Managing Human Resources by Exploiting and Exploring Peoples Potentials (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 37)

ISBN: 1781905053

Author: Mikael Holmqvist

Condition: New

Product Description Organizations are under constant pressure to be ambidextrous. They must be able to exploit existing processes, routines and systems at the same time as they must engage in exploration through playfulness, relaxed control and experimentation. We know little about the human costs and challenges of ambidexterity. In this volume we explore the impact of ambidextrous organizations on individuals' working lives. The authors analyze how employees are required to follow routines at the same time as they are expected to break these routines. They also explore how the individual dilemmas of ambidexterity play out in the lives of precarious work, online communities, management consultants, workers in the automotive industry, and consumers of pop-management books in the US. The result is a rich and fascinating picture of individuals whose working lives are made up of a continued tension between the quest to be exploitative and explorative. Review This volume of Research in the Sociology of Organizations offers nine critical essays interrogating human resources approaches to management, both firm- and self-initiated. Their focus on 'exploitation and exploration' contributes to an exciting revival of sociological interest in the political economy of work and productive play. Several essays focus on the ideal of an ambidextrous individual who is both capable of following rules and knowing when to break them to an employer's or organization's advantage. Others look at self-development and self-organization habits as ways of creating an exploitable resource for future employers, as well as forms of control employers exert over workers. The populations they consider are mostly European, but include both manual and intellectual forms of work. One essay shows how by looking at Wikipedia we can better understand how a degree of 'principles and guidelines of coordination' can be harnessed without succumbing to bureaucratization or other organizational control pathologies. More than one essay responds to James March's oft-cited 1991 article, 'Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning,' including one that argues a Marxist view for a political understanding of March's terms. The contributors are European organizational social scientists and professors of business and communication. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. --Book News Inc. Portland, OR About the Author Mikael Holmqvist - Stockholm University School of Business, SwedenAndre Spicer - Warwick Business School, UK