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Title: The Social Construction of Management: Texts and Identities (Studies in Management, Organizations and Society) by Nancy Harding, Anthony P. Olmsted ISBN: 0-415-36942-8 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $95.00

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Average Customer Rating: 1 (1 review)

Rating: 1
Summary: Dumbed Down Sociology of Victimology
Comment: It seems there is a race going on in academia to be the first with the title of their book The Social Construction of ____fill in the blank. In this case the first author to lay claim on the title The Social Construction of Management is Nancy Harding a lecturer in management in Britain. The book purports to be an overview of how management is constructed in management textbooks. The book is an academic embarrassment. The wording is so dense and abstract, the content so rambling, and the grammar is so poor that the book is nearly incoherent and indecipherable. The book is filled with run-on sentences. Consider the following excerpt from page 3:

The decentring SIC DECENTERING of the subject has replaced humanism and the concept of the universal human being with the individual who is involved perpetually in processes of identity formation, and it is those processes which fascinate and inform much of our current theorizing and research practices. What this sentence means is anyone's guess.

Or consider the following sentence from page 1. If we are to work to bring about these changes, we first need to understand the deep processes of constitution and construction of management and managers, for as the metaphors of construction and constitution imply, the bedrock upon which the current oppressive identities are built serves to uphold them and make them impervious to change. Again, what does this mean?

Harding almost cannot write a paragraph without quoting or citing some French intellectual. Consider the following from page 12. It is also Derridean in its exploration in that it studies how the Grand Discourses identified by Foucault can be identified through close analysis of texts, but also in that it draws upon Derrida's later work to explore how languages which speak through us colonize us (Derrida 1998). Name dropping passes for thought or analysis.

If the average college student wrote such run-on sentences on their entrance or proficiency exams I dare say they would flunk. But such drivel passes for profundity in current academia. This is sad because a sociological treatment of management from a social constructionist viewpoint is long overdue. But this book isn't it.

Unsurprisingly, the paradigm employed in the book is victimilogy - the managerial oppression of labor, women, gender, classes, or any other politically correct group. Victimology passes for sociology. This is strange because social constructionism is an antidote to victimology. Social constructionism views all social structures, including management, as precarious, non-deterministic human creations. The class-consciousness of oppression is itself viewed as a social construction or ideology. But the social constructionism contained in The Social Construction of Management only reinforces a paranoid sense of powerlessness. For example, there is no discussion contained in the book of the power of unions or whistle blowers on management.

It is incredible that this book passed all the academic reviewers. There are many solid works that employ the social construction viewpoint. Kristin Bumiller, The Civil Rights Society - The Social Construction of Victims 1988 is a solid counterpoint work.

Harding's historical study - if we want to call it that - leads her to believe that after 1988 management books became Dumbed Down. After perusing The Social Construction of Management, all I can say is that I wholeheartedly agree with her on that point. This book is not recommended.