First published in 1997, this volume asks: when was ‘The Postmodern’ in the History of Management Thought? Marta B. Calás and Linda Smircich have chosen this subtitle as entry point to the collection for several reasons. The first, and most evident, is that it prompts us to reflect on the inclusion of a volume on postmodern organization studies within a series of books on the history of management thought. What does such inclusion signal? Are we saying that we are past the postmodern in organization studies? That we have transcended modernity and, beyond, postmodernity? Similar to other social sciences, organization and management studies in the Anglo-American and European academy became impressed by the styles of ‘postmodernism’ and their epistemological companions, ‘poststructuralisms’, during the 1980s. For this collection we have selected twenty two journal articles, published between 1985 and 1996, that we consider emblematic of postmodern endeavours in management thought, as they further our understanding of how ‘truth’ (of any paradigmatic persuasion), is fashioned through particular discourses and other signifying practices. Taken together, these articles address the following questions: What has the field accomplished through attempts at being postmodern? With what consequences? And, where does the field stand now, if it is still/already (going) after ‘the postmodern’? In our view ‘the postmodern’ cannot transcend modern management thought; it is, rather, part of it. Nevertheless, the mere appearance of efforts towards making the field ‘postmodern’ makes it important to account for them in the history of the field. Such is the narrative that we are trying to portray in this volume.

"This excellent, pioneering book is a must-read as we enter the new millennium." --David J. Farmer, State University of New York Comprehensive and timely, Postmodern Management and Organization Theory provides a critique of postmodern theory as it stands today. The text gives an overview of issues as they relate to management and organization theory and its history and assembles in one volume a variety of important works on postmodern philosophy--including feminist, cultural, and environmental philosophies. The contributors address the future of postmodern advancement in management and organization theory and method, establishing an agenda for future research. This thought-provoking book will be useful to scholars, researchers and upper-level students in organization theory, organization behavior and change, management, and industrial psychology.

Focuses on a major philosopher who has had, or should have, a major influence on organization theory.

Essential reading for all those concerned with contemporary theorizing of organization, this important and thought-provoking volume explores the implications of postmodernist/poststructuralist thinking for organizations and organizational analysis. The book introduces the concepts underpinning a postmodern organizational analysis, contrasting modern and postmodern forms of explanation and addressing the distinctions between postmodernity and postmodernism. Succeeding chapters then examine and assess the interplay of major postmodernist themes - such as deconstruction, desire, difference, pluralism and relativism - with key topics of organizational analysis and research. The final section is one of critique, as its authors variously argue that postmodernism fails adequately to address the realities of power, control and change in a globalizing world.

Nateghian's study focuses on a comprehensive investigation of the modernist management theories that have dominated the fields of organizational and management science for decades. He contends that these theories no longer address all of the issues facing managers today and examines the reasons for their demise. A subsequent inquiry for an alternative management theory is conducted in his research which is formulated as postmodern management theory. This theory incorporates postmodern discourse, systems thinking, psychology, feminism, and culture, along with operations research and artificial intelligence methodologies to increase the effectiveness of present and future manufacturing organizations.

Americas Revolution Against Exploitation The book suggests that these postmodern times may well pass by America, that it will be stymied by the legacies of a post-industrialism in which a form of power/knowledge was institutionalized in corporate embodiments swollen with the bureaucratized complacency that defense-related contracting induced in organizations remote from competitive struggle in a consumer market-place. It is now clear that the post-industrial society was a knowledge-based society shaped by the requirements of the Cold War and the warfare state. It was these which materialized the shift in organizational social relations from an industrial epoch founded on exploitation to one in which value be- came increasingly fused within the unity of power/knowledge condensed within the global, bureaucratic, corporate frame. America won the Cold War but is clearly in danger of losing the aftermath, not to the old adversaries, but to nations which were not even admitted to the Cold War game as equal players: most noticeably Japan, but also Germany, the powerhouse at the center of the European Community, as well as the Newly-Industrializing Countries of East Asia. Statutorily, of course, the first two were not allowed to, play as part of the Cold War settlement at Yalta. Exclusion spawned different strategies premised on structures which were and had always been institution ally distinct. What is to be done? Boje and Dennehy are quite clear: first, there has to be a realization that the recipes of modernism were epoch or era specific and may be past their use-by date in some areas of organizational life. Second, that for as long as the lenses through which we focus on organizationallife are made to modernist specifications, so that they focus on variables such as formalization, standardization, centralization, etc., as the strategic focus for research and teaching, we will be condemned to doing the time-warp over and over again, stuck in the modernist frame while the spectacle outside turns ever more postmodern. Third, that postmodernism offers an integrative focus which will aid us as teachers, students, researchers and practitioners in overcoming the excessive differentiation which has fragmented our intellectual and praxeological communities. Fourth, that in doing so it will serve to re-vitalize the study of management and organizations by opening it up to the cutting-edge of contemporary social science currents. If the hypotheses and argument that the authors advance are substantially correct, then we stand at one of those moments in history when the urge to resist and understand the limitations of the old slogans is critical. Americas Revolution Against Exploitation: The Story of Postmodern Management achieves this resistance and this understanding sufficiently to reconfigure our grasp of the modern condition in which we have been while pointing us towards what we may become. One should salute the book as a contribution to one of the projects for the future, one which, because of its easy style, deserves to secure postmodernism a good name in management and organization theory circles.