Eccles, Robert, and Nitin Nohria. 1992. Beyond the Hype. Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press.

Chapter Two: Rhetoric: The Work of Words p. 17-38

Today's Management Rhetoric

Often the excitement of new rhetoric becomes tiresome. Five new principles are:

1. Smaller is better than larger (more outsourcing, less layers)

2. Less diversification better than more (partnering, joint ventures, alliances, etc.)

3. Competion replaced by collaboration across org. boundaries.

4. Formal authority is diminished.

5. Time cycles must become shorter. Need more flexible, adaptable, responsible organizations.

They appeal to the need to feel we are living in a unique period for management.

Rethinking the Old Rhetoric

The past is often portrayed as more placid and less competitive age. Yet at any decade change was seen as prominent. Most basic managerial concerns were the same in 1950 as today. Even they they felt a need for a entirely new approach to management.

General Electrics managerial speeches spoke of empowerment, innovation etc. despite our view now as a large bureaucratic organization. They saw dynamic change and a need for customer-focus. They spoke of decentralization. Welch and Cordiner (current and past CEO's) speak the same language even though Welch is trying to undo what Cordiner helped developed. They both 'apply timeless common sense to organizations and cloak it in an energizing rhetoric of historical necessity and innovation".

Rhetoric of Revolutionary Change

peter Drucker's "New Organization" is typical of this persisting rhetoric of change -- the demise of middle management and the rise of the knowledge worker. In fact, he had been talking about the rise of the new organization for over 20 years!

"Every generation of management discourse portrays the present as especially challenging, stereotypes the past, and then paints a vision of the future that is sharply contrasted with it. Most have seen trends away from more bureaucratic organizations.

Most discourse over the ages has advocated taht 'we must push decision-making authority down to the level of each individual... and tap their specific skills and knowledge..."

Same as it ever was

They write "Is something really fundamental going on, or does today's craze for newness simply point to our willingness, perhaps even our need, to indulge in the excitement of imaginary revolutions?"

But "the way people talk about the world has everything to do with the way the world is ultimately understood and acted in, and that the concept of revolutionary change depends to a great extent on how the world is framed by our language".

"It is language, not facts, that ultimately shapes the way we see things".

Taking Rhetoric Seriously

The primary task of managerial language has always been to persuade individuals to put forth their best efforts in a collective enterprisse with other men and women". p 29

Managers infer meaning from the plethora of management rhetoric available. Since most is fairly general, it is open to broad interpretation and action.

The world of management is therefore a complex social system that involves a network of managers, academics, consultants, and journalists playing many overlapping roles... p. 30

"New vocabularies cycle quickly through the elaborate social system of management discourse -- adopted under the promise of change and innovation, discarded when they are no longer able to inspire and mobilize action".

According to Peter Senge, there must be a creative tension between reality and vision that inspires people personally to take up the challenge of transformation. p. 32

One paragraph I liked was"

We want GE to become a company where people come to work every day in a rush to try something they woke up thinking about the night before. We want them to go home from work wanting to talk about what they did that day, rather than try and forget about it. We want factories where the whistle blows and everyone wonders where the time went, and someone suddenly wonders aloud why we need a whistle." p. 33

Powerful Rhetoric

They use metaphors, analogies, stories and myths, slogans and maxims. It is clear but not too clear. It needs to be flexible enough to incorporate the different meanings, emphases, and interpretations that different people will inevitably give to it. p. 35 Words are important, but ultimately the must produce action. Often new programs fail because the rhetoric fails to be revolutionary. Often new ideas are seen as packaged rational designs. People quicky adopt these faddish designs in the hope they will be progressive. But "real change depends fundamentally upon new ways of acting accompanies by new ways of talking". "Unless language is mobilized in such a way as to create the possibility for action...it remains just so many words".