Propaganda,Trusteeship,and Artifact: Locating a New Place for the Management Textbook

Abstract

Whether or not the management textbook qualifies as ideology and as propaganda has important implications for where the study of management can be located in an undergraduate college curriculum. This article contains a sketch of one way to use the concept of management practice as the focal point for an undergraduate course about pluralism in American society. In such a course, the study of management practice is not an end in itself but rather becomes a means to an end in each student’s quest to find an intellectual voice. This kind of critical study of management practice is enhanced by the way that Cameron, Ireland, Lussier, New, and Robbins sidestep the question of management textbooks as propaganda.

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