Robin Fincham
Biographic Data
| ID | 247383 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robin Fincham |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robin |
| FAMILY NAME | Fincham |
| SIGNATURE | FINCHAM R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Stirling |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 60 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Expert labour as a differentiated category: Power, knowledge and organisation
The idea of ‘expert labour’ as a category uniting many kinds of knowledge‐based work has long been of interest. At the same time, existing models often do not differentiate between the many forms of ‘new’ expertise in the main business and technological groups. These tend to be consolidated in single categories of ‘entrepreneurial’, ‘organisational’ or ‘commercial’ professions. This paper built on R eed's seminal account of the expert division of…
Not sharing but trading: Applying a Maussian exchange framework to knowledge management
Knowledge sharing is widely regarded as the process underpinning knowledge management in organizations. The dissemination of knowledge so that all benefit from shared know-how is seen to greatly enhance working capability. Nevertheless, we suggest the sharing perspective can mean a somewhat restricted view of how knowledge workers relate to and use knowledge and that focusing on knowledge exchange affords a better understanding of the processes t…
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…
Configuring expert knowledge: The consultant as sector specialist
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 …
Management Consultants
Interest in management consultants, in popular management media and academic study, has expanded enormously in the past decade, reflecting the growth of consultancy and increasing numbers of managers who experience working with consultants. The emergence of consulting as a growth industry has links with many modern conditions. Trends like the service economy, increasing “marketization” of sectors, and the development of new organizational and cor…
Within and Beyond Communities of Practice: Making Sense of Learning Through Participation, Identity and 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…
Knowledge work as occupational strategy: Comparing IT and management consulting
Information technology and management consulting are two classic areas of knowledge work. Analysing them not in terms of ‘essential traits’ but occupational strategies addresses the problem of virtually all expert labour in the so-called information society being seen as ‘knowledge work’ of one sort or another
The consultants’ offensive: Reengineering – from fad to technique
Business process reengineering has tended to be seen as a management fashion and the brainchild of the gurus who popularised it. Yet this overlooks the role of consultants in the spread of BPR and the system itself as a specific technique of change management. In fact BPR played a significant role in the push for new business in management consultancy and has become integral to an armoury of consultant tools. This article explores reengineering a…
Computing occupations: Organizational power, work transition and collective mobility
The computing occupations are in a state of transition between a technical service and something more central to organizational power and decision‐making. This process has had complex implications for the nature of computing work and for careers. There is no certainty that embryonic changes will carry through. But neither should the chances of these occupations of mounting a ‘collective mobility project’ be written off early
Working
Skilled Workers in the Class Structure
Labelling in Development Policy: Essays in Honour of Bernard Schaffer
Labelling in Development Policy reveals how labelling is perceived as natural and objective by sheltering behind an ideology of rationality. In reality labelling is an instrument of power through which the relationships between class interests and institutional processes are constructed and sustained. The book focuses on labels which arise in development policy areas as an aspect of the donative political discourse associated with the development…
From 'Post-Industrialism' to 'Information Society: Comment on Lyon
Industrial Relations and Management Strategy
The Political Economy of Under-Development
Shorter Notices
The Local Politics of Rural Development: Peasant and Party-State in Zambia
The Trade Union Movement in Africa: Promise and Performance
Agrarian Reforms and Hired Labour in Africa
Economic Dependence and the Development of Industry in Zambia
This article examines aspects of Zambian industry, particularly the difficulties caused recently by its high level of dependence. Around 1975, problems of output and employment became acute, and the manifest cause was insufficient foreign exchange. Copper sales still provide almost all of Zambia's foreign exchange; the price fell dramatically in 1970, and recoveries throughout the decade were short-lived or partial.1 At the same time, Zambia's ma…
Knowledge work as occupational strategy: Comparing IT and management consulting
Information technology and management consulting are two classic areas of knowledge work. Analysing them not in terms of ‘essential traits’ but occupational strategies addresses the problem of virtually all expert labour in the so-called information society being seen as ‘knowledge work’ of one sort or another
Skilled Workers in the Class Structure
Not sharing but trading: Applying a Maussian exchange framework to knowledge management
Knowledge sharing is widely regarded as the process underpinning knowledge management in organizations. The dissemination of knowledge so that all benefit from shared know-how is seen to greatly enhance working capability. Nevertheless, we suggest the sharing perspective can mean a somewhat restricted view of how knowledge workers relate to and use knowledge and that focusing on knowledge exchange affords a better understanding of the processes t…
Labelling in Development Policy: Essays in Honour of Bernard Schaffer
Labelling in Development Policy reveals how labelling is perceived as natural and objective by sheltering behind an ideology of rationality. In reality labelling is an instrument of power through which the relationships between class interests and institutional processes are constructed and sustained. The book focuses on labels which arise in development policy areas as an aspect of the donative political discourse associated with the development…
Expert labour as a differentiated category: Power, knowledge and organisation
The idea of ‘expert labour’ as a category uniting many kinds of knowledge‐based work has long been of interest. At the same time, existing models often do not differentiate between the many forms of ‘new’ expertise in the main business and technological groups. These tend to be consolidated in single categories of ‘entrepreneurial’, ‘organisational’ or ‘commercial’ professions. This paper built on R eed's seminal account of the expert division of…
The Political Economy of Under-Development
Configuring expert knowledge: The consultant as sector specialist
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 …
The consultants’ offensive: Reengineering – from fad to technique
Business process reengineering has tended to be seen as a management fashion and the brainchild of the gurus who popularised it. Yet this overlooks the role of consultants in the spread of BPR and the system itself as a specific technique of change management. In fact BPR played a significant role in the push for new business in management consultancy and has become integral to an armoury of consultant tools. This article explores reengineering a…
Computing occupations: Organizational power, work transition and collective mobility
The computing occupations are in a state of transition between a technical service and something more central to organizational power and decision‐making. This process has had complex implications for the nature of computing work and for careers. There is no certainty that embryonic changes will carry through. But neither should the chances of these occupations of mounting a ‘collective mobility project’ be written off early
Economic Dependence and the Development of Industry in Zambia
This article examines aspects of Zambian industry, particularly the difficulties caused recently by its high level of dependence. Around 1975, problems of output and employment became acute, and the manifest cause was insufficient foreign exchange. Copper sales still provide almost all of Zambia's foreign exchange; the price fell dramatically in 1970, and recoveries throughout the decade were short-lived or partial.1 At the same time, Zambia's ma…
The Trade Union Movement in Africa: Promise and Performance
Agrarian Reforms and Hired Labour in Africa
Shorter Notices
The Local Politics of Rural Development: Peasant and Party-State in Zambia
The Political Economy of Under-Development
Industrial Relations and Management Strategy
Skilled Workers in the Class Structure
Labelling in Development Policy: Essays in Honour of Bernard Schaffer
Labelling in Development Policy reveals how labelling is perceived as natural and objective by sheltering behind an ideology of rationality. In reality labelling is an instrument of power through which the relationships between class interests and institutional processes are constructed and sustained. The book focuses on labels which arise in development policy areas as an aspect of the donative political discourse associated with the development…
From 'Post-Industrialism' to 'Information Society: Comment on Lyon
Working
Computing occupations: Organizational power, work transition and collective mobility
The computing occupations are in a state of transition between a technical service and something more central to organizational power and decision‐making. This process has had complex implications for the nature of computing work and for careers. There is no certainty that embryonic changes will carry through. But neither should the chances of these occupations of mounting a ‘collective mobility project’ be written off early
The consultants’ offensive: Reengineering – from fad to technique
Business process reengineering has tended to be seen as a management fashion and the brainchild of the gurus who popularised it. Yet this overlooks the role of consultants in the spread of BPR and the system itself as a specific technique of change management. In fact BPR played a significant role in the push for new business in management consultancy and has become integral to an armoury of consultant tools. This article explores reengineering a…
Within and Beyond Communities of Practice: Making Sense of Learning Through Participation, Identity and 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…
Knowledge work as occupational strategy: Comparing IT and management consulting
Information technology and management consulting are two classic areas of knowledge work. Analysing them not in terms of ‘essential traits’ but occupational strategies addresses the problem of virtually all expert labour in the so-called information society being seen as ‘knowledge work’ of one sort or another
Management Consultants
Interest in management consultants, in popular management media and academic study, has expanded enormously in the past decade, reflecting the growth of consultancy and increasing numbers of managers who experience working with consultants. The emergence of consulting as a growth industry has links with many modern conditions. Trends like the service economy, increasing “marketization” of sectors, and the development of new organizational and cor…
Configuring expert knowledge: The consultant as sector specialist
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 …
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…
Not sharing but trading: Applying a Maussian exchange framework to knowledge management
Knowledge sharing is widely regarded as the process underpinning knowledge management in organizations. The dissemination of knowledge so that all benefit from shared know-how is seen to greatly enhance working capability. Nevertheless, we suggest the sharing perspective can mean a somewhat restricted view of how knowledge workers relate to and use knowledge and that focusing on knowledge exchange affords a better understanding of the processes t…
Expert labour as a differentiated category: Power, knowledge and organisation
The idea of ‘expert labour’ as a category uniting many kinds of knowledge‐based work has long been of interest. At the same time, existing models often do not differentiate between the many forms of ‘new’ expertise in the main business and technological groups. These tend to be consolidated in single categories of ‘entrepreneurial’, ‘organisational’ or ‘commercial’ professions. This paper built on R eed's seminal account of the expert division of…
Business (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Economics (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Knowledge management (6 works) · Management and Organizational Studies (6 works) · Marketing (5 works) · Accounting and Organizational Management (3 works) · Agriculture (3 works)