Employing Bureaucracy

Deftly blending social and business history with economic analysis, Employing Bureaucracy shows how the American workplace shifted from a market-oriented system to a bureaucratic one over the course of the 20th century. Jacoby explains how an unstable, haphazard employment relationship evolved into one that was more enduring, equitable, and career-oriented. This revised edition presents a new analysis of recent efforts to re-establish a market orientation in the workplace. This book is a definitive history of the human resource management profession in the United States, showing its diverse roots in engineering, welfare work, and vocational guidance. It explores the recurring tension between the new professional order and traditional line management. Using a variety of sources, Jacoby analyzes the complex relations between personnel managers, labor unions, and government from the late 19th century to the present. Employing Bureaucracy: *analyzes the origins of the modern employment relationship's distinctive features; *combines a variety of disciplinary perspectives, from business and labor history to economics, sociology, and management; *shows the transformation of the American workplace over the course of the 20th century, from market-oriented to bureaucratic to recent efforts to move back to a market orientation; and *provides the single-best and most sophisticated history of the origins and development of the modern "HR" profession. For historians, social scientists, and practitioners, this book is a readable and rewarding study. With the future of work currently under debate, it is critical that the historical process that produced the modern American workplace is understood. Read the Workforce Management Magazine review about Employing Bureaucracy at www.erlbaum.com.

Deftly blending social and business history with economic analysis, Employing Bureaucracy shows how the American workplace shifted from a market-oriented system to a bureaucratic one over the course of the 20th century. Jacoby explains how an unstable, haphazard employment relationship evolved into one that was more enduring, equitable, and career-oriented. This revised edition presents a new analysis of recent efforts to re-establish a market orientation in the workplace. This book is a definitive history of the human resource management profession in the United States, showing its diverse roots in engineering, welfare work, and vocational guidance. It explores the recurring tension between the new professional order and traditional line management. Using a variety of sources, Jacoby analyzes the complex relations between personnel managers, labor unions, and government from the late 19th century to the present. Employing Bureaucracy: *analyzes the origins of the modern employment relationship's distinctive features; *combines a variety of disciplinary perspectives, from business and labor history to economics, sociology, and management; *shows the transformation of the American workplace over the course of the 20th century, from market-oriented to bureaucratic to recent efforts to move back to a market orientation; and *provides the single-best and most sophisticated history of the origins and development of the modern "HR" profession. For historians, social scientists, and practitioners, this book is a readable and rewarding study. With the future of work currently under debate, it is critical that the historical process that produced the modern American workplace is understood. Read the Workforce Management Magazine review about Employing Bureaucracy at www.erlbaum.com.

The present revised edition is an attempt to understand how industrial labor was transformed and to identify the historical process by which good jobs were created. It is, therefore, an account of the bureaucratization of employment, since many of the features that define good jobs; stability, internal promotion, and rule-bound procedures are characteristic of bureaucratic organizations. The book also examines the upheaval in the labor markets of the 1980's and 1990's, which has caused a reduction in the number of good jobs. Chapter 9 in this revised edition carries the narrative forward from 1945 to the present time, examining both the high-point of the bureaucratic system in the 1950's and 1960's--the golden years--and its erosion since then.

Deftly blending social and business history with economic analysis, Employing Bureaucracy shows how the American workplace shifted from a market-oriented system to a bureaucratic one over the course of the 20th century. Jacoby explains how an unstable, haphazard employment relationship evolved into one that was more enduring, equitable, and career-oriented. This revised edition presents a new analysis of recent efforts to re-establish a market orientation in the workplace. This book is a definitive history of the human resource management profession in the United States, showing its diverse roots in engineering, welfare work, and vocational guidance. It explores the recurring tension between the new professional order and traditional line management. Using a variety of sources, Jacoby analyzes the complex relations between personnel managers, labor unions, and government from the late 19th century to the present. Employing Bureaucracy: *analyzes the origins of the modern employment relationship's distinctive features; *combines a variety of disciplinary perspectives, from business and labor history to economics, sociology, and management; *shows the transformation of the American workplace over the course of the 20th century, from market-oriented to bureaucratic to recent efforts to move back to a market orientation; and *provides the single-best and most sophisticated history of the origins and development of the modern "HR" profession. For historians, social scientists, and practitioners, this book is a readable and rewarding study. With the future of work currently under debate, it is critical that the historical process that produced the modern American workplace is understood. Read the Workforce Management Magazine review about Employing Bureaucracy at www.erlbaum.com.

Original and based on unique empirical research in the areas of organization theory and organizational behaviour, focusing on two major companies, this work makes an invaluable contribution to the literature on bureaucracy and innovation.

The call to "reinvent government"—to reform the government bureaucracy of the United States—resonates as loudly from elected officials as from the public. Examining the political and economic forces that have shaped the American civil service system from its beginnings in 1883 through today, the authors of this volume explain why, despite attempts at an overhaul, significant change in the bureaucracy remains a formidable challenge.

What is a bureaucracy, from where does it come, and how does it develop? Japanese have long described their nation as a “kingdom of bureaucrats", but until now, no historian has fully explained the historical origins of the mammoth Japanese executive state. In this ground-breaking study, translated into English for the first time, Yuichiro Shimizu traces the rise of the modern Japanese bureaucracy from the Meiji Restoration through the early 20th century. He reveals how the making of the bureaucracy was none other than the making of Japanese modernity itself. Through careful political analysis and vivid human narratives, he tells the dynamic story of how personal ambition, new educational institutions, and state bureaucratic structures interacted to make a modern political system premised on recruiting talent, not status or lineage. Bringing cutting-edge Japanese scholarship to a global audience, The Origins of the Modern Japanese Bureaucracy is not only a reconceptualization of modern Japanese political history but an account of how the ideal of “pursuing one's own calling” became the foundational principle of the modern nation-state.