Suchergebnisse

Two principal conclusions can be drawn from this analysis of negotiating practice. Firstly, that negotiations take place at all levels and on a much more regular basis than in formal meetings alone. Secondly, the need for training in negotiating skills is highlighted, illustrating the way in which negotiators are made and not born. This is especially important when it comes to the use of language in order to present cases in the most effective manner.

In two previous articles, this author drew attention to the importance of the linguistic resources of legitimising principles, and the uses of ideology and rhetoric in bargaining and negotiation. It was argued that if we are fully to understand the processes of power in organisations generally, and in industrial relations in particular, we need to study in more detail the nature and uses of ideology, legitimising principles and rhetoric, and the ways in which these are used continually to reinforce and reproduce structures of power and domination. Illustrative material from an engineering company, Bettavalve Placid, was used to demonstrate the nature of some of these processes.

Power cannot be studied simply by observing the outcomes of contested decision making or by focusing on the possession of physical or structural resources, as an outline of some of the power processes at Bettavalve Placid suggests. Power exists and is mobilised even when "nothing happens" in the normal sense. To fully understand the processes of power in organisations generally and in industrial relations in particular, the use of ideology, legitimising principles and rhetoric and the ways in which these are used continually to reinforce and reproduce structures of power and domination need to be studied. It is demonstrated how the unitarist ideology of the Bettavalve Placid management was continually reinforced by the use of various legitimising principles and articulated via certain rhetorics.

AbstractThis paper seeks to argue that despite the easy surface pervaisiveness of notions of turbulence, instability and chaos, such conceptions have yet to radically influence our views of change. Most of the change literature can be seen to be rooted in a traditional modernist paradigm which sees change as linear incremental progression. While there are some theorists who appreciate the limitations of the modernist paradigm, there are few who have begun to develop a truly postmodernist approach to change. This paper represents a small step in that process and concludes by surfacing the practical implications for change agents of transcending the modernist paradigm.'Speculate what our ideas of cause and effect might have been had melting butter been our model rather than billiard balls. As it is, the world may seem to us to be a succession of clicks, pushes, ticks and tocks. Had the melting of butter or wax seized our imagination instead, the world would have appeared to us as a series of simmering, drippings, meltings, and splashes…' (Hanson, 1969, pp. 282–283).