ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the rationale and scope of the book. It identifies ‘consociation’ as a critical concept for understanding management in large organisations. Two contrasting modes of representing the work lives of senior managers are presented and contrasted with the insights offered by the ethnomethodological approach of ‘third person phenomenology’. This approach explores common sense methods of managerial reasoning by analysing ‘management objects’ such as documents, spreadsheets, charts and models. The background to and central presuppositions of Ethnomethodology as a First Sociology are summarised and its distinctive character emphasised. An outline of the analytic approach of the rest of the book is presented.
