The Triumph of Emptiness Consumption, Higher Education, and Work Organization [Hardcover]

In this book, Mats Alvesson aims to demystify some popular and upbeat claims about a range of phenomena, including the knowledge society, consumption, branding, higher education, organizational change, professionalization, and leadership. He contends that a culture of grandiosity is leading to numerous inflated claims. We no longer talk about plans but 'strategies'. Supervisors have been replaced by 'managers', managers are referred to as executives. Management is about 'leadership'. Giving advice is 'coaching'. Companies become 'knowledge-intensive firms'. The book views the contemporary economy as an economy of persuasion, where firms and other institutions increasingly assign talent, energy, and resources to rhetoric, image, branding, reputation, and visibility.

Using a wide range of empirical examples to illuminate the realms of consumption, higher education, organization, and leadership, this provocative and engaging book challenges established assumptions and contributes to a critical understanding of society as a whole.

1. Introduction - Zero-Sum Games, Grandiosity, and Illusion Tricks
2. Consumption - the Shortcomings of Affluence
3. Explaining the Consumption Paradox: Why aren't People (More) Satisfied?
4. Higher Education - Triumph of the Knowledge Intensive Society or a Statistical Cosmetics Project?
5. Higher Education - an Image-Boosting Business?
6. Modern Working Life and Organizations - Change, Dynamism, and Post-Bureaucracy?
7. Organizational Structures on the Beauty Parade: Imitation and Shop-Window Dressing
8. A Place in the Sun - Occupational Groups' Professionalization Projects and Other Status and Influence Ambitions
9. Leadership - A Driving Force or Empty Talk
10. The Triumph of Imagology - A Paradise for Tricksters?
11. The Costs of Grandiosity

The author, a leading management scholar and a major sociological thinker, punctures the grandiosity and narcissism of our times when we succumb tolCÔ