Man management : Ironies of modern management in an "old" university

Kerfoot, Deborah and Knights, David (1999) Man management : Ironies of modern management in an "old" university. In: Transforming Managers : Engendering Change in the Public Sector. Taylor and Francis Group, pp. 201-214. ISBN 1857288750

Abstract

As the broad economic transformations of the post-industrialized era gather pace, so the requirement for contemporary organizations to become ever more “flexible�? and responsive to the demands of diverse and fast-changing markets has increased. The collapse of large-scale bureaucratic hierarchies and the consequent restructuring, decentralization and delayering of managerial jobs has been accompanied by new forms of work and new practices of managerial control. Whether it be in the guise of the “flexible firm�? (Atkinson 1984), “flexible specialization�? (Piore and Sabel 1984), total quality management (TQM) (Deming 1986), business process reengineering (Hammer and Champy 1993) orthe “virtual organization�? (Chesbrough and Teece 1996), this emergent managerial phenomenon has found a resonance across numerous private-sector sites. Concomitant with the dissolution of rigid vertical lines of control, new so-called “leaner�? structures have emerged, informed and framed by the specialisms and discourses of this “new managerialism�?. Drawing on the rhetoric of empowerment, participation, trust and mutuality (Kerfoot and Knights 1995), the modernorganization increasingly invests its survival and productive potential in the legions of project groups, multi-function work groups and forms of team-working that characterize the “flexible�? corporation.