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Transition and organizational dissonance in Serbia

Hollinshead, Graham; MacLean, Mairi

Authors

Graham Hollinshead

Mairi MacLean



Abstract

This study reveals and analyses contradictory narrative voices within a local enterprise in the troubled Balkan region, recently acquired by a multinational enterprise. We employ case study research methods informed by semi-structured interviews with management and worker representatives to expose underlying and conflicting rationalities relating to the upgrading of technological and work systems, as a management-led response to growing market pressures. Recognition of the post-socialist enterprise as a site of political contestation and social fragmentation serves to frustrate broader aspirations of policy-makers towards early transitional closure, and limits the potential applicability of linear western conceptions of organizational change to transitional realities. The Serbian case presents an extreme variant of other, post-socialist contexts, institutionally volatile and politically charged. In an increasingly unbounded, indeterministic world, however, it emerges as potentially archetypal, thus enhancing our understanding of organizations and their management in the new global era. Copyright © 2007 The Tavistock Institute.

Citation

Hollinshead, G., & MacLean, M. (2007). Transition and organizational dissonance in Serbia. Human Relations, 60(10), 1551-1574. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726707083477

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Oct 1, 2007
Journal Human Relations
Print ISSN 0018-7267
Electronic ISSN 1741-282X
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 60
Issue 10
Pages 1551-1574
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726707083477
Keywords dissonance, micro-politics, modernisation and anti-modernisation, narrative, post-socialist transition, Serbia
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1024442
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0018726707083477


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