Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Organization
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Hancock, P.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Fear and (Self) Loathing in Coleridge Close: Management in Crisis in the 1970s Sitcom

Philip Hancock

University of Warwick, Coventry, UK, Philip.Hancock{at}wbs.ac.uk

In this paper my ambition is to contribute to the study of images of organizing in popular culture in two ways. Drawing in particular on the work of the German philosopher and critical theorist Ernst Bloch, I firstly argue for the utility of a dialectical approach to the interrogation of cultural artefacts, one that recognizes the co-existence of both ideological and critical content as integral to the artefact itself. I then illustrate this approach through a textual analysis of several British television situation comedies of the 1970s. In doing so, I argue that throughout this period it is possible to discern a deep-seated cultural unease with the role and legitimacy of organizational management within what was an unstable industrial and economic environment. I conclude by reflecting not only on the implications of this particular finding, but also on the utility of adopting such a theoretical orientation. One that simultaneously attends to both the deeply ideological content and structure of such material while, at the same time, retaining an orientation prepared to pursue the critical and potentially utopian content that remains within.

Key Words: Bloch • management • popular culture • situation comedy

Organization, Vol. 15, No. 5, 685-703 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1350508408093648
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?