This book is designed as a guide which directs the reader through the maze of literature that Political Development studies involves and as a warning against the managerial approach to political change that such literature often masks.
The accurate assessment of political risk can make the difference between success and failure for a multinational corporation, which must keep corporate objectives in sight while operating in a large number of widely varying environments. While environmental or political risk assessment has become an explicit function in many firms and is inherent in all foreign investment, the uncertainties of foreign political environments continue to pose critical problems for managers. In Managing Political Risk Assessment, Stephen J. Kobrin describes and analyzes the techniques of political risk assessment employed by U.S. multinationals. His analysis draws on organizational theory, economics, political science, and international relations. The study reveals that those charged with political risk assessment have often not been fully integrated into the core of the managerial process, information from subsidiaries is often biased, and the flow of data is poorly controlled. As a result, virtually all firms experience difficulties in using environmental assessment in planning and making decisions. Kobrin persuasively argues that the thorough integration of the assessment function into the managerial process is a necessary step, as the need for political risk assessment intensifies with the increased interaction between international business and its social and political surroundings. Political scientists, institutional economists, managers, and students and teachers of international business will all profit from Kobrin’s excellent synthesis of knowledge in this area of scholarly interest. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.
Shows how managers can use the conceptual framework of TPC theory (technical, political, and cultural dynamics) to cope with major strategic reorientation. Raises such fundamental questions about the nature of organizations. What business(es) should we be in? Who should reap what benefits from the organization? What are the values and norms of organizational members? Provides concepts and workable technologies for dealing with these questions and preparing for future change. Includes extensive examples.
`Many books on management are sanitized, cleanly technical accounts of the unreality of managerial life and work. Politics hardly feature. This book tells it like it is: it dishes the dirt, gets low-down, into the funky and fascinating politics of organizational life′ - Stewart Clegg, Aston Business School and University of Technology, Sydney Combining a practical and theoretical guide to the politics of organizational change, this book provides an exceptional resource to students of change management, and organizational behaviour. Buchanan and Badham show how the change agent who is not politically skilled will fail, and that it is necessary to be able and willing to intervene in the political processes of the organization. This revised edition includes a range of excellent new material and features, including: - a new chapter on gender in approaches to organization politics - a full range of teaching materials including case studies, incident reports, self-assessments, and more - Each chapter recommends a feature film (or DVD) to illustrate aspects of organization politics - fresh research evidence - recent literature on the nature of entrepreneurial politics; - a model of political expertise, and how that can be developed This lively and engaging book is key to MBA and other Masters degree candidates taking courses in change management, and organizational behaviour. It will also be valuable for practising managers on tailored executive programmes in organization politics.
Using evidence from extensive fieldwork, Isabelle Werenfels explores the relationship between elite dynamics and strategies and the lack of profound political change in Algeria after 1995, when the country’s military rulers returned to electoral processes.
Why getting results should be every nonprofit manager's first priority A nonprofit manager's fundamental job is to get results, sustained over time, rather than boost morale or promote staff development. This is a shift from the tenor of many management books, particularly in the nonprofit world. Managing to Change the World is designed to teach new and experienced nonprofit managers the fundamental skills of effective management, including: managing specific tasks and broader responsibilities; setting clear goals and holding people accountable to them; creating a results-oriented culture; hiring, developing, and retaining a staff of superstars. Offers nonprofit managers a clear guide to the most effective management skills Shows how to address performance problems, dismiss staffers who fall short, and the right way to exercising authority Gives guidance for managing time wisely and offers suggestions for staying in sync with your boss and managing up This important resource contains 41 resources and downloadable tools that can be implemented immediately.
For nearly three decades, policymakers and students have been concerned with Third World societies in transition. Conventional interpretations of political change, formalized in studies of political development, have dominated approaches to analyzing such changes. Yet, argues the author, these interpretations have been justly criticized as bankrupt and irrelevant to Third World realities. Why are they reproduced? How can one explain the belief that these approaches remain viable? These are some of the questions addressed in this wideranging review of the literature of political development and the paradigms that have guided analysis of political change over the past thirty years. Examining how political development theories are rooted in U.S. foreign policy, domestic political trends, and changes in postwar political science, Dr. Gendzier grounds the traditional approach to political development in recent history and politics. Her analysis raises questions about how development doctrine is related to foreign policy, as well as noting development theory's debt to cold war ideology and revisionist theories of liberal democracy. Dr. Gendzier's interpretation sheds light on the reasons for the current theoretical bias that favors approaching politics in terms of psychology and culture—an approach that, she states, has had devastating effects on our understanding of politics.
The contemporary American political landscape has been marked by two paradoxical transformations: the emergence after 1960 of an increasingly activist state, and the rise of an assertive and politically powerful conservatism that strongly opposes activist government. Leading young scholars take up these issues in The Transformation of American Politics. Arguing that even conservative administrations have become more deeply involved in managing our economy and social choices, they examine why our political system nevertheless has grown divided as never before over the extent to which government should involve itself in our lives. The contributors show how these two closely linked trends have influenced the reform and running of political institutions, patterns of civic engagement, and capacities for partisan mobilization--and fueled ever-heightening conflicts over the contours and reach of public policy. These transformations not only redefined who participates in American politics and how they do so, but altered the substance of political conflicts and the capacities of rival interests to succeed. Representing both an important analysis of American politics and an innovative contribution to the study of long-term political change, this pioneering volume reveals how partisan discourse and the relationship between citizens and their government have been redrawn and complicated by increased government programs. The contributors are Andrea Louise Campbell, Jacob S. Hacker, Nolan McCarty, Suzanne Mettler, Paul Pierson, Theda Skocpol, Mark A. Smith, Steven M. Teles, and Julian E. Zelizer.
This book examines the interrelated dynamics of political action, ideology and state structures in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, emphasising the wider UK and European contexts in which they are nested. It makes a significant and unique contribution to wider European and international debates over state and nation and contested borders, looking at the dialectic between political action and institutions, examining party politics, ideological struggle and institutional change. It goes beyond the binary approaches to Irish politics and looks at the deep shifts associated with major socio-political changes, such as immigration, gender equality and civil society activism. Interdisciplinary in approach, it includes contributions from across history, law, sociology and political science and draws on a rich body of knowledge and original research data. This text will be of key interest to students and scholars of Irish Politics, Society and History, British Politics, Peace and Conflict studies, Nationalism, and more broadly to European Politics.
Examining the role of memory in the transition from totalitarian to democratic systems, this book makes an important contribution to memory studies. It explores memory as a medium of and impediment to change, looking at memory's biological, cultural, narrative and socio-psychological dimensions.