This highly polemical and Dutch‐rooted article is intended as a contribution to the debates in both popular and academic literature about business process redesign and similar change programmes. Describes BPR and its logical successor, the “holonic” organization, as operational and...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of management gurus in a contemporary society. Design/methodology/approach – To further understanding about the specific atmosphere favorable to the production and consumption of the guruesque ideas the paper draws on the work of...

This paper develops and problematises the notion of the 'exemplary worker'--an idealised worker who is automated, compliant and mechanical. We suggest that the identity of such a worker emerges historically in a range of organisational, social and cultural discourses and provides a norm against...

Purpose – Seeing, one might say, is everything between black blindness and white blindness: between not seeing because of the absence of light and not seeing because of the blinding quality of light; between seeing nothing and “seeing” only that which produces vision (usually the sun or...