Dionysus at work? The ethos of play and the ethos of management

This paper discusses the way in which play is used in contemporary managerial ideologies, relating it to the cultural imperative of ‘wellness’. Three central questions underpin this commentary. Firstly, has management entered into a kind of ‘Dionysian’ mode, a spirit of playful transgression and destruction of boundaries marking a new bond between economic grammars of production and consumption, and cultural grammars of the modern self? Secondly, can ‘happiness’ (as a ‘goal’ of the modern ethos) be related to playfulness and well‐being at work? Thirdly, is there a relationship between play at work and processes of infantilisation in Atlantic cultures? Our conclusions indicate that it is possible to speculate upon a phase in the western civilising process in which a new ‘managerial Dionysus’ is emerging in certain western organisations.