Understanding Management

This book views management as a complex set of social and symbolic processes often characterized by considerable ambiguity and paradox. In particular, it develops the body of work concerned with building experienced-based, grounded description and understanding of the processes of management and managing.

The contributors explore: the dynamics, subtleties and complexities of managerial life; its informal as well as formalized features and practices; and the significance of the cultural and symbolic in organizations. There is a concern with meanings and the relationships between managerial talk, thought and action. The contributors also draw on both established social anthropological concepts - such as culture, myth, ritual,

Stephen Linstead is Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Wollongong University, Australia

Robert Grafton Small was formerly Lecturer in Organizational Behaviour and Marketing at the University of St Andrews

Paul Jeffcutt is Senior Lecturer in Organizational Analysis at the University of Hull

CONTRIBUTORS OUTSIDE WESTERN HEMISPHERE

Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges University of Lund

David Golding University of Humberside

Dan Gowler formerly University of Oxford

Karen Legge University of Lancaster

Hugo Letiche Erasmus University

Stephen Lloyd Smith Kingston University

Barry Wilkinson Cardiff Business School