Organizational imaginaries

Different theoretical conceptualizations of ‘imaginaries’ are being offered as tractable responses to the ascending organizational challenge known as ‘the future’. Despite their undoubted promise, however, the plurality of conceptualizations of ‘imaginaries’ makes it unclear how the term is contributing to impactful theory. By clarifying the different uses of the concept this paper reveals the theoretical possibilities inherent in imaginaries. First we trace how dominant sources from other fields have inspired organization studies, followed by a categorization of the imaginaries concept in relation to a common entanglement of ‘the human’, ‘the future’ and ‘organization/organizing’ – the human-future-organization nexus. Six categories of organizational imaginaries are proposed: Functional imaginaries, Social imaginaries, Existential imaginaries, Political imaginaries, Sociomaterial imaginaries and Ecological imaginaries. By interrogating the assumptions behind these categories, we conceptualize a further category – ‘transformational imaginaries’ – which indicates a shift of emphasis away from desirable futures and towards desirable presents. Our meta-theoretical approach contributes with a) a clearer distinction between different conceptualizations of imaginaries of use for organizational analyses, b) a contrasting conceptualization of imaginaries of use for understanding immediate experiences of disruption and organizational transformation and c) practical implications for the field that facilitate more precise and impactful applications of organizational imaginaries, in its different conceptual forms.