The romance of the lowly clerk: recognizing the tradition of office intellectualism

Abstract

This article examines a literary tradition that promotes clerkdom as a refuge for sensitive writers and intellectuals. Recent scholarly work on the role of the novel in organization studies often treats the novel as something that might be introduced to employees by well-meaning scholars as a means of generating insight into their circumstances. In contrast, this study positions workplace literature as spontaneously discovered by, and largely produced by, office workers themselves as part of a tradition of office intellectualism. Focusing on the rich interface between the office and literature, this creative process is understood to be ongoing and self-sustaining, morphing alongside technological change into forms such as the blog. The article argues that the intellectual lives of workers deserve greater attention, positing high literature on lowly clerks as a rich soil that nurtures today's over-educated office denizens.Generally speaking, clerks go unnoticed, people underestimate them. (José Saramago, All the Names) This article sets out by exploring how literary fiction is regarded in organization studies, highlighting inattention to the relationship between 'great' novels and the ongoing production of workplace writing. Drawing on Rose's (2010) account of working class intellectual life, it argues that a tradition which combines clerkdom and intellectualism might be expected in today's offices, and deserves greater attention in our field. The ongoing production of workplace fiction, it is argued, is

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Organization and the arts: Critical conversations on expanding meanings and understandings of who matters

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