Christopher Grey

Tests of time : organizational time-reckoning and the making of accountants in two multi-national accounting firms

There has been remarkably little study of the recruitment, training and socialization of accountants in general, much less the specific case of trainee auditors, despite many calls to do so. In this paper, we seek to explore one key aspect of professional socialization in accounting firms: the discourses and practices of time-reckoning and time-management. By exploring time practices in accounting firms we argue that the organizational socialization of trainees into particular forms of time-consciousness and temporal visioning is a fundamental aspect of securing and developing professional identity. We pay particular attention to how actors consciousness of time is understood to develop, and how it reflects their organizational and professional environment, including how they envision the future and structure their strategic life-plan accordingly. Also of particular importance to the advancement of career in accounting firms is an active engagement with the politics of time: the capacity to manipulate and resist following the overt time-management routines of the firms. Rather than simply see trainees as passive subjects of organizational time-management devices, we noted how they are actively involved in ‘managing’ the organizational recording of time to further their career progression.

Beneath and Beyond Organizational Change Management: Exploring Alternatives

This essay introduces contributions to a special issue exploring alternative accounts of organizational change management (OCM). It begins with identifying why such alternatives are needed by pointing to core assumptions within OCM, including a practical and ontological prochange bias, managerialism and universalism. The alternatives to OCM are then framed in terms of the constructionism associated with various forms of discourse analysis. It is argued that the contributions show, both theoretically and empirically, the limitations of OCM as conventionally understood.

‘We Are All Managers Now’; ‘We Always Were’: On the Development and Demise of Management

The existence of an identifiable group of people who are labelled ‘managers’ has been one of the most significant aspects of the organization of work and society for well over a century. This separation of managers from others has been questioned for some years by critical writers, not least because it ignores the many managerial activities performed by non‐managers both in and outside the workplace. This argument suggests that the development of the ‘special’ status of managers is a construction which requires explanation. Accepting this, three broad types of explanation are reviewed in the paper: technical, elite and political approaches. Notwithstanding these explanations, in recent years the logic – although not necessarily the actuality – of organizational change programmes, and especially of the concept of empowerment, has been suggestive of the ‘demise’ of management, most especially middle management. This demise has implied an erosion of the distinction between managers and managed. Now, organizational members are told that ‘we are all managers’, and the three approaches have various ways of explaining this, which are reviewed. Critics may reply that ‘we always were’, thus welcoming a more democratic notion of management, but this paper argues that such a reply reflects an inadequate, and potentially oppressive, understanding of management

Management Education A Polemic

This paper is a polemic against the mainstream of management education. It is argued that this mainstream is managerialist in character and ignores critical management research. In replicating the notion of management as a set of morally and politically neutral techniques, management education re-enforces the commonsense technicism of many management students. The paper explores some of the problems and paradoxes of managerialism and technicism in management education, considers how these relate to current quality initiatives within higher education and, finally, points to some of the political implications of the issues raised.

What are business schools for? On silence and voice in management education

There are widespread reports of poor working conditions, especially in developing countries. If these are commercially necessary and if business schools exist to enable effective management, why are they not taught in such schools? This article argues that the reason is that business schools are not primarily concerned with producing effective managers but withsocializing and legitimating managers. Critical manage ment education needs to give voice to concerns about management practice, which presents pedagogical problems to which some solutions are suggested.

Organizing Studies: Publications, Politics and Polemic

This paper explores the relationship between European and North American publication in the organization studies field by means of a political analysis of the constitution of centres and margins. This analysis is rooted in the historical development of business schools and their search for academic status which, in turn, is refracted through the globalization of business schools and the emergence of ranking systems for journals and business schools. The consequences of these developments are critically assessed in terms of their tendency to be exclusionary and conservative to the detriment of intellectual innovation within organization studies.

Too Much, Too Little and Too Often: A Critique of du Gay's Analysis of Enterprise

In recent years, organizational and political debates have accorded a privileged position to enterprise as holding the promise for both corporate and individual development. In several publications, Paul du Gay has articulated a persuasive analysis and critique of the enterprise discourse; he and a number of collaborators have analysed the various managerial discourses and techniques through which employees are reimagined as entrepreneurs, and organizations are to move from dysfunctional bureaucracies to models of excellence. Whilst we share du Gays critical position towards enterprise and the Foucauldian tradition upon which he draws, we feel that his analysis suffers from several flaws which we articulate around three themes. Firstly, we argue that du Gays analysis claims too much for enterprise, and relies on a flawed dualism between enterprise and bureaucracy; secondly, we feel that his analysis is over-deterministic and makes too little space for resistance and alternative discourses to enterprise; finally, we suggest that du Gay has presented the same arguments too often and that his work is implicated in the constitution of the enterprise discourse as an accomplished fact within the academic community.

Bringing Secrecy into the Open: Towards a Theorization of the Social Processes of Organizational Secrecy

This paper brings into focus the concept of organizational secrecy, defined as the ongoing formal and informal social processes of intentional concealment of information from actors by actors in organizations. It is argued that existing literature on the topic is fragmented and predominantly focused on informational rather than social aspects of secrecy. The paper distinguishes between formal and informal secrecy and theorizes the social processes of these in terms of identity and control. It is proposed that organizational secrecy be added to the analytical repertoire of organization studies.

The Temporality of Power and the Power of Temporality: Imaginary Future Selves in Professional Service Firms

This paper extends existing understandings of power, resistance and subjectivity in professional service organizations by developing an analysis of how these relate to temporality. Drawing in particular on Hoy’s reading of the Foucauldian account of temporality, we conceive of disciplinary power regimes and resistance as inherently future-oriented, or, to use Ybema’s term, postalgic. In moving beyond the extant research focus on self-disciplined and/or counter-resistant professional selves, we draw attention to the imaginary future self as an employee response to disciplinary power. In contrast to the future orientation of disciplinary power, this response envisages the future as a discontinuous break with the present which we examine as a form of resistant postalgia. Building on in-depth qualitative data gathered at two professional service firms, we explain how imaginary future selves can shed new light on the interplay of power, resistance and subjectivity.

Friendship and Organizational Analysis Toward a Research Agenda

Recent developments in organizational analysis have done much to fill out the dry, textbook image of rational, formal structures. Yet on one of the commonest kinds of organizational experience—friendship—organizational analysis has remained virtually silent. By contrast, within the wider social science literature some writers have recently accorded greater importance to friendship as a social phenomenon. This article suggests that organizational analysis would be well served by doing the same. To this end, the article explores what this might entail and identifies some of the issues that it could illuminate, both empirically and theoretically. In particular, it presents friendship as a folk concept, which recognizes the situational variability of its form, experience, and connectedness with other forms of relationship. In doing so, the article will help define and open up a focus for future research into friendship and organizational analysis.