Relations of disorder and disorganization have typically been peripheral in organization theory. As a result, the messy sides of organization and management – and their impact on establishing order in contemporary organizational life – are often overlooked. But, as Cooper (1986) tells us, order and disorder are inseparable and co-constitutive features of all organizational life. In line with this approach, critical organization studies is beginning to explore how organization/disorganization and management/mismanagement may be understood as mutually dependent and dynamically interwoven (Böhm & Jones, 2001; Burrell & Parker, 2016; Cooper, 2001; Hassard, Keleman, & Cox, 2008). For example, studies have developed this critical line of thought by conceptualizing the unmanaging organization (Munro, 2001), ‘spectres’ of disorganization (Knox, O’Doherty, Vurdubakis, & Westrup, 2015), the dark spaces of organization (O’Doherty, De Cock, Rehn, & Ashcraft, 2013), the un/doing and performativity of gendered dis/organization (Ashcraft & Mumby, 2004; Pullen & Knights, 2007; Trethewey &... more
