Issues in Society Series

Organization and Innovation

by David Knights and Darren McCabe

Published 1 January 2003

What do recent management fads and fashions have in common?
What are the implications and limitations of the prescriptions on offer for people's working lives?

Managerial fads and fashions, guru panaceas and organisational innovations have proliferated over the last 20 years. Drawing on case studies from the UK manufacturing and financial service sectors, this book argues that the emergence and popularity of a new range of management innovations reflects and facilitates the reproduction of a neo-liberal economics that has dominated Western politics for over almost a quarter of a century.

The book contends that current management thinking around 'new' forms of work organization is immersed in a contemporary version of the American Dream. Referring to empirical research, the authors identify numerous difficulties confronting the implementation of this discourse, including:

Collective and individual forms of resistance
Unintended consequences and contradictory tensions around the notions of autonomy versus control
Individualism versus collectivism
Insecurity versus commitment
Quality versus quantity.

Organization and Innovation concludes that the contemporary American Dream offers only 'one' dream of a better tomorrow and offers a powerful argument that we should seek other dreams that question rather than simply legitimise current inequalities.