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Management Lives: Power and Identity in Work Organizations PDF

185 Pages·1999·3.2 MB·English
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David Knights + Hugh Willmott MANAGEMENT LIVES Management Lives Management Lives Power and Identity in Work Organizations David Knights and Hugh Willmott SAGE Publications London • Thousand Oaks • New Delhi © Knights and Willmott, 1 999 First published 1 999 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 6 Bonhill Street London EC2A 4PU SAGE Publications Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 9 1 320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd 32, M-B1ock Market Greater Kailash - I New Delhi 1 10 048 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 8039 8333 6 ISBN 0 8039 8334 4 ( pbk) Library of Congress catalog card number available Typeset by Mayhew Typesetting. Rhayader, Powys Printed in Great Britain by Redwood Books, Trowbridge, Wiltshire Contents Preface 1 2 Background Approach Usage Acknowledgements viii viii ix x Managing Knowledge I Against the text Introducing the novel From textbook to novel Nice Work Relevance of the novel Managing knowledge Information and understanding Textbook syndrome Guru syndrome Managing as a lived experience Vic the manager Nice play? The personal and the political Interpreting everyday life Interpreting the factory Interpreting the lecture The politics of teaching and the struggle to learn An overview Summary 2 4 5 6 8 9 10 11 12 14 14 15 16 18 18 20 21 24 26 Organizing Work 30 31 31 33 35 36 37 40 44 45 Conceptualizing (working) life Power, inequality, identity and insecurity Working lives The historical meaning of work Industrial work The existential meaning of work Orientations to work What makes work meaningful? Industry and society Academia and society Summary 50 vi Contents 3 Identity and Insecurity at Work 53 The burden of identity 54 The battle for human nature 57 The selfish gene? 58 Contextualizing human nature 59 Claims about human nature 60 Behaviourism: stimulus and response 62 The illusion of free will 64 Critical reflections on behaviourism 65 Symbolic interactionism: meaning and self 68 The process of self-formation 70 Critical reflections on symbolic interactionism 73 Beyond behaviourism and symbolic interactionism 75 The precariousness of identity in the context of work and society 76 The limits of rational control 76 Identity formation in conditions of uncertainty The context of capitalism 79 Resistance and control 80 Identity and exploitation 8 1 Identity and consumption 82 Summary 84 4 Power and Inequality at Work 88 Devotion to a master 89 Devotion to success 9 1 Conceptualizing power 93 Lukes's three-dimensional model 95 The question of 'real interests' Conceptualizing inequality 99 Rereading the novels through an understanding of inequality 1 0 1 Nice Work 1 0 1 The Remains of the Day 1 02 The Bonfire of the Vanities 1 03 The Unbearable Lightness of Being 1 05 Discussion 1 07 Dynamics of inequality 1 08 Stereotyping 1 08 Domination 1 1 0 Subordination III Indifference 1 12 Resistance 1 1 3 Summary 1 1 6 5 Managing to Manage Everyday managing Analysing mundane managing 1 2 1 1 22 1 24 Contents Making the modern organization Weber and bureaucracy Taylor and scientific management The denial of morality? Refining the modern organization Remembering Barnard 'Post-bureaucratic' organization Reflections on post-bureaucracy Managing to manage Managerial manipulation Issues of hierarchy and accountability Identity and insecurity Power and inequality Summary and conclusion Appendix A 1 2 3 4 Synopses of Novels Nice Work The Unbearable Lightness of Being The Remains of the Day The Bonfire of the Vanities Appendix B The Conceptual Framework Identity Insecurity Power Inequality An illustration Index vii 1 28 1 30 1 33 1 35 1 38 1 38 1 40 1 42 1 43 1 43 145 1 46 148 1 5 1 1 58 1 58 1 59 1 60 1 6 1 1 63 1 63 1 64 1 66 1 67 1 69 1 7 1 Preface The mind is primarily concerned, not with measures and locations, but with being and meaning. I This book has been long in its genesis. The original idea to write such a text occurred several years, and almost as many draft manuscripts, ago. It is the product of a teaching collaboration on a course that we have developed over many years. Background The idea for the book was prompted initially by our understanding of managing as an everyday activity that involves interactions between people - interactions that are not unrelated or entirely dissimilar to other spheres of life, except perhaps in the rhetoric and hype that surround management. Since most management textbooks do not make the connection between managing and everyday life, and indeed envelop the activity of management within an academic and professional mystique, we have been drawn to alternative sources (e.g. novels) that might enable students to relate accounts of management to their own experience. Approach The title Management Lives! is intended to be ambiguous and a little controversial. It is concerned to illuminate the lives of people who, in different ways, are involved or affected by management. It includes those expressly identified as managers, but it extends to others who are managed, including the customers that are increasingly the targets of a competitive preoccupation with customer 'care' and service programmes. We refrain from treating management from the point of view of a set of theories and or a series of techniques that examine what are assumed to be effective yet diverse ways of managing (e.g. motivation, leadership, training, organizational structure). Instead, we seek to address managing as a vibrant, complex, challenging and even exciting human experience. Our approach is designed to counter the image of management as a branch of science or engineering, and to encourage an appreciation of managing as part and parcel of life and how it is lived. Preface ix This approach accords with a more general recognition among teachers that education is best facilitated where students identify with, and are actively involved in, the learning process. In order to 'make management live', we explore the lives of those who are touched by it, using the concepts of power, inequality, identity and insecurity to guide and enrich our analysis. In our view, these key concepts are central for understanding so many facets of human life - from work to the family, from business to leisure, from reproduction to sexuality and from the sacred to the profane. Instead of organizing our course around established topics or focusing on the writings of authorities in management - such as Maslow, Fiedler or Mintzberg - we have encouraged our students to read more widely from a literature that would not conventionally be on a management syllabus. This has included the writings of Erich Fromm, Robert Pirsig and Harry Braverman, for example. We have also encouraged them to read a number of novels that offer a fictional exploration of central ideas in the course. A majority of students found the ideas explored in these texts more relevant to them personally and stimulating intellectually than the staple diet of management textbooks and associated readings. At the same time, they found a challenge in the invitation to read novels in a different, more reflexive and analytical way - as illustrative of ideas rather than just a good story. It could also be disturbing when, in contrast to management texts, students made connections between the ideas explored in the novels and their own lives and relationships. In sum, this book is less concerned with the specific and detailed, 'technical' functions of management, as described in most textbooks, than with the ways in which these technical activities affect the lives of managers. On the other hand, we are not concerned with the lives of management as a piece of voyeurism, as might be a journalist, so much as how the lives of managers, in the broadest sense, affect their work. Students told us that the novels we recommended made what we were seeking to communicate more accessible and meaningful. Otherwise rather abstract ideas that previously had been perceived to have relevance only for passing exams suddently came alive. The enthusiasm encouraged us to move further in this direction. Instead of simply providing an extensive list of novels that might be read by students as a supplement to more orthodox literature, we began integrating a small selection of these novels into the course. Gradually, they became primary rather than secondary reading and this book is a reflection of that evolutionary development in the course. Usage Since we began to use novels in the mid- 1 980s, we have discovered that their use in teaching management students is not as unique as we first thought. Colleagues elsewhere have told us how they also use novels to illuminate particular ideas or to leaven otherwise technical treatments of

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