Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/2777 on 28.02.2017 by CS (TIS)Decision making activity is at the heart of organisations and, as an essential managerial
function, it has been the subject of an immense body of literature. As the majority of
research has been undertaken within the disciplines of economics and psychology,
studies have tended to emphasise economic rationality as the basis for cognitive
reasoning, decision processes and judgement and as the analytic paradigm. However, in
the face of new problems, and in times of profound change, conventional forms of
thought may be problematic in themselves. This project suggests and assesses a
Foucaultian framework as an alternative approach to the study of managerial decision
making.

Within a multiple case-study strategy, evidence has been collected from three
manufacturing companies in Devon and Cornwall, using a range of qualitative methods;
derived from ethnography, historiography, and grounded theory. A major decisional
theme emerged in each case study: employee participation, linked to the nonrecognition
of trade unions; Japanese managerial techniques (Kaizen); and product
quality.

A Foucaultian approach to discourse analysis was used to assess the trajectories of
systems of management thought; nature and influence of changes in management
discourse, and the resulting vacillation in power/knowledge relations within these three
organisations. Genealogical assessment of alterations in organisational culture reveals
shifts in the power relations which produce and maintain those decision outcomes;
which, in their turn, establish and affirm the power relations. Among them are
stereotypes that are problematised by non-unionism; the historical possibilities giving
rise to the discourse and practices of Kaizen; discursive motifs on quality, and the
formation of new discourses.

Comparative archaeology of the various concepts of quality, as apprehended within the
study, has identified two major currents of discourse. Neither discourse is inherently
advantageous or harmful to an organisation but, where discourses are both present, and
in competition, the resulting dichotomy is disorientating for organisational actors and
potentially lethal to business performance