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Corporate Futures

The Diffusion of the Culturally Sensitive Corporate Form

As we approach the end of the century, cultural, institutional, and even geopolitical change becomes the norm rather than the exception. Late Editions, edited by George E. Marcus, is a series of annuals designed to probe these changes not through the familiar academic conventions of analysis but instead through in-depth, informed conversations and interviews with individuals at the sites of these transformations. The casts of other volumes in the series include artists, oncologists, Siberian medical leaders, warhead designers, and computer junkies, all of whom take the opportunity presented by Late Editions to reflect upon the great and often puzzling shifts occurring in the cultural landscape.

Late Editions 5, Corporate Futures, questions this idea of a "cultural landscape" by focusing on the the marked investment of corporations in the concept of culture, long the purview of anthropologists and, more recently, those involved in the humanistic disciplines. Emerging in the discourse of the workplace—and traveling beyond it to traditionally alternative associations—is the idea of a "corporate culture" with its own organization, management policies and practices, and ethos. How can we understand this culture of corporations, and to what extent does it reflect self-contained communities or fragmented human existence in groups under conditions of postmodernity? Corporate Futures tackles these issues and questions through conversations with managers, financial and risk analysts, and other participants in national and international organizations.

The results—engaging, intriguing, speculative, current—continue the work begun in earlier volumes to map the terrain of the present and navigate the uncertain future.

Praise for Late Editions: "If the succeeding volumes are as compassionate and informed as the first, this series could become an essential postmodern guidebook to the world’s changing cultural terrain. I plan on letting it ease me into the next century."—Catherine Gysin, Utne Reader


362 pages | 9 halftones, frontispiece | 6-1/2 x 9-1/4 | © 1998

Late Editions: Cultural Studies for the End of the Century

Culture Studies

Economics and Business: Business--Business Economics and Management Studies

Media Studies

Table of Contents

Introduction by George E. Marcus
I: Governance, Accounting, Planning
1: Corporate Culture Wars
Christopher Newfield
2: Making More Matter at the Bottom Line
Constance Perin
3: Toward a Higher-Order Merger: A Middle Manager’s Story
Melissa Cefkin
4: Colombo-Japanese Mixtures amidst a Corporate Reinvention
Santiago Villaveces-Izquierdo
5: Storying Corporate Futures: The Shell Scenarios
Robbie E. Davis-Floyd
II: Speculations and Risks
6: The World as Speculation
Gudrun Klein
7: Sixty-five Roses, Pulmozyme, Steve Shak, Genentech, Inc.
Michael Fortun
III: Opposition, Inc.
8: Making Space, Speaking Truth: The Institute for Policy Studies, 1963-1995
Michael Fortun, Kim Fortun.
9: Citizens, Inc.: Bottom-Up Organizing in Bottom-Line Contexts
Kim Fortun
10: Artists Incorporating: Business Savvy Meets Creative Experimentation
Laurel George
Contributors
Index

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