Robert French - Böcker

Group Relations, Management, and Organization brings together a timely collection of new and important essays by an international group of authors. The authors represent different cultures, roles, and institutional backgrounds, as well as a variety of perspectives on the past, present, and future of group relations and its current impact on management, organizations, institutions, and societies. The importance of the book is in the perspective that it offers on the traditions of group relations and the changes that are currently taking place within this field. It is essential reading for those currently involved in the practice of group relations, for management educators and students, and for organizational consultants. The book provides the reader with reflections and insights which are highly relevant to an in-depth understanding both of the role of manager and to the dynamics of organizing.

Group Relations, Management, and Organization brings together a timely collection of new and important essays by an international group of authors. The authors represent different cultures, roles, and institutional backgrounds, as well as a variety of perspectives on the past, present, and future of group relations and its current impact on management, organizations, institutions, and societies. The importance of the book is in the perspective that it offers on the traditions of group relations and the changes that are currently taking place within this field. It is essential reading for those currently involved in the practice of group relations, for management educators and students, and for organizational consultants. The book provides the reader with reflections and insights which are highly relevant to an in-depth understanding both of the role of manager and to the dynamics of organizing.

This book describes an approach based on attention that can help individuals and groups to cooperate more effectively. It presents the first book-length reassessment of Wilfred Bion's ideas on groups. Every group has a purpose or purposes - or, as Bion put it, "every group, however casual, meets to 'do' something." The approach described here shows how individual group members' use of attention - both broad or "evenly suspended" and focused - can promote a better understanding of purpose, making it possible for them to do what they have met to do. This work of attention enables group members to maintain a clear sense of their purpose and also to recognise how easily they can become distracted, losing focus and dispersing their energies into activities that are off task. The approach builds on the authors' experience of using Bion's insights into group dynamics over twenty-five years in different contexts, formal and informal, as group members, managers, leaders, teachers, consultants, researchers, family members, and friends.

The author has been a leading figure internationally in the fields of organizational consultancy and group relations for many years. Robert French and Russ Vince have gathered together, for the first time, his key writings in this area. This is essential reading for managers and leaders, as well as organizational consultants, academics and students of organizations. Part of the Tavistock Clinic Series.

At a time of ever-increasing debate about orthodox approaches to management education, and their application in the post-industrial era, this innovative book brings together the work of authors actively engaged in developing new forms of education.

The introduction contrasts dominant utilitarian and functionalist conceptions of management education with various alternatives. It argues the need for a critical and pluralistic form of management education whereby participants are introduced to the full diversity of appropriate perspectives and debates. The remainder of the book echoes this commitment by exploring a range of approaches, including those based in psychoanalysis, critical theory and poststructuralism. Throughout the book, there is a focus is upon the implications of problematizing management knowledge so as to facilitate alternative and critical modalities of teaching and learning. In this context management is seen not simply as a bundle of skills and techniques but, rather, as a complex social, political and moral practice.

At a time of ever-increasing debate about orthodox approaches to management education, and their application in the post-industrial era, this innovative book brings together the work of authors actively engaged in developing new forms of education.

The introduction contrasts dominant utilitarian and functionalist conceptions of management education with various alternatives. It argues the need for a critical and pluralistic form of management education whereby participants are introduced to the full diversity of appropriate perspectives and debates. The remainder of the book echoes this commitment by exploring a range of approaches, including those based in psychoanalysis, critical theory and poststructuralism. Throughout the book, there is a focus is upon the implications of problematizing management knowledge so as to facilitate alternative and critical modalities of teaching and learning. In this context management is seen not simply as a bundle of skills and techniques but, rather, as a complex social, political and moral practice.

Can you learn without knowing it? This controversial and much debated question forms the basis of this collection of essays as the authors discuss whether the measurable changes in behaviour that result from learning can ever remain entirely unconscious. Three issues central to the topic of implicit learning are raised. Firstly, the extent to which learning can be unconscious, and therefore implicit, is considered. Secondly, theories are developed regarding the nature of knowledge acquired in implicit learning situations. Finally, the idea that there are two separable independent processing systems in the brain, for implicit and explicit learning, is considered.Implicit Learning and Consciousness challenges conventional wisdom and presents the most up-to-date studies to define, quantify and test the predictions of the main models of implicit learning. The chapters include a variety of research from computer modelling, experimental psychology and neural imaging to the clinical data resulting from work with amnesics. The result is a topical book that provides an overview of the debate on implicit learning, and the various philosophical, psychological and neurological frameworks in which it can be placed. It will be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and the philosophical, psychological and modeling research community.

This book describes an approach based on attention that can help individuals and groups to cooperate more effectively. It presents the first book-length reassessment of Wilfred Bion's ideas on groups. Every group has a purpose or purposes - or, as Bion put it, "every group, however casual, meets to 'do' something." The approach described here shows how individual group members' use of attention - both broad or "evenly suspended" and focused - can promote a better understanding of purpose, making it possible for them to do what they have met to do. This work of attention enables group members to maintain a clear sense of their purpose and also to recognise how easily they can become distracted, losing focus and dispersing their energies into activities that are off task. The approach builds on the authors' experience of using Bion's insights into group dynamics over twenty-five years in different contexts, formal and informal, as group members, managers, leaders, teachers, consultants, researchers, family members, and friends. The book aims to introduce Wilfred Bion's ideas to those who may never have encountered them, but it also develops those ideas in a way that offers fresh insights for those already familiar with his work. Throughout the book the authors use stories from their own experience to make the ideas accessible to anyone who is seeking to enhance their contributions to group life, to find the truth behind their experience, or simply to make things less confusing.

Can you learn without knowing it? This controversial and much debated question forms the basis of this collection of essays as the authors discuss whether the measurable changes in behaviour that result from learning can ever remain entirely unconscious. Three issues central to the topic of implicit learning are raised. Firstly, the extent to which learning can be unconscious, and therefore implicit, is considered. Secondly, theories are developed regarding the nature of knowledge acquired in implicit learning situations. Finally, the idea that there are two separable independent processing systems in the brain, for implicit and explicit learning, is considered.Implicit Learning and Consciousness challenges conventional wisdom and presents the most up-to-date studies to define, quantify and test the predictions of the main models of implicit learning. The chapters include a variety of research from computer modelling, experimental psychology and neural imaging to the clinical data resulting from work with amnesics. The result is a topical book that provides an overview of the debate on implicit learning, and the various philosophical, psychological and neurological frameworks in which it can be placed. It will be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and the philosophical, psychological and modeling research community.

David Armstrong has been a leading figure internationally in the fields of organizational consultancy and group relations for many years. Robert French and Russ Vince have gathered together, for the first time, his key writings in this area. This is essential reading for managers and leaders, as well as organizational consultants, academics and students of organizations. Part of the Tavistock Clinic Series.

This volume contains new papers addressing a number of new and traditional issues pertaining to the roles of representations in visual perception.Among these issues is the one concerning the nature of the perceptual state itself – e. g. on the issue of whether the perceptual state, like its distal objects, is structured, for instance by possessing a spatial character. Other issues include those of whether at least aspects of the distal object are presented immediately to us visually, whether representation plays any (interesting) role in disjunctivist and naïve realist accounts of visual experience and the relationship among visual perception, attention and representation.The anthology includes a wide variety of positions on the subject of the roles of representations in visual perception, which would help to close the literature gap and will be of interest to scholars from all schools and trends of philosophy of mind.