The Aesthetic Turn in Management

[15]The Cultural Performance of Control

Rolland Munro

‘we present ‘management’ not only as an oral traction in its literal sense, that is that managers spend most of their time talking, but also in its anthropological sense, that is as a means by which culture is generated, maintained, and transmitted from one generation to another.’

Dan Gowler and Kareen Legge (1996: 35)

‘When such performances are successful, we receive experience rather than belief. Then the invisible world is made manifest. In all events the performed order is explicit, realized, and we are within it, not left merely to endlessly wonder or talk about it.’

Barbara Myerhoff, Remembered Lives (1992: 234)

Rolland Munro Centre for Social Theory and Technology, Keele University, ...