Haute Couture and Pret-a-Porter: The Popular Press and the Diffusion of Management Practices

Organization Studies, May, 2000 by Carmelo Mazza, Jose Luis Alvarez

Abstract

The transformation of management practices has recently become the object of many theoretical and empirical works. While most of these works focus mainly on universities, business schools and consulting firms, our paper aims at investigating the still largely unexplored role of the popular press in the production and legitimation of management ideas and practices. Based on the content analysis of the articles on human resource management published in the last decade in leading newspapers and magazines in Italy, we argue that popular press is the arena where the legitimacy of management ideas and practices is produced. We also suggest that the dynamics of management practice legitimation in Italy, described in this paper, is representative of similar processes occurring in other European countries.

Descriptors: management knowledge, legitimacy, legitimation process, popular press, human resource management

Introduction

Management theory has experienced a diverging process in the last fifty years, a process that, on the one hand, has elevated academic knowledge and on the other has moved towards popularization. The institutions that participate in these processes have been the object of attention. However, research has primarily focused on educational systems (Engwall 1992; Locke 1996). Popular management ideas have been present since the 1940s through practitioner-oriented publications, often written by academics. In the last twenty years, mass media, in particular the popular press (newspapers and magazines), have increasingly covered management themes. For instance, by proposing role models for managers -- e.g. scientific organizers, pragmatic decision makers, clever strategists and skilful craftsmen -- and by describing successful practices, the popular press has concurred in the construction and institutionalization of management as a popular topic.

Moreover, the role of the popular press has gone beyond the mere diffusion and account of prefabricated ideas to the co-production and legitimation of management practices and theories. This has occurred through both the increase of management information within general periodicals and the growth in sales of business publications. As a consequence, popular press supplements the role of academia in the production of management theories: the popular press opens the doors for management to enter mass consumption.

This paper tries to capture and describe the role of the popular press in the creation of ideas and in their impact on management practices. We argue that, in the last two decades, management theories and practices are turning from aggregations of formal and technical knowledge based on a sort of 'esprit de geometrie' to aggregations of tacit knowledge and experience-based rules of thumb based on a difficult to achieve 'esprit de finesse'. Relying on vocabulary from the fashion industry, we could call these two strategies of knowledge for action 'haute couture' and Pret-a-porter', respectively.

Haute couture produces very sophisticated and expensive dresses for a distinguished target market of high income and social visibility. Haute couture relies on restricted and well-recognized channels of diffusion, and it aims to enhance the social distinction of its consumers. Pret-a-porter fabricates clothing for mass distribution and consumption. The target market is much larger and is reached through massive advertising.

Haute couture and pret-a-porter are, though, poles in what is truly a continuum. For instance, some haute couturiers are also able to create pret-a-porter collections. This is analogous to the fact that a few academics, specialized in the issue of accuracy, are also able to face the issue of relevance, writing best sellers and one-minute managerial guides. In other words, haute couture and pret-a-porter are adopted here as metaphors of two basic strategies of production and diffusion of theories and practices, rather than normative expressions.

Extant research mainly focuses on academic outlets (mostly journals) and practitioner-oriented publications (mostly best-seller books). There have been efforts at defining the language and rhetoric of management theories (Astley and Zammuto 1992; Czarniawska 1999) and best practices, such as TQM (Westphal et al. 1997; Furman 1997), business process re-engineering (Fincham 1994; Jackson 1995), and managerial excellence (Furusten 1995). The very important issue of the patterns of influence over time between academics and practitioners has also been explored (Barley et al. 1988; Barley and Kunda 1992). More recently, the faddish way in which management ideas spread has gained attention (Abrahamson 1996), as well as standardization (Sahlin-Andersson 1996) and trivialization (Wall Street Journal 1994; Hilmer and Donaldson 1996). Unfortunately, the conditions under which the popular press, namely nationwide newspapers and magazines, concurs in the popularization of management knowledge and in the transformation of practices are still an understudied topic.