The Flexible Imagination: At Work in the Transnational CorporateOffices of Jakarta, Indonesia is a behind-the-scenes ethnography examining the social interactions between individuals from different cultural and national backgrounds who work together in the halls of some of the most notorious Fortune 500 corporations out of Southeast Asia. In the transnational corporate spaces of Jakarta, Indonesia, there is a frustrating struggle for coherence and meaning by expatriate and national populations still new to the morphing and “flexible” world of global capitalism. Many of those newly engaged in the machinations of our global economy struggle to make sense of their unfamiliar surroundings. In this situation, where localities and social constellations are in a state of constant flux, people rely on their imagination in the construction of a social reality that makes sense—provides enough social stability—to get through the routine activities of a typical work day. The imaginary put to use by those discussed in this book ties together bodies of knowledge—historic and current, academic and popular, economic and cultural—in an attempt to create a transnational working reality that makes sense. Thus, the term “flexible imagination” encapsulates the variable and shifting nature of these imaginary processes.

Leggett’s The Flexible Imagination is a seminal piece—a must-read for anyone working in a transnational corporate setting and for any student studying international business. This work illustrates how corporate workers must be aware of the global, social, and cultural environments in which they work; more importantly, Leggett demonstrates how rapidly these environments can change and affect how one does business. -- Richard Robbins, State University of New York at Plattsburgh
William Leggett’s The Flexible Imagination is an engaging, absorbing, and intellectually stimulating examination of the imaginations which are emerging from the transnational relations of the global economy. Carefully researched through ethnography conducted in Jakarta, Indonesia, this is a wonderfully told story of the spatialised micro-politics of the transnational office. Here an interesting set of characters work to animate the ways in which diverse imaginations manage transnational encounters within the global economy—providing a much needed anthropology of cross-cultural corporate life. -- Pauline Leonard, University of Southampton
This is a fascinating and original book in which Leggett illuminates the dynamics of cultural encounters in the transnational corporate office, thereby transforming our understanding of emerging identities in the new spaces of the global economy and the ongoing importance of the colonial past. -- Katie Walsh, University of Sussex

William H. Leggett is an associate professor of cultural anthropology at Middle Tennessee State University. He has published extensively on the interesting cultural encounters that take place in the transnational corporate offices of Southeast Asia.