The Agency of Organizing

The Agency of Organizing PDF Author: Boris H. J. M. Brummans
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317223241
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Winner of the 2018 Outstanding Edited Book Award from the Organizational Communication Division of the National Communication Association The Agency of Organizing explains why the notion of agency is central to understanding what organizations are, how they come into existence, continue to exist, or fade away, and how they function. Written by leading organizational communication scholars, the chapters in this edited volume present seven different theoretical perspectives on agency in the dynamics of organizing. Authors discuss how they conceptualize agency from their own perspective and how they propose to investigate agency empirically in processes of organizing by using specific methods. Through insightful case studies, they demonstrate the value of these perspectives for organizational research and practice.

The Agency of Organizing

The Agency of Organizing PDF Author: Boris H. J. M. Brummans
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317223241
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
Winner of the 2018 Outstanding Edited Book Award from the Organizational Communication Division of the National Communication Association The Agency of Organizing explains why the notion of agency is central to understanding what organizations are, how they come into existence, continue to exist, or fade away, and how they function. Written by leading organizational communication scholars, the chapters in this edited volume present seven different theoretical perspectives on agency in the dynamics of organizing. Authors discuss how they conceptualize agency from their own perspective and how they propose to investigate agency empirically in processes of organizing by using specific methods. Through insightful case studies, they demonstrate the value of these perspectives for organizational research and practice.

Organization and Organizing

Organization and Organizing PDF Author: Daniel Robichaud
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415529301
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
This timely collection addresses central issues in communication theory on the nature of organizing and organization. It contributes to the conception of materiality, agency, and discourse in current theorizing and research on the constitution of organizations. Representing scholarship in various parts of the world, it features contributions that overcome traditional conceptions of the nature of organizing by addressing the difficult issues of the performative character of agency; materiality as the basis of the iterability of communication and continuity of organizations; and discourse as both textuality and interaction.

Organizing Empire

Organizing Empire PDF Author: Purnima Bose
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822384884
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Organizing Empire critically examines how concepts of individualism functioned to support and resist British imperialism in India. Through readings of British colonial and Indian nationalist narratives that emerged in parliamentary debates, popular colonial histories, newsletters, memoirs, biographies, and novels, Purnima Bose investigates the ramifications of reducing collective activism to individual intentions. Paying particular attention to the construction of gender, she shows that ideas of individualism rhetorically and theoretically bind colonials, feminists, nationalists, and neocolonials to one another. She demonstrates how reliance on ideas of the individual—as scapegoat or hero—enabled colonial and neocolonial powers to deny the violence that they perpetrated. At the same time, she shows how analyses of the role of the individual provide a window into the dynamics and limitations of state formations and feminist and nationalist resistance movements. From a historically grounded, feminist perspective, Bose offers four case studies, each of which illuminates a distinct individualizing rhetorical strategy. She looks at the parliamentary debates on the Amritsar Massacre of 1919, in which several hundred unarmed Indian protesters were killed; Margaret Cousins’s firsthand account of feminist organizing in Ireland and India; Kalpana Dutt’s memoir of the Bengali terrorist movement of the 1930s, which was modeled in part on Irish anticolonial activity; and the popular histories generated by ex-colonial officials and their wives. Bringing to the fore the constraints that colonial domination placed upon agency and activism, Organizing Empire highlights the complexity of the multiple narratives that constitute British colonial history.

Management and Organization of Temporary Agency Work

Management and Organization of Temporary Agency Work PDF Author: Bas A.S. Koene
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317808754
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Over the past two decades the use of flexible employment relations has increased in most developed countries. The growth of temporary agency work constitutes a significant component of this development. Organizations are now facing the challenges of managing a ‘blended workforce’, i.e. a workforce consisting of both direct hires and contractors. At a time when Europe, as well as the rest of the world, is facing enhanced global competition and a severe labor market crisis, an understanding of temporary employment practices becomes all the more acute. With the evolution of the use of agency work in the Western world over the past decade, the chapters in this volume show how a focus on the management and organization of temporary agency work can be helpful to see possibilities and pitfalls for the use of temporary employment in the wake of changed employment practices and challenges to labor market stability and welfare structures. Together, the new case studies presented in this volume provide a wide scope of analysis of the organization and management of temporary agency work, offering a much-needed contribution to the discussion of issues and priorities that guide and shape organizational practices today. Its particular uniqueness lies in the empirical richness and variety of local case studies and the way in which these are related to wider policy aims, ideological shifts, and the dynamics of organizational practice, with a particular focus on the organization and management of ‘blended workforces’.

The Changing Organization

The Changing Organization PDF Author: Kaijun Guo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107146801
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 467

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Book Description
The book is designed for academics and graduate students in organization theory, social theory, cybernetics, cross-cultural theory and systems theory. It examines social collectives and organisation culture, presenting a theoretical framework capable of improving our understanding and anticipation of its patterns of behaviour.

The Evolution of Agency

The Evolution of Agency PDF Author: Michael Tomasello
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262047004
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
A leading developmental psychologist proposes an evolutionary pathway to human psychological agency. Nature cannot build organisms biologically prepared for every contingency they might possibly encounter. Instead, Nature builds some organisms to function as feedback control systems that pursue goals, make informed behavioral decisions about how best to pursue those goals in the current situation, and then monitor behavioral execution for effectiveness. Nature builds psychological agents. In a bold new theoretical proposal, Michael Tomasello advances a typology of the main forms of psychological agency that emerged on the evolutionary pathway to human beings. Tomasello outlines four main types of psychological agency and describes them in evolutionary order of emergence. First was the goal-directed agency of ancient vertebrates, then came the intentional agency of ancient mammals, followed by the rational agency of ancient great apes, ending finally in the socially normative agency of ancient humans. Each new form of psychological organization represented increased complexity in the planning, decision-making, and executive control of behavior. Each also led to new types of experience of the environment and, in some cases, of the organism’s own psychological functioning, leading ultimately to humans’ experience of an objective and normative world that governs all of their thoughts and actions. Together, these proposals constitute a new theoretical framework that both broadens and deepens current approaches in evolutionary psychology.

Exercising Agency

Exercising Agency PDF Author: Mark Mullaly
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317138090
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
Exercising Agency is a book about decision making. In particular, it looks in detail at how a very important type of organizational decision gets made: whether or not to initiate a project. Making strategic decisions of this kind can never be a wholly rational and scientific process. And Exercising Agency lifts the lid on many of the important behavioural factors that inform project decisions: power and politics, personality, the ’rules’ of an organization. Mark Mullaly draws on his research to provide practical guidance for decision makers; project shapers, approving executives and those responsible for how initiation decisions are made. By explaining the influence, value and risks associated with the elements that inform the way we make strategic decisions he will help you identify how individuals and organizations can best support the process to ensure project initiation decisions are effective and most closely underpin the priorities of the organization. If you are involved in framing or making decisions about the future of your organization; the projects that you do or don’t decide to initiate, then read this book. It won’t make the decisions any easier but it will help you improve the quality of the decisions you make and over time, the effectiveness of your organizational decision making.

Agency and Change

Agency and Change PDF Author: Raymond Caldwell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134357885
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
This excellent book remaps the limits and possibilities of change, clearly shifting the focus from outmoded debates on agency and structure to new practice-based discourses on agency and change. Offering readers a selective and critical review of key literature and empirical research, it will help students contextualize this complex subject area and independently evaluate future prospects for effective change agent roles in organizations Presenting an interdisciplinary exploration of competing discourses, the book uses two overarching conceptual continua: centred agency-decentred agency and systems-processes, thereby allowing a more intensive focus on agency and change. Well-written with challenging content, this book is essential reading for those interested in the origins, development and future prospects for change agency in an organizational world characterized by increasing complexity, risk and uncertainty.

Africa's Informal Workers

Africa's Informal Workers PDF Author: Ilda Lindell
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1848138334
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Africa's Informal Workers is a vigorous examination of the informalization and casualization of work, which is changing livelihoods in Africa and beyond. Gathering cases from nine countries and cities across sub-Saharan Africa, and from a range of sectors, this volume goes beyond the usual focus on household ‘coping strategies’ and individual agency, addressing the growing number of collective organizations through which informal workers make themselves visible and articulate their demands and interests. The emerging picture is that of a highly diverse landscape of organized actors, providing grounds for tension but also opportunities for alliance. The collection examines attempts at organizing across the formal-informal work spheres, and explores the novel trend of transnational organizing by informal workers. Part of the ground-breaking Africa Now series, Africa’s Informal Workers is a timely exploration of deep, ongoing economic, political and social transformations.

Delegation and Agency in International Organizations

Delegation and Agency in International Organizations PDF Author: Darren G. Hawkins
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139458817
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
Why do states delegate certain tasks and responsibilities to international organizations rather than acting unilaterally or cooperating directly? Furthermore, to what extent do states continue to control IOs once authority has been delegated? Examining a variety of different institutions including the World Trade Organization, the United Nations and the European Commission, this book explores the different methods that states employ to ensure their interests are being served, and identifies the problems involved with monitoring and managing IOs. The contributors suggest that it is not inherently more difficult to design effective delegation mechanisms at international level than at domestic level and, drawing on principal-agent theory, help explain the variations that exist in the extent to which states are willing to delegate to IOs. They argue that IOs are neither all evil nor all virtuous, but are better understood as bureaucracies that can be controlled to varying degrees by their political masters.