C.P. Snow's Fictional Sociology of Management and Organizations

Abstract

This paper seeks to use C.P. Snow's Strangers and Brothers novel sequence as a resource to demonstrate aspects of organizational life and, in particular, the social practices of managers. The paper begins with a discussion of the case for using fiction in organizational analysis. Then, Snow's novels, following an overview, are explored in two major ways. First, Snow's account of decision-making in organizations is shown to be a subtle and incisive account of group processes, which is sensitive to the dialectic of structure and agency. Second, the development of the novel sequence is shown to indicate something of the dissolution of the modernist scientific rationality which has dominated management and organization theory and practice. Thus the paper aspires to persuade that there is an interest in Snow's fiction for organizational analysis and, more generally, that it is desirable to use fictional representations within the academic study of management and organizations.

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