Abstract

'There is no alternative to free market liberalism and managerialism', is the orthodoxy of the twenty-first century. All too often, ordinary people across the world are being told that the problem of organization is already solved, or that it is being solved somewhere else, or that it need not concern them because they have no choices. This dictionary provides those who disagree with the evidence. Using hundreds of entries and cross-references, it proves that there are many alternatives to the way that we currently organize ourselves. These alternatives could be expressed as fictional utopias, they could be excavated from the past, or they could be described in terms of the contemporary politics of anti-corporate protest, environmentalism, feminism and localism. Part reference work, part source book, and part polemic, this dictionary provides a rich understanding of the ways in which fiction, history and today's politics provide different ways of thinking about how we can and should organize for the coming century.
Martin Parker is Professor of Organisation and Culture in the Management Centre at the University of Leicester. Valérie Fournier is Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies in the Management Centre at the University of Leicester. Patrick Reedy lectures in organizational behaviour and human resource management at the Business School of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
'Great fun...Here's your toolbox for hammering out a new vision.' Amory Starr, author of Naming the Enemy and Global Revolt 'The Dictionary of Alternatives reveals a splendidly rich and dazzling array of other possibilities, other dreams, other truths and other worlds. At a time when so much intellectual discourse is slavishly conformist, this book dares to be different.' Christopher Grey, University of Cambridge