TY - JOUR

T1 - Novel thought: Towards a literary study of organization

AU - Beyes, Timon

AU - Costas, Jana

AU - Ortmann, Guenther

N1 - Funding Information: Beyes Timon Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany and Copenhagen Business School, Denmark Costas Jana European University Viadrina, Germany Ortmann Günther University of Witten/Herdecke, Germany Timon Beyes, Leuphana Universitat Luneburg, Universitätsallee 1, Luneburg, 21335, Germany. Email: timon.beyes@leuphana.de 10 2019 0170840619874458 © The Author(s) 2019 2019 SAGE Publications This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ( http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page ( https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage ). Novels espouse an epistemological freedom that is beyond even experimental forms of scholarly research and writing. Precisely this freedom makes novels so conducive to thought. Their enduring presence in organization studies demonstrates literary fiction’s power of conveying how things are, might be, or can be thought of; of inventing new ways of seeing; of enabling different vocabularies as well as staging and transmitting specific affects. In this paper, we trace the mutual ‘contamination’ between the novel and organization studies as well as discuss different modes of engaging prose fiction, drawing on Rancière’s ethical, representative and aesthetic regimes of art. With a special nod to Kafka’s novels and stories and also McCarthy’s Satin Island , we outline the contours of a literary study of organization and introduce the special themed section on ‘The Novel and Organization Studies’. fiction Kafka literature McCarthy organization theory organization Rancière the novel edited-state corrected-proof Funding The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2019.

PY - 2019/12/1

Y1 - 2019/12/1

N2 - Novels espouse an epistemological freedom that is beyond even experimental forms of scholarly research and writing. Precisely this freedom makes novels so conducive to thought. Their enduring presence in organization studies demonstrates literary fiction’s power of conveying how things are, might be, or can be thought of; of inventing new ways of seeing; of enabling different vocabularies as well as staging and transmitting specific affects. In this paper, we trace the mutual ‘contamination’ between the novel and organization studies as well as discuss different modes of engaging prose fiction, drawing on Rancière’s ethical, representative and aesthetic regimes of art. With a special nod to Kafka’s novels and stories and also McCarthy’s Satin Island, we outline the contours of a literary study of organization and introduce the special themed section on ‘The Novel and Organization Studies’.

AB - Novels espouse an epistemological freedom that is beyond even experimental forms of scholarly research and writing. Precisely this freedom makes novels so conducive to thought. Their enduring presence in organization studies demonstrates literary fiction’s power of conveying how things are, might be, or can be thought of; of inventing new ways of seeing; of enabling different vocabularies as well as staging and transmitting specific affects. In this paper, we trace the mutual ‘contamination’ between the novel and organization studies as well as discuss different modes of engaging prose fiction, drawing on Rancière’s ethical, representative and aesthetic regimes of art. With a special nod to Kafka’s novels and stories and also McCarthy’s Satin Island, we outline the contours of a literary study of organization and introduce the special themed section on ‘The Novel and Organization Studies’.

KW - Media and communication studies

KW - fiction

KW - Kafka

KW - literature

KW - McCarthy

KW - organization theory

KW - Organization

KW - Ranciere

KW - the novel

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074486158&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/0170840619874458

DO - 10.1177/0170840619874458

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 40

SP - 1787

EP - 1803

JO - Organization Studies

JF - Organization Studies

SN - 0170-8406

IS - 12

ER -