Once Upon a Time in Facilities Management Tales from an Organizational Netherworld

What would the world of work look like if interpreted through the lens of the fairytale? To answer this question Once Upon a Time in Facilities Management explores storied spaces and metaphorical archetypes in the study of business, management, and organization. At its core, the authors offer a diagnostic approach for the study of work organization that links management theory, storytelling, and the business imaginary. An important empirical focus is also included that explores a business service rarely studied in the management literature: Facilities Management (FM), a 'secondary service' of non-core and increasingly outsourced organizational functions. An in-depth appreciation of FM is provided that assesses the people, practices, and processes of the service in a study that also highlights the characteristic liminality of the sector's professional activities. Emphasis is placed on illuminating the storytelling nature of the service, using primarily the genre of fairytales to identify representational archetypes (including queen, shadow, sage, trickster, adventurer, and eternal child) within FM's storied space. In the process, three central characters (essentially modes of FM delivery) are identified - the professional consultant, the external service provider, and the in-house function - with these forming the structural basis of fairytales explaining the culture and symbolism of FM as a business service. The authors conclude by extrapolating findings from the study to inform a discussion of the contributions of folkloric analysis to organization theory explicitly and our understanding of business and management practice more widely.