The Politics of Management Knowledge

This book explores in detail the relations between management knowledge, power and practice in a world where globalization highlights, rather than obscures, the locally specific character of many management recipes.The Politics of Management Knowledge recognizes the political nature of management knowledge as a discourse produced from, and reproducing, power processes within and between organizations. This theme underpins discussion of the ways in which management ideas and practices produce managers of a particular kind - person of enterprise, bureaucrat, heroic leader and so on. Critical examinations of certain current management theories - lean production, excellence, entrepreneurship - illuminate the myriad modes in which relations of power intermingle with relations of knowledge.