The last twenty years or so have seen a far-reaching reconfiguration of the characters that dominate the world of organizations. For much of its life, the study of organizations was dominated by two central characters, the manager and the worker, whose relationship with all its tensions, conflicts, and accommodations unfolded with within a broader environment of markets, governments, shareholders, social institutions, technological forces and so forth. In recent years, however, there has been a substantial movement to change the two-actor show into a three-actor show, the organizational dyad into a triad. The newcomer to the stage has been the consumer, a character whose whims, habits, desires and practices are no longer seen as 'impacting on' the activities of managers and workers from the outside but increasingly as defining them. At times the referee in the management-labour contest, the consumer is often called upon to take sides, declare winners and losers, and even define the rules of the game (e.g.