According to Wikipedia, management comes from the italian ‘maneggiare’ and from the latin ‘manus’(hand the latter, to handle the former)and Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933)defined management as “the art of getting things done through people”.

I agree with you however that it stereotipically implies the concept of control of others’ activities.
And this is why in this post I used specifically the term ‘to govern’ or ‘governance’to indicate the strategic direction (what is the right path) from ‘to manage’ or ‘managing’ as the actual walking that right path.

As for organisation, I wonder if it having become ever so liquid and so porous is a sufficient reason to think of another term, rather than to ask oneself how to better assist the organisation in coping with this new fact of life.

Of course I am sure that both David Phillips (who in this blog, as you say, has repeatedly questioned the concept of organization) and Emanuele Invernizzi (who was the principal protagonist of the recent thematization of the institutionalization of the public relations function concept) will want to weigh in on this, hopefully however taking into consideration the overall perspective of this post.

Very interesting post. A couple of thoughts:

1. I wonder about the future of the concept of “management”, which carries with it notions of control that appear to be less and less relevant. Freeman & McVea wrote in 2005 wrote about stakeholder partnerships (the bridging concept), and this seems to me to be the future in terms of shifting understanding from how an organisation seeks to organise and control its resources and activities, into how it can achieve optimum results in partnership with others operating in the internal and external environment.

2. As David Phillips has mentioned frequently, the concept of “organisation” is also challenged. This is especially the case in respect of its boundaries which become increasingly fluid and porous.

The efforts of PR practitioners to gain greater recognition has been based on the concepts of management and organisation – seeking to be part of the dominant coalition and represent (even control) the organisation in terms of its communications, relationships and reputations.

If we no longer can control or manage in the traditional way of thinking, and our notions of organisation also change – what does this mean for PR?

Perhaps rather than the discussion around institutionalisation (as per many earlier posts), we need to dis-institutionalise PR and consider its role in a world that is much less organised and managed than we’ve previously believed.