Once Upon a Time in Facilities Management

Abstract

Abstract This book explores the storied spaces and narrative archetypes of a secondary business service, using facilities management (FM) as an example of non-core and increasingly outsourced organizational activities. The centrepiece is the development of artificial folklore, a research approach combining organizational analysis, storytelling, and folklore for interpretive purposes. An in-depth exploration of FM is developed; one exploring people, place, and process in a project revealing elements of organizational liminality as well as professional enchantment. This leads to concentration on the storytelling nature of secondary services, specifically utilizing the genre of fairytales to investigate narrative patterns within FM’s cultural environment. In the process, three modes of FM delivery are identified: consultancy provision, service provision, and in-house provision; modes which are narratively demarcated as professionals tell both deconstructed and reconstructed tales about their work. What is revealed is a recognized understanding across the three provider groups of their role as the ‘necessary evil’ of business organization, and notably as represented—in folkloric terms—by the shadow archetype. Ultimately, the artificial folklore approach developed in this book produces ghostwritten tales for each of the main FM provider streams; tales which reflect symbolically, the consultancy provider’s Hansel and Gretel, the service provider’s Goldilocks, and the in-house provider’s Cinderella organizational motifs. The outcome of this inquiry is a new diagnostic approach to the study of management, work, and organization—one linking elements of social theory, narrative analysis, and the business imaginary.