Contemporary scholarship and classic essays focus on the continuing crises in bureaucratic organizations and managerial authority. Rethinking and innovation in private, public, and nonprofit organizations emerge from case studies on schools, multicultural and feminist organizations, private corporations, environmental planning and regulation, alternative services, and attempts to "reinvent government." Author note: Frank Fischer teaches Political Science and Public Administration at Rutgers University and has published several books, including Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise and The Argumentative Turn in PolicyAnalysis and Planning.Carmen Sirianni teaches Sociology at Brandeis University and is co-editor of the Labor and Social Change series at Temple University Press. His books include Worker Participation and the Politics of Reform (Temple) and Working Time in Transition (Temple).

In this comprehensive and scholarly book, the essential critical strands in organizational analysis are explained. It examines how central traditions have realigned in relation to the challenge of postmodernism and the new reflexive turn in organizational studies. Judicious, innovative and written with the needs of students in mind, this book offers a renewed and revitalized critical accent in organization studies - one that focuses on existing and emerging social tendencies, contestations and struggles. It will be essential reading for senior students of organization studies and sociology.

In this provocative study, Paul du Gay makes a compelling case for the continuing importance of bureaucracy. Taking inspiration from the work of Max Weber, du Gay launches a staunch defence of `the bureaucratic ethos′ and highlights its continuing relevance to the achievement of social order and good government in liberal democratic societies. Through a comprehensive engagement with both historical and contemporary critiques of bureaucracy and a careful examination of the policies of organizational change within the public services today, du Gay develops a major reappraisal of the so-called `traditional′ ethic of office. In doing so he highlights the ways in which many of the key features of bureaucratic conduct that came into existence a century ago still remain essential to the provision of responsible democratic government.

This volume brings together leading scholars in the field of organisation studies to reflect on the universal phenomena of hierarchy (vertical organisation of tasks) and bureaucracy (rule-bound execution of tasks), resulting in a colourful kaleidoscope of thought-provoking, critical and refreshingly non-mainstream analysis.

Street-Level Bureaucracy is an insightful study of how public service workers, in effect, function as policy decision makers, as they wield their considerable discretion in the day-to-day implementation of public programs.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Bureaucracy is a curse – it seems we can’t live with it, we can’t live without it. It is without doubt one of the fundamental ideas which underpin the business world and society at large. In this book, Tom Vine observes, analyses and critiques the concept, placing it at the heart of our understanding of organisation. The author unveils bureaucracy as an endlessly emergent phenomenon which defies binary debate – in analysing organisation, we are all bureaucrats. In building an experiential perspective, the book develops more effective ways to interact with bureaucracy in theory and practice. Empirical material take centre stage, whilst the book employs ethnographic and auto-ethnographic methods to illuminate the existential function of bureaucracy. Taking examples from art, history and culture, this book provides an entertaining alternative academic analysis of bureaucracy as a key idea in business and society which will be essential reading for students and scholars of work and organisation