Ideology in Management Studies

• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Date: 01 January 2020
• Author: Anne‐Laure Boncori,Martin Fougère,Andrew Sturdy,Hannele Seeck
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12215

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 22, 53–74 (2020)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12215

Ideology in Management Studies

Hannele Seeck ,1,2 Andrew Sturdy ,3Anne-Laure Boncori 4

and Martin Foug`

ere 5

1University of Turku,School of Economics, Turku, Finland, 2University of Helsinki, Faculty of Social Sciences,

Helsinki, Finland, 3Department of Management, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TN, UK, 4Management and

Strategy, INSEEC Business School, 75010, Paris, France, and 5Politics and Business, Department of Management and

Organization, Hanken School of Economics, 00101, Helsinki, Finland

Corresponding author email: hannele.seeck@gmail.com

Ideology is a core and contested concept in the social sciences, but also long deployed

in management research to highlight the political, embedded and/or obscuring nature

of ideas. Indeed, many would argue that management itself is inherently ideological in

legitimating or privileging managerial interests and concealing other groups and ways

of organizing. In the first systematic reviewof how ideology has been conceptualized in

management studies, this paper explores its diverse and changing meanings in order

to develop and sustain the concept. It is based on a heuristic review of 175 articles

and 41 books published between 1956 and 2018. Further developing categories used in

the social sciences around its role, we found views of ideology as: (1) domination; (2)

legitimation; (3) interpretation; (4) integration; and (5) normative logic. In addition,

emerging perspectives were identified where ideology was (6) an object of critique or

(7) fantasy structuring social reality. We describe, illustrate and evaluate these often

internally diverse and interrelated perspectives, as well as comparing them with some-

times competing notions within the management field, such as discourse, culture and

legitimation. We also bring togetherthe different approaches and argue for a pluralist,

but not infinitely flexible, approach to the concept. In doing so, we identify research

agendas for ideology within management and organization studies.

Introduction

‘It is widely agreed that the notion of “ideology” has

given rise to more analytical and conceptual difficul-

ties than almost any other term in the social sciences’

(Abercrombie et al. 1980, p. 187)

Why consider ideology when its ‘end’ has been

asserted by many since World War II? While such

claims can readily be dismissed as ideological them-

selves, the complexity and contested nature of the

term – its ‘semantic promiscuity’ – are hard to deny

(Gerring 1997, p. 957). Furthermore, in some fields of

social science, such as sociology, its use has declined

significantly since the 1980s (Kumar 2006). Such a

context might not seem fruitful for an account of its

deployment and continuing theoretical and political

potential. And yet, within management and organi-

zation studies (MOS), scholars have drawn on and

renewed the concept since the 1950s, and, impor-

tantly, continue to do so, albeit mostly at the mar-

gins of the field. They have been inspired, in part, by

a number of traditions and waves of social theory –

from Marx, Weber and Mannheim to, more recently,

ˇ

Ziˇ

zek – but also by the continuing rise of management

and the mystification or influence it can bring.

Although it is important to distinguish between

ideology within management and organizations, and

specifically management ideologies, the concept has

mostly been applied in the latter sense, to man-

agement ideas or movements, such as human rela-

tions, scientific management and more recently, new

public management, corporate social responsibility

(CSR) and leadership (Frenkel 2005; Tsutsui 2001).

These have been shown to emerge from and shape

institutions; to unify or dominate actors; and/or to le-

gitimate social arrangements, notably management’s

powerful role within capitalism (Shenhav 1999). Al-

though the concept has sometimes been used loosely

and widely, its most distinctive analytical role has

been to connect management to power and to reveal

C2019 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Publishedby John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington

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54 H. Seeck et al.

that management is not a neutral set of techniques or

objectives, but inherently social. Most accounts de-

fine management ideology as a collective or socially

embedded, and yet also contestable, set of ideas that

describe and/or seek to justify managerial authority

(Barley and Kunda 1992; Guill´

en 1994; Parush 2008).

This is most evident in Bendix’s classic definition as

‘all ideas which are espoused by or for those whoex-

ercise authority in economic enterprises, and which

seek to explain and justify that authority’ (Bendix

1956, p. 2, note 1; see also Sutton et al. 1956). How-

ever, we shall see that this view is, in fact, not the

most common and that perspectives vary over time,

largely in line with wider theoretical trends.

While the relatively short history of management

practice is one of challenge and conflict, the occu-

pation probably reached its high point of legitimacy

in the post-war managerial capitalism of the USA

(Useem 1978). Subsequent pressures emerged with

the rise of investor capitalism, although management

still retained a central and legitimate role (Useem

1996). More recently, some influential ideas reflect

concerns with both managerial and shareholder legit-

imacy, through more inclusive thinking about stake-

holders, the (natural) environment and the ‘non-

expert’ (Freeman et al. 2010; Sundararajan 2016).

This mayreflect a wider ideological shift in some soci-

eties, where management ideas are deployed as much

for societal and environmental impacts as for business

outcomes (e.g. corporate social responsibility). Alter-

natively, a ‘new spirit of capitalism’ (Boltanski and

Chiapello 2005) is emerging, wherebythe use of ideas

can become subject to greater critique and resistance

and yet, at the same time, be seen as more insidiously

powerful (Fleming and Spicer 2003). Either way, it

is especially timely to investigate how the concept

has been theorized in management and organization

studies. Furthermore, ideology cuts across many other

important, enduring and sometimes competing con-

cepts in management studies, including institutions,

legitimacy,innovation,sensemaking and culture,as

well as other concepts in the social sciences, notably

discourse (Van Dijk 2006). Thus, unpacking its ana-

lytical use can also help us to understand a great deal

about management theory more generally and assess

its continuing value and distinctive contribution.

To date, there has been no systematic review

of how ideology has been conceptualized in MOS.

This is perhaps surprising given its longstanding

importance in the field and because it continues to

be a focus of reviews in other, related fields such as

business ethics (Haase and Raufflet 2017) and media

studies (Downey and Toynbee 2016). Furthermore,

reviews of the concept in core social science disci-

plines such as politics (e.g. Gerring 1997; Knight

2006) and sociology (Kumar 2006) havenot included

some of the recent formulations of ideology which

have been prominent in management studies. Given

such neglect, within management and more generally,

we seek to provide an overview of the use of ideol-

ogy in MOS. More specifically, our purpose is to (1)

identify, classify, illustrate and evaluate different the-

oretical traditions pertaining to ideology within MOS

and point to future research directions and (2) use

this analysis to argue for its continuing, but distinc-

tive, relevance in relation to competing concepts in

MOS. Our framing is based primarily on a develop-

ment and updating of the classical conceptualizations

of ideology in the social sciences, such as those based

on the works of Marx, Weber, Mannheim and Geertz,

and recognizes both diversity within these perspec-

tives (and even individual authors) and connections

between them (see also Gerring 1997). We then out-

line some of the limitations of our review and identify

specific future research directions in the study of ide-

ology. First, however, we briefly introduce the use of

ideology in the social sciences before discussing the

method of our review.

Ideology in the social sciences

Conceptualizations of ideology emerged in Europe,

firstly in France around the time of the revolution

(Hassan 1986). It is claimed, for example, that the

term was originally formulated by Destutt de Tracy

(1796) as a positive notion around the science of

ideas (Haase and Raufflet 2017). In 1805, it appeared

with a pejorative meaning in Napoleonic criticism of

‘ideologues’. Its key initial impetus, however, was in

the rise of Marxist thinking, with Marx and Engels

publishing their essay on the German ideology

in 1845. It has retained a strong association with

Marxism ever since, with mixed fortunes as a result,

but as we shall see, it has taken a diverse range of

forms as it has become incorporated into social sci-

ences. More generally, there is a long and continuing

tradition of explaining the nature of society through

its ideas and systems of belief, including ideologies,

although such accounts compete with and/or

complement other approaches which emphasize

economic/material and political dynamics (Durkheim

2001/1912; Weber 1922/1968). A classic example

of this is debate over the extent to which modern

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