Elite formation as symbolic closure: management

Paper presented at the 6th International Critical Management Studies Conference STREAM 24: Elites

Elite formation as symbolic closure: management consulting and its discoursive effects Christian Schmidt-Wellenburg

1 Introduction At the end of the 20th century management consulting has emerged as a legitimate producer of management knowledge and at the same time has become an inherent component of governing the firm. In order to understand the rise of consulting, the paper explores the changes that took place in the management field and discourse using a Bourdieusian field perspective. The paper argues that this framework is especially useful for analysing the formation of symbolic elites and the influence they have via the perceptions they generate on further material and symbolic processes of closure. In a first step the main features of Bourdieus field approach are outlined. In a second step this framework is applied to the field and discourse of management. In a last step the rise of consulting can be understood as a change in the strategies of symbolic closure in the field that lead to the rise of certain heterodox positions in the managerial discourse. The restructuring of management knowledge that followed opened up the possibility for practices of consulting to be established as ways of governing the firm and of producing knowledge on this arena of governance.

2 Elite formation as symbolic closure Elites can be understood as sets of positions that encompass opportunities to enter into valued social relationships from which other positions are excluded albeit their incumbents desire to take part in these relationships prevails due to the gains these relationships promise. Elites can thus be understood along the lines of Max Weber as an effect of the openness or closure of social relationships: “A social relationship (… ) will be spoken of as open to ‘outsiders’if and insofar as its system of order does not deny participation to anyone who wishes to join and is actually in a position to do so. A relationship will (… ) be called ‘closed’against outsiders so far as, according to its subjective meaning and its binding rules, participation of certain persons is excluded, limited or subjected to conditions.“(Weber 1978: 43) Taking this 1

definition as a preliminary starting point, two analytically distinct strategies involved in processes of elite formation can be distinguished. On the one hand, elites are formed by the exclusion effects constantly produced when entering or not entering social relationships – material strategies. On the other hand, elites are formed by rearranging and changing the subjective meaning and binding rules of the relationships –symbolic strategies. The process also involves the active contribution of non-elite positions, at least in so far as they also share a commitment to monopolising resources or privileges, power or prestige in order to keep or further their current standing (Mackert 2004). This constant struggle is the driving force behind processes of closure or opening and constitutes itself in two forms of strategies: strategies of social exclusion and strategies of usurpation (Parkin 1974, 1979). Strategies of social exclusion are the preferred instruments of ruling groups and can be differentiated according to their ratio into exclusion according to collective or individual attributes. Strategies of usurpation are employed by excluded groups that aim at appropriating resources formally regarded as legitimate possession of superordinated groups. These four ideal types of strategies taken together enable to understand forms of exclusion as manufactured by the outcomes of social struggles. Starting from these basic assumptions, the production of elites can be dissected analytically in the following dimensions. First, the process involves material closure, understood as depriving certain positions of opportunities to enter relationships that open the access to means in order to achieve thought-after ends. Second, the process includes discoursive closure as the rearranging of the relationship’s subjective meaning and binding rules, hence influencing the outcome of material closure. Third, the process includes symbolic closure, understood as the limitation of opportunities to enter into relationships concerned with the discoursive production of rules and strategies of closure. The last form of closure has up to date not been given much attention in the managerial field, since the field’s discoursive closure is mostly understood as a mere function of the outcomes of material closure: positions benefiting from the prevailing form of exclusion are the once designing the rules and carving out the categories of perception and evaluation. But as Murphy pointed out, such a one dimensional conception lacks the possibility to distinguish between different forms of exclusion and their interaction in forming and changing a certain regime of domination (Murphy 1984: 552). To gain the full benefits of a theory of closure all four ideal-typical strategies have to be integrated into an analytical framework. I will sketch such a framework drawing on ideas by Bourdieu, who through-out his career has been engaged in the quest “to ‘bring’back the symbolic dimension of domination (… ) to explicate the specificity and 2

potency of symbolic power, that is, the capacity that systems of meaning and signification have of shielding, and thereby strengthening, relations of oppression and exploitation by hiding them under the cloak of nature, benevolence and meritocracy.”(Wacquant 1993: 1) Bourdieu subscribes to the above mentioned main features of theories of social closure, starting with the presupposition that all social action is ultimately a struggle for power. This struggle is motivated by the urge of all actors to align their interests and their perception of self and world with the reality encountered. The ability to do so stems from the actor’s common knowledge or practical sense that can be analysed using the concept of habitus. The habitus encompasses schemata for perception, action and evaluation. It has been acquired in and is the product of the individual socialisation and in the case of collective actors of their historic genesis (Bourdieu 1979: 181f.). Besides being a structured structure the habitus is the central generative principle of social action and as such a structuring structure. Bourdieus idea enables us to understand the reproduction and changes of the social world as outcomes of the relationships between a certain habitus, its generative context and its present context of application (Bourdieu 1993: 97-121). And it opens up the possibility to do so without relying on a omniscient conception of the actor, because a sphere of the practical sense is distinguished from its structural effects: it is possible to understand certain modes of behaviour as strategic according to a certain conjunction of habitus and context albeit not intentionally motivated by the strategic reasoning of individual actors (Bourdieu 1998b). Bourdieu seeks to render certain actions intelligible by referring to the genesis of their preconditions and the historical uniqueness of the interplay of a certain habitus with a certain context. The first aspect is emphasised by the use of the concept of capital. All objects that are of interest and all capabilities that are employed in struggles can be understood along the lines of capital as congealed outcomes of former struggles, ranging from economic capital, social capital through to cultural capital (Bourdieu 1983). The second aspect is stressed by the concept of the field. Fields can be depicted as realms of the practical sense organised around one central aspect perceived by all parties taking part as an “enjeu”worth fighting for (Bourdieu 1998b). This takes on the form of a core belief, the doxa, shared by all engaged in the struggles and lights up in a main form of capital cherished and sought-after in this specific field. The enjeu creates the illusio of the field being an objective fact, leads to shared interests and to the commitment of all actors to engage in action (Bourdieu 1993: 122f.; Bourdieu 1999: 270ff.). Fields are one way Bourdieu tries to understand social closure. They constitute a realm of social relationships that is set aside from the rest of the social world. Their autonomy can be 3

judged by the entrance barriers to certain fields. These come in the form of official certificates or in the subliminal form of an adequate habitus and state of mind to take part in the games played. And their autonomy manifests itself in a certain form of capital that is associated with the core belief of the field, has its own mechanism of reproduction and is transferable into other forms of capital and fields (Bourdieu/Wacquant 1996:124-147; Müller 2005). It is important to acknowledge that fields don’t have strict boundaries: they can be understood as institutional catchment areas with the power of their central institutions fading away when one approaches the horizons. Due to the relationships between fields and their relative dependence on each other, a society wide field of power can be constructed as the ground for struggles over the forms of domination and differentiation. This field of power has been dominated by the institution of the state for much of the last centuries, albeit it is in flux (Bourdieu 1994; Bourdieu 2001: 210-246). When turning to the inner workings of fields Bourdieu distinguishes two logics of closure. First, differences arise according to the outcomes of the struggles which effect the allocation of capital: hierarchies that prevail over time are the consequence. Second, a symbolic pole can be distinguished from a material pole according to the strategies employed in the struggles for power. Starting from the credo that all things social are determined by their material and symbolic existence one has to account for both aspects in order to understand any social behaviour, be it an economic transaction or an artistic act of creation (Bourdieu 1998a; Schwingel 1993). Both are part of a material as well as a symbolic economy, following different logics of playing the game of the field (Bourdieu 1993: 222; Schwartz 1997: 65-94). The material logic aims at fulfilling the own interests by focusing on the means and ends available and leads to material strategies in the struggle for capital and positions. The symbolic logic aims at the reformulation of adequate means and ends in the field and leads to symbolic strategies in struggles over the definitions and classifications of capital and positions. This opens up the possibility of specialisation and production of symbolic and material elites in every field. Practices can be distinguished along the lines of being more or less discoursive according to their orientation towards actively defining and chaining the fundamental perception of the world. Since all practices have meaning and thus some discoursive effects this separation is gradual not fundamental. Hence, the formation of an symbolic elite is linked to the degree of specialisation of a discoursive realm in the field encompassing the overt symbolic struggle. By distinguishing a discoursive realm within the field comprised of symbolic positions and capital, institutions and practices not open to all the legitimate production of statements about the character and nature of the field is restricted. 4

The symbolic elites are differentiated from all other actors in the field by their exclusive chances in stating the state of the world and interpreting it. They create reality not by acting in it but by objectifying it. The possibility to produce statements on the field and on changes and new inventions in the field as well as the chance to pass judgment on opportunities, necessities or dangers depend on the recognition of these utterances by others as legitimate. The legitimacy to produce such statements does not arise from conscious decisions of others on the credibility of the speaker issuing the statement. It accrues from the correspondence between the speaker’s habitus and the objectified institutions that select the speaker and the statements as true and adequate (Bourdieu 1999: 70). Actors in the field belief in the workings of these institutions and by taking them for granted open up the possibility of accepting their effects of selection of a certain statement and speaker in a particular moment as a legitimate outcome and by doing so verify the due workings of the institution. Bourdieu calls the workings of this structural homology symbolic power (Bourdieu 1998a: 197, Bourdieu 2001: 225ff.). The ability to exercise symbolic power depends on the command over habitual attributes, certain experiences or knowledge of practices and technics that are identified in the field with the capacity to speak the truth, to create news and to innovate. (Bourdieu 2001: 311). This capability can also be understood as symbolic capital when focusing on the one hand on its capacity to function as a form of credit to issue statements and to venture beyond the previously accepted and institutionalised facts of the field. On the other hand to point to the reproductive effect that accrues to certain positions after issuing widely accepted statements to do so again. Along this line two different forms of the workings of the symbolic economy can be distinguished. An inner circle of production drawing on the effects statements have on the future capacity of the speakers to issue more statements. And an outer circle of production drawing on the speaker’s position, practices and capital that are not directly linked to the field’s discoursive practice but also influence the speaker’s possibility to issue statements. Both circles of production are guided by the perception that the ability to engage in them in order to create new or true insights depends on the personality of speakers. Often the term charisma or entrepreneur is used to distinguish such speakers from others by their capability to create universally applicable and worthy innovations or general statements. By using the concept of symbolic power entrepreneurship can be understood as the description of the symbolic credit granted to some, enabling them to ‘adequately’grasp the field’s reality and act innovative on it. Entrepreneurship is a fundamental feature of the symbolic closure of fields and has got to be explained as an outcome of the strategies of exclusion prevailing in 5

the field: The goal is to uncover the mechanisms that attribute a certain discoursive potential to some habitus and not to others allowing a confined circle of virtuosi to produce prophecies which are accepted as credible promises of reform and as plausible bets on the future by other experts and the majority of laymen (Bourdieu 2000a: 28-31). The functioning of the symbolic economy not only relies on certain habitus but also on corresponding institutions that consecrate new and true descriptions of reality and are accepted by the participants in the field as naturally functioning. These institutions help to secure three fundamental features of any symbolic economy. Every description of reality, every outline of problems and proposed solutions involves a plea for its universal validity detached from the partialistic standpoint and the self-interest of the speaker issuing it. Thus an ethos of disinterest lies at the heart of any form of symbolic economy. And this notion of disinterest has got to be retained albeit every single statement also is known to be an act of materiality, functioning as a moment in the self-interested struggles in which the speaker is constantly involved. These two sides of any symbolic act have got to be kept separate and the paradoxical character of symbolic action be disguised, because if it is revealed, symbolic effects as well as the materialistic gains will vanish (Bourdieu 1998a: 164-167). Institutions of consecration uphold this double truth of the symbolic good (Bourdieu 1998a: 173-176). They encompass the logics and practices behind objectifying certain views to become general views of reality. According to the practices of consecration certain problems are perceived as pressing and some solutions are selected as adequate or new. According to the logic of consecration certain habitus are selected to become the ideational virtuosi of the field and others silenced from the start. If these institutions of consecration are accepted in the field as the legitimate forms of socialisation, of the production of knowledge and innovation, the effect of symbolic closure will set in and distinguish a symbolic elite that takes over the task of world description and by doing so of world making and innovation. The discoursive practice, dominated by the elite, is than the hidden struggle over systems of classification influencing possible careers in the field and the exclusion from material as well as symbolic opportunities. Along the lines of Bourdieus argument on symbolic violence the formation of elites can be understood as an effect of the specialisation of the symbolic dimension of the field to form a semi-autonomous discoursive practice (Bourdieu 2000b). This entails a closure in the discoursive practice in the field, singling out some and excluding many from the production of descriptions on the field. In order to understand this process of symbolic closure the practical working of the discourse are to be analysed along the lines of symbolic capital, the 6

discoursive potential of the habitus, the institution of consecration and their effects on socialisation on concealing the double truth of the symbolic. The discoursive practice is the place where a discourse on the field is produced that itself has effects of closure: It establishes and restricts opportunities for certain positions to enter into social relationships from which material and symbolic gains can be obtained.

3 Management Field and Discourse Drawing on the above outlined heuristic the management field can be described in a first step by using the concept of the core belief of the field, the forms of habitus inherent to the fields working, its specific form of capital and its central institutions as well as their effects of material closure. In a second step the management discourse can be depicted by making the fields symbolic closure explicit, leading up to a relative autonomy of a discoursive realm of practice that can be described along the discoursive potential of the habitus, distinct discoursive practices leading up to symbolic capital and field specific institutions of consecration. 3.1 Management field and material closure

The field of management rests on the core belief that each and every enterprise and organisation is governed by decisions that have designated effects by which the envisioned goals are attained. Two underlying assumption back this ‘idée directrice’of the managerial field. First it is assumed that each decision has a causal impact on the world and that this impact can be calculated, given the transparency of all its components. If the observed effect does not match the anticipated effect, it seems natural to optimize the principles of reaching decisions. Hence, the idea of achieving control through change lies at the heart of the enjeu of the management field. Second, it is assumed that organizations are similar enough in order to expect equal problems and solutions to apply to all. This opens up the possibility to judge the success of decisions by comparing them with decisions taken in other organizations and to optimize ones own decisions by aligning them with successful principles. Both assumptions taken together form a constellation –enjeu – that motivates all participants of the field to engage in the struggle for organizational control, creating the illusio of an own reality of a social realm of management. And this core belief marks the central taboo of the managerial field, fending of any statements directed at the fundamental ontology of the field as either missing the point in question when talking about management, as having no practical relevance on management or as being outright ideological and motivated by a position outside of the managerial field. 7

When focusing on economic corporations the maximising of the profit gained from certain decisions in its relational form of efficiency becomes the benchmark for comparing different forms of deciding. Since all corporations are perceived as similar in regard to problems of efficiency they become competitors in a struggle to secure resources to reach decisions. Management itself is vital for reaching good decisions and as such contributes to the corporation’s efficiency, making it a sought-after and scarce resource either in the form of experience internalised in the habitus of managers and objectified in their curriculum vitae or in the form of externalised management knowledge objectified in management ideas and concepts. The scarcity of the internalised form of managerial capital resolves from the limited opportunities to earn managerial capital and the continuous threat to its personalised forms by each decision taken. The scarcity of the externalised form of managerial capital rests on the linkage between a constant need for profit in a world with only limited opportunities to gain profit and on the threat to established forms of managerial capital by new ideas which are part of attempts of ‘control through change’. This leads to a thirst for new forms of management and at the same time devaluates new forms as they become widely spread due to their positive impacts. Starting form this paradoxical exposition of managerial capital as a symbolic and material good –a principle of deciding that has to be acknowledged by all in order to work and at the same time only works and promises profits if used by as few as possible –the two main strategies that prevail in the field can be sketched. The material strategy focuses on appropriating managerial capital and excluding others from its use. In case of the managerial capital’s internal form this involves socialisation, education and hiring, in case of its external form this is achieved by purchasing management tools, solutions, and consulting. The symbolic strategy aims at creating new forms of management experiences, either by solving practical problems, generalising the solutions and inscribing them into the curriculum vitae as mastering of difficult non-standard situations or by conducting research into more general problems. As will be shown, both sets of strategies can work as mechanisms of social closure, when exclusively linked to certain positions and excluding others. Managerial capital and strategies structure managerial action via a field specific managerial habitus that derives from past experience, enables managers to make corporative decisions, and can be described as leadership personality. It consists of an optimistic attitude of mind by which decisions and problems become challenges and opportunities to prove one self and is combined with an appetite for risk and decisiveness, a profound general education and the ability to see beyond ones own nose. The basic managerial habitus is a bundle of dispositions 8

enabling its bearer to venture onto new territory, to have entrepreneurial visions and to realise these (Hartmann 1995: 459). At the heart of the managerial habitus lies the potential for producing creative decisions, a capability that resides in the personality and can only be nourished through experience. The different forms of experience are archived in the manager’s vita and become the visible signs for his managerial potential. They are at the centre of processes of material closure that reside in the organization and function via the selection of mangers for a career. The selection process focuses on two aspects. On the one hand the experience gathered according to position, task and duration. On the other hand the chemistry has got to be right between those selecting and those being selected, pointing towards a resemblance of their habitual dispositions (Hartmann/Kopp 2001: 458). Both forms of selection focus on the habitus and are boosted by the social capital its bearer possesses in the form of exclusive contacts and information as well as outright relationships of patronage. The other class of selection processes resides outside of corporations in educational institutions. These forms of selection concentrate on cultural capital that is acquired in the process of schooling and higher education, objectified in the form of official certificates and functions as a door opener for the entry into management careers since private property has ceased to qualify for leadership positions directly (Bourdieu/Boltanski/Saint Martin 1981: 30). University degrees are rated according to discipline and type of grade with PhDs and degrees in management science having become an ever more important asset in recent years (Beyer 2006; Faust 2002a; Pohlmann 2007; Hartmann 1997: 305; Zorn 2004: 346). Furthermore the university’s reputation is an important criterion in the selection process in the US, the UK and France (Bourdieu 1978; Byrkjeflot 2001; Hartmann 2004). German careers in management differ on the last account since up to today the universities reputation has had no significant influence on the selection process. This puts the emphasis in Germany on selection processes in the corporative context that concentrate on personality and social capital of potential candidates (Hartmann/Kopp 2001: 444). In all its different forms material closure rests on the habitus as subjectified and culturaliesed form of structure that is understood as personality of the actor by which his qualification for leadership positions is judged, be it by institutions of education and their examinations, by corporations and their career requirements or by the implicit terms of admission to other exclusive social circles. 3.2 Management discourse and symbolic closure

In correspondence with the symbolic strategy in the field a need for the ex-ante evaluation of new concepts and ideas arises in order to place bets on the future before the discoursive 9

changes have had material impacts on the corporation’s profits and causal links can be attributed. This need leads to a search and production of promising sings that reveal the future impact new management knowledge might have in tomorrow’s ,real world‘today. The dynamic of this symbolic economy of management knowledge can only be understood by posing the following questions: How are these signs produced, by whom and as part of what discoursive practice of objectifying knowledge? Answers can be found by explicating in a first step the discoursive practices involved in producing knowledge and the resources needed for taking part in these practices –the basis of symbolic capital. In a second step the positions of speech to which these resources accrue have to be named. They function as platforms to lance statements and include the standards by which certain habitus are qualify as having discoursive potential. In a third step, the logic that guides and hides the accumulation of symbolic capital and its preferred linkage to certain positions can be understood as rules of speech that function as instances of consecration. The meaning of the different practices employed in producing management knowledge is encapsulated in the narration of corporate change. This narration is not only the form, according to which statements about corporate change have to be presented. It is at the same time the structure of the practical sense in use when statements are produced (Viehöver 2001: 179). The narration of how changes in management knowledge come about includes the three classical phases of social change seen as disruption, creation and implementation (Berger/Luckmann 2000; Lawrence/Suddaby 2006; Tolbert/Zucker 1996). First, practices of disruption are legitimate ways of stating the need for change. A reason has to be given as why new problems of governing are caused that call for new solutions. Likewise, new solutions to these problems have to be discovered. And the constellation of problem solving has to comply with a commonly shared concept of knowledge progress. Second, practices of creation are the legitimate steps in objectifying once own view and can be differentiated in the formation of the concept and the creation of awareness for the concept. The formation of a concept consists of theorizing, creating a general rule out of the observed, and naming, marking the concept as unique and tightly linking it to once own person. Creating awareness entails practices of publishing and teaching the concept as well as imagining a responsive public that can be addressed. Practices of implementation include creating a universally applicable blueprint of corporate change and spelling out the practical merits that can be gained by its application, the support and opposition it might encounter.

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The symbolic economy of management knowledge inner circle

statement rule of speech: novelty symbolic capital: management concept, centrality discoursive practices: disrupting knowledge, naming

audience rule of speech: mobilisation symbolic capital: type of publication (best selling), awards discoursive practices: creating awareness (publishing, teaching, imagining an audience

speaker rule of speech: initiation of change social capital: innovator (pioneer, guru) discoursive practice: pioneering solution, concept of knowledge progress

rule of speech: credibility by authenticity social capital: management experience, consulting experience

rule of speech: credibility by experiment social capital: research projects (science, consultancy)

discoursive practices: theorizing, sings of reputation, imagining implementation and assistance

outer circle

To engage in theses practices different forms of capital are needed in order to achieve statements that gain attention as promising signs. As mentioned before, the basic capitals that unfold a symbolic effect can be distinguished as either stemming from the inner or outer circle of the symbolic economy. And they can be distinguished according to their linkage either to the statement, the audience or the speaker. In the inner circle of the economy only discoursive effects generate symbolic capital. In case of the statement symbolic effects arise by sharply separating it from others or by highlighting its exceptionality through acronyms and diagrams. The concept itself becomes the base of a symbolic effect due to its novelty that is produced and used by disoursive practices of disrupting and naming. In case of the imagined audience the rule of mobilisations focuses attention on the quantity and quality of potential followers that back the concept. Practices of awareness lead to symbolic effects which are concentrated in the position of the best-selling author concerning the lay public and the highly decorated award winner concerning the expert public. In case of the speaker symbolic capital is awarded according to the rule of change to those with the ability to innovate. This ability can be demonstrated by tightly linking a speaker to a new concept, crediting him, his position or a certain context (Silicon Valley, Japan in the 1970s and 1980s) with the ability to initiate change. Symbolic capital is accumulated as genial capabilities attributed to pioneers and gurus. 11

The second type of base for symbolic capital is located in the outer circle of the symbolic economy and has references to less discoursive practices in the field. These types of capital exert their symbolic effects because they symbolise the credibility of the speaker’s access to the managerial practice, either by pointing to the authenticity of the link or to its experimental character. In the managerial discourse three basis of symbolic capital can be named that exert a symbolic effect: management experience, consulting experience and research. Managerial experience can be gained by any executive position but it does not have to be first hand experience, albeit it is valued far higher if it is. Two types of managerial experience seem to generate higher symbolic effects than other: experiences gathered in leading positions in large multinational corporations and in renowned management consultancies. These experiences narrate stories of success, which only work, if the success is also known to the listener or reader. This is the reason why only highly reputable companies are used as basis for examples that in turn profit from being linked to innovative concepts. This shows how important it is to pay attention to the discoursive construction underlying selection by competition. Otherwise the effect that namedropping only works if the names dropped are well known to the audience is underscored and systematic preference for units with a high reputation ignored. Research on the other hand does not focus on the experience of the person conducting it. On the contrary, the credibility ascribed stems from the possibility to eliminate all subjective experience in the link between speaker and managerial practice and by doing so to issue universal statements. This claim is traditionally backed by two beliefs in the field of science: research methods are instruments producing objective data and the scientific community can function as a critical competition for truth. Reputation also plays a key role here, since only few can follow the process of scientific competition. Instead scientific reputation in the form of highly valued business schools and universities is used as indicator for a speaker’s credibility. As will be shown later on, research in the context of consultancies has gained ever more importance in recent years establishing consultancy research as a third from of symbolic capital. Consulting experience is a form of symbolic capital that relies on the authenticity of the experience consultants gather not in management but in management change. During the last half of the 20th century this basis for symbolic capital gained prominence that coincides with corporative change becoming a normality and management not only turning more selfreflexive but also becoming a part of a market for corporate governance as will be outlined later on. Due to theses changes, readjusting management by means of consulting changed 12

from being a measure for extraordinary problems to being a common feature of corporate governementality. Again the reputation consultancies for operating on a global scale, serving well known and successful clients and spanning a broad field of activities ads to the speakers credibility, because reputation is understood as effect of a selection via a market of consulting. Symbolic capital is at the heart of the processes of symbolic closure. Symbolic capital appears in the managerial field either as the symbolic effect different objectified forms of capital have because they enable their owners to take part in discoursive practices. These practices and their products are perceived by others as promising signs in the symbolic economy of management knowledge: management concepts and ideas, certain positions and certificates. Or symbolic capital appears as the symbolic effect that accrues to incorporated forms of capital as the discursive potential of the habitus that matches the prevailing perception of the idea innovator in the field: the management pioneer searching for a practical solution, the business school professor unearthing a universal insight, the management consultant furnishing a globally applicable tool for corporate change. The more their innovative capacities are attributed to their personality traits and their discoursive position of today linked to high impact statements of yesterday, the more they are drawn into the inner circle of the symbolic economy and become ,gurus‘of management. Both forms of social capital are needed in order to issue statements that have an impact. And both forms of capital are not open to all actors in the field equally. The material base of the symbolic effects is linked to the material closure of the field ascribing reputation to those who rank high in the distribution of capital. This closure of options to influence the symbolic representation of the field that leads to a systematic inferiority of those already subject to material exclusion can only work, because three different institutions of consecration are accepted throughout the field as legitimate forms of selecting innovative habitus as well as innovative ideas. With the establishment of a market for corporate control management can be judged according to its impact on the corporate performance that is understood as a causal effect of management decisions. Statements by executives of highly ranked corporations or those drawing on their experience attract more attention, because they have been subject to selection via a market that functions in the symbolic economy of management as a mechanism of verifying of falsifying the practices of governing (Foucault 2004: 55f.). The same applies to research findings, positions and reputation that stem from a scientific background. They are viewed as the outcome of a scientific competition for truth that is spurned by the ethos of critique, produces objective 13

statements and is accepted as a legitimate mechanism of objectifying universal statements about the managerial field. And in recent years the idea of a market for management consulting has gained prominence and is revert to as the legitimate mechanism that selects concepts for corporate change which are not only true but also relevant in the managerial practise. These three institutions of consecration obscure the material effects of closure they produce and guarantee the aura of disinterest that is at the base of the symbolic closure: The outcomes of the symbolic struggles are wholly detached from the material and particularistic interests of the speaker. Symbolic closure at the same time guarantees a semi-autonomous discoursive practice that is grouped around the symbolic pole of the field and follows an own logic opposed to the everyday managerial practice in the field. It thus opens up a space set aside of the doxical everyday perception of the world in which heterodox positions can be developed and brought into position against orthodox perceptions of the world without being outright heresy right from the start and without endangering material gains right away. At the same time, due to the logics of symbolic closure, this realm of the ideational virtuosi is restricted and all actors involved including those from the momentarily subordinated fraction are part of the symbolic elite of the managerial field. Due to this innovation and change seem to be above all else elite projects.

4 The rise of management consulting: Changing strategies of closure and perceptions In the second have of the 20th century the importance of management consulting practices in managerial everyday contexts and in producing management knowledge has increased dramatically (Ernst/Kieser 2002; Faust 2002b; Kipping 2002). These changes can be traced as a restructuring of knowledge in the discourse on how to govern the firm. Management itself has changed from being an institution for solving problems to being an endless project of optimisation in the need of aid, guidance and advice. Due to this shift management consulting now fulfils many new needs and has changed from being a temporally bounded measure for extraordinary situations into a basic technique in the everyday governing of the firm and the production of governmental knowledge (Schmidt-Wellenburg 2009). These changes are due to the growing influence of certain heterodox positions in the discourse which was made possible in part by a minor change in the way symbolic power is accumulated in the field, on which I will concentrate here. In the following section I will single out two dislocations in which the symbolic effects of research practices and consulting practices were changed in 14

such a way that new possibilities for heterodox positions where opened up. By making use of these possibilities according to their habitual dispositions certain discoursive statements rose to prominence changing the perception of management and in turn affecting the material and symbolic strategies of closure prevailing in the managerial field. This lead to the rise of the importance of management consulting in the realm of ideational virtuosi compared to executives and business school scientist and established management consulting as a fundamental position in the managerial field. In the 1970s methods derived from the social sciences gained importance as discoursive practices and were established as a basis for symbolic capital in the popular management discourse. At the same time consulting experience and practices also started to gain acceptance as a solid ground for lancing statements in the managerial discourse. These changes opened up the possibility for standpoints which are associated with the terms of ‘empowerment‘and ‘organizational culture‘and became part of the first readjustment of governmental knowledge on the firm. This in turn made possible a second shift concerning the basis of the symbolic capital in the 1990s: The importance of non-academic research conducted by management consultancies and of executive education as basis for symbolic capital rose. These changes allowed for the consolidation of this new form of governmental knowledge though-out the firm. Positions profiting from this second shift are associated with the ideas of ‘reengineering’and ‘risk management’. Both shifts can best be detected when focusing on careers in the symbolic elite that were made possible by these changes. Here the interconnection of personal life history and the structural change becomes obvious and understandable in form of a habitus that seems new and fitting the opportunities opening up in front. 4.1 Scientific methods and consulting experience as basis of symbolic power

For the first shift the careers of Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Tom Peters best illustrate the changes in the closure of the symbolic elite. They share some main features in their position in the management discourse through-out the different stages of their careers. Both started out from the relative periphery of the managerial discourse but had a command over a fair amount of symbolic resources that opened up the possibility to engage in the discoursive struggles issuing heterodox statements from the position of the well situated heretic (Bourdieu 1988: 180) close to but not in power. The career of Rosabeth Moss Kanter starts in the sociology department of the University of Michigan and leads her to the Harvard Business School and the chair of the Editor of the 15

Harvard Business Review as well as being one of the best paid and highly respected academics in management studies and consulting. At the beginning she engaged in the sociology of organisations and in feminist studies on gender differences in and at work. In the early 1970s these were not exactly core themes or approaches in management studies. At that time Kanter was a recognised sociologist teaching at Brandeis and Yale and publishing in leading sociological journals such as the American Journal of Sociology (Kanter 2007b). Two developments opened up the possibility of a career in management studies for her. First, the general air of emancipation in the 1970s put new emphasis on the thematic issues of employee empowerment and gender equality in the firm (Puffer 2004: 268). Kanter’s work that is presented in her first widely acknowledged book “Men and Women of the Corporation”(Kanter 1977), is driven by the habitus of critical feminist science. Her motivation stems from the idea to further scientific knowledge and to contribute to the political every day struggles of the subordinated at the same time. Her work can is par of a much broader reform endeavour which also includes efforts of an “American corporate renaissance”against the background of the new Japanese strength: “If the American organizations use this opportunity to arouse the potential entrepreneurs in their midst (… ) then (… ) they could be renewed, refreshed, and readied for a changed world”(Kanter 1983: 352-353). Second, the business schools internal struggle for reform. Business schools aimed at a more scientific profile that included more research conducted along the lines of rigorous methods and at the same time they expanding massively in numbers and thematic scope (McFarland 1960; Cruikshank/Doyle/McGraw 1999: 8). This opened up many career opportunities for scientists of neighbouring disciplines as long as these disciplines had the reputation of being ‘scientific’compared to the management studies established in the 1950s and 60s.Starting from the solid base of her sociological reputation Kanter seizes the opportunity by using an explicit double strategy in her first two books. She serves a sociological audience by applying scientific rigor and at the same time addresses a managerial audience by highlighting the practical consequences that contribute to emancipation and by addressing the social changes needed in the firm: “I worked hard to meet every academic standard I could, but my goal was impact and change, not just academic research for its own sake. I was very conscious of the potential value of my work both for individuals and for changing policy.”(Puffer 2004: 98). Kanter used the considerable amount of scientific capital acquired in the periphery of the managerial discourse at a favourable moment of the development of the field in order to lance statements that paid out massive symbolic returns. She was granted the C. Wright Mills 16

Award by the Society for the Study of Social Problems and was able to also acquire consulting engagements since the “productivity arguments of Men and Women of the Corporation caught the attention of many companies”(Puffer 2004: 101). These engagements entailed further opportunities of empirical scientific research. Kanter now focused on the question, “if there was a new breed of managers out there”(Puffer 2004: 102). The results of the research where to become the book Kanter is best known for: “The Change Masters”(Kanter 1983). If Men and Women of the Corporation opened up the door to the managerial discourse this book gave her the shove in the right direction along a path that finally in 1986 led to the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (Kanter 2007a). Throughout her career Kanter subscribes to the academic standards of research and employs a variety of methods including ethnography as well as case studies and survey methods. Kanter and many others sharing her destiny switched to management science during the enlargement of business schools and the accompanying increase in their scientific rigour during the 1970s. They anchored the knowledge and the command of social science methods as legitimate practices of producing popular management knowledge in the managerial discourse. This option at the time was attractive because it enabled the participants to take part in the reform endeavour. At the same time it was a strategy in order to profit from scientific capital in addition to scientific reputation derived from the field of science. This surplus is made possible because methods draw their capability of producing true statements from their development in the scientific context but can also be employed to produce statements in nonscientific contexts. These statements than have the air of truth but do not have to subscribe to the rules of the scientific discourse. By transplanting these practices a certain degree of autonomy of the managerial discourse from the scientific field is gained, that will be further increased when these methods of research deriving from the social sciences are employed in management consulting contexts. The career of Tom Peters started as a consultant at McKinseys San Francisco and leads him to become the “ueber-guru”and for some time the best paid speaker on the international management circuit (Collins 2007: 9). In 1977 Tom Peters became part of the research project on Organization that was to become the background of one of the first management books planned and published by McKinsey in order to promote their managerial approach: “In Search for excellence”(Peters/Waterman 1982) The opportunity only opened up for Peters because management consulting had undergone some changes beforehand. By the beginning of the 1970s McKinsey, once the epitome and pace setter of the consulting profession 17

(McKenna 2006: 145), had come under presser from competitors like Boston Consulting Group or Bain and Company that were promoting their distinct and new approaches like the experience curve and the BCG matrix (Henderson 1972a, b; Crainer 1998: 26). McKinsey followed this trend towards developing distinct approaches that could be marketed by reference to the consulting firm by initiating three research projects along the lines of strategy, organisation and operations. According to the internal hierarchy of valuation at McKinsey strategy was taken to be the most important, followed by organization and on a third place way down the line operations (Crainer 1998: 28). One outcome of the research project on organization was “In Search for Excellence” (Peters/Waterman 1982). The book can be described as “a Mc Kinsey-looking Book. It has a black cover with a conservative white typeface. Our message was revolutionary, but our credentials and look were traditional”(Peters 2001). The camouflage technique used with the book has its roots in Peters position as well situated heretic that can explain his career as a journey from the outer realms of the symbolic economy right into its heart. At the beginning stands not outright heresy but a heterodox position arising from a fine tuned sense for diverging from the trodden path of McKinsey and at the same time using their resources: “We got away with it because Bob Waterman and I wore dark McKinsey suits with skinny McKinsey ties and spoke proper McKinsey consulting business-speak.”(Peters 2001). The foundations for getting away with it were laid by a BCE and MCE of Cornell University followed by four years in the US Navy finishing his service 1970 after two years in Vietnam and the Pentagon. Peters than started his MBA studies at Stanford picking up his PhD studies in his second MBA year. He was awarded his MBA in 1972 and his PhD in behavioural organisation studies in 1973 and started to work for federal government at the Office of Management and Budget. In 1974 he applied for a job at McKinsey for the third time after 1970 and 1971 (Collins 2007: 10; Crainer 1998: 106-138). Now he seemed to fit the profile Ron Daniels, a former managing director of McKinsey, once described as highly intelligent and ambitious to win any competition combined with self-doubt that leads to ever more dedication (Crainer 1998: 107). Peters started work at the San Francisco office, which is a rather peripherial place in the McKinsey world of this time, since it does not have a very high sales volume and no extra strategic significance. But it is attributed to be the creative and unconventional laboratory of the firm: “We were the closest thing McKinsey had to hippies –hippies in black suites” (Peters 2001). The San Francisco office derives its stance from being part of elite and at the same time the creative countervailing power, due to being gifted with intelligence and 18

extraordinariness. The same logic applies to Peters positioning when looking at the content of the management discourse. At the end of the 1970s Peters differs from the orthodoxy of the management discourse by not emphasising the importance of strategy or structure, the old dichotomy, but organization and culture (Peters 2001). Peters attributes importance to human resources, recruiting and leadership when improving the performance of companies. He stresses the soft aspects of management and this in an environment –McKinsey –that wholeheartedly subscribed to the ideology of structure and strategy (Micklethwait/Wooldridge 1998: 119). Much like Kanter he also automatically positions himself against the recognised MBA education of the mid 20th century: “We of In Search of Excellence were the backlash to the MBA dogma of the 1960s and ’70s.”(Peters 1997, s.a. Collins 2007: 7) But in addition to Kanter Peters combined his position in the field and his positioning in the discourse with the attitude of a maverick (Peters 1989), which leads to a more provocative stance that became to a certain degree a performative necessity for consulting gurus (Greatbatch/Clark 2005), albeit no other guru achieved such mastery at it: “My agenda was this: I was genuily, deeply sincerely, and passionately pissed off! (… ) At Peter Drucker, for one. (… ) I was extremely pissed off at Rober McNamara. (… ) McNamara introduced the tyranny of the bean counters. (… ) But mostely I was pissed of at Xerox (… ): the bureaucracy, the great strategy that never got implemented, the slavish attention to numbers rather than to people, the reverence for MBAs. ”(Peters 2001) Peters knows how to take the position of the established heretic, inside and outside of McKinsey. He departed the firm in 1981 (Micklethwait/Wooldridge 1998: 136). The lasting impact of Peters and other consultants of this time should not only be seen in the contribution they made to the content of the managerial discourse by furthering ideas that attributed importance not only to structure and strategy but also to culture, operations, values, leadership style, skills and staff (Waterman/Peters/Phillips 1980). Of equal lasting importance are the practices of researching and writing that are taken from the every day consulting practice. Research is conducted by gathering the experience on a certain subject that partners of the consultancy, clients and academics have. The knowledge gathered is than composed into a report that draws heavily on techniques and content of case studies on former or current clients and outlines a problem-solving approach distinct to the consultancy. This schema of objectification follows the logic of writing general and specialized management surveys or reports for clients that has been a part of the practice of consulting starting in the 1930s and was brought to perfection by McKinsey (McKenna 2006: 62, 71). Legitimacy than derives from successful consulting projects and the reputation of clients. At the same time Peters and 19

Watermann do collaborate with Anthony Athos of Harvard Business School and Richard Pascale of Stanford Business School. But neither the first article nor the book is co-authored with an academic, making them one of the first instances of objectified management knowledge resting mainly on consulting experience. The two changes in the practices of producing popular management knowledge outlined here –the rising prominence of consulting experience and the import of social science methods –have created a situation in which a new form of discoursive practice will gain influence starting in the mid 1980s: research conducted by management consulting. 4.2 Consulting research and executive education as basis of symbolic power

At the beginning of the 1990s the potential of IT solutions had researched a point at which the changes initiated in the 1980s could be taken one step further: “The opportunity was to apply information technology to the redesign of business processes. None of us knew exactly what that meant”(Davenport 1993: ix). This not only gives rise to one of the most prominent management ideas of recent years –reengineering –but also opens up a new field of expertise in which management consultancies could engage (Armbrüster/Kipping 2003): It-related advice. This furthers their capability of measuring, comparing and collecting wide amounts of data and knowledge on different companies and industries worldwide. These practices are at the base of a new form of management research that is detached from the academic institutions of the scientific field and has become not only a service sold to customers but also a basis of symbolic capital. The rise of management consultancy research as a type of symbolic capital can best be illustrated by the career of Thomas Davenport. The second and interlinking change is the rise of the importance of executive education. It is made possible by the content shifts of the managerial discourse of the 1980s that put more emphasis on the ongoing optimization and education of staff in general and especially management. This rise of the prominence of human resource management leads to an increase of the importance of executive education likewise for business schools and consultancies. Executive Education now contributes a considerable amount of financial resources, social capital, and prestige for both institutions. And its practices can function as a basis for symbolic capital even in the academic context, which can best be illustrated by the career of Michael Useem. In 1988 Davenport is director of research at the Index Group and as such at the heart of the “primal soup”(Davenport 1995) out of which reengineering emerged. In close proximity to MIT and Hammer, “whose office was a couple of floors down from ours”, Davenport is 20

conducting research as part of the “multi client research program that was a joint venture of Index Group and Hammer”(Davenport/Prusak/Wilson 2003: 162-3). Out of this research two books emerged: “Reengineering the Corporation”by Hammer and Champy (Hammer/Champy 1993) and “Process Innovation”by Davenport (Davenport 1993). Albeit both books originate from the same research project, they are very different. Hammer and Champy adopt the style of the consulting maverick by than a popular posture in the tradition of Peters. Davenport on the other hand orientates himself towards the academic tradition of the textbook and even includes an appendix outlining “The Origins of Process Innovation” (Davenport 1993: 311-326) –a rather scientific undertaking. He tried to “make clear that reengineering had its roots in these pre-existing ideas”which was most “probably a big commercial mistake, even if undeniably true”(Davenport/Prusak/Wilson 2003: 161). Davenport might not have cashed in at the beginning of the 1990s, but his “relative moderate, academic rigorous, and popular-but-not-widely-so version of the subject” (Davenport/Prusak/Wilson 2003: 156) opened up the opportunity for a career in order to become a ‘public business intellectual’that derives his symbolic power from his research conducted in the realm of consulting and is acknowledged in the popular management discourse as well as the academic context. In 1982 Davenport qualifys himself for the managerial field by attaining a business program for PhDs at Harvard and after having received an MA in 1979 and a PhD in 1980 in sociology from Harvard (Davenport 2004; Davenport/Short 1990). His engagement in consulting research starts in 1983 at CSC Index and continues at McKinsey in 1989 and afterwards Ernest and Young until 1994. From 1998 to 2003 Davenport was partner and director of the Andersen Consulting Institute on strategic change, later Accenture. Through-out his career Davenport has also been engaged in business schools, ranging from Harvard and the University of Texas, the Graduate School of Management at Boston University to his appointment as professor at Babson College in 1999, where he is also the director of two of five research institutes located within the executive education branch. Davenport himself understands his work as ongoing “research initiatives”that are located in the consulting as well as the academic sphere and as typical of business intellectuals: “we’ve never really been anything but writers, researchers, consultants, and teachers, and we have only had ‘real jobs’ for brief periods.”(Davenport/Prusak/Wilson 2003: vii). What had shifted are not so much the practices themselves but their contextualization as consulting or scientific. In 1993 the research is characterised as stemming from both “academic and consulting contexts.”(Davenport 1993: 18) In the 2007 book “Competing on 21

Analytics”(Davenport/Harris 2007) there is no mentioning of the scientific context at all except on one occasion: Babson College is named the place of the first meeting that took place between Davenport, SAS Institute (a software firm interested in research on the subject) some of their clients from Intel and former colleges of Accenture Institute for High Performance Business (Davenport/Harris 2007: ix). At the same time the whole arrangement of research takes place under the patronage of Davenport as professor of Babson College, his only denomination stated in the book. What had happened? Consultancy research has not only become a routine that is conducted on regular and professional bases by specialists as their main task compared for example to the way research was conducted by Peters and Waterman at the end of the 1970s. It has also become a general role model for conducting research into management also followed by business schools such as for instance Babson College by aligning executive education and research facilities: “I think it is a nice mixture to do these sponsored research programs at the School of Executive Education, because we get a lot of spillover of content into executive programs and the same kind of companies come though for research and education.”(Davenport 2005) Hence, it is not unusual to do research headed by a professor in an academic context explicitly not denominated as scientific. This high lightens the acceptance consulting research has not only gained in the managerial discourse but also in the academic context. Today the strong opposition that Peters and Waterman were confronted with for the methodology of their book (Byrne 2001, Collins 2007: 35-40; Crainer 1998: 180-199) seems an unlikely sort of reaction to a new publication mostly grounded on the more or less systematic comparison of experience on corporate change gathered in consulting projects. Consulting research seems to have been established as a legitimate basis for symbolic capital in the management discourse. Knowledge produced here is valid, because in consulting “we could try out ideas and frameworks on a broad variety of companies that were interested or active in the field. (… ) Each has been ‘proven’to some degree by the experience of firms and their consultants.”(Davenport 1993: ix) Consulting research functions as an institution of consecration, because it is able to document and compare the effects the managerial competition has on different concepts: they are proven as either successful or not. And after 30 years of governmentalising the firm consultancies can also draw on the heaps of data now available and open to statistical analysis. Internal and external relations are thoroughly documented by IT mediated instruments such as enterpriseresource-planning- or point-of-sale systems right down to simple web sides (Davenport/Harris 2007: 11). At his point it seems obvious that management consultancies have informational capital () which does come in handy if engaging in research, because they have an exclusive 22

knowledge of the field which is than paired with an expertise not found elsewhere: “In the research centres I try to produce managerial knowledge that’s actually useful –and unfortunately most business schools are not terribly useful at producing knowledge that’s useful to practitioners doing real work.”(Davenport 2005) At the same time the symbolic closure of the field has changed to such a degree that a speaker like Davenport –dedicated to practical research and having neither dispositions for higher academic honours nor the pecuniary thrive towards lucrative consulting engagements –can all the same become a well recognised ‘business intellectual’and by his own definition following Shelley one of the “acknowledged legislators of mankind”(Davenport/Prusak/Wilson 2003: ix). A similar rise of the importance of practices associated with consulting can be traced in management and executive education. Consulting practices gain ever more influence as “a role model the university could look to. (… ) The best educational technology I’ve ever seen has comes out of work Andersen has done.”(Davenport 2005) This convergence also works the other way round as can be seen when taking a closer look at the career of Michael Useem that stretches from being an recognised and promising sociologist in the 1980s to the position of the William and Jacalyn Egan Professor of Management and director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management at Wharton School in the 1990s (Useem 2007). The habitual constancy spanning over nearly 40 years is his calling: to teach. In the mid 1980s his scientific interest switches to questions of leadership (Useem 1985b, a). Accompanying this switch is the insight that leadership can only be optimized by “looking back on those decisions, to make certain that we don’t make the same mistake twice, that you have some sense for what went right as well.”(Useem 2006) One vital part of the task to optimize the way decisions are reached is counselling another one the education of managers on the way decisions are processed. As a business school professor Useem sees himself as educator and counsellor in this arrangement in order to further the improvement of leadership. His motivation is “to help people –either indirectly through academic research that I do publish as well, or sometimes more directly by providing commentary that people can draw upon –see themselves in the commentary, and thus draw lessons from it.”(Useem 2006) Useem sees his mission in advancing the decision making skills of practitioners, a mission he follows by practices also involved in consulting engagements: “pointing people to real experiences, whether involving them in real or simulated exercises, or by having them learn from people who have been in challenging leadership situations.”(Useem 2001) The attitude that teaching is a form of consulting can also be found in a more outspoken version with Hau L. Lee of Stanford Graduate School of Business. He points out that a “lot of academics see consulting 23

and research as two different things. (… ) I didn’t see it that way. I was convinced that consulting would only prepare me better for being a good teacher.”(Kerr 2007) Here the emphasis is turned around, consulting now being understood as also to include teaching at business schools. Lee points out that consulting has become a fundamental and legitimate practice of producing and teaching management knowledge and has ceased to be “viewed primarily as a means to supplement academic incomes.”(Kerr 2007) 4.3 Management consulting as consecration and technique of governance

The changes outlined above have two effects on the position of management consulting in the field. Management consulting has become a technique of governance in the context of the firm and as such influences the material struggles in the field. And it has become an institution of consecration that influences the symbolic struggles in the field. Although only the shift in the symbolic strategies of closure that made this change in the position of management consulting possible were discussed here and the coinciding changes of the knowledge of governing the firm were not touched upon I will finish by shortly sketching the new position of management consulting in the managerial field. Management consulting practices have become an integral part of the governmentality of the firm and as such management consultancies have become institutions that influence the distribution of managerial capital. Since management has changed from being an institution for solving problems to being itself an endless project of optimisation in need of aid, guidance and advice, the problems to which management consulting is the solution have increased. Management consulting provides professional help for self-subjectification in the form of management education and the creation of new management concepts. Management consulting deals with optimising the simulated market situations internal and external to the firm by providing systems to observe, measure and set incentives. Management consulting seems to be predestined for gathering and interpreting information on the enterprise’s environment due to its global engagement in different industries. Finally, management consulting can position itself as a neutral expert capable of providing practical and tested expertise and by doing so bolsters its position in comparison to scientific actors in the field as well as direct competitors. The changes in the governmentality of the enterprise have thus transformed management consulting from a temporally bounded measure for extraordinary situations into a basic technique in the everyday governing of corporations. These changes have facilitated the transfer of consulting experience into managerial capital, making consultancies gatekeepers which influence managerial careers. 24

The ability of management consulting to function as neutral expertise shows that management consulting has become an institution of consecrating. It functions as a legitimate institution that speaks judgement on management ideas and concepts. This ability accrues to consultancies, because consulting practices have become the base of symbolic capital according to the rule of credibility by experiment. Consulting can be understood as a form of testing management concepts on diverse settings of problem solving, in different industries and across many types of companies all over the globe. Management concepts that have been positively tested in advance and adjusted according to the experiences gathered in implementation also draw on the second rule of speech: credibility by authenticity. In addition to management ideas and concepts consultancies also influence the selection of persons for the inner circle of the symbolic economy and thus function as gatekeepers to symbolic careers in the field. Consultants are no longer thought of as inferior speakers because they lack an academic career, since their practices have become a functional equivalent to scientific practices as a basis of symbolic capital. The idea of testing management concepts in every day consulting projects rests on the assumption that competition between different consultancies and the possibility of the consumer to choose between different symbolic goods guarantees a selection according to the impact of the good on the client. The belief in the existence of a market for consulting is the underlying assumption that makes consultancies institutions of consecration. This idea of a functioning market secures the linkage between the reputation of a consultancy and the consultancies ability to create concepts that get selected, making the consultancies reputation a valid indicator in the symbolic economy of the managerial field. This is the reason, why the idea of competition between consultancies is regarded with such high esteem in the field and guarded by emphasising the sanctioning powers of clients if self-interest should get the upper hand: “Ask yourself how long McKinsey & Company could stay in business if clients suspected the at client data were being leaked to competitors. Because of such clear franchise risks, McKinsey and firms like it have explicit codes of conduct that forbid any behaviour that could be perceived as compromising the confidentiality of client data.”(Simons 1999: 93) In this context the idea of the market functions as a standing tribunal issuing objective judgements from which subjective interests have been deleted (Foucault 2004: 342). This new position of management consultancies in the field has made them functional equivalents to business schools in more than one respect.

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Christian Schmidt-Wellenburg Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg GK „Märkte und Sozialräume in Europa“ Lichtenhaidestr. 11 96045 Bamberg Tel. 0951 / 863 2617 Fax 0951 / 863 1183 [email protected]

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