Understandina b y Stephen Linstead b. Robert Grafton Small * N o and Paul Jeffcutt UNDERSTANDING MANAGEMENT UNDERSTANDING MANAGEMENT edited by Stephen Linstead, Robert Grafton Small and Paul Jeffcutt Thomas j. Bata ib rary y TREi-i, , i i rARIO SAGE Publications London • Thousand Oaks • New Delhi U 5 138 1 Qs Editorial selection and matter, and Introduction © Stephen Linstead, Robert Grafton Small and Paul Jeffcutt, 1996 Chapter 1 Stephen Linstead 1996 Chapter 2 Dan Gowler and Karen Legge 1996 Chapters 3 and 5 David Golding 1996 Chapter 4 Omar Aktouf 1996 Chapter 6 Michael L. Rosen and Thomas P, Mullen 1996 Chapter 7 © Steven P. Feldman 1996 Chapter 8 © Stephen Lloyd Smith and Barry Wilkinson 1996 Chapter 9 © Robert Grafton Small 1996 Chapter 10 © Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges 1996 Chapter 11 © Paul Jeffcutt 1996 Chapter 12 © Hugo Letiche 1996 First published 1996 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the Publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd 6 Bonhill Street London EC2A 4PU SAGE Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd 32, M-Block Market Greater Kailash -1 New Delhi 110 048 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 8039 8912-1 ISBN 0 8039 8913-X (pbk) Library of Congress catalog card number 95-072171 Typeset by Type Study, Scarborough, North Yorkshire Printed in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press Ltd, Broughton Gifford, Melksham, Wiltshire To the memory of Dan Gowler (1931-1992); and Keith Turner (1949-1993), an indefatigable ally, innovative agitator, inimitable critic, irrepressible spirit, and irreplaceable friend. - Contents Acknowledgements ix Contributors x Editors’ Introduction 1 Part 1: Making the Meaning of Management 1 Understanding Management: Culture, Critique and Change 11 Stephen Linstead 2 The Meaning of Management and the Management of Meaning 34 Dan Gowler and Karen Legge 3 Producing Clarity - Depoliticizing Control 51 David Golding Part 2: Defamiliarizing Management Practice 4 Competence, Symbolic Activity and Promotability 66 Omar Aktouf 5 Management Rituals: Maintaining Simplicity in the Chain of Command 78 David Golding 6 There to Here and No Way Back: the Late Life of a Cocaine Dealer 94 Michael L. Rosen and Thomas P. Mullen Part 3: Rethinking Symbolic Management 7 Management in Context: Culture and Organizational Change 113 Steven P. Feldman 8 ‘We are our own Policemen!’- Organizing without Conflict 130 Stephen Lloyd Smith and Barry Wilkinson Part 4: Consuming and Constructing Identity 9 Marketing, or the Anthropology of Consumption 145 Robert Grafton Small viii Contents 10 Autobiographical Acts and Organizational Identities 157 Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges Part 5: Changing Identities 11 Between Managers and the Managed: the Processes of Organizational Transition _ 172 Paul Jeffcutt 12 Postmodernism Goes Practical 193 Hugo Letiche Name Index 212 Subject Index 216 Acknowledgements Certain of the chapters of this book have appeared previously in a different form in other places. We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce them, in revised form, here: Blackwell Publishers for Chapters 5 and 7; the editors of Sociological Review for Chapter 3; MCB Publications for Chapter 9; and Oxford University Press for Chapter 2. Chapter 2 appeared as ‘The Meaning of Management and the Management of Meaning: a view from social anthropology’, in Michael J. Earl, (ed.) Perspectives on Management: A Multidisciplinary Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press 197-233 (1983). Chapter 3 appeared as ‘Establishing Blissful Clarity in Organizational Life: Managers’, in Sociological Review, 28(4): 763-82 (1980). Chapter 5 appeared as ‘Some Everyday Rituals in Management Control’, Journal of Management Studies 28(6): 569-83 (1991). Chapter 7 appeared as ‘Management in Context: an essay on the relevance of culture to understanding organizational change’, Journal of Management Studies 23(6): 587-607 (1985). Chapter 9 appeared as ‘Marketing, or the Anthropology of Consumption’, European Journal of Marketing, 21(9): 66-71 (1985).