ABSTRACT
Scholars of organizations are increasingly interested in everyday experiences through the study of embodiment and the lived body (see e.g. Hancock and Tyler, 2009, Pullen and Rhodes, 2015; Fotaki and Daskalaki, 2021; Harding et al., 2021). Many have turned to the recent work on affect to understand the multiplicity of our identities at work, as employees, managers, co-workers and consumers, are entangled with the world around us. Organizations may shape or move us, impacting upon our bodies and our sense of self (Shilling, 2012). When you walk into a workplace, you can gain a sense of this space of work, the people who work there and the artefacts and objects of that organization (Dale and Burrell, 2008). Entering a room, there are expectations and histories; multiple different ways of sensing the atmosphere of the room, the intensities between bodies and non-human objects. Take for example an organization with a ‘fun’ culture: those objects we encounter may encourage us to ‘have fun’, to tell jokes, to feel and demonstrate emotions such as happiness (Hunter, 2022). There may be expectations to experience organizational life in prescribed ways, although of course, the expected and the actual experience of employees may widely differ. To study the world of organizations, therefore, is to appreciate the connectedness with the world and to recognise the entanglements of the human, non-human and more-than-human in organizational life. It is this focus on affect being located in situated relationships with others, both human, non-human, and more-than human that this book explores.
