Whilst there is a great deal written about management which sets out to tell people how to do it or how to perform better, there is a lot less about the day-to-day realities of managing work. An earlier study by Tony Watson, In Search of Management (1984) was a major attempt to add to this fairly limited literature. Following the very positive reception this book received, it was felt that some of the issues raised by the study could be followed up by changing the emphasis on the lives of managers in a single organisation to one on the range and variety of places in which people 'manage'. It was also felt that a lot more needed to be said about the process of people becoming managers. The Emergent Manager thus looks closely at the lives of managers in a range of settings and how they make sense of their pasts, presents and futures as managers and as people with identities outside the workplace. This book provides a new understanding of the nature of management work and of the way people make sense of their lives as managers across a range of workplaces from civil service departments and building societies to shops