Description
Book SynopsisDifferences in management behavior across organizations are attributed to differences in priorities and objectives or differences in the style and preferences of the individuals involved. This volume challenges this image by attending to the extra-organizational and extra-individual forces that shape and constrain how work is structured in organizations. The authors focus their attention on work within and between organizations and emphasize the ways in which the jobs are defined, the power and autonomy they engender, the opportunities that are afforded, and the constraints that are imposed, are continuously contested not only at the individual level, but also at a more aggregate and collective level. This volume is the product of an interdisciplinary gathering of scholars convened with generous support of the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council. It presents new theoretical and empirical papers that examine aspects of the changing nature of jobs and work in organizations from multiple perspectives and methodologies.
Trade ReviewBusiness, management, and other specialists from the US, Europe, and Canada offer 12 essays that consider the structure and structuring of work within and between organizations, focusing on jobs and how they are shaped by and impact organizations, occupations, and institutions. They discuss jobs as the building blocks of organizational and societal structures, with examples like idiosyncratic jobs and college teaching; professional and occupational boundaries for technicians and human resource departments; constraints related to work in organizations, including organizational identity, network position, and autonomy; and how structures are perpetuated and changed and stress broader institutional and political forces. -- Annotation * (protoview.com) *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Bringing Jobs Back In: Toward a New Multi-Level Approach to the Study of Work and Organizations - M. Diane Burton, Lisa E. Cohen and Michael Lounsbury PART I: TASKS AND JOBS AS BUILDING BLOCKS Jobs as Gordian Knots a New Perspective Linking Individuals, Tasks, Organizations, and Institutions - Lisa E. Cohen Idiosyncratic Jobs, Organizational Transformation, and Career Mobility - Anne S. Miner and Olubukunola (Bukky) Akinsanmi The Ideology of Silence at the Harvard Business School: Structuring Faculty’s Teaching Tasks for Moral Relativism - Michel Anteby PART II: OCCUPATIONAL AND PROFESSIONAL BOUNDARIES What Do Technicians Mean When They Talk About Professionalism? An Ethnography of Speaking - Stephen R. Barley, Beth A. Bechky and Bonalyn J. Nelsen Compliance Police or Business Partner? Institutional Complexity and Occupational Tensions in Human Resource Management - Kurt W. Sandholtz and Tyler N. Burrows PART III: STRUCTURE AS CONSTRAINT Structure at Work: Organizational Forms and the Division of Labor in U.S. Wineries - Heather A. Haveman, Anand Swaminathan and Eric B. Johnson It’s Not You, It’s Your Job: Network Evolution Within Firms - Jennifer Kurkoski Help Me Do It on My Own: How Entrepreneurs Manage Autonomy and Constraint Within Incubator Organizations - Victor P. Seidel, Kelley A. Packalen and Siobhan O’Mahony PART IV: CHANGING AND PERPETUATING STRUCTURES Legal Avoidance and the Restructuring of Work - Charlotte S. Alexander Externalization of Work by Corporate Law Firms: Implications for Careers and the Profession - Christine Riordan and Paul Osterman Work as Commons: Internal Labor Markets, Blended Workforces and Management - Arnaldo Camuffo and Federica De Stefano From Adapting Practices to Inhabiting Ideas: How Managers Restructure Work Across Organizations - Ruthanne Huising
