Management and Marketing - Research Publications
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ItemSome dare call it power(Sage Publications, 2006)Power has typically been seen as the ability to get others to do what you want them to, if necessary, against their will (Weber 1978). This seemingly simple definition, which presents the negative, rather than the positive, aspects of power has been challenged, amended, critiqued, extended and rebuffed over the years but it, nonetheless, remains the statting point for a remarkably diverse body of literature. Behind it lies a series of important struggles, not just concerning different conceptualizations of power, and different traditions of social science, but also in the interplay between critical and managerialist thought as well as betvveen academic and practitioner discourses. There are, then, a multitude of different voices that speak to and of power and a variety of contradictory conceptualizations result. The two dominant voices the functionalist and the critical (to use simple categorizations) - rarely communicate with each other and refer to quite different lineages of earlier work. The former has adopted a managerialist orientation whose underlying assumptions are rarely articulated, much less critiqued. The result has been an apparently pragmatic concept, easy to use but also easy to abuse. The latter has confronted issues of domination and exploitation head on but, some would argue, in ways that appear to be increasingly less relevant. The aim of this chapter is to explore these different voices and to reflect on the changes that have occurred since the last incarnation of this chapter, 10 years ago. The first section explores the historical development of functionalist and critical voices. It discusses the broader heritage of Marx and Weber concerning power, followed by early management work on power. The second section shows how subsequent developments built on these respective approaches, in many respects, pulling them further apart. An analysis of this work shows how the different voices have continued to follow divergent trajectories. The third section focuses on the insights provided by Foucault, and the supposed end of sovereignty, which had such an impact on this field of study in the late 1980s and early 1990s, radically changing our understanding of power. The fourth section revisits power and resistance in the light of Foucault's influence to discuss some of the developments in this area over the last 10 years, as well as to connect with some previously neglected streams around Goffman's ideas concerning 'total institutions', which we believe are particularly relevant for making sense of some of the events that have shaped our lives in recent years.
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ItemDiscourse and institutions(ACAD MANAGEMENT, 2004-10)
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ItemIntroduction: Organizational discourse: Exploring the field(SAGE Publications Ltd, 2004-01-01)
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ItemPower and change: A critical reflection(John Wiley & Sons, 2004)Power has typically been seen as the ability to get others to do what you want them to, if necessary, against their will (Weber, 1978). In the context of change, the use of power – by management – seems both logical and inevitable given the high risk of failure attributed to employee resistance noted in the opening chapter. If employees do not want to change, then managers must use power – the ability to make them change despite their disinclination – against their resistance. Yet behind this apparently straightforward understanding of the role of power and this ‘no nonsense’ approach to organizational change, lies a series of important struggles, not just about different conceptualizations of power, but also about the interplay between critical and managerial thought; and between academic and practitioner discourses. The aim of this chapter, therefore, is to provide an overview of the different ways in which power has been understood and to relate these different understandings to the literature in organizational change and the practical recommendations it provides for managing change. The first section explores the historical development of two traditions in the study of power: the broader heritage of Marx and Weber and the early management work on power. The second section then elaborates two diverging views and their underlying assumptions: critical theory, which draws and builds on the Marxian/Weberian heritage; and the more recent work in management which, for the most part, has adopted a very different conceptualization. The third section provides an analysis of the traditional organizational change literature to see how it accommodates these divergent assumptions. The fourth section focuses on the insights provided by Foucault, which have radically changed our understanding of power. The fifth section examines some of the more recent ideas in managing organizational change in the light of these insights.
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ItemCritical discourse analysis and identity: why bother?(Informa UK Limited, 2004-10)
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ItemIdentity and collaborative strategy in the Canadian HIV/AIDS treatment domain(SAGE Publications, 2005-01-01)We explore the links between identity and strategy making by drawing upon a case study of a collaborative strategy implemented by community organizations and pharmaceutical companies involved in Canadian HIV/AIDS treatment. In implementing collaborative strategy, our analysis shows that champions engage in identity work that simultaneously involves: identification with their respective constituencies and, specifically, with categories associated with high legitimacy; counter-identification from their respective constituencies by constructing themselves as different from its core members; and dis-identification away from their constituency towards their collaborative partners. We also examine the interactions between champions and other actors involved in the strategic change process to show the limits and tensions involved in such identity work. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for research and practice.
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ItemDiscourse and collaboration: The role of conversations and collective identity(ACAD MANAGEMENT, 2005-01)
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ItemThe emergence of new global institutions: A discursive perspective(SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2006-01)We examine how a new discourse shapes the emergence of new global regulatory institutions and, specifically, the roles played by actors and the texts they author during the institution-building process, by investigating a case study of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and its relationship to the new environmental regulatory discourse of ‘precaution’. We show that new discourses do not neatly supplant legacy discourses but, instead, are made to overlap and interact with them through the authorial agency of actors, as a result of which the meanings of both are changed. It is out of this discursive struggle that new institutions emerge.
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ItemThe construction of the older worker: privilege, paradox and policy(SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2007-08)Our study of a public inquiry shows how particular constructions of the older worker — as male and lacking in self-esteem — were privileged as a result of discursive manoeuvres that established comparative disadvantage among different identities. Paradoxically, traditional gender stereotypes were subverted to construct female willingness to accept low status, low paid jobs as a reason why they did not need help in the form of policy initiatives; while men's intransigence meant they deserved greater support. A second paradox concerned the construction of the older worker as lacking self-esteem: it led to self-esteem based solutions that were the responsibility of the individual to remedy but, precisely because older male workers lacked self-esteem, they were unable to help themselves and needed the help of employment and welfare agencies. Thus we can see the link between particular identity constructions, discourse and the reproduction of particular institutional structures.
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