Understanding Management

229 Pages·1996·9.771 MB·English

by  Stephen Linstead, Robert Grafton Small, Paul Jeffcutt (editors)

Understandina
b y Stephen Linstead
b.
Robert Grafton Small
* N
o and Paul Jeffcutt
UNDERSTANDING
MANAGEMENT

UNDERSTANDING
MANAGEMENT
edited by
Stephen Linstead, Robert Grafton Small
and Paul Jeffcutt
Thomas j. Bata ib rary y
TREi-i, , i
i
rARIO
SAGE Publications
London • Thousand Oaks • New Delhi
U 5 138 1 Qs
Editorial selection and matter, and Introduction © Stephen
Linstead, Robert Grafton Small and Paul Jeffcutt, 1996
Chapter 1 Stephen Linstead 1996
Chapter 2 Dan Gowler and Karen Legge 1996
Chapters 3 and 5 David Golding 1996
Chapter 4 Omar Aktouf 1996
Chapter 6 Michael L. Rosen and Thomas P,
Mullen 1996
Chapter 7 © Steven P. Feldman 1996
Chapter 8 © Stephen Lloyd Smith and Barry
Wilkinson 1996
Chapter 9 © Robert Grafton Small 1996
Chapter 10 © Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges 1996
Chapter 11 © Paul Jeffcutt 1996
Chapter 12 © Hugo Letiche 1996
First published 1996
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in
writing from the Publishers.
SAGE Publications Ltd
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SAGE Publications Inc
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SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
ISBN 0 8039 8912-1
ISBN 0 8039 8913-X (pbk)
Library of Congress catalog card number 95-072171
Typeset by Type Study, Scarborough, North Yorkshire
Printed in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press Ltd,
Broughton Gifford, Melksham, Wiltshire
To the memory of Dan Gowler (1931-1992);
and Keith Turner (1949-1993), an indefatigable
ally, innovative agitator, inimitable critic,
irrepressible spirit, and irreplaceable friend.
-
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Contributors x
Editors’ Introduction 1
Part 1: Making the Meaning of Management
1 Understanding Management: Culture, Critique and Change 11
Stephen Linstead
2 The Meaning of Management and the Management of
Meaning 34
Dan Gowler and Karen Legge
3 Producing Clarity - Depoliticizing Control 51
David Golding
Part 2: Defamiliarizing Management Practice
4 Competence, Symbolic Activity and Promotability 66
Omar Aktouf
5 Management Rituals: Maintaining Simplicity in the Chain of
Command 78
David Golding
6 There to Here and No Way Back: the Late Life of a Cocaine
Dealer 94
Michael L. Rosen and Thomas P. Mullen
Part 3: Rethinking Symbolic Management
7 Management in Context: Culture and Organizational Change 113
Steven P. Feldman
8 ‘We are our own Policemen!’- Organizing without Conflict 130
Stephen Lloyd Smith and Barry Wilkinson
Part 4: Consuming and Constructing Identity
9 Marketing, or the Anthropology of Consumption 145
Robert Grafton Small
viii Contents
10 Autobiographical Acts and Organizational Identities 157
Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges
Part 5: Changing Identities
11 Between Managers and the Managed: the Processes of
Organizational Transition _ 172
Paul Jeffcutt
12 Postmodernism Goes Practical 193
Hugo Letiche
Name Index 212
Subject Index 216
Acknowledgements
Certain of the chapters of this book have appeared previously in a different
form in other places. We are grateful to the following for permission to
reproduce them, in revised form, here:
Blackwell Publishers for Chapters 5 and 7; the editors of Sociological Review
for Chapter 3; MCB Publications for Chapter 9; and Oxford University
Press for Chapter 2.
Chapter 2 appeared as ‘The Meaning of Management and the Management
of Meaning: a view from social anthropology’, in Michael J. Earl, (ed.)
Perspectives on Management: A Multidisciplinary Analysis. Oxford: Oxford
University Press 197-233 (1983).
Chapter 3 appeared as ‘Establishing Blissful Clarity in Organizational Life:
Managers’, in Sociological Review, 28(4): 763-82 (1980).
Chapter 5 appeared as ‘Some Everyday Rituals in Management Control’,
Journal of Management Studies 28(6): 569-83 (1991).
Chapter 7 appeared as ‘Management in Context: an essay on the relevance
of culture to understanding organizational change’, Journal of Management
Studies 23(6): 587-607 (1985).
Chapter 9 appeared as ‘Marketing, or the Anthropology of Consumption’,
European Journal of Marketing, 21(9): 66-71 (1985).