Popular Management Books: How They Are Made And What They Mean For Organizations

Popular Management Books The growing interest in management knowledge has generated an enormous literature and brought great success for a number of American management gurus. This book is a timely and radical critique of the quick-fix solutions offered by popular management books. Features include: • Detailed criticism of the ideological hegemony of North American managerial discourse; • An interrogation of books by leading populist management gurus such as Tom Peters, Richard Normann and Robert Waterman; • An institutional approach to the creation, diffusion and consumption of management knowledge; • The implications for organisations of acting on popular managerial discourse. Popular Management Books is a much needed corrective to the under-researched truisms of many management books. Staffan Furusten is Assistant Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics and the Stockholm Centre for Organisational Research. Popular Management Books How they are made and what they mean for organisations Staffan Furusten London and New York First published 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge Ltd is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 1999 Staffan Furusten All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Popular management books: how they are made and what they mean for organisations/Staffan Furusten. An English adaptation from the Swedish title: Den populära managementkulturen. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Management literature. I. Title. HD31.F8713 1999 99–18144 658–dc21 CIP ISBN 0-203-98370-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-21218-9 (hbk) ISBN 4-15-21219-7 (pbk) To Kristina, Axel and Ernst Contents List of illustrations 1 2 3 viii Preface ix Acknowledgements xi A study of popular management books 1 A growing interest in management knowledge in the 1980s 1 Popular managerial manifestations as elements of the organisational environment 3 Earlier studies of popularised management knowledge 7 The diffusion and production of management books 11 An outline of the study 13 The managerial discourse and the organisational environment 15