167 research outputs found
Exploring the novels of Zakes Mda
No full textLecture series presented by Associate Professor Gail Fincham, Department of English, University of Cape Town. This lecture series, focusing on the novels of famous South African author Zakes Mda, will be of interest to students of African literature and lovers of literature more generally
Expertise and innovation: information technology strategies in the financial services sector
No full textRobin Finchman ... [et al.].xii, 334 p. : ill. ; 25 cm
The Consultant-Client Relationship: Critical Perspectives on the Management of Organizational Change
No full textThe management consultancy industry is attracting more and more attention. The critical literature in particular has questioned how a non-codified body of knowledge like ‘consultancy' could become so apparently influential. The answering emphasis has been on the symbolic nature of consultant strategies and consultancy as a powerful system of persuasion. However, an emerging structural perspective has developed a rather different view, focusing on the limits of the industry discourse, and the constraints of a consultancy role defined largely by external forces. While it is useful to contrast the two perspectives - strategic and structural - they can also be viewed as complementary, and indeed a number of writers have been well aware both of the importance of consultant strategies and the context of consultancy work. In particular, they have explored the interaction between consultant and client, and called attention to factors like the countervailing power of client organizations and the uncertainty of the management task. The paper aims to contribute to this debate and draws on case studies of consultants' role in the management of organizational change - one of clients with considerable market power, and another of interdependency between consultant and client. The point stressed is that the consultancy process contains no 'necessary' structures (which may be implied by pairings such as the dependent client and indispensable consultant, or alternatively the resistant client and vulnerable consultant). Instead the consultant-client relationship is best regarded as part of an overarching managerial structure and a contingent exchange that assumes a variety of forms
The Agent's Agent: Power, Knowledge, and Uncertainty in Management Consultancy
No full textThe existence of so many metaphors for the management consultant (e.g., as performer, as witchdoctor) betokens the fundamental uncertainty of consultancy work. This article suggests that the application of agency theory to the client-consultant relationship may be a useful way of exploring and mapping this uncertainty. The image of consultants as the "agent's agent" (hopefully, not just another metaphor) pictures consultancy as defined by an extended agency role: The consultant is the agent of management, which is itself the agent of capital. In seeing consultancy in this way, as a kind of extrusion of managerial power, attention is drawn to its tenuous legitimacy in client firms, as well as to a kind of parity between consultancy and management. The article highlights two central aspects of uncertainty-power and knowledge-and explores these in research conducted in large-scale firms like the Big Five. The data confirm the importance of consultancy as "relational work" and the subordination of consultancy. Typical agency problems were mirrored in the limits of power tactics employed in client firms and the difficulties of transfer between consultant and local managerial knowledge
Narratives of success and failure in systems development
No full textThis paper explores a narrative perspective on 'success' and 'failure' in computer systems development. Organizational narratives can be seen as sense-making devices and as having a purposive aspect in the ways in which they evolve and change and influence behaviour. Narratives like success and failure in particular can be seen as persuasive rhetorics used in legitimizing particular courses of action. The narrative approach challenges more accepted notions, particularly rationalist views that see computer success/failure as outcomes brought about by simple causation. It also reveals the limitations of process models of IT success/failure, though these stress a more complex form of decision making around IT. In the paper, these issues are explored in contrasting projects in financial services firms. In two case studies, computer success and failure emerge not as discrete conditions, but as interacting themes employed by organizational members in response to the circumstances they confront. The corporate capacity to build success out of failure, and to distance the new from the old, discriminated between successful and unsuccessful projects
Knowledge work as occupational strategy: comparing IT and management consulting
No full textInformation technology and management consulting are two classic areas of knowledge work. Analysing them not in terms of 'essential traits' but occupational strategies addresses the problem of virtually all expert labour in the so-called information society being seen as 'knowledge work' of one sort or another
Intellectual capital accounting in the UK: A field study perspective
No full textAccounting for intellectual capital is increasingly recognised to be one of the most fascinating and potentially far-reaching challenges facing the accountancy profession. A growing literature, encompassing theoretical, empirical and practical elements, is currently emerging as researchers and practitioners endeavour to account for the hidden value that the intellectual capital concept denotes, and its pivotal role in the value creation process. To date, many of the most instructive advances have emanated from Scandinavia, reflecting these societies' sustained interest in necessity of accounting for the worth of employees, arguably the principal progenitor of intellectual capital accounting. Reports from a number of Australian, Canadian and European enquiries have added to the momentum of the intellectual capital accounting project, whilst affirming its links with contemporary debates about the information society, intangibles, knowledge management and business reporting. This paper reports and discusses some of the findings of a recently completed field study of intellectual capital accounting developments in the UK, funded by one of the professional accountancy bodies. Drawing on a series of semi-structured interviews, it documents how senior managers in six knowledge-based organisations view intellectual capital and related developments, their evolving attempts to respond to the challenges these present, and their progress in measuring and reporting their performance in these areas
Rethinking the dissemination of management fashion: accounting for 'intellectual capital' in UK case firms
No full textIn research on management knowledge, a tension often exists between perspectives that stress the effects of structural and institutional forces on the spread of new knowledge within managerial communities versus a more action-focused and organizationally embedded perspective on dissemination. This article contributes to the critique of dissemination theory by exploring the fashion for Intellectual Capital Accounting. ICA is a set of accounting models for managing knowledge-based assets and represents a poorly institutionalized variable type of fashion. The findings from case studies of ICA in six UK firms are at variance with the image of packages of knowledge being transferred into organizations. They confirm a process of dissemination that was much more a function of operational constraints and the level to which internal controls had developed; firms seemed to come to ideas via distinctive processes internally constructed around current problems and agendas, technical constraints, and the actions of a range of sponsoring groups
The consultants' offensive: reengineering - from fad to technique
No full textBusiness process reengineering has tended to be seen as a management fashion and the brainchild of the gurus who popularised it. Yet this overlooks the role of consultants in the spread of BPR and the system itself as a specific technique of change management. In fact BPR played a significant role in the push for new business in management consultancy and has become integral to an armoury of consultant tools. This article explores reengineering as a consultancy solution in the context of the external expert's distinctive claims on knowledge, and argues that this approach reveals new insights into both reengineering and the consultancy process
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