Call for Papers

Managerialism can be understood as the “expansion of managerial technics far beyond the realms of managerial organizations” (Klikauer, 2015: 1105). And yet, managerialism seems to be the default answer to any public issues ranging from public healthcare (Allain, Lemaire, & Lux, 2021), to sustainable development (Wright & Nyberg, 2016), or the emancipation of minorities (Zanoni & Janssens, 2007). The ability of those countless managerial reforms such as “total quality”, “environmental management”, “ethic committee’” and the likes (Abrahamson, 1995), to truly tackle any important social challenge remains – to say the least – highly debatable. Since the seminal work by Meyer and Rowan we know that managerial reforms serve as “rational myths” (Meyer & Rowan, 1977), allowing organizations to preserve their legitimacy, and decision makers to pay lip services to pressing social issues (Bansal & Clelland, 2004). In their classical work, Meyer and Rowan (1977), envisioned a post-industrial society where rational myths would become more important than the force of production but also alerted regarding the “explosive organizational potential” of this evolution (p. 346). Almost 50 years after, we feel that we are actually witnessing first-hand this organizational explosion, as research documents the widening gap between managerial policies promises and their actual outcomes, through ideas such as organizational hypocrisy (Brunsson, 1989), functional stupidity (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012), managerial apocalypse (de Vaujany, 2024) or organizational bullshit (Spicer, 2013).
 
In this sub-theme, we are interested in research that seeks to explore the negative consequence of managerialism on organizations in 2025. While we welcome any contribution that documents how managerialism leads to pathological organizations, we feel that years of unrestrained managerialism has led to a full-blown societal problem. Managerialist reforms do not occur in a vacuum, they actually transform organizations directly affecting internal organizational behaviour and operational practices (Meyer & Rowan, 1977), by disturbing organizational equilibrium, modifying structure, culture, and output (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) through the imposition of new standard operating procedures, new rules, and change in internal management (Boiral, 2007; Denis et al., 2007; Spicer, 2013). Worse, each new management fashion (Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999; Piazza & Abrahamson, 2020) requires its own dedicated resources to perform, such as ethical manager, total quality software, and of course ping pong table in the case of neo-participative management.
 
Moreover, the societal context in 2025 is very different from the one during which Meyer and Rowan developed their idea. We are facing societal grand challenges (Ferraro et al., 2015; George et al., 2016), such as the need for a socioecological transition (Banerjee, 2003; Banerjee & Hoffman, 2021) or the rise of a digital economy (de Vaujany, 2024) that call for a new understanding of managerialism, its consequences, the idea of rational myths, and ultimately those challenges challenge our managerial believes, asking whether we should develop new forms of organizations (Berkowitz & Bor, 2018; Brès et al., 2018) at the risk of triggering new managerial fashions, or perhaps revert back to “good old” ways of organising (du Gay & Vikkelsø, 2016)?
 
Hence, we welcome all empirical and theoretical contributions that seek to address the issue of managerialism with a special interest on research that documents how the endless multiplication of managerial reforms transforms not only local organizations, but the way we organise, and affect society at large, and conversely how our contemporary societal context invites us to revisit the idea of managerialism and rational myths. Submissions may address (but not limited to) the following questions:
 
What characterizes pathological organizations and what are they not?

• What theories and ideas address organization pathologies?

• What are the antecedents to pathological organizations?

• Do pathological organizations necessarily come from pathological leaders?

• What are the effects of pathological organizations for workers, organizations, society? (negative effects, evolution, side effects, positive outcomes…)

 
Revisiting the link between rational myths, organizational behaviour, efficiency, and organizational practices:

• How can we understand the Meyer and Rowan’s conundrum in 2025?

• Does the search for legitimacy always calls for the creation of new rational myths?

• How do rational myths interact, accumulate, connect to each other?

• What are the consequences of rational myths on individuals, organizations, industry sectors and the society at large?

 
The eternal returns of management fashions:

• Where do management fashions come from? What is the underlying dynamic of management fashions?

• What factors keep management fashions alive beyond the arrival of new managerial trends?

• How are the relentless waves of management fashion reshaping the organizational landscape?

• How organizational actors adapt to never-ending waves of management fashions?

 
Broader perspective on managerialism:

• What are the challenges and potential solutions to survive instability and inconsistencies brought about by managerialism in organization?

• What is the meaning and definition of managerialism in 2025 considering mega-trends such as technological progress, social issues, the evolution of the workforce?

• How to explain the persistence of managerialism despite its failure to address social issues?

• Are there different forms of managerialism? If so, what are they? What are their impacts?

• Beyond managerialism what are the approaches to overcome managerialism?

References

• Abrahamson, E. (1996): “Management fashion.” Academy of Management Review, 21 (1), 254–285.

• Abrahamson, E., & Fairchild, G. (1999): “Management fashion: Lifecycles, triggers, and collective learning processes.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 44 (4), 708–740.
• Allain, E., Lemaire, C., & Lux, G. (2021): “Managers’ subtle resistance to neoliberal reforms through and by means of management accounting.” Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 34 (3), 591–615.
• Alvesson, M., & Spicer, A. (2012): “A Stupidity‐Based theory of organizations.” Journal of Management Studies, 49 (7), 1194–1220.
• Banerjee, S.B. (2003): “Who Sustains Whose Development? Sustainable Development and the Reinvention of Nature.” Organization Studies, 24 (1), 143–180.
• Banerjee, S.B., & Hoffman, A.J. (2021): “(Un)Sustainability and Organization Studies: Towards a Radical Engagement.” Organization Studies, 42 (8), 1319–1335.
• Bansal, T., & Clelland, I. (2004): “Talking Trash: Legitimacy, Impression Management, and Unsystematic Risk in the Context of the Natural Environment.” Academy of Management Journal, 47 (1), 93–103.
• Berkowitz, H., & Bor, S. (2018): “Why Meta-Organizations Matter: A Response to Lawton et al. and Spillman.” Journal of Management Inquiry, 27 (2), 204–211.
• Boiral, O. (2007): “Corporate greening through ISO 14001: a rational myth?” Organization Science, 18 (1), 127–146.
• Brès, L., Raufflet, E., & Boghossian, J. (2018): “Pluralism in organizations: Learning from unconventional forms of organizations.” International Journal of Management Reviews, 20 (2), 364–386.
• Brunsson, N. (1989): The Organization of Hypocrisy. Talk, Decisions and Action in Organizations. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
• Denis, J.L., Langley, A., & Rouleau, L. (2007): “Strategizing in pluralistic contexts: Rethinking theoretical frames.” Human Relations, 60 (1), 179–215.
• de Vaujany, F.-X. (2024): The Rise of Digital Management. From Industrial Mobilization to Platform Capitalism. New York: Routledge.
• DiMaggio, P.J., & Powell, W.W. (1983): “The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields.” American Sociological Review, 48 (2), 147–160.
• du Gay, P., & Vikkelsø, S. (2016): For Formal Organization. The Past in the Present and Future of Organization Theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Ferraro, F., Etzion, D., & Gehman, J. (2015): “Tackling grand challenges pragmatically: Robust action revisited.” Organization Studies, 36 (3), 363–390.
• George, G., Howard-Grenville, J., Joshi, A., & Tihanyi, L. (2016): “Understanding and Tackling Societal Grand Challenges through Management Research.” Academy of Management Journal, 59 (6), 1880–1895.
• Klikauer, T. (2015): “What is managerialism?” Critical Sociology, 41 (7–8), 1103–1119.
• Meyer, J.W., & Rowan, B. (1977): “Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony.” American Journal of Sociology, 83 (2), 340–363.
• Piazza, A., & Abrahamson, E. (2020): “Fads and Fashions in Management Practices: Taking Stock and Looking Forward.” International Journal of Management Reviews, 22 (3), 264–286.
• Spicer, A. (2013): “Shooting the shit: The role of bullshit in organizations.” M@n@gement, 16 (5), 653–666.
• Wright, C., & Nyberg, D. (2017): “An Inconvenient Truth: How Organizations Translate Climate Change into Business as Usual.” Academy of Management Journal, 60 (5), 1633–1661.
• Zanoni, P., & Janssens, M. (2007): “Minority employees engaging with (diversity) management: An analysis of control, agency, and micro‐emancipation.” Journal of Management Studies, 44 (8), 1371–1397.
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