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Organization-Representation
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Organization-Representation
Work and Organizations in Popular Culture

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June 1998 | 288 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
The representation of organizations and working life in popular media signifies--but also helps shape-- contemporary practice and institutions. The studies presented in Organization/Representation unravel the complex social relationship between organization and its representation, offering new insights into the interaction between the popular images we create and receive and the power relations that govern society, working life, and culture. The volume shows how the boundaries between each of the categories are blurred to the extent that it is misleading to make assumptions about where "representation" begins and "organization" ends. Rich insights are offered into the relations between gender, power and work, and how the popular media--in which they are represented--may function as a two-way mirror. The different media of cinema, documentary film, childrenÆs literature, and even the cyber-world of computerized image, replicate the power structures they are supposed to describe and may help create or at least shape contemporary realities. Several of the contributors to the volume end by questioning some of the basic ontological distinctions between "fiction" and "reality." Critical analysis of the relationship between popular culture and organizational life enhances our understanding of both. Scholars, researchers and students of organizational theory, sociology of organization, cultural studies, and gender and organization will find a rich source of case examples and illustration, together with the challenging perspective of a new frame of inquiry.

John Hassard and Ruth Holliday
Introduction
 
PART ONE: REALISM AND REPRESENTATION
Ian Aitken
The Documentary Film Movement
The Post Office Touches All Branches of Life

 
John Hassard
Representing Reality
Cinema Verit[ac]e

 
Peter Stead
The Cultural Representation of Trade Unions
 
PART TWO: SEX AND VIOLENCE
Joanna Brewis
What Is Wrong with This Picture? Sex and Gender Relations in Disclosure
Ruth Holliday
Philadelphia
Aids, Organization, Representation

 
Maggie O'Neill
Saloon Girls
Death and Desire in the American West

 
 
PART THREE: MEN AND SUPERMEN
Christopher Grey
Child's Play
Representations of Organization in Children's Literature

 
Norman Jackson and Pippa Carter
Management Gurus
What Are We To Make of Them?

 
Linda McDowell
Fictional Money (Or, Greed Isn't So Good in the 1990s)
Rolland Munro
Masculinity and Madness
 
PART FOUR: ORGANIZATIONAL FUTURES
Martin Parker and Robert Cooper
Cyberorganization
Cinema as Nervous System

 
Warren Smith
Computers and Representation
Organization in the Virtual World

 
J Martin Corbett
The Medium as Message
Sublime Technologies and Future Organization in Science Fiction Film, 1970-95

 

`This is a unique, fascinating and valuable treatment of material and issues which have been ignored in 'mainstream' organisation studies. Read this and you will never again watch an episode of Casualty, The Bill or Silent Witness without boring your companion with critical commentary on the portrayal of hierarchy, sex role stereotyping, power relations, the role of authority figures and dysfunctional rules' - Human Resource Management Journal

`This worthwhile collection gathers together a series of essays dealing with the representation of social organizations in the popular media...The quality of analysis in all the contributions to this volume is consistently high, and the material covered is extensive. The book will prove useful on media/cultural studies courses as well as those concentrating on the sociology of organizations' - European Journal of Communication

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