ABSTRACT
The sociological imagination does not just mean suspending our everyday commonsense assumptions about the world. It also means being wary of styles of intellectual analysis that are more concerned with solving the problems of particular sections of society than with developing an analysis that would be of relevance to members of society more generally. Jacques (1996) points out, for example, that many of the attempts currently being made to theorise work relations are producing their own kind of ‘commonsense’. At the heart of this is a standard body of relatively unchanging US-created ‘management knowledge’ that takes for granted that the key ‘work’ issue is one of finding better ways to manage employees to enable organisations to achieve high productivity, international competitiveness and ‘world class efficiency’. Questions are not asked about the nature and legitimacy of work organisations or, for example, the role of non-managers in ‘managing’ work, in shaping ‘motivations’ or acting as social citizens within work arrangements in which relationships are built and balanced. To ask these questions, we might add, does not preclude an interesting issue of efficiency and productivity but it does mean asking ‘efficiency and productivity in whose interests?’.
