Leo Mccann
Biographic Data
| ID | 138244 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Leo Mccann |
| GIVEN NAMES | Leo |
| FAMILY NAME | Mccann |
| SIGNATURE | MCCANN L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manchester |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0754-804X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 59 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Normalization of degraded expert work in globalized finance: The experiences and consequences of organizational control over outsourced expert workers
An important element of the crisis in expertise is the growing insecurity and degradation of the working conditions of many expert occupations. Building on theoretical work on the crisis of expertise, this paper examines the status and conditions of expert financial workers who find themselves in challenging and unwelcome working conditions. Using in-depth interviews with financial assistants employed in the outsourced fringes of the global banki…
Being Patient
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study
The limits of ‘professionalisation from above’: On the ‘re-professionalisation’ of street-level policing in England
The occupation of policing is in crisis. Criticism of police failings has created intense pressure for the traditional ‘occupational closure’ model of policing as a craft to be replaced by new ‘professional’ models associated with ‘evidence-based policing’, harm reduction, risk management and vulnerability. Various change initiatives have amounted to the ‘re-professionalisation’ of policing, whereby previous models of police professionalism based…
Enacting care amid power relations: The role of ‘veiled care’ in organisational life
Traditional understandings of care-giving assume care practices are clear to others and unambiguously altruistic, reflective of the selfless and humane bearing of care professionals. However, a range of organisational research has noted the complex and often contradictory ways in which enactments of care are interwoven into organisational relations of power and control. Through a narrative analysis of interview data, our paper focuses upon practi…
Producing paramedicine: Case studies in the medical labor process
Leadership lessons untold: A new history of Robert McNamara’s World Bank
Leadership education can be reductionist and facile. Recent scholarship in management and organizational history has reexamined many of the most established business school concepts and literatures, rethinking the ‘lessons’ taught from – among others – Taylor, Maslow and the Human Relations School. This study similarly uses historical methods (oral historical and archival) to analyse the career of Robert S. McNamara, a major figure often portraye…
Placing Camelot: Cultivating leadership and learning in the Kennedy presidency
The concept of ‘place’ can play a powerful role in understanding how leadership is socially constructed. This article explores the geographic, symbolic and mythic uses of place in the cultivation of a distinct leadership style around the Presidency of John F. Kennedy. It focuses on the history of a social and learning event that today might be called a leadership development programme: the ‘Hickory Hill Seminars’ of 1961-4, named after and mostly…
Theorising the hospice gaze: A Foucauldian collaborative ethnography of a palliative day care service
Multiple Dimensions of Work Intensity: Ambulance Work as Edgework
Working life in public sector professions is undergoing significant change and becoming increasingly demanding. This article explores work intensity in NHS ambulance services in England, describing four distinct but interrelated dimensions of intensity: temporal; physical; emotional; and organizational. We use the concept of edgework to explore the complexities involved in how emergency workers attempt to negotiate the rewards and risks associate…
‘Killing is our business and business is good’: The evolution of ‘war managerialism’ from body counts to counterinsurgency
Managerialism versus professionalism is a central axis of conflict across many occupations. ‘The profession of arms’ is no exception. This article explores the contested yet symbiotic relationship of management and the military via a discussion of the Vietnam conflict and contemporary debates over restructuring the US military to fight so-called ‘New Wars’. It portrays a complex picture of the organization and measurement of destruction, arguing …
Deconstructing the Welfare State: Managing Healthcare in the Age of Reform
Extreme work/normal work: Intensification, storytelling and hypermediation in the (re)construction of ‘the New Normal’
The label ‘extreme’ has traditionally been used to describe out-of-the-ordinary and quasi-deviant leisure subcultures which aim at an escape from commercialized and over-rationalized modernity or for occupations involving high risk, exposure to ‘dirty work’ and a threat to life (such as military, healthcare or policing). In recent years, however, the notion of ‘extreme’ is starting to define more ‘normal’ and mainstream realms of work and organiz…
Management is the gate’ – but to where? Rethinking Robert McNamara’s ‘career lessons’
Career narratives could make a potentially valuable contribution to an ‘historic turn’ in management and organization studies. This paper provides an historical narrative on the career of Robert S. McNamara, former President of Ford, US Secretary of Defense, and Chairman of the World Bank. Based on a thorough exposition and deconstruction of historiographical and journalistic sources, the paper makes two contributions. Firstly, it argues that McN…
Casting the lean spell: The promotion, dilution and erosion of lean management in the NHS
Lean thinking has recently re-emerged as a fashionable management philosophy, especially in public services. A prescriptive or mainstream literature suggests that lean is rapidly diffusing into public sector environments, providing a much-needed rethink of traditional ways of working and stimulating performance improvements. Our study of the introduction of lean in a large UK public sector hospital challenges this argument. Based on a three-year …
Popular Culture and Workplace Gendering among Varieties of Capitalism: Working Women and their Representation in Japanese Manga
Female empowerment is a prerequisite for a just and sustainable developed society. Being the most developed non‐western country, J apan offers an instructive window onto concerns about gender worldwide. Although overall gender equality is advancing in J apan, difficulties remain, especially in achieving equality in the workplace. We draw on theories of ontological commitment and the psychology of fiction to critically analyse the role of popular …
White-Collar Sweatshop
Symbolic Analysts
Managing from the echo chamber: Employee dismay and leadership detachment in the British banking and insurance crisis
Purpose – This paper aims to explore the culture of working life in British financial services multinationals in the period leading up to the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Design/methodology/approach – Informed by labour process theory, the paper is based on a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews with technicians and junior managers in British insurance and banking MNCs. Findings – The data demonstrate widespread employee disaffection wi…
Reforming Public Services After the Crash: The Roles of Framing and Hoping
This symposium of Public Administration explores the impact of the ‘Great Financial Crisis’ ( GFC ) on public services provision and delivery. This introductory article discusses the political and media ‘framing’ and ‘counter‐framing’ of what the GFC means for reforming public service bargains. The dominant frame is that service reform and cutbacks to provision are inevitable and unavoidable. This is contrasted with the counter‐frame that the GFC…
Men Under Pressure: Representations of the `Salaryman' and his Organization in Japanese Manga
In this paper we analyse representations of the Japanese salaryman and Japanese organization in Japanese manga, or graphic novels, during the turbulent decades from the mid-1980s to the present day. We argue that manga presents salarymen protagonists in a sympathetic yet not uncritical light, and that it displays support for and criticism of both the Japanese and American organizational models. In addition, we describe how these manga offer impor…
The resilience of `institutionalized capitalism: Managing managers under `shareholder capitalism' and `managerial capitalism
This article identifies two, nation-wide, forms of governance or organizing capital,`shareholder' capitalism and `managerial' capitalism, epitomized by the USA and Japan respectively. Furthermore, it identifies the implications for managers in these systems. The article argues that both varieties of capitalism have been forced to modify, due to pressures from globalization. Shareholder capitalism in the USA has been intensified with an even great…
Overlapping effects: Path dependence and path generation in management and organization in Russia
An important contribution to our understanding of management transformation in post-socialist societies has been made by new institutionalism. The strength of this approach derives from its critique of normative models based on neo-classical economics, which has tended towards institutional and management voluntarism. It has been able to grasp complexity in societies undergoing structural change, stressing that path dependence in property, politi…
At the sharp end of new organizational ideologies Ethnography and the study of multinationals
The discipline of international management has favoured predominantly functional and structural approaches to data collection and analysis, and its concepts are usually based on rather unitarist, ethnocentric interpretations of `global business' that sideline local features and exaggerate the impact of change. On the other hand, the `varieties of capitalism' approach, while sensitive to national differences in institutions and `national business …
New communities of inquiry in multinational research Politics, resistance and perspective
Economic Development in Tatarstan: Global Markets and a Russian Region
Multiple Dimensions of Work Intensity: Ambulance Work as Edgework
Working life in public sector professions is undergoing significant change and becoming increasingly demanding. This article explores work intensity in NHS ambulance services in England, describing four distinct but interrelated dimensions of intensity: temporal; physical; emotional; and organizational. We use the concept of edgework to explore the complexities involved in how emergency workers attempt to negotiate the rewards and risks associate…
Casting the lean spell: The promotion, dilution and erosion of lean management in the NHS
Lean thinking has recently re-emerged as a fashionable management philosophy, especially in public services. A prescriptive or mainstream literature suggests that lean is rapidly diffusing into public sector environments, providing a much-needed rethink of traditional ways of working and stimulating performance improvements. Our study of the introduction of lean in a large UK public sector hospital challenges this argument. Based on a three-year …
Reforming Public Services After the Crash: The Roles of Framing and Hoping
This symposium of Public Administration explores the impact of the ‘Great Financial Crisis’ ( GFC ) on public services provision and delivery. This introductory article discusses the political and media ‘framing’ and ‘counter‐framing’ of what the GFC means for reforming public service bargains. The dominant frame is that service reform and cutbacks to provision are inevitable and unavoidable. This is contrasted with the counter‐frame that the GFC…
At the sharp end of new organizational ideologies Ethnography and the study of multinationals
The discipline of international management has favoured predominantly functional and structural approaches to data collection and analysis, and its concepts are usually based on rather unitarist, ethnocentric interpretations of `global business' that sideline local features and exaggerate the impact of change. On the other hand, the `varieties of capitalism' approach, while sensitive to national differences in institutions and `national business …
Overlapping effects: Path dependence and path generation in management and organization in Russia
An important contribution to our understanding of management transformation in post-socialist societies has been made by new institutionalism. The strength of this approach derives from its critique of normative models based on neo-classical economics, which has tended towards institutional and management voluntarism. It has been able to grasp complexity in societies undergoing structural change, stressing that path dependence in property, politi…
Producing paramedicine: Case studies in the medical labor process
Popular Culture and Workplace Gendering among Varieties of Capitalism: Working Women and their Representation in Japanese Manga
Female empowerment is a prerequisite for a just and sustainable developed society. Being the most developed non‐western country, J apan offers an instructive window onto concerns about gender worldwide. Although overall gender equality is advancing in J apan, difficulties remain, especially in achieving equality in the workplace. We draw on theories of ontological commitment and the psychology of fiction to critically analyse the role of popular …
The resilience of `institutionalized capitalism: Managing managers under `shareholder capitalism' and `managerial capitalism
This article identifies two, nation-wide, forms of governance or organizing capital,`shareholder' capitalism and `managerial' capitalism, epitomized by the USA and Japan respectively. Furthermore, it identifies the implications for managers in these systems. The article argues that both varieties of capitalism have been forced to modify, due to pressures from globalization. Shareholder capitalism in the USA has been intensified with an even great…
Leadership lessons untold: A new history of Robert McNamara’s World Bank
Leadership education can be reductionist and facile. Recent scholarship in management and organizational history has reexamined many of the most established business school concepts and literatures, rethinking the ‘lessons’ taught from – among others – Taylor, Maslow and the Human Relations School. This study similarly uses historical methods (oral historical and archival) to analyse the career of Robert S. McNamara, a major figure often portraye…
Management is the gate’ – but to where? Rethinking Robert McNamara’s ‘career lessons’
Career narratives could make a potentially valuable contribution to an ‘historic turn’ in management and organization studies. This paper provides an historical narrative on the career of Robert S. McNamara, former President of Ford, US Secretary of Defense, and Chairman of the World Bank. Based on a thorough exposition and deconstruction of historiographical and journalistic sources, the paper makes two contributions. Firstly, it argues that McN…
New communities of inquiry in multinational research Politics, resistance and perspective
The informal economy and the informal state in Tatarstan, Russia
Presents a unique view of informality within the government of Tatarstan which challenges the notion that these forms can be dismissed as simply corruption. Focuses on interviews with investors and businessmen, showing how informality can be an important factor in the reproduction of elite classes. Limits the article to the unique dynamics of the transition from command economy to free market economy but provides resonance with the experiences of…
Economic Development in Tatarstan: Global Markets and a Russian Region
Overlapping effects: Path dependence and path generation in management and organization in Russia
An important contribution to our understanding of management transformation in post-socialist societies has been made by new institutionalism. The strength of this approach derives from its critique of normative models based on neo-classical economics, which has tended towards institutional and management voluntarism. It has been able to grasp complexity in societies undergoing structural change, stressing that path dependence in property, politi…
At the sharp end of new organizational ideologies Ethnography and the study of multinationals
The discipline of international management has favoured predominantly functional and structural approaches to data collection and analysis, and its concepts are usually based on rather unitarist, ethnocentric interpretations of `global business' that sideline local features and exaggerate the impact of change. On the other hand, the `varieties of capitalism' approach, while sensitive to national differences in institutions and `national business …
New communities of inquiry in multinational research Politics, resistance and perspective
Men Under Pressure: Representations of the `Salaryman' and his Organization in Japanese Manga
In this paper we analyse representations of the Japanese salaryman and Japanese organization in Japanese manga, or graphic novels, during the turbulent decades from the mid-1980s to the present day. We argue that manga presents salarymen protagonists in a sympathetic yet not uncritical light, and that it displays support for and criticism of both the Japanese and American organizational models. In addition, we describe how these manga offer impor…
The resilience of `institutionalized capitalism: Managing managers under `shareholder capitalism' and `managerial capitalism
This article identifies two, nation-wide, forms of governance or organizing capital,`shareholder' capitalism and `managerial' capitalism, epitomized by the USA and Japan respectively. Furthermore, it identifies the implications for managers in these systems. The article argues that both varieties of capitalism have been forced to modify, due to pressures from globalization. Shareholder capitalism in the USA has been intensified with an even great…
White-Collar Sweatshop
Symbolic Analysts
Managing from the echo chamber: Employee dismay and leadership detachment in the British banking and insurance crisis
Purpose – This paper aims to explore the culture of working life in British financial services multinationals in the period leading up to the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Design/methodology/approach – Informed by labour process theory, the paper is based on a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews with technicians and junior managers in British insurance and banking MNCs. Findings – The data demonstrate widespread employee disaffection wi…
Reforming Public Services After the Crash: The Roles of Framing and Hoping
This symposium of Public Administration explores the impact of the ‘Great Financial Crisis’ ( GFC ) on public services provision and delivery. This introductory article discusses the political and media ‘framing’ and ‘counter‐framing’ of what the GFC means for reforming public service bargains. The dominant frame is that service reform and cutbacks to provision are inevitable and unavoidable. This is contrasted with the counter‐frame that the GFC…
Popular Culture and Workplace Gendering among Varieties of Capitalism: Working Women and their Representation in Japanese Manga
Female empowerment is a prerequisite for a just and sustainable developed society. Being the most developed non‐western country, J apan offers an instructive window onto concerns about gender worldwide. Although overall gender equality is advancing in J apan, difficulties remain, especially in achieving equality in the workplace. We draw on theories of ontological commitment and the psychology of fiction to critically analyse the role of popular …
Extreme work/normal work: Intensification, storytelling and hypermediation in the (re)construction of ‘the New Normal’
The label ‘extreme’ has traditionally been used to describe out-of-the-ordinary and quasi-deviant leisure subcultures which aim at an escape from commercialized and over-rationalized modernity or for occupations involving high risk, exposure to ‘dirty work’ and a threat to life (such as military, healthcare or policing). In recent years, however, the notion of ‘extreme’ is starting to define more ‘normal’ and mainstream realms of work and organiz…
Management is the gate’ – but to where? Rethinking Robert McNamara’s ‘career lessons’
Career narratives could make a potentially valuable contribution to an ‘historic turn’ in management and organization studies. This paper provides an historical narrative on the career of Robert S. McNamara, former President of Ford, US Secretary of Defense, and Chairman of the World Bank. Based on a thorough exposition and deconstruction of historiographical and journalistic sources, the paper makes two contributions. Firstly, it argues that McN…
Casting the lean spell: The promotion, dilution and erosion of lean management in the NHS
Lean thinking has recently re-emerged as a fashionable management philosophy, especially in public services. A prescriptive or mainstream literature suggests that lean is rapidly diffusing into public sector environments, providing a much-needed rethink of traditional ways of working and stimulating performance improvements. Our study of the introduction of lean in a large UK public sector hospital challenges this argument. Based on a three-year …
Deconstructing the Welfare State: Managing Healthcare in the Age of Reform
‘Killing is our business and business is good’: The evolution of ‘war managerialism’ from body counts to counterinsurgency
Managerialism versus professionalism is a central axis of conflict across many occupations. ‘The profession of arms’ is no exception. This article explores the contested yet symbiotic relationship of management and the military via a discussion of the Vietnam conflict and contemporary debates over restructuring the US military to fight so-called ‘New Wars’. It portrays a complex picture of the organization and measurement of destruction, arguing …
Multiple Dimensions of Work Intensity: Ambulance Work as Edgework
Working life in public sector professions is undergoing significant change and becoming increasingly demanding. This article explores work intensity in NHS ambulance services in England, describing four distinct but interrelated dimensions of intensity: temporal; physical; emotional; and organizational. We use the concept of edgework to explore the complexities involved in how emergency workers attempt to negotiate the rewards and risks associate…
Leadership lessons untold: A new history of Robert McNamara’s World Bank
Leadership education can be reductionist and facile. Recent scholarship in management and organizational history has reexamined many of the most established business school concepts and literatures, rethinking the ‘lessons’ taught from – among others – Taylor, Maslow and the Human Relations School. This study similarly uses historical methods (oral historical and archival) to analyse the career of Robert S. McNamara, a major figure often portraye…
Placing Camelot: Cultivating leadership and learning in the Kennedy presidency
The concept of ‘place’ can play a powerful role in understanding how leadership is socially constructed. This article explores the geographic, symbolic and mythic uses of place in the cultivation of a distinct leadership style around the Presidency of John F. Kennedy. It focuses on the history of a social and learning event that today might be called a leadership development programme: the ‘Hickory Hill Seminars’ of 1961-4, named after and mostly…
Theorising the hospice gaze: A Foucauldian collaborative ethnography of a palliative day care service
Enacting care amid power relations: The role of ‘veiled care’ in organisational life
Traditional understandings of care-giving assume care practices are clear to others and unambiguously altruistic, reflective of the selfless and humane bearing of care professionals. However, a range of organisational research has noted the complex and often contradictory ways in which enactments of care are interwoven into organisational relations of power and control. Through a narrative analysis of interview data, our paper focuses upon practi…
Producing paramedicine: Case studies in the medical labor process
The limits of ‘professionalisation from above’: On the ‘re-professionalisation’ of street-level policing in England
The occupation of policing is in crisis. Criticism of police failings has created intense pressure for the traditional ‘occupational closure’ model of policing as a craft to be replaced by new ‘professional’ models associated with ‘evidence-based policing’, harm reduction, risk management and vulnerability. Various change initiatives have amounted to the ‘re-professionalisation’ of policing, whereby previous models of police professionalism based…
Normalization of degraded expert work in globalized finance: The experiences and consequences of organizational control over outsourced expert workers
An important element of the crisis in expertise is the growing insecurity and degradation of the working conditions of many expert occupations. Building on theoretical work on the crisis of expertise, this paper examines the status and conditions of expert financial workers who find themselves in challenging and unwelcome working conditions. Using in-depth interviews with financial assistants employed in the outsourced fringes of the global banki…
Political science (22 works) · Law (18 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Law (13 works) · Public relations (12 works) · Economics (10 works) · Politics (9 works) · Management and Organizational Studies (8 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Narrative (6 works)