Valuing Corporate Discourses. a Case Study on Management Fads Market in Brazil
It is well known that the first question underpinning this paper has been a concern to an extensive literature of economic sociology and of what Lamont (2012) has addressed as “Sociology of Valuation and Evaluation”. This literature focuses on practices and experiences of giving worth or value, as well as in assessing how an entity attains a certain type of worth (p. 105). This literature is concerned with the manners which an entity can classified in view of others, on how one justify the worth of an entity as legitimate, and also how devices, instruments, and technologies can be used as guideposts to individual and collective action. In my specific case, I draw mostly from the qualification/singularization literature of economic sociology (Beckert & Musselin, 2015, Callon et al 202, Karpik, 2007) to try understanding the course of events – and the devices used to do so – that makes one able to consider a discourse worth, to comprehend it as a product into a market.
The forms of discourse in question are what have been called by critical management scholars as “management fads”, popular management ideas that have risen mid-1980 and early as a body of works that had in common their market acceptance, the presentation of ideas in a pragmatical and appealing way (specially to middle-level managers), frequently combined with pseudo theorical models that could be the touchstone ideas for the conformation of training programmes. Since Huczynski (1993) seminal work, an extensive amount of research has been produced about these popular management ideas and its authors (gurus), speakers who often combine writing and consulting activities and, through their performance and trajectory, sell and spread ways of thinking and acting in the corporative world (HUCKZYNSKI, 1993; JACKSON, 2001). One can account for research into themes and structures of these management ideas, detailed studies about management gurus performances, its intrinsic relation to management consultancy, as well as understanding of popular management ideas as a commercial product – such is the case of this paper. As was the case of the critical management agenda prominently addressed by Abrahamson (1996), a management fad – and its popularization – may only be comprehended through the intertwined relations between the gurus that author them and intermediaries involved in the diffusion of management ideas (such as business schools, management editorial market, management media and management consultants).
The case study chosen to comprehend how this discourses are evaluated and classified as products worth consuming is a trade show located in Brazil called HSM Expomanagement. It is a convention where what’s been offered as a product are lectures, hold by international and national gurus, with new manners to manage, create strategies, lead and think organizations. This tradeshow has been chosen not only because of its magnitude, but mostly because it can be seen as a possible photograph of this market. I am able to say so because most of the actors involved with the creation and diffusion of management fads are materially present in this space. It gives, in this sense, materiality to a market otherwise loosely diffused in actors that – as far as working with a same sort of product – not necessarily take it each other into account in their actions. For instance, a management consultancy may be more concerned about other consultants than it is with the contents taught by a business school.
But it is a especially interesting photograph due to its configuration and representation to the actors involved. It is a ritual of management fads market in Brazil in as much all actors – consumers and suppliers – share a mutual belief in the descriptive and prescriptive validity of its symbolic contents and accept the authenticity of one another’s intentions (Alexander, 2006). This has been made clear through a disruption occurred in the last tradeshow, where due to economic transactions of the organizing firm, one of the main institutions (and its brand) that had been given worth to some of the presenters in the tradeshow wasn’t able to continue in it. Hence, the tradeshow makes the construction of this market – as well as the ways consumers and suppliers evaluate the discourses – manifest itself in a palpable way. It makes it possible to observe devices used to self-presentation of each of the firms and presenters, and also the mechanisms used by its consumers to choose between the presentations available in a located space. It sheds light into the devices used to shape and discipline their judgment of worth, conceivably advancing in the sociology of valuation and evaluation agenda - and in answering the questions posed by this paper.