The Organization of Things

This is a book about knowledge and how it is organized. The business school has captured ideas about organization, and reduced them to questions of formal structures, documented processes, logistics and operations. This book shows how the concept can be understood more generously by illuminating the fundamental importance of culture to our understanding of organization. Using the idea of a cabinet of curiosities, the author shows how we can learn a lot about authority from choirs of angels, about secrecy from shipping containers, or work from art galleries. In disorganizing categories, forcing unusual conjunctions, the work opens itself to organization studies and studies of organizing, as well as cultural sociology, human geography, and social theory. Bringing together arguments developed over the last two decades, this book brings together and updates work that will provide a unique and valuable reference for students and scholars of management and organization around the world.

Martin Parker is Professor in the Business School at the University of Bristol, UK.

Part I: Fascinations 1. Concepts and Methods 2. The Culture of Organizing Part II: Assembly 3. Art 4. The Zoo 5. Tower Cranes Part III: Hierarchy 6. Angels 7. Skyscrapers 8. Super Flat Part IV: Visibility 9. Gothic 10. Secret Societies 11. James Bond Part V: Movement 12. Shipping Containers 13. Rockets 14. The Circus Part VI: Reorganization 15. The Order of Things