TELLING TALES: MANAGEMENT GURUS' NARRATIVES AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF MANAGERIAL IDENTITY
TIMOTHY CLARK
King's College, University of London
GRAEME SALAMAN
The Open University
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the reasons for the apparently powerful impact of manage-ment gurus' ideas (i.e. guru theory) on senior managers. An examination of thelimited literature on management gurus and other related literatures suggests threeexplanations for the appeal of guru theory for senior managers. The ®rst set ofexplanations relates to various features of management work which may 留學生dissertation網heightenmanagers' receptivity to guru ideas. The second set focuses on the gurusthemselves and emphasizes the form in which they are presented (i.e. publicperformances). The ®nal set of explanations highlights the importance of the socio-economic and cultural context within whichguru theories emerge and becomewidely adopted. A number of criticisms of these explanations are o?ered: that theyde®ne the manager as passive, that the¯ow of ideas is one way (guru to manager),that they rely on an academic conception of knowledge. An alternative explana-tion of their success is outlined which suggests that their work ± their analyses,presentations and theories ± o?er attractive conceptions of the role of managerswhich constitute the identity of the modern senior manager as an heroic, transfor-mative leader. Gurus therefore not only constitute the organizational realities butalso managers themselves.
INTRODUCTION
Since the 1980s management guru writing ± guru `theory' ± has become adominant paradigm within management thought. A number of commentatorshave attested to the increasing popularity and signi®cance of guru theory.Huczynski (1993a, pp. 35±58) maintains that guru theory is one of six leading
families of management ideas in the twentieth century. Oliver (1990) and Wood(1989) note its ascendancy and distinctiveness as a new management paradigm
which ensures a more than passing in¯uence on management theory and practice.Willmott (1993, p. 516) notes that it is having `a material e?ect on the politics of
Journal of Management Studies 35:2 March 1998
0022-2380# Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1998. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK
and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Address for reprints: Timothy Clark, The Management Centre, King's College, University of London,Campden Hill Road, London W8 7AH, UK.
work' and has become a force that has moral as well as managerial signi®cance.Je?cutt (1994) terms this area of organizational understanding `organizationalinterpretation', and writes: `Like the ``philosopher's stone'' of medieval alchemy,the genre of organizational interpretation has appeared to provide a medium
through which the theoretical and empirical ``base metal'' of organization couldbecome transformed into the ``golden glow'' of ordered success' (p. 234).Guru theory ± discussed in more detail below ± involves the presentation ofambitious claims to transform managerial practice, organizational structures andcultures and, crucially, organizational performance, through the recommendationof a fundamental almost magical cure or transformation that rejects the past, andreinvents the organization, its employees, their relationships, attitudes andbehaviour. The current role of management gurus in the production and di?usionof accepted management wisdom about organizational environments, organiza-tional structures and systems for high performance, the formulation and imple-mentation of business strategy, the achievement of the learning organization,managing change etc., is fundamental. Yet it has been generally overlooked.It has been noted that over the last 30 years senior managers have been assailedby ± and curiously have been prepared to accept ± a steady stream of apparentlyhighly attractive suggestions for re-modelling their businesses; ideas which insuccession have risen and fallen in popularity and use (see Abrahamson, 1996;Byrne, 1986; Eccles and Nohria, 1992, pp. 25±6; Gill and Whittle, 1993;#p#分頁標題#e#
Kilmann, 1984; Mayer, 1983). These guru-led ideas include T-groups, centraliza-tion of large corporate decision making, matrix management, portfolio manage-ment, zero-based budgeting, management by walking about, quality circles,Theory Z, delayering, TQM, corporate culture, business process re-engineering(BPR), the learning organization, and so on.
How can the impact of these various prescriptions be explained, especially sincethe life-cycle of these ideas takes the form of a bell-shaped curve with a strikingcycle of enthusiasm and decline ± the rapid waxing and waning of these ideas,with managers soon forgetting ± and forgiving ± their previous conversion at thehands of management gurus? How is it that managers seem to be insatiably keen
on the next wave of management fashionable thinking when they have hardly gotover the last? To date little attention has been paid to seeking answers to thesequestions. This paper seeks to rectify this situation by attempting to map andunderstand the reasons for the apparently powerful impact of management gurus'ideas and performances on senior managers. Gaining a better understanding ofthe guru phenomenon is critical for several reasons. First, few people in employ-ment will not currently be experiencing the consequences of some guru-led orinitiated programme of organizational change whether it be BPR, TQM, thelearning organization, etc. Second, the appeal of gurus is curious since: (1) thereare major doubts about the e?cacy of the core ideas (Carroll, 1983; Clark andSalaman, 1996a; Guest, 1992); (2) many critics have noted that guru theory eitherinvents management techniques that only appear to be novel or rediscovers/reinvents old management techniques that were invented previously or forgotten(Kimberly, 1981); (3) guru-led programmes are characterized by high rates offailure (The Economist 1994a; Grint, 1994); and, (4) the ideas gurus develop and
disseminate may do more harm to organizations than good (Abrahamson, 1991;Eccles and Nohria, 1992). Third, management gurus are fashion setters and the
138 TIMOTHY CLARK AND GRAEME SALAMAN
# Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1998swings in fashion they inspire are an extremely serious matter for managementscholars. In part this is because as the ideas they develop and disseminatepermeate throughout the management community they become the issues thatmanagement scholars investigate. So, to some extent management gurus set themanagement research agenda. But also management gurus and business schoolsare both competing to convince the management audience that they are at theforefront of management innovation. If the ideas developed and disseminated bybusiness schools are perceived to be less valid than those of management gurusthen they will increasingly become seen as peripheral institutions. Indeed, Gerlach(1996) argues that guru texts have already become the dominant social discoursewithin organizational studies. He argues that it is gurus rather than academicswho have de®ned the `new' ideal-form of organization and consequently set the#p#分頁標題#e#
problems to be solved and in the process established themselves as the mainproblem solvers. Thus understanding the factors which account for guru successand impact may assist scholars in business schools to e?ectively intervene in themanagement-fashion-setting process by creating powerful alternative discourseswhich ensure the long-term viability of many business schools.
The paper is structured as follows. In the ®rst part we examine the nature ofmanagement gurus and guru theory. In the second part we explore conventionallyavailable explanations for the impact and value of guru ideas. It is suggested thatthese explanations are based on a view of guru ideas as being attractive tomanagers because of managers' insecurity, perceived incapacity, or inherently
limited ways of thinking, plus their inherent susceptibility to glib, familiar ideas orto the appealing performance of guru presentations. In the ®nal section we moveto a more interactive notion of gurus and their clients where managers are notdopes and dupes, where managers are not bedazzled by gurus' ideas and recom-mendations, but where both parties work collaboratively to develop a body ofknowledge ± a series of narratives ± which are bene®cial to both.
MANAGEMENT GURUS AND GURU THEORY
Huczynski (1993a) identi®es three types of management gurus: (1) `academic
gurus' (e.g. Kenneth Blanchard, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Michael Porter); (2)
`consultant gurus' (e.g. Peter Drucker, Tom Peters, Robert Waterman); and, (3)
`hero managers' (e.g. John Harvey-Jones, the ex-Chairman of ICI).[1] First, theyare essentially purveyors of management fashion. Their ideas are invariablycharacterized by rapid, bell-shaped swings in popularity. According to
Abrahamson (1996, p. 256), `we should label swings ``management fashions'' onlywhen they are the product of a management-fashion-setting process involving parti-cular management fashion setters ± http://www.ttc-switch.com/thesis_sample/organizations and individuals who dedicatethemselves to producing and disseminating management knowledge'. Managementgurus are therefore part of a management-fashion-setting community, the othermembers of which include management consultancies, business schools andbusiness-press organizations, which, in line with Hirsch's (1972) model of culturalproduction, is concerned with creating, selecting, processing and disseminatingmanagement ideas to users (i.e. managers). However, not all ideas become massmanagement fashions, or fads of the moment. Gurus therefore either thrive or
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falter depending on their ability to produce ideas that have mass appeal to theirmanagement audience.
A second attribute of management gurus is the way in which they disseminatetheir ideas to management users. The traditional way in which gurus and would-be gurus launch themselves and their ideas is by writing a seminal managementtext (see Fincham, 1995).[2] Management gurus therefore use the book-publishingindustry to disseminate their ideas. According to Wood (1989, p. 380), this#p#分頁標題#e#
material consists of three types of books: (1) books which o?er analysis (withprescriptions) of a broad theme (e.g. the Japanese Management Model); (2) bookswhich focus on methods for improving the handling of a speci®c topic (e.g. motiva-tion); and, (3) reports of success stories which include studies of ®rms and indivi-
duals' accounts of their personal achievements.These books have perhaps been the publishing phenomenon of the 1980s. As aconsequence, guru ideas have had enormous impact ± and have brought richrewards to their originators (if not to those who receive them). For example InSearch of Excellence (Peters and Waterman, 1982) sold 122,000 copies in the ®rst twomonths of publication. Within one year it had sold more copies than any otherbook except the Living Bible in 1972 and 1973. The book has sold more than 5million copies world-wide. Stephen Covey's book Seven Habits spent four years onthe New York Times best seller list and has sold more than 6 million copies world-wide. Hammer and Champy's (1993) book Re-engineering the Corporation has soldover 2 million copies to date and is currently the `management world's mostfashionable fad' (Lorenz, 1993).
However, management gurus are more than successful authors ± they are alsosuccessful orators, indeed experts in persuasive performances. Like a theatricalscript, management guru books are the basis for action, but gurus must have ameans of realizing their potential. Mangham (1990) writes of theatrical scripts thatthey are `an abbreviated and necessarily incomplete version of a possible work ofart' (p. 107). The task of the performer, in this case a management guru, is tobring the text to full realization by transforming the unfamiliar into the familiar sothat the text has meaning for the audience to which their actions are addressed.The book or text is a distant inaccessible world which can only be made dazzlinglypresent and real and intelligible by the actions of the performer/managementguru. The guru `knows the road to the centre of the world: the hole in the skythrough which he can ¯y up to the highest heaven or the aperture through whichhe can descend to the underworld' (Eliade, 1987, p. 205). Guru performances aretherefore much more than mere dry exposition; they involve highly theatricalbehaviour, anecdotes, exhortation, challenge, threat, confrontation and humour.Odd things happen. They are a place where imaginative truth is experienced aspresent truth.
Given the importance of these events to the nature of guru activity it is hardly
surprising to discover that in the 1980s one of the most in¯uential gurus, Tom
Peters, was taking up to 150 seminars a year and charging around $60,000 per
appearance. He now limits his public performances to between 50 and 60
seminars a year and is estimated to earn between $70,000 and $90,000 for a day-
long seminar (The Economist, 1994b, p. 90). Other management gurus, such as
Stephen Covey, Kinichi Ohmae, Richard Pascale, Peter Senge, etc., also conduct#p#分頁標題#e#
management seminars and charge similar appearance fees. Jackson (1996a) reports
140 TIMOTHY CLARK AND GRAEME SALAMAN
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that Michael Hammer, currently perhaps the most in¯uential management guru
(see Thackray, 1993), delivers seminars to over 5,000 senior managers annually
and receives a fee of up to $50,000 for each event.
Finally, a critical and distinctive feature of gurus' ideas and performances is a
forceful denunciation of previous principles of organization, management and
structure. They are not o?ering a mere shift in direction. Rather they are going
the whole way. Typically a guru rejects current ways of thinking about, and imple-
menting, the design of work. The rejection of traditional forms makes the identi®-
cation and development of the new all the more pressing and important. Gurus
supply the directions and encouragement for this reconstruction. In guru narra-
tives the organization must recognize sinful ways thoroughly in order to overcome
and vanquish them; they must reject the past, embrace the path of virtue, and be
reborn. Kanter (1990, p. 356), for example, insists that organizations must `either
move away from bureaucratic guarantees to post-entrepreneurial ¯exibility or they
stagnate'. Critical to much guru theory is the argument, represented for example
by Peters, that traditional forms of organization and management have reached
their limits and are inappropriate for new current conditions. Organizational
control through increasingly complicated structures, rules and regulation has
reached its limit. This argument asserts that `modern' organizational forms
stressed the importance of control over variability, of regularity and predictability
over spontaneity. Like all gurus, Peters et al. are essentially arguing for the limits
of modernity ± of current forms and principles of organization. Speci®cally, Peters
et al. argue that under structural forms of control workers were stripped of their
human-ness, they became mere objects, instruments, `so that their subjectivity, the
primeval ``givenness'' of their existence could be denied and they themselves could
be made hospitable for instrumental meanings' (Bauman, 1992, p. xi). However,
while gurus are focused on work they locate the source of work and organizational
di?culties in the larger society and ethos. They argue that employees' disenchant-
ment, like that of the world as a whole, stemmed from the encounter between the
designing posture and the strategy of instrumental rationality. The achievement of
that encounter was the world split between wilful subject and will-less object;
`between the privileged actor whose will counted, and the rest of the world whose
will did not count' (Bauman, 1992, p. xi). Gurus claim to be able to resolve this#p#分頁標題#e#
hiatus.
Having identi®ed the main features of management gurus and guru theory, in
the next section we examine a range of explanations which have been o?ered to
explain their impact.
REASONS FOR THE IMPACT OF GURUS' IDEAS: CONVENTIONAL EXPLANATIONS
In this section we collect together a number of available explanations for the
success of guru ideas. To achieve this we have had to overcome the fact that the
literature on this subject while growing is nevertheless extremely limited. In the
discussion below we have taken a broad approach and included literature that was
not necessarily originally produced in response to the problematic addressed here.
We therefore draw on a number of literatures that have previously tended to be
viewed as external to an analysis of the guru phenomenon but nevertheless have ±
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or could be seen to have ± explanatory purchase for the issue addressed in this
paper. In the subsequent discussion these various explanations are organized into
three sections. We examine, in turn, explanations which apply to (1) management
users, (2) the management gurus themselves and (3) the socioeconomic and
cultural context within which they develop and disseminate their ideas.
Management Users
Since guru work is addressed to management users rather than organizational
systems, the ®rst set of explanations for gurus' impact relate to those features of
management work which may heighten managers' receptivity to guru ideas.
Psychological explanations. The majority of literature examining the management
guru phenomenon to date has sought to explain their impact on managers in
terms of their ability to `satiate individuals' [managers'] psychological needs' (Abra-
hamson, 1996, p. 271). This explanation focuses on the way in which the ideas
that gurus develop and then promulgate through books and presentations assist
managers to control a world that is unordered and unstable. In a world that is
perceived as ®ckle and unpredictable, guru theory, it is claimed, helps managers
`create a sense of order in the face of the potential chaos of human existence'
(Watson, 1994a, p. 904). It is their search for control and predictability which
renders managers vulnerable to the quasi-magical solutions management gurus
o?er as relief to their sources of frustration. Versions of this argument can be
found in the work of Byrne (1986, 1992), Huczynski (1993a, b), Watson (1994a)
and Jackson (1996a).
The nature of the managerial task. A second class of explanation draws on that
literature which has sought to examine the nature of managerial work. It may be
that gurus' ideas appeal because they are formulated in ways that are inherently
attractive to and easily accessible by managers in terms of their work-developed#p#分頁標題#e#
preferences for the nature and format of information. A number of studies that
have sought to identify the key features of management work over the last 40
years suggest that it is characterized by brevity, spontaneity, fragmentation and
discontinuity, adaption to circumstances, super®ciality, unre¯ectivity, and a focus
on doing, on tangible, concrete activities, and on the immediate (see Carlson,
1951; Hales, 1986; Martinko and Gardiner, 1990; Mintzberg, 1980, 1990;
Stewart, 1967, 1983). These characteristic features of managers' work may cause
managers to be responsive to ideas that are presented in particular ways. Indeed,
analysis of a number of guru texts conducted by Conrad (1985), Freeman (1985)
and Zibergeld (1984) indicate that they are immediate, practical, concrete, super-
®cial and easily read and assimilated.
Management learning. Others have focused on the nature of management learning
in attempts to understand their receptivity to some sorts of ideas, or the form in
which ideas are presented. Kolb et al. (1984), for example, have argued that
because of the nature of managers' work demands, managers may learn in
distinctive ways ± i.e. might have action-focused learning styles (Honey and
Mumford, 1986). And Rogers (1986) has suggested that managers as adults
would prefer learning episodes that are usually episodic in character, occurring in
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short bursts of intense activity; goal and task-centred; use demonstration; and
avoid general principles. If true, this could have obvious and important implica-
tions for the qualities of guru ideas and presentations that appeal to managers.
The social aspects of management work. Some researches have noted the social aspect
of management work ± which could also be key to senior managers' admiration
for and attraction to gurus' ideas and performances. Mangham (1990) has
argued that managing is a `performing art', thus drawing attention to the fact
that managing `involves the reading and interpretation of events and circum-
stances and the expression and embodiment of that reading in action on the part
of the managers. Action is eloquence' (p. 110). Managers could thus be attracted
to gurus' performances because in impressing managers within a social setting
(the guru performance) gurus demonstrate these very qualities of performance,
interpersonal charisma and `eloquence' that managers admire and wish to
master. Managers may admire ± and listen to ± gurus because gurus display high
levels of public mastery of the social qualities and attributes which managers
themselves admire.
Guru Performances
Another type of explanation has concentrated on the gurus themselves and
suggests that their success and impact on managers is related to their public#p#分頁標題#e#
performance ± not simply to gurus' ideas and their claims but the form in which
they are presented. The impact of guru ideas may in part therefore derive from
the power of their public performances (Clark, 1995; Clark and Salaman,
1996a, b; Huczynski, 1993a). Clark and Salaman (1996a) argue that the guru
performance has major elements of display and conversion with a focus on the
irrational, emotional and symbolic aspects of organizations. They argue that a key
feature of
successful performances given by management gurus is the successful manage-
ment of risk, promise and opportunity within a particularly highly demanding
type of public performance, that carries a risk of total and public failure and
acclaim . . . the successful ones use their ability to manage this performance risk
to build their personal `characters' or reputations with clients. (Clark and
Salaman, 1996a, p. 12)
Similarly, Huczynski (1993a) argues that the public performances of management
gurus are exercises in persuasive communication. Essentially gurus are seeking to
achieve transformations of consciousness in the audience of managers. Huczynski
(1993a, pp. 251±67) adopts Lewin's (1951) change model to argue that alterations
in audience beliefs are the outcome of three phases of a presentation: creating
disequilibrium by challenging audience members' normative world-views
(unfreezing); inducing guilt through the threat of damnation and the promise of
salvation (changing); and enabling the audience to see familiar ideas and concepts
in new ways (refreezing).
In order to facilitate conversion or identi®cation with a new idea a powerful
range of communication techniques are used by gurus. Huczynski (1993a) draws
on Atkinson's (1984) work to reveal the importance of rhetorical styles and
TELLING TALES 143
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claptraps combined with a number of de-stabilizing techniques which generate
anxiety in the audience (see Oliver, 1990; Sargant, 1976). This is heightened since
the essence of the performance con®rms the nature of the threat to an organiza-
tion, o?ers protection from that threat, substitutes `unreal' for `real' achievement,
transports the audience to a symbolic realm, addresses symptoms and not causes,
and places an unrealistic emphasis on optimistic models (Clark and Salaman,
1996a).
Socioeconomic and Cultural Explanations
A number of commentators have highlighted the importance of the socioeconomic
and cultural context within which management theories emerge and become
widely adopted (e.g. Alvesson, 1990; Whitley, 1984; Willmott, 1993). Otherwise, it
might seem that the guru ideas themselves `produce the practices they describe,
rather than appreciating how their prescriptions selectively (re)construct and ratio-
nalize particular kinds of management practice' (Willmott, 1993, p. 518). In this#p#分頁標題#e#
sense the popularity and impact of particular guru ideas is related to their ability
to (re)frame their analyses of contemporary management problems and solutions
in such a way that they resonate with and are in harmony with the expectations
and understandings of their target audience. If they fail to convince their target
audience of the plausibility and appropriateness of their ideas then their prescrip-
tive advice will probably not be heeded. According to Grint (1994, p. 193) `for the
``plausibility'' to occur the ideas most likely to prevail are those that are appre-
hended as capturing the zeitgeist or ``spirit of the times'' '. Indeed, The Economist
(1994a, p. 80) suggests that any successful management guru must possess a `nose
for the zeitgeist'.
Given the above, it may be that macroeconomic ¯uctuations could a?ect demand
for guru theory. Barley and Kunda (1992) suggest that long-term, 50-year Kondra-
tie? waves of economic expansion and contraction may parallel broad changes in
managers' preferences for di?erent type of management ideas. They argue that
because in expansionary periods pro®ts are dependent on capital investment and
automation there should be a demand for management techniques which stress
the e?cient use of structures and technologies as a means of increasing labour
productivity and pro®tability (rational rhetorics). In contrast, during periods of
contraction the supply of capital investment outstrips demand, managers become
interested in labour as a factor of production with the consequence that there is
demand for management techniques which stress employee relations as a means
of increasing labour productivity and pro®tability (normative rhetorics). Applying
this argument to the realm of management gurus suggests that their success
may in part be due to their ability to reformulate their ideas so that they are in
harmony with the dominant management rhetorics which are related to macro-
economic ¯uctuations. Thus during an economic upswing they will tend to
develop rational rhetorics and during a downswing they will tend to develop
normative rhetorics.
The way in which guru theory resonates with wider political programmes may
have an e?ect on its demand. For example, a number of di?erent commentators
note the a?nity between guru theory and the values of the politico-ethical project
of developing an enterprise culture fostered by the Reagan and Thatcher adminis-
trations (du Guy, 1990; Miller and Rose, 1990; Rose, 1990; Silver, 1987). Du Gay
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# Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1998
(1994) and du Gay and Salaman (1992), for example, have argued that guru type
ideas work together to constitute a speci®c discursive formation in which the old
(bureaucratic) forms of organization are unfavourably contrasted with new, ¯exible#p#分頁標題#e#
forms, the latter closely related to the culture of enterprise. They argue that new,
enterprising, anti-bureaucratic forms of organizational administration and struc-
turing are closely bound up with the de-di?erentiation of the spheres of production
and consumption, and the supremacy of the language of the market. The
advocacy of enterprise within organizations ± with all the numerous implications
for employees' competencies, structures, cultures, etc. ± is a major element of
gurus' ideas, recommendations and presentations. Since the language of enterprise
demonstrates an a?nity with extra-organizational values and debates it may have
extra appeal for managers.
Other writers have noted the correspondence between guru packages and core
national values. Guest (1990), for example, argues that the success of guru ideas,
particularly those which originate in the USA, is due to their close links with core
values in American society: optimism, simplicity, the focus on a dream, an
idealized sense of possibility, the focus on individualism and enterprise, and the
view of the leader. He argues that the appeal of these ideas is not simply that they
o?er attractive solutions to current problems, but that these solutions are modern-
day manifestations of key elements of the American Dream. They therefore
embody and promote key traditional American values.
In a similar vein, Grint (1994) argues that much guru theory claims to revive
or rediscover forgotten (or abandoned) national (American) values in the face of
threats from the apparently superior values of foreign (Japanese) cultures. He
suggests that guru theory seeks to defend and emphasize fundamental American
values in the face of the threat from the `other' (Japanese) values. Guru histor-
ical narrative he suggests asserts that America's current competitive problems
are not due to fundamental weaknesses but to America's recent complacency and
inertia. America has lost touch with its essence; it has forgotten what it once
was. But the guru can o?er salvation. The guru shows the way back to true,
basic values and proper practices, enabling us to recognize how and where we
have gone astray. Grint, for example, writes of a recent guru-led initiative,
BPR, that it o?ers a solution and a way forward that is convenient and comfor-
table:
The language of reengineering renders opaque developments clear, not by
providing a more objective analysis of the situation and the solution but by
providing a persuasive rendering of these. Moreover, part of the persuasive
essence lies in the resonance that it `reveals' between the old and the new,
particularly between American past glories and future conquests . . . American
industry is weak now because, rather than despite the fact that, it was so strong
before; and American industry will be strong again because of, rather than#p#分頁標題#e#
despite, American culture. (Grint, 1994, p. 194)
Similarly, Keisling (1984) argues that `In Search of Excellence brought welcome balm
for America's battered self image. There was a better, wholly indigenous solution
to declining productivity and industrial decline and Peters and Waterman's
argument is put in terms that most people could immediately grasp' (p. 40).
TELLING TALES 145
# Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1998
Samuelson (1984) suggests that `In Search of Excellence reassures us. It's a morality
tale ± Horatio Alger in a three piece suit' (p. 70).
CONSULTANTS AND CLIENTS TELLING TALES TOGETHER: THE MANAGERS AS A
COLLABORATIVE CONSTRUCT
The preceding types of explanation of guru impact and appeal are open to a
number of criticisms. Primarily they tend to accept unquestioningly the arguments
and assumptions of guru ideas themselves (the virtues and necessity of HRS; the
role of culture; the pressures for change from the environment; the death of
bureaucracy, etc.). In doing so they assume a simplistic and one-way conception of
the guru±client relationship. Also, with the forms of explanation considered so far,
gurus are de®ned as the dominant, initiating partners, exploiting the naiveteÂ,
vulnerability of their client managers, selling them glib promises, fads, empty
slogans; confusing them through their rhetoric, dazzling them with their perfor-
mances. Managers, on the other hand, are conceived largely as passive, docile
consumers of gurus' ideas and recommendations, inherently vulnerable to gurus'
blandishments, anxiously searching for reassurance and support, looking despe-
rately for new ideas. Managers' needs are seen as those of `a petulant infant,
insecure, desperately seeking predictability and order, easily bored and distracted,
®xated on instant grati®cation and ®lled with yearnings for dependence and
authority ®gures' (Thomas, 1993). Finally these explanations rely implicitly on a
formalistic, academic and rationalistic conception of knowledge, in relation to
which guru activity is evaluated as shallow and glib.
There is something unsatisfactory about analyses which rest on such founda-
tions, and in what follows we o?er a tentative alternative approach to the explana-
tion of guru appeal which di?ers with respect to each of these criticisms. This
approach o?ers a more interactive and a more balanced conception of the guru±
client relationship ± one where both parties derive bene®t from the exchange and
where both parties in¯uence the content and nature of the relationship; where
there are no winners and losers but rather a collusion in mutual winning. In this
conception both parties adjust the relationship and the ideas transmitted within
the relationship to the bene®t of both. The previous producer/consumer model is#p#分頁標題#e#
replaced by one where both processes occur simultaneously and where both
parties produce and use the ideas in question ± where they de®ne and feed each
others' needs and identities. In this approach guru theory is regarded not as a
body of expert knowledge that gurus make available to their grateful clients, but as
a means, as a language for representing negotiated and mutually acceptable ways
of knowing, de®ning and talking about management, organization and managers.
Such an approach is in its infancy and requires more work and research. This
paper is intended not to assert the superiority or feasibility of this position but to
describe a potentially useful alternative position. This approach seeks to explain
the impact and appeal of guru ideas, not through their relationship with what are
regarded as ®xed aspects of the manager's role (see above) but through their contri-
bution to the management role itself. Theories of organization (guru theory) and of
strategy contain common discursive elements which represent both the organiza-
tion, and the manager (Rouleau and Seguin, 1995). Analysis of these discursive
146 TIMOTHY CLARK AND GRAEME SALAMAN
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forms is an important step in the understanding of current developments in organi-
zation structure and functioning.
The Nature of Guru Knowledge
The ®rst element in the new approach is a rede®nition of the role of expert
knowledge as the basis of guru activity. Conventionally, guru ideas, however
disparaged by academic commentators, are seen to represent a body of expert
knowledge and advice. One view of what gurus do and of their role, is to see
them as professionals ± people with a mastery of a body of practical theory and skill.
This view is one which has been asserted by some gurus themselves. However,
gurus do not possess and cannot deploy a body of formal, authoritative theoretical
professional knowledge to underpin their work, because there is no such
knowledge. The `knowledge' of gurus cannot be de®ned on a neutral, formal,
theoretical basis, for not only are the results of guru knowledge and work
ambiguous but also it is ambiguous what role knowledge plays at all. Organiza-
tions ± or their senior managers ± demanding expert assistance from gurus
therefore cannot rely on accessing formal, uncontested, rational bodies of
knowledge and expertise.
In these circumstances, guru theory can be seen less as a set of expert solutions,
and more as a language for representing mutually acceptable ways of knowing
and de®ning and talking about management, managers and organizations and
their structures and dynamics (threats, opportunities, solutions, etc.). Gurus'
authority vis-aÁ-vis their clients ± senior managers ± depends on mastering the#p#分頁標題#e#
impression of possessing authoritative knowledge. The guru must seem to be authori-
tative, must behave con®dently, must be in command. Their success with clients
depends on their apparent possession of what senior managers value, on their
mastering techniques which convey the impression that they possess authority and
expertise in areas that clients value. Since, according to Starbuck (1992), clients
tend to make their judgements about the value and quality of gurus' services on
the basis of `general symbols of expertise', their success depends on their manipulation
of symbols of authority ± their `symbolic outputs'. Hence the foundations for guru
success rests on their knowledge and skill at identifying and manipulating the
mutually acceptable symbols of knowledge in the course of convincing perfor-
mances.
Another feature of the knowledge on which gurus claim authority is that it does
not pre-date the client relationship but is developed in interaction with the clients.
It is therefore a social product, developed in `consultation' with their clients. Guru
`knowledge' is produced and displayed through a process of `translation' ± an
inherently interactive process.
By translation we understand all the negotiations, intrigues, calculations, acts of
persuasion and violence, thanks to which an actor or force takes, or causes to
be conferred on itself, authority to speak or act on behalf of another actor or
force. `Our interests are the same', `do what I want', `you cannot succeed
without going through me'. (Callon and Latour, 1981, p. 279)
Translation is achieved through `problematization' (Callon, 1986) whereby actors
(i.e. management gurus) convince other actors (i.e. clients) that their interests
TELLING TALES 147
# Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1998
coincide ± `I want what you want' ± by re-de®ning the `problem' in terms of a
solution owned or within the orbit of the former.
Gurus as Manipulators of Myths
A second element of the approach that we are seeking to develop suggests that
gurus' impact is based on their manipulation not of expert knowledge, but of
myths and symbols. Since they lack an objectivistic and functionalist knowledge
base, gurus depend for their success with clients, and demonstrate their expertise,
through the manipulation of myths, meanings and symbols. The insecure
knowledge-base of guru activity `means that the possibility of rationality ± clari-
fying means±ends relationships or exercising quali®ed judgement ± becomes
reduced. Thereby, a space is created for . . . the adoption of institutionalized
myths' (Alvesson, 1993, pp. 1002±3). Similarly, Willmott (1993, p. 517) supports
the notion that guru theory, by constituting `a self-disciplining form of employee
subjectivity' is a strategy for managing meaning and extending management#p#分頁標題#e#
control.
Therefore, the critical feature of guru theory is its symbolic quality ± it works by
giving the sense of being knowledgeable. Being perceived as knowledgeable is more
important than being knowledgeable: gurus must appear to make sense by
re¯ecting back to managers what they already know, value and want. The
knowledge required to achieve this is knowledge of the management of meaning,
of myths and of rhetoric. If, as Jackall (1988, p. 137) suggests, gurus are `virtuosos
in symbolic management', then impression management becomes not incidental
but central to guru work. Knowing how to win management acceptance by
becoming an obligatory passage point (Callon, 1986) becomes the key type of
knowledge. Rhetoric is at the core of guru work. As a consequence, a distinctive
feature of guru work is `the degree of elaboration of the language code through
which one describes oneself, one's organization, regulates client-orientations as
well as identity' (Alvesson, 1993, p. 1007). The focus of this language is the claim
to mastery of, and expertise in, valued managerial behaviours, skills and
knowledge.
Gurus as Myth Makers and Storytellers
The third element of our approach emphasizes that gurus not only act as
managers of meaning, but that they achieve this through their use of language,
and speci®cally through acting as organizational myth makers or storytellers. This
is their real expertise and source of their knowledge base. Gurus' myths or stories
are rationality-surrogates. They compensate for the uncertainties generated by the
absence (impossibility) of `true' expert knowledge (which follows from the ambigu-
ities involved, especially the di?culty in establishing clear means±ends linkages).
However, what are these myths about, and what purposes do they serve?
Alvesson (1993) has suggested that gurus help managers convince themselves ±
and others ± that they know what they are doing and that they have had the help
of the brightest and the best. The use of gurus is a powerful and convincing
symbol of an organization's status and aspirations. The analysis of the content of
gurus' mythic stories has been taken a step further by both Jackall (1988) and
Mangham (1990). Jackall suggests that the appeal of gurus lies in the connections
between the skills managers must use, and the roles they play, and the skills of
148 TIMOTHY CLARK AND GRAEME SALAMAN
# Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1998
gurus: `Managers' use of certain kinds of expertise, namely that generated by
management consultants of various sorts, themselves virtuosos in symbolic manipu-
lation, aptly illustrates their peculiar symbolic skills' (Jackall, 1988, p. 137).
Mangham has argued that the focus of this symbolic work, which gurus are
employed to support, is as much about managers and their roles and identities as#p#分頁標題#e#
it is about the subject of management, organization and organizational perfor-
mance: `Managing is itself a form of performance: to manage is to engage in the
art of performing . . . a process that involves the reading and interpretation of
events and circumstances and the expression and embodiment of that reading in
action on the part of the manager' (Mangham, 1990, pp. 106, 110). Management
gurus may therefore support ± and appeal to ± managers not simply by displaying
qualities managers themselves value and use, but by enhancing managers' con®-
dence in performing their role as senior managers through their mythic story-
telling.
Gurus' success with their clients lies in their capacity, in partnership with the
client, to address and manipulate through myths and stories, symbolic issues of
great pertinence and salience to senior managers: managers' own roles, skills and
identities within the `new' organization.
The Nature of Guru Storytelling
The `dreams' and schemes of contemporary gurus' discourses about the `new'
organization play a major part in constituting the new senior manager (du Gay,
1996). Management theories ± purveyed through guru writings and packages ±
help managers to make sense of themselves by providing them with purpose and
hope, and by de®ning for them who they are, why they exist and why they are
important (Watson, 1994a, b). It has always been so. Management writers such
as Taylor, Fayol, Follett, Mayo ± by articulating conceptions of the organization
± also de®ned the character and attributes of the senior manager. Bendix (1956)
in his classic study ± still highly pertinent today ± notes that `all ideologies of
management have in common the e?ort to interpret the exercise of authority in
a favourable light'. And, in a prescient remark, continues: `To do this, the
exercise of authority is . . . justi®ed with the assertion that the few possess
qualities of excellence which enable them to realize the interests of many'
(Bendix, 1956, p. 13). Today this is the role of guru theories. They de®ne the
managerial ± or leadership ± qualities necessary for e?ective implementation of
the senior management role. Watson (1994a) has noted this relationship between
guru theory and identity. On the basis of a study of UK managers he notes that
guru language and theory play a part in helping managers make sense of their
lives and their role and `their place in the scheme of things' (Watson, 1994a,
p. 896).
The dispositions, actions and attributes that constitute the business leader have
no natural form or basis but come into being through current discourses of
organizational restructuring projects developed and purveyed by management
gurus ± as a series of historically speci®c assemblages. These contemporary guru#p#分頁標題#e#
`theories' of organization de®ne the nature and role of the new executive; and,
we contend, in so doing generate the appeal of guru theory for gurus' clients.
And in constituting the senior manager, gurus ensure their own continuing role.
As Jackson has remarked, `Management gurus are both products and producers
TELLING TALES 149
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of managers' needs to de®ne, judge, reconcile and preserve themselves' (Jackson,
1996a, p. 586).
Management gurus convey their expertise to managers and construct the
manager's role through language. In this they do what managers do: they use
language to help their clients understand, know, classify and therefore be able to
act on the world. Czarniawska-Joerges identi®es three elements of this language:
Managers tell their subordinates what is what (they label things), what things are
like or what they could be like (they use metaphors), they tell them what is
normal or acceptable (they utter platitudes). Labels, metaphors and platitudes
are building blocks for more complex control machinery: world-views, philoso-
phies, ideologies, cosmologies, business ideas. (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1990,
p. 139)
Gurus' words appeal because of their strangeness and their familiarity ± their
capacity to be simultaneously banal and challenging. They surprise, they comfort,
they disguise, they make connections between words and actions and deny the
connection or present it as natural. They show that the guru knows ± better than
the client, the same as the client, di?erently from the client; they surprise. These
stories work in two ways: solving mysteries or deconstructing certainties. Both
indicate mastery and add value.
Good consulting, like good theory and good art, emphasizes aspects of events
and interpretative schema that may be, by themselves, quite misleading or
overstated, but that leads in combination with what is accessible to ordinary
knowledge, to improvements in understanding. From this perspective, the
extent to which speculation is non-redundant in an interesting way is likely to
be as important as whether it is precisely true . . . Thus, it calls for an apprecia-
tion of the role of surprise, evocativeness and beauty in interpretation. (March,
1984, p. 19, quoted in Czarniawska-Joerges, 1990, p. 149)
Words work by identifying necessary types of associated actions ± costs (reduce!),
value (add!), quality (improve!), customers (cherish!, increase!), etc. As a consequence,
labels and words remove uncertainty and anxiety. Czarniawska-Joerges and
Joerges (1990) make the point that gurus' words familiarize and make acceptable ±
lean production, downsizing, cost control, culture change.
They objectivize, make strange into familiar, doubtful into obvious, and by
involving values close the gaping door of the unknown. They can be seen as#p#分頁標題#e#
verbal rituals, utterances whose meaning lies in the act of repetition. They
familiarize by relating concrete things or happenings to commonsensical gener-
alizations. These characteristics of their functioning suggest a similarity between
platitudes and rituals, both of them being linkages between a speci®c present
and the accumulated past. (Czarniawska-Joerges and Joerges, 1990, p. 347)
The symbols that gurus manipulate in their work are presented to clients in the
form of stories. This is how guru knowledge is displayed and it is also how gurus
de®ne the problems to be solved and outline relevant solutions. Through these
150 TIMOTHY CLARK AND GRAEME SALAMAN
# Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1998
stories gurus manage the display of their expertise through talk (i.e. they tell tales)
about organizational processes and functions. Their tales are of miraculous
strategic virtuosity, of heroic organizational turn-rounds, of battles with organiza-
tional monsters (poor quality, poor service levels, huge inventories, etc.); about the
necessary virtues for organizational success and how these virtues may be gained.
Above all they are of the heroes/heroines who make success possible ± the new
manager.
Gurus' words and stories constitute, make up, the world they describe, in an
open, interactive form, encouraging responses from clients, incorporating sugges-
tions, working interactively with clients and audiences. The situation is not one
where gurus impose meanings on managers; it is one of negotiation where gurus'
success lies in re¯ecting and modifying managers' meanings. Mangham (1990,
p. 107) remarks of managers' performance: `A successful performance is the result
of a triadic collusion between author, actor and audience . . . it must be remem-
bered that the process is not one of interpreting followed by expressing, but a
commingling of the two'. The `production' (by gurus) and `consumption' (by
managers) of guru knowledge occurs simultaneously. `Thus meaning is as much a
product of acts of consumption as it could be of acts of production' (Je?cutt,
1993, p. 23).
Gurus' stories in part claim authority by referencing other famous, successful,
senior clients; to accepted values and assumptions within the political environment
(enterprise) etc. They gain credibility by incorporating and legitimating the
responses, values and views of their senior management audience. Legge (1996),
following Latour (1987), argues that:
Good consultancy stories are self-fortifying and well positioned ± they antici-
pate and answer potential objections in advance. They are also interactive.
They link claims to ideas the client already accepts; they develop the elements
in the story progressively building on earlier assertions; and they ensure that
the client draws the necessary and inevitable conclusions. There can be no#p#分頁標題#e#
room here for ambiguity. (Legge 1996, p. 4)
Bloom®eld and Vurdubakis (1994) remark that a ®rst step in making an issue
manageable (subject to management understanding and action) is to frame it in
such words and analysis that enable the problem and its solution to be clear and
capable of being read by anyone who follows the argument. The bene®t of the
guru's stories must be clear and immediate or capable of being seen as contri-
buting ultimately to problem solving. According to Legge:
The consultant might seek to build a client base by doing away with potential
clients' explicit interests: by rede®ning the problems presented; by inventing
new problems; by seeking new clients and endowing them with problems for
which the consultancy already has a packaged solution; by using strong
rhetoric to render any detour invisible; by becoming indispensable. (Legge,
1996, p. 6)
Gurus' tales, as Legge (1996) notes, are inseparable from the rhetorics of persua-
sion, using labels to introduce order and certainty through giving names to things,
TELLING TALES 151
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and metaphors to break through the banal and commonplace, and create the
promise of the new. They claim credibility and value by a variety of techniques.
Bloom®eld and Vurdubakis (1994, p. 460) note the brevity, layout and style of
guru (consultancy) language and reports (the ubiquitous `overheads'). The aim is to
suggest economy, directness, `to the point', non-wordy, `strict economy in matters
of communication, no verbiage, wa?e, or waste, just plainly stated fact: reading a
report takes time, time is money'. A useful ®nding must be stated in a way that it
can be grasped immediately. By capturing the world of the organization succinctly
and economically the guru demonstrates his or her commitment and capacity to
achieve control over their subject matter in the same way that the manager aspires
to achieve such mastery ± in talk and in `reality' (Bloom®eld and Vurdubakis,
1994, p. 456).
These meanings and identities are produced and consumed through the interac-
tion between guru and client. The manager does not docilely consume; the guru
does not autocratically and manipulatingly produce. Guru activity, as Bloom®eld
and Vurdubakis (1994, p. 456) note, constitutes (does not `re¯ect') reality for
consultants and their clients. Guru talk and reports function as intermediaries
between the actors in the relationship, de®ning and associating heterogeneous
entities (humans, technologies, institutions etc.) and thereby constructing the form
and the substance of the relations set up between them. The organizational
realities (structures, strategies, environments, scenarios, learning organizations,
competences, etc.) which guru talk makes available for and accessible to manage-#p#分頁標題#e#
ment action and understanding is a textually constructed, known and described
reality. The knowledge practices inherent in guru talk set up speci®c relations
between and actions on the organizational features they describe. Guru talk and
activity is the means through which management can understand and know and
calculate, organizational structures and processes and thus the basis on which they
act to achieve compliance with their business objectives. In the process, manage-
ment itself is re-de®ned.
Guru work introduces managers to ways of knowing organizations and their
role within them; the key properties, processes, classes (`dogs', `cash cows', `task
cultures', etc.) enable managers to make sense of the confusion of undi?erentiated
events and factors. This involves a two-way process: guru talk and reports achieve
a textual ordering and classifying of the organization ± identifying types, opportu-
nities, challenges, weaknesses, etc., and de®ne the `real' world of the organization
in terms of these textual analyses (Bloom®eld and Vurdubakis, 1994).
Gurus' Narratives
By conceptualizing guru theory as a series of narratives which constitute the
executive, we highlight the ways in which conceptions of person or roles ± the
business leader, the CEO ± are inextricably linked with conceptions of, and ways
of knowing and understanding ± and changing ± organizations. The business
leader is constituted in contemporary guru theories of organization. And this
process is strengthened by resonances between the qualities identi®ed and
celebrated in guru theories and wider moral, social and political conceptions of the
nature of economies, organization and leadership ± for example, the primacy of
enterprise in a prevailing discourse of the market (see du Gay and Salaman, 1992;
Rose, 1990).
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# Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1998
One way in which gurus demonstrate their con®dent grasp of organizational
ambiguities is by their certainty about the nature and role of the executive. Many
writers have noted that gurus tend to share and re¯ect managers' values, and this
unquestionably reinforces their appeal to senior managers. Others have noted that
the power of current conceptions of the executive relate closely to wider social-
political moralities of enterprise (du Gay and Salaman, 1992; Guest, 1990, 1992).
But we are arguing something di?erent here. The point is not that gurus and
managers share a moral universe, but that gurus de®ne the managerial role in
terms of the executive's responsibility for managing meaning for their employees:
creating employees' moral universe.
Organizational leaders, it seems, are concerned with managing meaning for
subordinates. `Leadership is realized in the process whereby one or more indivi-#p#分頁標題#e#
duals succeeds in attempting to frame and de®ne the reality of others' (Smircich
and Morgan, 1982, p. 258). But this is also what gurus do, not simply in their
published work but also powerfully in their public presentations. Smircich and
Morgan's description of leaders' work could apply to gurus:
The actions and utterances of leaders guide the attention of those involved in a
situation in ways that are consciously or unconsciously designed to shape the
meaning of the situation. The actions and utterances draw attention to particu-
lar aspects of the overall ¯ow of experience transforming what may be complex
and ambiguous into something more discrete and vested with a speci®c pattern
of meaning. (Smircich and Morgan, 1982, p. 261)
Gurus' narratives centre around two interrelated aspects of management: the
managers' values and skills; and the role, status and identity of senior managers.
In terms of the ®rst narrative, two gurus ± Deal and Kennedy (1982) ± argue
that: `Since organization values can powerfully in¯uence what people actually do,
we think that values ought to be a matter of great concern to managers. In fact,
shaping and enhancing values can become the most important job a manager can
do' (p. 32). And Tom Peters (1978, p. 10) remarks that `symbols are the very stu?
of management behaviour. Executives, after all, do not synthesize chemicals or
operate fork lift trucks; they deal in symbols'.
In terms of the second narrative, gurus not only represent and de®ne core
management skills and attitudes (and values); they also de®ne senior managers'
roles and identities, and legitimize managers' status claims. They tell managers
why they are important, why they matter, why their skills are critical. Wood
(1989, p. 387) has noted that the appeal of guru ideas has as much to do with the
`forming of identities' as with `the value of the technologies or organizational
forms they propose'. Guru theory provides a new language which reconstructs
managers' identities in accordance with the demands and needs of the enterprise
culture. It is about rede®ning and reconstituting the subjectivities of managers.
The direct outcome of most contemporary guru programmes of organizational
analysis ± BPR, the `learning organization', the delayered, ¯exible organization,
performance management, TQM ± is the reconstruction of the nature and contri-
bution of senior managers. While the practices of management reproduce and
transform organizations and organizational functioning; theories of organizational
structure and functioning also transform and reproduce the modern manager. If
TELLING TALES 153
# Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1998
management is `above all a performing activity: it does what it says and it says
what it does' (Clegg and Palmer, 1996, p. 2) then management itself is constituted#p#分頁標題#e#
by what management writers and theorists say organizations and managers are.
However, while the impact of these programmes on middle-level managers is
increasingly the subject of academic analysis (du Gay, 1996; du Gay and Salaman,
1992; du Gay et al., 1996; Jackson, 1996a, b; Scarborough and Burrell, 1996) the
impact of these guru theories and programmes on the making up of the senior
executive has been relatively little studied and understood (Clark and Salaman,
1998; Salaman, 1997). Yet it is precisely these implications that may well help to
explain the appeal of guru theory to senior managers. The writings of manage-
ment gurus are rich and forceful enunciations of the necessary qualities of the new
manager. For many the new executive assumes a moral character. Hammer and
Champy remark: `Reengineering capitalizes on the same characteristics that tradi-
tionally made Americans such great business innovators: individualism, self-
reliance, a willingness to take risk, and a propensity for change' (Hammer and
Champy, 1993, p. 3). Stephen Covey (The Seven Habits of Highly E?ective People) also
stresses the folk-spun morality of the executive. He requires that managers are
capable of `Working from the Inside Out', or of `Finding true North' (Jackson,
1996b). For other gurus the new leader is more than a model of morality: s/he
must also manage others' moralities. In supporting the `learning organization' for
example, leaders must `de®ne reality'. Senge (1990, p. 9) writes: `Much of the
leaverage leaders can actually exert lies in helping people achieve more accurate,
more insightful, and more empowering views of reality.' And (Hammer and
Champy, 1993, p. 103) also see the job of the executive as a `visionary and
motivator. By fashioning and articulating a vision of the kind of organization that
he or she wants, the leader invests everyone in the company with a purpose and a
sense of mission'.
Interestingly, while these heroic conceptions of the new, entrepreneurial
manager contrast strikingly with images of the manager of 20 years ago ± dull,
grey, bureaucratic, unglamorous ± they are strikingly similar to the conceptions of
the manager of the early (entrepreneurial) industrial period. In 1835 Richard Ure
± an early Ur-Peters ± remarked: `It required, in fact, a man of Napoleonic verve
and ambition to subdue the refractory tempers of a work-people accustomed to
irregular paroxysms of diligence' (Ure, quoted in Bendix, 1956, p. 59). Comments
that could have been by any modern guru eulogist of management.
Gurus' tales create and demonstrate the manager in the course of a joint enter-
prise to know the organization. As a consequence, the ultimate object of guru
work is not the client's organization, but the client as a manager. The gurus' role, and#p#分頁標題#e#
their appeal to managers, is that their stories simultaneously centre on and
celebrate a new hero ± the manager as corporate leader, as strategist, as saviour.
Je?cutt (1994) has identi®ed a number of essential narratives deployed by gurus
(consultants) in re-interpreting the organization ± as they `seek to construct persua-
sive accounts of both the practice of organization and the theorization of organiza-
tional analysis' (Je?cutt, 1994, p. 229).[3] In these stories, the heroic manager ®gure
undertakes an arduous and perilous journey towards a compelling and portentous,
if elusive, objective. `The quest can thus be understood as a heroic process of
passage through which the questor (seeker), and their world, becomes re-ordered
and re-formed' (Je?cutt, 1994, p. 229).
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# Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1998
Gurus' narratives centre around two essential and moralized themes. In the ®rst
the organization is described, analysed and presented as an imagined community,
where members and activities are integrated through shared beliefs, mutuality,
consensus; where con¯ict is minimal, the organization is uni®ed and harmonious
and members accept the logic of di?erence and rank and accept their positions
and their roles and rewards. Je?cutt (1993, pp. 230±1) describes this as the
`Romantic' narrative. The second main narrative is the `epic' narrative. Here the
organization must make a perilous journey, through contested terrain to achieve
ultimate salvation. The journey has three stages: initially the hero (the executive) is
complacently unaware of the pressing dangers, seduced by inertia, history;
secondly, having awakened, the hero in a condition of awareness seeks redemp-
tion; and ®nally, in the third stage, the questor achieves transformation through
ordeal and commitment. As Je?cutt (1993) notes in these `epic' narratives, the
management guru alerts the organization to the hideous perils that endanger the
organization from within (e.g. existing work practices, poor quality) or without
(e.g. competitor behaviour, costs, quality standards). `Redemption occurs through
the heroic [executive] struggle with these limitations (e.g. radical restructuring,
transformations in employee and managerial e?ectiveness), and culminates in the
organization's assertive rebirth and subsequent burgeoning' (Je?cutt, 1994, p. 229).
Interestingly, and central to our argument here, in both these guru narratives ±
the rediscovery of the organization as imagined community, and the successful
steering of the organization away from the perils of complacency through the
agonies of rebirth ± senior management is de®ned in a central, critical heroic,
almost mystical role. In both narratives responsibility for successful outcomes and#p#分頁標題#e#
transformation lies with senior management: success depends on the charisma,
vision, energy, courage of senior management. The stories de®ne management.
Thus, gurus' knowledge displayed through their narratives o?ers representations
not only of organizations' structures and processes and purpose to managers, but
also within these representations, crucially, an identity for managers themselves.
Gurus' overt point of concern is usually some central organizational process ±
strategy development, re-structuring, culture change, re-engineering, total quality,
etc. But at the heart of the process, and centrally responsible for initiating and
supporting the recommended programme of change, is an authoritative reinterpre-
tation of senior management.
CONCLUSION
The approach o?ered here di?ers fundamentally from previous explanations in
three ways. First, conventional explanations accept the reality of the management
role and explain the impact of guru ideas in terms of ®xed and unquestioned
conceptions of the management role. Once this role is accepted as given, its
demands and limitations (methods of working, social aspects, psychological
pressures, needs for new forms of organization, etc.) are seen to predispose
managers to be attracted to the content or form of gurus' messages. But the alter-
native explanation sketched here reverses this logic. Here guru theory is seen not
to `solve' managers' problems or to supply answers to their role pressures, but to
constitute the role itself. The approach problematizes what the others take for
TELLING TALES 155
# Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1998
granted. The role of the executive does indeed explain the appeal of guru theory,
but not because guru theory solves executives' problems, but because the role itself
is inscribed in gurus' ways of knowing and thinking about the organization itself.
Secondly, this approach deploys a contemporary approach to management
which de®nes it not in terms of lists of responsibilities, accountabilities and tasks
(and the implications of these for managers' susceptibilities to guru theory), but in
terms of the language. Whereas conventional explanations de®ne the manager's
role in terms of duties and activities, the alternative approach argues, as Clegg and
Palmer (1996, p. 2) note: `Most of what managers do is discursive; it consists of
discussion, ordering, cajoling, pleading, condensing, summarizing, synthesizing,
presenting, reporting ± all activities that take place through the media of various
texts and representations.' So too is the work of gurus, but guru discourse and
activity, by focusing on the organization, also de®nes the manager.
Thirdly, this approach, in recognizing the historical speci®city of conceptions of
the management role ± and associated qualities ± rejects explanations in terms of#p#分頁標題#e#
the realities and pressures of the management role and seeks to locate current
conceptions of this role in forms of discourse of organizations and strategy which
achieve a taken-for-granted quality through their resonances with wider social-
political discourses of market and enterprise, and which are reproduced and
relayed through the critical intermediary activities of management gurus. To
understand the ways in which guru theory constitutes the modern executive it is
necessary to analyse how such theory works.
This article is addressed to a review of available explanations of the impact of
management gurus on their senior management clients. It has assembled a
number of available explanations, most of which were developed originally as part
of debates addressing di?erent problematics but which have here been used as a
potential basis for explanations of guru impact. Part of the contribution of the
paper is that it identi®es and maps the main explanatory models that have been
used or could be used to account for the appeal and impact of management
gurus' ideas and performances.
In the ®nal section of the paper a tentative alternative approach is outlined.
This is presented as a promising, if as yet largely untested approach to the expla-
nation of the impact of management gurus ± an approach which is, however,
beginning to attract support and attention.[4] The merit of this approach, is that it
is largely free from the criticisms that have been levelled at earlier approaches:
that they de®ne the manager as a passive, uncritical, vulnerable, and exploited
consumer of guru ideas and recommendations; that the ¯ow of ideas is one way
(gurus to manager); that they are uncertain about the nature of the bene®ts
management receives from the transaction; that they rely on an academic concep-
tion of knowledge.
The alternative type of explanation de®ned the client±guru relationship in equal
and interactive terms where both bene®t from and contribute to the relationship.
Here it was suggested that gurus' role and success lies in their supporting manage-
ment work and reducing uncertainty, not in terms of their expert professional
knowledge but in terms of their competence at managing meanings ± a quality
managers admire because this is the essence of their work.
The argument presented in later sections of this paper goes beyond a concep-
tion of the guru as simply resolving managers' problems (even of identity). In this
156 TIMOTHY CLARK AND GRAEME SALAMAN
# Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1998
article we o?er an explanation of gurus' success which is based in their function in
de®ning the management role itself, and its associated tasks and responsibilities
and competences. One of the unremarked aspects of the successful guru ± and a#p#分頁標題#e#
major reason for their success ± is the way in which guru work with clients builds
a conception of the nature and importance of the manager in a way that would
have been inconceivable 20 years ago where managers and management were, if
anything, regarded negatively. Today the manager is a hero or heroine. As Burrell
(1989, p. 308) notes of guru literature: `In Sir Karl Popper's terms . . . all this kind
of book does is to reinforce the mystique of leadership.'
By their stories which resonate with managers' values, and which describe what
organizations are like, how they work, and how they must be managed, gurus
o?er a conception of management itself in virtuous, heroic, high status terms.
Guru activity, with their management clients therefore not only constitutes organi-
zational realities, it constitutes managers themselves.
NOTES
[1] The majority of these individuals are American. It may be that there are certain
features of American society which support the development of management gurus
and guru theory. These may include the focus on a dream, an idealized sense of
possibility (Guest, 1992), the assumption that individuals are adaptable to a dynamic
and changing future (Abrahamson, 1996), the relatively poor performance of
American organizations in the face of (mainly) Japanese and south-east Asian compe-
tition, and the gradual historical emergence of a conviction of the inherent inade-
quacy, even dangers, of conventional US management techniques and the need to
(re)discover (borrow) new principles of organization.
[2] These books are so critical to legitimizing the guru's ideas and in gaining an
audience that some gurus have been accused of manipulating the best-seller lists by
establishing intricate buying networks for purchasing copies of their own books
(Business Week, 1995).
[3] Other writers have o?ered frameworks for the analysis of guru narratives. Jackson
(1996b) uses the work of Ernest Bormann (1972) to develop some fantasy themes
inherent in the work of Stephen Covey. Clark and Salaman (1998) have identi®ed
three meta-narratives in culture change programmes. Rouleau and Seguin (1995)
have identi®ed a number of forms of strategic discourse each of which establishes a
di?erent narrative relationship between environment, organization and individual.
[4] To date there has been relatively little systematic attention paid to explaining the
remarkable impact and power of management gurus' theories and prescriptions
about organizations and organizational restructuring, which is surprising since these
theories have been highly signi®cant in determining recent and current programmes
of organizational change. Furthermore, understanding the factors accounting for
guru success and impact may enable academics to successfully intervene in the#p#分頁標題#e#
management fashion-setting process. The limited research which does exist has
primarily focused on (1) textual analyses of guru publications (Fincham, 1995;
Gerlach, 1996; Grint, 1994; Jackson, 1996b; Je?cutt, 1994); and, (2) the psychologi-
cal appeal of gurus for managers (Huczynski, 1993a, b; Watson, 1994a, b).
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