Managing in Changing Times: A Guide for the Perplexed Manager

This management book brings together distinguished writers from diverse fields and their specialised perspectives on new ideas and the challenges they pose to the hegemony of neo-classical scientific management. It explores various possibilities for the future development of the understanding of management and organisation in the context of new economic conditions taking shape in both the East and the West. The focus on these makes this volume topical. It provides today’s managers with alternatives to conventional approaches to management.

One of the chapters, Perplexing Images: Relational Identities in Cultural Tempospaces is written by <link people slawomir-magala _blank>Slawomir Magala, Professor of cross-cultural management at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. This chapter deals with emergent individual and collective identities, which differ from the ones imposed by educational and institutional structures. Talking of rigidity: let us look at ourselves - academic communities managed by the assumed meritocracy of peer reviews and impact-rich publication lists. The main conclusions are that socialisation and acculturation patterns in recent professional and other networks are more flexible, contingent and unpredictable than ever before. From the point of predicting behaviour in different contexts they need a major overhaul. Moving through "tempo spaces" of contemporary social processes, individuals combine and recombine webs of relations ("society") and webs of meaning ("culture") contributing to the increasing complexity and heterogeneity of interaction flows and further multiplying socialization tracks. Finally, some polemical shots against du Gay's 'Organizing Identity" should help perplexed managers in navigating their careers - always mindful that an unexamined managerial career is not worth pursuing...

Managing in Changing Times: A Guide for the Perplexed Manager shows the manager that there are no easy, quick-fix, off the shelf solutions to complex problems. Solutions require thinking and action with multiple perspectives and require considerable effort to master. The book will be a handy reference material for students of management, managers and management pundits.

More Information
Homepage Book
<link people slawomir-magala _blank>Personal Homepage Slawomir Magala