ABSTRACT
The argument we will develop here is that the popular culture phenomenon Star Trek (including the original television series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, and associated merchandise and paraphernalia) can be treated as a research resource; data, if you like, that if read and interpreted, can provide organizational scientists with important insights into contemporary problems and phenomena. We approach ‘Star Trek’ (the inclusive term for the television series and its many spin-offs) as an ‘expressive good’, the product of a corporation in the entertainment industry, with a mass-market global consumer base. Conceived of in this way, it is as legitimate to take the scrutiny of Star Trek as seriously as any other management or marketing phenomenon. Star Trek is a particularly rich expressive good having held a central position in the popular culture market – a market notoriously prone to fads, fashions and short-term crazes – for the last three decades (a recent Harris Poll indicated that 53 per cent of the US public define themselves as Star Trek ‘fans’, while over 2 billion dollars has been spent on merchandise from the series).
