Gideon Kunda

The Local Selves of Global Workers: The Social Construction of National Identity in the Face of Organizational Globalization

This article seeks to further understanding of the significance and impact of national identity in the context of organizational globalization. Arguing against the tendency of organizational researchers to pose this identity as an objective, cognitive essence, the article claims that national identity constitutes a symbolic resource that is actively and creatively constructed by organizational members to serve social struggles which are triggered by globalization. It offers support to this claim with ethnographic field data generated from an Israeli high-tech corporation undergoing a merger with an American competitor. The implications of the article concern the need for researchers to take into account the space for choice that organizational members have in defining national identity and the interrelationships between the enactment of this identity and processes of resistance to globalization.

Reflections on becoming an ethnographer

Purpose – In this paper the author aims to examine his own life and work in order to understand how an ethnographic sensibility emerges and develops.Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines the personal and institutional context in which his book Engineering Culture: Commitment and Control in a High Tech Corporation was researched and written, from formative moments in his life that led him to the study, through the process of finding, entering and exploring his field, to the acts of interpretation and writing that culminated in the book.Findings – The paper illustrates the institutional pressures that constrain conceptual and methodological freedom and undermine the logic of inquiry, and suggests ways of circumventing them. It also illustrates how interpretation is rooted in symbolic resources developed over a lifetime that are far beyond a grounding in social theory, and shows the intricate connections between question formulation, data collection, interpretation and writing that transcend the s...

Itinerant Professionals: Technical Contractors in a Knowledge Economy

After World War II, bureaucratic employment relations, rooted in the ethos and institutions of the New Deal, dominated cultures of work for nearly three decades.1 The bureaucratic bargain was simple: As long as firms remained profitable and the economy strong, employers would provide employees with secure jobs in return for effort and loyalty. Since the mid-1980s, three developments have progressively undermined the bargain. First, in the name of efficiency and global competitiveness, firms in the economy’s core have repeatedly laid off large numbers of employees independent of economic cycles. Moreover, for the first time in history, layoffs have targeted significant numbers of managers and professionals (Heckscher 1995; Osterman 1996; Cappelli 1999). Second, job tenure for men has become shorter and labor markets have become more volatile (Bureau of Labor Statistics 1998). The third and perhaps most radical break with the culture of bureaucratic employment has been the expansion of the contingent labor force (Barker and Christensen 1998).