Knowing Managing, Selling Management;
An Analysis of Commodification in
Management and Organization StudiesCraig Prichard
Department of Management, College of Business,
Massey University, Private Bag 11-222,
Palmerston North, Aotearoa New Zealand
Email: c.prichard@massey.ac.nz
Fax: 00 646 350 5796
Paper for the ‘Creation and Dissemination of Management Knowledge’ Stream,
Critical Management Studies Conference, UMIST, Manchester, July 2001
Working Paper
Copyright: This online paper may be cited or briefly quoted in line with the usual academic conventions. You may also download it for your own personal use. This paper must not be published elsewhere (e.g. mailing lists, bulletin boards etc.) without the author's explicit permission. But please note that if you copy this paper you must include this copyright note
this paper must not be used for commercial purposes or gain in any way you should observe the conventions of academic citation in a version of the following form: Craig Prichard ' Knowing Managing, Selling Management;An Analysis of Commodification inManagement and Organization Studies, published by the Department of Management, Massey University at http://www.massey.ac.nz/~cprichar/cms2km.htm (version: cms 2001 k dissem, June 28, 2001)
Introduction, Social Dynamics Commodity Production, Commodification and Knowledge Management, Conclusions, References
Abstract
The claim that today's political, social and economic formations be regarded as 'knowledge economies' or 'knowledge societies' provides a basis for a renewed analytical engagement with the complex linkages between what Marx and his followers identify as the restless, revolutionizing mechanisms of capitalist social relations, and the production and distribution of human knowledge, or know-how. This paper explores this in relation to those knowledges that surround the management and organization of capitalist enterprises themselves.
This paper is primarily exploratory and polemical. It argues that commodifying processes and pressures induced by the market production of knowledge goods in publishing, consultancy and executive education fields work to configure the organization of management knowledge more generally. It illustrates this with reference to the development of a relatively new field of management knowledge – knowledge management.
Finally, there came a time when everything that men had considered as inalienable became an object of exchange, of traffic and could be alienated. This is the time when the very things which till then had been communicated, but never exchanged; given, but never sold; acquired, but never bought — virtue, love, conviction, knowledge, conscience, etc. — when everything, in short, passed into commerce. It is the time of general corruption, of universal venality, or, to speak in terms of political economy, the time when everything, moral or physical, having become a marketable value, is brought to the market to be assessed at its truest value. Marx, K., (1955). The Poverty of Philosophy. London: Lawrence and Wishart, P. 29. (emphasis added.)
The claim that today's political, social and economic formations be regarded as 'knowledge economies' or 'knowledge societies' provides a basis for a renewed analytical engagement with the complex linkages between what Marx (as suggested above) and his followers identify as capitalism’s restless, revolutionizing mechanisms, and the production and distribution of human knowledge, or know-how. There are many areas of human activity that might be included in such an analysis. Clearly human knowledge processes play a particularly important part in the development of forces of production. This paper however is not concerned with this contribution directly but with the development of knowledge about managing work and organizations as ‘knowledge goods’. The paper is primarily exploratory and polemical. It investigates the proposition that commodifying processes and pressures induced or impelled by the market production of knowledge goods in publishing, consultancy and executive education fields particularly work to configure the organization of management knowledge more generally. It argues that significant tensions exist in the field of management knowledge due to the competing forms of production. Production under full market conditions confronts goods and services produced for positional markets and under simple commodity production. It further suggests that each of these conditions likewise shape the form and character of management and organizational knowledge.
In order to illustrate such features the paper discusses the development of a relatively new field of management knowledge – knowledge management. The illustration in the context of the surrounding discussion suggests that a number of general features of commodification appear to intensify the differentiation of knowledge and undermine the potential for interdisciplinary solutions .
This paper is in three parts. The first section discusses existing accounts of the diffusion of management knowledge. The second identifies features of commodification, and how this might bear on knowledge production. The third explores this via the ‘Knowledge Management’ field.
I Social Dynamics, Fashionable Knowledge and Commodity Processes.
In recent years the diffusion of management knowledge has developed into a vibrant sub-field of research in management and organization studies (Abrahamson, 1996; Barley and Kunda, 1992; Clark and Salaman, 1996; Huczynski, 1993; Jackson, 2001, Mosakowski, 1998; Ramsay, 1996; Rynes et.al, 2001). This work explores the management business guru phenomena (Huczynski, 1993; Jackson, 2001), the relations between consultants and clients (Clark and Salaman, 1996;Sturdy, 1997), and the traffic of ideas between practitioner and academic ‘sub-cultures’ (Rynes et al., 2001). In this latter field Barley, Meyer and Gash’s well cited article (1988) addressing the practitioner and academic ‘organizational culture’ literature, identifies a shift in academic framing of ‘organizational culture’ during the period understudy, toward the concerns voiced by practitioners. Barley et al. suggest that this shift, where the academic literature on organizational culture became more managerial and functional, may have been the result of a ‘subtle influence on academics’ (1988:55) toward securing resources and a larger audience for their work.
In a linked, but broader analysis of management discourses, Barley and Kunda (1992) argue that particular discourses, such as ‘organization culture’, are part of ‘surges’ of management prescriptions that alternate between normative and rational forms of management knowledge. These ‘surges’ are linked through changing economic trading conditions to long waves of economic growth and contraction. The discourses themselves draw on wider cultural resources.
When conditions change and the practices associated with the prevailing ideology seem to become inadequate, the cultural repertoire constrains theorists to search for alternatives nearer the pole of the antinomy least recently emphasized. (1992:392)
Taken together these articles point to important links between economic processes and the form of academic and practitioner management knowledge. In discussing this Barley et al. suggest that such linkages are located in the ‘social dynamics’ that surround the search for increased legitimacy and forms of revenue. These dynamics, they suggest, may be strong enough to co-opt a developing field of academic research for practitioner concerns. Through this academic management knowledge is linked to cycles of accumulation and the associated restructuring of capitalist economies.
In relation to the consultant and ‘guru’ industries, a small number of authors have explored the interface between consultant and client (Ramsay, 1996; Sturdy, 1997; Carter et al., 1999). Ramsay (1996), for instance, outlines a research programme for this field and provides a useful sketch of the recent growth and scope of the industry. He concludes by arguing that the industry now ‘wields an immense and international power in the discovery, development, packaging and sale of the latest (management) technique’ and is a significant source, in its own right, in the acceleration of management fads. Ramsay is suggesting that such firms do not simply play a supportive, legitimating role for productive enterprise, but are driven by the need to turn out fashionable management knowledge. He also suggests that academic management knowledge may fall ‘prey’ to this ‘faddism’.
Criticism must also be directed at the tendency in many graduate business schools to treat guru and senior management pronouncements sycophantically and uncritically, since this approach has led academia to become a further part of rather than an answer to the problems under discussion here. (1996:167)
Alongside, and linked to the consultancy industry, is the business book sector (Furusten, 1999). Here publishers work under full market conditions. These conditions could be said to play a mediated role in the form in which academic, consultant and practitioner management knowledge is organized and presented. The demands for enhanced exchange value drive the regular updating of key texts, and the expansion of publishing into new fields which fosters an impression of constant ‘newness’ and change in both academic and practitioner management knowledge.
Despite differences between consultant, business book and academic fields of production, recent research surrounding the term ‘management fashion’ (Abrahamson, 1996; Noon et al., 2000) regards these as interdependent fields. While Ramsay (1996) applauds this developing strand of academic research for providing a basis for much needed academic scrutiny, I want to suggest that to date prominent researchers have tended to downplay a commodity-based analysis in favour of diffusion and network analysis. Diffusion and social network analysis, based on the work of Everett Rogers (1995) and his many colleagues, comes, unfortunately, with a series of implicit assumptions about the progressive nature of diffusion. It lacks an analysis of the links between economic readings of capitalist society and innovation and diffusion processes. While Rogers himself has addressed his critics (Down and Mohr; 1976) on this pro-innovation bias (1995), the broader link to capitalist commodity processes remains unchallenged.
Abrahamson’s work (1996; Abrahamson and Fairchild, 1999) exemplifies this tendency. His work explores both the ‘fashion – setting community’ of consultants, business schools and book publishers and provides analysis of factors influencing demand for management fashions. Yet it takes for granted the conditions under which book publishers and consultants, particularly, operate. While clearly many consultants operate under conditions of simple commodity production – selling to make ends meet - Abrahamson’s fashion setting community includes corporate publishers and consultants. These ‘knowledge entrepreneurs’ (1999:708) are involved in market commodity production and thus have interests in maximizing the exchange value from their activities. This may be achieved for instance through shortening product cycles of business prescriptions, developing new markets, acquiring related enterprises and codifying and extending the consumption of to many organizations and industries. Abrahamson’s work at best only partially addresses these issues. He tends to identify circulation as driven by consumer demand, and the diffusion processes as a result of social networks. The analysis does not address directly commodity relations and accumulation processes as ‘drivers’ of diffusion and product innovation.
If such issues were to be explored they raise a number of questions with regard to those ‘social dynamics’ noted in Barley et al. and Barley and Kunda’s work and generally supported by Abrahamson. For instance, to what extent are these ‘social dynamics’ not, simply, conditioned by long-waves of growth and constradiction, but are directly shaped by market commodity processes? Likewise, to what extent are different forms of production at the source of the tension between practitioners and academic knowledge? And, relatedly, to what extent are these ‘social dynamics’ orchestrated by both State and institutional moves toward market commodity production of knowledge?
In most western societies academic management knowledge is underwritten (if not fully funded) by State revenues as part of university education. Universities are not engaged, in the main, in full market processes. Yet this does not necessarily invalidate the questions. The form of academic management knowledge could be said to be over-determined, given its ‘closeness’ to market relations and its significance as marginal sources of income for academic institutions, by market commodity processes. If this is plausible then what Barley and his co-authors identity as ‘social dynamics’ might be equally well represented as the reconfiguration of forms of knowledge as artifacts for market commodity production.
Responses to these points and questions obviously require detailed conceptual and empirical endeavor that is beyond the scope of this paper. For instance each particular field of production e.g. consultancy, book publishing and executive education, deserves separate analysis. It may be that only imperceptible links exist between the forms of management knowledge sold by business advice firms under full commodity production, and academic management knowledge in any particular field. Below, the attempt is made to outline the conceptual frameworks that might be drawn into such work, and to present existing research that is suggestive of, but not necessarily directly focused upon, this line of argument.
Economists and sociologists of radical and Marxist persuasion identify capitalist societies are those dominated by market commodity production and exchange (Hodgeson, 1998; Marginson, 1997: Sayer, 1995; Harvey, 1982; Jessop, 1982). Naturalistically speaking commodities can be taken to be activities or things produced for sale. Yet the distinctive social feature of commodities is not their material or useful form for consumers. It is their value as sources of exchange generally, and particularly as devices for expanding the quantity of money as capital. As Marx poetically outlined:
Could commodities speak, they would say: "Our use-value may be a thing that interests men. It is not part of us as objects. What, however, does belong to us as objects, is our value. . . In the eyes of each other we are nothing but exchange values". (1978: 318)
The distinctive feature of capitalist societies – and that feature that induces capitalism’s astonishing wealth amassing characteristics – is neither market exchange of goods and services between sellers and consumers (e.g. relations between academic book publishers and students), nor the complex division of labour involved in producing such goods ( e.g. academic authors, proof-readers, editors, printers, distributors, salespeople etc), nor the technologies involved in this production (timber production, paper production, presses, internet, computers etc). While each of these might be regarded as media for capitalist market production, the key feature that connects these is the commodity form whose ‘real nature’ is its ability to realize an expanded amount of money through the production, distribution and exchange processes. It is this feature and its characteristics and contradictions that , I want to argue, is the generative, self-replicating mechanism (Marsden and Townley, 1996) that helps but does not completely explain the current conditions surrounding the nature of management knowledge generally and academic management knowledge particularly.
This self-replicating mechanism can be regarded as a result of intra-class competition for new sources of value in the context of diminishing returns and overproduction (Sweeny, 1970; Heilbroner, 1986). While expansion can take place for instance by acquiring other enterprises, opening up new markets and absorbing non-market sectors, the key point is that the mechanism can be said to have - to varying degrees - disciplining effects on the character of the artifacts and activities produced and the structures, practices and relations that are enrolled in producing, distributing and exchanging these ‘artifacts’ and ‘activities’ for money. Before I move on to discuss these it is important firstly to sketch in some of the broader conditions involved.
While Marx and his followers recognize capital as a self-replicating mechanism that literally has a life of its own, they accept that generalized market production is an historical accomplishment that requires a number of interlinked conditions to be in place and draws on (some might say corrupts) a wide range of other human processes. Marginson summaries these conditions (1997:29-31) as including generalized market commodity production and exchange, competition between producers, and market subjectivities.
Generalized commodity production for markets requires in the first instance enforceable property rights that allow owners to withhold their property from use. It is this power of access to property which is at the core of capitalist market relations (Heilbroner, 1986). Generalized commodity production also requires that almost everything and everyone ‘has a price’, and that market production involves monetary exchange for commodities. Alongside this is also the condition of competition between consumers for use values, and between producers for exchange value. While these broad conditions are necessary it is clear that fully developed market commodity production requires ‘market subjectivities’. These include legal and institutional practices and a raft of behavioral processes reproduced through forms of education and learning embedded in families, schools and state institutions. In broad terms market subjectivities are those that require that we take up the position of consumer, and seek to maximize utility through exchange processes.
From a theoretical position capitalism’s expansionary movement is induced by what Marx regarded as the revolutionary social force of ‘capital’. The ‘darker’ side is the relentless drive for accumulation, the constant search for extraordinary profits through technological and organizational reconstruction and acquisitions and the pressure to constitute new areas of human activity in the form of capitalist market relations. It is this expansionary drive for sources of exchange value that can be regarded as the mechanism that impels the substitution of machines for human labour, the global sourcing of labour, resources and markets, and – as discussed here - the sale of knowledge for instance as discrete, deliverable, credit-able, ‘chunks’ (see Ford et al., 1996 for an overview of advice designed to achieve this in universities).
Yet the search for exchange value is problematic. It periodically conspires to induce economic, social and political cycles/crises. Marx argued that this then cleared the way for further accumulation . It is also problematic at a more fundamental level. At the core of Marx’s theory of capitalist society is a set of linked ‘contradictions’. These include tensions around capitalism’s ability to protect and conserve socially useful resources, activities and artifacts (including forms of sacred knowledge), and private accumulation of profit from highly socialized production, distribution and exchange processes. Under capitalist market commodity relations socially useful processes, artifacts and resources are inevitably drawn into circuits of production and consumption.
Given the above sketch it can be easily appreciated that a raft of human skills and various forms of human knowledge are crucial to the articulation of capitalist relations. We might simply note, as Abrahamson tends to in his discussion of management ‘fashion’ setters, that the demand for ‘management knowledge’ derives from its functional role (addressing performance gaps) in realizing exchange value: in organizational and technological innovation and reconstruction, in strategizing and rationalizing the search for sources of value, and attempting to manage the contradictions among those ‘required’ to submit their labour to the process. In this view Braverman, for instance, identifies (1974) the formidable contribution of Taylor’s ‘scientific’ management, alongside more recent behaviourist, cognitive and humanist derived recipes, that are engaged in addressing the ‘problem’ of labour and its efficiency under changing capitalist conditions.
This ‘utility’ argument is, I’d suggest, the core understanding that ‘normal’ management science (Marsden and Townley, 1996) has of itself: that it plans, implements, monitors, analyzes and reports the capitalist commodity process in the interests of realizing exchange value. But this, I want to argue, does not go far enough!
The argument here is that markets for knowledge have developed through a complex set of political and economic changes, and become sites for the expansion of capital in their own right. Management knowledge – particularly - can be regarded as a forerunner in this regard. The form and structure of this knowledge – and by this we can include its form as sign or meaning (Crowther, et. al.1999) - can be regarded as under the thrall of capital’s expansionary regime (Heilbroner, 1987). And while the pretense or semblance of utility is important – and must be supported by those who seek to extract value - full commodity production nevertheless is involved in configuring the form that management knowledge is able to take. In relation to academic management knowledge there are clearly pressures at work that induce full market commodity production (discussed below), but, at the same time, production also goes on under conditions of public goods (state patronage) , positional goods (class reproduction) and simple commodity production.
It is in this context that I think we might investigate Abrahamson and Eisenman’s recent article (2001). In this they call on management scholars to engage more directly (2001:74) in the ‘management fashion industry’, or at least to ‘consider how their position, impact and relevance in the management knowledge market might be evolving’ (20001:67). Given the above discussion we might suggest that Abrahamson and Eisenman’s understanding of the ‘management knowledge market’ lacks an extended analysis of the nature of such a market. The authors note the commoditization of management knowledge, and call upon scholars to become more vocal in debunking ‘management knowledge that is created and disseminated purely for financial profit’ (2001:71). But their work tends to confound two important features. Like the assumptions used by some of the classical economists Marx criticized, Abrahamson and Eisenman’s understanding collapses the distinction between the interest of management fashion setters - consultants, publishers particularly - in realizing above normal exchange value, and satisfying practitioners demand for techniques ‘capable of narrowing performance gaps’ (2001:71). Their framework also fails to address the tension between different forms of production – simple, positional and public – as alternatives to market commodity production in management knowledge. Abrahamson and Eisenman’s paper of course makes interesting reading from an empirical point of view. Is it possible that these fashion industry analysts have turned advocates? Is it possible that this cry for ‘help’ – so to speak – also articulates significant tensions that surround the conditions under which management knowledge is produced? Does it signal the maturation of the ‘market’? Clearly the conditions under which academic management knowledge is produced are mixed, and this offers some scope for different forms of production and consumption.
In relation to the development of academic knowledge production, Marginson (1998; 1997; 1995) notes that universities have developed, relatively recently, what he calls ‘islands of expansionary capitalism’ (1997:247). Here, full market commodity production is underway in, for instance, overseas students, post-graduate business education and commercial research and consultancy spheres, where significant open-ended potential for growth exists. In these fields, production is impelled by the demand for capital accumulation with the focus on expanding production and minimizing unit costs as far as possible (as distinct from positional good production where limits on production are largely fixed). While use values remain important to the consumer, the educational content is merely the vehicle for realizing exchange value. This is not to assume that institutional constraints do constrain these ‘islands’ of expansion. Clearly they do operate for instance to stop universities from simply selling degrees (Sturdy and Gabriel, 2000).
Of course universities are ‘mixed economies’. They operate, in general terms, under simple commodity production where returns from ‘islands of expansionary capitalism’ are consumed in non-market forms of production (not passed to owners) and used to ‘protect’ and extend core institutional activities and features (including protecting new managerial hierarchies and coalitions). Yet despite this mixed or ‘quazi-market’ position, Marginson argues that the particular form that the activities universities undertake is significantly influenced by these seemingly marginal areas of market commodity production - particularly in areas where market subjectivities are strongly entrenched (e.g. business and applied science areas). Here the introduction of ‘one characteristic of markets tends to produce the others’ (1997:30-31).
Because markets have endogenous dynamics, all else being equal the development of one or another characteristic of markets tends to produce the others, the more so if market subjectivities are entrenched. For example scarcity is one of the conditions of competition and product definition. Exchange encourages competition (the search for best price) and also vice versa (high value goods encourage profit taking). Competition encourages scarcity and a focus on outputs. However the development of market relations depends also on exogenous factors. (1997:31).
What this suggests is that even under mixed conditions, the character and form of that which is produced comes to resemble market commodities. Arguably academic management knowledge (taken generally at this point) can be said to be overly determined in this sense. As well as being involved in a sphere where market subjectivites are strongly entrenched, the field is also positioned by universities as sites where full commodity production takes place (overseas students and postgraduate business courses) and, at the same time, draws on and is variably linked to a circuit of production that includes those organizations working under market commodity conditions. It seems reasonable to propose that these various pressures and forces are likely to be significant features in constituting the form and nature of academic management knowledge.
How might we understand the impact of this ‘internal’ and ‘external’ conditioning on the form of academic management knowledge? If we take each of the characteristics of market commodity production we can sketch out a number of features. As noted, market production is driven by the need for exchange value and the search for sites of expanded return on invested capital. The producer has a strong interest in individualized consumption, and in extending the number and multiplying the range of exchange possibilities as exchange value is maximized at the margin where unit costs are minimized. As noted above it is through this that market commodity production under capitalist structures generates its momentum . The effect of these characteristics on academic management knowledge then might, for instance, include the following features.
Product Cycles
The development of product cycles where existing forms of knowledge are regularly ‘re-tooled’ - in ways that maximize novelty and minimize cost - and thus increase and maximize the return from demand. We might suggest that recent attempts to translate the ‘wisdom’ of classical and modern philosophers into management books can be regarded an example of this (Morris and Morris, 1997). Here both novelty and cost issues are important. Obviously costs are at a minimum (as producers do not have to pay for the original research, and copyright restrictions on the original texts have lapsed.
Differentiation
The search for enhanced marginal returns for ‘knowledge producers’ is likely to extend differentiation between producers and thus across the management and organization studies field. This could be said to diminish the possibility of paradigmatic solutions to field problems as these demand heavy ‘investment’, and may reduce rather than enhance the possibility of extracting above normal profits. While such differentiation might suggest some degree of innovation and creativity as specialisms develop ‘niche’ areas (where premiums can be charged), competition for marginal returns through growth will likely induce specialisms to copy the terms and broad claims used by others, and then reproduce the specialism’s assumptions and prescriptions and ignore the contradictory claims by other specialisms. In the midst of this various methods aimed at extending specialization may be adopted which attempt to ‘lock’ consumers into the specialism’s ‘goods’.
Exchange directed expansion
Efforts may be made to extend and expand exchange opportunities by dividing goods into smaller consumable units, and tying consumers into regular and extended consumption. Where producers accentuate use value, there would likely be extensive emphasis on the value of individual return from extended consumption e.g. ‘ continued professional development’ and ‘life-long learning’.
The argument to this point can be briefly restated. Various scholars have identified the importance of social dynamics in the diffusion of management knowledge. While investigations of this in relation to professional closure, ‘invisible colleges’, or as part of alliances between various groups of ‘fashion setters’ in response to consumer demand is important, we might also suggest that market commodity production has a strong bearing on these dynamics. University-based business and management education at the level of the specialism can be regarded as conditioned by : institutional demands, the prevalence ‘market subjectivities’, and various other relations. These could be said to impel the configuration of management and organization studies into forms that at least mimic those found in market commodity production, even if public good and/or simple commodity processes underpin this work.
With these features in mind I now want to offer a tentative illustrative analysis of the knowledge management field. I have drawn here on the findings of Scarbrough and Swan (2001) in relation to the diffusion of this field.
III Commodification and ‘Knowledge Management’
The field of ‘knowledge management’ (KM) offers us an illustrative example here. KM can be identified as a significant growth site for both consultants and book publishers and academic specialisms have played a significant role in its development and propagation. Each of the core management specialisms can be identified as being involved in the field with information systems regarded as the lead specialism. While each draws on similar terminology and uses common philosophical works to add some rhetorical certitude to its claims (Prichard, 2000), the particular offerings reproduce each specialism’s concerns and assumptions with little reference to, or inter-linkage between, specialisms (Prichard, 2000; Scarbough and Swan, 2001). For instance in response to the perceived ‘problem’ of ‘knowledge management’, Information Systems is involved in specifying various forms of machine based learning and communication (e.g. intranets, groupware and 'intelligent agents', data mining) which draw on information science’s search processes (Liebowitz, 1999). The field tends to regard the problem of 'knowledge' as part of moves toward high technology or information-rich societies or economies. Meanwhile ‘strategic management’ understands the ‘problem’ (of knowledge management) as rooted in the changing character of market relations. It responds by ‘re-packaging’ various approaches by which firms can 'do business' in a knowledge economy. For example emphasizing the licensing and sale of process as product, and the importance, and problematics, of inter-firm alliances as solutions to expertise problems. At the same time ‘accounting’ has been drawn into offering differing methods for the valuation of 'knowledge' (e.g. ‘intellectual capital’), and ‘Organizational Behaviour’ is involved in offering extensions to its ‘organizational learning area’. This includes offering suitable 'learning/talking' 'cures' that aims to address the problematization of 'innovation', ‘creativity’ or ‘sharing’ among knowledge workers (Prichard, 2000).
Scarbrough and Swan (2001), drawing on their own work in the field and a review of the literature drawn from the Proquest and BIDS journal database between 1993-1998, broadly confirms the points above. They also point out a number of other features that illustrate the importance of market commodity processes in the development of ‘Knowledge Management’. But rather than explore these processes directly, Scarbrough and Swan use this paper to offer a correction to Abrahamson’s ‘fashion model’. They argue that the model tends to treat management knowledge consumers as if they were victims of management fashions. Scarbrough and Swan argue that it is more likely that users are involved in a form of ‘reflexive exploitation’ of such discourses, and this ‘is a more important driver of that cycle than the opportunistic tactics of knowledge suppliers’ (2001:11). This is a more sophisticated reading of consumption than that proposed by Abrahamson. But it remains a rationale based on the utility – political in this case – of particular discourses to managerial consumers, rather than one based on an extended discussion of attempts by management specialisms, particularly, to enhance exchange processes in the service of exchange value. In line with earlier work (Burrell and Scarbough, 1995), Scarborough and Swan argue that product cycles in management discourse are connected to the on-going problem of the legitimacy of managers on the back of career, specialism and economic ‘class’ projects.
Granted these are important features. But Scarbrough and Swan’s emphasis stifles a more direct analysis of commodity processes and forms. In this regard, and at the level of discourses generally, Scarborough and Swan note three particularly important features. Firstly they note a series of ‘bandwagon effects’ which illustrate both product cycles and differentiation. These include the promotion of knowledge management as both timeless in scope (obsolesce is ignored) and fundamental to managerial/ organizational success. Scarborough and Swan also identify significant ambiguity and simplicity in relation to the discourse’s key concerns, and how it might be implemented. Both features are crucial to diffusion as they allow a good deal of interpretive flexibility by both users and more particularly ‘experts’. Flexibility allow the particular programme to be tailored to the client, and for development of ‘market opportunities’ (2001:8). In order to smooth the path here, Scarbrough and Swan note the use of some familiar discursive features: best-practice case studies, ‘confessional’ statements from the high profile companies, and reassuring metaphorical statements. These, they note, aim to both reassure clients about the discourse’s ability to solve problems, and also ‘open up new uncertainties which will ensure their continued involvement’ (2001:8).
Further ‘bandwagon effects’ or product cycle effects, are also noted. For instance Scarbrough and Swan note little recognition, obvious learning, or cross-fertilization between knowledge management and previous prescriptive packages. While Knowledge management is seen as a ‘suitor’ to the earlier business process re-engineering (BPR), this is not identified in the publications. The authors – without developing the point directly – suggest that this is, on the face of it, a perverse situation given the ‘product’s name’ – knowledge management. They go on to note that,
KM has an autistic quality’ which can be explained in terms of the need to differentiate new discourses from competing ideas so as to achieve wider currency (and a new wave of commercial exploitation) . (2001:9)
They then turn to what can be identified here as processes of differentiation.
The enthusiastic championing of KM by the IS community can be contrasted with the somewhat belated reaction of Personnel and Human Resource specialists. Having recognized its growth in popularity, KM is being reconstructed by the HR community as the creation of intellectual capital through the development of employees and the management of organizational culture. (2001:10).
It is clear that Scarbrough and Swan recognize commodity processes at work here. Their turn of phrase suggests that they view the ‘HR community’s’ response to ‘knowledge management’ as that which might be typical of a market commodity producer entering a developing market. The authors further suggest that HR’s move to develop a response to knowledge management can be regarded as an attempt to operationalize [‘albeit subliminally’ (2001:7)] its work on ‘organizational learning’. This is suggestive of a link to Barley et al.’s discussion of the shift by academics involved in ‘organizational culture’ to embrace practitioner concerns. Scarbrough and Swan note that HR’s concern with ‘people and process’ in relation to organizational learning, gives way to the ‘tools and systems’ of knowledge management.
The authors conclude by arguing that the social networks and dynamics (as identified by Abrahamson and Barley et al.) involved in the diffusion of management prescriptions be ‘seen less as channels of distribution, than as the medium through which ambiguous programmatic ideas are translated into knowledge commodities’ (2001:11).
What Scarbrough and Swan are reluctant to recognize directly is that this differentiation, lack of cross-fertilization, and seeming competition between specialisms can be addressed as market commodity production by specialisms engaged in exchange value enhancing differentiation and expansion. If addressed directly in this fashion, we might suggest, for example, that HR community’s ‘belated reaction’ to KM could also be read as a result of continued profitable returns from work on the ‘Learning Organization’ formation. Jackson (2001) suggests the ‘learning organization’ has been highly successful in extending and maintaining its momentum as a management discourse. The shift to KM might be regarded as a response to slowly diminishing returns from ‘the Learning Organization’ and organizational learning more generally.
In sum, Scarbrough and Swan’s work identifies commodity processes at the level of discourses generally (‘bandwagon effects’), and at the level of particular discourses in the form of commodity orientated discursive practices (e.g. ‘ambiguity’ and ‘simplicity’, commonality of terms but differentiation of meaning, strong claims to timelessness and the essential utility of the prescriptions for managers, use of ‘headline’ firms as case studies). The point not explicitly developed in the paper is that academic management specialisms (accounting, information systems, management, organization behavior) can be regarded as taking in this case a more central role as commodity producers seeking to acquire and expand exchange value.
Conclusions
The above is offered as an illustrative and exploratory example of the how commodity processes are engaged in constituting the forms of management knowledge. Clearly by addressing a contemporary discourse, there is little scope for exploring the on-going effects of these particular commodity processes on the form of academic management knowledge articulated in textbooks and in education programmes. It is, however, somewhat salutary to note how ‘organizational culture’ – largely in its managerial form - has become a core feature of many recent general management texts. However, aside from this, I wish to conclude with a series of tentative points drawn from the above.Firstly, the above suggests that market commodity production has a marked disciplining effect on the movement and form of management knowledge, and that this retards the development of a discipline of management, or more particularly paradigmatic possibilities for this field of knowing. Market production drives specialization and induces fragmentation in the search for sources of value.
Secondly, as the preceding discussion suggests, it may be that ‘knowledge management’ illustrates some form of maturation in the global management knowledge market as all academic management and business specialisms appear to have been drawn into market commodity production and competition .
Thirdly, the above does not deny the place of other forms of explanation. Clearly professional networks that underpin institutional isomorphism, institutional processes and the search for new forms of managerial rationality are equally plausible ways of addressing the reconfiguration of academic management knowledge. Yet commodity forms are clearly deeply engaged in the constitution of how we might come to know and practice managing and how we might teach and research management.
And lastly, this paper raises a number of broader issues surrounding the form of analysis of management knowledge and practice. For the purposes of establishing the argument it has adopted a strongly realist and reductionist stance. This prioritizes ‘exchange value mechanisms’ as that which ultimately shapes human activity under capitalism. Yet explanatory recourse to such mechanisms does not demand that we regard capitalism as an overwhelming social force. We might regard it as a set of self-replicating mechanisms that become inserted into various activities and artifacts, a various times because the potentially provides sources of exchange value. To survive under current conditions many forms of human knowledge and artifacts ‘must’ (unless they are supported by other forms of production) take on those forms that facilitate the extraction of exchange value. This does not necessarily mean that all activities and forms of knowledge must, or that they might be support by other forms of production.
Yet it seems that ‘success’ of various forms of academic management discourse under conditions of diminishing public and positional good production, demands their re-contextualization via particular discursive practices – that emphasize timelessness, uniqueness, utility and simplicity - as market commodities.
References:Abrahamson, E.(1996). ‘Management Fashion’. The Academy of Management Review. 21(1):254-285
Abrahamson, E & Fairchild, G. (1999). Management Fashion: Life cycles, Triggers and Collective Learning Processes. Administrative Science Quarterly. 44:708-740
Abrahamson, E and Eisenman, M., (2001) ‘Why Management Scholars must intervene strategically in the management knowledge market’. Human Relations 54(1):67-75
Armstrong, P. (1986).’Management Control Strategies and Inter-Professional Competition: the Cases of Acountancy and Personnel Management’. In Knights D and Willmott H. (eds.) Managing the Labour Process. (19-43London: Gower
Barley, S. and Kunda, G. (1992). Design and Devotion: Surges of Rational and Normative Ideologies of Control in Managerial Discourse. Administrative Science Quarterly, 37:363-399.
Barley, S., Meyer, G. and Gash, D. (1988). Cultures of culture: Academic practitioners and the pragmatics of normative control. Administrative Science Quarterly, 33: 24-60.
Bowman, C and Ambrosini, V., (2000). Value Creation Versus Value Capture: Towards a Coherent Definition of Value in Strategy. British Journal of Management. 11:1-15
Braverman, H., (1974). Labour and Monopoly Capital. The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. NY:Monthly Press
Clark T & Salaman G (1996) ‘Management Guru as Organizational Witchdoctor’. Organization 3(1):85-107
Crowther D & Carter C (2000). ‘Organisational consumerism: the appropriation of packaged managerial knowledge’. Management Decision. 38(9): 626-637
Foucault, M., (1991). Discipline and Punish. London: Penguin
Ford P Goodyear P Heseltine R Lewis R Darby J Graves J Satorius P Harwood D and King T (1996) Managing Change in Higher Education; A learning Environment Architecture, Buckingham: OU Press and SRHE
Furusten, S., (1999) Popular Management Books: How They are Made and What They Mean for Organizations. London: Routlege
Gibson-Graham, J. K., (1996) The End of Capitalism (as we knew it); A feminist Critique of Political Economy. Oxford: Blackwell
Harvey, D., (1982). The Limits to Capital. Oxford: Blackwell
Heilbroner, R. L., (1988). Behind the Veil of Economics; Essays in the Worldly Philosophy. NY:Norton
Hirsch, F., (1976). Social Limits to Growth. Mass.: Harvard University Press
Hodgson, G., (1982). Capitalism, Value and Exploitation, A Radical Theory. Oxford: Robertson
Hodgson, G (1999). Economics & Utopia: Why the learning economy is not the end of history. London, Routledge, 1999
Huczynski, A., (1993). Management gurus : what makes them and how to become one. London ; New York : Routledge
Jackson, B., (2001) Management Gurus and Management Fashion, A Dramatisic Inquiry. London and New York: Routledge
Jessop, B., (1982). The Capitalist State; Marxian Theories and Method. NY: New York University Press
Liebowitz, J., (ed.) (1999). Knowledge Management Handbook. Boca Raton, FL., USA:CRC Press
Marginson, S., (1995). Markets in Education: A Theoretical Note. Australian Journal of Education, 39(3):294-312
Marginson, S., (1997) Markets in Education. Sydney: Allen and Unwin
Marginson, S., (1998). Value Creation in the production of services: a note on Marx. Cambridge Journal of Economics. 22:573-585
Marx, K., (1955). The Poverty of Philosophy. London: Lawrence and Wishart
Marx, K., (1990) Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Trans. Ben Fowkes. London: Penquin
Marx, K. 1978. Capital Vol 1. in Tucker, R. (ed.) The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: Norton
Mosakowski, E., (1998) ‘Managerial Prescriptions under the resource-based view of strategy:The Exampl of Motivational Techniques’. Strategic Management Journal., 19:1169-1182
Morris, T & T V Morris (1997) If Aristotle ran General Motors, Henry Holt & Company
Newman, P., (1998) The New Palgrave dictionary of economics and the law. London: Palgrave
Noon, M., Jenkins, S., and Lucio, M. M.. (2000). ‘Fads, and Techniques and Control; the competing agendas of TPM and TECEX at the Royal Mail (UK). 37(4):499-520
Ramsay, H., (1996). ‘Managing Sceptically: A Critique of Organizational Fashion’ (155-172). Clegg S and Palmer G (eds) The Politics of Management Knowledges, London: Sage
Roger, E. (1995) The Diffusion of Innovation 2nd Ed. New York: Free Press
Rynes, S.L., Bantunek, J.M. & Daft R.L. (2001). Across the Great Divide; Knowledge Creation and Transfer Between Practitioner and Academic. Academy of Management Journal. 44(2):340-355.
Sayer, A., (1995). Radical Political Economy; A Critique. Oxford: Blackwell
Scarbrough H. & Swan J., (2001) Explaining the Diffusion of Knowledge Management: The Role of Fashion. British Journal of Management. 12(3):1-12
Scarbrough H. & Burrell G (1996) 'The Axeman Cometh: the Changing Roles and Knowledges of Middle Managers' in Clegg S and Palmer G (eds.) The Politics of Management Knowledges, London: Sage pp. 173-189
Sturdy, A., (1997) The Consultancy Process – An Insecure business. Journal of Management Studies. 34(3):389-413
Sturdy, A and Gabriel, Y. (2000) Missionaries, Mercenaries or Car Salesmen? MBA Teaching in Malaysia. Journal of Management Studies. 37(7):979-1001
Sweeney, P. M. (1970). The Theory of Capitalist Development. Principles of Marxian Political Economy. NY: Monthly Review