In recent studies of managers (e.g. Holmberg and Tyrstrup, 2010; Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2003) there is a good deal of discussion about the mundane activities of managers—listening, chatting, joking. When managers talk about themselves doing these acts, they are ‘endowed with extraordinary dimensions, in spite of being performed by more organizational members, usually every day’ (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2003: 1437).

Is this your experience of managers and what they do?