Sjoerd Keulen

Understanding Management Gurus and Historical Narratives: the benefits of a historic turn in management and organization studies

Abstract A historic turn in organization studies requires a basic theoretical understanding of ‘doing history’ and an appreciation of the centrality of narrative in history. Following the cultural turn in history, narrativist historians and philosophers of history such as Hayden White, Frank Ankersmit and Paul Ricoeur have made the case that narrative is an essential and unavoidable component in history. We demonstrate the persuasive capacity of narrative through a narrativist critique of three bestselling ‘management gurus’. This analysis illustrates the following: (1) the narrative features of popular organizational theories; (2) the basis of the success of guru literature; and (3) why gurus and organizational scientists themselves do not understand the narratological mechanisms behind their success. Finally, we maintain that historical narrativism offers the possibility for positioning organizational history as a highly relevant field for management academics, gurus and even managers, providing support for a historic turn.

Leadership style and entrepreneurial change: The Centurion operation at Philips Electronics

Purpose – This paper aims to look at the role of the top and middle management of the Philips organization during the transition from one type of organizational change to another in the 1990s and the role the history of the organisation played in this process. Design/methodology/approach – The paper analysis is based on historical records, literature and interviews with former Philips top managers. Findings – The paper shows that Philips’ leaders used different styles of leadership to create a deliberate atmosphere and willingness to change. The final emergent transformation, however, could only sufficiently materialise while it rejuvenated existing management concepts like Quality Management. The success was partly based on the fact that these concepts played a historical role in the Philips organisation. Originality/value – The paper adds the historical style approach to leadership research and pays attention to the important role of the organization’s history during processes of organizational change.

Leading a multinational is history in practice: The use of invented traditions and narratives at AkzoNobel, Shell, Philips and ABN AMRO

This article states that the distinctiveness of business history and its convincingness can be improved by the concept of invented tradition and narrative. After a theoretical overview it suggests that the narrative approach explains the way leaders operate in practice. It argues that with a narrative approach one sees that history is used by business leaders in four different ways: as a source to create traditions and symbols as means of communication, as a way to understand and strengthen the identity of the organisation, as means to create corporate memory and as a tool to connect past, present and future. The examples are taken from a Dutch oral history project on management behaviour at multinationals.

Introduction: The era of management:a historical perspective on twentieth-century management

The twentieth century is a special period in the history of management. It is characterised by an extraordinary dissemination and diversification of management. However, the era consists of different phases. Inspired by the work of historians and philosophers of history who wrote on periodization as well as business and management historians who researched the development of management, we present a new periodization. Moreover, we suggest that the heyday of management in the 1980s and 1990s was followed by an ‘end’ of twentieth-century management. In addition, we argue that too much emphasised has been placed on the development of management in industry and too little on how management was adopted and represented in banks, public administration, politics and in popular culture. Thus we hope that a closer look at and different focus on twentieth-century management will improve our understanding of differences in the history of management and stimulate new debate.

The managers' moment in Western politics: The popularization of management and its effects in the 1980s and 1990s

In the 1980s and 1990s, political leaders in Western democracies used management and managerialism to initiate change. The result was privatization, deregulation, public cost-cutting programs and a greater influence of business leaders and managerial principles in politics and public administration. This change was possible because management itself had transformed from a systems approach to a more personal approach, which made the manager the symbolic figurehead of organizational change and success. Management and rock star CEOs became a big hit in popular culture. An in-depth analysis of the Dutch case shows that political leaders explicitly and purposely presented themselves as managers and were perceived as such. These ‘managers in politics’, (prime) ministers and chairmen of political parties transformed their organizations in a managerial way. By focusing on Dutch environmental policy, we establish that this transformation effected the content of environmental policy. Around 2000, the manager steadily lost his/her attractiveness as he/she was held responsible for economic decline and governmental problems. A new political language, influenced by the experiences with management in the 1980s and 1990s, was introduced. Entrepreneurship instead of managerialism, value-driven politics instead of ‘no nonsense’ business talk and ‘emotional’ instead of ‘rational’ management models became popular. This article thus argues that more attention should be paid to the historical change of management in the 1980s and 1990s; that this change should be understood as a linguistic change first that, however, initiated a change of practices; and that concentrating on politics, public administration and popular culture provides a new understanding of the kind of management change that took place.