Rhetoric and the Politics of Workplace Innovation: Struggling with empowerment and modernization

Beirne, M. (2013) Rhetoric and the Politics of Workplace Innovation: Struggling with empowerment and modernization. Edward Elgar: Cheltenham, UK. ISBN 9780857930002

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Abstract

Employee empowerment has been associated with workplace innovation for more than two decades. The achievements of empowering managers and liberated employees have been celebrated in a large and growing promotional literature. Yet the familiar images of responsive, flexible, autonomous and happy work groups that flow so easily from prescriptive sources seem to be at odds with workplace developments in the aftermath of the Great Recession. A disempowering logic is evident in some of the most prominent restructuring and modernising projects of recent years, with the off-shoring, rationalising and labour cheapening strategies of prominent employers prompting darker views from populations of workers around the world. This book provides a critical insight into the ongoing debates and controversies that surround employee empowerment, highlighting competing interests, exploring conflicting values, and illuminating some basic tensions between confident rhetoric and everyday realities. It also marks a contrast with established academic investigations in this area, combining sober analysis with advocacy to claim space for a research-based activism among coalitions of critical researchers and like-minded practitioners to find more genuinely enriching and empowering ways of managing and organizing work.

Item Type:Books
Additional Information:E-ISBN: 978 1 78254 834 8
Status:Published
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Beirne, Professor Martin
Authors: Beirne, M.
Subjects:H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management
College/School:College of Social Sciences > Adam Smith Business School > Management
Publisher:Edward Elgar
ISBN:9780857930002

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