Management gurus have existed for as long as the leaders of large, complex organizations have had intractable problems to solve. This seminal text asks key questions such as: What is the secret of the success of management gurus and how can it be emulated? In this revised edition, Andrzej Huczynski brings his analysis of gurus into the twenty-first century. He identifies the essential ingredients of popular management ideas and contends that company managers, business school academics and management consultants all have the possibility of attaining guru status by following the guidelines contained in this book. It includes an additional chapter by Brad Jackson (Department of Management and Employment Relations, The Auckland University Business School, New Zealand) and Eric Guthey (Department of Intercultural Communication and Management, The Copenhagen Business School, Denmark). Management Gurus is a must read for all those studying organizational behaviour, leadership and organizational psychology or for those who wish to attain guru status.

Building on the success of the first edition, Huczynski identifies the essential ingredients of popular management ideas and brings his analysis of gurus into the twenty-first century.

Fully revised and refined, this new edition of Institutional Theory and Organizational Change considers the developments in the field of institutional organization theory over the past decade. With each chapter being significantly updated, the book explains what the institutional organization approach means by bringing special attention to how the institutional environment is made up and how organizations are governed by it.

Demystifying Business Celebrity is the first systematic exploration of business celebrity. This book defines what business celebrity is, describes how it is constructed and explains why it exists; raising questions about the impact of business celebrity on our ability to promote the practice of leadership in an enlightened manner.

Managing People and Organizations in Changing Contexts addresses the contemporary problems faced by managers in dealing with people, organizations and change in a theoretically-informed and practical way. This textbook approaches people management from the perspective of practising and aspiring managers, making it a valuable alternative to existing texts on organizational behaviour and human resource management. This new edition considers new emerging organizational forms such as e-lancing and recent management concerns such as employee engagement, de-professionalization and the growing challenges of social media. Built around a chapter framework that connects different themes to managerial action and practices, this textbook covers a wide range of topics including: managing at the individual, group and organizational levels change management managing creativity and innovation, and corporate governance and corporate social responsibility. There is an increased international flavour, reflected in the range of contemporary case studies and literature used throughout, which explore business and management problems in the private and public sectors. This text will be relevant to practising and aspiring managers studying people management, organizational behaviour and change management.

Organizational change impacts upon all organizations regardless of size and sector. In this unique organizational change textbook, important ongoing debates about managing change and leading change are combined, giving a broader perspective that encourages readers to engage with both management and leadership. In combination, management and leadership insights inform how organizations are changing and how we can make a positive difference in such processes of change. Managing and Leading Organizational Change speaks both to the applied and practical aspects of organizational change, as well as questioning the research and evidence base of organizational change practices. Chapters begin with real-world insights, followed by coverage of the major theories. The ongoing nature of these debates is signposted through the inclusion of questioning sections with research case studies showcased. This textbook will be particularly beneficial for final year undergraduates and postgraduates studying organizational change, strategic change, change management and change leadership modules.

Industry analysts are in the business of shaping the technological and economic future. They attempt to 'predict' what will become the next big thing; to spot new emerging trends and paradigms; to decide which hi-tech products will win out over others and to figure out which technology vendors can deliver on their promises. In just a few short years, they have developed a surprising degree of authority over technological innovation. Yet we know very little, if anything about them. This book seeks to explain how this was achieved and on what this authority rests. Who are the experts who increasingly command the attention of vendor and user communities? What is the nature of this new form of technical and business knowledge? How Industry Analysts Shape the Digital Future offers the first book length study into this rarely scrutinized form of business expertise. Contributions to this volume show how, from a small group of mainly North American players which arose in the 1970s, Gartner Inc. has emerged as clear leader of a $6 billion industry that involves several hundred firms worldwide. Through interviews and observation of Gartner Inc. and other industry analyst firms, the book explores how these firms create their predictions, market classifications and rankings, as well as with how these outputs are assessed and consumed. The book asks why many social scientists have ignored the proliferation of these new forms of management and technical expertise. In some cases scholars have 'deflated' this kind of business acumen, portraying it as arbitrary knowledge whose methods and content do not deserve enquiry. The valuable exception here has been the path-breaking work on the 'performativity' of economic, financial or accounting knowledge. Drawing upon recent performativity arguments, the book argues the case for a Sociology of Business Knowledge.

Can waged work under capitalism be meaningful? How does this meaningfulness express itself in the politics of working life? More fundamentally, how should work be socially and economically valued, rewarded, organised and regulated to become more meaningful? Knut Laaser and Jan Ch. Karlsson address these questions and provide a novel theory of meaningful work that is deeply ingrained in Critical Social Science approaches. The authors conceptualise meaningful work as a continuum between meaningful–meaningless work that rests on objective and subjective dimensions of autonomy, dignity and recognition, all pushed and pulled by the multi-layered control and power dynamics of waged work. They challenge the tendency to promote unpolitical concepts in the scholarship of meaningful work. The explanatory power of the meaningful work framework is illustrated by the analysis of empirical case studies on Norwegian industry operators, British bank employees, Indian security guards, German university academics and Swedish cabin crew members.

Today we often hear academics, commentators, pundits, and politicians telling us that new media has transformed activism, providing an array of networks for ordinary people to become creatively involved in a multitude of social and political practices. But what exactly is the ideology lurking behind these positive claims made about digital publics? By recourse to various critical thinkers, including Marx, Bakhtin, Deleuze and Guattari, and Gramsci, Digital Publics systematically unpacks this ideology. It explains how a number of influential social theorists and management gurus have consistently argued that we now live in new informational times based in global digital systems and new financial networks, which create new sbjectivities and power relations in societies. Digital Publics traces the historical roots of this thinking, demonstrates its flaws and offers up an alternative Marxist-inspired theory of the public sphere, cultural political economy and financialisation. The book will appeal to scholars and students of cultural studies, critical management studies, political science and sociology.

Managing Change: A Critical Perspective explores how and why change occurs in organizations and how the change process can be managed effectively. Complete with an appendix featuring twenty popular change management techniques, it is an ideal core textbook for change modules on HR and business degree programmes at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. It offers a critical perspective, challenging the main assumptions and ensuring that the complexity of the subject is understood and appreciated. This fully updated 2nd edition of Managing Change: A Critical Perspective includes new chapters on perspectives, power and politics, ethics, agents and agency, HRM and evaluation. Its revised structure reflects strategic, group and individual change, and a revised final chapter evaluates the practice and theory of change management. Online supporting resources include annotated weblinks for students, an instructor’s manual complete with commentary on questions and cases in the book and lecture slides and additional case studies for tutors.