Organizations and Popular Culture

Book excerpt: Throughout its history, popular mass-mediated culture has turned its attention to representing and interrogating organizational life. As early as Charlie Chaplin’s cinematic classic Modern Times and as recently as the primetime television hit The Simpsons, we see cultural products that engage reflexively in coming to terms with the meaning of work, technology and workplace relations. It is only since the late 1990s, however, that those who research management and organizations have come to collectively dwell on the relationship between organizations and popular culture – a relationship where the cultural meanings of work are articulated in popular culture, and where popular culture challenges taken for granted knowledge about the structure and practice work. Key to this development has been the journal Culture and Organization – a journal that has been centre stage in creating new vistas through which the ‘cultural studies of organization’ can be explored. This book brings together the journal’s best contributions which specifically address how popular culture represents, informs and potentially transforms organizational practice. Featuring contributors from the UK, USA, Europe and Australia, this exciting anthology provides a comprehensive review of research in organization and popular culture.