ABSTRACT
I have said throughout that organisations should provide opportunities for people to come together on an equal footing to pursue commonly agreed goals. From a narrow perspective of corporatist profit or imperialism, those goals would be the continuation of policies and practices which ensure the security that corporations need to continue their pursuit of profit and colonisation. From a more humanitarian and educational perspective, the goals would be the creation of democratic forms of engagement which would encourage popular participation in decision-making at local and systemic levels. The nature and purpose of organisation theory on this view assumes an educational mandate. If people are to participate in decision-making, if organisations are to be sites of learning, what needs to be learnt to turn the values into realities? How does the high-sounding rhetoric become a reality of organisational life?
