ABSTRACT

Popular culture provides many images of organisations. Government agencies are presented as benign and helpful in the radio soap opera “The Archers”; Kafka’s novels present bureaucracies as impenetrable; in films such as “Robocop” big business is stereotyped as ruthless and machine-like; and television shows like “Spitting Image” attribute much to the personalities of key policy makers. Such a variety of images is hardly suprising: organisations pervade modem societies. Most of us are born in an organisation and are likely to die in one; we are educated in organisations, find employment within them, and throughout our lives we depend upon them, not only for the luxuries of life but also for essentials such as water, power, security, employment, health, and communications.