Management and Marketing - Research Publications
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ItemWhat happens to coroners' recommendations for improving public health and safety? Organisational responses under a mandatory response regime in Victoria, Australia(BIOMED CENTRAL LTD, 2014-07-18)BACKGROUND: Several countries of the British Commonwealth, including Australia and the United Kingdom, vest in coroners the power to issue recommendations for protecting public health and safety. Little is known about whether and how organisations that receive recommendations act on them. Concerns that recommendations are frequently ignored prompted the government of Victoria, Australia, to introduce a requirement in 2008 compelling organisations that receive recommendations to provide a written statement of action. METHODS: We conducted a prospective study of organisations that received recommendations from Victorian coroners over a 33-month period. Using an online survey, we asked representatives of "recipient organisations" what action (if any) their organisations took, and what factors influenced their decision. We also probed views of the quality of the recommendations and the mandatory response regime in general. Responses were analysed at the recommendation- and recipient organisation-level by calculating counts and proportions and using chi-square analyses to test for sub-group differences. RESULTS: Ninety of 153 recipient organisations surveyed responded (59% response rate); they received 164 recommendations (mean = 1.9; range, 1-7) from 74 cases. A total of 37% (60/164) of the recommendations were accepted and implemented, 27% (45/164) were rejected, and for 36% (59/164) the recommended action was "supplanted" (i.e., action had already been taken). In nearly half of rejected recommendations (18/45), recipient organisations indicated implementation was not logistically viable. In half of supplanted recommendations, an internal investigation had prompted the action. Three quarters (67/90) of recipient organisations believed the introduction of a mandatory response regime was a good idea, but fewer regarded the recommendations they received as appropriate (52/90) or likely to be effective in preventing death and injury (45/90). CONCLUSIONS: Only a third of coroners' recommendations were implemented by the organisations to which they were directed. In drawing policy lessons, it is important to separate recommendations that were rejected from those in which action had already been taken. Rejected recommendations raise questions about the quality of the recommendations, the reasonableness of the organisation's response, or both. Supplanted recommendations focus attention on the adequacy of consultation between coroners and affected organisations and the length of time it takes for recommendations to be issued.
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ItemMetaphor, Myth, and Theory Building: Communication Studies Meets the Linguistic Turn in Sociology, Anthropology, and Philosophy(SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2010-08)
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ItemThe fox and the hedgehog go to work - A natural history of workplace collusion(SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2008-02)The author argues that an ironic approach to collusion can help shift the focus of resistance away from the relatively rare events surrounding implacable opposition or total unanimity to the quotidian aspects of workplace politics. Collusion is characterized as an outcome of organizational politics conducted between the traditionally opposed parties of radical industrial sociology (i.e., managers and workers) under the guidance of an ironic mode of cognition. Irony is depicted as a foxlike way of gaining “a perspective on perspectives,” which provides a means of understanding stalemate, accommodation, and collusion by showing how opposing ideological positions are indebted. It also illuminates the moments when collusion breaks down and resisting parties become implacably opposed hedgehogs (one position prevails over the other), leading to overt conflict and resistance.
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ItemFrom National Service to Global Player: Transforming the Organizational Logic of a Public Broadcaster(WILEY, 2010-09)abstract We present organizational logics as a meso‐level construct that lies between institutional theory's field‐level logics and the sense‐making activities of individual agents in organizations. We argue that an institutional logic can be operationalized empirically using the concept of a discourse – that is, a coherent symbolic system articulating what constitutes legitimate, reasonable, and effective conduct in, around, and by organizations. An organization may, moreover, be simultaneously exposed to several institutional logics that make up its broader ideational environment. Taking these three observations together enables us to consider an organizational logic as a spatially and temporally localized configuration of diverse discourses. We go on to show how organizational logics were transformed in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation between 1953 and 1999 by examining the changing discourses that appeared in the Corporation's annual reports. We argue that these discourses were modified through three main forms of discursive agency: (1) undertaking acts of ironic accommodation between competing discourses; (2) building chains of equivalence between the potentially contradictory discourses; and (3) reconciling new and old discourses through pragmatic acts of ‘bricolage’. We found that, using these forms of discursive agency, a powerful coalition of actors was able to transform the dominant organizational logic of the ABC from one where the Corporation's initial mission was to serve national interests through public service to one that was ultimately focused on participating in a globalized media market. Finally, we note that discursive resources could be used as the basis for resistance by less powerful agents, although further research is necessary to determine exactly how more powerful and less powerful agents interact around the establishment of an organizational logic.
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ItemDoing what comes naturally? Why we need a practical ethics of teamwork(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2005-02)
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ItemNeither Good nor Bad but Dangerous: Surveillance as an Ethical Paradox(Open University Press, 2007)
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ItemThe labour process, surveillance, and the person in the sight of the organization(SAGE Publications Ltd, 2009-01-01)
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ItemNice work? Rethinking managerial control in an era of knowledge work(SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2005-09)This article assesses the ability of labour process theory (LPT) to account for the persistence of managerial control under the apparent conditions of greater autonomy and discretion we have come to associate with ‘knowledge Work’. LPT has traditionally problematized control around the need to resolve ‘the indeterminacy of labour’—that is, how do managers ensure that workers’ actual labouring efforts approach their potential labour power? In contrast, I propose that it is more useful to problematize control around the ‘indeterminacy of knowledge’—that is, how do managers ensure that workers’ cognitive efforts approach their full cognitive potential? A common response to the problem of the indeterminacy of knowledge has been to cede discretion to workers so that they can exercise their mental capabilities in order to provide their organizations with solutions to workplace problems. I will show, however, that this still requires the operation of disciplinary mechanisms that perpetuate managerial control under conditions that ostensibly reverse the separation of the conception and the execution of work tasks inherent in the logic of Taylorism.
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ItemCoercion versus care: Using irony to make sense of organizational surveillance(ACAD MANAGEMENT, 2006-10)