Author: | Carter, C. Mueller, F. |
Title: | The 'long march' of the management modernizers: Ritual, rhetoric and rationality |
Journal: | Human Relations
2002 : NOV, VOL. 55:11, p. 1325-1354 |
Index terms: | MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT ANALYTICAL REVIEW INSTITUTIONS |
Language: | eng |
Abstract: | This article deals with a transition process from a professional engineering archetype to a modernizing managerialist archetype in a British electricity utility. This took place in the context of the substantially changing utility sector characterized by privatization, the introduction of efficiency targets, the introduction of a regulatory system, the prospect of mergers and predatory takeovers. The high flying rhetoric of modernizing managerialists needs to be seen in the context of institutional templates, which carried substantial mimetic legitimacy, in particular programmes such as total quality management, teamworking and job redesign. They provided a basis to displace entrenched engineering rituals, and establish a new 'dominant rhetoric'. |
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