Seminar
In Defence of Management
Organisation Studies
Speaker: | Professor Barbara Czarniawska, University of Gothemburg |
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Date: | Tuesday 29 October 2013 |
Time: | 4.00 pm |
Location: | Bateman Lecture Theatre, Building One, Streatham Campus |
Further details
It is estimated that management will continue to increase in relation to other occupations. This fact, far from producing joy or gratefulness, is met with an increasing hostility towards the occupation. This hostility is not produced by our colleagues in critical management studies – like every art, management needs its critics – but by its often thoughtless enthusiasts. After having reviewed some most blatant examples from what Nigel Thrift called "cultural circuit", comprising business schools, management consultants, management gurus, and business media, I will suggest a way of building an old-new alliance, necessary in order to retrieve the positive meaning of management.
Barbara Czarniawska is Professor of Management Studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She studies connections between popular culture and practice of management, and techniques of managing overflow in affluent societies; exploring techniques of fieldwork and the applications of narratology in social sciences. Recent books in English: Cyberfactories: How News Agencies Produce News (2011) and Managing Overflow in Affluent Societies (edited with Orvar Löfgren, 2012).