ABSTRACT

The concepts of social sciences, social action and organizations as texts, are no longer unfamiliar ones. The use of language in social analysis has made researchers acutely aware of the importance of language use, not only to contain and express experience but also to create second order accounts of these experiences. This way of using language to shape our knowledge and guide social action, it is urged, makes social action and organization a 'text'.
Text/Work is an innovative exploration of our understanding of the textual nature of organizational life, and considers the consequences of textual nature for organization studies. How can organizations be profitably written into textual forms? This is a bold investigation into a challenging and exciting area of study.

part I|148 pages

Reading the research text

chapter 1|26 pages

Management she wrote

Organization studies and detective stories

chapter 2|16 pages

Managing metaphorically

chapter 3|31 pages

Browsing the culture

Membership and intertextuality at a Mormon bookstore

chapter 4|21 pages

Representation of organizational change in Ron Howard's Gung Ho

The role of speech acts and conversation

chapter 5|29 pages

Text(s) from place, space and non-place

Discourses of Poland

chapter 6|23 pages

Organizing multiple spacetimes in a colonial context

Indigeneity and white Australian nationalism at the Melbourne Museum

part II|117 pages

Sampling genres

chapter 7|17 pages

Protext1

The morphoses of identity, heterogeneity and synolon

chapter 8|24 pages

Organizing the past

A history and its (de)construction

chapter 9|15 pages

Eleven characters in search of an ethic

Or the spirit of capitalism evisited

chapter 10|11 pages

Dramaturgy, dialogue and organizing

Scripting a (theatrical) play on words

chapter 11|37 pages

A “sampled” account of organization

Being a de-authored, reflexive parody of Organisation/writing

chapter 12|11 pages

Circling the square

Stories of an unsettled self