Managing Modernity: Beyond Bureaucracy?

Bureaucracy has long been a cornerstone of advanced industrial societies, and a defining feature of modernity. At the same time, many commentators from all quarters argue that it is on the wane in this post-this or that world; or that if it isn't, it should be dismantled to free up organizations, enterprise, and innovation.But do we live in a more or less bureaucratic world? Do contemporary forms and means of communication undermine or modify bureaucracy, or does technology create new 'iron cages' and forms of control? If bureaucratic models of organization are abandoned, do we run risks of organizational failure and inequity? Are there certain moral, professional, and social values associated with bureaucratic models?This book explores these issues in different organizational contexts - public administration, the National Health Service, the modern firm and corporation - and offers new insights into enduring questions. It will be an invaluable resource for academics, researchers, and students in organization studies, management, public administration, and sociology. The volume will also appeal to managers, planners, and policy makers who deal with these challenges.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Stewart Clegg, Martin Harris, and Harro M. Höpfl: Managing Modernity: Beyond Bureaucracy? 1: Paul du Gay: 'Without Regard to Persons': Problems of Involvement and Attachment in 'Post-bureaucratic' Public Management 2: Harro Höpfl: Bureaucratic and Post-bureaucratic Accountability in Britain: Some Sceptical Reflections 3: David A. Buchanan and Louise Fitzgerald: New Lock, New Stock, New Barrel, Same Gun: the Accessorized Bureaucracy of Healthcare 4: Ewen Speed: Applying Soft Bureaucracy to Rhetorics of Choice: UK NHS 1983-2007 5: Martin Harris: Network Governance and the Politics of Organizational Resistance in UK Healthcare: the National Programme for Information Technology 6: Jannis Kallinikos: Bureaucracy Under Siege: On Information, Collaboration and Networks 7: Mats Alvesson and Dan Kärreman: 'Meritocracy' versus 'Sociocracy': Personnel Concepts and HR Themes in Two IT/Management Consulting Firms 8: Stephen Ackroyd: Post-Bureaucratic Manufacturing? A Consideration of the Post-War Organization of Large British Firms 9: Stewart Clegg: Under Reconstruction: Modern Bureaucracies 10: Mike Reed: The Post-Bureaucratic Organization and the Control Revolution 11: Hugh Willmott: The Futures of Bureaucracy?

About the Author :
Stewart Clegg is Research Professor and Director of the Centre for Management and Organization Studies Research at the University of Technology, Sydney and he is also a Visiting Professor at Copenhagen Business School and EM-Lyon. A prolific publisher in leading academic journals in social science, management and organization theory, he is also the author and editor of many books, including the following Sage volumes: Handbook of Power (with Mark Haugaard 2009), Handbook of Macro-Organization Behaviour (with Cary Cooper 2009), and Handbook of Organization Studies (with Cynthia Hardy, Walter Nord and Tom Lawrence, 2006). Dr Martin Harris is a Senior Lecturer at the Essex University Business School. He has edited (with Ian McLoughlin) Innovation, Organization Change and Technology and published in leading journals such as the Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, and the Journal of Information Technology. Martin's current research is centred on digital technology, 'post-bureaucracy' and 'the politics of forgetting' in UK public institutions such as the BBC, the British Library and the NHS. Dr Harro Höpfl is Reader at the Essex Business School, and was formerly Senior Lecturer in Politics at Lancaster University; he is also Visiting Professor at the Pedagogical University, Krakow. He has published extensively (individually authored books, contributions to edited volumes and to standard reference works, and articles in leading journals). He is particularly interested in the history of political thought, especially reason of state, Machiavellianism, and the political and organizational thought of the Jesuits and Calvinists, and on concepts of authority, power and legitimacy, corporate and political accountability, and the theory of bureaucracy and post-bureaucracy.

Review :
This thought provoking volume successfully emplaces important empirical developments in major UK public services settings in a wider organizational and theoretical perspective.