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Wednesday, 9 September 2026
You Didn't Miss The Conference
Tuesday, 8 September 2026
I Don’t Want to be Bitter
Envy. Now that’s an ugly word, isn’t it? When we think of envy, all things green, ugly and almost appalling comes to mind. It is one of those feelings we would rather not admit to having, and yet I couldn’t help noticing just how prominent it has become, especially in this day and age. We have all been guilty of it. We watch someone else get the promotions we wanted. We see someone living the life we believe they don’t deserve. We’d scroll through our phones and find ourselves wondering why they have what we don’t. Sometimes, it is even worse when we convince ourselves that they haven’t worked nearly as hard for it as we have. Envy brings out the worst in us, but it’s such a human feeling. It’s so human, that I believe there are times when we think that we’re above that feeling. We don’t even bother acknowledging it. We simply sit there in denial, convincing ourselves that they simply can’t be all that. That they aren’t as talented as we thought. That their success isn’t quite as impressive as everyone makes it out to be. That maybe they didn’t really deserve what they got. Anything really, to make ourselves feel a little less inadequate for wanting what they have. For feeling envious. Envy is hardly a new human feeling, either. It has been discussed for centuries, even in religion and literature. Dante Alighieri, in The Divine Comedy, places envy among the seven deadly sins being purged in Purgatorio. On the second terrace of Mount Purgatory (the fact that I had to research this after finishing this after so long), the souls guilty of envy have their eyes sewn shut with wire. A particularly gruesome punishment of a sin so closely associated with what we see in others and yet, I couldn’t help but notice something almost poetic about that. Envy is such an ugly feeling, but it imperative to remind ourselves that it’s also an extraordinarily human one. One I couldn’t help but think a lot about, lately. But what if envy doesn’t always have to bring out the worst in us? What if we could use that ugly feeling, and turn it into something…useful instead? After all, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right? We just have to figure out what they’re doing that makes us wish we were them in the first place. Logically and evidentially, not emotionally. So I recently finished Michael Jackson’s autobiography, Moonwalk, which was edited by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis—yes, the great Jackie O herself. She also wrote the foreword. Now, that’s aura. Imagine having Jackie O as your editor. I actually picked up the book because my sister persuaded me to read it, insisting that it would change the way I think. Naturally, I was skeptical at first since my sister is a very devoted Michael Jackson fan, so I assumed that she was simply recommending it because she loved him and wanted someone to discuss the book with. But I was wrong. One of the things that struck me most about the book was the way he seemed to think about his own work. Even someone as extraordinarily successful as Michael Jackson could look at everything he had accomplished so far and still feel that there was more he could do. More he could learn. More he could become. And mind you, he wrote this during his Bad era. After Thriller had become a worldwide phenomenon, after it was established that he is the one of the biggest stars in the world. Literally after he had turned the moonwalk into one of the most iconic dance moves in popular culture, to this day. Yet somehow, he still didn’t seem to be satisfied with simply being great. He was still looking for ways to be better. There was this constant desire to improve. To look at other artists, past and present, and study what they were doing. What worked and what didn’t. What he could learn from them and do it differently. And that made me think about envy in a different way.
Because perhaps, the feeling itself isn’t always the problem. It is what we actively choose to do with it. The reason why envy hurts so much in the first place is because it touches something insecure within us. Someone else’s success becomes a reminder of what we don’t have, and suddenly, their happiness feels like an indictment of our own lives. In other words, that insecurity causes us to be bitter, as we look for ways to diminish their success instead of celebrating them. But after reading Moonwalk and probing a little into the way Michael Jackson thought about his own work, I began to realize that perhaps there is another version of envy. One that, if we’re simply honest with ourselves, can be incredibly revealing. Instead of diminishing someone’s success or fixating on their downfall, we should simply ask ourselves: Okay. What can I learn from them? Because there will be days when I look at the people around me and feel that familiar sting (I’m only human, after all). I’ll see people who can write and publish book after book at an age when I’m still figuring out what writing route I’m taking. People who can sit down at a piano and improvise so naturally, as though the music simply appears beneath their fingers. People who have found the loves of their lives, gotten married somewhere around my age, thrown these beautiful, lavish weddings surrounded by their loved ones, as if they’ve had all their lives figured out while we’re still here, reading the instructions. Sometimes, I admit, I do envy them. I could pretend I don’t. I could tell myself that their books aren’t that impressive, that I’m not interested in marriage yet anyway, that their wedding was unnecessarily extravagant, or that being able to improvise on the piano isn’t really that important. These things would certainly make me feel better, for a short period of time. But it certainly wouldn’t make me better. So instead of dwelling on my insecurities and allowing myself to become bitter, I’ve been trying to do something healthier with that ugly feeling. I’ve been asking myself, “Okay, what can I do about this? What is actually within my power? How can I improve?” Because I certainly don’t want to be bitter. I’m old enough now to start thinking about the legacy I want to leave behind, the kind of impression I want to make on the world. And being someone who is unkind, insecure and thrives on making other people feel like they have to tread carefully around me, is not the kind of person I want to become. I want to try as hard as I can to achieve the things I want. I want to write and publish the books I’ve been trying to write, one day. I want to learn the things I still don’t know. I want to become better at the things I care about. And if I fail, then that’s okay. Because at least I’ve tried. I would rather live with the disappointment of having tried my best and failed than sit on the sidelines, watching everyone else move forward and grow increasingly bitter that their lives aren’t mine. At least, this is what I’ve learned from envy: I don’t have to hate someone for having what I want. I can simply let their success show me what I want for myself, then actually do something about it.
And that’s what innocence is. It’s simple and trusting like a child, not judgmental and committed to one narrow point of view. If you are locked into a pattern of thinking and responding, your creativity gets blocked. You miss the freshness and magic of the moment. Learn to be innocent again, and that freshness never fades. - Michael Jackson, ‘Dancing the Dream’. Sincerely, Cherie. The Whiffler is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell The Whiffler that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
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Monday, 7 September 2026
Newsround: Free book on academic careers
Newsround: Free book on academic careersAlso the sub-themes for EGOS 2026 are out, and it is rich pickings for historical researchers. And New Scholars offers new webinars on AI.
Contents
1. Free book: Beyond the thesis (Savvas Pappagianidis)Beyond the Thesis: Building Your Academic Identity and Career is a practical and reflective guide for doctoral researchers and early-career academics making the transition from PhD study into professional life. It argues that a doctorate is not simply an end point or qualification, but the beginning of a longer professional journey in which identity, relationships, skills and reputation are already being formed. The book explores career planning under uncertainty, professional identity, first academic jobs, applications and interviews, mentoring and networking, teaching, research, leadership, engagement and sustainable working practices. Combining honest reflections on mistakes with practical actions, it helps readers make more deliberate and informed choices about the kind of academic or wider professional life they want to build.
2. EGOS 2026 Liverpool: Historical sub-themesSub-theme 14: [SWG] Qualitative Restudies: Retheorizing in a Changing WorldConvenors:
Call for Papers
A restudy is an empirical study which is designed to enable systematic comparison with the original data, analytical results, or field setting of a prior study. Restudies could extend the original theorizing, reconstruct it in meaningful ways, refute existing theories, or add new lenses and theoretical perspectives. In returning to original studies and their empirical sites, qualitative restudies allow organization scholars to explore how our interpretations and theorizing are shaped by theoretical and methodological traditions, historical contexts, institutional structures, and researcher backgrounds. By acknowledging the situatedness of inquiry, restudies pave the way for more critical and sustained engagement with phenomena of interest, the populations and contexts in which we explore them, and the theoretical legacy on which we build our work (Köhler et al., 2025; Rumyantseva & Welch, 2023). They are the basis for retheorizing; that is, for conducting studies that return to existing empirical work in order to reevaluate the theoretical conclusions generated. Sub-theme 62: “All Work and No Play” - Conceptions of Work, Organizing and Business in Historical PerspectiveConvenors:
Call for PapersThis sub-theme examines how boundaries between work and play have been historically constructed, challenged, and transformed within organizational life. While current debates focus on issues like gamification, work-life balance, and the playfulness of digital capitalism, we contend that these trends are rooted in deeper historical tensions that remain insufficiently explored. By contextualizing how people in organizations have understood, policed, celebrated, or worried about the relationship between work and play, we uncover the contingent assumptions that continue to influence modern organizations. The sub-theme title invokes both folk wisdom (“all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”) and historical ideologies that sought to eliminate playfulness from “serious” business. This deliberate ambiguity reflects our interest in the tensions, contradictions, and struggles that have characterized the work-play relationship across time. This sub-theme will address several core issues, including: How have organizations attempted to harness, regulate, or eliminate playful practices? What forms of resistance, creativity, and subversion have emerged through workplace play? And how have shifting conceptions of human nature, from Johan Huizinga’s homo ludens (the playful human) to the dominant model of homo economicus, influenced organizational forms and management practices over time? How did sectors focused on innovation or creative products engage with the paradoxical tensions between “work” and “play”? How have entrepreneurs in creative and cultural industries developed business models to monetize “play” to form a profit-making enterprise? Ultimately, the sub-theme will explore how historical analyses contribute to the business and organization of play. Sub-theme 70: The Past Through Games of Power: Memory and Organizational HistoryConvenors:
Call for PapersThe sub-theme “Games of Memory and Power in Organizational History” invites analyses of how organizational actors use traces of the past as a resource to develop persuasive narratives and play political games in and around organizations (Suddaby et al., 2023). Interpretations of the past can be cultivated as memories that circulate within and across organizations (Coraiola et al., 2023) or as narratives that carry moral meanings and frame how actors interpret the past, present, and future (Hampel & Dalpiaz, 2023; Hernes & Schultz, 2020; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). Interpretations of the past and the traces on which they rely are always situated in place and time and shaped by power relations (Durepos & Thurlow, 2025; Wanderley & Barros, 2019). Disputes over how the past should be interpreted can turn into conflicts over meanings within, where actors seek to impose meaning on the vastness of the past within the constraints of culture (Suddaby et al., 2023; Vaara & Whittle, 2022). Research on the uses of the past by organizational actors has established that narratives of continuity and rupture are the result of political disputes in which groups seek to establish belonging or exclusion through them (Foroughi, 2020). Struggles about remembering and forgetting take many forms. From the meaning attributed to objects (Shortt & Izak, 2021), the design and uses of architectural spaces (Decker, 2014; Decker et al., 2024), and intentional narratives designed to narrate histories like corporate museums (Hatfield, 2024; Nissley & Casey, 2002), power games frame the past. Remembering and forgetting are situated outcomes from disputes, and even nonevents and paths not taken continue to influence interpretations (Egholm, 2026). For instance, museums often naturalize the past or invite contestation of established meanings through strategies of display and narration (Aroles et al., 2024). The erasure of slavery from the management discipline is a paradigmatic case of forgetting (Cooke, 2003). Historiographical devices such as periodization (Sadeghi et al., 2024), turning points (Capoccia & Kelemen, 2007; Marquis & Qiao, 2024), and founding moments (Suddaby et al., 2023) are not neutral. They result from choices that privilege actors, geographies, and causal stories while marginalizing others (Durepos & Barros, 2023; Durepos & Thurlow, 2025; Wanderley & Barros, 2019). 3. New Scholars resourcesNew Scholars offers resources to help management researchers advance meaningful and rigorous scholarship. Watch over 100 webinars on YouTube and join our LinkedIn group. Click on the session titles below to learn about each webinar and register. WebinarsAI for Better Qualitative Research: From concerns to good practices
Designing Research for Fit: Research design considerations for qualitative researchers
You’ve Got Data – Now What? Analyzing qualitative data for insight and impact
Developing Management Scholarship in the Age of Generative AI
Ibrat Djabbarov, PhD New Scholars is supported by
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You Didn't Miss The Conference
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