Reason's Neglect: Rationality and Organizing

Reason, and the need to Be Rational, are essential dimensions of society and the organizations we live and work in. Yet the "rationalization" of working processes, or the "rationality" studied in social sciences, is all too often, used, understood, and interpreted in an extremely narrow sense. This book sets out to rectify this neglect.

Professor Barbara Townley was awarded her PhD from the London School of Economics. She taught at Lancaster, Warwick, and Edinburgh universities in the UK, and at the University of Alberta, Canada, before taking up her present position at the University of St. Andrews. Her work has been published in leading North American and European journals including Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, Human Relations, Organization, and Accounting, Organization, and Society. She is the author of the widely cited Reframing Human Resource Management (Sage, 1994) which offered a Foucauldian critique of HRM. She has been Associate Editor of Human Relations, and serves on the editorial boards of Human Relations, Journal of Management Studies, Organization, and Strategic Organization.