It has long been argued that the field of organisation and management studies lacks coherence and, more fundamentally, cannot be unified. The first systematic statements of this point of view occurred around 1980 (Burrell and Morgan 1979) and have continued (Morgan 1986; 1997; Alvesson and Deetz 1996; Jackson and Carter 2000; cf. Ackroyd 1992). Certainly, as it is at present, the field is characterised by a diverse collection of sub-disciplines which have little in common, apart, that is, from an interest in a vaguely similar subject matter. The concerns of research accountants and organisational psychologists, for example, or business strategists, econometricians and industrial sociologists are apparently quite different.