sufficient rationalization’ dominated apubli…
The performative surprise’: Parody, documentary and critique
Can parody help us to ‘re‐imagine’ the organizations and institutions we live with (Du Gay 2007 Du Gay, Paul. 2007. Organizing identity: Persons and organizations after theory, London: Sage. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 13)? Or, like many forms of critique, does parody risk being incorporated: becoming part of the power it aims to make fun of? In this paper, drawing on Judith Butler’s work, I argue that certain circumstances enable parody to de…
When care is left to roam: Carers’ experiences of grassroots nonprofit services in Ireland
Beyond ourselves: Passion and the dark side of identification in an ethical organization
How are organizational discourses enacted by people at work? In this article, instead of treating subjects as somewhat distinct from such discourses, I argue that the two are inescapably intertwined. The concept of ‘ek-stasis’ helps us to understand this. Ekstasis invokes an idea of the ‘self ’ that, through processes of identification, is always located outside of itself, embedded in a wider sociality. I explore this dynamic through an in-depth …
Frames of war: When Is Life Grievable
Dangerously empty? Hegemony and the construction of the Irish entrepreneur
In this article we build on Jones and Spicer’s (2009) conceptualization of the entrepreneur as an empty signifier. We explore the function of the signifier ‘entrepreneurship’ within a social context marked by crisis: Ireland 2007–2010. In doing so, we show how its articulation by government acted to legitimize the continuation of market logics and, relatedly, the existing political status quo. Theoretically, we demonstrate the usefulness of Lacla…
Some Good Clean Fun’: Humour, Control and Subversion in an Advertising Agency
This article explores the relation between humour and control, drawing on participant observation in an organization in which humour was central to daily life. Keys is a leading advertising agency whose staff spent an unusually large amount of time sending humorous e‐mails. Examining these e‐mails in some depth, we unpack the role of humour in subverting various forms of control, including gender norms and managerial authority. We find the relati…
Affective disruption: Walter Benjamin and the ‘history’ of Ireland's industrial schools
What role do organizations play in writing history? In this paper, I address the part played by organizations in the enactment of large-scale violence, and focus on the ways in which the resulting histories come to be written. Drawing on the case of Ireland's industrial schools, I demonstrate how such accounts can act to serve the interests of those in power, effectively silencing and marginalizing weaker people. A theoretical lens that draws on …
From gendered organizations to compassionate borderspaces: Reading corporeal ethics with Bracha Ettinger
In this article, we propose a new way of approaching the topic of ethics for management and organization theory. We build on recent developments within critical organization studies that focus on the question of what kind of ethics is possible in organizational contexts that are inevitably beset by difference. Addressing this 'ethics of difference', we propose a turn to feminist theory, in which the topic has long been debated but which has been …
Work-worlds colliding: Self-reflexivity, power and emotion in organizational ethnography
While organizational ethnographers have embraced the concept of self-reflexivity, problems remain. In this article we argue that the prevalent assumption that self-reflexivity is the sole responsibility of the individual researcher limits its scope for understanding organizations. To address this, we propose an innovative method of collective reflection that is inspired by ideas from cultural and feminist anthropology. The value of this method is…
Thinking critically about affect in organization studies: Why it matters
Affect holds the promise of destabilizing and unsettling us, as organizational subjects, into new states of being. It can shed light on many aspects of work and organization, with implications both within and beyond organization studies. Affect theory holds the potential to generate exciting new insights for the study of organizations, theoretically, methodologically and politically. This Special Issue seeks to explore these potential trajectorie…
Censored: Whistleblowers and impossible speech
What happens to a person who speaks out about corruption in their organization, and finds themselves excluded from their profession? In this article, I argue that whistleblowers experience exclusions because they have engaged in ‘impossible speech’, that is, a speech act considered to be unacceptable or illegitimate. Drawing on Butler’s theories of recognition and censorship, I show how norms of acceptable speech working through recruitment pract…
Judith Butler and performativity
This chapter explores the work of Judith Butler and the approach to studying identification and subjection in organizations that emerges from her ideas, including her theory of performativity. I begin by introducing Butler, her work and her practical commitments to intellectual thought. Next, I outline her approach to identification and subjection which, overall, is conceptualized as affective recognition. I describe specific ideas within this, a…
How to Whistle-Blow: Dissensus and Demand
Organizational form and pro-social fantasy in social enterprise creation
Why do social entrepreneurs retain their faith in social entrepreneurship despite the organizational tensions and anxieties inherent to this field of practice? In this article, we employ the psychoanalytic concept of fantasy to advance knowledge on social enterprise creation. The research analyses qualitative data relating to the adoption of the Community Interest Company, a bespoke organizational form for social enterprise. We argue that social …
Power and politics in public inquiries: Bloody sunday 1972
What are the dominant framings by which public inquiries understand and analyze power dynamics in the events they examine? We draw on unique data from the Saville Inquiry into the killing of 13 people by British soldiers at acivil rights demonstration in Northern Ireland in 1972. Juxtaposing an analysis of the actions of senior military figures with the final Inquiry report, we show how an approach of ‘sufficient rationalization’ dominated apubli…
Whistleblowing advocacy: Solidarity and fascinance
What role does difference play in relationships between partners in solidarity? In this article we add to debates on difference-in-solidarity by proposing fascinance as a critical aspect of intersubjective relations in solidarity networks. We build upon extant feminist and affect theory scholarship in doing so. Our novel approach is informed by our analysis of in-depth empirical data from a special case of solidarity – whistleblowing advocacy gro…
The Costs and Labour of Whistleblowing: Bodily Vulnerability and Post-disclosure Survival
Whistleblowers are a vital means of protecting society because they provide information about serious wrongdoing. And yet, people who speak up can suffer. Even so, debates on whistleblowing focus on compelling employees to come forward, often overlooking the risk involved. Theoretical understanding of whistleblowers’ post-disclosure experience is weak because tangible and material impacts are poorly understood due partly to a lack of empirical de…
Whistleblower as activist and exile: The case of Edward Snowden
Whistleblowing is an important form of radical political activism, influencing social reform by fundamentally changing the way we see our world. This article contributes to understandings of whistleblower-activism in cases of wrongdoing on the part of state institutions. Extant theorizations of organizational whistleblowing fall short in explaining such instances. In contrast, this article develops four key dynamics of state whistleblower-activis…
Troubling organizational violence with Judith Butler: Surviving whistleblower reprisals
How do workers who encounter violence by deviating from organizational norms make sense of their experiences? Our article engages with Judith Butler's work on vulnerability and troubling to address this. Inspired by these concepts while analyzing empirical data gathered from whistleblowers in financial services, we propose a framing termed “aggression‐troubling”. Aggression‐troubling encompasses an awareness of: the vulnerability and relationalit…
Feminist social movements and whistleblowing disclosures: Ireland's Women of Honour
Feminist social movements based on workers disclosing sexual harassment and sexual violence have had a dramatic impact on workplaces worldwide. But what are the specific dynamics shaping organizations founded on acts of disclosure? Organizational whistleblowing research has overlooked this topic, while literature on feminist social movements has not, to date, focused on whistleblowing disclosure as a shared experience prompting collective action.…
Regulators of Last Resort: Whistleblowers, the Limits of the Law and the Power of Partnerships
Strangers in conversation: Judith Butler with gender, work and organization
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study
When whistleblower retaliation backfires: Reprisal reversal and racialized retaliation at Amazon
Can aggressive whistleblower retaliation be turned back upon the employer? Existing scholarship on whistleblower retaliation in organizations has largely examined its destructive effects on individual whistleblowers. In this article, we foreground the opposite dynamic: the capacity for whistleblowers and their supporters to counter retaliation so that employer attacks ultimately backfire. Drawing on Martin’s backfire framework—derived from studie…
‘You can’t buy my silence’: Five lessons on resistance and organizational silence amidst the expanding use of non-disclosure agreements
Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are increasingly used by powerful organizations to silence victims of workplace abuse, discrimination and misconduct. While originally designed to protect intellectual property, NDAs have evolved into tools that suppress resistance, conceal unethical and sometimes criminal behaviour and reinforce organizational silence. This Acting Up piece draws on the experiences of Zelda Perkins – co-founder of the global campa…
Whistleblowing as Disclosure Injustice: Testimonial and Structural Barriers to Being Heard
Are all whistleblowers able to raise disclosures effectively and safely? Or do some workers encounter unfair disadvantage because of who they are? Thus far, the concepts we use in whistleblowing scholarship fail to capture whether and how a whistleblower's gender, race, class, or ethnicity might shape their experience of disclosure. We address this discrepancy by interrogating how a specific social category, gender, intersects with whistleblowing…
Sociology (21 works) · Management and Organizational Studies (15 works) · Political science (14 works) · Law (12 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · Ethics in Business and Education (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works)