The Triumph of Emptiness: Consumption, Higher Education, and Work Organization

by Mats Alvesson

In today's world, considerable time and effort is devoted to appearance, both for individuals and organizations; the right look, an impressive title, a favourable connection. The focus is on the surface, with considerations of substance often overlooked. In this book, Mats Alvesson demystifies
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 Supervisors have been replaced by 'managers', and managers are referred to as 'executives'. Management itself is about 'leadership'. Giving advice is 'coaching'. Companies become 'knowledge-intensive firms'. This 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.

This second edition uses a wide range of empirical examples to illuminate the realms of consumption, higher education, organization, and leadership in the 21st century. Exploring new areas such as strategic management in higher education, title inflation, and the increasing imbalance between
knowledge, manual, and care work, this provocative and engaging book challenges established assumptions and contributes to a critical understanding of society as a whole.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Politics, Society, Economics, Education, Psychology

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Mats Alvesson är professor vid Lunds universitet och arbetar även vid University of Queensland, Australien, och City University, London. Han forskar och skriver om bland annat organisationskultur, ledarskap, identitet i organisationer och kvalitativ forskning och intresserar sig för fenomenet funktionell dumhet.

Reviews

[Peter Geyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part of the enjoyment of reading Mats Alvesson is his transparency. He tells you he's a sceptic, so you know you're in for a critique. Unlike some people who use that label, he knows what it means and provides some data and experience for his argument. It's easy to be a critic, much harder to back things up and to invite others to check out the data.

The emptiness Alvesson writes about involves looking at several areas, from consumption in general, higher education, working life and organisations, occupational groups and professionsalisation as well as leadership and the themes are what he calls grandiosity and imagology, which may be about looking good (sometimes a physical requirement), but being content-free.There's also functional stupidity, a marvellous idea which is elaborated on in a more recent book, which I read and reviewed a few weeks ago.

This can mean anything from people inventing important titles for themselves and others, or the requirement to do so on CVs, the self-promotion of educational institutions essentially making promises they can't deliver to students who may not be all that interested and have misleading views about future prospects in the world of work, the status seeking of professionalisation and consequent issues (a nice line about certification), problems of mass education and maintenance of standards ( a line I've had in mind for many years regarding teachers and psychologists), some musings on leadership, particularly transformational leadership (in my view a soft target) and whether people want to follow, be left alone or something in between.

There are a number of interesting phrases. From today's completion there's

"Knowing too much of what really goes on then may make it difficult to express positive messages. Ignorance may in this sense increase credibility. The will to not know may be a strong contemporary motive, facilitating many individuals' careers (and ease of mind." (p202)

I also greatly liked his labelling of branding as "symbolic pollution"

This is a book that makes you think and the author doesn't require you to agree. There are all sorts of interesting references to follow up, including (for me) some familiar names. I don't usually read too many books on organisations these days, as that's a past life and there have rarely been insights of depth and examples easily recognised in personal experience anyway as there is from this book.

[Allys Dierker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m not at all put off by the skepticism. In fact, that’s why I bought the book and committed to reading it. But “Triumph” suffers from a few challenges: it’s a bit too “academese-y” and the concepts are pretty simple but dressed up and expanded in what feels like an attempt to fill pages. There are also some sloppily written/edited passages that made reading this more of a chore than reading “The Stupidity Paradox.”

Alvesson analyzes consumption, higher education, and work organization (his subtitle) according to three concepts he articulates as zero-sum games, “grandiosity,” and illusion tricks. His overall argument seems to be that goods/brands, schools, and jobs have been changed by a culture that has moved away from physical production and into “knowledge production.” And because Western culture now has fewer physical things to produce, the economy depends on manufacturing desire for products, which are “positional,” or “zero-sum.” Consumers buy brands because they (consumers) want to improve their (consumers’) status, which depends on a zero-sum game: I can only be (and feel) superior if I am better than you. And I can do this through brands, and schooling, and work titles, all of which are inflated.

Alvesson cites sources to argue that education is educating less (tests indicate that students are performing more poorly in critical thinking skills AFTER years of college than when they entered but schools use precious resources marketing themselves heavily as a brand), that middle management is increasing in size with inflated titles and leadership concepts are fairly bankrupt (when “leaders” chat and drink coffee with secretaries, the leaders are “doing leadership.” When secretaries chat and drink coffee with other secretaries, they are chatting and drinking coffee. Google “post-heroic leadership” and prepare for your eyes to get stuck that way from rolling them), and that people are so busy keeping up with the Joneses buying crap to fill a void that will never be filled.

And this leaves us where? With unfulfilling lives, jobs, narcissism, and a functional stupidity that we need to survive in a Potemkin village that looks great but is hollow at its heart.

There are some good analyses about fashion (it’s jumped the shark the minute it catches on—and this means fashions of clothing as well as theories of organization), student satisfaction (a consumer orientation detracts from what we like to think education does: teaches discipline and concepts and skills that may not come easily and the value of deferred gratification and personal growth over mere credentiaing), diversity (the symbolic value of diversity management is at odds with an everyday level of operations that involves people who may or may not play well with others and may or may not buy into the myth of a well-oiled rainbow workplace), and titles in the workplace (the professionalization of jobs leads to expectations that the jobs can’t possibly fulfill: everyone wants to engage in strategy and no one wants to do the grunt work).

But Alvesson’s writing in “Triumph” is a little too unwieldy and padded for me to feel like the substance I took away justified the volume and the difficulty of reading the prose.

Overall, my cynical take on the message: we are set up to want more (stuff, money, respect, prestige) than our economy and workplaces and education are actually able to provide. So instead of recognizing and accepting that and finding fulfillment internally, we look externally (and are encouraged to do so because that’s how brands and schools make money and how companies keep running) and expect our stuff and jobs and titles to provide that fulfillment. I put this on the “Existential Crisis: Deal with It Because Only You Can Fix You” shelf.

It’s not a message a thinking person can really reject.

[Harry Fulgencio · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a bit too close for comfort. Alvesson's persona sounds more like a ranting preacher rather than a person that inspires and persuades people to reflect upon the trend of grandiosity. The book tries to appeal to public and almost everyone because of this the tone changes from one to another.

He does have a point with the trend but I think it would haven been a great read if he just stuck with two themes: consumption of technology and continued professionalization (higher education - masters - e.g. food and beverage management) of jobs among others..

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those who have never dealt with works coming from the field of critical management studies here have a great opportunity to do so. The aim of Alvesson is no other than that of provoking a reflection (puncturing myths, as he says) on academic, media-related and taken-for-granted truths on fields so disperse as management theory, consumption&marketing, leadership studies or higher education at large.

Core ideas he wants to covey are the unstoppable display (and proliferation), in our mature Western economies, of zero-sum games (example: status-oriented consumption), grandiosity (selling image above substance) and illusion tricks (pseudo-events, pseudo-theories, pseudo-realities) in all the above mentioned fields.

The text works nicely for those (management) professors willing to discuss the societal, ethical and even politico-ideological implications of big segments of their areas of expertise

[francolino · Rating 5 out of 5]

recommended to me by Elin, and easily one of my favourite academic or real life books.

[Calle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Relevant to anyone working in a large organization or who may some day do so, or who has worked in them and wants to think deeper about where all the nonsense comes from and how to deal with it.

The book is essentially about how surface, quantity and appearances has come to steal more and more attention and resources at the expense of depth, quality and substance. There are many seemingly dissociated phenomena of this that Alvesson studies individually while subsuming them under a unifying theory and the umbrella term "Grandiosity". The book is certainly thought provoking and the discussion of it below includes my own thoughts that aren't necessarily Alvessons.

What were dealing with is a kind of malaise. To use a metaphor of organisations as plants, this malaise of superficial grandiosity eats out the core of the stem and the roots to nourish only what’s visible. But what's visible is ultimately in need of nourishment from the non-visible parts, or else the bright, shiny berries showcased to the world eventually will begin to taste bland, if not foul. And the plants internal hollowing out eventually puts it at risk of dying.

Alvesson argues that an important part of the genesis of this malaise is that modern day affluence entails a shift in desires toward status rather than the proverbial bread and butter. The problem being that status, unlike material wealth, is a zero-sum game.

Another part of the root cause is, in my opinion, modern ease of communications and mobility. A big increase in the menu of choices results in an awful lot of energy and resources spent by those who want to be chosen on a surface that becomes a bigger and bigger lie about its substance. Especially if the choosers spend their time more on hastily locating potential choices than on patiently examining them.

Higher status anxiety via affluence + shorter attention spans + more visibility = superficial grandiosity

"Fake it till you make it" seems true enough, even sensible for people starting out, but what if everyone fakes? You'll need to out-fake everyone else, and vice versa, in an arms race.

Alvesson repeatedly points out the zero-sum games involved. And there is very interesting game theory at the core of grandiosity. The players in this game create value of different kinds, economic and social value, superficial and substantial. They can cooperate with each other to mutually benefit in their value production. But there's limited time available for such cooperation so they need to make discerning choises of partners. The main variable in the game is the degree to which all involved players can see each others surface features. Further, the game mechanics are such that superficial value does not alone create substance value at all, while substance value pays dividends in terms of increased superficial value over time.

The book would have been stellar if Alvesson could have somehow involved such game theory in the analysis. Perhaps through collaboration with somone in that field. Because the subject matter really is profound and cross-disciplinary - spanning sociology, psychology, economics and game theory.

To round off, a great non-technical work of sociology that I found not just enlightening but personally catharctic in a way similar to "Bullshit Jobs" by Graeber.

[Dag Gustafson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read to broaden your spectrum.