After retrotopia? The future of organizing and the thought of Zygmunt Bauman

Jerzy Kociatkiewicz and Monika Kostera

Scandinavian Journal of Management, 2018, vol. 34, issue 4, 335-342

Abstract: The main body of work of Zygmunt Bauman concerns his home discipline of sociology, but his insights have been influential also in the field of organization studies. In this text, we provide an overview of the extent of this influence, providing some additional context for positioning the other contributions to this special section. Afterwards, we explore in more detail two notions central for Bauman’s late thought: that of liquidity and retrotopia. The former constitutes the root metaphor for theorizing the current global predicament. In this text, we analyse how two modes of interpreting it, using the assumptions behind Kurt Lewin’s CATS model and the alchemical tradition underpinning Carl Gustav Jung’s conception of archetypes respectively, can help us theorize the alternative modes of organizing and managing encountered in a study of contemporary alternative organizations.

Keywords: Zygmunt Bauman; Liquid modernity; Liquidity; Retrotopia; Alternative organizations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:scaman:v:34:y:2018:i:4:p:335-342

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DOI: 10.1016/j.scaman.2018.05.003

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