Occupy Management

‘Monika Kostera’s book isn’t about Occupy, and all its related social movements, but uses the metaphor of occupation as an entryist injunction to take back ‘management’ from those who wish to make it a discipline based on hierarchy and order. It’s a kind of squatting, though a gentle and polite one. The tone of the book is to celebrate all the things in heaven and earth that are not dreamt of in conventional managerialism and use them as imaginative springboards to different ways of thinking about management.’ - Martin Parker, University of Leicester UK, excerpt from review in Organization, March 2016, SAGE Publications

‘In its playful style, its photographic illustrations from the author’s valuable collection, its joyful spirit, and its totally uninhibited mix of personal storytelling and poetry [this book] draws the reader into the author’s private life with the free ranging discussion of ideas; this book provides a welcome antidote to the stifling straightness of much academic writing.’ - Yiannis Gabriel, University of Bath and University of Lund, excerpt from review in 'Management Learning', September 2014, SAGE Publications

'This is a tremendously important text, standing out among the rising tide of studies and manifestoes aimed at tapping the heretofore neglected yet profuse supplies of human faculties and energies marginalized and suppressed by the orthodox bureaucratic model of management. It offers simultaneously a profound diagnosis of the current state of affairs, an exhaustive inventory of its limitations and deficiencies - as well as opening new vistas and presenting a thorough analysis of an art of management fit to avail itself of the novel opportunities the post-bureaucratic era might offer.' - Zygmunt Bauman, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Leeds, UK

'All those who want to participate in positively changing the world by finding and introducing new and feasible solutions to existing problems and needs certainly find in the book inspiration and motivation essential for pursuing their mission.' - Aneta Milczarczyk, Freelance Researcher and Project Coordinator

'Occupy Management! Engages with management from the heart. It explores the joys of organization, and the tyranny of domination. A unique and challenging approach to management in contemporary life.' - Jonathan Murphy, Visiting Professor, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

'This is a remarkable book, simultaneously profound, thought-provoking, and beautiful. Professor Kostera has fashioned a genuinely mesmerizing lens on organizing, a ‘through-the-looking-glass’ one that is considerably more inviting and humanistic than most others in this field. She also combines old-world scholarship and sophistication with highly contemporary thinking. The result is a kind of organizational nouvelle cuisine that is at once lyrical, deep, satisfying, and eye-opening. It will be a welcome read for anyone wanting fresh views, possibilities, and approaches for organizing and managing in today’s world.' - Professor Daved Barry, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

'Recycling valuable concepts and theories from the academic fields of management and organization studies, Occupy Management! will encourage you to rethink the roles self-management and self-organizing can play in deciding whether our future will be sustainable, democratic and humane or will continue its slide down the rabbit hole of hate, fear and oppression. In the spirit of exploring alternative futures, this is organization theory as participatory art!' - Mary Jo Hatch, C. Coleman McGehee Eminent Scholars Research Professor of Banking and Commerce, Emerita, University of Virginia, USA