Alvesson’s Triumph of Emptiness is based on decades of experience in management, research, and publications on organisations. The outcome of this is that business, organisations, management, and society have a strong emphasis on “it must look good” with the brand name being “more crucial than the actual product” (p. ix). The reason for this is detailed in 11 chapters outlining the Triumph of Emptiness. Perhaps one might see Alvesson’s work as an application of Adorno and Horkheimer’s (1944) “Culture Industry” and perhaps even Adorno’s masterpiece “Minima Moralia” that highlights the pathologies of rampant consumer capitalism.
But before discussing “the culture industry”, Alvesson introduces the pathological triad of “zero-sum” games, grandiosity, and illusion tricks as the three key elements of emptiness. This is followed by his investigation into consumption and affluence that has turned affluence into the influenza-like illness of “Affluenza” (deGraaf et al., 2005) so that “we can buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like”. To do this well, today’s “educational customers” (Orwellian Newspeak), formerly known as students (Oldspeak), need to go through “higher education” – particularly business schools – dedicated to the culture of emptiness under Alvesson’s ideology of “it must look good” (Locke and Spender, 2011). This is prevalent in “modern working life” (Alvesson, 118ff) governed by anti-democratic managerial regimes with bureaucratic hierarchies (Diefenbach, 2013). Managerialism has skilfully linked managerial regimes to “leadership” seen as managerial “crypto-professionals” which play a substantial part in the Triumph of Emptiness. The final two chapters of Alvesson’s book are dedicated to the triumph of what Taylor et al. (1994) calls “imagology” which is a term that describes the merger of the “looking good” image with ideology. The final chapter discusses the “cost of grandiosity”.
Perhaps the book’s key idea is found in business “organisations exhibiting impressive window-dressing through policy formulations and executive development programmes as well as occupations re-launched as professions” (p. 1). Alvesson calls this zero-sum games where, for example, “one person’s advantage corresponds directly to another person’s loss” (p. 7). Of course, this is found in “the ranking of universities” (p. 7) where, as an example, not everyone can graduate from Boston University ranked at No. 75 of the world’s 100 top universities. Telling readers that a little book reviewer graduated from BU is perhaps a definite sign of “grandiosity [that is] the most important theme of this book [meaning] to give yourself, your occupational group/organisation, or even the society in which you live, a positive – if somewhat superficial – well-polished and status-enhancing image” (p. 8). Alvesson notes, “my thesis is that our era is becoming permeated by such grandiosity – and emptiness [with] the grandiose-self which is characterised by fantasies of omnipotence, exhibitionism, and ambition [resulting in] a narcissistic culture” (p. 11).
To show (off!) grandiosity “illusion tricks” are required. These are “pseudo-events, pseudo-actions, and pseudo-structures […] These concepts allude to the way in which activities and developed structures focus less on a substantial practice or quality […] than on signalling what is positive, impressive, and fascinating” (p. 15). This is what French philosopher Baudrillard (1994, 2005) calls Simulacra and Simulation and the triumph of “sign-value” over use-value. Meanwhile management – less philosophically – became known as “Impression Management” (Rosenfeld et al., 1995).
But Alvesson’s dark triad of zero-sum games, grandiosity, and illusion tricks not only shape “Organisation Men” but also “homo consumercus” (p. 32) where Alvesson argues that during the last 50 years material standards have doubled while happiness remains at the same level’ (p. 38). Perhaps consumer capitalism has never been about Utilitarianism’s “Happiness Principle” nor does management create “organisational happiness”, a term distinctively absent from any organisational and management textbook. Hence, the “$280 billion [that] was spent on advertising in the United States in 2007” (p. 41) were not to solve global poverty and making people happy but to keep consumer capitalism going (Achbar and Abbott, 2003; Benson and Kirsch, 2010). Without explaining the intimate link between the Triumph of Emptiness and capitalism, this theme is discussed in “explaining the consumption paradox – why aren’t people (more) satisfied?” (47ff.) even though some people have seen a life beyond the managerial reductionism of simply being “satisfied” (job and consumer satisfaction).
Perhaps with enlightenment, issues such as satisfaction and happiness were once linked to education. But with Managerialism, education takes on a double-faced Janus-image when it is mutated into what Alvesson calls “educational fundamentalism. This is an ideology that expresses a strong belief – and often a naïve blind faith – in the opportunities and positive results offered by education” (p. 74). This is conducted inside “McUniversities [reflective of the] McDonaldization [under] standardisation, efficiency, routinisation” (p. 81). It signifies “The Managerialist University” (Aspromourgos, 2012). These Fordist degree-factories “focus on entertainment and keeping students happy [whilst] increasingly costs are being devoted to marketing and procuring good customer experience for students” (p. 100) rather than wasting university funds on, for example, prostate- and breast-cancer research. This marks the pathologies of the Triumph of Emptiness (Alvesson, 2013) and Managerialism (Klikauer, 2013) to the detriment of human society.
But this shapes not only education. It also shapes “modern working life” as numerous authors from Jackall (1988), Schrijvers (2004) to most recently James (2013) have shown comprehensively. Alvesson sums this up as “organisational hypocrisy, myth-building, and mushroom management – ‘keep them in the dark and fill them with shit’” (p. 150). All this is also part of a rise of “professionalisation [that] is very much about politics and the struggle for status, power, and material rewards. It is not so much a question of the work characteristics themselves or the knowledge base of a profession; rather the significant point is the ability to organise and mobilise a powerful project to gain acceptance for claims to having special status” (p. 156). Aligned to this, special status and grandiosity are also achieved through Managerialism’s ideology of leadership because it is “a way of boosting the status and position of managers [as] the dominant heroes of our time – even mythical figures” (p. 171) as Bolchover’s (2005) “Great Business Leaders” shows so pointedly. It “fuels fantasies of grandiosity and identity-boosting” (p. 181).
The hidden transcript to this is “the greater the focus on leadership and the more there is of it, the greater the emphasis on ‘non-leaders’ as followers and subordinates rather than autonomous employees capable of operating independently” (p. 183). This is only one “cost of grandiosity” (p. 204). At a personal level, the high cost of grandiosity is most devastating when Alvesson notes, “in the Guardian supplement on ‘Superbrands’, one will find Warwick Business School listed alongside Coca-Cola, FedEx, and Pampers as one of the strongest consumer and business brands in the country” (p. 211). Perhaps my FedEx-Pampers-Warwick-PhD is a sign of emptiness.
Overall, Alvesson’s most delightful book suffers only one minor shortcoming, namely what the British philosopher Bauman (1987) calls “interpreters” rather than “legislators”. A German philosopher once diagnosed it as “philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it”. Perhaps one way of how to end Alvesson’s correctly identified grandiosity and emptiness and to move towards “Post-Managerial Living” (Klikauer, 2013) can be found in Gibson-Graham’s Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities published shortly after Alvesson’s most insightful book on emptiness. By and large, the perceived Triumph of Emptiness remains socially constructed. What people have done can be undone. As one of the world’s finest philosophers once said “it is only for those without hope that hope is given” (Walter Benjamin).
