Abstract
Not having read the first edition of this book, I immediately engaged with its laudable aims: highlighting how management is too important to be left to the gurus and wanting to stimulate alternative approaches to management theory and practice. It was the practice piece that particularly struck a chord with me. As I write this review, a number of issues covered in the media raise questions about the practice of management – conflict in the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), hefty fine for British Petroleum (BP) following the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster and alleged tax avoidance in multinational companies such as Starbucks and Google.
The introduction highlights a key paradox with contemporary management in what Alvesson and Willmott refer to as post-bureaucratic organizations: management would have us believe that we are no longer in an era where workers (that includes knowledge workers) are being exploited by management, but rather that workers are now considered ‘co-constructors of value’. Perhaps this debate could have been extended – as managers abdicate their responsibilities, do workers as ‘co-constructors of value’ then become ‘co-recipients of risks’?
As someone who teaches Management and Human Resource Management (HRM), I was particularly interested in the chapter on Organization Theory, HRM and Leadership. Alvesson and Willmott are critical of the concept of HRM, particularly the way that HRM seems to have been elevated above Personnel Management and Industrial Relations and the way that Human Resource (HR) professionals now position themselves as co-creators of strategy. They go on to critique two specific aspects of HRM. First, the lack of scrutiny of the assumptions that inform HRM research and practice. Second, the notion of HRM as ideology – legitimizing managerial interests – parallels here then with Karen Legge’s (2005) seminal work.
While there is a reference to managers’ obsession with ‘best practice’ – highlighting inconsistencies in when managers choose to utilize ‘best practice’ – it would have been nice to see more of an extended critique of this. HR professionals are often quick to draw on ‘best practice’ as a way of demonstrating their value.
There are some very useful suggestions for future research in the field of HRM that will help broaden our understanding of the experience of workers in the contemporary workplace around the globe – thus moving away from research agendas often framed through the lens of more privileged (elite) workers.
The final chapter I suggest should form key reading in the education of all HR professionals, especially those working in senior roles who perhaps are most at risk of ‘going native’. By this, I mean agreeing with and promoting managerialist rhetoric, without thinking through the wider consequences. This final chapter stresses the importance of reflexivity ‘… capacity to reflect critically’ in order to ‘… transform the “quality” of this “external reality”’ (p. 218). Alvesson and Willmott invite us to question whether the call for more, or ‘better’ management, is a rational response to the failures of management. In restating Grey’s (2003) argument that management should be considered part of the problem, provides us with start point for reflexivity. Their observation that ‘the wider dissemination of critical thinking is vital for championing and facilitating progressive forms of change’ and that ‘… it is vital that tensions between critical thinking and the pressure to deliver results in an imperfect corporate world are acknowledged’ (p. 246) serves as a reminder of the complexities of management. This then highlights the importance of those responsible for selecting and developing managers (i.e. strategic HR professionals) engaging in a critical dialogue around the nature of management and perhaps more importantly the way that managers are identified and elevated into these roles.