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This study aims to address how and why do formal key account management (KAM) programmes hinder effective KAM management, and how can the problems of formalization in KAM be overcome. Recent empirical studies have reported an unexpected negative relationship between KAM formalization and performance.

An 18-month (340 days) ethnographic investigation was undertaken in the UK-based subsidiary of a major US sports goods manufacturer. This ethnographic evidence was triangulated with 113 in-depth interviews.

This study identifies how and why managerial reflexivity allows a more effectively combining of formal and post-bureaucratic KAM practices. While formal KAM programmes provide a means to initiate, implement and control KAM, they have an unintended consequence of increasing organizational bureaucracy, which may in the long-run hinder the KAM effectiveness. Heightened reflexivity, including “wayfinding”, is identified as a means to overcome many of these challenges, allowing for reflexively combining formal with post-bureaucratic KAM practices.

The thesis of this paper starts a new line of reflexive KAM research, which draws theoretical influences from the post-bureaucratic turn in management studies.

This study seeks to increase KAM implementation success rates and long-term effectiveness of KAM by conceptualizing the new possibilities offered by reflexive KAM. This study demonstrates how reflexive skills (conceptualized as “KAM wayfinding”) can be deployed during KAM implementation and for its continual improvement. Further, the study identifies how KAM programmes can be used to train organizational learning regarding KAM. Furthermore, this study identifies how and why post-bureaucratic KAM can offer additional benefits after an organization has learned key KAM capabilities.

A new line of enquiry is identified: the reflexive-turn in KAM. This theoretical position allows us to identify existing weakness in the extant KAM literature, and to show a practical means to improve the effectiveness of KAM. This concerns, in particular, the importance of managerial reflexivity and KAM wayfinding as a means to balance the strengths and weaknesses of formal and post-bureaucratic KAM.

According to an extensive and growing literature, we are in the twilight of bureaucracy. The labels applied to the supposed new organizational form include: post‐bureaucratic; post‐modern; post‐hierarchical; and the virtual organisation. The purpose of this paper is to consider the various claims for “epochal” change by evaluating the supporting and contrary evidence.

The paper draws on evidence on the reform of the UK Civil Service over the last few decades to show the intensification of bureaucracy.

The paper takes issue with the “epochalist” visions of sudden transformation which have underpinned much of the comment on post‐bureaucracy, arguing that the concept of post‐bureaucracy is analytically blind to the diversity and complexity of contemporary organizational change.

Locating the debate on post‐bureaucracy in the broader political economy of Neo‐Conservatism reveals an authoritarian dimension which has been absent from most commentaries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the imputed “fall” and subsequent “reinvention” of the BBC during the 1990s, relating a managerialist “politics of forgetting” to the broader ideological narratives of “the post bureaucratic turn”.

The paper draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, combining case study analysis with long‐term historical perspectives on organisational change.

The paper shows the ways in which public sector professionals contested “post bureaucratic” pressures for marketisation and organisational disaggregation.

The paper shows the ways in which large‐scale technological, regulatory and organisational change was mediated by cultural continuities and recurrent “surges” of managerial control.

This article develops a framework for understanding autonomy and control in post‐bureaucratic organizations. It reviews two dominant discourses on post‐bureaucracy – the managerial discourse and the critical management discourse. Whereas the one pictures post‐bureaucracy as an emancipating regime based on the personalities and social networks of individuals, the other pictures it as a totalitarian regime, which subordinates individuals’ thoughts, emotions and identities to its instrumental schemes. Both discourses are criticized for being grounded in a view of post‐bureaucracy as a “total” organization. An alternative conceptualization is developed, which shows that post‐bureaucracy neither emancipates individuals from control, nor captures them in totalitarian control. A distinguishing characteristic of post‐bureaucracy is that it displaces the responsibility for setting limits between professional and non‐professional concerns from the organization to the individual. Via a case study it is shown how this implies a specific form of control that does not restrict individual freedom, but uses it as its prime vehicle.

To research how the chief executive officers (CEO) and vice presidents (VPs) and Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System (SRHS) developed into a highly collaborative enterprise in managing change on a daily basis.

A combination of research methods, both qualitative and quantitative, was used in gathering data. Archival records – meeting minutes, memos, internal and external diagnostic surveys, local and regional newspapers – enabled collecting data over an extended period, in addition to direct observation (April 2003‐May 2004) and interviews: retrospective and concurrent. Content analysis – a qualitative method employed through grounded theory (analytic induction) – generated the themes from the archival and interview data.

Quantitative data suggest for the years May 2000‐December 2003 a change in behavior toward more participation occurred at SRHS, on an organizational level and in the relations between the CEO and VPs; also during this period the hospital's patient satisfaction scores improved significantly from 50 to low‐to‐mid 90 percent. The collaborative work practices the CEO and VPs had assumed was not the norm for the VPs working at SRHS back in March 2000, under the former CEO's administration. Research shows by May 2004 the current CEO and VPs' social interaction had evolved into practices of reciprocal power relations and knowledge sharing that was more decentralized, lateral, team‐based, and participative than a strict bureaucracy would tolerate.

Findings from this study illustrates three principles leaders can use in establishing stakeholder power relations to guide practices that aid organizations in managing change on a day‐to‐day basis.

To track changes in management paradigms from the bureaucratic to the post‐bureaucratic to the learning organization model, highlighting core differentiating features of each paradigm as well as necessary ingredients for successful evolution.

The article takes the form of a literature review and critical analysis.

The complexity of the learning organization necessitates gradual evolution. The successful integration of the characteristics of post‐bureaucratic firms – empowerment, teamwork, trust, communication, commitment, and flexibility – coupled with an emergent systems perspective can provide improved understanding of how the learning organization disciplines may actually materialize.

Linking two traditionally encapsulated areas of research namely post‐bureaucratic organizations and learning organizations, highlighting an interesting roadmap for successful convergence of post‐bureaucratic organizations towards learning organizations.

This aim of the paper is to explore regenerative work supporting employees' personal development and, thus, sustainable coping capacity in the post‐bureaucratic transition.

A comprehensive literature review was carried out to build a theoretical framework on regenerative work. Two case studies with an interpretative, action research approach provide empirical examples. Qualitative semi‐structured interviews and participative observations were carried out.

The case studies indicate that the regenerative potential of work is threatened by the unbalanced nature of the post‐bureaucratic transition. Confined bureaucratic work is changing into more complex and boundaryless post‐bureaucratic work. However, organizational practices are still founded on the bureaucratic mentality emphasizing impersonality, pre‐planning, and rigid top‐down use of power. Post‐bureaucratic work realities exist in bureaucratic work organizations; the clashes between the two mentalities lead to human resources consumption rather than their regeneration.

As the paper is founded on only two case studies, further research should be carried out on the inconsistencies between the nature of work and organizational practices regulating work.

The paper outlines alternative post‐bureaucratic approaches to organizing; post‐bureaucratic organizational values and structures are depicted, employees' autonomy and interconnectedness are discussed as the elements of a post‐bureaucratic organization.

It is shown how the post‐bureaucratic transition proceeds in an unbalanced manner such that daily work activities are more influenced by the post‐bureaucratic approach while the solutions for organizing still rely on the bureaucratic mentality. The proposed theoretical model on regenerative work outlines the kind of work experiences leading to employees' sustainable well‐being.

Hiring management consultants as external support in organizational change is in the literature described as a socially and emotionally stressful activity for managers. Management consultants need to deal with these threatening aspects of their service. This paper aims to explore the subject positions management consultants offer managers in their self‐presentations on the World Wide Web.

The paper studies the self‐presentations on the www of four large management consultancies–Accenture, BCG, KPMG, and McKinsey & Co. Using a Foucault inspired discourse analytical framework, we analyze the subject positions offered to client‐managers in these self‐presentations and how these subject positions relate to the management regimes of bureaucracy and post‐bureaucracy.

The study identifies two different discursive practices–one normalizing practice, constructing the use of management consultants as a natural aspect of management and a second practice rationalizing the use of management consultants, providing arguments aimed at reducing the pressures on the manager. The normalizing discourse which draws on a post‐bureaucratic regime was found in Accenture and KPMG. The rationalizing discourse was found in McKinsey and BCG and draws on the bureaucratic regime.

This work highlights how consultants deal with the pressures their presence puts on managers. It illustrates how managerial truth regimes contribute to shaping the conditions for management consulting and the consultant‐client relationship.