The purpose of this article is to compare and contrast the socio‐economic approach to management (SEAM) with 15 large system change methods. All 16 of these methods are part of the transorganizational development (TD) gameboard (see the Web site at http://web.nmsu.edu/ dboje/TDgameboard.html...

The purpose of this article is to explore the similarities and differences in the socio‐economic approach to management (SEAM) method and postmodern approaches to theatre. Neither metaphorical nor managerialist, SEAM's perspective allows that the organization is theatre. Introduces the terms...

This article brings out the numerous connections that can be established between the socio‐economic approach to management (SEAM) considered as an architecture and the postmodern movement. The authors analyze the contribution of SEAM to the postmodern management approach, through the process...

Postmodernist contestations of modernist economic and organizational rationalities have made immense contributions to organizational analysis. A current direction in critical theory now, working through the postmodernist critique, seeks new conceptions of organizations and sources for the...

Purpose – According to an extensive and growing literature, we are in the twilight of bureaucracy. The labels applied to the supposed new organizational form include: post‐bureaucratic; post‐modern; post‐hierarchical; and the virtual organisation. The purpose of this paper is to consider...

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to argue that an enriched understanding of texts would enable more informed and responsible management practice. The authors present an approach to the analysis of management texts that enjoys, rather than contests, multivocality with the aim of making our...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to expand understanding of how Gestalt psychotherapy theory and practice can support the facilitation of change management efforts in organisations. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is based on action research approach in which the author...

Explores organizational learning based on the interpretations of actors in the organizational setting. Brings out the major point that events of organizational change are subject to multiple and competing interpretations and that labelling a particular event as “organizational learning” can...

Explores how developments in the ground‐breaking field of narrative family therapy might be applied to organizational change efforts. After an introductory discussion of some of narrative therapy’s key orientations and practices (e.g. postmodern notions of language and power, influence...

Critical Management Studies (CMS) in Postmodernity (PM) has been playfully posed as a double oxymoron, i.e. “CMS” to examine the contradiction of an emancipatory discourse predominantly cast in a managerialist tenor; “CMS in PM” to examine the feasibility of taking any position at all in...