What does being a manager mean to those who do managerial work and why has becoming a manager become so attractive for so many people? How does pursuing a managerial career fit with the wider project of constructing a life and a sense of self? This illuminating and thoughtful book answers these questions by considering the extended life histories of ten managers, allowing their own voices to be heard. The Manager's Tale uses the ideas of Heidegger, Sartre and Ricoeur to show that who a person is can be seen as a narrative accomplishment, a result of the stories we tell ourselves and others. Within this framework the manager's stories are revealed, highlighting the complex ways in which dominant expectations of what it means to be a successful individual in the modern world influences what sort of person we strive to be.

'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.