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Accounting has an ever-increasing significance in contemporary society. Indeed, some argue that its practices are fundamental to the development and functioning of modern capitalist societies. We can see accounting everywhere: in organizations where budgeting, investing, costing, and performance appraisal rely on accounting practices; in financial and other audits; in corporate scandals and financial reporting and regulation; in corporate governance, risk management, and accountability, and in the corresponding growth and influence of the accounting profession. Accounting, too, is an important part of the curriculum and research of business and management schools, the fastest growing sector in higher education. This growth is largely a phenomenon of the last fifty years or so. Prior to that, accounting was seen mainly as a mundane, technical, bookkeeping exercise (and some still share that naive view). The growth in accounting has demanded a corresponding engagement by scholars to examine and highlight the important behavioural, organizational, institutional, and social dimensions of accounting. Pioneering work by accounting researchers and social scientists more generally has persuasively demonstrated to a wider social science, professional, management, and policy audience how many aspects of life are indeed constituted, to an important extent, through the calculative practices of accounting. Anthony Hopwood, to whom this books is dedicated, has been a leading figure in this endeavour, which has effectively defined accounting as a distinctive field of research in the social sciences. The book brings together the work of leading international accounting academics and social scientists, and demonstrates the scope, vitality, and insights of contemporary scholarship in and on accounting and auditing.

This book focuses on the transition faced by business organizations and their stakeholders as they move from protected markets to open competition, and it explores how these changes can be facilitated by outside interveners/agents. Centering on four case studies — AT&T, Lucent, Electricité de France, and the Italian State Railways — the book analyses the approach to intervention, the problems created by existing systems of stakeholder dialogue, and the prospects for change. It draws two fundamental lessons. Firstly, that intervention in these situations must be broad and involving — a ‘full engagement’ approach — in order to achieve changes in relations and identities among a range of players. The book explores the key elements and practical techniques of this approach. Secondly, that the issues ultimately go beyond improving union-management relations or organizational structures; even in the best cases, the players have been unable to reach stable agreements in the face of continuing pressures for change. A deep transformation of the system of stakeholder relations is required — the creation of a system of ‘post-industrial relations’. The book includes discussion of managerial problems and intervention strategies in an ever more responsive and flexible economy, and also the implications for democracy in the work-place and the future of union representation. The book is valuable for consultants, unionists, managers, and public policy makers, and accessible also to students and the interested public.

Why are there so many crises in the world? Is it true that the global system is today riskier and more dangerous than in past decades? Do we have any tools at our disposal to bring these problems under control, to reduce the global system’s proneness to instability? These are the tantalizing questions addressed in this book. Using a variety of demographic, economic, financial, social, and political indicators, the book demonstrates that the global system has indeed become an “architecture of collapse” subject to a variety of shocks. An analysis of the global financial crisis of 2008, the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and China, and the European sovereign debt crisis illustrates how the complexity and tight coupling of system components creates a situation of precarious stability and periodic disruption. This state of affairs can only be improved by enhancing the shock-absorbing components of the system, especially the capacity of states and governments to act, and by containing the shock-diffusing mechanisms, especially those related to phenomena such as trade imbalances, portfolio investment, cross-border banking, population ageing, and income and wealth inequality.

This book demonstrates the importance of the role of knowledge in firms and economies. The authors clarify the theoretical debates on the production and use of knowledge in organizations, and examine the challenges that face those managing knowledge at different levels of the organization. They develop the notion of ‘community’ within the context of the firm and explore the ways in which these communities learn and produce new knowledge, positing from this emphasis a challenging model of distributed governance of knowledge within and beyond firms. Using insights from academic disciplines including economics, science and technology studies, cognitive sciences, economic geography, and management science, the authors use analytical argument and empirical cases to develop a new theorization of knowledge formation and management, and in turn a new conception of the firm.

Leadership is still much discussed, studied, and sought after, even though we now live in supposedly more democratic times with flatter organizations and empowered employees. But how can we best understand leadership? Are leaders born or made? Do they have particular traits or are we all potential leaders? Do the requirements for leadership change over time or are there timeless patterns? Do traditional approaches help us to pick and develop leaders or are there alternative ways that advance our understanding? This book investigates the notion of leadership in a series of historical case studies and rich essay portraits of some of the most famous, and infamous, leaders (e.g. Florence Nightingale, Richard Branson, Horatio Nelson, Martin Luther King, Henry Ford, etc.). The scenarios are drawn from right across the spectrum to include business, politics, society, and the military. The first part of the book considers four sets of parallel cases where leadership appears to be a major explanation of success and failure. The second part takes the four critical issues arising from these parallel cases (identity, strategic vision, organizational tactics, and persuasive communication) and explores them in detail. One main reason we have such difficulty in explaining and enhancing leadership, the author argues, is because we often adopt perspectives and models that obscure rather than illuminate the issues involved. The reliance upon traditional scientific analysis has not provided the anticipated advances in our understanding because leadership is more fruitfully considered as an art, or more exactly an array of arts, rather than as a science.

Since the early 1980s there has been an explosion of auditing activity in the United Kingdom and North America. In addition to financial audits there are now medical audits, technology audits, value for money audits, environmental audits, quality audits, teaching audits, and many others. Why has this happened? What does it mean when a society invests so heavily in an industry of checking and when more and more individuals find themselves subject to formal scrutiny? This book argues that the rise of auditing has its roots in political demands for accountability and control. At the heart of a new administrative style, internal control systems have begun to play an important public role and individual and organizational performance has been increasingly formalized and made auditable. The author argues that the new demands and expectations of audits live uneasily with their operational capabilities. Not only is the manner in which they produce assurance and accountability open to question but also, by imposing their own values, audits often have unintended and dysfunctional consequences for the audited organization.

Personal authenticity was once a reference point from which critics and labour activists sought to challenge the domination of the corporation. Now it has entered into the parlance of managerial discourse. This book critically investigates the increasing popularity of personal authenticity in corporate ideology and practice. Rather than have workers adhere to depersonalising bureaucratic rules or homogenous cultural norms, many large corporations now invite employees to simply be themselves. Alternative lifestyles, consumption, ethic identity, sexuality, fun, and even dissent are now celebrated since employees are presumed to be more motivated if they can just be themselves. Does this freedom to express ones authenticity in the workplace finally herald the end of corporate control? To answer this question, this book places this concern with authenticity within a political framework and demonstrates how it might represent an even more insidious form of cultural domination. The book especially focuses on the way in which private and non-work selves are prospected and put to work in the firm. The ideas of Hardt and Negri and the Italian autonomist movement are used to show how common forms of association and co-operation outside of commodified work is the inspiration for personal authenticity. It is the vibrancy, energy, and creativity of this non-commodified stratum of social life that managerialism now aims to exploit. Each chapter explores how this is achieved and highlights the worker resistance that is provoked as a result. The book concludes by demonstrating how the discourse of freedom underlying the managerial version of authenticity harbours potential for a radical transformation of the contemporary corporate form.

This book provides a coherent overview of the most important theories and insights in the field of business ethics, together with a substantiated development of ethical norms and values with which organizations must comply. At the end of each chapter is a case study (e.g., Shell, KPN Telecom, IHC Caland, Herald of Free Enterprise disaster, etc.), ideal for graduate courses in business ethics and corporate social responsibility.

The book is a rich account and analysis of the John Lewis Partnership. The JLP is well-known, revered, and admired, enjoying an enviable reputation for commercial success and principled business practice. And yet, among the public, commentators, and government, it is not known well at all. This book offers a deeper, more analytical understanding, revealing the tensions and dilemmas that characterize even this most well-intentioned of organizations. The US/UK model of the firm, emphasizing shareholder value and openness to the market, is prone to a number of problematic consequences, for employees, suppliers, and sometimes shareholders. JLP represents a contrast to this model—one with implications beyond the small niche of mutually-owned firms. JLP has lessons for organizations that are unlikely to move towards the Partnership’s distinctive shared ownership; this book identifies these lessons. Key questions addressed include: how does JLP work in practice? What is the link between co-ownership, the JLP employment model, and the performance of the businesses? What is the role of management in the success of John Lewis and Waitrose? Are mutuality, co-ownership, and business performance at odds? What is the significance of democracy within JLP? And probably most significantly: what are the implications for policy-makers, managers, and economic agents of the JLP? This book is based on detailed knowledge of the JLP and its constituent business gathered by the authors over a fifteen-year period. They conclude that JLP is more complex, more impressive, and more interesting than its admirers realize.

This book explores the ways in which the word ‘network’ has been deployed in literature. In particular, it offers a commentary on how the idea of networks has been used to illustrate contemporary forms of socio-economic organisation (as with the idea of a ‘network society’ or a ‘network state’), broadly conceived to also include the political aspects of networks. The term ‘network’ has become a ubiquitous metaphor to describe too many aspects of contemporary life. In doing so, the book argues, the term has lost much of its analytical precision and has no clear conceptual underpinnings. This study brings some intellectual clarity to the discussion of networks by asking whether it is possible to construct a clearly demarcated idea of a network as a separable form of socio-economic coordination and governance mechanism with its own consistent logic. In doing this, the primary contrast is with hierarchies and markets as alternative and already well understood forms of socio-economic coordination each with their own distinctive logic. The book identifies two underlying programmatic issues: the question of whether there can be a particular logic to the network form of organisation, and whether there are any limits to networks. The book contends that if networks are to mean anything then they must not apply to everything, so this raises an obvious limit to their embrace. The questions thus become where and how to draw these limits. These are reviewed in the light of the concrete organisational forms that networks have taken in the contemporary period.

Geopolitical shifts, increasing demands for accountability, and growing competition have been driving the need for change within the transnational nongovernmental organization (TNGO) sector. Additionally, TNGOs have been embracing more transformative strategies aimed at the root causes, not just the symptoms, of societal problems. As the world has changed and TNGOs’ ambitions have expanded, the roles of TNGOs have begun to shift and their work has become more complex. To remain effective, legitimate, and relevant in the future necessitates organizational changes and investments in new capabilities. However, many organizations have been slow to adapt. As a result, for many TNGOs’ the rhetoric of sustainable impact and transformative change has far outpaced the reality of their limited abilities to deliver on their promises. This book frankly explores why this gap between rhetoric and reality exists and what TNGOs can do individually and collectively to close it. In short, TNGOs need to change the fundamental conditions under which they themselves operate by bringing their own “forms and norms” into better alignment with their contemporary ambitions and strategies. This book offers accessible future-oriented analyses and lessons-learned to assist readers in formulating and implementing organizational changes to adapt TNGOs for the future. The book draws upon a variety of disciplines and perspectives, including hundreds of interviews with TNGO leaders, firsthand involvement in major organizational change processes in leading TNGOs, and numerous workshops, training institutes, consultancies, and research projects.

How do firms cope with changing environments? Is flexibility really the solution? How can we measure a firm's flexibility? Can a more flexible firm be created? Based on an Igor Ansoff Award-winning study this book shows how flexibility has become the new strategic challenge for contemporary firms. Although traditional organizational forms have worked well in the relatively stable environments of the past, the globalization of markets, rapid technological change, shortening product life cycles, and increasing aggressiveness of competitors have radically altered the ground rules for competing in the 1990s and beyond. Increased competition forces firms to move more quickly and boldly than before, and to experiment in ways that do not conform to traditional administrative theory. This book offers a wealth of insights into the way firms can increase their flexibility. It is based on extensive interviews with practitioners and supported by many longitudinal case studies on flexibility improvement within large corporations. The book provides a strategic framework which explains what types of flexibility are effective under different organizational conditions and environmental characteristics. It also demonstrates an integrated method for diagnosing a firm's flexibility and for guiding the transition to greater flexibility and responsiveness.

In the 1980s and 1990s the governance witnessed a shift from the Weberian model of bureaucracy to the ‘new managerialism’ — a term used to describe the group of ideas imported from business and mainly brought into government by management consultants. Over the past fifteen years, the British, French, and Canadian governments have spent growing sums of money on consulting services, thus, policy makers inside the state have increasingly been exposed to the business management ideas that consultants bring into the public sector. There are major differences in the extent to which reformers in these countries accepted these ideas in bureaucratic reform. Accordingly, this is a book about policy change and variation. It shows that the reception given by states to managerialist ideas depends on the openness of policy-making institutions to outside expert knowledge and on the organization, development, and social recognition of management consultancy.

This book explains the legal structure of business firms as they operate in the world today. It describes the legal foundations or “matrix” from which all firms are built, managed, and governed. The legal theory of the firm presented here provides a counterweight to the currently dominant economic approaches to understanding firms. The book describes how business enterprises work, the laws governing them, and how they change over time in terms of their institutional purposes and values. Basic legal ideas emphasized in the book include the “real fictions” of firms, the role of constructed “entities,” and the recognition of firms as “persons.” Other foundations of the firm include agency law, organizational contracts, and private property—and an appreciation of how these legal elements fit together to compose the “business persons” of modern firms. An institutional legal theory of the firm is developed that embraces both the “bottom-up” perspective of business participants and the “top-down” rule-setting perspective of government. The book discusses the important feature of limited liability of both firms themselves and participants in them, as well as the shifting legal boundaries of firms in different circumstances. A typology of different kinds of firms is presented ranging from entrepreneurial one-person start-ups to complex corporate groups. New forms of hybrid social enterprises are also reviewed. Practical applications include recommendations about two contemporary problems: executive compensation and rights of political speech of business corporations highlighted in the landmark Citizens United case.

This book provides a series of inter-disciplinary perspectives on how capitalism and national capitalisms are changing in the twenty-first century. It aims to bring perspectives on how the international economic order is changing as a result of the rise of emerging economies countries, the increasing influence of regional organizations such as the EU, NAFTA etc. and new forms of private and public international regulation together with analyses of how states are adapting their economic policies and processes and what the consequences of these are for adaptations for different societies. In turn, it links these changes to how firms are developing new strategies for organizing global value chains and applying scientific knowledge to the commercialization of products. The book contextualizes these processes in a world where financial markets have become increasingly uncertain and crisis prone at the same time as demands from different social groups for new forms of corporate governance and corporate social responsibility are emerging. It draws on examples from Europe, North and Latin America as well as Asia in order to illustrate the complex ways in which different forms of national capitalism are adapting and changing their institutions. The book builds on earlier comparative accounts of how institutions, firms, and markets co-devolve to analyze current changes in these relationships and suggest likely developments in them, and in this way move the frontiers of research forward to a global and inter-disciplinary perspective on twenty-first century capitalism and capitalisms.

Organizations turn to multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs) to meet challenges they cannot handle alone. By tapping diverse stakeholders’ resources, MSPs develop the capability to address complex issues and problems, such as health care delivery, poverty, human rights, watershed management, education, sustainability, and innovation. This book provides a comprehensive understanding of MSPs, why they are needed, the challenges partners face in working together, and how to design them effectively. Through the process of collaboration partners combine their differing strengths, vantage points, and expertise to craft innovative responses to pressing societal concerns. The book offers valuable advice for leaders about how to design and scale up effective partnerships and how to address potential obstacles partners may face, such as dealing with the conflicts and power issues likely to arise as partners negotiate with each other. Drawing on three comprehensive cases and countless shorter examples from around the world, the book offers practical advice for organizations embarking on an MSP, as well as theoretical understanding of how partnerships function. Using an institutional theory lens, it explains how partnerships can effect change in institutional fields by reducing turbulence and negotiating a common set of norms and routines to govern partners’ future interactions within the field of concern. Topics covered include: the nature of working collaboratively, why partnerships are needed, types of partnerships, guidelines for partnership design, partnerships and field dynamics, how to deal with conflicts among partners, negotiating across power differences, partnerships for sustainability, collaborative governance, working across scale differences, and how partnerships transform fields.

Organizations performing non-routine, innovative, often knowledge-intensive tasks, for example, professional partnerships need a rather flat, collegial, and non-bureaucratic structure. This book examines cooperation among partners in a US corporate law firm and provides a grounded theory of collective action among rival peers, or collegiality. Members (partners and associates) are portrayed as independent entrepreneurs who build social niches in their organization and cultivate status competition among themselves. This behaviour allows them to fulfil their commitment to an extremely constraining partnership agreement and generates informal social mechanisms (bounded solidarity, lateral control, oligarchic regulation) that help a flat organization govern itself: maintain individual performance, even for tenured partners; capitalize knowledge and control quality; monitor and sanction opportunistic free-riding; solve the ‘too many chefs’ problem; balance the powers of rainmakers and schedulers; and integrate the firm in spite of many centrifugal forces. These mechanisms and the solutions they provide are examined using a broadly-conceived structural approach combining theory-driven network analysis, ethnography of task forces performing knowledge-intensive work, and analysis of management and internal politics in the firm. The author presents a theory of the collegial organization that generalizes its results to all kinds of partnerships.

After twenty-five years of preparation, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Geneva, is finally running its intensive scientific experiments into high-energy particle physics. These experiments, which have so captured the public's imagination, take the world of physics to a new energy level — the terascale — at which elementary particles are accelerated to one millionth of a percent of the speed of light and made to smash into each other with a combined energy of around fourteen trillion electron-volts. What new world opens up at the terascale? No one really knows, but the confident expectation is that radically new phenomena will come into view. The kind of Big Science being pursued at CERN, however, is becoming ever more uncertain and costly. Do the anticipated benefits justify the efforts and the costs? This book aims to give a broad organizational and strategic understanding of the nature of Big Science by analyzing one of the major experiments that uses the Large Hadron Collider, the ATLAS Collaboration. It examines such issues as: the flow of ‘interlaced’ knowledge between specialist teams; the intra- and inter-organizational dynamics of Big Science; the new knowledge capital being created for the workings of the experiment by individual researchers, suppliers, and e-science and ICTs; the leadership implications of a collaboration of nearly three thousand members; and the benefits for the wider societal setting. This book aims to examine how, in the face of high levels of uncertainty and risk, ambitious scientific aims can be achieved by complex organizational networks characterized by cultural diversity, informality, and trust — and where Big Science can head next.

It has long been an interest of researchers in economics, sociology, organization studies, and economic geography to understand how firms innovate. Most recently, this interest has begun to examine the micro-processes of work and organization that sustain social creativity, emphasizing the learning and knowing through action when social actors and technologies come together in ‘communities of practice’; everyday interactions of common purpose and mutual obligation. These communities are said to spark both incremental and radical innovation. This book examines the concept of communities of practice and its applications in different spatial, organizational, and creative settings. Chapters examine the development of the concept, the link between situated practice and different types of creative outcome, the interface between spatial and relational proximity, and the organizational demands of learning and knowing through communities of practice. More widely, the chapters examine the compatibility between markets, knowledge capitalism, and community; seemingly in conflict with each other, but discursively not.

If the defining goal of modern-day business can be isolated to just one item, it would be the search for competitive advantage. Competition is more intense than ever—technological innovation, consumer expectations, and government deregulation all combine to create more opportunities for new competitors to change the basic rules of the game. At the same time, most of the old reliable sources of competitive advantage are drying up: the strategies employed by GM, IBM, and AT&T to maintain their positions of dominance in the 1960s and 70s are now obsolete. The authors of this book argue that the last remaining source of truly sustainable competitive advantage lies in “organizational capabilities”: the unique ways each organization structures its work and motivates its people to achieve clearly articulated strategic objectives. The book argues that managers must understand the concepts and learn the skills involved in designing their organization to exploit their inherent strengths. All the reengineering, restructuring, and downsizing in the world will merely destabilize a company if the change doesn't address the fundamental patterns of performance—and if the change doesn't recognize the unique core competencies of that company. The authors draw upon specific cases to illustrate the design process in practice, and they provide a set of tools for using strategic organization design to gain competitive advantage. They present a design process, explore key decisions managers face, and list the guiding principles for incorporating the design function as a continuing and integral process.