Management and Marketing - Research Publications
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ItemUnderorganized Interorganizational Domains: The Case of Refugee Systems(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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ItemUnderstanding power: Bringing about strategic change(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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ItemManaging multiple identities: Discourse, legitimacy and resources in the UK refugee system(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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ItemRelativity Without Relativism: Reflexivity in Post-Paradigm Organization Studies(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.
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ItemThe power behind empowerment: Implications for research and practice(SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 1998-04)The 1990s have been called the “empowerment era,” yet growing evidence suggests that empowerment programs often fail to meet the expectations of both managers and employees. To provide a better understanding as to why empowerment programs often fail and to suggest how such failures may be averted, we examine the power behind empowerment. Ironically, although power and empowerment are inextricably linked, much of the work on empowerment in the business literature has been devoid of any discussion of power. We present a four-dimensional model which shows the multifaceted way in which power works. In it, we observe the similarities and differences in the ways that different theorists have approached the study of power, notably those ascribing to mainstream, critical, and Foucauldian perspectives. We then use this power model as a lens with which to examine empowerment practices in business. This analysis suggests a number of possible reasons for the failure of business empowerment programs and provides directions for future research and practice which might address these shortcomings.
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ItemStrategies of engagement: Lessons from the critical examination of collaboration and conflict in an interorganizational domain(INFORMS, 1998-01-01)Many writers advocate interorganizational collaboration as a solution to a range of organizational and intersectoral problems. Accordingly, they often concentrate on its functional aspects. We argue that collaboration deserves a more critical examination, particularly when the interests of stakeholders conflict and the balance of power between them is unequal. Using examples from a study of the UK refugee system, we argue that collaboration is only one of several possible strategies of engagement used by organizations as they try to manage the interorganizational domain in which they operate. In this paper, we discuss four such strategies: collaboration, compliance, contention and contestation. By examining the stakeholders in the domain and asking who has formal authority, who controls key resources, and who is able to discursively manage legitimacy, researchers are in a stronger position to evaluate both the benefits and costs of these strategies and to differentiate more clearly between strategies that are truly collaborative and strategies that are not. In other words, we hope to demonstrate that collaboration between organizations is not necessarily “good”, conflict is not necessarily “bad”, and surface dynamics are not necessarily an accurate representation of what is going on beneath.
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ItemWatching whale watching: Exploring the discursive foundations of collaborative relationships(SAGE Publications, 1999-12-01)In this article, the authors develop a discourse analytic framework for examining the antecedents, dynamics, and outcomes of interorganizational collaboration. They argue that a framework based on a discursive understanding of collaboration can provide a coherent basis for understanding the dynamics of collaboration, the relation of collaboration to its broader institutional context, and the management and facilitation of collaborative activity as a communicative process. The authors base this framework on a study of the fabric of collaborative relationships that characterize one organizational field—the Pacific Northwest whale-watching industry. The theoretical framework they have developed frames collaboration as the discursive negotiation of the issues to be addressed by the collaboration, the interests relevant to the collaboration, and the actors who should represent these legitimate interests.
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ItemPedagogical practice and postmodernist ideas(SAGE Publications, 1999-12-01)Postmodern approaches to management and organizational theory raise a number of particular challenges for management educators. This article explores howinstructors can present postmodern ideas in the context of management education and explore their implications for management practice. The authors identify four postmodern themes: the notion of complicated identities, the “death” of the individual as expert, “disciplinary” powers that constrain individual actions, and the postmodern organization as a combination of dream and nightmare. To demonstrate the ambiguities and paradoxes associated with each theme, the authors outline in-class exercises to surface postmodern ideas.
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ItemNo joking matter: Discursive struggle in the Canadian refugee system(SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 1999)Organizations often engage in discursive struggle as they attempt to shape and manage the institutional field of which they are a part. This struggle is influenced by broader discourses at the societal level that enable and constrain discursive activity within the institutional field. We investigate this relationship by combining a study of political cartoons, as indicators of the broader societal discourse around immigration, with a case study of the Canadian refugee system, a complex institutional field. Our analysis reveals the complex intertextual and interdiscursive relations that characterize and surround institutional fields, and shows how discursive struggle in the refugee determination system is shaped by, and shapes, broader societal discourses.
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ItemDebating the ambiguous enterprise of management(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 1999-12-01)Abstract There are significant ambiguities surrounding the academic discipline of management, which can be analysed in terms of three major debates. First the professional status of management brings with it questions about restriction or access to management education, the control of curricular and the relative importance of basic, applied and consultancy-driven research. Second, there are debates about the changing nature of management research, which require the accomodation of increasing diversity within management theory. Finally, the ambiguities associated with these debates can be seen to have impacted on the development of management education, its accessibility and diversity. The ambiguities associated with these debates must be carefully managed if the discipline is to prosper. New organisational forms are needed to embed management teaching and research within the complex collaborative relationships of the many stakeholders involved.