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An approach for thinking about, and intervening in, organizational change processes is developed which tries to achieve a balance between the naiveté of popular linear approaches to change and the complexity of metaphoric models that have been suggested in the recent academic literature. Two concepts, mind‐set and paradox, are advanced with the aim of encouraging reflective thinking among organizational members. An application of the concepts in a specific organizational setting is provided. This paper provides both researchers and managers with a renewed vocabulary, enabling them to better understand the processes that are set in motion by planned organizational change.

The purpose of this paper is to explore conceptions of radical change and utopianism in the work of Philip K. Dick and Fredrick Jameson in order to challenge the neo‐liberal orthodoxy that historical change is no longer possible. The paper relates this orthodoxy to the dominance of the realist novel as a literary genre and contrasts this with the fantastic and delirious world found in Dick's science fiction.

Jameson's dialectical criticism is combined with aspects of a Benjaminian montage to explore the relationships between ideology, material social organization and the forms of specific literary genres. This approach simultaneously denaturalises the present and opens up the future to the possibility of radical change without delimiting that future by prescribing its form. In this respect the paper is concerned with utopianism rather than representations of Utopia.

The paper shows how the realist novel functioned within a conservative social ideology to prevent change. In contrast works of fantasy like Dick's science fiction open up new possibilities for change and a future that is not entirely delimited by the present but, by denaturing the present, opens it up to a virtual indeterminacy that is the space of freedom.

Theoretically, the paper extends conceptions of radical social and organizational change by considering the limits of dominant conceptions of change and of radical conceptions that seek to represent Utopia. Methodologically the paper contributes to readings of novels in organization studies by introducing Jameson's dialectical criticism and through a critique of the dominant preoccupation in the discipline with realist novels.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise the relationship between novels and organizational change and to introduce this special issue of the Journal of Organizational Change Management.

The themes of the special issue are discussed and each paper is introduced.

The relationship between novels and organizational change is a complex, iterative one that should be understood in its historical, political, economic and cultural context. If so understood, novels can enhance our understanding of organizational processes.

Although literature and representation in general have been discussed in studies of organization and management before, the specific literary form of the novel has not been theorised in relation to the question of novelty and organizational change.

This chapter is an overview of herstorical, political and theatrical developments in South Africa. It provides an overview of the background to the herstory of South Africa from 1912–1993.

Dates are included which have relevance to the herstory of South African Women; for example, 1912 was the year of the formation of the African National Congress (ANC); in 1913 Charlotte Maxeke led a march against pass laws for African women; the Native Land Act of 1913 stated that natives were no longer able to buy, sell or lease outside the stipulated reserves; the Influx Control and The Natives Urban Act of 1923 and amendments to the Act in 1937 had devastating consequences for African women as it severely restricted their movements from rural to urban areas. The year 1930 is important because this was when white South African women acquired the vote which gave political activists such as Helen Joseph and Helen Suzman a political voice. In 1948 the ANC Women’s League (ANCWL) was formed. Political events from the 1970s through to 1993, demonstrate how the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), the African National Congress (ANC), other anti-apartheid organisations and the apartheid government realised the effectiveness of theatre as a political weapon

The author examines the inter-relationship between authenticity, music and gender in relation to a particular contemporary genre, emotional hardcore or emo. Noting how hard rock often defined itself as authentic in contrast to (feminine) pop music, the author argues that it is possible to see the ‘persistence of masculinism’ in wider debates around the performance of (appropriate) fandom. Drawing on a wealth of online data from platforms such as Reddit, Tumblr and Facebook, the author observes that even as male fans of emo distance themselves from hyper-masculine forms of hard (or cock) rock, they also critique the presence of female fans as ‘inauthentic’.

The purpose of this paper is to explore Thomas Pynchon's novel Against the Day as a symptomatology of organization and examine the (un)easy relationship between the novel and organization.

The novel is explored through three interrelated readings: first, the novel is considered as a representation of the gruesome nature of capitalist ordering; Second, the novel's textual strategies are examined to consider its co‐implication and knotting into the very logic of organization it abhors; Third, the novel is read as a search for other spaces haunting the broken machine of capitalist organizing.

The paper shows how Pynchon's writing and critique of capitalist organizing occupies an indeterminate space characterised by the ambivalence of ambivalence, where deciding upon its final meaning is a reductivist strategy ill suited to this complex text. Instead the novel functions through a complex process of displacement and emplacement.

Theoretically, the paper extends further the understanding of the relationship between literature and organization, challenging reductivist readings of this relationship to explore how the novel simultaneously emplaces and displaces the reader so that critique, as well as convention, are thoroughly unsettled.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.