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Organizational scholars have shown considerable interest in the rise of complex systems of organizational control, sometimes referred to metaphorically as the process of tightening the iron cage, as well as patterns of workplace resistance to it. More recently, the scholarly spotlight seems to have shifted from formal modes of employee resistance to more informal or routine forms of workplace resistance. This paper presents a detailed ethnographic account of informal resistance and its ability to limit managerial control in a health maintenance organization undergoing the computerization of its administrative functions. Our study adopts a more problematic approach to understanding routine resistance, tracing its discursive constitution in the workplace. Using the findings of an ethnographic study involving observation and interviews, we show how routine resistance was discursively constituted and how it limited organizational control in interesting and unexpected ways. This discursive constitution was achieved through (a) owning resistance, (b) naming resistance, and (c) designating indirect resistance. The paper also analyzes how these different discursive constructions limited managerial control by affirming autonomous self-identities, renegotiating roles and relationships, and reinterpreting dominant managerial discourses. Finally, broader implications for understanding routine resistance in organizations are drawn.

This paper examines the process of work computerization in a Health Maintenance Organization from an institutionalist perspective. It investigates how one element of the institutional environment, viz., the ideology of professionalism, became a powerful presence and continually influenced the process of work computerization in the organization. Using ethnographic methods of participant observation and in-depth interviews, the paper identifies the different local meanings of professionalism held by organizational members. It then examines how the ideology of professionalism became institutionalized within the organization through a combination of micro-and macro-level forces. The paper also looks at the consequences of this ideology for the computerization process. Mainly, it shows how the ideology of professionalism facilitated a climate of acceptance toward computers, escalated commitment to the technology and was partly responsible for the suppression of individual concerns regarding work computerization. Finally, implications for organization theory and research are drawn.

SummaryThe technique of analysing factorial experiments has been used in this paper to analyse data on survival sequence of infants. Even though no generalizations can be made at this stage, the findings relating to interactions appear to be interesting, revealing and useful. Strong associations between survivorship of infants at successive birth orders are indicated.

"In a gorgeous history that spans continents and millennia, Aarathi Prasad weaves together the complex story of the queen of fabrics. Through the scientists who have studied silk, and the biology of the animals from which it has been drawn, Prasad explores the global, natural, and cultural history (and future) of a unique material that has fascinated the world for thousands of years"--

This book studies the history of intercultural human rights. It examines the foundational elements of human rights in the East and the West and provides a comparative analysis of the independent streams of thought originating from the two different geographic spaces

On idling, storytelling, and impartibility: phaltu bethna sakht mana hai -- On films, recognizability, and spacing-out: double dekho -- On toilets, deceptions, and citability: Kaminey, a tragic-play -- On swelling, containment, and recyclability: cocktail mix -- Conclusion: the inoperative operations of urban play.

"In this book, Prasad Khanolkar offers a new way of thinking about 'slums' and southern cities based on a grounded engagement with the relationship between media, objects, spaces, and people in the everyday life of slum localities in Mumbai, India. Over the past few decades, Mumbai, like many cities in the global South, has experienced a series of overarching governmental missions to program it into an interoperable and profitable city. Its 'slums', which house a majority of its population, don't fit within the dominant registers and continue to be deemed as excess. Urban residents inhabiting Mumbai's slum localities thus find themselves in the middle of missions, policies, and programs that are not of their making, just as often that they find themselves localized by lack of resources, caste system, communal conflicts, and territorial jurisdictions. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in slum localities of Mumbai, this book explores how its residents engage in different forms of play in order to extend and expand their field of possibilities, despite the limitations and fixities. The book attends to some of these playacts: imparting stories with different thicknesses, rehearsing roles on and offscreen, engaging in deceptive performances, experimenting with repetitive everyday rhythms, and recycling matter and forms. Through these playacts, urban residents explore the virtual abilities of different mediums to put bodies, objects, and spaces into new forms of relationships and create passages to depart from programmed urban futures. By attending to these proliferating urban passages of different residents in slum localities, the book makes a case for rethinking southern cities as mediums for urban lives to converge and depart without an overarching framework. The book makes a significant contribution in the field of urban studies, urban anthropology, urban geography, and urban sociology. It will be of interest to scholars and students working on postcolonial cities, Southern urbanisms, infrastructure studies, and urban planning in the global South"--