The Politics of Management Knowledge

In recent years management knowledge has seen mounting challenges to the notions of objectivity, neutrality, and universality. The Politics of Management Knowledge goes beyond broad-brush affirmations on this theme. This insightful volume explores the connections among management knowledge, power, and practice in a world where globalization highlights, rather than obscures, the localizations of generic management recipes. Central to the book is the recognition of management knowledge′s political nature and the discourse produced from power processes within and between organizations. This theme underpins the various ways that management practices produce managers as particular kinds of subjects for example, man-of-enterprise, bureaucrat, heroic leader, and so on. Critical examinations of management theories about lean production and excellent entrepreneurship also highlight the myriad areas in which relationships between knowledge and power intermingle. The Politics of Management Knowledge discusses the future of management knowledge and argues that even at a time when middle management in particular is under threat, there is a need for a new understanding less attuned to the corporate world of today and more appropriate for the emerging industries of the 21st century.

Stewart Clegg is Professor at the University of Sydney in the School of Project Management and the John Grill Institute for Project Leadership and an Emeritus Professor of the University of Technology Sydney.