Introduction

Introduction

This book covers a variety of insights into the way in which organization is represented in the popular media. Drawing on organization theory, this text aims to unpack, decode and interpret messages and ideologies in contemporary representations of organization, whether these are Hollywood movies or ethnographic/documentary films, children's literature or the popular and ‘quality’ press. The focus of the book is frequently the material largely undiscussed in ‘mainstream’ organization theory, as popular culture offers more dramatic, more intense and more dynamic representations of organization than management texts. Consequently, where organization studies texts present rationality, organization and monolithic power relations, popular culture plays out sex, violence, emotion, power struggle, the personal consequences of success and failure, and disorganization upon its stage. Does popular culture present only an idealized, sensationalized view, then – one irrelevant to the lived experiences of organizational participants? Or are such glimpses and insights perhaps the very focus, the heart of organizational life, too long ignored by mainstream theory? Furthermore, do the ways in which such representations are presented carry with them some deeply rooted ideological persuasions, ensuring that their audiences accept and conform to the values of organizational society? Or are they implicit critiques of modern (and postmodern) capitalist frameworks? Finally, do we, the audience, passively receive such ideologies or do we rather recreate our own meanings in the light of our lived cultures and cultural capital?

It is our intention in bringing together the chapters in this volume to take a critical look at filmic, literary, televisual and journalistic portrayals of organizations, and to explore the ways in which these portrayals both remark on and inform current organization theory and practice. This agenda reflects not only a theoretical imperative to explore the linkages between ‘image’ and ‘reality’, ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’, but also a pedagogic desire to use commonplace media representations in the classroom as an aid to teaching and learning how organizations work. A cross-disciplinary focus, taking elements from management and organization theory, sociology, geography, media and cultural studies, film theory, and the interface between each, has allowed the authors to consider a diverse set of methodological and epistemological issues. First, however, [Page 2]it is necessary for readers unfamiliar with the debates to cover the key theories surrounding representation.