Nanette Monin

Hijacking the Fairy Tale: Genre Blurring and Allegorical Breaching in Management Literature

Our paper argues that genre is more than the packaging of a message: it is integral to both the story told and the reader’s response. Drawing on formalist and behaviourist approaches, we suggest that the fairy tale, a traditional and universally familiar narrative genre, lives on in organizational storying; and we re-read The One Minute Manager as a fairy tale. We note that eighteen of the thirty-one functions of the fairy tale fabula distinguished in Propp’s morphology are elements of the tale; that the thirteen discarded functions, the tale not told, all relate to the theme of villainy; and that genre initiates an intertextual play of meaning. We conclude that although fairy tales may be invaluable sources of folk-knowledge, this familiar mode of storied knowledge-making may lull the reader into acquiescence with a one-dimensional experience. On the other hand, creative approaches to the narrative genres of management theory should be applauded: genre-breaching, which defamiliarizes the familiar, enables new insights.

The purpose of the picnic: using Burke’s dramatistic pentad to analyse a company event

Uses Kenneth Burke’s “dramatistic pentad” as an analytical framework to analyse a company event that in New Zealand became symbolic of social responsibility in action. Presents the event in which the staff of an Auckland food processing operation was flown to Western Samoa for a weekend “picnic”. Explores the act – what happened; the scene the physical, geographic and cultural milieu of the action; the agent – managing director Dick Hubbard’s individual identity and the role he played out in terms of the action; the agency – the means by which Hubbard was enabled to accomplish this action, and his role in initiating, approving and funding the staff picnic; and finally, the purpose – the intended effect of the action and a consideration of perceived outcomes. Considers the usefulness of the dramatistic pentad to other organisational contexts. Concludes that it provides a useful model to guide the analysis of diverse organisational texts.

Shaping Leadership for Today: Mary Parker Follett’s Aesthetic

In this article we explore a view of Mary Parker Follett’s leadership writings that adopting an aesthetic lens un folds. Our approach leads us to images of circularity as experienced in both our own sensory response to her arguments as paradoxical, and as an image of her intellectual abstractions. This aesthetic inquiry values a paradoxical both-and over a bipolar either-or approach, and demonstrates that Follett’s pragmatism stems from her notion of integration and her use of circularity as a recurring leitmotif. Follett argues that leadership integration is contingent on a continual review of the total situation in all its complexity and fluidity. This leads to paradoxical notions of the subordinate role of the leader in organisational processes and the pre-eminence of leadership as an activity that concerns all actors regardless of their place within a hierarchy.

Finding Myth and Motive in Language: A Narrative of Organizational Change:

Our article defines myth as “ideology in narrative form” and explores the role of myth in an organizational change story. Following Roland Barthes we show that when word meaning shifts from first- to second-order semiology the myth that develops within the second-order semiology of a discourse may become a determinant of change outcomes. Here we tell a story of a symphony orchestra that operated as a self-governing co-operative for its first 25 years but, influenced by the storying of second-order semiology, it undertook a radical change: it adopted a corporate style of governance. We explore this change as an example of a restructuring that was assumed to be managed rationally but was in part mythologically driven.

Guru of Gurus Peter Drucker, Logology, and the Ultimate Leader

Since management theorizing began, a trend that clearly separates managers into a hierarchy of leader-managers has emerged: “Leaders” are now perceived as higher order managers, and “bad” managers are now called “managers,” and “good managers” are called leaders. The authors suggest that management and leadership theory have already moved from the naming of managers to the designation of the select few as leaders of managers and that a leader of leaders or an ultimate leader will debut. Supported by Burkes theory of logology, the article suggests it is language itself that propels the drive toward hierarchy until it arrives at an ultimate position. The method of text analysis utilized is called scriptive reading, and the article is underscored by the larger methodology of new rhetoric.

Art Rules? Brokering the Aesthetics of City Places and Spaces 1

In a narrative built around our experience of art placed in the lobby of a corporate edifice, we argue that a city bureaucracy is actively participating in the legitimised abduction of community resources by urban developers: that however well‐intentioned, subscription to the notion that social, environmental, and aesthetic responsibilities can be expected of, and accounted for, by corporate business, is naïve. Our intention is to signal the outcome—corporate control of our aesthetic environment—that our discussion foreshadows.

Finding Beauty in the Banal: An Exploration of Service Work in the Artful Classroom

Artists derive inspiration from daily life. According to John Dewey (1934), common experiences are transformed into works of art through a process of compression and expression. Our paper adopts Deweys frame to demonstrate that experience in the artful classroom plays a valuable role in management education. We asked students to reflect on their work experience and then to provide an artful expression of their reflections. For this exercise we defined artfulness as a process which relies on the discursive practices of satire, and in particular irony and parody. Offering a service management class as an exemplar we demonstrate the use of these rhetorical techniques as reflective learning tools. A class of students were first prompted to consider their common experiences as both customers and service providers, and were then asked to create an ironic artefact. Our paper, which analyses a cartoon sequence produced by students in response to this assignment and in which they parody the fast-food service experience, illustrates how a business studies classroom can be transformed into an artful space.

Personification of the computer: a pathological metaphor in IS

Semantic and syntactic aspects of metaphor are explored and explained as a preface to an exposition of the impact on Information Systems (IS) personnel of a popular root metaphor: the personification of the computer. It is suggested that since action metaphors determine attitudes and future directions, this personification may be responsible for confusing both end-user and researcher: that if the potential of computers is to be more fully realised and utilised, our perceptions of the language in which we describe them should be illuminated. There is a danger, it is argued, that if human attributes are ascribed to the computer, personnel in IS begin to act out the metaphor pathologically.

Blake's 'London': Diabolical reading and poetic place in organisational theorising

We read Blakes poem ‘London’ aimed at sensitising readers to the early nineteenth century plight of Londons most vulnerable citizens. Our reading surfaces several issues relevant to organisational theorising: the role of ‘diabolical reading’ strategies in creating mental flux through textual flux; the use of visual and poetic symbolism to contest the language systems implicated in the psychic effects of institutional domination; and Blakes narrative voice as wandering Bard, which places the poetic body at the centre of responding to spatial practices of the city. We argue Blakes art still inspires because it haunts the reader as it continually renews itself in re-reading and so both inscribes and incorporates, making the word, flesh. Blakes philosophy also highlights the creative poetic subject ‘placed’ in their city-landscape and so provides a pathway through inscription and incorporation. Implications for organisational theory are explained.