![]() |
![]() |
Your cart is empty |
||
Books > Business & Economics > Business & management > Management & management techniques > Organizational theory & behaviour
This edited book brings together humanities and social sciences scholars from the various disciplines at the nexus of discourse studies and ethnography to reflect on questions of institutional practices and their political concerns. Institutional order plays an important role in structuring power relations in society. Yet, contrary to common understandings of structure, institutional orders are far from fixed or stable. They constantly change, and they are resisted and reimagined by social actors. The 20 studies collected in this edited volume develop the notion of institutionality as an overarching perspective to explore how institutional actors and institutional practices order and reorder power in societies across the globe. Thereby the chapters pay special attention to the fluidity, volatility, fragility, and ambiguity of order, and consequently to its claims to authority. Employing a broad range of discourse analytic and ethnographic methodologies, the studies show how institutions are discursively and materially constructed, defined, represented and how they are made relevant and become powerful - or how they are resisted, transformed or lose significance - in interaction. Readers will obtain nuanced insights into ways in which differently positioned social actors engage in struggles about how institutions can be imagined and enacted across several domains, such as workplace interactions, architecture, mass-media representations or organisational publicity. This book will be of interest to readers in Applied Linguistics, Discourse and Society, Critical Discourse Analysis, Political Theory and Communication Studies.
Quarter examines business owners who use their firms as laboratories for social innovation. After providing an introduction to this phenomenon in an historical perspective and discussing the 19th-century British industrialist Robert Owen, he provides ll case studies of contemporary innovators from six countries-the UK, US, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, and New Zealand. The case studies fall into two broad groups. The first involves business people who promote innovative ownership and decision-making strategies such as donating their shares to a trust and thereby creating a company without shareholders so that employees can assume greater control; creating a worker co-operative; and transferring ownership to employees through an employee stock ownership plan. The second group of case studies involves innovative efforts at changing the relationship to the surrounding community through creating socially and environmentally responsible businesses. Quarter concludes by looking at the potential and limitations of this phenomenon for building a social movement. A provocative look at the social organization of work that will be of interest to scholars and researchers of industrial organization and to business leaders examining innovative ownership arrangements.
This book explores the experiences of caregiving fathers in the UK. Conceptions of fatherhood, childcare, and work have altered over the last few decades, with many fathers taking a more active role in caregiving than before and seeking to alter their working patterns accordingly. However, such a wider involvement in caregiving for fathers can clash with traditional values about masculinity and work, which still hold sway over public opinion and workplace policies. Using quantitative and qualitative data, collected through the use of surveys, focus groups and semi-structured interviews with managers and working parents, the book explores perceptions and experiences of fathers who amend their working patterns due to caregiving responsibilities. It highlights the specific challenges faced by caregiving fathers when they attempt to take an active role in the parenting of their children which is identified as the 'fatherhood forfeit'. This impactful new book proposes actions to address such mistreatment and improve equality in the workplace, which includes changes to policy, increases in training and the importance of workplace role modelling. It will be of interest to academics studying human resource management, gender, masculinity, organisational studies, and the home-life balance, as well as policymakers.
This handbook compiles the latest knowledge in critical areas of human resource management, including employee financial and non-financial participation in the enterprise, employer flexibility, unions, collective bargaining and workplace dispute resolution.
This book aims at catalyzing our learning from the COVID-19 crisis. Numerous studies have emerged confirming that during the COVID-19 pandemic, crisis management has been far from holistic. Progress previously made towards sustainability has in many cases been reversed and global inequality has grown. This volume scrutinizes the crucial role of businesses in the lived experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and calls for a new goal system in business, establishing human dignity as the ultimate outcome of sound business. Part of the Humanism in Business Series, this book brings together a group of international experts to consolidate the lessons to be learnt from the pandemic and how it was handled. It explores the foundations of the crisis, before focusing on selected sectors and regions for analysis and, finally, drawing conclusions according to the principles of humanistic crisis management. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of business ethics, as well as policy-makers, professionals and all those who practice humanistic management.
This research monograph presents an inter-disciplinary study of the impact, and current status, of applications of complexity-related concepts in the early stages of development of Agile Project Management (APM). The results serve as an introduction for exploring more profound relations between complexity-related ideas and APM in the future. The increasing complexity of software projects and their environment in the 1990s constituted the main determinants of the development of the family of methodological frameworks called Agile Project Management. Development of APM has been shaped by a broadly defined area of research called complexity science or complexity theory based on complex adaptive systems (CAS) and on their characteristics: Complexity, chaos, the edge of chaos, emerging properties, non-linearity, self-organization, etc. In the 21st century, due to the expansion of Agile beyond software development, the challenges deriving from the complexity of projects and the environment are even more urgent or compelling. Such phenomena demand more profound inter- and multi-disciplinary studies. This book examines the impact of applications of complexity-related ideas deriving from intuitive complexity and from complexity science in the early stages of development of the Agile methodological frameworks in project management and considers the current status of those applications. It questions the usefulness of those applications for the practice and theory of APM, and then proposes a conceptual framework for further theoretical studies and several ways of improvement and refinement of the Agile Project Management necessary to deal with broadly defined complexity in project management. Requiring a medium-level knowledge of complexity studies and knowledge of project management, this book is written for the research community studying the links between the various methodological frameworks included in APM and complexity-related ideas. It will also be interesting for studies of the impact of complexity on modern management, and for master's students on IT and management courses.
High-technology and globalization are arguably the two most important forces driving the US economy today. This book analyzes how they interact and the implications of that interaction. The methodology applies data and statistical analysis to determine the impact of these forces over a broad spectrum of the US economy. Key topics addressed include why the US economy runs a continuing trade deficit in manufactured high-tech goods, why high-tech firms steadily lose manufacturing jobs, while creating professional jobs, and why high-tech industries rely on foreign outsourcing for much of their manufacturing.
This book draws together William B. Gartner's key contributions to entrepreneurship research over the past 25 years. An original introduction by the author offers a comprehensive overview and analysis of his work as it pertains to the development of entrepreneurship as a scholarly field, and the articles demonstrate the many ways in which his research has explored entrepreneurship in relation to individuals, firms, environments, and processes.
When a $145 million IT project failure pushes Los Angeles to the edge of financial meltdown, the County CEO asks Max McLellan, a harried IT project manager, aka The Integrator, for help. The County Board gives Max 30 days to identify the problem and find a solution. At first Max finds the usual missteps, but something bigger and darker beckons, an explosive source of project failure. He must do something different, rattling ghosts of previous County IT failures, uncloaking crookedness, and exposing truths that shatter careers. With some people rooting for his failure, Max battles to fit all the pieces together with the County team, applying his proven framework to define the problem, plan a solution and execute it successfully. It's common knowledge that barely 50% of IT projects succeed, per a 2017 Project Management Institute report. Equally well-known, approximately 70% of large-scale change management initiatives fail according to a 2017 McKinsey & Co. report. Given the challenge to overcome these low success rates, The Integrator offers a proven narrative on the organizational change framework for achieving Agile IT project management success based on the author's 45+ year client experiences and published research. The Integrator defines change management as the single overarching methodology integrating Agile IT and project management. It does this because all projects are about change - significant organizational and personal change. The people involved - their participation in and understanding and support of these changes - ultimately determine IT projects success or failure. In fact, while all IT projects are about change, successful projects change human behavior. The methodologies included in the framework, described in The Integrator, include: * Change management as defined by AIM (Accelerating Implementation Methodology). * Project management as defined by the Project Management Institute (PMI) Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) standard. * IT management as derived from the Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEEE) Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) standard. * Agile as defined by the Agile Alliance's Agile Manifesto. Written by a certified Project Management Professional and accredited change management practitioner, The Integrator chronicles the challenges involved in applying this framework in a real-world setting to achieve successful project implementation.
Winner of the inaugural 2022 Joyce Rothschild Book Prize from the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations. Our everyday lives are structured by the rhythms, values, and practices of various organizations, including schools, workplaces, and government agencies. These experiences shape common-sense understandings of how 'best' to organize and connect with others. Today, for-profit managerial firms dominate society, even though their practices often curtail information-sharing and experimentation, engender exploitation, and exclude the interests of stakeholders, particularly workers and the general public. This Research in the Sociology of Organizations volume explores an expansive array of organizational imaginaries, or conceptions of organizational possibilities, with a focus on collectivist-democratic organizations that operate in capitalist markets but place more authority and ownership in the hands of stakeholders other than shareholders. These include worker and consumer cooperatives and other enterprises that, to varying degrees: Emphasize social values over profit Are owned not by shareholders but by workers, consumers, or other stakeholders Employ democratic forms of managing their operations Have social ties to the organization based on moral and emotional commitments Organizational Imaginaries explores how these enterprises generate solidarity among members, network with other organizations and communities, contend with market pressures, and enhance their larger organizational ecosystems. By ensuring that organizations ultimately support and serve broader communities, collectivist-democratic organizing can move societies closer to hopeful 'what if' and 'if only' futures. This volume is essential for researchers and students seeking innovative and egalitarian approaches to business and management.
In this timely book, Barbara Czarniawska and Bernward Joerges examine the hopes and fears around work and job security inspired by automation, from the original coining of the term 'robot' to the present day media fascination. Have these hopes and fears changed or do they remain the same? This discerning book investigates whether these changes in perception correlate to actual changes taking place in the field of robotics. Exploring several streams of popular culture, including ground-breaking science fiction novels and films, the impact of these globally renowned works on public opinion regarding robotics is assessed. Detailed media analysis identifies the frequency and complexity of common views that stem from the ideas found in both fiction and scientific research results disseminated by the news. Recent social science works dedicated to the study of robotziation are then reviewed, illustrating current and future debates surrounding the phenomenon of the 'robot revolution'. Robotization of Work? will be a key resource for students and scholars studying the organization of work, IT and digitalization, and cultural studies. It will also be of interest to anyone engaged with the concepts of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotization.
This handbook provides a forum for leading researchers in organization theory to reflect on their own discipline: how it has developed and why; what sorts of knowledge claims it regards as aceptable and why; and where it may be, or should be, going. Focussing on organization theory, the aim of this volume is to hold up for examination its key assumptions and knowledge claims, the chief explanatory strategies used, its relationship with the real world, and the future of organization theory. The book is divided into five sections under the following headings: Organization Theory as Science; The Construction of Organization Theory; Meta-theoretical Controversies in Organization Theory; Organization Theory as a Policy Science; and The Future of Organization Theory.
Volume 29 of Research in Organizational Change and Development includes ten contributions from colleagues around the globe with powerful insights and potentially relevant impact for researching and practicing organization change and development during and post the pandemic. The emerging people analytics subfield and organization development perspectives are brought together to present an integrated framework that can guide future theoretical development and practice. Bourdieu's concept of social position in the form of "habitus oriented approach" expands our understanding of human behavior. Lewin's original view of political labs is advanced to examine the emerging phenomenon of labs as mechanisms for organization change and development. The alignment challenges of strategy and digital technology in government organizations is examined via the use of collaborative inquiry. The essence and context of collaboration in teams is investigated in the emerging new workplace. The current state of organizational DEI practice is examined and a new framework for diagnosing and addressing small-scale diversity-related challenges is introduced. Digital transformation suggests the need for a new STS platform with new guiding design principles. The establishment of a collaborative community generated insights into the challenges faced by healthcare organizations. Action research supported new cooperation and partnership between universities and external organizations. In the new "Reflection" feature, the author compares organization development (OD) and change management (CM) across eight concepts that are relevant to both OD and CM.
This impactful volume demonstrates the application and power of psychology and behavioural economics in the pursuit of quality and continuous improvement. It focusses on how the works of stalwarts such as Daniel Kahneman, Richard Thaler, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and many others can be used to build an organization that is known for quality products and flawless service delivery. The application of psychology and behavioural economics is still new to quality improvement, and in this book, Debashis Sarkar shares 25 lessons, featuring specific examples based on real life, that show how their application can increase the effectiveness of outcomes. Behavioural Science for Quality and Continuous Improvement: 25 Lessons from Psychology and Behavioural Economics is ideal for business improvement professionals of all hierarchies and across different functional areas and industries seeking to understand the potential of psychology and behavioural economics and their applications, as well as in training and executive development programmes and for scholars of operations management, quality management, and engineering.
Since the dawn of social science, theorists have debated how and why societies appear to change, develop and evolve. Today, this question is pursued by scholars across many different disciplines and our understanding of these dynamics has grown markedly. Yet, there remain important areas of disagreement and debate: what is the difference between societal change, development and evolution? What specific aspects of cultures change, develop or evolve and why? Do societies change, develop or evolve in particular ways, perhaps according to cycles, or stages or in response to survival necessities? How do different disciplines-from sociology to anthropology to psychology and economics-approach these questions? This book provides complex and nuanced answers to these, and many other, questions. First, the book invites readers to consider the broad landscape of societal dynamics across human history, beginning with humanity's origins in small nomadic bands of hunter gatherers through to the emergence of post-industrial democracies. Then, the book provides a tour of several prominent existing theories of cultural change, development and evolution. Approaches to explaining cultural dynamics will be discussed across disciplines and schools of thought, from "meme" theories to established cumulative cultural evolutionary theories to newly emerging theories on cultural tightness-looseness. The book concludes with a call for theoretical integration and a frank discussion of some of the most unexamined structures that drive cultural dynamics across schools of thought.
This book acts as a valuable quick-access resource on the challenges and opportunities that the digital age presents to organizational leadership. Balanced, comprehensive, and thought-provoking, the book will be useful to professionals and practitioners. The book broadly follows a macro, meso, and micro approach to argumentation and is best read from beginning to end. The book synopsizes the historical context of technological revolutions and reflects on first-order results from enhanced use of information and communication technology in organizations; considers second-level impacts from information and communication technology on economy, society, work, and the very act of organizing; maps out core concepts of agility and principles that leaders should honor to exploit agility in newfound workforce ecosystems; showcases emerging leadership behaviors and mindsets; and specifies the good practice needed to plan and lead digital strategies. The book invites reference to the author's popular Knowledge Solutions: Tools, Methods, and Approaches to Drive Organizational Performance (2017) and the more recent Leading Solutions: Essays in Business Psychology (2021), which it both rests on and extends.
This book describes the neurology of a business as a new dimension of organization and as a basis for success in a complex world. Comparing organizations with living organisms, it places an organization's neurology (control and communication) as a third dimension beside its anatomy (structure) and physiology (process). Overlooked by classical organizational theory, this third dimension offsets its typical drawbacks. The Neurology of Business introduces Stafford Beer's Viable System Model (VSM) and shows how this helps managers to diagnose, discover, and unleash the potential and performance lying dormant in today's enterprises. The book is based on numerous consulting projects and management seminars conducted in Europe, America, and Asia. It guides the reader through the diagnosis and design process and illustrates application issues with practical examples. In this way, the book provides managers with the language needed to have meaningful conversations about how their organizations are functioning. As such, it will benefit managers in business and nonbusiness organizations, as well as readers interested in general management.
This book treats discovery and invention as processes of knowledge transformation. This process of transformation also covers the way in which scientists persuade and inventors create markets. New discoveries and technologies are not simply the result of organizational agendas and market forces; they are created by human beings who transform both nature and society. One of the goals of this book is to take technological and scientific thinking out of the realm of mystery and give a wider audience the tools to begin to comprehend it. An additional goal is to show how ethics can be used to make certain inventions and discoveries transform the world in a beneficial way. New technologies must be environmentally sustainable and socially just. Chapter 1 begins with analysis of several cases of discovery, and attempts to make generalizations from them. Chapter 2 combines psychology, sociology and philosophy of science in an effort to determine whether and how science can be studied. Chapter 3 is about invention and the story of the telephone is at the center, with other cases embellishing the discussion. Chapter 4 brings ethics, discovery and invention together in the case of the atomic bomb, then goes on to treat new ethical technologies like the development of a compostable furniture fabric and the introduction of photovoltaics into developing countries. Chapter 5 considers how to teach ethical discovery and invention, and includes a section on the management of discovery and invention.
Critical Moments in Executive Coaching examines the change process supported by workplace and executive coaching, making use of empirical evidence from the study of a range of real coaching conversations and coaching relationships. It is both a complete handbook that for the first time gives access to a global qualitative research base in the field of executive coaching, and a look behind the scenes into the practice of both inexperienced and experienced coaches, their clients and their commissioners. Erik de Haan allows the reader access to the wealth of Ashridge empirical research in this field to date, alongside prominent research groups around the world. This book provides practitioners with a range of suggestions for their contracts, backed up by qualitative and narrative research. It looks at what research is already telling us about the value of coaching conversations and the impact of critical 'moments of change' in coaching, from the perspectives of coaches, clients, stakeholders and sponsors. The detailed research findings outlined in the book are supplemented throughout by case studies and snapshots of coaching moments as well as practical advice and insights for those working in the field. The book also brings forward innovative new models and concepts for coaches which have emerged from research. Critical Moments in Executive Coaching offers an evidence and research-based approach that will be of great interest to coaches in practice and in training, students of both undergraduate and graduate coaching programmes and those who supervise and commission coaching.
This volume of Research on Negotiation in Organizations focuses on three new and emerging areas in the domain of negotiation and conflict within organizations. In the first section, the problem of "deviance" within organizations is approached from a conflict and justice perspective. Earlier research attention to these issues tended to treat deviance largely as a problem created by selected individuals who did not adapt to the organization, rather than as a systemic problem created by certain organizational conditions. By seeing deviant behavior in organizations as a possible response to unfair treatment, and by employing conflict management concepts to explain how individuals respond to organizational constraints and pressures, the papers in this section extend the work on conflict and justice to a new, rich, and largely unexplored domain. The second section of this volume addresses an increasingly important challenge in our world - the effective management of environmental conflict; the authors demonstrate factors contributing to the intractability of environmental disputes, and the importance of perceptions of fairness in attaining conflict resolution. The third and final section offers diverse but important papers in the application of conflict and negotiation to the international environment, including an examination of conflict in a Chinese cultural context, and commentary on the role of power differences in conflict management and negotiation.
Seize the competitive edge, increase innovation, and do right by people through building equity and diversity into your organizational DNA Studies continuously prove that companies with more diversity in their ranks are more innovative, serve expanded marketplaces, and perform better financially; however, most companies have yet to develop and implement effective diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives-and pressure to succeed is rapidly increasing. All Are Welcome takes you beyond the mere practice of hiring a diversity of staff to make inclusion part of the equation, too. The author argues that a strong practice of inclusion is necessary to keep employee retention up, make diversity efforts stick, and cultivate an organization that outperforms its peers. All Are Welcome covers: Why Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Matters Understanding the Problem: Hiring - Retention = Zero Progress Focusing on Inclusion and Equity A Framework for Change Increasing Workforce Diversity: Hiring and Development Building an Inclusive Workplace: Culture and Accessibility Serving a Diverse Marketplace's Needs: Product, Customers and Marketing Supporting our Communities: Social Impact and Legislative Advocacy Conditions for Success: Courage, Accountability, Respect, and Empowerment The Future of Work and the Role of DEI Pressure to make equity, diversity, and inclusion an organizational priority-on par with the pursuit of profits and growth-is greater today than ever. All Are Welcome provides the knowledge, insights, and tools you need to make diversity, equity, and inclusion an integral part of your organizational strategy.
Against a backdrop of downsizing, restructuring and other devastating changes within today's organizations, how does the executive actually go about getting things done? Not simply through the exercise of raw power, argues Gottlieb. Indeed, power and influence are not the same. Most articles in academic and professional business periodicals concentrate on power and provide scant insight into influencing--its techniques and various behaviors. In this work, Gottlieb, a specialist in management development and training, takes a big step toward correcting this imbalance and the confusion it creates. He explores a variety of approaches to getting work done that are both non-traditional and non-hierarchical in structure. Matrix or systems approaches have become commonplace, staff levels have thinned, and today's managers are increasingly dependent upon the cooperation of others in the organization, people over whom the manager has no direct authority. Managerial success depends, therefore, on an ability to influence others to comply and prioritize productively and efficiently. The book identifies the strategies available to those who want to develop or hone their influencing skills. It helps executives adapt their current influencing style to the new demands and requirements for leadership in today's unstable organizations, for example by building effective alliances and strong bases inside and outside of the organization for the exercise of one's influence. The book also helps managers construct dynamic organizational action plans for empowering and motivating others, and for providing bosses, peers, and subordinates with incentives to achieve goals. Gottlieb covers techniques to enhance persuasive and related selling techniques, examines several motivation issues for subordinates, and presents managers with approaches to using influence in the dual role of coach and counselor for staff and peers. Well illustrated with case studies, scenarios, and dialogues, the book will be essential for decision makers throughout the public and private sectors, and for all who aspire to decision-making positions in all types of organizations.
Despite a shared interest in the analysis of complex organizations operating in complex environments, macro-organization theory and research on the multinational corporation have developed quite independently of each other. This book, the product of a collaborative endeavour by scholars from both fields, represents the first systematic effort to build a broad bridge between these two areas of research. 'An excellent collection of essays which provides both the general and specialist reader with a fascinating insight into the latest advances in organisational theory.' John H. Dunning, Universities at Reading and Rutgers.
This handbook presents an expansive exploration of critical theory, critical perspectives, critical praxis, and the impact on the research, theory, and practice of Human Resource Development (HRD). Critical Human Resource Development (CHRD) aims to challenge the normative structures, practices, policies, definitions, and approaches which have historically dominated the field of Human Resource Development (HRD). As an approach to HRD, CHRD raises awareness of social systems, organizational policies and practices, and research paradigms that silence new ways of knowing and understanding, while advancing underrepresented and emerging approaches. Through an analysis of power and privilege, morality and ethics, and ideology and context, CHRD situates diversity, equity, inclusion, social justice, and resistance as a path forward in a rapidly-changing global society. In contrast to HRD's traditional focus on organization development, training and development, and career development, this handbook adopts a more critical vantage point which classifies the scope and outcomes of HRD across five domains identified by CHRD scholars as key to understanding the nature and work of the field- organizing, relating, learning, changing, and advocating. |
![]() ![]() You may like...
Organisational Analysis and…
Steve Mpedi Madue, Stellah Lubinga
Paperback
R419
Discovery Miles 4 190
We Are Still Human - And Work Shouldn't…
Brad Shorkend, Andy Golding
Paperback
![]()
Family Business Case Studies Across the…
Jeremy Cheng, Luis Diaz-Matajira, …
Hardcover
R3,035
Discovery Miles 30 350
Philosophies of Organizational Change…
Aaron C. T. Smith, James Skinner, …
Paperback
R1,139
Discovery Miles 11 390
Organization Development And Change
Thomas Cummings, Christopher Worley, …
Paperback
![]()
|