Abstract
One of the authors of this chapter (hereafter ‘I’) was once asked to assist a managerial team of a large organization in the Netherlands. The organization (PULSE), was the product of a recent merger between two competing insurance corporations. Due to increased internal conflicts following the merger, almost the entire management team had been replaced by a new one. A new mission – represented by the slogan ‘Human Value in Security’ – had been developed to engineer a more effective organizational culture. An instrumental approach to social change may be awkward for those in social and cultural studies whose intellectual heritage is to resist the idea that cultures can be re-created at will and behaviours will fall in line with a new slogan or mission statement. However, organization and business studies have been dealing with issues of organizational culture as engineered since the 1980s – in particular since the publication of Peters’ and Waterman’s (l982) bestseller In Search of Excellence. In the mainstream of management and business scholarship little has been done to counter the unrealistic idea that top-down cultural engineering is desirable and/or possible. Instead, large sums of money have been made by consultants who coin new buzzwords when old ones cease to be fashionable (Feltman 1992).
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alexander, J. 1988. Action and its Environments. New York: Columbia University Press.
Bhabha, H. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
Butler, J. 1993. Bodies that Matter. On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. London: Routledge.
Copjec, J. 1989. ‘The Orthopsychic Subject. Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan’, October, 49 (Summer): 53–71.
de Certeau, M. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Deleuze, G. [1968] 1994. Difference and Repetition. London: The Athlone Press.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1994. What is Philosophy? London: Verso.
Derrida, J. 1978. Writing and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Derrida, J. [1972] 1982. Margins of Philosophy. Hemel Hempsted: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Durkheim, E. 1984. The Division of Labour. London: Macmillan.
Eco, U. 1977. A Theory of Semiotics. London: Macmillan.
Featherstone, M. Hepworth, M. and Turner, B.S. (eds) 1991. The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory. London: Sage.
Feltman, E. 1992. ‘Adviseren na het postmodernisme: Naar een buitengewone interventiekunde?’ M&O, 46 (1): 133–60.
Foucault, M. 1977. Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage.
Frank, A. 1991. At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Frank, A. 1995. The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Garfinkel, H. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Heidegger, M. [1927] 1986. Sein und Zeit (16th edition). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Koot, W. 1994. De Complexiteit van het Alledaagse. Bussum: Couthino.
Leder, D. 1990. The Absent Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
van Loon, J. 1996. ‘A Cultural Exploration of Time. Some Implications of Temporality and Mediation’, Time & Society, 5 (1): 61–84.
Lupton, D. 1995. The Imperative of Health: Public Health and the Regulated Body. London: Sage.
Martin, E. 1987. The Woman in the Body. Open University Press.
Merton, R. 1968. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press.
Peirce, C.S. 1940. The Philosophy of Peirce. Selected Writings, ed. J. Buchler. London: Kegan Paul, French, Trubner and Co.
Peters, T. and Waterman, R. 1982. In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s best run companies. New York: Harper & Row.
Rockwell, H. 1996. ‘An Other Burlesque: Feminine Bodies and Irigaray’s Performing Textuality’, Body & Society, 2 (1): 65–89.
Stacey, J. 1998. ‘Teratorologies’, A Cultural Study of Cancer. London: Routledge.
Veldhoen, E. and Piepers, B. 1995. The Demise of the Office. The Digital Workplace in a Thriving Organization. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2001 British Sociological Association
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
van Loon, J., Rockwell, H. (2001). Dissonant Choreographies: Performativity and Method in Socio-cultural Research. In: Cunningham-Burley, S., Backett-Milburn, K. (eds) Exploring the Body. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230501966_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230501966_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-41694-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-50196-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)