Post bureaucracy and the politics of forgetting: The management of change at the BBC, 1991‐2002
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the imputed “fall” and subsequent “reinvention” of the BBC during the 1990s, relating a managerialist “politics of forgetting” to the broader ideological narratives of “the post bureaucratic turn”.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, combining case study analysis with long‐term historical perspectives on organisational change.
Findings
The paper shows the ways in which public sector professionals contested “post bureaucratic” pressures for marketisation and organisational disaggregation.
Originality/value
The paper shows the ways in which large‐scale technological, regulatory and organisational change was mediated by cultural continuities and recurrent “surges” of managerial control.
Keywords
Citation
Harris, M. and Wegg‐Prosser, V. (2007), "Post bureaucracy and the politics of forgetting: The management of change at the BBC, 1991‐2002", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 20 No. 3, pp. 290-303. https://doi.org/10.1108/09534810710740146
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2007, Emerald Group Publishing Limited