Birds of Different Feather Flock Together? Rhetorical Competition and the Convergence of Management Discourses

Abstract

Organizational control is a central component of modern management discourses. Technostructural control emphasizes technocratic rationalization of work processes and maximum utilization of worker’s self-interest, while normative control focuses on worker’s commitment and loyalties as well as the right kind of employment practices. By using TQM as a normative control discourse and the BPR as a techno-structural discourse, this paper examines how the two rival camps influenced each other’s perceptions of organizational control. Analyses of U.S. business articles suggest that the two discourses converged and the perceived gap between the two became narrower. Consequently, once-sharply-defined boundaries gradually eroded. Building on framing theory and content analyses of business articles, I argue that such a rhetorical blending of normative and techno-structural elements of organizational control occurred through borrowing of defining vocabularies from the salient rival and strategic positioning of one discourse against the other. Implications for neo-institutionalism and management fashion research are discussed.

Organizational control is a central component of modern management discourses. Technostructural control emphasizes technocratic rationalization of work processes and maximum utilization of worker’s self-interest, while normative control focuses on worker’s commitment and loyalties as well as the right kind of employment practices. By using TQM as a normative control discourse and the BPR as a techno-structural discourse, this paper examines how the two rival camps influenced each other’s perceptions of organizational control. Analyses of U.S. business articles suggest that the two discourses converged and the perceived gap between the two became narrower. Consequently, once-sharply-defined boundaries gradually eroded. Building on framing theory and content analyses of business articles, I argue that such a rhetorical blending of normative and techno-structural elements of organizational control occurred through borrowing of defining vocabularies from the salient rival and strategic positioning of one discourse against the other. Implications for neo-institutionalism and management fashion research are discussed.