Suchergebnisse

What is the role of management consultants in the diffusion of fashionable ideas? This paper addresses this question by drawing on an ethnographic study of management consultants in the UK. The study examined how the consultants made sense of a newly emerging discourse of work-life balance. Using the metaphor of a `bandwagon', the study reveals the shifting interpretations of the work-life balance discourse as the consultants found themselves `riding alongside', `cashing in', `steering', `steering clear of' and `falling off' the bandwagon. These findings question the idea that fashion-setters always `jump on' to fashion bandwagons, thereby acting as passive channels in the diffusion of popular discourses. Instead, the study highlights the similarities between fashion-setters and their audiences in the reflexive and strategic ways in which discourses can be interpreted, enacted and appropriated.

If marriage is, by longstanding definition and acceptance, a formal relationship between a man and a woman, primarily (though not exclusively) with the aim of producing and rearing children as I have described it, and if that is the institution contemplated and safeguarded by Article 12, then to accord a same-sex relationship the title and status of marriage would be to fly in the face of the Convention as well as to fail to recognise physical reality (Sir Mark Potter, judgment inWilkinson v Kitzinger & Others[2006] HRLR 36, para. 120).

This article explores the relationship between discourse and subjectivity in organizations with reference to an ethnographic study of UK management consultants. The article reveals the contradiction, criticism, cynicism and ambivalence involved in their role as preachers and practitioners of flexible work. These findings question the assumption that management consultants are evangelists that are identified with the discourses they sell. However, I also argue that the dis-identification and contradiction I observed did not in fact disrupt or disturb the production and promotion of their flexible working discourse. I suggest that the consultants constructed pragmatic, instrumental and dramaturgical selves in order to manage the tension between being preacher and practitioner. I conclude by suggesting that cynicism, ambivalence and contradiction constitute important but neglected features of work and organization.

The Department of Defense has been called to transform the way it fights, thinks and operates to more effectively counter the changing threats to the United States. Private organizations have long been faced with a similar need to be flexible to meet the dynamic market which they serve. The Office of Force Transformation has been tasked to facilitate the mandated transformation of the DoD. Based on literature on slack resources, slack may be a necessary tool for proper transformation to a more innovative and effective military.

Disembodiment, community development, & spatial reorganization in cyberspace are discussed with a focus on activism in the particular minority group of transsexuals & cross-dressing people. Cyberspace is a familiar place for this group, long used to living out "virtual identities" & escaping from their bodies. The particular needs & issues confronting transgendered women & men that the Internet has been able to address, eg, "passing" for the other sex, & personal judgments & social hierarchies with the transgendered community. Through the facilities & attributes of cyberspace, this group has promoted the new self-classification "transgendered" that in turn has increased the base & activism of community members. As a result of the Internet, not only has the transgendered community expanded in the US, but internationally, to reshape its sphere of political & legal activism; examples of international activism are given. 19 References. M. Pflum

This paper provides an introduction to the SOSIG (Social Science Information Gateway) Law Gateway a web based descriptive database of high quality legal information resources on the Internet (www.sosig.ac.uk/law). The Law Gateway is a new research support service being developed by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (University of London) in partnership with the University of Bristol as part of the UK's Resource Discovery Network initiative. The project seeks to provide access to the expanding range of global legal materials now being delivered over the Internet. In effect, the Law Gateway aims to offer the UK and international legal communities appropriate new ways to find, assess and access law in the new century.