Management and Marketing - Research Publications

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    Some dare call it power
    HARDY, C ; Clegg, ; Clegg, SR ; Hardy, C ; Lawrence, TB ; Nord, WR (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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    Discourse and institutions
    Phillips, N ; Lawrence, TB ; Hardy, C (ACAD MANAGEMENT, 2004-10)
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    Introduction: Organizational discourse: Exploring the field
    Grant, D ; Hardy, C ; Oswick, C ; Putnam, LL (SAGE Publications Ltd, 2004-01-01)
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    Institutional effects of interorganizational collaboration: The emergence of proto-institutions
    Lawrence, TB ; Hardy, C ; Phillips, N (ACAD MANAGEMENT, 2002-02)
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    Power and change: A critical reflection
    HARDY, C ; CLEGG, S ; BOONSTRA, JJ (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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    INVESTING IN RETRENCHMENT - AVOIDING THE HIDDEN COSTS
    HARDY, C (UNIV CALIF, 1987-01-01)
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    Underorganized Interorganizational Domains: The Case of Refugee Systems
    Hardy, C (SAGE Publications, 1994-01-01)
    This article uses the example of refugee systems-the government, nongovernment, and refugee organizations that are involved in the reception of asylum seekers; the determination of refugee status; and the settlement of refugees-to further our understanding of under organized interorganizational domains. The comparison of Canada, the United Kingdom, and Denmark demonstrates that there are different forms of under organization. Domains may be underdeveloped due to a lack of convergence around key values, the exclusion of relevant stakeholders, or both. The nature of under organization has implications for the political processes that occur in them. Accordingly, the example of refugee systems alerts us to a potential irony: Domains that seem to be relatively organized and that display a higher degree of collaboration may have excluded key stakeholders who threaten existing domain definitions; whereas domains that display high levels of conflict and disorganization may do so precisely because all the relevant stakeholders have secured equal access to the domain and are able to influence its definition. These findings have been drawn from a comparative study of refugee systems in the three countries. This study used in-depth interviews and archival data to compare the structure, values, and relations of stakeholder groups in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Denmark. Interviews were carried out with 81 civil servants, politicians, nongovernmental organization (NGO) officials, and refugees. Documentary and archival evidence was drawn from a wide variety of sources.
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    Understanding power: Bringing about strategic change
    Hardy, C (Wiley, 1996-01-01)
    Success in today's competitive and complex world depends upon the ability to bring about effective strategic change. Much of the business literature has been preoccupied with finding more sophisticated techniques to formulate better strategies. But business success depends not only on finding the right strategy, but also ensuring it materializes in the form of a pattern of appropriate strategic actions. We know relatively little about this part of the strategy‐making process. This article shows how a better understanding of the use of power can provide the energy to ensure strategic action by driving the organization and its members through the strategy‐making process.
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    Managing multiple identities: Discourse, legitimacy and resources in the UK refugee system
    Phillips, N ; Hardy, C (SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 1997-05)
    In this article, we examine how the concept of a `refugee' is discursively constituted within the UK refugee system. We examine the actions and interactions of four organizations in particular: the British government, the Refugee Legal Centre, the British Refugee Council and the Refugee Forum, as they struggle to establish an understanding of `refugee' conducive to their goals and interests. Within this institutional field, the social construction of refugees takes place at two different levels: at the broadest level, the idea of a refugee is defined through an ongoing discursive process involving a wide range of actors; while at a more micro level, individual cases are processed by a limited subset of organizations based on this broad definition. We show that while the government controls the processing of individual cases through its formal authority and control of resources, all four organizations participate in the definition of a refugee and they all, therefore, play a role in refugee determination. Understanding the dynamics of an institutional field requires a consideration of discursive as well as traditional sources of power. While formal authority and resource dependency may provide some organizations with a measure of control within an existing institutional frame, discursive processes enable other organizations to modify or maintain the institutional frame within which traditional power is exercised.
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    Relativity Without Relativism: Reflexivity in Post-Paradigm Organization Studies
    Hardy, C ; Clegg, S (Wiley, 1997-01-01)
    This paper shows how organization studies controls the subject through its use of representational devices. Different theoretical and methodological approaches may appear to offer epistemological guarantees concerning the validity of data about the research subject but they remain representations, beyond which we can know nothing except through representation. Research is not about wrenching truth from a recalcitrant ‘reality’: the devices it uses to represent its research subject create and control in the way they silence to give voice to aspects of that subject. All data are ‘collaborative products’ created in accordance with ‘the practical procedures and background assumptions of the participating actors’ (Knorr‐Cetina, 1981). Thus the relations between research subject, researcher and the protocols that comprise the research process both embody and obscure power. For this reason, it is important that theory strives for a high degree of reflexivity (Marcus, 1994) in accounting for its own theorizing, as well as whatever it is that it theorizes about. In this paper, we critically examine different research approaches, including those of Aston, to show the dangers that can arise when research is carried out without regard to reflexivity. We offer some criteria for carrying out reflexive research which, we believe, is one of the major challenges facing post‐paradigm organization studies. As we shall see, reflexivity shows us how far we have come in the thirty years since Aston.