In her chapter, Czarniawska gives us the opportunity to imagine the origins of organizing in the still significant legacy of the Romans and their long-lasting empire. Her reflections are not so much concerned with the organizational and economic aspects of the Empire, but of the imbricated relationship of the Roman management of military and civil administration. She focuses, in particular, on the financial, agricultural, industrial, and trade dimensions of Rome. Czarniawska insists on the ‘hybridity’ of the organization of the Empire and especially its economy. We see the Empire through the eyes of Czarniawska as a hybrid military-economical conundrum, with a multiplicity of rules and standards interpreted locally and dependent on complex political and cultural practices of rules, bureaucracies and standards. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the limits and scope of using the Empire as a source of contemporary insight but, nonetheless, reinforces her key message that many of our ways of organizing were born in Rome.

Management and organization studies have to handle the peculiarities of contemporary management and organizing: coeval and multiple times, simultaneity of events occurring in various settings, and the digitalization of many practices. This is why a technique known as “shadowing”, that is, following a chosen person at work, is very useful when conducting fieldwork in contemporary organizations. What is more, it is possible to shadow not only people, but also objects and quasi-objects. This variation of the technique removes the only difficulty related to shadowing - the necessity to be emotionally attuned to the person one is following. This chapter contains the basic features of the technique and various examples of its use.