PORTRAIT GALLERY AND ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT

In the following chapters, the reader will meet and become acquainted with a number of managers who work in different types of organizations. We have interviewed the majority of them on one or, in the majority of cases, several occasion(s), and they constitute our primary material. They are flanked by managerial voices from secondary data material, which is taken from various media, trade and industry journals as well as research literature. Of the thirty-one managers who make up our primary material, thirteen are the main actors and the remaining eighteen secondary actors.

The main actors lend themselves to both in-depth study and slightly wider interpretations. As our account of the methods used (see Appendix) shows, they have been the objects of particularly intensive study: they have been interviewed on a number of occasions over a period of time. They are of particular interest as case studies, since they are faced with working situations and challenges that actualize identity work in ways which are both typical and insightful. The reader will become very familiar with the main actors and meet them to varying degrees in all the chapters where we report the result of our interviews and observations. The remaining eighteen, our secondary actors, turn up here and there in the chapters, but we do not follow them as deeply, intensively or thoroughly as the main actors. The secondary actors help to further illustrate our interpretations and not only make the portrayals of managerial work more varied, and in some cases richer, but also increase the breadth of our study. This allows us to draw further conclusions, reducing the risk that a single, untypical case will give a misleading impression.

Our main aim is not to overgeneralize, but most of what we take up here appears to characterize large parts of management and managerial life today. If we find that our material includes at least two examples on a particular theme, we estimate that it is of a certain general interest since it shows that the phenomenon exists, and an analysis can provide wider insights.