Science Fiction and Organization

238 Pages·2003·1.19 MB·English

by  Higgins, Dr Matthew;Higgins, Matthew;Lightfoot, Geoff;Parker, Martin;Smith, Warren

Science Fiction and
Organization
Science fiction can be seen as a diagnosis of the present, and a vision of possible
futures. As such, it forms an excellent tool of interrogation for both contemporary
organizing processes and organizations as institutions. To date, however, the mar-
ginal activity of science fiction has been largely ignored in writing on organiza-
tional theory. This international collection is the first book of its kind to explore
how science fiction can enrich organizational studies by drawing on perspectives
across the arts and social sciences.
Key themes include:
(cid:127) Examining the interrelation of organizational theory and developments in
science fiction.
(cid:127) Showing how immersion in science fiction can alter the reader’s perspective
and how this, in turn, feeds an understanding of organization.
(cid:127) Discussion of how the exploration of popular themes in science fiction (such
as identity, the nature of reality, the place of technology, the all-powerful
corporation, the creation and maintenance of meta-narratives) corresponds
to approaches taken to similar themes within organizational theory.
The range of sources and theoretical perspectives included in this text will ensure
its importance for academics in the fields of organizational and social theory,
particularly those interested in the relationships between art, theory and
literature.
Warren Smith is Lecturer in Organization Studies at the Management Centre,
University of Leicester.
Matthew Higgins is Lecturer in Management at the Management Centre,
University of Leicester.
Martin Parker is Reader in Social and Organizational Theory at the University
of Keele.
Geoff Lightfoot is Lecturer in Accounting at the University of Keele.
Routledge Studies in Human Resource Development
Edited by Monica Lee
Lancaster University
HRD theory is changing rapidly. Recent advances in theory and practice, in how
we conceive of organizations and of the world of knowledge, have led to the need
to reinterpret the field. This series aims to reflect and foster the development of
HRD as an emergent discipline.
Encompassing a range of different international, organizational, method-
ological and theoretical perspectives, the series promotes theoretical controversy
and reflective practice.
1 Policy Matters
Flexible learning and organizational change
Edited by Viktor Jakupec and Robin Usher
2 Science Fiction and Organization
Edited by Warren Smith, Matthew Higgins, Martin Parker and Geoff Lightfoot
Also available from Routledge:
Action Research in Organisations
Jean McNiff, accompanied by Jack Whitehead
Understanding Human Resource Development
Edited by Jim Stewart, Jim McGoldrick, and Sandra Watson
Science Fiction and
Organization
Edited by Warren Smith,
Matthew Higgins, Martin Parker
ff
and Geo Lightfoot
London and New York
First published 2001
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
© 2001 Edited by Warren Smith, Matthew Higgins, Martin Parker
and Geoff Lightfoot
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Science fiction and organization / edited by Warren Smith ... [et al..]
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Organization. 2. Science fiction. I. Smith, Warren, 1967–
HD31 .S3428 2001
302.3′5 – dc21 2001019498
ISBN 0-203-40198-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-40838-1 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0– 415– 21588– 9 (Print Edition)
Contents
Notes on contributors vii
Introduction: more amazing tales 1
MATTHEW HIGGINS
PART I
For the world is hollow and I have touched the sky* 13
1 ‘Give me your mirrorshades’: science fiction
‘methodology’ meets the social and organizational
sciences 15
DAVID McHUGH
2 Science fiction and the making of the laser 31
CHRISTOPHER HALEY
PART II
Mirror, mirror* 41
3 Metropolis, Maslow and the Axis Mundi 43
JAMES M. TOLLIVER AND DANIEL F. COLEMAN
4 The rape of the machine metaphor 61
NANETTE MONIN AND JOHN MONIN
5 Organizing men out in Joanna Russ’s The Female Man
and Fay Weldon’s The Cloning of Joanna May 73
MARIA ALINE FERREIRA
vi Contents
6 Drowned giants: science fiction and consumption utopias 90
JAMES A. FITCHETT AND DAVID A. FITCHETT
7 Spectacle and inter-spectacle in The Matrix and
organization theory 101
DAVID BOJE
PART III
Is there in truth no beauty?* 123
8 Reading Star Trek: imagining, theorizing, and
reflecting on organizational discourse and practice 125
DONNCHA KAVANAGH, KIERAN KEOHANE AND CARMEN KUHLING
9 From the Borgias to the Borg (and back again):
rethinking organizational futures 143
CHRIS LAND AND MARTIN CORBETT
10 Of Philip K. Dick, reflexivity and shifting realities:
organizing (writing) in our post-industrial society 160
CHRISTIAN DE COCK
11 ‘I am a man, and nothing human is alien to me’:
alienation and freakishness 177
WARREN SMITH
PART IV
The gamesters of Triskelion* 191
12 ‘Repent Harlequin!’ said the Ticktockman: digesting
science fiction 193
MARTIN PARKER
13 Cyberpunk management 204
ERIK PIÑEIRO
Index 215
* For the world is hollow and I have touched the sky, etc. are titles of episodes of Star Trek
– The Original Series, 1966–9
Notes on contributors
David Boje, Professor of Management at New Mexico State University, has
published numerous articles in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Man-
agement Journal, Management Communication Quarterly and other journals. He edits
the Journal of Organizational Change Management and is founding editor of Tamara:
The Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science. He serves on the editorial
board of Academy of Management Review, Management Digest, Organization, Journal
of Management Inquiry, Management, Organization Studies, EJ-ROT and Emergence
and Management Communication Quarterly. Recent books include Narrative Research
Methods for Communication Studies (London: Sage, 2000) and Spectacles and Festivals
(Hampton Press, CA, 2001). Vita is at http://cbae.nmsu.edu/mgt/dir/faculty/
vita/boje/.
Daniel F. Coleman (Ph.D., State University of New York at Buffalo) is a
Professor and Dean at the Faculty of Administration, University of New
Brunswick, Canada. His current research interests are the causes and con-
sequences of organizational commitment, employees’ responses to privatiza-
tion and leadership. He teaches courses in Organizational Behavior, Organiza-
tion Design, Motivation and Leadership.
Martin Corbett is Senior Lecturer in organizational behaviour and industrial
relations at the University of Warwick Business School. His interest in
researching, understanding (and perhaps transcending) the dualism of the
social/organic and technical/mechanical has led to a number of papers and
books over the past fifteen years. Currently Book Review Editor of the journal
Organization, Martin dreams of becoming cyborg but has yet to own a reliable
motor vehicle or demonstrate even rudimentary mastery of the modern
personal computer.
Christian De Cock is a Lecturer at the School of Business and Economics,
University of Exeter. He received his first degree from the University of
Antwerp (lic. T.E.W.) and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the Manchester
Business School, University of Manchester. Prior to joining Exeter University
he worked as a research fellow at Manchester Business School and as a lec-
turer at the University of London. Christian is Associate Editor of the journal
viii Notes on contributors
Creativity and Innovation Management. His research has appeared in such journals
as Asia Pacific Business Review, Interfaces, International Journal of Organizational
Analysis, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, and Journal of Man-
agement Inquiry. He has also written several book chapters and teaching cases.
Christian conducts research on organizational change, organizational creativ-
ity and organizational storytelling.
Maria Aline Ferreira has a first degree from the University of Oporto and a
Ph.D. from the University of London (Birkbeck College). Since 1987 she has
worked at the University of Aveiro, where she is now an Associate Professor.
Recent publications include ‘The Foreigner Within: Teaching The Rainbow
with the Help of Cixous, Kristeva and Irigaray’, ‘Approaches to Teaching
D.H. Lawrence’, ‘Myth and Anti-Myth in Angela Carter’s The Passion of New
Eve’ in the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, ‘D.H. Lawrence and Hélène Cixous:
Unexpected Contiguities’ in Études Lawrenciennes and ‘Another Jouissance:
Secular and Mystical Love in Kate Chopin’s “Two Portraits”’, Literature and
Psychology.
David A. Fitchett is currently preparing for submission of his Ph.D. thesis on
the fiction of J.G. Ballard at Brunel University. His primary areas of interest
include apocalyptic science fiction and utopian island spaces in British litera-
ture of the twentieth century.
James A. Fitchett was awarded his Ph.D. from the University of Stirling in 1998.
His research draws on social theory to consider issues including experiential
consumption and the culture industry. He has published work on illicit recre-
ational drug consumption, the relationship between consumption and
environmentalism and consumer citizenry. He currently holds a lectureship in
marketing and consumer research at the University of Exeter, UK.
Christopher Haley is currently at the Department of History and Philosophy
of Science in Cambridge, where he is engaged in doctoral research concern-
ing nineteenth-century æther physics. Besides this, one academic interest is
the philosophy of physics – specifically, the attempts to reconcile quantum
mechanics with special relativity. A further interest is the public understand-
ing of science, and to this end he may be found working in the Whipple
Museum of the History of Science on occasion. He enjoys the fiction of Iain
M. Banks.
Matthew Higgins is a Lecturer in Management in the Management Centre at
the University of Leicester. His Ph.D. at Keele University explores issues of
morality and engagements with marketing. Current research interests include
critiques of marketing and cultural movements, ethics and marketing in the
not-for-profit sector.
Donncha Kavanagh is Lecturer in Management in University College, Cork.
His research interests include the pre-modern, the history of management
thought, actor-network theory and the sociology of technology.
Notes on contributors ix
Kieran Keohane Ph.D. (York, Canada, 1993), Statutory Lecturer in Sociology,
National University of Ireland, Cork, is the author of Symptoms of Canada
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998).
Carmen Kuhling Ph.D. (York, Canada, 1998), Lecturer in Sociology and
Womens’ Studies, Department of Government and Society, University of
Limerick, is the author of The New Age Ethic and the Spirit of Postmodernism
(Creskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, forthcoming). She is interested in the phil-
osophy of the social sciences, postmodern theory, the relationship between
creativity and subversion, and the relationship between popular culture and
social transformation.
Chris Land is an ESRC-funded research student at Warwick Business School.
As part of his Ph.D., he is currently researching post-structural perspectives on
the relationship between organization and information technology. This work
brings together interests in actor-network theory, cyborg studies, popular cul-
ture and Deleuze and Guattari. Other significant research interests include
information warfare, time, cybernetics, William Burroughs and South Park.
Geoff Lightfoot is Lecturer in MIS and Accounting at Keele University. His
current research interests include the use of Darwinist metaphors in manage-
ment and accounting literature and futures trading (both on capital markets
and SF collectors’ fairs). Sadly, however, the weight of his own collection of SF
books, videos and collectibles recently caused his house to overbalance.
Although this does make getting in and out rather difficult, the postman is
happier as he no longer has to make regular deliveries from Amazon.
David McHugh is a Senior Lecturer in Organizational Behaviour in the
Department of Management at the University of Central Lancashire. He is a
keen member of the International Brotherhood of Tooth Fairies and a staunch
proponent of lecturer-centred teaching. He has an abiding interest in the issues
of subjectivity and workplace identity but would rather read SF than organiza-
tion theory. He is the co-author of a well-regarded critical organization studies
text and very little else. He lives near Liverpool, is married to Chris Corcoran
and has two daughters named Roia and Anya. Between them they have
responsibility for a number of rats, tropical fish and a parrot called Goodison.
Dave is an avid collector of SF books for which he gets no end of domestic gyp
and will read or watch any old crap that can be remotely regarded as SF. He is
a passable singer but an atrocious guitarist and would like to hear from anyone
who has solid empirical evidence of the media conspiracy against Everton
Football Club.
John Monin is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Manage-
ment and International Business at the Auckland campus of Massey Uni-
versity, New Zealand. He read humanities subjects for his initial degrees,
majoring in Latin, and his doctoral studies were in information systems. He has
contributed chapters in books on a range on topics including information