Joanne Murphy

Like most academics, my writing (and thinking) comes most often in the form of academic articles and papers. I’m incredibly lucky to write with some incredible scholars. This section spotlights some of that work and provides links to recent publications.

The Role of Framing Mechanisms in Explaining System‐Wide Change: The Case of the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace Process by Joanne Murphy, David Denyer & Andrew Pettigrew

This paper is open access and can be accessed in full by clicking here

Abstract

System‐wide change is often challenging to achieve due to complex and fragmented institutions, dispersed and diffused power structures, confidence‐sapping histories of failure and the influence of multiple and overlapping fields. This study examines how a large complex system‐wide problem such as the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace Process was paradoxically opened up and made more receptive to change by widening of the way the problem was framed. We demonstrate how and why the framing enables the mobilization of cooperation and the delivery of contextually appropriate collective action critical to the achievement of outcomes in system‐wide change processes. More specifically, we examine how and why such complex and precarious processes emerge over extended timescales through four mechanisms: frame contesting, reframing, frame reproduction and frame defending. Each of these mechanisms is agentic, dynamic, purposive and politically charged. The time‐series analysis of these interlinked mechanisms is a crucial and innovative feature of the study. We encourage management and organizational scholars to elevate their gaze to the system‐wide changes so emblematic of contemporary society and offer an outline agenda for research.

Zero-sum politics in contested spaces: The unintended consequences of legislative peacebuilding in Northern Ireland –

Abstract

Studies of ethno-nationalist conflict have repeatedly underlined the significance of policy interventions that seek to de-territorialise contested space after armed conflict and create more plural societies. Creating ‘shared’ space in divided societies is often critically important and inextricably linked to peacebuilding. However much of this scholarship has tended to focus on the relative success or failure of such policies. This paper conversely explores the ‘unintended consequences’ (Merton, 1936) of legislating around fragile public space in Northern Ireland and considers its potential to undermine, rather than reinforce efforts to transition to peace. Drawing on a body of work around unintended consequences, territorial socialisation and peacebuilding, we argue that such legislation in ethno-nationalist societies emerging from conflict is a double-edged sword which can be utilised both explicitly and implicitly to reactivate tribal spatial politics and exacerbate divisions in deeply divided societies.

Transitional optics: Exploring liminal spaces after conflict – by Joanne Murphy & Sara McDowell

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to engage in a new conceptualisation of liminality, as it applies to space and place in societies emerging from conflict but not yet at peace. We adopt a case study approach of two urban environments: Derry/Londonderry, a city that experienced acute levels of violence during the Northern Ireland conflict, and Bilbao, the largest city in the Basque Country, which has been at the crux of the cultural and economic struggle for Basque independence. The visual, built environment has been significantly reconfigured in both cities to communicate the transition from conflict. Yet the optics of peacebuilding does not necessarily reflect the experiences of communities as they move through complex processes. A more nuanced and critical reading of the urban environment often reveals stagnation within peace processes and the existence of liminal, inbetween spaces. This paper suggests that ‘transitional optics’ in societies moving out of conflict can physically illuminate the complex nature of building peace, and argues that the idea of permanent liminality can offer new ways of understanding the ways in which transitional processes can become trapped. An ‘end-point’ is not always achievable, or perhaps, for some, desirable. The characteristics of permanent liminality can be identified in three main areas: political imagery, physical regeneration and public space as a conflict arena.

Managing the Entanglement: Complexity Leadership in Public Sector Systems by Joanne Murphy, Mary Lee Rhodes, Jack Meek & David Denyer

Abstract

Complexity in public sector systems requires leaders to balance the administrative practices necessary to be aligned and efficient in the management of routine challenges and the adaptive practices required to respond to dynamic circumstances. Conventional notions of leadership in the field of public administration do not fully explain the role of leadership in balancing the entanglement of formal, top‐down, administrative functions and informal, emergent, adaptive functions within public sector settings with different levels of complexity. Drawing on and extending existing complexity leadership constructs, this article explores how leadership is enacted over the duration of six urban regeneration projects representing high, medium, and low levels of project complexity. The article suggests that greater attention needs to be paid to the tensions inherent in enabling leadership if actors are to cope with the complex, collaborative, cross‐boundary, adaptive work in which they are increasingly engaged.

Managing contested spaces: Public managers, obscured mechanisms and the legacy of the past in Northern Ireland by Joanne Murphy, Maire Braniff, Sara McDowell and David Denyer

Abstract

Societies emerging from ethno-political and inter-communal conflict face a range of complex problems that stem directly from the recent lived experience of bloodshed and injury, militarisation, securitisation and segregation. As institutional agents in such an environment, public managers perform the dual role of both interpreting public policy and implementing it within a politically contested space and place. In this article, we address how managers cope with the outworking of ethno-nationalist conflict and peace building within government processes and policy implementation and contend this is a subject of emerging concern within the wider public administration, urban studies and conflict literature. Using data from a witness seminar initiative on the Northern Ireland conflict transformation experience, we explain how public sector managers make sense of their role in post-agreement public management and highlight the importance of three identified mechanisms; ‘bricolage’, ‘diffusion’ and ‘translation’ in the management of public sector organisations and urban spaces in a context of entrenched conflict and an uncertain path to peace.