This fascinating book demonstrates how popular culture is a compelling arena for the critique of organizational life, one that plays out the complex and contradictory relations that people have with the organizations in which they work.
Carl Rhodes is Professor of Organization Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney. Robert Westwood is Reader at the University of Queensland Business School. Their book Humour, Work and Organization (2007) is also published by Routledge.
Part 1: Introduction 1. Introduction: Representation/Culture/Organization 2. Management as Popular Culture Part 2: Cinema 3. Images of Bureaucracy in the Cinema 4. Leads to a Closing: Salesmen, Identity and Masculinity 5. Cyborg Fantasies and Imagined Futures of Organizations Part 3: Television 6. Representations of Work and Management in British Sitcoms 7. The Carnivalization of Organizations in Television Comedy 8. Reception of McDonald's in Sociology and Television Animation Part 4: Music 9. Selling Out: Authenticity and Resistance in Rock Music 10. Bruce Springsteen, Management Gurus and the Trouble of the Promised Land 12. Songs of Work, Solidarity and Resistance from Joe Hill to Billy Bragg 13. Coda: What can Organization Studies do with Popular Culture?