| This dissertation is about the influence of business management discourse on moral order, in particular, the influence of management theories that conceive of corporations as cultures. These theories emerged in the 1970s and have become widely popular since, both within business and beyond it, raising the question: What moral attractions and obligations do these ideas carry? In answering this question, the dissertation focuses on the idea of corporate culture as it moves across boundaries—the historical boundary dividing the time before and after its invention and popularization (Chapters 2 and 3), the boundary between success and failure (Chapter 4), and the boundary between for-profit businesses and non-profit organization (Chapter 5). This study is based on analysis of 502 newspaper and magazine articles on management and corporate culture published from 1975 to 1985, 38 bestselling business books (a sample drawn from the New York Times and Publishers Weekly lists) published from 1970 to 1999, government documents and news articles on the collapse of Enron and the Columbia space shuttle disaster, and 25 in-depth interviews with management consultants who work with non-profit organizations. |
