The notion that management knowledge is universal, culture-neutral, readily transferable to any country or situation, has come under mounting challenge. In this vein, this volume explores in detail the relations between management knowledge, power and practice in a world where globalization highlights, rather than obscures, the locally specific nature of many management recipes. This volume recognizes the political nature of management knowledge, as a discourse produced from, and reproducing, power processes within and between organizations. This theme underpins discussion of the ways in which management ideas and practices "produce" managers of a particular kind - "man of enterprise", bureaucrat, heroic leader. Critical examinations of certain current management theories - lean production, excellence, entrepreneurship - illuminate the myriad modes in which relations of power intermingle with relations of knowledge. Authors from a variety of different countries address the social and political processes involved in cross-cultural transference of management ideas across the world. They also look to the future, stressing the need for a substantial understanding that is less attuned to the corporate worlds of today and more appropriate for the increasingly diverse organizations likely to emerge in the 21st century.
The notion that management knowledge is universal, culture-neutral, readily transferable to any country or situation, has come under mounting challenge. In this vein, this volume explores in detail the relations between management knowledge, power and practice in a world where globalization highlights, rather than obscures, the locally specific nature of many management recipes. This volume recognizes the political nature of management knowledge, as a discourse produced from, and reproducing, power processes within and between organizations. This theme underpins discussion of the ways in which management ideas and practices "produce" managers of a particular kind - "man of enterprise", bureaucrat, heroic leader. Critical examinations of certain current management theories - lean production, excellence, entrepreneurship - illuminate the myriad modes in which relations of power intermingle with relations of knowledge. Authors from a variety of different countries address the social and political processes involved in cross-cultural transference of management ideas across the world. They also look to the future, stressing the need for a substantial understanding that is less attuned to the corporate worlds of today and more appropriate for the increasingly diverse organizations likely to emerge in the 21st century.
