Reinventing the management organizational field: From the social construction of shareholder value to the emergence of the celebrity CEO

Abstract

This paper explores the Shareholder Value (SHV) ideology as a social construction process marked by a reorganization of the business Management discourse as of the 1970s, after the institutionalization of the Agency Theory formulations. Such social construction can be explained according to the Bourdieusian notion of an organizational field portrayed in terms of a social subsystem, structured under diverse forms of capital, handled by each actor present in the organizational field construction here identified. These actors’ engagement to the SHV field construction legitimized a new set of shared values and beliefs, materialized within Value Based Management (VBM) as of the 1990s, celebrating a new way of perception, experience, and acting in firms under such an ideology. Therefore, despite the anti-managerial impulse of the SHV ideology, as of the 2000s, a new social arrangement within the organizational field revealed the emergence of the Celebrity CEO, whose performativity of managerial actions simultaneously unveils the potential of the Management field to reinvent, as well as the symbolism associated with the SHV ideology.