Hervé Corvellec – författare

Denna bok bygger på berättelser från vardagen ute i olika organisationer – en vardag som förvånansvärt ofta varken är välordnad eller rationell. Berättelserna är skrivna av unga människor och speglar deras kontakter med arbetslivet i dagens Sverige. Tack vare detta underifrånperspektiv ges utrymme för vardagliga tankar och mänskliga känslor, något som lätt försvinner i de teoretiska framställningar som görs i traditionella läroböcker.

Boken är indelad i sju tematiska kapitel:

Varje kapitel inleds med en teoretisk översikt med anknytning till kapitlets tema. Sedan följer ett antal berättelser som kommenteras utifrån kapitlets inledande modeller och begrepp. Kapitlen avslutas med diskussionsfrågor och tips för vidare läsning. Boken utgör ett unikt sätt att förbereda studenter, såväl praktiskt som teoretiskt, på de situationer som de kommer att möta i sin yrkeskarriär.

I denna andra reviderade upplaga har referenslitteraturen uppdaterats för att återspegla den senaste utvecklingen inom olika delområden och en del av de konkreta fallbeskrivningarna har blivit ersatta eller kompletterade med nyare fall.

Sagt om bokenBokens första upplaga fick priset ”Årets bokstöd – Akademiska priset 2004” av Centrum för personal och utveckling tillsammans med tidskriften Personal och ledarskap. Ur juryns motivering: ”I stället för att skriva ännu en teoretisk organisationsbok med några pliktskyldiga fallbeskrivningar längst bak har dessa författare gjort något mycket uppiggande. De startar med alldeles sanna, verkliga och osminkade vardagsberättelser från unga människors första kontakt med yrkeslivet. Sedan hakas teorin elegant på. (…) En måste-bok för att skärpa den kritiska blicken.”

Om författarnaHervé Corvellec är professor i företagsekonomi och verksam vid institutionen för Service Management, Campus Helsingborg, Lunds universitet. Leif Holmberg är docent i företagsekonomi och verksam vid Högskolan Kristianstad. Han har också mångårig praktisk erfarenhet av organisations- och ledningsarbete.

Performance is the yardstick by which the quality of individual and collective human effort is assessed. Everywhere, performance shapes the lives of people and organizations according to its logic and demands. The quest for performance has spread to societies worldwide; it has become of central importance for our perception of our activities and our understanding of the world. Such importance calls for reflection within the context of organizations. First, all important social processes are strongly affected by organizations. Second, performance holds a commanding position in organizations.

In Stories of Achievements, Herve Corvellec explains performance as a matter of telling, recounting, and communicating an organization''s actions or the results of those actions. He describes how organizations work with the notion of performance and examines its connections with efficiency and competition. Corvellec begins with an assessment of management literature, discussing the various ways different professions define performance. What is considered to be performance in one profession may be at odds with its definition in another. The author examines what performance means in the world of sports, and provides a look at performance throughout sports history. He then draws parallels between sports and organizations, detailing similarities and differences between performance and the notions of competitions, measurement and hierarchy.

This study covers particular aspects of the notion of performance—linguistic, semantic, theoretical, logical, historical, and narrative. Drawing on various methodologies, each chapter represents a smaller study of how performance is manifested in a particular context. Together, they provide a general presentation of how the notion of performance is used in organizations, where it comes from, and what is meant by performance in general managerial discourse. Stories of Achievements will be engrossing reading for management, accounting, and organization professionals, as well as sociologists interested in the study of economic organizations.

Performance is the yardstick by which the quality of individual and collective human effort is assessed. Everywhere, performance shapes the lives of people and organizations according to its logic and demands. The quest for performance has spread to societies worldwide; it has become of central importance for our perception of our activities and our understanding of the world. Such importance calls for reflection within the context of organizations. First, all important social processes are strongly affected by organizations. Second, performance holds a commanding position in organizations.

In Stories of Achievements, Herve Corvellec explains performance as a matter of telling, recounting, and communicating an organization''s actions or the results of those actions. He describes how organizations work with the notion of performance and examines its connections with efficiency and competition. Corvellec begins with an assessment of management literature, discussing the various ways different professions define performance. What is considered to be performance in one profession may be at odds with its definition in another. The author examines what performance means in the world of sports, and provides a look at performance throughout sports history. He then draws parallels between sports and organizations, detailing similarities and differences between performance and the notions of competitions, measurement and hierarchy.

This study covers particular aspects of the notion of performance—linguistic, semantic, theoretical, logical, historical, and narrative. Drawing on various methodologies, each chapter represents a smaller study of how performance is manifested in a particular context. Together, they provide a general presentation of how the notion of performance is used in organizations, where it comes from, and what is meant by performance in general managerial discourse. Stories of Achievements will be engrossing reading for management, accounting, and organization professionals, as well as sociologists interested in the study of economic organizations.