Grand plots of management bestsellers: learning from narrative and thematic coherence

Jerzy Kociatkiewicz () and Monika Kostera ()
Additional contact information
Jerzy Kociatkiewicz: University of Sheffield [Sheffield]
Monika Kostera: UJ - Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie = Jagiellonian University = Université Jagellon de Cracovie, University of Bradford

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Barbara Czarniawska and Carl Rhodes have argued that managers and entrepreneurs o en learn from popular culture. e dominant plots off er the accepted interpretations and guide for actions, whereas alternative plots, available but not most prominent, provide schemes for possible departures from the common wisdom. In this article, we propose that not only works of ction serve this purpose; powerful ideas derive also from popular management books, not only in terms of explicit content but also as what we term, in homage to Lyotard, the grand plots: structures of meaning not usually seen as the overt message of this article. We present the results of our classi catory reading of popular management books, interpreting them in terms of the tacit notions of narrative development and cohesion, emplotted in the background. e contribution of this article is to show the ways in which the grand plots of popular management books are used to achieve coherence in presenting the books' total solutions for a variety of organizational problems and contexts. What their readers learn is not so much (or not just) how to manage but how to make narrative sense of management regarded as part of wider cultural context.

Keywords: Sensemaking; Narrativity; Management discourse; Grand plots; Popular management textbooks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-02400981v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Management Learning, 2016, 47 (3), pp.324-342. ⟨10.1177/1350507615592114⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-02400981v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02400981

DOI: 10.1177/1350507615592114

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().