John Storey

Graeme Salaman

Innovation is increasingly identified as the critical factor in ensuring economic competitiveness. Departments of state and quasi-governmental organizations in many countries including, Austria, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden and the UK, have issued reports and calls to action; but implementation will continue to be problematic unless the points made in this book are taken into account. Drawing on 350 in-depth interviews with senior managers, this book presents an original theory about the characteristics of managers in “good innovative organizations” and “poor innovative organizations”. It pays close attention to the attitudes, understandings, assumptions and interpretations of managers, who are often the ultimate decision-makers when it comes to innovation. The text is supported by real-life, internationally-known cases such as Hewlett-Packard, Zeneca and the BBC, as well as voluntary sector cases such as Oxfam. It is also enriched by substantial and highly revealing quotations from senior managers themselves.

Insights into Making Innovation Happen

Managers of Innovation

This book is concerned with the relationship between a man's work and his leisure time, in its broadest sense. At the opposite extreme to the 'instrumental' attitude, where the worker keeps his work and leisure time completely separate, is the close involvement in work and the correspondingly close relationship between working and non-working identities characteristic of 'occupational communities'. This 1974 book attempts to define the concept. After a survey of the theoretical background, Dr. Salaman presents a model of what an occupational community is and the reasons for its existence. The following chapters consist of empirical discussions on some specific examples. There is a detailed comparison between Cambridge railwaymen and architects. Dr Salaman draws the conclusion that occupational communities may be of two sorts - one based on the occupation as a whole, the other on a particular local workplace - and this distinction has considerable implications for the sociology of work.

An Exploration of Work/Leisure Relationships

Community and Occupation

Craig R. Littler

The Design, Allocation & Control of Jobs

Class at Work

This book offers a thoroughly researched and accessibly written account of the John Lewis Partnership. It describes what the JLP is, how it works, and what other businesses can learn from it. The US/UK model of the firm, with its emphasis on shareholder value and its openness to the market in the buying and selling of businesses, is prone to a number of problematic consequences for employees, suppliers, and sometimes share-holders. The JLP represents a contrast to this model - one that has implications beyond the small niche of mutually-owned firms. The JLP has lessons for organizations that are unlikely to move towards the Partnership's distinctive shared ownership. This book identifies these lessons. The key questions addressed include: how does the JLP work in practice? What is the link between co-ownership, the JLP employment model, and the performance of the businesses? What is the role of management in the success of John Lewis and Waitrose? Are mutuality, co-ownership and business performance at odds? What is the significance of democracy within the JLP? And probably most significantly: what are the implications, for policy-makers and for economic agents of the JLP? This book is based on detailed knowledge of the JLP and its constituent business gathered by the authors over a fifteen year period. Their conclusion: that the JLP is more complex, even more impressive, and more interesting than its admirers realise.

Lessons from the John Lewis Partnership

A Better Way of Doing Business?

Lessons from The John Lewis Partnership

In the midst of the most severe recession for 80 years there is little need to argue that organizations are beset by dilemmas and paradoxes. Confidence in prevailing business models and in the underlying assumptions underpinning business decisions over many decades has now been shaken. But it is not enough to rail against arrogance and greed. Within their own (flawed) assumptions bankers and corporate leaders were acting rationally. A major reason for the failure to anticipate and warn is that observers of organizations usually tend to view organizations in terms similar to those employed by the people who run them: as rational, sensible and objective, whereas, in fact, they are usually confused and confusing, paradoxical and contradictory entities. Paradox is at the heart of how organizations work (or don’t work) yet the phenomenon has been strangely unstudied. In an age of crisis and uncertainty, dilemmas and paradoxes are especially evident and prevalent. The fascination and the promise of paradox is that there is also a sense that there is a hidden truth entwined within the opposites. This we contend is a challenge for leaders. The ultimate responsibility of leadership is to make sense of these and to handle them in a competent manner. This demands a new mode of leadership. The management of dilemma and paradox it is contended, the essence of leadership today. Paradoxical forces provide a dynamism which, although often experienced as potentially threatening, discomforting and negative can also be exciting, promising and positive. "The assumption that organizations are rational entities is challenged every day in the work environment by a rich reality of asymmetries between conflicting forces, complexity, hidden intentions and paradoxes. Anyone wanting to understand the real forces that govern organizations should read this book. A must read for modern leaders who have the intellectual honesty to lead organisations with open eyes and not with the over simplifications and clichés of the past"--Giovanni Ghisetti, Director Business Transformation, Coca Cola Enterprises Europe "Storey and Salaman’s description of the paradoxes which characterise leadership today is hauntingly accurate. Their intelligent optimism that those dilemmas can be met is as encouraging as it is challenging for those of us who have to do just that. Having read the insights in this book I now understand how their business advice was always so pertinent".--Andy Street, Managing Director of John Lewis

Exploiting paradox for strategic leadership

Managerial Dilemmas

Decision Making for Business gathers crucial contributions to our understanding of decision making and assembles them to form a coherent and sustained analysis of the key factors that influence the process. The selected articles are stimulating, provocative and analytical, resulting in a critical, comprehensive and innovative analysis of decision making.

Graeme Salaman

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