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Predominantly in the USA, the business case for organizational democracy has recently emerged out of new wave management and is characterized by a communitarian challenge to the economic efficiency of hierarchical modes of organizational governance. It presents democratization as a pragmatic remedial device to counter the symptoms of employee alienation and ameliorate the organizational problems associated with destabilized capitalism. This paper outlines the origins and nature of the business case for organizational democracy through a comparison with new wave management; uncovers its underlying rationale in terms of an array of constitutive assumptions that justify and differentiate its prescriptions for the workplace; and considers the implications of using a business case to legitimate the democratization of work organizations. It concludes by outlining the paradoxes inherent in the business case and suggests that, rather than appropriating the business case's functionalist teleology, it is at the interconnection of politics, ethics and knowledge, together with more consideration of the values and particularism which underpin trust in hierarchy, whence organizational democracy can best gather its rationale and legitimization.

Ruy Barbosa, the Brazilian lawyer and legal scholar, statesman, educational reformer, journalist, politician, and spokesman for a liberal tradition, is again in the news. Lionized during a career which spanned the late Empire and early Republic, deified as a cultural monument since his death in 1923, Ruy and his once secure historical reputation are now under assault. That Barbosa could be criticized at all is shocking, especially to an older generation for whom the repeated homage to his memory in countless books, in the press, and on the hustings formed a cultural constant in their youth and helped to set their world view. For others, mostly younger Brazilians, the image of a remote, rather pedantic, and above all irrelevant Ruy has been redrawn, if not refurbished, in light of a new historical perspective.

This research investigates how recent approaches to culture management have tacitly assimilated Merton's and Mayo's reformulations of Durkheim's theory of anomie.This reformulation legitimates an instrumental focus upon the need for 'experts' to regulate the means by which naturalized utilitarian ends are pursued by developing culture management practices that aim to (re)integrate the mal-socialized. In contrast to this technocratic approach, we explore how Durkheim's original formulation of anomie, far from accepting utilitarian ends as givens, articulated concerns about the unfettering of egoism he saw to be engendered by the classical liberal free market assumptions at the heart of utilitarianism. How this free market ethos, articulated by recent neoliberal discourses, guides the content and processes of post-bureaucratic culture management manoeuvres is then investigated. This article concludes by showing how, from Durkheim's stance, such managerial processes paradoxically serve to express and propagate the incidence of anomie. In stark contrast, as a means of re-establishing social cohesion as a bulwark against anomie whilst protecting individual freedoms, Durkheim's communitarian agenda emphasized the need to establish an organic solidarity, knowingly agreed by all on an equal basis, thereby potentially legitimating a more democratic approach to organizational governance that has contemporary relevance.

This article considers the implications of the Visible Unpaid Work Strategy for the unpaid work element of a community order. It argues that such a strategy is incompatible with the requirement for skills development in the current delivery of unpaid work. It uses data collated from research into public perceptions of the sanction and consequently disputes the viability of community engagement in relation to the choice of work for offenders.

For nearly 70 years scholars have been discussing the characteristics of action research and it is apparent that there is an increasingly wide range of forms that action research takes in practice. Here we argue that such diversity is not haphazard and that we must be cautious about developing all-embracing standards to differentiate the 'good' from the 'bad'. Rather this diversity is inspired by different philosophical stances, which usually remain tacit in published accounts thereby fuelling ambiguity and controversy about what action research should entail in practice and as to its 'scientific' status. The aim of this article is to explain the apparent diversity of action research in the organization studies domain, by clarifying how variable philosophical assumptions systematically lead to the constitution of distinctive forms of action research with their attendant conceptions of social science. This diversity is illustrated, with examples from the relevant literature, in terms of variation in: the aims of action research; its conception of social science; the role of the action researcher and their relations with members; the validity criteria deployed and the internal tensions that arise.

The objective of this paper is to explore how the current interest in Business Ethics can be located within an analysis of contemporary society which takes into account the prevalence of moral uncertainty along with the concomitant desire to (re)establish some form of normative order. As such, Business Ethics may be seen as a socially constructed "field" of study which reflects broader changes and controversies within society. Yet as a body of knowledge, Business Ethics articulates epistemological doubts. Two distinctive themes in Business Ethics discourse are considered-the modernist/rationalist and the postmodemist/relativist. It is argued that in different ways, each can be seen as both an expression of, and a reaction to, the increasing incidence of anomie in society. The implications for organizational practices are then considered through the example of Corporate Codes of Ethics and the problem of establishing consensus where the grounds for any claim to moral authority are problematic.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how the institutional context influences human resource management (HRM) policies in the public and private sector in Nigeria.Design/methodology/approachThe convergent parallel mixed methods approach was adopted for this study. Survey data were collected from 122 HR managers across public and private sector organizations in Nigeria as well as 13 qualitative interviews. ANCOVA was used to analyse quantitative data while thematic analysis was used to analyse qualitative data in order to understand the influence of institutions on HRM in the public and private sector in Nigeria.FindingsFindings indicate that while coercive, mimetic and normative institutional mechanisms influenced HRM in both the public and private sector, the influence of coercive mechanisms was significantly higher in the public sector, largely due to the poor enforcement of labour legislation and attempts by private sector organizations to adopt neo-liberal approaches to HRM.Originality/valueThe study provides an understanding of the institutional context of HRM in Nigeria by highlighting how varying degrees of pressures from the environment create internal diversity in HRM approaches in the public and private sector.