ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the ways in which the officers of bureaucratic corporations – the managers of organisations – vary the ways in which work is carried out as they strive to exert control over task performance in order to assist the survival of the enterprise that employs them. Managers work day-to-day in a context where the survival of the organisation can never be taken for granted, whether it is a profit-oriented business corporation or a public service organisation. The logic of corporate management is one of shaping exchange relationships to satisfy the demands of the various constituencies, inside and outside the organisation, so that continued support in terms of resources such as labour, custom, investment, supplies and legal approval is obtained and the organisation enabled to survive into the long term. Labour or human resource 'inputs' into organisations are clearly not equivalent to inputs of gas, electricity or raw materials.
