STRATEGY UNDER THE MICROSCOPE: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND IT IN FINANCIAL SERVICES*

This article subjects the organizational theory literature on corporate strategy to critical scrutiny, arguing that both the ‘rational’and ‘processual’approaches to strategy generate analyses that are ahistorical and theoretically undeveloped. In their place, but focusing specifically on the financial services, we offer an alternative genealogically informed analysis. This indicates how the historical development of strategy discourses and practices are discontinuous and uneven across countries, sectors, companies and specialist spheres. In addition it suggests that corporate strategy has considerable impact on inter-organizational relations and both ‘internal’(i.e. management and employees) and ‘external’(i.e. consumers) members of the organization. the article seeks to illustrate its arguments both at the sectoral level by examining the development of strategic discourse in banks and insurance companies and at the organizational level by providing some case study material on IT strategy in a life insurance company.     

THE CULT[URE] OF THE CUSTOMER

Much organizational restructuring, at least in the UK and USA, seeks to replace organizational regulation by that of the market. These developments centre around an emphasis on relations with customers - the ‘sovereign consumer’- as a paradigm for effective forms of organizational relations; they are apparent in, and underpin, a wide variety of organizational developments: just-in-time, total quality management, culture change programmes. Understanding these developments requires consideration of the discourse of enterprise of which the culture of the (internal) customer constitutes a key element. Defining internal organizational relations ‘as if’they were customer/supplier relations means replacing bureaucratic regulation and stability with the constant uncertainties of the market, and thus requiring enterprise from employees. This discourse has fundamental implications for management attempts to define working practices and relations and, ultimately, has impact on the conduct and identities of employees. Understanding these developments is not possible if analysis remains at the level of the organization. It requires that organizational restructurings, and the discourse which supports them, be located within the social and political rationality of enterprise. The certainties of management, the conviction that environmental challenge and competitive threat must be met by the cult[ure] of the customer, are due to managements’largely unquestioned acceptance of the normality and perceived good sense of the discourse of enterprise.     

Employee perceptions of HR practices: A critical review and future directions

Abstract

Scholars are directing more attention to employee perceptions of human resources (HR) practices and have explored issues such as whether and how employees’ idiosyncratic or collective perceptions of HR practices shape employee outcomes. To further this area of research, we seek to determine what authors mean when they refer to “employee perceptions of HR practices”. We review 105 articles from leading human resource management journals and find that employee perceptions of HR practices is not a monolithic concept. Rather, following previous scholars, we identify three distinct components of employee perceptions of HR practices: the ‘what’, ‘how’, and ‘why’. We critically summarize extant literature on these three components of employee HR perception and propose future research directions, including enriching the theoretical foundations of HR communication, embracing cross-national contexts, and enhancing practical relevance.     

‘Embrace the masculine; attenuate the feminine’ – gender,identity work and entrepreneurial legitimation in the nascent context

This article critically analyses how gender bias impacts upon women’s efforts to legitimate nascent ventures. Given the importance of founder identity as a proxy for entrepreneurial legitimacy at nascency, we explore the identity work women undertake when seeking to claim legitimacy for their emerging ventures in a prevailing context of masculinity. In so doing, we challenge taken for granted norms pertaining to legitimacy and question the basis upon which that knowledge is claimed. In effect, debates regarding entrepreneurial legitimacy are presented as gender neutral yet, entrepreneurship is a gender biased activity. Thus, we argue it is essential to recognize how gendered assumptions impinge upon the quest for legitimacy. To illustrate our analysis, we use retrospective and real time empirical evidence evaluating legitimating strategies as they unfold, our findings reveal tensions between feminine identities such as ‘wife’ and ‘mother’ and those of the prototypical entrepreneur. This dissonance prompted women to undertake specific forms of identity work to bridge the gap between femininity, legitimacy and entrepreneurship. We conclude by arguing that the pursuit of entrepreneurial legitimacy during nascency is a gendered process which disadvantages women and has the potential to negatively impact upon the future prospects of their fledgling ventures.     

False promises of co-production in neighbourhood regeneration: the case of Dutch community enterprises

Many European countries are implementing austerity measures alongside trends of welfare state retrenchment. Entrepreneurial forms of active citizenship are considered as a new form of public management to fill gaps left by spending cuts and to continue neighbourhood regeneration. Inspired by British practices, Dutch citizens are trying to set up community enterprises (CEs) to provide services or other benefits for residents in deprived neighbourhoods. Based on a qualitative panel study, this article reveals supportive responses but also resistance from local governments and housing associations. Within a positive policy discourse on co-production, institutional responses often encompass forms of ‘counter-production’ that hold CEs in full uncertainty about crucial conditions for their business.     

Unpacking the Fluidity of Management Accounting Concepts: An Ethnographic Social Site Analysis of Enterprise Risk Management

Abstract

This study offers new insights into what renders management accounting concepts (MACs) fluid. Extant literature depicts how fluidity is an effect of heterogeneous associations among actors, which translate and mobilize them in situated and variegated forms. This focus on heterogeneous arrangements, however, tends to neglect the role of practices and how these practices render MACs fluid. Hence, the study investigates how practices, together with arrangements, which Schatzki (2002. The site of the social: A philosophical account of the constitution of social life and change. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press) refers to as ‘site’ (i.e. a mesh-work of practice-arrangement bundles), are implicated in MACs’ fluidity. To do so, an ethnography of the MAC ‘Enterprise Risk Management’ (ERM) at the largest division of a multi-national manufacturer was conducted. By analyzing attended risk meetings, the paper shows the ways in which the ERM site prefigures multitudinous paths for carrying on and carrying out risk management activities, which in turn, render the ERM site into a fluid space of intelligibility. These findings indicate that MACs’ fluidity is associated with multidimensional prefigurements that the site produces. With these insights, the paper contributes to understanding how the situated functionality of management accounting comes about, and reveals nuances and multiplicities amid the enabling and constraining space for actions that practiced MACs as mesh-work engender.     

Born Again? The Ethics and Efficacy of the Conversion Experience in Contemporary Management Development

This article notes how a religious tone has seeped into the discourse of contemporary management development. This religious analogy is explored through the evangelical Christian notion of ‘conversion’ and radical personal change. The expansion of such a mind-set into contemporary management thinking is related to the revival of the charismatic form of authority, in the writing of popular management gurus, such as Tom Peters. The search for new forms of ethical and social cohesion is considered. Next, this framework is applied to management development, with particular reference to one fairly mainstream, if intensive, programme. Through quotes from the managers involved, we illustrate how this programme employed emotional experience to remould individual personality and hence corporate culture in a way that mimics the religious conversion process. Finally, we question both whether a largely involuntary business organization has an ethical right to claim the ‘souls’ of its managers, and whether this is likely to be a realizable goal, in any case.     

The governmentality of marketing discourse

This paper provides a reading of mainstream academic marketing discourse based upon Foucault's concept of governmentality. Three periods of marketing thought are identified, described and analyzed—‘early marketing thought’ (c. 1900–1960), ‘marketing management’ (c. 1950–1985) and ‘service management’ (c. 1975–present). For these three periods, respectively, our focus is on analyzing what marketing seeks to govern, how marketing governs, and who we become when governed by marketing. It is argued that customer orientation has become the dominant governmental discursive practice in marketing—it has embedded marketing discourse more and more deeply over time. By exposing the governmental rationality of marketing, this paper provides a basis for resisting and deconstructing marketing discourse.     

Creating space for play/invention – concepts of space and organizational entrepreneurship

This paper focuses on how one can relate management thinking/practices to entrepreneurial processes in the context of formal organization. In order to do this we develop a number of related ‘spatial concepts’ providing us with the possibility of describing entrepreneurship as a ‘creation and use of space for play/innovation’. Using concepts of space, the managerial and the entrepreneurial dimensions and perspectives on organizing creativity become highly visible in the case studied. This is a field study (within the ethnographic tradition) focusing on an organizational transformation of a former public authority into a competitive limited company. A distinction between managerialism and ‘entrepreneurship as event’ is proposed as conceptually fruitful as well as useful for discussing recommendations to managers for how to handle entrepreneurial processes. A minimal and contextual role for management is suggested when aspiring to support the creations of space for play/invention, for example, for entrepreneurship as forms of organizational creativity.     

‘Fog in the Channel,continent isolated’: Britain as a model for EU social and economic policy?

A discourse on British ‘exceptionalism’ is currently developing according to which the UK's apparently ‘flexible’ economy should serve as a model for the rest of the EU. This is explored through two case studies concerning the transmission of regulatory practices from the continent to Britain (working time) and vice versa (takeover regulation). We suggest that a UK model of the firm constructed around shareholder value and untrammeled managerial prerogative is unlikely to have much resonance for other European systems, in which the term ‘flexibility’ has different connotations.     

Circuits of Knowledge and Techniques: The Transnational Flow of Planning Ideas and Practices

This article considers the conceptual and methodological tools which may help to focus the critical analysis of transnational flows of planning ideas and practices in the present period. The discussion starts from the rejection of the ‘modernization myth’ with its linear concept of a single development trajectory and reviews the philosophical background to the array of alternative conceptions which have displaced it. It then examines three, often overlapping, fields of intellectual development which offer promising concepts for exploring contemporary transnational flows of planning ideas and practices: actor‐network theory (especially with respect to the way ideas and technologies get to ‘travel’ and get ‘translated’), institutionalist versions of policy ‘discourse analysis’ (discourse structuration and institutionalization, in particular), and discussions about circuits of knowledge and hegemonic projects in the globalization and international development literatures. Drawing on these, I suggest that critical analysis of such flows should give special attention to the ‘origin stories’ of such ideas, their ‘travelling histories’ and the ‘translation experiences’ through which exogenous planning ideas and practices become ‘localized’. I conclude by commenting on what may be distinctive about transnational flows in the present period, why undertaking critical analysis of such flows is valuable, and key methodological attitudes to keep in mind in conducting such analyses.     

An ‘incitement to discourse’: benchmarking as a springboard to sustainable development

Benchmarking, while belonging to the array of instruments associated with eco‐efficiency, eco‐modernism and ‘political sustainability’, provides a way in which corporations can be held to account in terms of their environmental and social responsibility. New Zealand lacked such benchmarks until the annual Survey of Corporate Environmental Responsiveness was introduced for top companies by turnover in 1999, exposing the myth of ‘clean and green’ New Zealand as far as environmental management of business was concerned, but providing a measure that has become a driver for many companies. The paper discusses outcomes of the benchmarking survey and describes how it has been employed as a Foucauldian ‘incitement to discourse’ with a focus group of participating companies, engaging them in a more dialectical discourse of sustainable development based in Critical Theory and perspectives from Foucault. Maori speak of their ‘turangawaewae’–having a ‘place to stand’. The survey provided the broader research programme with that place to stand in terms of creating a meaningful position for the researchers, and a degree of legitimacy, within the business context. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment.     

Theoretical implications from the case of performance-based human resource management practices in Japan: management fashion,institutionalization and strategic human resource management perspectives

In Japan, a new type of human resource management (HRM) practices called ‘performance-based HRM practices’ (seika-shugi in Japanese) emerged in the 1990s, and has been adopted by many Japanese firms. In this paper, I illustrate how these type of practices emerged as a management fashion, diffused across a large number of Japanese firms, and became institutionalized in the Japanese business context; and discuss the relationship between performance-based HRM practices and firm performance. This illustration is used to develop a theoretical framework to better understand the relationship between HRM practices and firm performance by integrating theories of management fashions, institutionalization and strategic HRM. Suggestions for future research are also discussed.     

‘Down with Big Brother!’ The End of ‘Corporate Culturalism’?

Hugh Willmott's classic 1993 JMS article, ‘Strength is Ignorance; Freedom is Slavery’, has greatly influenced how we understand culture management. It draws parallel's with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty‐Four to reveal the totalitarian aspirations of ‘corporate culturalism’. While it is sometimes said that employee resistance is missing in Willmott's account, I argue that it is implicitly pervasive, prefiguring subsequent investigations of ‘micro‐emancipation’ in management studies. The recent waning of scholarly interest in this type of resistance, however, also points to the contemporary relevance of Willmott's analysis. Emergent forms of corporate regulation utilize ‘biopower’ rather than just cultural conformity, rendering micro‐emancipation inadequate, but inspiring other types of dissent.     

The contours of employee voice in SMEs: the importance of context

This article develops a context‐sensitive approach to analyse how and why voice operates in small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), an area that remains under‐theorised and under‐researched. By building on a priori frameworks with proven ability to unpack complexity and take account of the wider context of SMEs, this article explores how resources (human and social capital) and constraints (product market, labour market and strategic orientation) interact to shape voice practices. The article finds significant differences between ‘reported’ compared with ‘actual’ practices in situ, and identifies different types of firms (‘strategic market regulation’, ‘strategic market‐led’ and ‘non‐strategic market‐led’) along with the factors that influence the form and practice of voice. Overall, the article argues that researchers should further pursue research that appreciates the layered nature of ontology and the role played by firm context to explain complex organisational phenomena, if we are to advance our understanding of voice practices in SMEs and beyond.     

Public entrepreneurship: desiring social change,creating sociality

In this paper we want to affirm the desiring-social-change that we find in practices presently represented by theorists and policy-makers as examples of ‘social entrepreneurship’ (SE). We do this as an attempt to intensify the presence of the social and sociality in today's discourse on the entrepreneurship–society relationship. SE, as all entrepreneurship practices, operates by social and economic forces (limiting ourselves to those here), and generates social and economic outcomes (amongst others). Its second half, however, dominates the concept of SE, and our analysis seek to remedy this imbalance by focusing on the social productivity of entrepreneurship, on entrepreneurship desiring social change. We suggest ‘public entrepreneurship’ might grasp this as a more balanced concept that will also support a more precise analysis of the entrepreneurship–society relationship.     

Urban Ecological Enclosures: Conservation Planning,Peri-urban Displacement,and Local State Formations in China

Across contemporary China, city governments are unevenly territorializing peri-urban villagers’ land and housing by creating new urban ecological conservation sites. I analyze this emerging form of what I call ‘ecological territorialization’ through three interrelated spatial practices: comprehensive urban–rural planning, peri-urban ‘ecological migration’, and the distribution of institutional responsibility for conservation site financing, construction and management. Detailing this triad of territorializing practices renews attention to the relationship between conservation classifications that justify state intervention, uneven displacements of people from rural land and housing, and site-specific capitalizations that collectively consolidate urban government control over rural spaces. These practices emerge stochastically as state, private, and semi-state institutions capitalize on conservation projects in the context of legally and constitutionally underdefined land use rights and ecological land designations. In the current post-socialist moment of urban ‘greening’, these practices are key to producing frontiers of land-based accumulation and extending local state control across the peri-urban fringe. Urban ecological enclosures not only remake city-level state power but also shape rural people's relationships to land, labor and housing.     

Mobilizing consent: paternalism and cellular manufacturing

In this paper we explore the dynamics of the introduction of New Systems and Structures of Work Organization (NSSWO) in the context of the forces impacting upon organizational change in the unionized sector of manufacturing industry throughout the Thatcher period. This we do by way of a detailed case study of a major UK auto-components manufacturer. We explore a number of changes in work organization, including the introduction of a cellular-based system of manufacturing, from its initial strategic conception through to its implementation; the delegation of responsibility for quality to shop-floor operators and the use of more flexible working practices. In doing so, we reconsider the context of change, the detailed processes of change and the pattern of accommodation between labour and management. Drawing upon our previous work on the nature of paternalism (Ackers,and Black, 1991), we explore its significance in terms of management’s constant drive for more economic work practices and patterns of organization. Specifically we explore the significance of paternalism as a relevant concept in interpreting the case, and hence, also, as a relevant concept in understanding HRM. The case challenges the prevailing ideology that the ‘successful’

economic organization requires (a) a de-regulated labour market and (b)

a trade union free environment, or, failing this, that management needs to

develop an individualistic approach towards the work-force, moving from the

more pluralist‘industrial relations’approach towards an essentially ‘unitarist framework, as found in certain interpretations of ‘uman resource management’(Guest, 1987)

The paper is thus a contribution to the continuing analysis of those ‘tensions and struggles through which the open ended potential of labour power have been managed, through shifting patterns of coercion, accommodation and compliance into profitable forms of production’(Elger and Smith, 1994: 12; Thompson, 1990). By means of this case we attempt to explore this issue with respect to three interconnected

themes:

The place of paternalism as a relevant concept in the age of HRM.

The extent to which organizations may be better advised to look towards ways

to build upon their existing organization culture, rather than seeking solutions

from overseas models.

Linking with previous work on the ‘Joint Process’in the US (Black and Ackers, 1994), the paper raises issues concerning the ‘strategic issue . . . which managers have to face . . . the balance between joint regulation and joint consultation’(Storey and Sissons, 1993: 221), and hence the role of trades unions in organizational change programmes.     

Cities within the City: Do‐It‐Yourself Urbanism and the Right to the City

In many cities around the world we are presently witnessing the growth of, and interest in, a range of micro‐spatial urban practices that are reshaping urban spaces. These practices include actions such as: guerrilla and community gardening; housing and retail cooperatives; flash mobbing and other shock tactics; social economies and bartering schemes; ‘empty spaces’ movements to occupy abandoned buildings for a range of purposes; subcultural practices like graffiti/street art, skateboarding and parkour; and more. This article asks: to what extent do such practices constitute a new form of urban politics that might give birth to a more just and democratic city? In answering this question, the article considers these so‐called ‘do‐it‐yourself urbanisms’ from the perspective of the ‘right to the city’. After critically assessing that concept, the article argues that in order for do‐it‐yourself urbanist practices to generate a wider politics of the city through the appropriation of urban space, they also need to assert new forms of authority in the city based on the equality of urban inhabitants. This claim is illustrated through an analysis of the do‐it‐yourself practices of Sydney‐based activist collective BUGA UP and the New York and Madrid Street Advertising Takeovers.