Humour, Work and Organization

University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia University of Technology, New South Wales, Australia

'From Heidegger to HucBuc, Bakhtin to Ronald McDonald, ready yourself for a hysterical ride when you open Westwood and Rhodes’ fascinating and refreshingly original collection. Anyone interested in the radical possibilities of a comic organizational frame should buy this book. I’m just off to purchase my ‘work sucks’ T-shirt.' - Peter Case, Professor of Organization Studies, Bristol Business School, The University of the West of England 'Humour in the workplace has always fascinated researchers. Now Westwood and Rhodes have assembled a collection of chapters that finally does justice to our current understanding of organizational humour. If you think humour in the workplace is a serious business then this is the book for you.' - Graham Sewell, Professor and Chair in Organizational Behaviour, Tanaka Business School, Imperial College London

• Part A: Theorizing Humour, Organization and Work 1. Introduction: Humour and the Study of Organizations 2. Humour as Practically Enacted Theory, or, Why Critics Should Tell More Jokes 3. Humour and Parody: The Power of Inversion Part B: Humour in Organizations 4. What Does Fun ‘Make’ Of Us? 5. The Little Book of Management Bollocks: Kitsch Artefacts 6. Organizing Humour: A Feminist Perspective 7. Humour in Workplace Meetings: Challenging Hierarchies Part C: Humour about Organization 8. Humour as Critique in Popular Television: Work and Organizations in The Simpsons 9. Another Average Day in The Office: Humour and the Brentist Striation of Modern Work Spaces 10. How Sick Are These People? Organizational Bystanding, Seinfeld’s New York Four and the Duty of Care Part D: The Organization of Humour 11. The Comedy Club: The Staging of Humour 12. Grotesque Humour Regeneration of McDonaldization and McDonaldland 13. Budweiser’s Lizards and The Organizational Production of Humour Part E. Coda 14. Theory as Joke