This book provides a focused collection of readings to support and encourage wider consideration of alternative ways of thinking about management and its effectiveness in contemporary organisations.

Chapter 1 The nature of management, David Golding; Chapter 2 Encountering management, Vincenzo Dispenza; Chapter 3 Treading treacle at parties and parapets, Joe Nason; Chapter 4 The enactment of political tensions in management, Judith Golding; Chapter 5 Reconstructing the study of management, Robert Protherough; Chapter 6 Teaching management through reflective practice, Janet McGivern, Jane Thompson; Chapter 7 Circles of uncertainty in management learning, Judith Golding; Chapter 8 Promises, promotion and pristine porcelain, Fred Dobson; Chapter 9 Nothing starts from nowhere, David Currie;

David Golding is Senior Research Fellow at the Hull University Business School. He has over twenty years of experience of managing in industry and has spent fifteen years teaching and researching management. He has published widely in both management and sociology journals and contributed to a number of books on management.
David Currie is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Organisational Analysis and Human Resource Management, University of Lincolnshire and Humberside. He has fourteen years' experience of management in local government and ten years' experience of teaching and researching in management.