Leaders, Managers, Entrepreneurs on and Off the Organizational Stage*
Leaders, Managers, Entrepreneurs On and Off the Organizational Stage*
Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges, Rolf Wolff
My purpose is to tell of bodies which have been transformed into shapes of different kinds. You heavenly powers, sinee you were responsible for those changes, as for all else, look favourably on my attempts, and spin an unbroken thread of verse, from the earliest beginnings of the world, down to my own times. Ovid: Metamorphoses Abstract Barbara CzarniawsicaJoerges Department of Business Administration, Lund University, Lund, Sweden Roif Woiff Gothenburg Research Institute at the School of Economics and Legal Science, Gothenburg, Sweden
This paper explores three crucial roles of the organizational theatre: managers, leaders and entrepreneurs. Changing fashion in the organizational theory debate as well as in organizational practice puts different roles in focus at different times. Organization theory should, accordingly, shift its attention toward studying the contexts in which a given role acquires dominance, in place of an unreflective discussion of the relative functional advantages of each of them. This paper argues that none of the three will ever go out of fashion, as they can be seen as enactments of archetypes, embodying the different fears and hopes of those who create organizations by their daily performance. Leadership is seen as symbolic performance, expressing the hope of control over destiny; management as the activity of introducing order by coordinating flows of things and people towards collective action, and entrepreneurship as the making of entire new worlds. The sociohistorical context needs to be considered as the stage-set wherein these roles gain prominence.
Introduction
Organization Studies 1991, 12/4: 529-546 © 1991 EGOS 0170-8406/91 0012-0022 $2.00
Leaders are in, managers are out, entrepreneurs are waiting in the corridor. What orders their appearances and disappearances? In an attempt to answer this question, we
Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges, Rolf Wolff
My purpose is to tell of bodies which have been transformed into shapes of different kinds. You heavenly powers, sinee you were responsible for those changes, as for all else, look favourably on my attempts, and spin an unbroken thread of verse, from the earliest beginnings of the world, down to my own times. Ovid: Metamorphoses Abstract Barbara CzarniawsicaJoerges Department of Business Administration, Lund University, Lund, Sweden Roif Woiff Gothenburg Research Institute at the School of Economics and Legal Science, Gothenburg, Sweden
This paper explores three crucial roles of the organizational theatre: managers, leaders and entrepreneurs. Changing fashion in the organizational theory debate as well as in organizational practice puts different roles in focus at different times. Organization theory should, accordingly, shift its attention toward studying the contexts in which a given role acquires dominance, in place of an unreflective discussion of the relative functional advantages of each of them. This paper argues that none of the three will ever go out of fashion, as they can be seen as enactments of archetypes, embodying the different fears and hopes of those who create organizations by their daily performance. Leadership is seen as symbolic performance, expressing the hope of control over destiny; management as the activity of introducing order by coordinating flows of things and people towards collective action, and entrepreneurship as the making of entire new worlds. The sociohistorical context needs to be considered as the stage-set wherein these roles gain prominence.
Introduction
Organization Studies 1991, 12/4: 529-546 © 1991 EGOS 0170-8406/91 0012-0022 $2.00
Leaders are in, managers are out, entrepreneurs are waiting in the corridor. What orders their appearances and disappearances? In an attempt to answer this question, we
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