THE BROKEN WHEEL: THE INSEPARABILITY OF AUTONOMY AND CONTROL IN INNOVATION WITHIN ORGANIZATIONS

There is an ambiguity at the centre of our understanding of innovation in large, specialized organizations. The literature is split as to whether individual autonomy or hierarchical control leads to an increase in innovative activity. In this article, I argue that this uncertainty is the result of an inappropriate conceptualization. In my view, autonomy and control are inseparable aspects of managerial action, not independent empirical phenomena. Innovation in an organization requires the simultaneous regulation of autonomy and control in order to promote creativity and experimentation but still produce results that can be manufactured and marketed or institutionalized. I develop an interpretive concept of culture to analyse the relationship between autonomy and control, and I apply this conceptual framework to managers and engineers in an electronics company as they attempt to innovate. Four general conclusions emerge. First, autonomy and innovation can never be ends in themselves but always depend on a context of control for their relevance to the organization. Second, under conditions in which innovation is required and autonomous behaviour is important, general management control is needed as a sort of switching station to regulate interaction and set and enforce priorities. Third, when control and autonomy are not in balance a vicious circle can develop which undermines commitment to an organization's goals. Fourth, innovation in organizations requires participants to have a highly developed sense of the legitimate possibilities of autonomy in organization.     

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL AND THE EMERGENCE OF MANAGEMENT*

This article addresses the debate concerning the study of management. Arguing that definitions of management have suffered from conceptual obscurity, it advocates that an understanding of management must address relational, constitutive and political dimensions of its operation. the work of Michel Foucault, particularly the concept of power/knowledge and his ascending analysis of power, offers such an approach. the relevance of Foucault for recasting the study of management is illustrated through an analysis of performance appraisal systems introduced into UK universities.     

MANAGEMENT IN CONTEXT: AN ESSAY ON THE RELEVANCE OF CULTURE TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

The recent interest in cultural analysis of organizations is based on the belief that organizations have symbolic aspects that affect organizational behaviour. Underlying this research, however, are different assumptions about the nature of symbols and the role they play in organizations. The majority of writers have assumed that symbols perform an expressive function and are used in a type of action they call 'symbolic action’which they contrast with ‘substantive action’. This dichotomy between symbolic and substantive action has resulted in the development of models that assume culture is a causal factor in organizational change, and should be controlled by the management of symbols. In this article, this approach - the management as symbolic action approach - is examined and found to be inadequate. An alternative approach is developed - the culture-as-context approach - that assumes all actions have a symbolic aspect, all actions are value-laden, symbols are meaningful only in terms of their relations with other symbols, and symbols are dispositions to action, not causes of it. The study of culture is seen, then, as the explication of action in terms of the system of symbolic forms - goals, plans, ideas, roles and traditions - that people use to give meaning and order to their experience. This approach is applied to the interactions of the members of the‘Transition Team’in a Bell Telephone operating company preparing for the deregulation of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, its parent corporation, in 1981. It is demonstrated empirically and explained conceptually that culture leads to a certain class of possible actions which makes certain attempts at change, or reactions to change, probable in a given situation.     

ORGANIZATIONS AS RHETORIC: KNOWLEDGE-INTENSIVE FIRMS AND THE STRUGGLE WITH AMBIGUITY

This article discusses the concepts of knowledge-intensive workers and firms. the functional view is questioned and a perspective on knowledge as institutionalized myth and rationality-surrogate is proposed. the ambiguity of knowledge work is emphasized and it is argued that a crucial dimension of a knowledge-intensive organization concerns the struggle with this ambiguity, which leads to efforts to refine various rhetorical strategies. Besides those stressing knowledge, science and rationality, the article points to rhetoric describing employees in knowledge-intensive firms as possessing other personal qualities and orientations than personnel employed in bureaucracies.     

THE ADMINISTRATIVE COMPONENT OF ORGANIZATIONS AND THE RATCHET EFFECT: A CRITIQUE OF CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDIES

When growth and decline are examined with regard to the administrative component of organizations, an apparent dichotomy exists between crosssectional designs and within organization longitudinal studies. The results of longitudinal studes indicate the existence of a ratcheting effect of the administtrative component which cannot be explanined by the size construct alone. Therefore, an analysis of the ratchet effect is presented and a conceptual model of factors influencing the growth and decline of the administrative component is propsed.     

Strategic Practices: An Activity Theory Perspective on Continuity and Change

abstract   This paper draws upon activity theory to analyse an empirical investigation of the micro practices of strategy in three UK universities. Activity theory provides a framework of four interactive components from which strategy emerges; the collective structures of the organization, the primary actors, in this research conceptualized as the top management team (TMT), the practical activities in which they interact and the strategic practices through which interaction is conducted. Using this framework, the paper focuses specifically on the formal strategic practices involved in direction setting, resource allocation, and monitoring and control. These strategic practices are associated with continuity of strategic activity in one case study but are involved in the reinterpretation and change of strategic activity in the other two cases. We model this finding into activity theory-based typologies of the cases that illustrate the way that practices either distribute shared interpretations or mediate between contested interpretations of strategic activity. The typologies explain the relationships between strategic practices and continuity and change of strategy as practice. The paper concludes by linking activity theory to wider change literatures to illustrate its potential as an integrative methodological framework for examining the subjective and emergent processes through which strategic activity is constructed.     

IMAGES IN PRACTICE: VISTAS, TIME AND CAUSALITY IN ORGANIZATIONS

The article reports on a study of the way people conceive the organizations in which they work, what characterizes their conceptions, or images, and how they evolve. Images of organization from a single work organization are described and analyzed in terms of space, time and causality. Managers’ images are compared to those of other employees. The study shows that the work role influences the way in which an organization is perceived. The time orientation of the images develops by way of action, which also has an impact on the way causalities are conceived. Actions are directed towards the structure of the work organization. People’s images evolve as a result of structural changes and/or of changes in an individual’s position within the structure. As a possible starting point for further research, a typology of six different types of image and their relation to action theories is developed.     

CONTINUITIES IN HUMAN RESOURCE PROCESSES IN INTERNATIONALIZATION AND DOMESTIC BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

Internationalization is often seen as posing distinctive human resource problems that are difficult to overcome. This paper takes an alternative approach by considering the processes by which firms, large and small, internationalize and the way they sustain overseas activity at different stages of their internationalization. It does so by reference to six challenges faced by firms in the course of internationalization. the result is to highlight continuities and regularities between international human resource management and the creation of an effective domestic organization, along with common underlying processes and skills centred on networking, teams and organizational learning.
It is argued that this shifts attention from the specific tasks of the human resources function to more broadly defined human resource activities and processes which affect the growth of firms internationally. Secondly, it helps firms to think more positively about becoming international and to address relevant skills. Thirdly, it identifies appropriate activities, tasks and situations that business schools need to provide as part of an international management education.
However, the paper also recognizes that internationalization involves specific differences between domestic and international business management. A number of these are rooted in country-specific institutional factors which human resource management, the function, has to address. While processes may be common, knowledge is context-bound.     

SOME FACETS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CONSULTANTS AND CLIENTS IN ORGANIZATIONS

Although frequently represented as a critical aspect of consultancy, the relationship between consultants and their clients and its relevance to the achievement of successful outcomes are subjects to which few writers have devoted serious attention. In an earlier piece of research, the author concluded that an ‘interdependent’ relationship was likely to be an important factor in successful consulting assignments. He identified eight facets of this type of relationship. This paper describes how that theory was tested when three consultants, together with a number of their clients, explained why they thought their work together had been successful. The cases illustrate both the ways in which the relationships were built and the extent to which they were perceived as having been important ingredients in the outcomes achieved. The relationships described were characterized by high levels of mutual trust and interaction as well as contingency on the part of the consultants. In several respects the relationships were seen as interdependent. A feature of this study was that the extent to which the consultants found the research useful in a personal sense seemed to depend on the quality of the relationship between the author and the consultants. In the cases described the exercise seems to have been mutually beneficial. In another example this seems not to have been the case and the explanation seems to lie at least partly in a lack of interdependence.     

DEFICIENCIES AND THE PERPETUATION OF POWER: LATENT FUNCTIONS IN MANAGEMENT APPRAISAL

Institutionalized procedures for management appraisal are considered to be necessary and appropriate devices which contribute to and are supported by rational-legal ideologies of organization. The operation of such appraisal systems, however, is frequently regarded as deficient. This article discusses three inter-related propositions. They are that: 1. the rational-legal procedures of appraisal systems contradict the social processes by means of which dominant organizational power groups emerge, cohere and are perpetuated; 2. management appraisal systems consequently come to operate in ways which manifestly are consistent with a rational-legal ideology, but which do not constrain the prerogatives of members of dominant power groups to define reality and manage affairs in their own interests; and that 3. this inconsistency fulfils a latent function of perpetuating deficiency in the operation of management appraisal systems.     

THE CONCEPT OF DECISION: A DECONSTRUCTIVE ANALYSIS*

Decision-making as a central concept in management and organization theory has had a colourful and controversial career spanning some 50 years. During this time its image and meaning has shifted substantially to the point where its explanatory value as an established conceptual category in management and organizational analysis has been questioned. In this article, I attempt a critical study of the concept of decision and try to show that the various attempts to replace it by other terms such as ‘action’, and ‘change’, overlook the ontological status of the decision-making process. I argue here that decision is better understood as a series of interlocking pre-definitive acts of punctuating the flow of human experiences in order to facilitate sense-making and to alleviate our Cartesian anxiety. Decisions are not so much about ‘choice’or ‘intentions’as about the primordial ‘will to order’whereby interlocking configurations of micro-incisions punctuating our phenomenal experiences contrive to construct and reinforce a stable but precarious version of reality. When viewed thus, decision-making takes on a very different meaning - one that accentuates the concrete everydayness of micro-decisional acts which re-enact the ongoing contestation between order and disorder, routinization and breakdown, organization and disorganization, chaos and cosmos. Such micro-decisional ontological acts are what produces and sustains a version of reality to which we then subsequently respond. It is this ‘becoming’theory of decision-making which is offered as an alternative to the ‘event’driven model of decisional theorizing.     

DESIGNING SIMULATORS FOR STRATEGIC MANAGERS

The activity of strategic management is important because it is the activity through which the structure of an organization is developed and adapted in relation to its environment. The activities within an organization are systematized within structures because they enable the organization to ensure the effectiveness of those activities, and there already exist teaching methods appropriate for training managers in the operation of such structures. Few teaching methods exist however for teaching managers about structure itself. This paper initially discusses what structure is, and then goes on to describe an approach to the support of managers' learning about structure: how structure can be related to the activities of managers, and how managers can explore the implications of adopting alternative structures within their organization. The paper puts forward symbols for describing structure. It is then shown how the symbols can be combined by a manager to describe a particular organizational context in the form of a simulator, and how the resulting design can be transformed into the form of a computer program. This enables the resulting simulator to be used by the manager to explore the implications of adopting particular structural choices as he has defined them within the organization. Finally, the nature of the teacher's role is considered when supporting the learning of managers using this approach.     

THE MAKE-BUY DECISION AND MANAGING MARKETS: THE CASE OF MANAGEMENT BUY-OUTS

This paper attempts to develop the issue of the internalization of transactions (the make-buy decision). Butler and Carney (1983) have developed the concept of managing markets where under certain conditions transactions will not be internalized. This paper, as well as attempting to complete this picture, also draws attention to a largely ignored aspect of organization theory - the issue of when a transaction which is already internalized will be externalized. In examining the sale of subsidiaries by parent companies an attempt is made to draw the boundaries of Williamson's divisionalized form of organization. The necessary and sufficient conditions for sale to the management are developed in the theoretical discussion, followed in the second section by empirical evidence from a survey of management buy-outs.     

Action Research is Similar to Design Science

In management information systems (MIS) action research is long considered as promising but low-level research approach. It has an utmost relevance because action researchers are working with practitioners to solve the important practical problem. Design science outlined some years ago is just winning a wider audience. Action research was traditionally classified into qualitative research methods. But it seems to be the “wrong” home of action research. We shall show that after comparison of the seven aspects: concrete results of the study, knowledge produced, activities, the intent and the nature of a study, the division of labor in a study and generation, use and test of knowledge, the concordance between the characteristics of action research on the one hand and of design science on the other hand is very good. Hence, action research and design science should next be considered as similar research approaches, and this is a turning point in the history of both action research and design science.     

ENGINEERS,MANAGEMENT AND WORK ORGANIZATION: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ENGINEERS' WORK ROLES IN BRITISH AND JAPANESE ELECTRONICS FIRMS*

Many commentators have attributed the poor performance of British manufacturing to the ‘under-representation’ of engineers in management, and have proposed policies for bringing more engineers into management so as to develop a technologically oriented management culture. This paper argues that the under-representation of engineers in management is a symptom not the root cause of the problem, which lies in the split between technical and managerial expertise at the enterprise level. Based on a comparative analysis of engineers’ work roles and the relationship between technical and managerial functions in British and Japanese electronics firms, the paper argues that the mechanistically structured organization systems in the British firms generate a vertical polarization between technical and managerial roles, inhibit knowledge sharing and lead to the gross under-utilization of engineers in product development. A technologically oriented management cannot simply be achieved by getting more engineers into management. It requires, instead, organizational restructuring and changes in work practices to enable a better integration between technical and managerial expertise.     

STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT WITHIN A RESOURCE-CAPABILITY VIEW OF THE FIRM*

This paper takes a critical look at the field of strategic human resource management and in particular the debate about the strategic value of the human resource. We identify the contribution as well as the problematic nature of the situational-contingency perspective. Drawing from the strategic management literature and the concept of resource heterogeneity, we then posit a resource-capability view of the firm and argue that the mutually reinforcing interaction between the stock of knowledge, skills and expertise (resources) and the organizational routines and human resource policies and practices (capabilities) generates human resource competencies whose strategic value is realizable to the extent that they are linked with core competencies. We thus offer a reconceptualization of human resource competencies which goes beyond existing trait, behavioural and systems approaches. Finally, we identify the circumstances surrounding the generation and distribution of rents arising from the utilization of human resource competencies by drawing from transaction cost theory and industrial relations.     

What is Organizational Knowledge?

Organizational knowledge is much talked about but little understood. In this paper we set out to conceptualize organizational knowledge and explore its implications for knowledge management. We take on board Polanyi’s insight concerning the personal character of knowledge and fuse it with Wittgenstein’s insight that all knowledge is, in a fundamental way, collective. We do this in order to show, on the one hand, how individuals appropriate knowledge and expand their knowledge repertoires, and, on the other hand, how knowledge, in organized contexts, becomes organizational. Our claim is that knowledge is the individual capability to draw distinctions, within a domain of action, based on an appreciation of context or theory, or both. Organizational knowledge is the capability members of an organization have developed to draw distinctions in the process of carrying out their work, in particular concrete contexts, by enacting sets of generalizations whose application depends on historically evolved collective understandings. Following our theoretical exploration of organizational knowledge, we report the findings of a case study carried out at a call centre in Panafon, in Greece. Finally, we explore the implications of our argument by focusing on the links between knowledge and action on the one hand, and the management of organizational knowledge on the other. We argue that practical mastery needs to be supplemented by a quasi‐theoretical understanding of what individuals are doing when they exercise that mastery, and this is what knowledge management should be aiming at. Knowledge management, we suggest, is the dynamic process of turning an unreflective practice into a reflective one by elucidating the rules guiding the activities of the practice, by helping give a particular shape to collective understandings, and by facilitating the emergence of heuristic knowledge.     

THE INTERPRETATION OF ORGANIZATION: A CONTEMPORARY ANALYSIS AND CRITIQUE*

This article is concerned with examining the development of interest in organizational interpretation (exemplified by a decade of analyses of culture and symbolism in organization) as a rhetorical and philosophical episode in Organization Studies. the presumed ‘productivity’ of this recently developed arena of Organization Studies, for both the theory and practice of organization, is carefully considered through the discussion of a broad range of work from the past decade. This body of work is examined as a ‘genre’ of Organization Studies that both manifests particular issues for interpretation and articulates particular styles of representation. The article argues that the rise of interest in organizational interpretation represents a late-modern phase in Organization Studies, whereby traditional priorities and subordinations in the theory and practice of organization have been rewritten and renewed. In this way, organizational interpretation has come to articulate the most recent form of avant-garde activity in the continuing modernization of Organization Studies. In contrast, the article concludes with the consideration of a theory and practice for such work which would contribute to the articulation of a postmodern Organization Studies.     

Multilevel exploration of the realities of interdisciplinary research centers for the management of knowledge integration

The fostering of interdisciplinarity is increasingly requested of research organizations. However, conventional approaches to academic research management limit our understanding of the way interdisciplinary research (IDR) centers integrate multiple disciplines. This paper proposes a multilevel approach to explore the patterns of knowledge integration and the forms of research organization emerging from the practices and activities of IDR centers. Several bibliometric-based, network-oriented and visualization-rich approaches are used. The cases of two prominent IDR centers are considered: Harvard University's Wyss Institute and Kyoto University's WPI-iCeMS. At the macro level, our results show similarities in the scientific positioning of both IDR centers, which translate into differences in the nature, intensity and drivers of their knowledge interconnections at the meso-level. At the micro-level, we demonstrate that far from idealizations of full convergence, the realities of IDR centers are characterized by heterogeneous patchworks of multi-trajectory research domains—some of these enabling, others generating interdisciplinary knowledge. Differences in knowledge integration occur between but also, and more importantly, within IDR centers. Thus, tailored strategies tuned to the particularities of organizations and topic-based forms of research organization appear to cope better with interdisciplinary knowledge. The understanding of these inter- and intra-organizational differences proves crucial for effectively fostering knowledge integration. An integrated model relating levels of research management and visualization approaches is proposed for the management and assessment of knowledge integration in IDR centers.     

THE INTERSUBJECTIVITY OF ISSUES AND ISSUES OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY

This paper describes research concerned with assisting groups in organizations handle their complex, ill-structured policy issues in ways which we believe are significantly different from many typical policy analysis projects. It is our belief that many systems research, operational research and management science projects have concentrated on 'objective', usually quantitative data at the expense of losing their clients' interest and commitment. Our work is concerned with taking account of intersubjectivity in policy analysis and evaluation. It is orientated to the construction of models that will be owned by our clients because they recognize as legitimate, and explicitly take account of, the subjective and particular knowledge of individuals within organizations. They also explicitly take account of the interaction of shared and individual knowledge as a group comes to define an intersubjective group issue.