Manufacturing the Employee: Management Knowledge from the 19th to 21st Centuries - Hardcover

Jacques, Roy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803979150 ISBN 13: 9780803979154

Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1995

Synopsis

Contemporary thinking about management is still frequently presented as a set of universal, eternal verities. In this fascinating book Roy Jacques presents a discursive history of industrial work relationships in the United States which powerfully demonstrates that they are not.

A central concern is to show that current `common-sense′ in management forms an historically and culturally specific way of thinking about work and society which is often inappropriate for `managing for the twenty-first century′. The author is equally interested in revealing the cultural basis for American management ideas, currently exported round the world as an objective science, disconnected from its cultural and historical roots.

Roy Jacques considers: the Federalist world of the U S (c 1800-1870) and the traces of 19th century `pre-management′ notions continuing in 20th century management and industrial discourse; the emergence and development of industrial organization and big business; the profound remapping of the boundaries of social life which occurred with the creation of jobs and wages; and the evolving construction of the employee as increasingly a disciplinary subject of psychological, personnel and general management knowledge. He also looks at several major current management and organizational topics such as: motivation, leadership and power in organizations; productivity and efficiency; work and the family; ideas about Total Quality Management, Business Process Re-engineering, `knowledge work′ and so on.

About this title

About the Author

Roy Jacques is an Assistant Professor in the Organizational Psychology doctoral programme at the California School of Professional Psychology.

Edition details

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803979150
• ISBN 13: 9780803979154
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240