Across the social sciences, scholars are increasingly showing how people 'work' to construct organizational life, including the rules and routines that shape and enable organizational activity, the identities of people who occupy organizations, and the societal norms and assumptions that provide the context for organizational action. The idea of work emphasizes the ways in which people and groups engage in purposeful, reflexive efforts rooted in an awareness of organizational life as constructed in human interaction and changeable through human effort. Studies of these efforts have identified new forms of work including emotion work, identity work, boundary work, strategy work, institutional work, and a host of others. Missing in these conversations, however, is a recognition that these forms of work are all part of a broader phenomenon driven by historical shifts that began with modernity and dramatically accelerated through the twentieth century. This book introduces the social-symbolic work perspective, which addresses this broader phenomenon. The social-symbolic work perspective integrates diverse streams of research to examine how people purposefully and reflexively work to construct organizational life, including the identities, technologies, boundaries, and strategies that constitute their organizations. In this book, the authors define social-symbolic work and introduce three forms - self work, organization work, and institutional work. Social-symbolic work highlights people's efforts to construct the social world, and focuses attention on the motivations, practices, resources, and effects of those efforts. This book explores eight distinct streams of social-symbolic work research, drawing on a broad range of examples from the worlds of business, politics, sports, social movements, and many others. It provides researchers, students, and practitioners with an integrative theoretical framework useful in understanding social-symbolic work, a survey of the main forms of social-symbolic work, a rich set of theoretical opportunities to inspire new studies, and practical methodological guidance for empirical research on social-symbolic work.

Employee engagement, accountability, and true commitment--not management's well-thought-out initiatives--are the real key to achieving results. In The Power of Strategic Commitment readers learn how to improve strategic processes by enlisting the support of managers, employees, boards, suppliers, investors, and others to promote company-wide ownership. The book outlines the key factors that determine commitment and reveals how readers can continuously measure buy-in, involve everyone in creating their own piece of a larger organizational future, tailor commitment strategies for individual employees, keep everyone on the road to achieving stated goals, hire fully-engaged talent, and create a commitment-inspiring rewards system.Most managers and executives don't have a clear system for ensuring the support they need from those around them. But creating and sustaining the kind of buy-in that drives results starts with you. The Power of Strategic Commitment provides practical methods for getting everyone to not only accept and support, but actually embrace organizational initiatives and promote long-term success.

"Teams have evolved into an important structure in business today--and are now needed more than ever. An insightful collection of activities, "Team Workout" provides facilitators, trainers, leaders, and managers with a wide variety of tools to increase team effectiveness and upgrade skills and knowledge within today's challenging organizational environment. The book focuses on such current team issues as virtual teams, trust-building, customer satisfaction, recognition, and respect. Trainers will learn the key ideas that underlie all of the activities in this manual, including: * Each team has a common purpose, mission, or goal * Members are interdependent; they need each other to achieve their purpose * Agreement that working together effectively will help to reach their goal. This collection will help team leaders, team-building specialists, trainers, and others interested in creating collaborative, harmonious and effective work teams."

"Breakthrough innovation is a prerequisite for success in almost any organization, yet the actual management of innovation has only recently begun to receive the attention it deserves. Here, innovation thought leader Elaine Dundon offers a ""how-to"" prescription for building creative and strategic innovation skills at all levels of an organization (rather than focusing on decision-making levels only) -- and explains how to produce measurable results that translate directly to the bottom line.

Using field-tested concepts and practical examples, and featuring easy-to-apply processes and concrete thinking tools, this straight-talking book provides a broadly applicable guide to innovation -- one that's not limited to a specific industry sector. Today's most comprehensive, one-stop innovation resource, it describes:

* The three necessary components of innovation -- creative, strategic, and transformational thinking

* Methods for applying innovative thought to existing products, processes, and business models

* 90 great innovations and 90 trends to consider"

Are you over 50 and facing a crossroads in life? Feel you're too old to change or don't have time to start over? Think again. In this down-to-earth book, Cindy Galvin explains why it's never too late to launch your next career. With cheeky wit, Cindy takes you on a journey with clients who transformed their lives by developing careers filled with purpose. She explains why it's never been a better time to create the life you want. Cindy's book is a toolbox you can dip into for help with: * Leveraging decades of experience, skills and wisdom * Building a `success network' * Recognising the control and influence you have

"No more ""checking for feet."" This illuminating guide gets people to tell the truth at the meeting--not in the bathroom afterwards.

Almost everybody does it--lie, that is. In one recent survey 93% of people admitted to lying regularly at work Why? Because it's safer than telling the truth.

Sadly, organizations cannot succeed in this poisonous world of half-truths, strategic omissions, and doctored information. To function optimally, businesses must create an environment where people feel free to tell the truth, no matter how disturbing. Only then can organizations unleash the responsiveness, creativity, and enthusiasm necessary to achieve their goals.

This unique book shows how, using the formal process of ""dialogue,"" such a place can be built. In a lively discussion, the author shows managers how to use this technique to encourage truth-telling by reducing fear, prompting self-examination, and opening minds * build trust where suspicion and cynicism held sway * inspire individuals to think and learn as a group * help groups talk through tough issues and move to collaborative action."

This book is for people in leadership positions who want to learn more about great leadership. Why use the word `love' in a book for business? Because it matters! When leaders consider love from a philosophical viewpoint, it gives way to the serious business of trust, respect, compassion, ethics and loyalty in getting business done. If you give a damn about people and you're courageous enough to contemplate `love', you get great business. This book takes the reader through knowledge, practice and techniques. It is for busy managers to easily arm themselves with skills needed to improve the everyday performance of their people. If you love to lead, you need to Love to Lead.

Today, a large proportion of the world's states are under authoritarian governments. These countries limit participation rights, both in the political sphere and in the workplace. At the same time, they have to generate consent in the workplace in order to ensure social stability and prevent the escalation of conflicts. But how do companies generate consent given that employee voice and interest representation may be limited or entirely absent? Based on a review of research literature from sociology, organizational psychology, and behavioural economics, this book develops a theory of consent generation and distinguishes three groups of consent-producing mechanisms: socialization, incentive mechanisms, and participation and interest representation. It presents an empirical analysis of how these mechanisms work in Russian and Chinese automotive factories and shows how socio-cultural factors and labour regulation explain the differences between both countries regarding consent and control in the workplace. The book contributes to two research debates. First, it examines the generation of consent in the workplace-a core topic of the sociology of work and organization. Its particular focus is on consent generation in authoritarian societies. Secondly, the book contributes to the debate about the reasons for the completely different trajectories of post-communist Russia and China. The book provides an empirical analysis that explains the different work behaviours of employees in both countries and links the micro-level of the workplace and the macro-level of institutions and organizational cultures.

Grounded in research, DRIVERS provides an accessible and practical guide for leaders to understand and apply the science of intrinsic motivation and trust at work. The DRIVERS are the true performance currency.