managerialism
A number is worth more than a thousand pictures: The case of designers’ cynical resistance through quantification
Introduction
In the wake of a wide-ranging neoliberal impulse to ‘modernize’ organizations, attempts to evaluate, monitor, rank and audit performance in the name of accountability, transparency and efficiency have become common features of organizational life (Dahler-Larsen, 2012; Muller, 2018). The development and implementation of evaluation devices and indicators underpins much of the project of Strategic Management and the orientation known as New Public Management.
Managing the human
HRM research has historically either been focused on the way HRM directly contributes to company profit and short-term organizational goal achievement (so-called Hard HRM), or on how HRM could contribute to creating long-term collaborative regimes (so-called Soft HRM) that develop the quality of working life and the long-term viability of the organization. In other words, HRM practices have traditionally departed from a managerial perspective, which leaves out other stakeholder interests than the management or owners.
'Managing the human' in 21st century organizations: Developing a critical and performative research agenda for HRM-studies
Introduction
In Alvin Gouldner’s Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy (Gouldner, 1954) the interaction between workers and management in a gypsum mine is studied following what he saw as an attempt to introduce an efficiency and accountability oriented bureaucratic management. The reason why this classic study is relevant to frame a 21st century special issue on managing the human is the lucid way that Gouldner shows, inspired by Weber and Marx, how the relations between workers and managers develop in unpredictable ways.
Putting theory to work – a.k.a ‘if you don't like academia, why don't you leave?’
Introduction - Humboldt’s rift
The University of Culture, instituted by Humboldt, draws its legitimacy from culture, which names the synthesis of teaching and research, process and product, history and reason, philology and criticism, historical scholarship and aesthetic experience, the institution and the individual. (Readings, 1996: 65)
