Engineering management studies as part of continuing engineering education

Engineering management is an important area of undergraduate preparation. With the introduction of engineering and technology degrees via flexible delivery, there are a growing number of mature age engineering students returning to study to upgrade their qualifications. These students offer a new and unique perspective on engineering management - they may have had significant practical experience as a manager/supervisor in an engineering environment. This paper reports on a survey undertaken to better understand the perceptions of mature age engineering students relating to engineering management. The engineering management competencies identified as most important by mature age engineering students are those that are practically orientated, most clearly associated with engineering and generic professional skills. Management competencies identified as less important by mature age students are those that are more theoretical and most clearly associated with other business functions or professional occupations.

Human resource management studies in mainland China : mainstream or alternative research?

Our paper presents a summary of the existing literature on human resource management (HRM) studies in mainland China published in the 25 leading international journals over the last 30 years. The aim is to take stock of what is known and what is yet to be known about HRM in China. We argue that what is known is comparative rather than definitive, with HRM in China treated as a subset of international HRM, rather than as a mainstream issue. With a quarter of the world’s population affected by an understanding of what constitutes better HRM in China, we call for a more inclusive, collaborative approach by researchers inside and outside China.

The emergent structure of feeling : what does it mean for critical educational studies and research?

Critical research in education is not what it used to be. It must now engage with a differently structured and globalized world with different social and material conditions for its peoples. This paper sets out to name the contemporary structure of feeling in which education researchers now work, particularly in terms of what now is to be the object of their educational theorizing and research and what are to be the intellectual resources brought to bear on such activity. The intention is to open up debate, recognizing that there are no easy answers and yet acknowledging the need for answers to be attempted. It is, therefore, an invitation premised on an optimism of the will to complement legitimate pessimism of the intellect. It concludes that a critical engagement with these matters demands a modernist/postmodernist, reconstructive/deconstructive reflexivity in the mobilizing of a new sociological imagination applied across the broad spectrum which is educational research.

Research subjects/research subjections : exploring the ethics and politics of critical research

I use this paper to reflect upon the ethics and politics of Critical Management Studies (CMS) research. I highlight a potential for problematic power relations in CMS and, drawing upon Foucault’s (1976) ‘five methodological precautions’ for analysing power, I explore these power relations as an effect of the micro-constitution of ‘subordinate’ and ‘superior’ subject positions within the research process. Through detailed analysis of a research interview transcript I illustrate how the researched’s ‘subordinate’ and researcher’s ‘superior’ subject positions may be constructed as an outcome of normal and well-intentioned CMS research.

Book review : Ethics and organizational practice : questioning the moral foundations of management

The arena of ethics and business is a colossus: thousands of books, multiple dedicated journals, de rigueur organizational ethics policies and CSR initiatives - most of which we can be fairly confident would receive poor reviews by the editors and authors of Ethics and organizational practice: Questioning the moral foundations of management. This edited collection is a self-identified ‘critical’ take on business ethics, one that according to the editors’ introduction wishes to ‘expose business ethics to its crises’ and ‘critically investigate(s) what ethics means’. The ‘critical’ which Muhr, Sørensen and Vallentin invoke is one that would be familiar to authors and readers of Critical Management Studies – that is, to use Fournier and Grey’s (2000) oft-referenced depiction, the study of management and organization that is non-performative with regards to managerialist concerns of efficiency and profitability, that seeks to denaturalize taken-for-granted legitimations, and the normalization of current organizational practices and ideologies, and one which demonstrates significant reflexivity with regard to the philosophies and methodologies it deploys. To the above, we may also add pluralism, and indeed some playfulness, with a wide diversity of conceptual, theoretical, historical and popular sources mined for their potential to help us reconsider the organizational present.