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ICTs in the Contemporary World seminar
Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mister Jones?
Stewart Clegg
Director, Innovative Collaborations Alliances & Networks (ICAN), School of Management, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Tuesday 9 October, 2007
3.00 - 5.00 p.m.
Fifth Floor, Tower One
Modern bureaucracies are under reconstruction. First, bureaucracy no longer being ‘modern’, those organizations formerly known as bureaucracies are seeking to become ‘post’ bureaucratic, and second, as the ecology of the dot.com boom indicates, newly founded organizations often strive not to be bureaucratic. What, precisely, constitutes the post-bureaucratic is less clear. Often, the post-bureaucratic is defined in terms of hybrid new organization forms.
In this presentation I shall argue that bureaucracy, far from being superseded, is becoming embroiled in complex processes of hybridization (du Gay 2000; Courpasson and Reed 2004). To understand post-bureaucracy today we need to see bureaucratic organizations through a dialectical lens, one that sees them as simultaneously decomposing and recomposing. Decomposition takes us to the world of supply chains and outsourcing, of which the phenomenon of call centres is probably the most pertinent example. Recomposition takes us into the world of new organizational forms. In the former, there are some very familiar politics of surveillance and control; in the latter there are more innovative developments that centre on the replacement of the central figure of the bureaucrat with that of the project leader, and the central life experience of the occupational career followed largely in one organization being replaced by that of project management. The politics of the project are increasingly the testing ground for elite reproduction.
Stewart Clegg was born in Bradford, England, He was Reader at Griffith University (1976-84), Professor at the University of New England (1985-9), Professor at the University of St. Andrews (1990-3), Foundation Professor at the University of Western Sydney, Macarthur, (1993-6) before moving to UTS. He has produced many books, including the Academy of Management award-winning Handbook of Organization Studies (1996, with Cynthia Hardy and Walter Nord), the Eight Volume Central Currents in Organization Studies (2003), Debating Organizations (2003), with Robert Westwood, and most recently, the acclaimed Managing and Organizations: an introduction to theory and practice (2005) with Tyrone Pitsis and Martin Kornberger. He directs ICAN Research at UTS. Current and future work include projects developing and delivering several International Encyclopaedia, Dictionaries and Handbooks in the organizations field, writing a Foundations of Organization Science textbook on Power in Organizations (with Nelson Phillips and David Courpasson), as well as a very strong stream of top-tier journal publishing and research grant activities. Outside work, he enjoys walking, sailing, cycling, rugby football, as well as cinema, music (particularly jazz), theatre and politics.
Please note places will be available on a first-come-first-serve basis - registration is not required.
For any further queries regarding this seminar or to request information about future events please contact Frances White, Research Coordinator
Page last updated 05 February 2009 ^
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