In recent years, the contemporary social sciences have again turned their attention to space and places. The hypothesis is that these are not accidental episodes but a full-blown revolution in the way of viewing economic processes and their links with social and cultural structures. In other words, this new sensitivity to places offers the possibility of rethinking issues typical of economics in a different perspective that might be defined as local development, one of the terms most (ab)u...

Public administration in Canada needs to change. A handful of scholars across Canada have been sounding the alarm for years but to no avail. Talented young bureaucrats have been joining the public service with fresh ideas capable of creating real change, but the black hole consumes all.In The Black Hole of Public Administration, experienced public servant Ruth Hubbard and public administration iconoclast Gilles Paquet sound a wake-up call to the federal public service. The...

Many of today’s books on the tools and techniques of leadership and management provide descriptions of long lists for use in decision-making, leading, coaching and project management. This book takes a completely different approach. It contests the claims that the tools and techniques are based on evidence and explains why human activities of leading and managing are simply not amenable to scientific proof and consequently, why long-term futures of organizations are unpredictable.T...

This guide to the emerging language of creative industries field is a valuable resource for researchers and students alike. Concise, extensively referenced, and accessible, this this is an exceptionally useful reference work.- Gauti Sigthorsson***, Greenwich University***"There could be no better guides to the conceptual map of the creative industries than John Hartley and his colleagues, pioneers in the field. This book is a clear, comprehensive an...

'I love this book...it is novel, punchy and extremely well written. It takes the pomposity out of strategic management, showing that strategy is everywhere and can really help with the complicated jargon. A great read, buy it!' - Cary L. Cooper, Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health Lancaster University Management School'If strategy is the queen of business, then this book offers us the perfect introduction to her court! It is accessible, lively, and informative. The bo...

The literature on governmentality has had a major impact across the social sciences over the past decade, and much of this has drawn upon the pioneering work by Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose. This volume will bring together key papers from their work for the first time, including those that set out the basic frameworks, concepts and ethos of this approach to the analysis of political power and the state, and others that analyse specific domains of the conduct of conduct, from marketing to ...

This book critically assesses the learning that is required and provided within a learning society and gives a detailed sociological analysis of the emerging role of lifelong learning with examples from around the globe. Divided into three clear parts the book:looks at the development of the knowledge economyprovides a critique of lifelong learning and the learning societyfocuses on the changing nature of research in the learning society.The...

From climate change to GM foods, we are increasingly confronted with complex, interconnected social and environmental problems that span disciplines, knowledge bases and value systems. This book offers a transdisciplinary, open approach for those working towards resolving these 'wicked' problems and highlights the crucial role of this 'transdisciplinary imagination' in addressing the shift to sustainable futures. Tackling Wicked Problems provides readers with a framework and practical exam...

Written by a team of renowned experts in the field, Marketing: A Critical Textbook provides a unique introduction and overview of critical approaches to marketing.Ideally suited to advanced students of marketing, the book uses examples and ′real world′ case studies to illustrate and discuss major alternative and critical perspectives on the subject, enabling students to constructively question the conventional assumptions, concepts and models with which they are al...

Gender, Identity and the Culture of Organizations considers how organizations operate as spaces in which minds are gendered and men and women constructed. This edited collection brings together four powerful themes that have developed within the field of organizational analysis over the past two decades: organizational culture; the gendering of organizations; post-modernism and organizational analysis; and critical approaches to management. A range of essays by distinguished write...

Business ethics has largely been written from the perspective of analytical philosophy with very little attention paid to the work of continental philosophers. Yet although very few of these philosophers directly discuss business ethics, it is clear that their ideas have interesting applications in this field. This innovative textbook shows how the work of continental philosophers - Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault, Levinas, Bauman, Derrida, Levinas, Nietzsche, Zizek, Jonas, Sartre, Heidegge...

In Crippling Epistemologies and Governance Failures, Gilles Paquet criticizes the prevailing practices of the social sciences on the basis of their inadequate concepts of knowledge, evidence and inquiry, concepts he claims have become methodological “mental prisons”. Paquet describes the prevailing policy development process in Canada in terms of its weak information infrastructure, poor accountability, and inflexible organization design. In contrast, he suggests that social scien...