Pushkala Prasad

Symbolic Processes in the Implementation of Technological Change: A Symbolic Interactionist Study of Work Computerization

This study examined the symbolic processes involved in the computerization of work in a health maintenance organization. Guided by symbolic interaction as a methodological framework, this inductive study used the methods of participant observation and in-depth interviewing for gathering data. It documents the multiple symbols associated with computerization in the organization and discusses local interpretations of those symbolic realities. It also explores the influence of this symbolism on the computerization process.

Critical Theory in the Management Classroom: Engaging Power, Ideology, and Praxis

In this article, the authors discuss the relevance of critical theory for management education. They begin by distinguishing critical theory from critical thinking and then highlight the main features of critical theory: social construction, power and ideology, totality, and praxis. The article then introduces the remaining articles that constitute the special segment on critical theory and management education.

Patterns of 'Mock Bureaucracy' in Mining Disasters: An Analysis of the Westray Coal Mine Explosion

Recent studies on the antecedents of industrial crises have tended to focus on disasters in high-risk systems involving complex technologies and tightly-knit processes. This paper examines events leading up to mining disasters which past research has characterized as being typically more foreseeable and avoidable. We discuss how many mining disasters are likely to be the result of ‘mock bureaucracies’ or situations characterized by overt violation of safety rules at the workplace. Using the Westray mine explosion as an illustrative case, the paper traces the development and institutionalization of a mock bureaucracy in an organization. Implications for further research and understanding of industrial crises are drawn.

The Ideology of Professionalism and Work Computerization: An Institutionalist Study of Technological Change

This paper examines the process of work computerization in a Health Maintenance Organization from an institutionalist perspective. It investigates how one element of the institutional environment, viz., the ideology of professionalism, became a powerful presence and continually influenced the process of work computerization in the organization. Using ethnographic methods of participant observation and in-depth interviews, the paper identifies the different local meanings of professionalism held by organizational members. It then examines how the ideology of professionalism became institutionalized within the organization through a combination of micro-and macro-level forces. The paper also looks at the consequences of this ideology for the computerization process. Mainly, it shows how the ideology of professionalism facilitated a climate of acceptance toward computers, escalated commitment to the technology and was partly responsible for the suppression of individual concerns regarding work computerization. Finally, implications for organization theory and research are drawn.

The Empire of Organizations and the Organization of Empires: Postcolonial Considerations on Theorizing Workplace Resistance

Recent management and organizational research has frequently noted the complex nature of workplace resistance, and commented upon the difficulties attending scholarly efforts to theorize resistance in organizations (Hodson, 1995; Jermier, Knights, & Nord, 1994a; Prasad & Prasad, 1998, 2000, 2001). The objective of this chapter is to explore the limits/margins of current management scholarship on workplace resistance by means of drawing upon certain aspects of resistance theory that have received attention in postcolonial theory and criticism. In so doing, the chapter seeks to direct scholarly focus toward new—and hitherto relatively unexplored— areas of complexity that may surround management researchers’ endeavors aimed at theorizing resistance in organizations. Toward that end, the chapter especially looks at two features often found in postcolonial theoretic meditations on resistance—(a) the notion of “unconscious resistance,” and (b) ideas of ambivalence, mimicry, hybridity, and so on and their significance for resistance—and examines the questions, issues, concerns, and dilemmas that they seem to raise for organizational scholars engaged in researching workplace resistance.

The Postcolonial Imagination

Despite some differences, the two metropolitan accounts—one by Winston Churchill, and the other by Hardt and Negri (2000)— which inaugurate this chapter, share something in common at a deep level: what the two metropolitan accounts may be seen to share is an absolute acceptance of the genocidal consequences of “civilization” as the price that “the wretched of the earth” must willingly pay for achieving Europe’s1 idea of the Kingdom of God on Earth. It is accounts of this nature, as well as relatively more subtle expressions of Europe’s will to power, that postcolonialism seeks to “dislodge,” rupture, and “set askew.” Accordingly, postcolonial theory’s engagement with colonialism and its continuing aftermath may be seen as representing an ethico-political project aimed at developing a uniquely radical and comprehensive critique of three monumental and mutually overlapping phenomena of great relevance to us today, namely, Western colonialism and neocolonialism, European modernity, and modern capitalism. As postcolonial critics have noted, these phenomena are overdetermined, with each serving as one of the conditions of possibility, as well as the effects, of the others. These phenomena are also extremely complex as a result of, among other things, their long and variegated history, wide spectrum of constitutive practices, and far-reaching implications whether cultural, political, economic, psychological, philosophical, epistemological, ideological, ethico-moral, aesthetic, or something else.

Working with the “smart” machine: computerization and the discourse of anthropomorphism in organizations ∗

Computers are routinely anthropomorphized in contemporary societies. Yet, few studies seriously examine the personification of computers at the workplace. This paper focuses on the discourse of anthropomorphism and work computerization. Based on the findings of an ethnographic study that looked at the computerization of administrative processes in a Health Maintenance Organization, the paper demonstrates how the discourse of anthropomorphism simultaneously reflects attitudes towards the computer, and structures relationships with the technology in the workplace. Three themes emerged within the discourse of anthropomorphism in the organization. They were (1) the intelligent & cerebral computer, (2) the human computer, and (3) the computer as superior life form. These themes also performed certain ideological functions by glamorizing the computer and thereby legitimizing it in the organization. At the same time, employees discursively resisted the ideology of the ‘smart’ machine by interpreting it in ways t...