Contrived competition and manufactured uncertainty: understanding managerial job insecurity narritives in large corporations

The article addresses the debate over insecurity and precarity in managerial work. It notes while some commentators suggest advanced economies are characterized by managerial job insecurity, others argue the same economies possess stable managerial tenure rates. To make sense of this conundrum, qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with managers working in large corporations in liberal-market (USA, UK) and coordinated-market (Japan) societies are analysed. The aim is to assess whether sensitivity to managerial job insecurity is widespread and if so reflects wider corporate strategies of ‘contrived competition’ and ‘manufactured uncertainty’. It is argued such notions can influence managers’ understanding of their work situation through (re)producing narratives of employment precarity. Contrary to the message from many database and questionnaire studies, evidence from this international and longitudinal study suggests awareness of job insecurity is indeed widespread and does affect managers’ views of their employment situation and prospects

Using multiple paradigms in organizational research: First results

Tendo por base a distinto de paradigmas sociológicos realizada por Burrell e Morgan (1974) procurou-se, neste artigo, estudar a organização do trabalho no serviço de Bombeiros. OS dados referem-se a uma investigação exploratoria, de caracter funcionalista, das caracteristicas das funções e da motivação para o trabalho. Na medida da motivação potencial do trabalho foi utilizada a J. D. S. de Hackmen e Oldham (1976, 1980) tendo-se recolhido dados junto de 93 indivíduos de idades e tempo de serviço diferenciados por três níveis. Apesar do resultado da motivação e do potencial para o trabalho se situar a um nível inferior a norma para os EUA, os trabalhadores descrevem o seu trabalho como contendo aspectos motivadores. Observa-se, por km, um decréscimo na motivação e na satisfação com a idade e o tempo de service, nomeadamente nas escalas de identidade da tarefa, autonomia e feedback. Por fim, a análise das intercorrelações revela efeitos não previstos no modelo.The paper outlines a study examining Fire Service work organization from positions consistent with Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) four sociological paradigms (functionalist; interpretive; radical humanist: radical structuralist). Data are given from an exploratory functionalist,) investigation of job characteristics and work motivation. Here the Job Diagnostic Survey (Hackman and Oldham 1976., 1980) is used to assess the work’s motivating; potential, results being presented both for the sample (N=93) in general, and for three groups of firemen differentiated by age and length of service. Although the overall ((motivational potential score,) is below the United States crAll-Jobs), norm, firemen report generally high motivation characteristics in their work. In comparing groups, a consistent pattern is found whereby scores for both motivation and satisfaction decrease with age and length of service. For this trend, Analysis of Variance finds statistically significant results for 8 of the model’s 19 scales: notable here are group differences for task identity, autonomy and feedback. Finally, analysis of scale intercorrelations reveals several relationships not hipothesised in the model. The direction of further paradigm studies is outlined

A satisfação no trabalho: Teorias processuais: Uma revisão de aspectos teoricos e práticos

Inexistent

Corporate restructuring, work intensification and perceptual politics: exploring the ambiguity of managerial job insecurity

Whereas social theorists, qualitative investigators and survey-based analysts suggest advanced economies are increasingly characterized by managerial job insecurity, database and questionnaire researchers propose relatively stable tenure rates for managers. We make sense of this ambiguity in three phases: First, following interviews with managers in Japan, the UK and the USA, we offer support for the ‘global convergence’ thesis, through data reflecting greater job insecurity generated by comparable and recurrent corporate restructuring. Second, considering research suggesting relative stability in managerial tenure rates, we argue that our findings – signifying increased insecurity – can be explained in terms of the ‘perceptual politics’ of US-style shareholder capitalism impinging, hegemonically, upon occupational sensibilities. Third, in concluding this argument, we suggest that everyday managerial experience can be understood in light of corporations instilling a perceptual ‘insecurity message’ in managers, essentially as part of a tangible control strategy directed at the inexorable ratcheting-up of management productivity demands globally

Managing Modern Healthcare

Managing Modern Healthcare seeks to draw a number of important and grounded lessons about how management networks develop and influence the spread of management knowledge and practice; how management training and development relates to the needs of managers facing challenging conditions; and how those conditions are shaping the nature of healthcare management

Lost in transition : the reality of reform in a local SOE in modernising China

China's SOE restructuring has always been an important challenge in the country's economic reform. However, despite a growing literature dealing with the macro perspective of China's SOE reform and the large national champions in the country, there have been few attempts to focus on the smaller local SOEs and their employees who also endured all these massive economic and social changes. This study, based on interviewing employees of a once successful small SOE in Suzhou China about their dramatic work-life changes, provides another angle to examine China's SOE reform. It also presents the impacts of the reform measures on a company and, more importantly, on its employees, by allowing the employees to make their own interpretation on the SOE reform and the changes. By doing so, it brings recognition to the employees of China's local SOEs who seemed to be ignored in past studies and connects the macroeconomic policies and reform measures in China's transitional period to a more concrete discussion of the actual individuals involved.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo