TY - CHAP

T1 - Man management

T2 - Ironies of modern management in an "old" university

AU - Kerfoot, Deborah

AU - Knights, David

PY - 1999/4/1

Y1 - 1999/4/1

N2 - As the broad economic transformations of the post-industrialized era gather pace, so the requirement for contemporary organizations to become ever more “flexible�? and responsive to the demands of diverse and fast-changing markets has increased. The collapse of large-scale bureaucratic hierarchies and the consequent restructuring, decentralization and delayering of managerial jobs has been accompanied by new forms of work and new practices of managerial control. Whether it be in the guise of the “flexible firm�? (Atkinson 1984), “flexible specialization�? (Piore and Sabel 1984), total quality management (TQM) (Deming 1986), business process reengineering (Hammer and Champy 1993) orthe “virtual organization�? (Chesbrough and Teece 1996), this emergent managerial phenomenon has found a resonance across numerous private-sector sites. Concomitant with the dissolution of rigid vertical lines of control, new so-called “leaner�? structures have emerged, informed and framed by the specialisms and discourses of this “new managerialism�?. Drawing on the rhetoric of empowerment, participation, trust and mutuality (Kerfoot and Knights 1995), the modernorganization increasingly invests its survival and productive potential in the legions of project groups, multi-function work groups and forms of team-working that characterize the “flexible�? corporation.

AB - As the broad economic transformations of the post-industrialized era gather pace, so the requirement for contemporary organizations to become ever more “flexible�? and responsive to the demands of diverse and fast-changing markets has increased. The collapse of large-scale bureaucratic hierarchies and the consequent restructuring, decentralization and delayering of managerial jobs has been accompanied by new forms of work and new practices of managerial control. Whether it be in the guise of the “flexible firm�? (Atkinson 1984), “flexible specialization�? (Piore and Sabel 1984), total quality management (TQM) (Deming 1986), business process reengineering (Hammer and Champy 1993) orthe “virtual organization�? (Chesbrough and Teece 1996), this emergent managerial phenomenon has found a resonance across numerous private-sector sites. Concomitant with the dissolution of rigid vertical lines of control, new so-called “leaner�? structures have emerged, informed and framed by the specialisms and discourses of this “new managerialism�?. Drawing on the rhetoric of empowerment, participation, trust and mutuality (Kerfoot and Knights 1995), the modernorganization increasingly invests its survival and productive potential in the legions of project groups, multi-function work groups and forms of team-working that characterize the “flexible�? corporation.

U2 - 10.4324/9780203979006-20

DO - 10.4324/9780203979006-20

M3 - Chapter

AN - SCOPUS:85069815588

SN - 1857288750

SN - 9781857288766

SP - 201

EP - 214

BT - Transforming Managers

PB - Taylor and Francis Group

ER -