Organizational Relationships in the Networking Age: The Dynamics of Identity Formation and Bonding

Globalization, the information technology revolution, individualization and other processes in contemporary society all impact on organizations. Organizational actors are recognizing the need to make sense of these permutations, reconstruct their identities and positions and find ways of coping with the complexity of relationships within and between organizations. This book analyses the framework of these organizational relationships and the dynamics of identity formation and bonding on several levels.Organizational practices, managerial and professional coping strategies are all explored within the context of shifting inter-organizational relationships. The findings, which are presented by an international team of contributors, are complex and demonstrate continuities as well as discontinuities. The authors analyse the way in which organizational actors, such as managers, information technology specialists, creative professionals and academic researchers make sense of the social transformations in the networking age and their impact on organizations. The organizational settings which are studied include armies, universities, non-governmental organizations, information technology development houses, telecom operators and organizations in the food production chain. This multi-disciplinary book will appeal to a wide-ranging audience of scholars, practitioners and consultants across various fields including organization and management studies, industrial relations, social psychology, work and organization psychology and sociology, HRM and employment relationships.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Preface 1. Organizational Relationships in the Networking Age: An Introduction Part I: The Framing of Organizational Relationships 2. Commitment and Community in Organizations 3. The Performance Nature of Identification: Modes of Management and Actors at Work 4. The Critical Edge of Individualization: About the ‘Culturing’ of Service Delivery and the Performance of Privacy 5. Ideology, Consensus and Organizational Effectiveness in a Fragmenting Society: Western Combatants in the Second World War Part II: Personal Coping Strategies of Organizational Actors 6. Management as a Dead End: How Managers Survive in a Culturally Complex Environment 7. The Discursive Constructions of Performing Professionals 8. Identity Creation in Temporary and Scattered Work Practices in a Relational Perspective 9. Identity Construction and Commitments of Graphic Designers Part III: Shifting Inter-Organizational Relationships and Identity Formation 10. The Construction of Identity in a Fragmenting Telecom Operator 11. Identities and Relationships in the Theatre of the Dotcom Industries 12. Changing Identities of European Farmers 13. Biotechnology: The Production of New Identities 14. Organizational Relationships in the Networking Age: A Concluding Analysis Index