W.W. Sharrock – författare

Originally published in 1986, this work examines how key figures such as Garfinkel, Sacks and Cicourel have revolutionised thinking about how sociology''s presuppositions about ''being social'' are grounded. Yet until the appearance of this book there were no clear and authoritative introductions to the main thinkers in the field or their work. In assessing the critical reception of Ethnomethodology, Sharrock and Anderson argue persuasively that much is wide of the mark - as they say, the real argument has yet to begin.

Originally published in 1986, this work examines how key figures such as Garfinkel, Sacks and Cicourel have revolutionised thinking about how sociology''s presuppositions about ''being social'' are grounded. Yet until the appearance of this book there were no clear and authoritative introductions to the main thinkers in the field or their work. In assessing the critical reception of Ethnomethodology, Sharrock and Anderson argue persuasively that much is wide of the mark - as they say, the real argument has yet to begin.

This book examines the nature of work and management, centring on documents as a class of management objects which have been relatively understudied in ethnomethodological research. Treating documents and similar artefacts as ordering devices, the authors describe consociation – the social organisation of patterns of coordinated action in situations where the usual resources of face to face communication are absent. With a focus on senior managers, this volume provides a description of the interior configuration of the world of senior management as the encountered, everyday experience of managing, drawing on first person experience rather than ethnographic fieldwork to shed new light on the importance of third person reflection upon practical understandings. An innovative study of the social character of such management objects as spreadsheets, strategic plans, computational models and charts, Action at a Distance will appeal to scholars of sociology with interests in ethnomethodology, the sociology of work and method in the social sciences.