Mythologizing Management: A Mythographic Analysis of the Case Method

The case method remains a generally accepted didactical tool in business schools. But even though it served an important role in the legitimization of the management profession, it never lived up to the objectivist pretentions this professionalization was meant to foster (Khurana, 2007). After the dissolution of managerialism through the rise of the neoliberal shareholder perspective on business (cf. Ghoshal, 2005), one would have expected case studies – with their focus on the power of CEOs as ‘sovereign’ corporate statesmen – to have become less prominent vehicles of management ideology. However, it seems the opposite has happened.
We posit that the narrative ‘essence’ of case studies is that they celebrate and glorify the courage and determination of people overcoming their fear, indecision or disgruntlement in the face of organizational adversity. Otherwise stated, they are myths.
We identify the peculiar ‘rhetorical economy’ (Agamben, 2011) responsible for the ideological efficacy of business case studies in the mythologization of management. We perform a mythographic analysis of the case method using Barthes’ semiotic theory of myths as a starting point (Barthes, 1972 [1957]; see also Chandler, 2017, pp. 171–174). Barthes takes myths to be second-order semiological systems that employ manifestly meaningful first-order signs (images or texts) as signifiers of a meta-level sign, producing a latent ideological signification that deforms and distorts the meaning of the original. The way business cases portray the ‘life stories’ of the protagonist(s) in their engagement with a business challenge is never about the idiosyncrasies of the case situation itself. The mythical scheme of the business case refers to an economy beyond the reality depicted.
Barthes (1972 [1957], pp. 127–130) indicates that the decipherment of myths can take three different forms; one of these forms is an ideological reading, explaining the way in which myth naturalizes a contingent occurrence and renders it unquestionable. From this perspective, a mythographic analysis focuses on the dynamic of meaning and form that gives myth its seductive immediacy. The fact that someone will later see through the myth does not diminish the lasting effect of the immediate impression.
We perform our analysis of how this immediate capture is accomplished in business cases using the Case Centre’s 10 most popular cases. Most of these cases fall into the category of ‘life stories’, interlaced with information about the organizations the founders have created and applicable management knowledge they ‘invested’ in them. As we show, the salvific qualities of management myths are clearly present in these studies, particularly in the way in which the mythical narrative miraculously bridges the abyss between general business knowledge (being) and situated managerial action (praxis) through a ‘providential machinery’ (Agamben, 2011) that ultimately ensures the efficacy of the protagonists’ plans and decisions.
The historiographical contribution of this paper is twofold: it both contextualizes the ongoing rise of the case method in an era of shareholder capitalism and shows the historical contingency of the case narratives. This ultimately informs our plea for a more inclusive, CMS-approach to the case method.