Reconstructing Organization

The Loungification of Society

Damian P. O'Doherty

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137489203
• eBook ISBN: 9781137489227
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

This unique book breaks original ground in management and organization studies by drawing on over 2½ years of ethnographic study in a major UK international airport group. Much has been written about the 'McDonaldisation' or 'Disneyization' of society, but few have been attentive to what the author terms ' Loungification of society'. A minor mode of organization, but one whose effects are likely to become ever more profound, this study shows how management and organization is itself being reconstructed and reshaped by way of loungification. Drawing on critical management studies, actor-network theory, and debates in contemporary anthropology around the so-called ontological turn, Reconstructing Organization enacts a veritable experiment in business and management studies. Who are these coming loungers? What do they want? Can we manage them? Or will they soon capture us with their talking chairs and 'crinicultural' politics?

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• List of Figures
• 1: An Introduction to Loungification
• 2: ‘MAG Men’: Access to the Corridors of Corporate Power
• 3: The Management of Escape: Scattered Attention and Disorderly Convulsion
• 4: Becoming Lounge: Angularity and Disjunctive Synthesis
• 5: ‘The Lounger’: Re-assembling the Airport Customer
• 6: Extending Politics in Organization Studies: The Bob Cut and  ‘Crinicultural’ Politics
• 7: Animals and Organization: Feline Politics and the Nine Lives of ‘Olly the Cat’
• 8: Conclusion: Reconstructing Organization
• Ethnography at a Critical Distance: A Postscript to Loungification
• References
• Index