Love and organization

This paper argues that fiction provides a rich and complex field material for organizational studies. Based on three novels, the paper analyses various aspects of organizational behaviour. Many typical features explored in gender studies are found: male domination of the public sphere, sexuality as a power instrument, and women's subordination. But while partly helping to preserve organizational structure, sexuality and emotions are used also as ways of resisting the organization's control over the individual. The novels thus reveal the ambiguity of sexuality and more generally of emotions. People strive to be loved and love, and are driven by fear, vanity and longing, at work and at home. The private and the public life are integrated in people's lives, although the public sphere also provides a place to rest from personal anxieties.