‘It Was Such a Handy Term’: Management Fashions and Pragmatic Ambiguity*

Abstract

abstractThis article builds on constructs that authors have labelledstrategic ambiguity,interpretative viability,umbrella constructs, andboundary objects, and suggests that these constructs all articulate a central concern for collective action and the role of ambiguity therein. It characterizes aspragmatic ambiguitythe condition of admitting more than one course of action, and elucidates and operationalizes this new construct. Drawing on the sociology of translation (Callon, 1986;Latour, 1987),[1]it argues that pragmatic ambiguity is both the result and the resource of a collective process ofintéressementoccurring during the rise in popularity of a new management approach. FollowingBenders and van Veen (2001), the article posits that pragmatic ambiguity increases during the rise of a management fashion. It provides empirical evidence in support of this claim by means of a longitudinal analysis of quality management (QM) concepts as articulated by several authors both before and during the Quality Movement of the 1980s and 1990s. The analyses of QM texts show that concepts became vaguer, more ambiguous, and more general as the Quality Movement gained momentum, suggesting the presence of a positive feedback loop between pragmatic ambiguity and popularity. In addition, the data illustrate how pragmatic ambiguity was achieved and sustained textually, and how it was supported by a variety of social, linguistic and rhetorical factors.