Trust And Power On The Shop Floor

Annotation "In his book, Verkerk investigates the shop floor processes of modern factories. Two ethnographical case studies are presented from the perspective of a factory manager. He shows that high-trust and high-power relations between management and employees are the basic conditions for responsible, accountable, and successful organisations. In a philosophical argument, he develops an ethics of responsibility combining the ideas of humanity, trust and power on the shop floor, and the normative development of organisational structures."--BOOK JACKET. Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Managing the Shopfloor: Subjectivity, Masculinity and Workplace Culture (Degruyter Studies in Organization).

Professionals function in what can be called “social practices.” Norms in the practice set professionals’ responsibilities and rights and classify what is seen as morally proper and improper. Tensions arise when norms emerge that are not coherent with the nature of the practice. For example, when a hospital is assessed on the basis of economic criteria only, staff will feel uncomfortable and find difficulty in functioning properly in that practice. The Normative Nature of Social Practices and Ethics in Professional Environments is an essential research book that helps professionals in a variety of practices understand how normativity in their practice either helps or hampers them to function well and align with what they see as their personal and professional responsibility. Additionally, it explains the normative practical model/approach and how it can be applied to a series of concrete practices, as well as the role of innovative and disruptive technologies in these practices. Featuring a broad range of topics such as governance theory, sustainable development, and engineering, this book is ideally designed for managers, philosophers, sociologists, professionals, academicians, and researchers.

"A monumental and timely contribution to scholarship on society and environments. The handbook makes it easy and compelling for anyone to learn about that scholarship in its full manifestations and as represented by some of the most highly respected researchers and thinkers in the English-speaking world. It is wide-reaching in scope and far-reaching in its implications for public and private action, a definite must for serious researchers and their libraries." - Bonnie J McCay, Rutgers University "This is the desert island book for anyone interested in the relationship between society and the environment. The editors have assembled a masterful collection of contributions on every conceivable dimension of environmental thinking in the social sciences and humanities. No library should be without it!′ - Robyn Eckersley, University of Melbourne The SAGE Handbook of Environment and Society focuses on the interactions between people, societies and economies, and the state of nature and the environment. Editorially integrated but written from multi-disciplinary perspectives, it is organised in seven sections: Environmental thought: past and present Valuing the environment Knowledges and knowing Political economy of environmental change Environmental technologies Redesigning natures Institutions and policies for influencing the environment Key themes include: locations where the environment-society relation is most acute: where, for example, there are few natural resources or where industrialization is unregulated; the discussion of these issues at different scales: local, regional, national, and global; the cost of damage to resources; and the relation between principal actors in the environment-society nexus. Aimed at an international audience of academics, research students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers, The SAGE Handbook of Environment and Society presents readers in social science and natural science with a manual of the past, present and future of environment-society links.

Dynamic technological developments in industrial production, the rise of new social movements in national politics, and great changes in the international political economy have left a deep imprint on the Federal Republic. A compelling explanation of West Germany's success in maintaining economic prosperity and political stability under such challenging conditions has continued to elude observers. Under the editorship of Peter J. Katzenstein, thirteen distinguished scholars from both sides of the Atlantic here provide an original interpretation of the political economy of the Bonn Republic during the forty years since its founding, and explore in particular its extraordinary capacity for accommodating change. Whereas studies in political economy have typically focused on one level of political action—either the shop floor, or national politics, or the international system—this innovative account analyzes the interaction of change at all three levels, bringing together case studies drawn from six manufacturing and service sectors.

Improving Manufacturing Performance in South Africa

In many companies, two or three executives jointly hold the responsibilities at the top-from the charismatic CEO who relies on the operational expertise of a COO, to co-CEOs who trust in inter-personal bonds to achieve professional results. Their collaboration is essential if they are to address the dilemmas of the top job and the demands of today's corporate governance. Sharing Executive Power examines the behaviour of such duos, trios and small teams, what roles their members play and how their professional and inter-personal relationships bind their work together. It answers some critical questions regarding when and how such power sharing units form and break up, how they perform and why they endure. Understanding their dynamics helps improve the design and composition of corporate power structures. The book is essential reading for academics, graduates, MBAs, and executives interested in enhancing teamwork and cooperation at the top.