A Tale Of a Dog: Medieval women organizing through myth and ritual

Abstract

Scholars of management and organizational history have focused on work and organization as an activity that is paid-for and which takes place outside the home, thus rendering invisible much of what has been women's works of organization in the past. This article seeks to challenge that by presenting an account of a ritual undertaken by women in medieval France. A reading of the cultural symbolism of the ritual allows a glimpse into the material conditions of their lives and of the organizing for which they were responsible. The ritual allowed them to have a sense of control over lives which were precarious and where women were marginalized and excluded from the official rituals of the Church. The use of ritual, liminality, resistance by groups marginal to the focus of power and activities of sense-making and rationalization are all evident in this tale – and all subjects of ongoing debate and conversation between scholars of organization.