A Tale of Three Cities

Or the Glocalization of City Management
Erscheinungsjahr 2002
ISBN: 978-0-19-925271-8
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 172 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 272 g

Cities are complex, sprawling, diverse places. They are organized, but disorganized; managed, but unmanaged; orderly, but disorderly. Modern metropolitan cities reproduce themselves and we are familiar with the common icons that are replicated in every part of the globe, but how should we understand cities?

For the past five years, Professor Czarniawska has been leading a research project on globalization and the management of cities. Rather than seeing the city as a conurbation, or a location of economic activity, or in terms of governance and administration, Czarniawska explores the city as an action net. An action net of this sort includes various organizations-municipal, state, private, and voluntary-and non-organized individuals. Such an approach was designed to avoid the fallacy of viewing the big city as one big organization. The city is thus conceived as a particularly complex and disorderly action net; a seamless web of interorganizational networks, where the city administration proper constitutes just one point of entry and by no means provides a map of the entire terrain.

The research focuses on three European capitals: Warsaw, Stockholm, and Rome. At the outset, leading politicians and officials in each city listed the major problems and projects that the city was engaged in, for example environmental reforms, improvement of public utilities, privatization, financial targets, etc. The author selected a number of these for more detailed study, reporting upon interesting similarities and differences between the approaches taken. The book aims to explore organizing processes in their local context while following the connections between such contexts.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Czarniawska, Barbara

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Globalisierung
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Regional- & Raumplanung Stadtplanung, Kommunale Planung
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Globalisierung, Transformationsprozesse
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Internationale Wirtschaft Wirtschaftliche Globalisierung

Über Autor(innen)

Barbara Czarniawska is Skandia Professor of Management Studies at the Gothenburg Research Institute, Göteborg University, and is widely regarded as one of the leading Europeans in the field of organization studies. Previous positions include Chair of Management in the Department of Business Administration, Lund University, and Associate Professor and Acting Chair in Public Management at the Stockholm School of Economics. Recent academic posts abroad include Arthur Andersen Visiting Fellow at the Department of Accounting and Finance, London School of Economics and Political Science (March 1996), and Visiting Professor at the University of Innsbruck, Austria (1994).