The Stranger’s Gaze*

Abstract

Analyzing the trajectory of atypical bosses does not mean denying the existence of the mechanisms of both reproduction and global domination, but instead necessitates a heightened interest in the minority phenomena that splinter these individuals. This approach relies on the principal that a system is never transformed by its center, but always by its margins.

Atypical bosses do not consider the working world in the same way that regular bosses tend to. The experience of difference instead leads them to understand the company as a world in which their place is not given, but that rather has been acquired. They have learned to be relatively foreign in the professional world in which they act. But being strangers – i.e. not mobilising that which is implicit in the dominant culture – also leads them to adopt a posture altogether rare within normal managers: they look on, not just in order to see, but to question the meaning, utility and purpose of social practices that the majority has taken for granted.

Citation

Alter, N. (2017), "The Stranger’s Gaze*", Chanlat, J.-F. and Özbligin, M.F. (Ed.) Management and Diversity (International Perspectives on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Vol. 4), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 87-105. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2051-233320160000004005