1st Edition

Anthropology of Organizations

Edited By Susan Wright Copyright 1994
    232 Pages
    by Routledge

    232 Pages
    by Routledge

    The 1980s and 1990s have been a time of change for organizations, with a preoccupation for changing `organizational culture', a concept attributed to anthropology. These changes have been accompanied by questions about different styles of organizing. In both public and private sector organizations and in the first and third worlds, there is now a concern to understand how organizational change can be achieved, how indigenous practices can be incorporated to maximum effect, and how opportunities can be improved for disadvantaged groups, particularly women.
    The Anthropology of Organizations questions `organizational culture' as a tool of management and presents and analyses the latest anthropological work on the management of organizations and their development, demonstrating the use of recent theory and examining the practical problems which anthropology can help to solve.

    1 Culture in anthropology and organizational studies Part I Indigenous management Introduction 2 Indigenous management and the management of indigenous knowledge 3 ‘Owning’ without owners, managing with few managers: lessons from Third World irrigators 4 Institution building: examining the fit between bureaucracies and indigenous systems Part II Gender and organizational change Introduction 5 Play of power: women, men and equality initiatives in a trade union 6 Office affairs 7 The gendered terrains of paternalism 8 Culture, gender and organizational change in British welfare benefits services Part III Clients and empowerment Introduction 9 Community care as de-institutionalization? Continuity and change in the transition from hospital to community-based care 10 Disempowerment and marginalization of clients in divorce court cases 11 Idioms of bureaucracy and informality in a local Housing Aid Office

    Biography

    Susan Wright is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex.