Performativity in Business Education, Management Consulting and Entrepreneurial Finance

Objective

The world of business is a world of culture: a world of rituals, artefacts and idioms which is fit for anthropological and
sociological analysis. The notion of performativity serves as a useful vehicle to analyse the culture that do characterise
business schools, consultancy firms, corporations, investment banks, start-up companies and other sites of business life.
This notion refers to performance in the sense of efficacy in the achievement of tasks, but also to the institutive capacities of
knowledge and to an idea of practice as acting and staging. This research project seeks at providing sound social-scientific
knowledge on the performativity of business through a theoretical clarification of the concept and a set of empirical
investigations in three relevant areas. The first area is education in business administration. The project analyses the
performativity of the case method of instruction and of similar pedagogical techniques that emphasise singularity, exemplarity
and realism in the provision of meaningful and effective narratives. The second area is management consulting. The project
analyses the performativity of consultancy missions and management devices, with a focus on the practices of presentation
and communication used by consultants in order to construct convincing realities. The third area is entrepreneurial finance.
The project analyses the performativity of business models, business plans and business cases in the orientation of
investment and financing in entrepreneurial settings. Empirical investigation in all three areas is grounded in a qualitative,
case-based approach. The research project aims at generating detailed and original factual evidence of the performativity
of business in all three areas, and also at providing a coordinated and rigorous assessment of performativity as problematic
reality in today s risk-oriented global business culture.

Fields of science

• social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementbusiness models

Programme(s)

• FP7-IDEAS-ERC - Specific programme: "Ideas" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013)

Topic(s)

• ERC-SG-SH2 - ERC Starting Grant - Institutions, values, beliefs and behaviour

Call for proposal

ERC-2010-StG_20091209
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Host institution

Beneficiaries (1)