Suchergebnisse

Introduction -- What is work? -- Work in historical perspective -- Classical approaches to work : Marx, Durkheim and Weber -- Contemporary theories of work organization -- Class, industrial conflict and the labour process -- Gender, patriarchy and trade unions -- Race, ethnicity and labour markets : recruitment and the politics of exclusion -- Working technology -- Contemporary work : the service sector and the knowledge economy -- The meaning of work in the contemporary economy -- Work in the global economy -- Glossary

This highly topical book is a concise and accessible account of the relationship between technology and work. Firstly, it reviews and critically assesses a variety of recent approaches to the social and cultural dimensions of technology. Secondly, it examines the implications of these new approaches for existing ideas about the nature of technology and work organization. At the core of much thinking about technology is the assumption that the technical character and capacity of artefacts is given. The enduring image of deus ex machina captures the idea that it is the essential capacity 'within' a technology which, in the end, accounts for the way we organize ourselves, our work and other life experiences.

Keith Grint argues that the successes and failures of D-Day, on both sides, cannot be explained by comparing the competing strategies of each side. Instead he provides an account of the battle through the overarching nature of the relationship between the leaders and their followers

We are, apparently, living in unprecedented times, an Age of Uncertainty, when wicked problems whirl all around as we struggle to cope with Covid-19, environmental catastrophe and the right-wing populism that threatens to unravel all kinds of international agreements. In this personal reflection, 15 years after I wrote an article on wicked problems and the social construction of leadership, I take a look back, and forward, to see whether there ever was an Age of Certainty when only tame problems temporarily troubled us, or whether our understanding of the world is itself a social construction, open to dispute and thus we have always lived in uncertain times. In the process of this evaluation, I consider whether collaborative leadership, often associated with wicked problems, is as ubiquitous and effective as some proponents make out, and if it isn't, what this says about our ability to address such problems.

The Covid-19 pandemic that swept through the world in late 2019 and through 2020 provides a test not just for all societies and their leadership, but for leadership theory. In a world turned upside down, when many conventions are disposed of, it is clear that things will not return to the status quo ante any time soon, if ever. In the light of these challenges, this short paper suggests we might reconsider the way governments and their leaders act against the frame of societal problems, originally established by Rittell and Webber in 1973. I suggest that all three modes of decision-making (Leadership, Management and Command) are necessary because of the complex and complicated nature of the problem and conclude that while Command is appropriate for certain times and issues, it also poses long-term threats, especially if the context is ignored.

The invasion of Iraq was premised upon accounts of the situation that have proved unsustainable, but that has not generated a change in the strategy of the coalition forces. Conventional contingency accounts of leadership suggest that accurate accounts of the context are a critical element of the decision-making apparatus but such accounts appear incapable of explaining the decisions of those engaged. An alternative model is developed that adapts the Tame and Wicked problem analysis of Rittell and Webber, in association with Etzioni's typology of compliance, to propose an alternative analysis that is rooted in social constructivist approaches. This is then applied to three asymmetric case studies which suggest that decision-makers are much more active in the constitution of the context than conventional contingency theories allow, and that a persuasive rendition of the context then legitimizes a particular form of action that often relates to the decision-maker's preferred mode of engagement, rather than what 'the situation' apparently demands. In effect, the context is reconstructed as a political arena not a scientific laboratory.

Reengineering has rapidly become the business buzzword of the early 1990s. This examination of the reengineering phenomenon sets out to consider the extent to which it is a new model for organizational change and offers some suggestions as to why it appears to have become so popular. It disputes some claims to novelty and internal coherence and argues that explanations for reengineering's popularity might be sought through an externalist rather than an internalist account. That is, that its popularity might best be explained not by considering the uniqueness or 'inherent' rationality of the ideas involved, an 'internalist' account, but rather through the ways in which the purveyors of reengineering manage, in and through their accounts, to construct a series of sympathetic 'resonances' or compatibilities, an 'externalist' account. These are construed to exist between their ideas and popular opinion, or zeitgeist, and also between the novelty of the ideas and the cultural antecedents.