1. Introduction -- 2. The longevity of hierarchy -- 3. A general theory of hierarchical social systems -- 4. Application of the theory : how hierarchy works -- 5. Socrates : the un-normal normal person who won by losing -- 6. Why things (almost always) don't change.

Introduction -- Managers and managerialism -- Power and control within organisations -- Managers' interests in dominance -- The ideology of management -- A theory of the dominance of managers -- How managers create, justify, and conduct strategic change in their organisation : a case study --...

Purpose – To explore a musical metaphor in making organizational change a potentially pleasurable experience to participants. Design/methodology/approach – The paper begins by challenging ideological assumptions behind classical change metaphors. To build an alternative, the paper employs...

Strategic intent is a useful concept in accounting for purpose and continuity of goals in an organization adapting to internal and external developmental pressures. Yet, extant literature on strategic intent does not account for heterogeneity of goals within an organization. Indeed, there is...

The paradigmatic separation of the strategy and identity literatures constitutes an ongoing problem for the extension of either into more global contexts. The theorization proposed in this chapter presents rhetoric as the means by which the ‘strategy work’ of reimagining future options and...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the reasons and circumstances why strategic change initiatives based on new public management and managerialism go wrong. In particular, how such change initiatives are being justified, communicated, perceived, and implemented within...

Managers’ power within organisations has been analysed by several approaches: Orthodox management and organisation studies (‘functional approach’), Critical Management Studies (‘socio-political approaches’), interpretive, discourse-oriented and constructivist concepts...

Summary In this research note, we address the role of employee emotions during organizational change processes. While prior studies have examined emotions during a single change, such research analyzes emotions and change as snapshot events. In addition, we lack sufficient knowledge of the role...