The Engineering Project as Story and Narrative

Engineers most often organise their work in projects and consequently project management becomes an essential part of an engineer’s work and working life in general. Even if most engineers are trained in project management, it seems that this is a challenge to most engineers. It also seems that the traditional project management tools are not always sufficient when it comes to managing engineering projects. In this chapter, an engineering project is examined, and it turns out that the language, the stories, and the narratives connected to the project is of greater importance to the engineers than the formal project management tools that were offered to the engineers. It also turns out that the term “project” could itself be a problem when it comes to fulfilling the project goals. Therefore, it is concluded that when working on engineering projects, language, stories, and narratives are just as important to the engineers as any other element in the project.

Professional and Managerial Language in Hybrid Industry-Research Organizations and within the Hybrid Clinician Manager Role

Interactions between professionals and managers are vital to medical and commercialization outcomes. This chapter considers how boundaries between professionals and managers are expressed through language in two contexts: between researchers and managers in temporary Australian hybrid industry-research organizations and within the same individual performing a hybrid clinician-manager role in Australian health care organizations. Semi-structured interviews of twenty scientists, engineers, and managers, focusing on their experiences, and perceptions of occupational culture, revealed that language norms contributed to knowledge creation, and played a role in maintaining a hierarchy among research institutions. Semi-structured interviews of twenty doctors and managers, focusing on their perception and experience of the hybrid clinician manager’s role within health care organizations, revealed that professional identity influenced language norms used by doctors and managers and contributed to the tensions experienced in their interactions. Distinctive patterns of argumentation and language were identified as typical of commercial and research occupations and were also distinctive in doctors working in hybrid clinician manager’s roles. The scientists, engineers, and managers working in hybrid industry-research organizations and the doctors and managers working in health care organizations reported frustration and reduced effectiveness of argumentation due to different norms for dissent.

So Into It They Forget What Time It Is?

This chapter draws on 53 interviews from a case study led in Montreal in 2008 to demonstrate the existence of Unlimited and Unpaid Overtime (UUO) among video game developers and illustrate an emerging workplace regulation model of working time in the videogame industry. It brings to light a sophisticated and efficient system of rewards and sanctions, both material and symbolic, that drives professional workers in these trades to adopt a “free unlimited overtime” behavior despite the Act Respecting Labour Standards. Efficiency of this system is rooted in combined Project Management (PM) as an organisation mode and high international mobility of the workforce that both makes portfolio and reputation utterly important. This chapter focuses on (de)regulation of working time only, but it opens a path to theoretically account for (de)regulation of work among an expanding workforce: the “new professionals” in knowledge work.

Gendered Technology-Based Organizations

The “glass cliff” is a term coined by Professor Michelle Ryan and Professor Alex Haslam in 2004. Their research demonstrates that once women (or other minority groups) break through the glass ceiling and take on positions of leadership, they often have different experiences from their male counterparts. Specifically, women are more likely to occupy positions that can be described as precarious and thus have a higher risk of failure, either because they are in organizational units that are in crisis, or because they are not given the resources and support needed to thrive. The success of the glass cliff, as a phenomenon, rests on three factors. First, it relies heavily on the quality and quantity of data available, as well as the reliability of the data. Second, it relies heavily on the acceptance, utilization, and application of its existence, for a lack of acknowledgment, acceptance, utilization, and application of any phenomenon, concept, and theory will result in extinction. Third, this phenomenon, in reality, is quite taboo in a male dominated society, regardless of culture. Nevertheless, the glass cliff, as a phenomenon, is quite neoteric, and is typically not spoken of, nor referred to when men communicate, in the same way that men do not usually refer to the glass ceiling, or the glass escalator. The purpose of this chapter is to delve into and explore the concept of the glass cliff faced by women in high-tech corporations, and how the glass cliff affects their career advancement and identity growth through empirical data. The chapter then provides three recommendations on resolving the glass cliff phenomenon, and concludes with whether the glass cliff as a phenomenon is convertible to become a theory.

In the Name of Flexibility

This chapter takes you to a data security workplace in Finland. It presents reflections on the tensions of managing selves and others, as experienced by the employees and the managers. It argues that a generally critical approach to normative management may overlook the actual complexity and ambiguous nature of the late modern cultural environment. Both self-authoring and manipulative moves are made difficult by the amalgamating hegemonic and countercultural currents. The author points at chances for resistance through new forms of literacy. Instead of dropping “culture” as a conservative or managerial pursuit, we must learn to navigate successfully in the broken cultural landscape of today’s workplaces. The very same images that can be used for manipulation are open to more solidary configurations by the cultural and social imagination of organizational members.

Making a Rod for One’s Own Back

This chapter identifies a new pattern of bargaining for technology, based upon nine months’ ethnographic fieldwork amongst the engineers of a Telco’s research and development department. Bargains for smartphones were initiated by the employee and negotiated with the employer by reference to the productivity discourse of the vendor. After a honeymoon phase of exploration, the reality of operation was markedly different, resulting, in several cases, in the disposition of the smartphone or, in one case, the disposition of the employee to leave. Such bargains were driven by conceptions of the personal and organisational use value of the artefact, and this finding reveals shortcomings in the drivers, influences, and stages of adoption found in existing models. A new conceptual framework is presented that facilitates exploration of the contribution of personal and organisational use value to technology adoption.

Innovation Capability in High-Tech Companies

This chapter analyses the influence of organizational culture components, defined in Hofstede’s (1991, 2001) cultural framework (i.e., power distance, individualism/collectivism, assertiveness focus, and uncertainty avoidance), and empowerment on innovation capability, and examines the differentiations in their influence. The hypotheses are tested by applying Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) methodology to data collected from Information Technology professionals from high-tech companies. Results of the analyses have yielded that power distance is found to be negatively associated with both empowerment and innovation capability, whereas uncertainty avoidance is negatively related to innovation capability, but positively related to empowerment. Collectivism is found to be positively related only to empowerment; yet no significant relationship was revealed between collectivism and innovation capability. In addition, no significant relationship was found between assertiveness focus and empowerment or innovation capability. Empowerment is also found to be significantly and positively related to innovation capability. In terms of managerial practice, the study helps clarify the key role played by cultural dimensions in the process of shaping an empowering and innovative work environment. Findings also reveal that managers should focus on participative managerial practices (e.g. empowerment) to promote innovation capability of high-tech companies by considering the cultural tendencies of employees in the organization.

Organizational Characteristics of Middle Managers’ Deterioration as Sources of Organizational Decline

This chapter explores the mechanism of how structural and behavioral organizational characteristics lead to organizational deterioration as a source of organizational decline. First, using an original construct of organizational deterioration named “organizational deadweight” that is defined as ineffectual managerial load at the middle management level, the authors explore the relationships between the organizational characteristics and organizational deadweight. Data was collected through a questionnaire survey in 2006 involving more than 942 respondents from 128 business units of 16 large Japanese firms. The results suggest that reference to formal strategic planning, participation in the planning process, and vertical communication improve deterioration, whereas organizational size and layered hierarchical structure aggravate it. Finally, the authors discuss the roles of vertical communication and formal planning to safeguard against deterioration.

Group Processes in the Virtual Work Environment

This chapter explores an alternative approach to group processes in the virtual environment as a system of alliances, encompassing leader, member, and group. The purpose of this research is to determine if a system of alliances encompassing leader, member, and team exists in the virtual environment. The authors explore the applicability of alliances to a 21st century management environment by testing a conceptual model using 20,000 bootstrapped samples of 96 employed professionals and students studying in an online environment. They find evidence that group processes in a technology-mediated environment can be defined by a three-way-system of alliances in which the leader plays a less dominant role than in traditional groups. The authors find that the individual’s relationship with the group may be built through a trust relationship with other members rather than a direct relationship with the leader. Directions for future research and implications for management practice are also discussed.

Excessive Value Creation

This chapter demonstrates how contemporary imaginary structures, which urge us to move up in life by making the most of the possibilities we are faced with, may operate in an industrial setting where users are involved in the production of heavy duty vehicles. Opening up new domains for value creation, devoid of established norms and regulations, such an imaginary appeal to elevate ourselves arguably provides little guidance for how to do so. Demanding ever more from those subjected to its call, this appealing power, the chapter suggests, follows the logic of the Lacanian superego, which according to Salecl (2004, p. 51) “commands the subject to enjoy yet at the same time mockingly predicts that he or she will fail in this pursuit of enjoyment.” As such, it makes out a central component in a creative force that feeds excessive outgrowths, which perpetually contribute to pervert, displace, and fragment established grounds for value creating activities within this industrial domain.