Giving a voice to managers: forging the desire line through the creation of informal employee voice channels and productive resistance

Abstract

Within the extensive body of employee voice literature, the voice of the ordinary shopfloor employee has resonated loudly. The important role that line managers play in encouraging or inhibiting that voice has also been well documented. However, within the voice literature there has been silence with respect to line managers themselves being considered as voicers. In this paper, these missing managerial voices are amplified through the presentation of a case study of front and middle line manager voice within a university setting. Within this hierarchical organisation subject to increased managerialism, semi-structured interviews with 26 participants were conducted and it was found that line managers’ voice was thwarted due to relational and structural blockages in their formal voice channels. In some cases, this led to suppressed voice and a sense that line managers had no one to voice to. However, some managers were able to be creative and their actions led to productive resistance. While for others, these blockages motivated line managers to use covert ‘underground channels’ where their voice was raised informally and their interests could be advanced. The paper extends our knowledge by considering the line manager as a voicer, and not merely a manager of voice.     

Searching for managerial discretion: how public managers engage managerialism as a rationalization for increased latitude of action

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the managerial discretion that public managers experience. More specifically, it discusses how managerialism is an embedded ideological stance that influences understandings of public sector governance. I argue that managers’ perceptions of discretion are affected by these understandings. The analysis draws on empirical data from a longitudinal study, demonstrating how public managers engage discourses emanating from managerialism in order to rationalize increased discretion. The findings suggest that customer perspectives functions as a rationalizing factor for engaging public managers’ transition towards increased discretion. As such, this article contributes to knowledge about managerial discretion as well as managerialism.     

Towards the entrepreneurial university: the principal-agent problem

The purpose of the paper is to explore how an individualized incentive system could increase professors’ motivation to contribute to the university’s mission to become entrepreneurial in transition countries. The paper proposes a conceptual analysis that draws on the principal-agent problem to examine incentives that may stimulate institutional change. It considers the framework of a university becoming entrepreneurial and assumes that the principal is dean while the agent is a professor. It contributes to the national innovation system literature by providing new insights about the institutional change in transition countries. The contribution is threefold: it distinguishes between an ordinary and an entrepreneurial university, it explains relationship between micro and meso levels in the process of institutional change towards entrepreneurial university, it refines knowledge on individualized incentive system acting as a motivation for professors to contribute to university becoming entrepreneurial. The paper challenges studies that dismiss the micro level role of human agency in institutional change. The conceptual arguments have important managerial implications for all public and private institutions.

     

Business behaviour and management structure—1: A case study comparison of managerial initiative and control in four industrial enterprises

This is the first of two papers in this issue on how business decisions are made. The origins of corporate strategy and policy and the involvement of senior and junior management in such activities are theoretically difficult to generalize about. In these papers four well-known British firms are examined in depth. Their evolution over time is analysed and how managerial behaviour and perceptions changed is discussed. The conclusion is drawn that firms have been decentralizing in the last two decades in order to provide greater scope for managerial initiative, training and entrepreneurship at all levels. Part 2 contains the detailed evidence: some readers may prefer to consider it immediately after Section 1 below.     

Towards A Critique of Managerialism: the Contribution of Simone Weil*

This paper seeks to make a contribution to the critical literature on management and, more particularly, to the critique of managerialism. This is achieved via a consideration of the hitherto neglected writing of Simone Weil (1909–43) on management, work and organizations. Following an introduction to this work, attention is focused on Weil's notion of oppression, and detailed consideration is given to the conceptualization of management as a form of oppression. the bulk of the paper elaborates the significance of Weil's work for the critique of contemporary forms of managerialism. In particular, the development of new forms of managerial expertise, and the phenomenon of self-management, are analysed as forms of oppression. It is suggested that Weil offers the basis of a non-relativist post-Marxist form of ethically grounded critique in the field of management studies.     

初中思想品德学科集体备课研究

在禁止义务教育阶段的学校利用节假日补课的新形势下,各个初中学校开始努力转变教育教学理念,改变教学方式,提出＂向40分钟的课堂教学要效率＂。面对时间紧、任务重的课堂教学,通过集体备课提高教学效益显得尤为重要。集体备课是非常重要的环节,集体备课质量的高低直接影响教学目标的实现及教学效果。文章分析了当前初中学校思想品德学科集体备课的现状及存在的问题,并对如何提高集体备课的效益进行了初步探讨。     

Rooted in Supervision, Branching into Management: Continuity and Change in the Role of First-Line Manager

abstract    It is frequently argued that, as a consequence of radical organizational change, the role of first-line manager (FLM) has shifted from supervision to team leadership/co-ordination or business unit management. After reviewing the nature of these claims and the debate about the relationship between first-line management and supervision, evidence is presented from a survey of 135 organizations in London and the South East on how the role of FLM is presently defined and how it has changed. The findings paint a picture of a stable, consistent FLM role where a common performance-oriented supervisory core is surrounded by a penumbra of additional managerial responsibilities relating to stewardship, translating strategy into operations, unit management and, exceptionally, business management. The FLM role remains part of a hierarchical system of individual managerial responsibility and vertical accountability, with narrow spans of control, vertical and internal contacts and authority, participation in decisions and accountability confined largely to operating routines. Changes to the FLM role have been as much towards a strengthening of the supervisory core as a broadening into business management responsibilities. It is argued that the persistence and prevalence of the supervisory core stems from the continued location of FLMs within systems of external, hierarchical supervision. Far from being weakened, the supervisory core of the FLM role has often been strengthened by the adoption of more stringent controls over work practice in order to cope with a growth in business activity or comply with a greater range of external regulations. In some cases, however, a re-division of managerial labour has led to formerly middle management responsibilities and accountability being added to the supervisory core to produce an extended FLM role.     

企业并购经营者控制权激励动因分析

本文认为,管理主义动机是推动西方企业并购的主要因素之一,在我国特殊的制度背景下,企业高层经营管理者基于维护控制权及其控制权收益(包括政治收益)的管理主义动机则是促进我国国有企业并购行为的深层次原因。分析表明,并购有利于提高经营者的控制权收益,并且在一定程度上能满足经营者体现其“企业家精神”、自我实现的控制权需要。经营者控制权激励(即对控制权收益最大化的要求)是推动我国国有企业并购的制度动因。     

The proletarianisation of academic labour

This article looks at industrial relations changes, conflict and control in higher education, particularly among university academics. It suggests a tendency towards proletarianisation, and a focus on the academic labour process is useful in explaining growing conflict. An apparent HRM agenda and (reluctantly) increasing managerialism are forms, not causes, of change which is driven by funding pressures similar to those affecting other HE systems.     

Lessons from management–union partnership in teacher performance appraisal in the New South Wales public education system

Performance appraisal is frequently seen as one of the hallmarks of the ‘new managerialism’ in public sector human resource management. It is also commonly represented as a device for individualizing the employment relationship. Yet even appraisal offers scope for employee voice/participation, both individually and collectively, and for varying degrees of management–union cooperation. This study examines an unlikely case of management–union partnership in performance appraisal – that applied since 2000 to teachers in Australia's largest public schooling bureaucracy, the NSW Department of Education and Training, whose teachers have a long history of union solidarity and industrial militancy. The experiment can be seen as a union retreat from confrontationism, a concession to managerialism, and a resignation to the dominance of individualism over collectivism. However, we argue that it has also widened the scope for both union and employee voice at workplace level.     

Recruiting outside board members in the small family business: an ideological challenge

The focus of this paper is to explore how contrasting ideologies influence the selection process of outside directors in the small family business. Small family businesses donot just represent smallscale economic activity but they are the outcome of entrepreneurial ambition and family involvement. This means that willpower and emotional commitment blend with calculative considerations. As emotional as well as cognitive constructs the family, management and entrepreneurship each represent an ideology: paternalism, managerialism and entrepreneurialism. The proposed ideological framework is positioned against alternative approaches to the study of board selection processes. Two sets of data are presented. A piloting survey of 12 family businesses is used to substantiate the theoretical assumption that entrepreneurial firms avoid having outside directors and managerial firms welcome outside directors, leaving paternalistically-run family businesses ambivalent. Repeated in-depth interviews in two family businesses, one founder-managed and entrepreneurial, the other established and traditional, reveal how the professionalization of the board enforces managerialism, challenging thus far dominating ideologies, entrepreneurialism and paternalism. The outcome of this ideological contest, if properly orchestrated, is an energized and more competitive family business.     

Employee voice and regulation in the residential aged care sector

This article examines the interaction of regulation and employee voice in the residential aged care sector. In particular, it considers the regulatory forces shaping the expression of voice in the human services sector through the examination of three aged care providers. It suggests that in a sector characterised by low levels of unionisation and a preponderance of non‐union workplaces, employee voice does not act as a significant regulator of managerial decision‐making, rather a combination of external and internal constraints that regulates the expression of voice. This study identifies the regulatory role of location, labour law and social norms. It also highlights that the importance of these constraints will vary in different organisational contexts and as a consequence of interaction with internal regulation. Such internal regulation is most commonly expressed through the exercise of managerial prerogative.     

Employment relationships: ideology and HRM practice

HRM appears to both believe that unitarism already exists in employment relationships and, at the same time, sees itself as the means to achieving unitarism through the introduction of systems of ‘high commitment management’ (HCM) in the workplace. The primary goal of HCM is empirical unitarism, achieved by the implementation of a system of practices aimed at aligning the interests and objectives of managers and workers. Not surprisingly these taken-for-granted values and beliefs in HRM about employment relationships have stirred debate in the literature, with many suggesting this is a flawed view of organizational life (Hart, 1993; Keenoy, 1999). This study has attempted to verify empirically these assumptions from a managerial perspective by first identifying the current employment values and beliefs of managerial workers and management and second examining the extent to which these influence, or are influenced by, the adoption of high commitment practices in the workplace. It finds managers do consider employment relationships in general to be pluralist, however, when it comes to employment relationships in their own organizations managers' report these to be unitarist. A relationship is also found to exist between the use of HCM in the workplace and managerial values and beliefs, with increased usage of HCM being associated with unitary values and beliefs.     

The suitable few: managerial recruitment practices in the Norwegian state bureaucracy

The purpose of the present study is to explore whether supply and demand-related theories can help to explain organisational variations in the domination of men in managerial positions. The exploration is based on a case study of personnel policies and practices applying to managerial recruitment in two Norwegian state bureaucracies. The two organisations have several features in common, and yet the presence of women in the top managerial ranks has developed in different directions. In Organisation 1 male dominance persists in top positions, although for some time men and women have been more or less equally represented in middle management. In Organisation 2 gender equality has been steadily advancing at all position levels throughout the 1990 s. The empirical findings point in different directions, depending on whether a supply or a demand perspective is adopted in explaining these results. In Organisation 1 both supply and demand-related factors help to explain the perpetuation of male dominance in top positions. The progress in gender equality in Organisation 2 contradicts the supply theory, and the analysis of demand-related conditions alert us to the importance of investigating how gender-equality strategies works in different contexts.     

Managerial Behaviour Research in Private and Public Sectors: Distinctiveness, Disputes and Directions

A managerial behaviour approach is identified that has sought to understand managerial work by analysing the day‐to‐day behaviour of individual managers: what do managers do? It is argued that this approach is distinctive and that its distinctiveness is valuable and has not received adequate attention. The distinctiveness is defined by its research background, object, focus and methodology. The managerial behaviour approach has developed from research over nearly fifty years: long enough for there to have been a variety of disputes about what has, or ought to have been, achieved. The relevance of these criticisms and what later research has done to meet them is assessed. Recent research directions are identified and suggestions are made for building on the distinctiveness. It is concluded that the institutional embeddedness of managerial work should attract further scholarly attention, and that the contribution of researchers in the public sector, who come from a differentdisciplinary background, needs to be integrated with that of researchers from organizational behaviour as they can contribute new conceptual approaches, which could help to revivify this field of research.     

The curse of bureaucratisation or the blessings of professionalisation? Nurses’ engaged adoption of quality management in hybrid managerial positions

The paper concerns how new quality management in the Danish hospital sector has created new career and professionalisation opportunities for nurses. While the well-known dualism between the logics of professionalism and managerialism is challenged in the literature, not much is known about how engagement in the tighter steering of practice may converge with professional identities and meaningfulness in work. The paper applies a Bourdieusian and ethnographic approach to the examination of nurses’ enthusiastic involvement in quality management as they take up hybrid managerial positions in an acute care department. The findings demonstrate the importance of the material and symbolic value of scientific-bureaucratic knowledge in legitimizing quality management, achieving meaningfulness in practice and bolstering the professional role of nurses.     

吉林省白城市2010年初中毕业生学业考试物理试卷抽样分析报告

基础教育课改的目标是:提高全体学生的科学素养,促进学生的健康全面发展。而初中毕业生学业考试对于引导中学物理教学立足于学生科学素养的培养与发展、引导学生要养成一种"从生活走向物理,从物理走向社会"的良好学习习惯起着导向的作用,具有一定的思想和方向性、指导和实用性,因此初中毕业生学业考试试题备受关注。     

Rewarding employee performance: line managers' values,beliefs and perspectives

This article explores managerial perceptions of the effectiveness and fairness of individual performance-related pay schemes. It draws upon findings from a two-part study of middle managers' interpretation and application of performance-related pay processes in a variety of organizational contexts. The analysis reveals that middle managers all too often do not share the principles or the stated objectives of the schemes they are required to operationalize. It concludes that the importance of managerial values and beliefs about rewarding individual contribution has been an overlooked and underestimated dimension in the design and application of individual performancerelated pay schemes (IPRP) despite the significance of the manager's role in their organizational effectiveness.     

Survivors' reactions to downsizing: the importance of contextual factors

Downsizing has been a recurrent theme in corporate life for the last 20 years. Literature in this area has evolved sporadically and covers many aspects of it. Although this has resulted in rich data, there is a lack of robust research that integrates the strategic and operational elements of downsizing. Furthermore, downsizing results in negative outcomes such as loss of skills, learning and innovation. It can also result in negative emotions including anger, frustration and guilt. However, there is insufficient data about the specific conditions or contextual factors that influence survivors reactions. This article presents the findings of a study conducted in four large organisations in the UK that have undergone downsizing. It proposes a theoretical model encapsulating the organisational context, and argues that the two key factors that determine the context are frequency of downsizing and the degree of control that the organisation exercises in making the decision to downsize. A broad set of propositions is presented as to the likely reactions of ‘survivors’ in the various organisational contexts of downsizing.     

体育锻炼价值认识的调查分析与提高策略

采用问卷调查法、比较分析法和数理统计等方法,以陕西省含光中学生为研究对象,对初中学生参与体育锻炼的动机进行调查。通过了解目前初中学生体育锻炼动机的实际情况,对影响他们参与体育活动的相关因素进行分析,并提出有益于体育活动开展的相关建议。