Andrew Sturdy
Biographic Data
| ID | 1102540 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andrew Sturdy |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andrew |
| FAMILY NAME | Sturdy |
| SIGNATURE | STURDY A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bristol |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7130-6088 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 221 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 33 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Beyond hollowing out
Expenditure on management consultants in public sector organizations is generally seen as contributing to a “hollowing out” of the state through the substitution of internal management capability. However, there is little systematic evidence for this view which also ignores how public sector managers may, themselves, drive consulting use. Looking at 125 English public hospitals over 6 years, we explore the relationship between the development and…
In praise of boredom at work
In the context of management and organisational literature, boredom has largely been seen in individual, psychological and negative terms, both for those experiencing it and for organisational outcomes. Through selective references to a wider sociological, historical and philosophical set of perspectives, we make a case here for refiguring boredom at work as a more relational and political notion. Rather than being seen as negative or trivial, we…
Management Education
Something like 15 percent of US university students currently major in business or management, and in Western Europe it is similar. Elsewhere, business and management education is expanding its scope. A Chinese government minister is said to have called for a million MBA (master of business administration) graduates to help fuel the national economy. Such penetration and expansion in higher education systems and other educational domains have pro…
Pandemic consulting. How private consultants leverage public crisis management
This forum article discusses how the Covid19-pandemic as a major public crisis is transforming the relationship between governments and management consultants, contributing to the deepening presence of consulting firms in policy-making and governance. It shows how the crisis has entrenched private advice in public policymaking as governments are spending millions of dollars on transnational professional service firms like McKinsey, KPMG, Deloitte…
The management consultancy effect
The growing use of external management consultancy services by public sector organizations has generated controversy. Some claim that users have become overreliant on, or even addicted to, this source of knowledge. However, our understanding of this phenomenon and the precise nature of its risks is underdeveloped. In this article, we address these concerns by focusing on whether using consulting services inflates future demand and on its conseque…
The Oxford Handbook of Management Ideas
Management ideas, and their associated applications, have become a prevalent feature of our working lives. While their focus is familiar, such as efficiency, motivation, and improvement, they range from specific notions such as activity-based costing, to broad movements like corporate social responsibility. This Handbook brings together some of the latest research from leading international scholars on how management ideas are produced, promoted,…
Oxford Handbook of Management Ideas
The impact of management consultants on public service efficiency
Public sector organisations often make use of management consultants in policy implementation, but we know little about the outcomes. The paper reports one of the first quantitative evaluations of the impact of consulting advice on efficiency of public sector organisations. We employ an extensive dataset covering English NHS acute care hospital trusts over a four-year period. Based on PCSEs estimations, the findings show a significantly positive …
Professionals with borders
Recent claims assert that the transnational has displaced the national in importance vis-à-vis the governance of international professional organizations. Crucial to such claims are assumptions about rising geographical mobilityandtheemergenceofcosmopolitanprofessionalswhoareincreasinglydetachedfromnationalprofessional regimes and contexts. We interrogate claims about the importance of transnational spaces through a crossnational study of global …
Promoting solutions and co-constructing problems – management consultancy and instrument constituencies
The concept of ‘instrument constituencies’ has recently emerged in policy research to reflect actors and practices focused primarily on articulating and promoting policy solutions. A central component of this is that, with such an emphasis on promotion, policy-maker decisions are subject to supply push rather than being demand-led. In particular, the ‘solutions’ of instrument constituencies come before, rather than after, the problems they are he…
Managers as consultants
The nature and extent of changes in management remain subject to debate, especially around the notion of post-bureaucracy. Most research concedes that there has been some change, but towards hybrid or neo-bureaucratic practices. However, the mechanisms through which these changes have occurred, and their precise forms and outcomes have received less attention. This article addresses these issues by focusing on an emerging group of managers that c…
Being yourself ’ in the electronic sweatshop
This article extends research about high-commitment management practices in tightly controlled work environments typified by the call centre. One promising research avenue suggests that normative management systems in such contexts, involving ‘fun’ exercises and culture programmes, etc., are more about distracting employee attention away from other, more taxing controls. This article develops such an approach by exploring the specific nature and …
Normative Control and Beyond in Contemporary Capitalism
A Chaos that Worked
Drawing on a major historical study of the organization of Bletchley Park, the site of British and Allied codebreaking during the Second World War, this article shows that it was characterized by ‘chaos’ in terms of a lack of clear formal structures. It is argued that the success of Bletchley Park can be explained in terms of various factors including shared social capital of some employees, organizational hybridity, centralization, knowledge-sha…
“Just be yourself!”
Purpose The paper seeks to explore the nature and employee experience of an emergent approach to managing employees which emphasises “being yourself” through the expression of fun, individuality and difference. Design/methodology/approach The paper utilises interviews and observations in a US‐owned call centre in Australia. Findings The management approach outlined is located within the emergence of market rationalism and associated claims of the…
Between Innovation and Legitimation— Boundaries and Knowledge Flow in Management Consultancy
Management consultancy is seen by many as a key agent in the adoption of new management ideas and practices in organizations. Two contrasting views are dominant—consultants as innovators, bringing new knowledge to their clients or as legitimating client knowledge. Those few studies which examine directly the flow of knowledge through consultancy in projects with clients favour the innovator view and highlight the important analytical and practica…
Historicising knowledge-intensive organizations
This article offers a historicized account of knowledge-intensive organizations.This is achieved by drawing on an archive and interview study of Bletchley Park, the British SecondWorldWar codebreaking centre.The outlines of the organization of Bletchley Park are presented. The case is then used to challenge the idea that knowledgeintensive organizations are a novel phenomenon. Second, it is used to explore the contingent nature of ascriptions of …
A Consulting Diaspora? Enterprising Selves as Agents of Enterprise
While the concept of enterprise identity has been extensively discussed, the active role of individuals in promoting enterprise is less understood. This article presents enterprising selves not simply as a self-disciplinary outcome of power, but as agential, whereby actors support regimes of enterprise, either actively or symbolically. In particular, it explores a neglected group—former management consultants working as change agents within organ…
Configuring expert knowledge
This study defines an aspect of consultant knowledge that provides credibility without claiming unrealistic status for a field like consulting. Our focus is the “sector knowledge” that consultants accumulate which derives from repeated assignments in the industrial sector in which the client organization resides. This has been under‐researched partly because of an emphasis on knowledge as technique and method. But knowledge configured around the …
Introduction to food, work and organization
It would be unfair to say that food has been completely ignored in the study of work and organizations. In perhaps one of the earliest studies on the topic, published in this very journal, Cook and Wyndham (1953) identified patterns of eating behaviour in a factory cafeteria exploring differences in what was eaten and the timing, location and social setting of eating. This appears to have been an isolated concern for it was not until 1985 that Mi…
Management Education
Something like 25 percent of US university students currently major in business or management, and in the UK, 30 percent of undergraduates study some management. Elsewhere, business and management education is expanding its scope. A Chinese government minister is said to have recently called for a million MBA (Master of Business Administration) graduates to help fuel the national economy. Such penetration and expansion in higher education systems…
Within and Beyond Communities of Practice
Situated learning theory offers a radical critique of cognitivist theories of learning, emphasizing the relational aspects of learning within communities of practice in contrast to the individualist assumptions of conventional theories. However, although many researchers have embraced the theoretical strength of situated learning theory, conceptual issues remain undeveloped in the literature. Roberts, for example, argues in this issue that the no…
Management as a (Self) Confidence Trick
Debates on the impact of management ideas tend to assume a mechanistic view of knowledge with its value or threat conceived of in terms of the extent to which it is directly applied in practice. This is echoed in policies and practices of management education in terms of an emphasis on practical relevance. Such debates typically neglect processual views of knowledge and, in particular, the existential and associated emotional aspects of ‘acquirin…
Guess who's coming to dinner? Structures and uses of liminality in strategic management consultancy
Organizational studies have recently drawn our attention to the importance of liminality in our working lives. This transitional timespace is characteristic of precarious or mobile employment such as temporary, project and consulting work especially. It is understood as a fluid and largely unstructured space where normal order is suspended and which is experienced as both unsettling and creative. This article critically explores liminality throug…
Knowing the Unknowable
Being yourself ’ in the electronic sweatshop
This article extends research about high-commitment management practices in tightly controlled work environments typified by the call centre. One promising research avenue suggests that normative management systems in such contexts, involving ‘fun’ exercises and culture programmes, etc., are more about distracting employee attention away from other, more taxing controls. This article develops such an approach by exploring the specific nature and …
Guess who's coming to dinner? Structures and uses of liminality in strategic management consultancy
Organizational studies have recently drawn our attention to the importance of liminality in our working lives. This transitional timespace is characteristic of precarious or mobile employment such as temporary, project and consulting work especially. It is understood as a fluid and largely unstructured space where normal order is suspended and which is experienced as both unsettling and creative. This article critically explores liminality throug…
The Emotions of Control
Processes of control remain central to managerial and critical theories of organization, but their inherently emotional form has been largely neglected. The experience and expression of emotions are more than simply objects and outcomes of control, they also shape its context, processes, and consequences. Drawing upon observations of interpersonal encounters between environmental regulatory inspectors and industrial managers in the U.K., an emoti…
The impact of management consultants on public service efficiency
Public sector organisations often make use of management consultants in policy implementation, but we know little about the outcomes. The paper reports one of the first quantitative evaluations of the impact of consulting advice on efficiency of public sector organisations. We employ an extensive dataset covering English NHS acute care hospital trusts over a four-year period. Based on PCSEs estimations, the findings show a significantly positive …
Beyond hollowing out
Expenditure on management consultants in public sector organizations is generally seen as contributing to a “hollowing out” of the state through the substitution of internal management capability. However, there is little systematic evidence for this view which also ignores how public sector managers may, themselves, drive consulting use. Looking at 125 English public hospitals over 6 years, we explore the relationship between the development and…
The management consultancy effect
The growing use of external management consultancy services by public sector organizations has generated controversy. Some claim that users have become overreliant on, or even addicted to, this source of knowledge. However, our understanding of this phenomenon and the precise nature of its risks is underdeveloped. In this article, we address these concerns by focusing on whether using consulting services inflates future demand and on its conseque…
Pandemic consulting. How private consultants leverage public crisis management
This forum article discusses how the Covid19-pandemic as a major public crisis is transforming the relationship between governments and management consultants, contributing to the deepening presence of consulting firms in policy-making and governance. It shows how the crisis has entrenched private advice in public policymaking as governments are spending millions of dollars on transnational professional service firms like McKinsey, KPMG, Deloitte…
Professionals with borders
Recent claims assert that the transnational has displaced the national in importance vis-à-vis the governance of international professional organizations. Crucial to such claims are assumptions about rising geographical mobilityandtheemergenceofcosmopolitanprofessionalswhoareincreasinglydetachedfromnationalprofessional regimes and contexts. We interrogate claims about the importance of transnational spaces through a crossnational study of global …
Promoting solutions and co-constructing problems – management consultancy and instrument constituencies
The concept of ‘instrument constituencies’ has recently emerged in policy research to reflect actors and practices focused primarily on articulating and promoting policy solutions. A central component of this is that, with such an emphasis on promotion, policy-maker decisions are subject to supply push rather than being demand-led. In particular, the ‘solutions’ of instrument constituencies come before, rather than after, the problems they are he…
Historicising knowledge-intensive organizations
This article offers a historicized account of knowledge-intensive organizations.This is achieved by drawing on an archive and interview study of Bletchley Park, the British SecondWorldWar codebreaking centre.The outlines of the organization of Bletchley Park are presented. The case is then used to challenge the idea that knowledgeintensive organizations are a novel phenomenon. Second, it is used to explore the contingent nature of ascriptions of …
Configuring expert knowledge
This study defines an aspect of consultant knowledge that provides credibility without claiming unrealistic status for a field like consulting. Our focus is the “sector knowledge” that consultants accumulate which derives from repeated assignments in the industrial sector in which the client organization resides. This has been under‐researched partly because of an emphasis on knowledge as technique and method. But knowledge configured around the …
Introduction to food, work and organization
It would be unfair to say that food has been completely ignored in the study of work and organizations. In perhaps one of the earliest studies on the topic, published in this very journal, Cook and Wyndham (1953) identified patterns of eating behaviour in a factory cafeteria exploring differences in what was eaten and the timing, location and social setting of eating. This appears to have been an isolated concern for it was not until 1985 that Mi…
A Chaos that Worked
Drawing on a major historical study of the organization of Bletchley Park, the site of British and Allied codebreaking during the Second World War, this article shows that it was characterized by ‘chaos’ in terms of a lack of clear formal structures. It is argued that the success of Bletchley Park can be explained in terms of various factors including shared social capital of some employees, organizational hybridity, centralization, knowledge-sha…
The Consultancy Process — An Insecure Business?
This paper examines the practices and perceptions of management consultants and their clients. The existing literature, which emphasizes managerial anxiety in accounting for the persistent use of consultants and, relatedly, the transience of management ideas is critically developed. It is argued that such accounts tend to be abstracted from the power relations of organizations and capitalism and to portray management as passive victims of confide…
Customer Care in a Consumer Society
This article proposes a focus for research by drawing on two emerging and largely distinct streams of literature-on service/emotion work and organizations in consumer society. In particular, experiences of `customer care' and related `corporate culture' initiatives are examined. Here, employee ambivalence is highlighted and is typically portrayed in terms of: protecting a privileged or `real' sense of self; (re-)asserting control; and/or as being…
The Emotions of Control
Processes of control remain central to managerial and critical theories of organization, but their inherently emotional form has been largely neglected. The experience and expression of emotions are more than simply objects and outcomes of control, they also shape its context, processes, and consequences. Drawing upon observations of interpersonal encounters between environmental regulatory inspectors and industrial managers in the U.K., an emoti…
Beyond Organizational Change
In this distinctive and valuable contribution to understanding organisational change, different levels and types of analysis are drawn on and connected. This is achieved through an exploration of the
Beyond Organizational Change
Introducing Strategic Discourse
This chapter marks a shift in our analysis of change towards the dynamics of organizations operating within and simultaneously shaping the contexts which we have described earlier. At a broad level, our approach is to examine how organizations and fields link together through the development of particular discourses and practices. As we described in Chapter 1, discourses constitute ways of understanding situations and thereby relate to modes of a…
Marketing Discourse
In the previous chapters we argued that financial services organizations and those who worked inside them gradually began to reconstitute themselves from the point of view of strategic discourse. As the old field of relations which had connected the state, financial institutions and consumers together began to fall apart, managers began to evolve new ways of looking at their world and intervening in it. Strategic discourse provided a framework an…
Knowing the Unknowable
Knowing the Unknowable? A Discussion of Methodological and Theoretical Issues in Emotion Research and Organizational Studies
Emotion is only just beginning to be incorporated into organizational studies and relatively little attention has been given to methodological and related theoretical issues. These present considerable challenges, not least because emotion is considered to be especially elusive-private, intangible, transient, unmanageable, and even `unknowable-and is a complex that spans disciplinary divides and attention. At the same time, these characteristics …
Beneath and Beyond Organizational Change Management
This essay introduces contributions to a special issue exploring alternative accounts of organizational change management (OCM). It begins with identifying why such alternatives are needed by pointing to core assumptions within OCM, including a practical and ontological prochange bias, managerialism and universalism. The alternatives to OCM are then framed in terms of the constructionism associated with various forms of discourse analysis. It is …
Within and Beyond Communities of Practice
Situated learning theory offers a radical critique of cognitivist theories of learning, emphasizing the relational aspects of learning within communities of practice in contrast to the individualist assumptions of conventional theories. However, although many researchers have embraced the theoretical strength of situated learning theory, conceptual issues remain undeveloped in the literature. Roberts, for example, argues in this issue that the no…
Management as a (Self) Confidence Trick
Debates on the impact of management ideas tend to assume a mechanistic view of knowledge with its value or threat conceived of in terms of the extent to which it is directly applied in practice. This is echoed in policies and practices of management education in terms of an emphasis on practical relevance. Such debates typically neglect processual views of knowledge and, in particular, the existential and associated emotional aspects of ‘acquirin…
Guess who's coming to dinner? Structures and uses of liminality in strategic management consultancy
Organizational studies have recently drawn our attention to the importance of liminality in our working lives. This transitional timespace is characteristic of precarious or mobile employment such as temporary, project and consulting work especially. It is understood as a fluid and largely unstructured space where normal order is suspended and which is experienced as both unsettling and creative. This article critically explores liminality throug…
Management Education
Something like 25 percent of US university students currently major in business or management, and in the UK, 30 percent of undergraduates study some management. Elsewhere, business and management education is expanding its scope. A Chinese government minister is said to have recently called for a million MBA (Master of Business Administration) graduates to help fuel the national economy. Such penetration and expansion in higher education systems…
A Consulting Diaspora? Enterprising Selves as Agents of Enterprise
While the concept of enterprise identity has been extensively discussed, the active role of individuals in promoting enterprise is less understood. This article presents enterprising selves not simply as a self-disciplinary outcome of power, but as agential, whereby actors support regimes of enterprise, either actively or symbolically. In particular, it explores a neglected group—former management consultants working as change agents within organ…
Configuring expert knowledge
This study defines an aspect of consultant knowledge that provides credibility without claiming unrealistic status for a field like consulting. Our focus is the “sector knowledge” that consultants accumulate which derives from repeated assignments in the industrial sector in which the client organization resides. This has been under‐researched partly because of an emphasis on knowledge as technique and method. But knowledge configured around the …
Introduction to food, work and organization
It would be unfair to say that food has been completely ignored in the study of work and organizations. In perhaps one of the earliest studies on the topic, published in this very journal, Cook and Wyndham (1953) identified patterns of eating behaviour in a factory cafeteria exploring differences in what was eaten and the timing, location and social setting of eating. This appears to have been an isolated concern for it was not until 1985 that Mi…
“Just be yourself!”
Purpose The paper seeks to explore the nature and employee experience of an emergent approach to managing employees which emphasises “being yourself” through the expression of fun, individuality and difference. Design/methodology/approach The paper utilises interviews and observations in a US‐owned call centre in Australia. Findings The management approach outlined is located within the emergence of market rationalism and associated claims of the…
Between Innovation and Legitimation— Boundaries and Knowledge Flow in Management Consultancy
Management consultancy is seen by many as a key agent in the adoption of new management ideas and practices in organizations. Two contrasting views are dominant—consultants as innovators, bringing new knowledge to their clients or as legitimating client knowledge. Those few studies which examine directly the flow of knowledge through consultancy in projects with clients favour the innovator view and highlight the important analytical and practica…
Historicising knowledge-intensive organizations
This article offers a historicized account of knowledge-intensive organizations.This is achieved by drawing on an archive and interview study of Bletchley Park, the British SecondWorldWar codebreaking centre.The outlines of the organization of Bletchley Park are presented. The case is then used to challenge the idea that knowledgeintensive organizations are a novel phenomenon. Second, it is used to explore the contingent nature of ascriptions of …
Normative Control and Beyond in Contemporary Capitalism
A Chaos that Worked
Drawing on a major historical study of the organization of Bletchley Park, the site of British and Allied codebreaking during the Second World War, this article shows that it was characterized by ‘chaos’ in terms of a lack of clear formal structures. It is argued that the success of Bletchley Park can be explained in terms of various factors including shared social capital of some employees, organizational hybridity, centralization, knowledge-sha…
Being yourself ’ in the electronic sweatshop
This article extends research about high-commitment management practices in tightly controlled work environments typified by the call centre. One promising research avenue suggests that normative management systems in such contexts, involving ‘fun’ exercises and culture programmes, etc., are more about distracting employee attention away from other, more taxing controls. This article develops such an approach by exploring the specific nature and …
Managers as consultants
The nature and extent of changes in management remain subject to debate, especially around the notion of post-bureaucracy. Most research concedes that there has been some change, but towards hybrid or neo-bureaucratic practices. However, the mechanisms through which these changes have occurred, and their precise forms and outcomes have received less attention. This article addresses these issues by focusing on an emerging group of managers that c…
Promoting solutions and co-constructing problems – management consultancy and instrument constituencies
The concept of ‘instrument constituencies’ has recently emerged in policy research to reflect actors and practices focused primarily on articulating and promoting policy solutions. A central component of this is that, with such an emphasis on promotion, policy-maker decisions are subject to supply push rather than being demand-led. In particular, the ‘solutions’ of instrument constituencies come before, rather than after, the problems they are he…
Political science (25 works) · Sociology (24 works) · Management and Organizational Studies (20 works) · Public relations (18 works) · Politics (14 works) · Economics (13 works) · Business (11 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Epistemology (10 works)