Search results

In part 1 of this paper we used the concept of the occupational role to illustrate some of the contributions social scientists make to the better understanding of the problems confronting members of work organisations. The problem we were particularly interested in commenting upon was the difficulties surrounding the inter and intra‐organisational mobility of labour, and we used an analysis of the structure of the occupational role to examine the processes which result in the inability and/or unwillingness of employees to change their job.

In 1970, a quite new approach was introduced to the debate about job satisfaction. Briefly, Enid Mumford, who had been conducting research in this field, suggested that,

Social scientists are able to make, and indeed have made, contributions to the ideas and techniques available to the practising manager. These contributions vary from social scientist to social scientist, depending upon their current theoretical interests and specialisms. They also vary with the nature of the practical problems concerned. For example, social scientists have contributed to the deeper understanding of such complex problems as labour turn‐over, absenteeism, wage and salary administration, job satisfaction, and so on. Naturally enough these contributions have generally been of most direct interest to those managers concerned with the preservation, improvement and economic utilisation of the organisation's human resources.

It is now over two years since the Engineering Employers' Federation published a research paper by Tom Lupton and Dan Gowler entitled Selecting a Wage Payment System. When first published, many managers considered it too difficult and complex to read, which in part might have been due to the authors' attempts to digest their procedure to its ‘bare bones’ (and consequently scant explanation is given). However, a major difficulty might well have been the radically different approach to selecting and evaluating payment systems and for many the ‘new’ dimensions presented for consideration, compared with the approach and factors traditionally considered by many firms.

This paper has arisen out of work done at the centre for business Research, Manchester Business School, in connection with the Wage Payment System Project under the direction of Professor Tom Lupton. In addition to all the members of the project team, the author would like to acknowledge, in particular, the extensive and invaluable help given so freely to him by Dan Gowler of Manchester Business School.

Diffusion channels, after all, consist of people. If there is no one in an organization with an understanding of mathematics, then information available only in mathematical terms is unavailable information. For this, among other reasons, many organizations employ mathematicians, as they employ physicists, chemists and engineers in a development role. Their effective use requires a good deal of organizational sophistication and tolerance of ambiguity.

Acts of evaluation—the assessment against implicit or explicit criteria of the value of individuals, objects, situations and outcomes—form the core of any high discretion job, where choices have to be made and decisions taken in a world of scarce resources. On a day‐by‐day basis informal evaluations pervade the job of any manager or administrator, but often this is supplemented by formal evaluation research studies—whether technology assessment, investment appraisal, the evaluation of markets and competitors, or in the case of personnel managers—the evaluation of training and development and of organisational change programmes generally. These formal studies include the evaluation studies conducted by “professional” evaluation researchers, such as those engaged in the evaluation of federally funded US social change programmes, those drawn from commercial consultancy agencies or occupying an internal consultant's role within a large company, and those applied social scientists, working in university departments and research institutions interested in issues concerning work system and organisational design . Many articles published in Personnel Review attest to this concern with evaluation research and, indeed, expertise in the conduct of formal evaluation studies has been identified as a major weapon in the armoury of personnel managers who adopt a “conformist innovator” approach to developing their power and influence.

In Part I of this article we examined the conventional strategies which have emerged to cope with crises in methods, utilisation and values in evaluation research and, using “deconstructive” analysis, we questioned their validity and effectiveness. In so doing we argued that the logic of deconstructing evaluation research would suggest that there is no ultimate solution to the crises.

The last five years have seen an enormous resurgence of academic and managerial interest in the concept of organisational culture — the taken‐for‐granted assumptions, beliefs, meanings and values enacted and shared by organisational members. While for some academics, interest has centred on the epistemological questions raised in the very conceptualisation of organisational culture, for many managers the interest has been more down to earth. A group or organisation's culture is interesting because it is felt to “make a difference” — in other words, that culture can influence behaviour and, consequently, a company's performance, that a “strong” culture is both symptomatic and generative of “excellence”. Hence several practical questions have been posed. Can the organisational cultures generated in the large companies of economically successful nation states (e.g. Japan and West Germany) be transferred to companies in less economically successful countries? Can organisational culture be managed “in search of excellence”? If it can be managed — and there is much academic controversy on this point — how is this to be done?

By means of a pilot study of the Chairmen’s Statements in the Annual Reports of some major companies, an exploration of the concept of organisational culture is made, as reflected in the corporate image expressed in the language used in the Chairmen’s statements.