An Actor's Approach to Management

An Actor's Approach to Management is a contribution to the development of methods and practices for handling the complexity and non-linearity of organisational processes. The basic premises are that the individual person possesses creativity and problem solving skills that can be used in a constructive way in his/her daily work-life and that organisations can become more competitive if the management is capable of acknowledging these abilities. The challenge for management is to encourage employees to be innovative and to take on responsibility for organisational concerns in their work. The book provides a conceptual framework for understanding the complexity and challenges for management. A number of cases are presented in order to illustrate how managers can practice the actor based method. The actor based approach presented in the book contrasts more mainstream management approaches that tend to focus on rather mechanical management techniques constructing the employees as reactive. The authors ambition is to encourage students to be present and reflective in their tackling of organisational situations.

Content:

Foreword
Introduction
Actors and reality: a conceptual framework for creative governance
An actor-based strategy of growth - becoming a nationwidebank
Constructing topos in inter-organisational relationships by means of management technologies
Actor-based management - the Tesco way
Colliding and disintegrated topoi as the result of intended integration
Managerial knowledge in a research-based medical company
Communication as means for deciding about realistic possibilities
Supplementary readings
About the authors