Foucault, Management and Organization Theory: From Panopticon to Technologies of Self

This volume draws together critical assessments of Michel Foucault′s contribution to our understanding of the making and remaking of the modern organization. The volume provides a valuable summary of Foucault′s contribution to organization theory, which also challenges the conventions of traditional organizational analysis. By applying Foucauldian concepts such as discipline, surveillance and power/knowledge, the authors shed new light on the genesis of the modern organization and raise fresh questions about organization theory. The bureaucratic career is, for example, analyzed as a disciplinary device, a mechanism that seeks to alter rational choice rather than constrain bodies. This raises questions about Foucault′s linking of the modern organization′s birth with the enlightenment. Other contributions review the impact of totalizing managerial discourses and the limits and possiblities of resistance, and question the profound pessimism of Foucault. The volume concludes by examining the implications of Foucault′s later work in which he suggests that people are much freer than they feel.

Table of Contents:
Managing Foucault - Alan McKinlay and Ken Starkey Foucault, Management and Organization Theory PART ONE: FOUCAULT AND ORGANIZATION THEORY Modernism, Postmodernism and Organizational Analysis - Gibson Burrell The Contribution of Michel Foucault Foucault, Power and Organizations - Stewart Clegg Labour as Dressage - Norman Jackson and Pippa Carter PART TWO: CONSTRUCTING THE MODERN ORGANIZATION Discipline, Surveillance and the `Career′ - Mike Savage Employment on the Great Western Railway 1833-1914 Examining Accounts and Accounting for Management - Keith Hoskin Inverting Understandings of `the Economic′ The `Velvet Grip′ - Alan McKinlay and Ken Starkey Managing Managers in the Modern Corporation Management Accounting Numbers - Trevor Hopper and Norman McIntosh Freedom or Prison - Geneen vs Foucault PART THREE: (RE)CONSTRUCTING THE MODERN ORGANIZATION Discursive Formations, Strategized Subordination and Self-Surveillance - Stanley Deetz Through the Looking Glass - Alan McKinlay and Phil Taylor Foucault and the Politics of Production Beyond Good and Evil - Barbara Townley Depth and Division in the Management of Human Resources Re-Framing Foucault - Patricia Findlay and Tim Newton The Case of Performance Appraisal Afterword - Ken Starkey and Alan McKinlay Deconstructing Organization - Discipline and Desire

About the Author :
Alan McKinlay is Professor of Management at St Andrews University. Ken Starkey is Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Nottingham. In addition books published individually, both have also co-authored Organizational Innovation (1989) and Strategy and the Human Resource (1993) CONTRIBUTORS OUTSIDE WESTERN HEMISPHERE Pippa Carter University of Hull Stewart Clegg University of Technology Sydney Trevor Hopper University of Manchester Keith Hoskin UMIST Norman Jackson University of Newcastle upon Tyne Mike Savage Manchester University Philip Taylor University of Stirling

Review :
`This book is likely to be of great interest to Foucault scholars concerned with organisations and also of interest to organization experts with some familiarity with Foucault′ - Sociology `In these days of overwhelming ′labour flexibility′, this book is timely and offers new critical understandings. The majority of the 14 authors are based in Management Schools across the UK, USA, Australia and Canada. They all display in-depth scholarly understanding of Foucault′s intellectual enterprise.... The strength of this collection - apart from filling an obvious gap - derives from a two-directional approach: from Foucault to managment organisation theory and vice versa.′ - Modern and Contemporary France