Who are NHS middle managers? What do they do, and why and how do they do it’?This book explores the daily realities of working life for middle managers in the UK’s National Health Service during a time of radical change and disruption to the entire edifice of publicly-funded healthcare. It is an empirical critique of the movement towards a healthcare model based around HMO-type providers such as Kaiser Permanente and United Health. Although this model is well-known internationally,...

Critical approaches to leadership studies have sought to challenge the normative position of leadership as residing solely within the formal leader and have gone as far as to undermine the traditionally held assumption of leadership as a "real" phenomenon.The book offers a critical account of the nature of leadership and management in modern organizations. Specifically it examines the forces that affect the influence relationships between leaders and followers in public sector orga...

Until now, research has given us only a limited understanding of how managers actually make sense of and apply management knowledge; how networks of interaction amongst managers help or hinder processes of knowledge diffusion and the sharing of best practice; and how these processes are all influenced both by the organisations in which managers act and by the professional communities of practice they belong to. Managing Modern Healthcare fills these important gaps in our understan...

Written by a team of renowned experts in the field, Marketing: A Critical Textbook provides a unique introduction and overview of critical approaches to marketing.Ideally suited to advanced students of marketing, the book uses examples and ′real world′ case studies to illustrate and discuss major alternative and critical perspectives on the subject, enabling students to constructively question the conventional assumptions, concepts and models with which they are al...

This guide to the emerging language of creative industries field is a valuable resource for researchers and students alike. Concise, extensively referenced, and accessible, this this is an exceptionally useful reference work.- Gauti Sigthorsson***, Greenwich University***"There could be no better guides to the conceptual map of the creative industries than John Hartley and his colleagues, pioneers in the field. This book is a clear, comprehensive an...

Drawing together current thinking and research by leading writers in the field, this Reader will help you to understand and critically analyse key strategic aspects of educational leadership, including:- leadership perspectives and values- external and internal contexts- autonomy and accountability- partnership and collaboration- leading strategy and change.The book explores major challenges for educational leaders in managing the increasingl...

Organizing and Organizations is well loved by students and lecturers for its accessible, conversational tone and insightful real-life examples introducing the study of organizations and organizational behaviour. Fineman, Gabriel and Sims, eminent academics in the field, cover a wealth of key concepts, research and literature leaving students informed and engaged.The Fourth Edition builds on the strengths of previous editions, to provide you with a ...

This book argues that we are currently witnessing not merely a decline in the quality of social science research, but the proliferation of meaningless research, of no value to society, and modest value to its authors - apart from securing employment and promotion. The explosion of published outputs, at least in social science, creates a noisy, cluttered environment which makes meaningful research difficult, as different voices compete to capture the limelight even briefly. Older, more sign...

This book weaves together different strands of research in the area of lifelong learning that concentrates particularly on learning in alternative settings and ways, such experiential learning and informal and community learning. Drawing upon international research, the book examines how these strands of research can contribute to each other.The contributions to this book are based on material presented at a conference at the Centre for Research in Lifelong Learning, UK, and they f...

Just as newspapers do not, typically, engage with the ordinary experiences of people′s daily lives, so organizational studies has also tended largely to ignore the humdrum, everyday experiences of people working in organizations. However, ethnographic approaches provide in-depth and up-close understandings of how the ′everyday-ness′ of work is organized and how, in turn, work itself organizes people and the societies they inhabit.Organizational Ethnography brings contributions from...

"An excellent text for encouraging students to think critically about key public relations issues. Not only does it help students to develop a deeper appreciation of public relations, it also helps them to develop valuable learning skills."- Amanda Coady, The Hague University"A typically excellent piece of work from Jacquie L′Etang. Critical of every basic concept and provocative to all students. Ideal for second and final year undergraduates, plus ...

Understanding Organizations: Theories and Images introduces students to the key principles of understanding, designing, and managing organizations in an accessible and practical way. The book provides a conceptual toolkit containing the essential models, theories and concepts needed for working in, managing and evaluating organizations.Key Features:Insightful anecdotes discuss how for- and not-for profit organizations fit within our c...