One of the best things about engaging in research is the opportunity to publish findings and disseminate that research to a wider audience. Even though much academic work is focused on journal articles, I believe that books are still incredibly important and provide us with an opportunity to look in detail at complex social and organisational phenomena.
Details of my books are below along with links to sample chapters. Please feel free to contact me if you’d like more information.
Newly released!
War and conflict are a reality of life throughout the world. While much is written about the impact of violence and disorder, how people and organisations adapt to these environments is poorly understood. This book tells the often hidden story of people managing, delivering services and sustaining economies through and beyond violent conflict. It is written for both general readers and academic specialists, combining first person interviews, insights from ‘witness seminars; and informal conversations with more scholarly research. Building on what we already know about organisational behavior and conflict transformation, the book looks at the delivery of housing and public amenities, the management of public space and commemoration and the role of local businesses during and beyond violent conflict. In particular, it focuses on the role of organisational managers as peacebuilding entrepreneurs, generating and sustaining conflict transformation efforts.
The book is available now from Palgrave, Amazon and other outlets – see link above.
Praise for ‘Management and War’…
“This book focuses on three areas of conflict, two of which I have personally spent many decades involved with. It examines conflict and peace building from the ground up and gives a rare account of the necessary skills of managing strategic goals in dangerous and complex situations and brilliantly describes how hardship must be managed to keep society and life moving forward.”
Bertie Ahern, Former Taoiseach and signatory of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement
“This important book is founded on an ambitious study of the leadership and management of public services, economic renewal, links with NGO’s and the expression of culture and the Arts in violent conflicts in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and the Basque country. These conflicts are often portrayed solely through the eyes of political and security elites. Here the distinctive and additive focus is on the personal accounts of middle and senior managers accommodating and shaping organisational life in and around the conflicts. The book is enriched by a strong conceptual structure and a compelling and accessible writing style which will ensure its impact in academia and beyond.“
Andrew Pettigrew OBE, FBA, Emeritus Professor of Strategy and Organisation, Said Business School, University of Oxford
“Murphy’s highly readable and insightful account articulates new lines of research inquiry in the emerging field of management and peace building. She invites and provokes in equal measure. A critical and accessible resource for all academics and organisational actors interested in ‘managing conflict’. “
Hastings Donnan, Director, Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice
#Management #Conflict #Publicmanagers #Change #Peacebuilding
The fundamental change in policing that began in 2001 was a critical part of the Northern Ireland peace process. Seventy years after its establishment the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) remained distrusted and unrepresentative of the Catholic – nationalist community. This book explores how policing changed and the significant contribution that overhaul made to the most successful conflict transformation process in recent decades. It looks at policing from an organizational perspective and focuses on leadership, strategy and culture as it traces the journey from RUC to PSNI. In this way it reflects the views of many key figures inside the organization and of key political decision makers outside of it. This book will be of tremendous interest to those seeking to explore the underlying dynamics of one of the most radical and challenging change processes in recent history and is a must read for anyone interested in the Northern Irish peace process.
Praise for ‘Policing for Peace…’
“This book makes an important contribution to an understanding of the profound changes in policing that have occurred within a relatively short period of time in Northern Ireland. It also contributes to an understanding of organizational change in general. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in deepening his or her understanding of this complex situation.”
– Rutgers University Review
“Murphy’s close and detailed analysis provides a nuanced account of these important issues, and her work adds a valuable dimension to our understanding of the transition from RUC to PSNI. It will be of interest to researchers and policy-makers interested in the process of police reform in Northern Ireland and internationally and in the internal dynamics of organizational change generally.” – Aogán Mulcahy, British Journal of Criminology
#Policing #NorthernIreland #PSNI #RUC #Patten #Reform #Change
Co-authored with Mary Lee Rhodes, Jenny Muir and John Murray.
That public services exhibit unpredictability, novelty and, on occasion, chaos, is an observation with which even a casual observer would agree. Existing theoretical frameworks in public management fail to address these features, relying more heavily on attempts to eliminate unpredictability through increased reliance on measurable performance objectives, improved financial and human resource management techniques, decentralisation of authority and accountability and resolving principal-agent behaviour pathologies. Essentially, these are all attempts to improve the ‘steering’ capacity of public sector managers and policy makers.By adopting a Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) approach to public services, this book shifts the focus from developing steering techniques to identifying patterns of behaviour of the participants with the ultimate objective of increasing policy-makers’ and practitioners’ understanding of the factors that may enable more effective public service decision-making and provision. The authors apply a CAS framework to a series of case studies in public sector management to generate new insights into the issues, processes and participants in public service domains.
Now out in paperback!
Praise for ‘Public Management and Complexity Theory’
‘In sum, the book is useful in teaching students about how to view real world problems with a CAS framework and shows that traditional bureaucratic approaches to accountability may frustrate flexible management of the CAS dynamics.’- Sungho Lee, Samsung Economic Research Institute
“This is an interesting and brave attempt to apply complexity theory to the nitty-gritty and messy world of public services” – Graham Room, University of Bath, Social Policy and Administration, Vol. 48, No.5, October 2014.
#Public Management #Complexity #Health #Housing
Joanne Murphy 