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This paper addresses processes of subjection and abjection as expressed in organizational and collective memory. It complements recent developments in organizational memory studies by demonstrating how the dark side of organization has been subjected to what Susan Sontag calls a 'collective instruction' process that normalizes how this dark side is understood, or marginalized. The paper argues that history today is often represented as kitsch and offers a method of aesthetic 'juxtaposition' of visual artefacts that together with a detailed reading enables researchers to critically challenge this organization of memory and reintegrate abjected material. The method is exemplified by juxtaposing the iconic World War II photo of a little Jewish boy leaving his home with his hands in the air during the Nazi clearances of the Warsaw Ghetto and Paul Klee's iconic painting of an angel in terror, Angelus Novus, painted in 1920 just after World War I. The analysis demonstrates how history tends to be organized by a majoritarian system – in this case what has been termed 'the Holocaust industry' – through collective instruction in how to interpret events, and outlines alternative ways for exposing and resisting this process, resulting in the creation of counter-narratives. This analytical strategy confirms that organizational aesthetics resides at the heart of what is political.

'Deleuze and the Social' is concerned with the most basic notions of 'the social'. It seeks both to comprehend the 'multiplicity' of the social - in Deleuzian terms, the 'becoming' of the social itself, and it seeks to develop a new social analytical practice

This article explores the drama performed around a self-proclaimed 'anti-establishment' executive at a Danish film company, Zentropa. The company prides itself on being against the existing 'elitist' and commercialized Danish film industry. Inspired by the thesis that modern capitalism develops by incorporating the critiques directed against it, the article analyses how Zentropa's Chief Executive Officer invests a 'progressive', counter-cultural spirit in his management practices. We describe how a 'freethinking' and 'subversive' CEO uses his dramatized performances to exercise an authority that violates employees' privacy and involves public displays of disrespect. We further examine how employees use impression management to cope with norm-violating management practices, including sexual provocations and the dramatic, unjustified dismissal of an employee. In the context of these disruptions, we analyse how order is reestablished through dramaturgical cycles of symbolic events, including sacrifice. In particular, the study provides insights into how theatrically staged, norm-defying performances both disrupt the organization and allow managerial power to be reinstituted. It also demonstrates that anti-establishment management involves and rests upon the occasional exercise of traditional managerial hierarchy and control. Theoretically, the article develops a dramatist perspective, combining Goffman's symbolic interactionism and Burke's dramatism to offer a framework for understanding norm-transgressive management in modern organizations.

This article explores how an allegedly 'non-hierarchical' and aestheticized managerial practice reconfigures power relations within a creative industry. The key problematic is 'governmental' in the sense suggested by Michel Foucault, in as much as the manager's ethical self-practice—which involves expressive and 'liberated' bodily comportment—is used tactically to shape the space of conduct of others in the company. The study foregrounds the managerial body as 'signifier' in its own right. Empirically, this is done through an analysis of video material produced by the film company Zentropa about their apparently eccentric Managing Director, Peter Aalbæk. Contrary to much of the literature discussing embodiment and ethics in organization studies, we do not identify an 'ethics of organization' dominated by instrumental rationality, efficiency and desire for profit which is ostensibly juxtaposed to a non-alienating, embodied ethics. Rather, when the body becomes invested in management, we observe tensions, tactics of domination and unpredictability.

This article explores how an allegedly 'non-hierarchical' and aestheticized managerial practice reconfigures power relations within a creative industry. The key problematic is 'governmental' in the sense suggested by Michel Foucault, in as much as the manager's ethical self-practice—which involves expressive and 'liberated' bodily comportment—is used tactically to shape the space of conduct of others in the company. The study foregrounds the managerial body as 'signifier' in its own right. Empirically, this is done through an analysis of video material produced by the film company Zentropa about their apparently eccentric Managing Director, Peter Aalbæk. Contrary to much of the literature discussing embodiment and ethics in organization studies, we do not identify an 'ethics of organization' dominated by instrumental rationality, efficiency and desire for profit which is ostensibly juxtaposed to a non-alienating, embodied ethics. Rather, when the body becomes invested in management, we observe tensions, tactics of domination and unpredictability.

The interest in organizational play is growing, both in popular business discourse and organization studies. As the presumption that play is dysfunctional for organizations is increasingly discarded, the existing positions may be divided into two camps; one proposes 'serious play' as an engine for business and the other insists that work and play are largely indistinguishable in the postindustrial organization. Our field study of a design and communications company in Denmark shows that organizational play can be much more than just functional to the organization. We identify three ways in which workplaces engage in play: play as a (serious) continuation of work, play as a (critical) intervention into work and play as an (uninvited) usurpation of work.

This article extends the critique of the boundaryless career concept by focusing on how organizational members may experience boundaries as ambiguous within contemporary career development in organizations. As an alternative to the concept of the boundaryless career, we introduce that of the liminal career. We consider a liminal career as occurring when the normal career path within an organization becomes a state of 'betwixt and between', wherein distinctions between social domains and work roles become diffuse, indeterminate and difficult to comprehend. We engage with this concept in relation to three boundaries that remain central within career development: organizational boundaries establishing a distinction between that which is internal and external to the organization, hierarchical boundaries separating employees and managers, and functional boundaries demarcating different work domains. Using a case that illustrates how employees experience ambiguous organizational, hierarchical and functional boundaries, we argue that the concept of the liminal career captures the essence of situations in which there is a lack of clear categories, trajectories and schemes from which to structure career paths in organizations.

The leadership literature is full of stories of heroic self-sacrifice. Sacrificial leadership behaviour, some scholars conclude, is to be recommended. In this article we follow Keith Grint's conceptualization of leadership as necessarily pertaining to the sacred, but—drawing on Giorgio Agamben's notion of profanation—we highlight the need for organization scholars to profane the sacralizations embedded in leadership thinking. One example of this, which guides us throughout the article, is the novel A Wild Sheep Chase, by the Japanese author Haruki Murakami. By means of a thematic reading of the novel, we discuss how it contributes to profaning particular notions of sacrifice and the sacred in leadership thinking. In the novel, self-sacrifice does not function as a way of establishing a leadership position, but as a way to avoid the dangers associated with leadership, and possibly redeem humans from their current collective urge to become leaders. Inspired by Murakami's fictional example, we call organization scholars to engage in profanation of leadership studies and, in doing so, open new vistas for leadership theory and practice.

This Introduction argues for the importance of theology for the study of organization. It also draws the contours of a possible 'theology of organization'. Theology of organization, as we use it here, does not refer to a study of organization that is rooted in faith, nor does it refer to a study of religious practices in organizations. Instead, theology of organization recognizes that the way we think about and act in organizations is profoundly structured by theological concepts. In this editorial to the special issue we have three aims: to outline what theology of organization is, to show how it builds upon Carl Schmitt's 'political theology' and Giorgio Agamben's 'economic theology' and finally to propose three different forms that theology of organization can take. These forms of theology of organization respectively (1) analyse organizational concepts as secularized theological concepts, (2) show how theological concepts have survived unaltered in organizational contexts and (3) show how theological concepts have been corrupted or lost their original meaning when deployed in organizational contexts. In the final section of this editorial, we introduce the five contributions to this issue and indicate how they connect to the three forms of theology of organization that we have proposed.

This timely book provides a collection of critical explorations and discussions of managerial ethics and their moral foundations. It is concerned with theoretical, conceptual and practical matters, and thus provides an open and broad approach to a very dense field of enquiry