Organizational Epics and Sagas Tales of Organizations

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ISBN: 9780230515772 | 0230515770
Cover: Hardcover
Copyright: 7/15/2008

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This second volume in a trilogy on myth making in organizing focuses on organizational virtues and vices, as well as attributes and abilities of organizations, and legendary organizations that have become mythical in themselves. These narratives are presented as organizational sagas to reveal an archetypal dimension of organizing and organizations.

List of Tables	p. ix
List of Figures	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xi
Notes on the Contributors	p. xiii
Introduction to the Trilogy: Mythologies of Organizational Everyday Life	p. 1
Myths and human beings	p. 2
Organizational mythmaking	p. 5
Introduction to Organizational Epics and Sagas: The Mythologization of Organization	p. 9
Organization as myth	p. 9
Structure of the book	p. 10
The Myth of Entrepreneurship	p. 14
Myth-making and living myth	p. 15
Entrepreneurs in the education industry	p. 18
Entrepreneurs in the media industry	p. 21
Performative nature of entrepreneuring: mythical frame	p. 22
Concluding remarks	p. 24
Living with the Myth of Unattainable Technology	p. 26
Myths and technology	p. 27
Method	p. 29
Building the myth	p. 29
Awaiting the new technology to be implemented	p. 32
An unattainable vision	p. 34
Living with myths of e-business	p. 37
Goddess: A Story of Myth and Power	p. 40
The pattern	p. 40
Mobility	p. 41
Self-justificatory stories	p. 42
Workloads	p. 42
Vindictiveness and punishment	p. 45
A rationale?	p. 46
The power of mythical allusion	p. 47
Oedipus in the Land of Organizational Darkness	p. 51
Oedipus and miasma	p. 53
Miasma and organizations	p. 55
Mourning, depression and scapegoating	p. 60
The Myth of Corporate Size in Public Service Companies: The Case of Toscana Energia SPA	p. 65
Introduction	p. 65
The myth of 'corporate size' and needs of organizational aggregation	p. 66
Aggregation strategies of Italian public service companies	p. 68
The Italian gas sector: peculiarities and advantages of growth in size	p. 69
The case of Toscana Energia	p. 71
Potential benefits and risks of aggregation strategies in light of the tale of Toscana Energia	p. 75
Final thoughts	p. 78
Bureaucrats and Heretics: Gendering Mythology	p. 80
Introduction	p. 80
Good life: according to the bureau principles	p. 82
Evil life: according to the heretics	p. 86
Gendered aspects of the bureaucracy myth	p. 88
Extro	p. 91
The Myth of the Virtual Organization	p. 93
Introduction	p. 93
Virtual organizations	p. 94
The mythic archetypes within virtual organization discourse	p. 97
Conclusion	p. 103
Heroic Villains: The Badlands of Economy and Organization	p. 105
Introduction	p. 105
The Mafia, and others	p. 107
Myth today	p. 111
Fantasy economics and social change	p. 115
Merging the Myths: A Study of the Effect of Organizational Mythmaking in an Organizational Merger	p. 118
From story to myth	p. 120
Tales from a merger	p. 121
Myths in currency	p. 123
Interactions and agendas	p. 127
Commentary	p. 127
Storytelling in a new environment	p. 127
The Myth of Management as Art and the Management of Art as Myth	p. 131
Myths in management	p. 131
The myth of leadership as art	p. 135
Art and myth	p. 136
Management of art as myth	p. 137
Metaphors and myths for management	p. 140
The Cosmogonic Duel	p. 142
Introduction	p. 142
Social actors	p. 143
Myths	p. 146
The duel	p. 148
The hero's defeat	p. 149
Help	p. 151
Victory	p. 153
Further considerations	p. 154
The Pan American Dream and the Myth of the Pioneer	p. 156
Ideologies of Americanism and the formative context of the myth of the pioneer	p. 158
The myth of the pioneer as situated locally in the activities of early PAA	p. 160
Pan American Airways: the pioneering organization	p. 163
Conclusions	p. 167
Bibliography	p. 169
Index	p. 187
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Organizational Epics and Sagas Tales of Organizations

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