This chapter explores fictional portrayals of managers in popular culture and considers the different ways that they shape our understanding of the identities of managers. 455-470), has the following abstract that will hopefully pique your interest to read further: The book is a tour de force exploration of the issue of identities in organizations containing 55 chapters exploring all manner of issues from career identities to performed identities, fake identities to Trumpian identities and perhaps most importantly, encouraging scholars in this field further to ask: what questions should we be exploring in the coming years to really understand the nature of identity in the workplace? Our chapter, “Fiction and the Identity of the Manager” (pg. The chapter appears in The Oxford Handbook of Identities in Organizations edited by Professor Andrew Brown (Bath University) and was published by Oxford University Press in January 2020. In a new book chapter written with my colleague and friend Professor Mark Learmonth we continue our exploration of fictional portrayals of bosses (or managers) in popular culture and consider how these shape our understanding of the modern manager. Bosses are, it seems, shaped and sometimes guided by fiction through the cultural and social expectations of how they are supposed to act (and not act), and how they supposed to be (and not be) in the workplace, in what amounts to an ongoing internal battle between how bosses want to be seen – the fantasy – and how they are seen, the reality. They might embody the iron maiden characteristics of The Devil Wears Prada’s Miranda Priestly or the reckless hedonism of The Wolf of Wall Street’s Jordan Belfort. They might, for instance, channel Mad Men’s uber-cool Don Draper or gradually realise that they are acting like The Office’s painfully un-self-aware David Brent. Bosses might do this in a range of ways by consciously or unconsciously embracing behaviours of certain fictional bosses. Whilst writers, directors and actors often draw upon their own personal experiences to represent how managers act in organizational life, these portrayals also feedback in to how these managers themselves construct their identities in the workplace.
Bosses are portrayed on-screen in countless different ways within our favourite TV shows and films that reflect the way we see them both positively and negatively in our daily lives. The influence of TV and film on the identity of the modern boss is undeniable.
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