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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.

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.

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.

With the shift from an industrial to a knowledge economy, organization theorists continue to address the role and nature of control in organizational structure. The continuing utility of bureaucracy in new organizational forms was a focal point for this discussion. Research on this shift contributes to the ongoing debate on the role of ethics in bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic organizations. This paper suggested that the work of the artist Joseph Cornell provides a visual representation of the dimensions of this debate. First, the paper introduced Cornell to the reader. Next, the paper reviewed the research on bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic organizations with a focus on ethics, control, and enchantment in organizations. To provide visual reflections of the literature, this paper embedded examples of Cornell’s works throughout the discussion. Cornell’s art not only provides representations of these organizational forms, but also demonstrates how conflicts of an artist capture the development of thought within this area of organizational analysis.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the issues involved in managerial control and managerial identity in relation to the idea of a post‐bureaucratic organization. In addition it introduces the papers in this special issue.

The paper identifies the increasing complexity of issues of managerial control and managerial identity that arise from the idea of a post‐bureaucratic organization and post‐bureaucratic working practices, such as flex‐work and project management.

The paper suggests that the form and nature of managerial control and managerial identity are constantly evolving and in a state of flux as a consequence of processes of (de)bureaucratization and (re)bureaucratization.

The paper raises important questions about the nature of management in post‐bureaucratic work environments and challenges the behaviourist competencies approach to developing managers.

This paper aims to contribute to critical management studies (CMS) by developing an empirically grounded understanding of how post‐bureaucratic control operates implicitly, by seeping into the very identities of individual employees.

One longitudinal case study of multidisciplinary teamwork in a large insurance company was conducted during a five‐year period, beginning in the late 1990s.

Evidence from the case study shows how human resource management (HRM) techniques established among employees a desire to be recognised as a trustworthy member, on the one hand, and a constant fear of being unseen, on the other. This drove employees to continuously take initiatives that placed them in a self‐regulating limelight.

The study uses a single case study, which limits the scope of the findings

The paper provides interesting clues as to how post‐bureaucratic control is driven not only by the risk of being “caught misbehavin'”, as CMS primarily has it, but also by the risk of being unseen and by the desire to be recognised.

Modern bureaucracies are under reconstruction, bureaucracy being no longer “modern”; they are becoming “post” bureaucratic. Defining the post‐bureaucratic organization as a hybrid form provides insight into the intrinsic difficulties involved in the refurbishment of large complex organizations. The purpose of this paper is to examine these difficulties empirically.

The paper describes the case of an Australian public sector agency, subject to “corporatization” – a metamorphosis from a strictly public sector outlook to one that was imputedly more commercial. It focuses on the transition from personnel management to strategic HRM in the HR function.

A series of difficulties affected these changes: difficulties in inventing a new identity; differences in perception of that identity; organizational philosophy towards strategic HRM; unsuitability of extent networks; and identity conflicts. Two factors emerge as the core explanation for the difficulties encountered: the “stickiness of identity” and the difficulties associated with network development.

The paper outlines the difficulties experienced in the putative “refurbishment” of a large public sector agency as it made its way to “corporatization”.

Seeks to examine changes in the environment in which public policy and public management operate and the claim that bureaucracy has been replaced by post‐bureaucracy as a result of these changes.

The paper proposes reanimated public governance as a concept that occupies the space between public administration and transformed public governance (including reinvented government and new public management (NPM)). Rather than accepting the existence of post‐bureaucracy, per se, the paper argues that there has been a process of extending bureaucracy that cuts across public and non‐public boundaries rather than the development of post‐bureaucracy per se.

In examining the claims for post‐bureaucracy, The paper is witnessing a discourse and practice of continuity rather than difference. The need for economies of scale and scope, standardisation and the existence of indivisibilities in public services suggest that public sector reforms and proposals for new governance models establish extended or flexible forms of bureaucracy rather than post‐bureaucratic organisational forms. Attempts to introduce ICT‐based services and the need for regulatory agencies to oversee the contracts with private and non‐profit service providers reinforce these findings.

The arguments in this paper are based on marshalling the literature and debates surrounding public sector reform to advance a central thesis. It draws on real world examples but does not draw on direct empirical evidence. There is scope for internationally comparative case‐studies of various public service functions and discourses and practices in different countries.

Policy makers and managers should treat the clarion call of post‐bureaucracy as a way of liberating public services from a lack of creativity, innovation and accountability with healthy scepticism. In particular, the view that public sector reforms through post‐bureaucratic re‐organisation will lead to efficiencies is one to be challenged. Reforms in any service driven organisation are not zero‐cost and any implied operational cost saving should be considered against increased transaction costs.

There have been heroic claims made for post‐bureaucracy in many organisations enabled by developments associated with the concepts of information society and knowledge society. By locating public sector reforms under the rubric of “reanimated public governance” a deeper investigation of the implications for the discourses and practices associated with public sector reform is advanced.