Once Upon a Time in Facilities Management Tales from an Organizational Netherworld

What would the world of work look like if interpreted through the lens of the fairytale? To answer this question Once Upon a Time in Facilities Management explores storied spaces and metaphorical archetypes in the study of business, management, and organization. At its core, the authors offer a diagnostic approach for the study of work organization that links management theory, storytelling, and the business imaginary.

An important empirical focus is also included that explores a business service rarely studied in the management literature: Facilities Management (FM), a 'secondary service' of non-core and increasingly outsourced organizational functions. An in-depth appreciation of FM is provided that assesses the people, practices, and processes of the service in a study that also highlights the characteristic liminality of the sector's professional activities.

Emphasis is placed on illuminating the storytelling nature of the service, using primarily the genre of fairytales to identify representational archetypes (including queen, shadow, sage, trickster, adventurer, and eternal child) within FM's storied space. In the process, three central characters (essentially modes of FM delivery) are identified - the professional consultant, the external service provider, and the in-house function - with these forming the structural basis of fairytales explaining the culture and symbolism of FM as a business service. The authors conclude by extrapolating findings from the study to inform a discussion of the contributions of folkloric analysis to organization theory explicitly and our understanding of business and management practice more widely.

Patricia McCarroll, Senior Lecturer, Manchester Metropolitan University,John Hassard, Professor of Organizational Analysis, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester

Patricia McCarroll is a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester Metropolitan Business School. Before joining academia in 2012, she worked as a facilities project manager, being involved across client and service provider streams in both private and public sector practice. In her academic work, she specializes in executive education across undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, with her work in organization studies being influenced by her slightly unconventional background in archaeology and social anthropology. Her research focuses mainly on organizational narratives - specifically folklore and fairytales - and explores concepts such as liminality, enchantment, and organizational darkness.


John Hassard is Professor of Organizational Analysis at the Alliance Manchester Business School and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Previously he taught at London Business School and Universities of Cardiff and Keele. He was also formerly Visiting Fellow in Management Learning at Cambridge University. His research interests lie in organizational change, business history, and managerial work. On these topics he has published twenty books and more than a hundred articles in refereed journals such as the Academy of Management Review, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Human Relations, Industrial Relations, Journal of Management Studies, and Organization Studies.