ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the two aspects of Heather Hopfl’s work that we regard as central in the legacy she has left us with: theatre and poetics. Hopfl used to say that the social, the organizational, the political is always personal. To her, a social science that does not resonate with the personal is meaningless. Heather Hopfl brought humanist and emancipatory perspectives into organization studies, including ethnographic, aesthetic, dramaturgical and feminist ideas. Her most well-known writings are on otherness/othering. She was one of the three founding mothers of humanistic management, the two others being Mary Parker Follett and Simone Weil. Her writings are poetic, multilayered and quite multifaceted. Heather Hopfl points out that rhetorics may present themselves as the effective management strategy, but by reducing complexity and ambiguity, they make organizations more vulnerable.
