In search of popular management: Sensemaking, sensegiving and storytelling in the excellence project

Abstract

Critical accounts of popular management have tended to caricature the authors of this literary genre and have, furthermore, made broad claims as to the nature and potential of the organizational storytelling which features in these texts. This paper re-examines such claims and proclivities. It argues that any attempt to explore the nature of popular management or to account for the organizing potential of its storytelling must be located within an account of storytelling practice. To this end, the paper offers a critical analysis of the excellence project that is situated within a review of Tom Peters’ storyworld. Acknowledging the extent to which popular management deploys organizational storytelling in its endeavours, we offer – uniquely – a longitudinal analysis of Tom Peters' storytelling practices. Noting a tension between organizational sensegiving and organizational sensemaking processes, we argue that the storyworld of the excellence project acts to obscure the frictions, stresses and dislocations associated with the pursuit of business excellence. Highlighting the persistence of local sensemaking processes within and between those forms of public speech fostered by popular management, however, we argue that the tales which constitute the excellence project are, when viewed in context, more diverse and yet less productive than previously imagined.

Keywords:

• popular management
• guru theory
• excellence
• sensegiving
• sensemaking
• organizational storytelling
• rhetoric
• culture

Acknowledgement

The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the British Academy (SG-54322 Making Sense of Management's Gurus: The Case of Tom Peters).

Notes

This acronym stands for ‘anti-social behaviour order’. ASBOs were a controversial measure introduced by Tony Blair's New Labour administration in the UK. They were intended to curb forms of behaviour deemed to be anti-social in nature.

Our account of the rhetorical essence of popular management might tend to foster an overly stabilised account of the excellence project. It would be a mistake, however, to indulge this viewpoint. Indeed, it is important to point out that while the excellence project has retained its action orientation, has remained faithful to its, cultural, root metaphor, and has bequeathed its philosophy of ‘strategic exchange’ (Watson 2001) to subsequent generations of popular management it has continued to evolve within the parameters outlined by Huczynski (1993). In recent years, for example, Tom Peters has attempted to widen the base of the excellence project to include those European organizations excluded from the first rendering of ‘business excellence’ (Peters 1992). Similarly, and from the mid-1990s, Peters (1994, 1997) has enlarged his account of the essence of business excellence to acknowledge the important role which product design plays in stimulating demand. Furthermore we should acknowledge that the excellence project has been ‘feminized’ to some degree through the production of a narrative designed to reveal the market power and business potential of women (Peters n.d, 2003).

Elaborating on the antenarrative character of his tales, Boje tells us that he sides with Gallie (1968). Gallie, Boje tells us, defines stories as follows:

A story describes a sequence of actions and experiences done or undergone by a certain number of people, whether real or imaginary. These people are presented either in situations that change or as reacting to such change. In turn, these changes reveal hidden aspects of the situation and the people involved, and engender a new predicament which calls forth thought, action, or both. This response to the new situation leads the story towards its conclusion. (Boje 2001, 22)

Yet this quotation seems to contain all the features that we would normally associate with a ‘narrative’ definition of storytelling. Thus, we have people who change and develop as they encounter events. In other words, characters! We have, furthermore, a changing situation that becomes a predicament calling forth thought, action or both as we work towards a conclusion. In short, we have a plot. Indeed, we appear to have a very conventional plot; a plot with a rhythm; a plot with a heartbeat; a plot that Booker (2004) observes is, literally, typical of storytelling the world over!