Differences in management behavior across organizations are attributed to differences in priorities and objectives or differences in the style and preferences of the individuals involved. This volume challenges this image by attending to the extra-organizational and extra-individual forces that shape and constrain how work is structured in organizations. The authors focus their attention on work within and between organizations and emphasize the ways in which the jobs are defined, the power and autonomy they engender, the opportunities that are afforded, and the constraints that are imposed, are continuously contested not only at the individual level, but also at a more aggregate and collective level. This volume is the product of an interdisciplinary gathering of scholars convened with generous support of the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council. It presents new theoretical and empirical papers that examine aspects of the changing nature of jobs and work in organizations from multiple perspectives and methodologies.

Business, management, and other specialists from the US, Europe, and Canada offer 12 essays that consider the structure and structuring of work within and between organizations, focusing on jobs and how they are shaped by and impact organizations, occupations, and institutions. They discuss jobs as the building blocks of organizational and societal structures, with examples like idiosyncratic jobs and college teaching; professional and occupational boundaries for technicians and human resource departments; constraints related to work in organizations, including organizational identity, network position, and autonomy; and how structures are perpetuated and changed and stress broader institutional and political forces. -- Annotation * (protoview.com) *

Edited by Lisa E. Cohen, McGill University, Canada M. Diane Burton, Cornell University, USA Michael Lounsbury, University of Alberta, Canada