Read the book or attend a seminar? Charting ironies in how managers prefer to learn.

Access to the right information at the right time enables managers and the organizations for which they work to stay one step ahead of their competitors. Like any other hot commodity, information is packaged in a variety of ways. According to Crainer (1996), managers have a clear preference

No executive office is complete without a neatly arranged row of management bestsellers. They are as much a fixture as the family portrait and cynics might say, as much practical use. Research by the Management Training Partnership found that three-quarters of personnel directors buy at least four management books a year. But, only one in five are actually read. Tom Peters calculates that while over five million copies of his In Search of Excellence have been sold, only 100,000 or so readers have read it from cover to cover. As the books gather dust, executives absorb the latest big ideas at seminars and conferences. There can hardly be a manager in the western world who has not been to an event promoting a particular individual's view of how they should be managing their business. (p. 49)

Though interesting, Crainer's observation and others like it are limited in that they offer no explanation as to why it is that managers favor attending seminars and conferences in preference to reading.

In order to investigate this question, we conducted in-depth interviews with 22 managers regarding how they acquire a particular kind of business information: knowledge about popular management ideas (e.g., excellence, reengineering, Total Quality Management). We then analyzed transcripts of these interviews from a socio-semiotic framework. based upon that analysis, we argue that the way managers approach seminars and reading is more complex than the existing literature suggests. We contend that a rich, highly nuanced, and at times contradictory, semiotic code shapes how managers prefer to acquire information. In this paper, we identify the main features of this code, chart its regularities and inconsistencies, and tie it to exo-semiotic (i.e., cultural, economic, social) factors that influence managers' work and leisure. In doing so, we identify several ironies in how this code is used and understood, and point out how these ironies reflect and give rise to contradictory responses on the part of managers that provide them with the means to negotiate the conflicting demands placed upon them by the various competing value systems which govern and complicate their working and private lives.

Two key factors contributed to our decision to look at managerial preferences in consuming popular management ideas (as opposed to other forms of information). First, and most importantly with respect to our study, managers can access information about most (if not all) popular management ideas in book form or through seminar attendance. Other forms of information do not necessarily provide managers with these two options for access. (Though managers might be able to access the Internet, or other sources, for information that is also available in The Wail Street Journal, this kind of information often has a short shelf-life and thus does not lend itself to being disseminated in seminar format. In contrast, popular management ideas have a duration that more ephemeral kinds of information lack.) Second, popular management ideas permeate today's business climate. Given this pervasive presence, we expected (correctly) that all our interviewees would have come into contact with several popular management ideas during the course of their careers. This enabled us to ask our interviewees about their preferences in the packaging of a form of information known to all. In this way, we hoped to diminish idiosyncracies in reported preferences that were rooted in the kind of information consumed and not its packaging.

We begin our analysis by sketching the importance of popular management theories in the contemporary business world. We then describe how we obtained and conducted the interviews. Next, we outline the socio-semiotic theoretical framework with which we analyzed data drawn from the interview transcripts. We go on to chart the regularities, inconsistencies, and ironies of the code that, we argue, shapes managerial preferences for seminars over reading. We conclude by suggesting that the ironies of this code reflect an attempt on the part of the managers we interviewed to negotiate the conflicting demands that their working and private lives place upon them.

Popular Management Ideas

An ever-growing number of competing diagnostic tools and prescriptive models claim to give managers an edge in an increasingly competitive global marketplace: e.g., excellence, empowerment, intrapreneuring, reengineering, rightsizing, teamwork, Total Quality Management (TQM), and Theory Z. Currently, no single term is used in the popular and academic press to represent this array of concepts, which are variously (and often disparagingly) referred to as eclectic models (Guillen, 1994), fads (Shapiro, 1995), guru theory (Huczynski, 1993), innovations (Abrahamson, 1991), management fashions (Abrahamson, 1996), and management theory (Micklethwait & Wooldridge, 1997). In this study, we refer to these tools and models under the umbrella term of popular management ideas, which we define as possessing the following three characteristics: (a) they are expressed in the jargon of business, not the academy; (b) they are largely marketed and sold to those within the management community; and (c) they contain concepts, ideas, and techniques purported to improve organizational effectiveness.

Though some question the usefulness of popular management ideas (e.g., Nohria & Berkley, 1994), there is little doubt that these ideas have exerted a significant influence upon the way business is done today. These ideas have changed the size of organizations (through the implementation of downsizing, rightsizing) and the way they do business (by establishing teams and quality circles, through reengineering, etc.). The implications of such influence have been the focus of recent scholarly attention (e.g., studies on team discipline in self-managed teams such as Barker, 1993; Barker & Cheney, 1994). Another measure of the importance of popular management theory is the amount of money spent on them. Indeed, American management's search for business solutions has spawned a multi-billion dollar management theory industry. Nohria and Berkley (1994) report that the amount spent on management ideas in the form of consulting interventions, training programs, and business grew almost fivefold from just over $13 billion in 1982 to more than $60 billion in 1992.

To date, most scholarly studies of popular management ideas have investigated what might drive interest in a particular theory (Abrahamson, 1991, 1996; Crainer, 1996; Beyer & Trice, 1982; Freeman, 1985; Gill & Whittle, 1992; Horton, 1988; Huczynski, 1993; Kets de Vries & Miller, 1984; Nohria & Berkley, 1994). Our focus is upon the response of managers to the packaging (i.e., format of presentation) of popular management ideas, and not how they respond to the ideas (i.e., content) themselves.

Research Methods

This study was conducted over a five-month period. We selected participants using the snowball sampling strategy. This means of selection is a form of convenience sample in which one participant directs the researcher to another potential participant, who, in turn, directs the researcher to yet another potential participant, and so on (Lindlof, 1995). We asked executives we knew and who had already agreed to participate in our study to refer us to other executives within their organizations and industries. Because we were recommended to them by people they knew and respected, we were granted access and, more importantly, a portion of their valuable time. (The difficulty of gaining access to senior managers was underscored in discussions the first author had with two executives who took an interest in helping recruit participants. One executive cautioned: "These are very busy people." To which the other responded: "Getting a half an hour with a CEO is a coup d'etat. My secretary doesn't even get a half an hour of my time in a week.")

Our strategy yielded a total sample of 22 managers - 11 executives and 11 middle managers - from seven companies. The 11 executives included three CEOs, one president, four vice presidents, and three general managers. To ensure their anonymity, we refer to these managers by single letters and the organizations for which they work by double letters (e.g., Manager N, Company AA) to ensure the organizations' anonymity as well (see Table 1 for a summary of participants).

A potential weakness of a snowball sample such as ours is that it might reflect the biases of those upon whom we depended for referrals (Burgess, 1984). For research of the kind we report here, however, potential bias is not a critical concern. Identifying the elements of a semiotic code is similar to cataloging the vocabulary and charting the grammar that comprise a language. One need not have a large or representative sample to do so. For example, by observing the speaking habits of only a handful of speakers of American-English one can grasp the language's basic vocabulary and grammar. Additional observations of other speakers only serve to refine this basic understanding by increasing knowledge of the vocabulary and the intricacies of the grammar. Another potential problem with the kind of small unrepresentative samples generated through the snowball sampling strategy is that the data gathered from them might include much that is idiosyncratic. But then, any sample of American-English speakers, large or small, would reflect the individual and regional idiosyncracies of those included. The structures of semiotic codes, of which language is an example, can only be observed as they are partially realized in individual acts of discourse, which by their nature reflect and are situated within the habits, knowledge of the codes, etc. of the people involved.(1)

In order to gather preliminary information about how managers we interviewed read material about popular management ideas, we devised and distributed a questionnaire to all participants prior to interviewing them (see Appendix A). The interviews that followed, which lasted from thirty minutes to an hour, were recorded and transcribed. Each participant granted permission to record the interview. Because the interviewees reside in six different states, nine interviews were conducted in person and thirteen by phone. The face-to-face interviews were held in the interviewees' offices or a company conference room. The interviews were designed to let interviewees speak as fully as possible about their preferences. Though an interview schedule was used, the sequence of questions was flexible and varied with each interview.

Table 1

Profile of Managers Interviewed

Company          Manager           Position

Company AA(1)    Manager G   Finance Director for the Mid-Continent
                              Business Unit
                 Manager J   Manager of Business Support
                 Manager N   President of Refining and Marketing
                 Manager O   Environmental Director for the
                              Mid-Continent Business Unit
                 Manager P   Refinery Manager for the
                              Mid-Continent Business Unit
                 Manager S   General Manager for the U.S.
                              Mid-Continent Operations
                 Manager T   Manager of Transportation for
                              the Mid-Continent Business Unit

Company BB(2)    Manager A   Corporate Continuous Improvement
                              Coordinator
                 Manager C   President and CEO
                 Manager H   President and CEO (retired)
                 Manager L   Vice President of Systems Optimization
                 Manager M   Project Coordinator for the
                              Product Management Group
                 Manager R   General Manager of Transportation
                 Manager U   Material and Supply Coordinator

Company CC(3)    Manager B   Executive Vice President

Company DD(4)    Manager Y   President

Company EE(5)    Manager E   Team Leader

Company FF(6)    Manager D   Manager of Business Support
                 Manager V   CEO and Chairman of the Board
                 Manager W   General Manager
                 Manager X   Team Leader

Company GG(7)    Manager F   Vice President

1 A multi-national oil company that employs approximately 16,000
people in more than 30 countries around the world.

2 A major U.S. oil company that employs 5,000 persons.

3 A large multi-national oil corporation.

4 A large independent refiner and marketer in the Midwest.

5 A manufacturing company that employs 210 employees at six sites.

6 A multi-national transportation company.

7 A large investment firm.

The transcripts of these interviews were transcribed and then examined for recurrent themes by both of this paper's authors working independently of one another. When we compared preliminary findings, we found a surprisingly high degree of intersubjective agreement regarding the themes we identified within each transcript and within the transcripts as a whole. Once such recurring themes were identified, we sought to understand the relationships between them (that is to say, to discover what semiotic code governs and organizes them). To this end, we made additional copies of the transcripts and coded passages according to the themes they represented. Next, we cut up the transcripts and pasted the coded passages onto cards. Then, we placed together cards whose themes related to one another. This work was marked by a cyclical process: alone and then together, we looked for similar themes in order to identify relationships and clarified the relationships we discerned in light of the themes we had identified. This clarification involved three phases: coding and recoding the cards, identifying themes from careful scrutiny of the cards, and organizing those themes that related to one another in some way.

After conducting approximately a dozen interviews, we had reached a point in the data collection phase referred to by Glaser and Strauss (1967) as saturation; that is, we no longer extracted new themes from the data we gathered. At this point, we added a few additional questions to the interview schedule in an effort to tease out a more nuanced understanding of the themes already uncovered. When possible, we also re-contacted managers whom we had interviewed earlier in order to pose the new questions to them.

Socio-Semiotic Theory

According to Fiske (1990), there are two main approaches to the study of human communication. One sees communication as a linear or dialogic process, the other as the intersection of text (defined as any instance of communication, not only written work), reader (that is, someone who encounters a text), and culture. Most social scientific inquiry and much rhetorical criticism emphasize communication as process and thus focus upon the transmission of messages. In contrast, the semiotic approach to the study of human communication is primarily interested in examining the production and exchange of meaning which occurs as text, reader, and culture intersect with one another. In this study, we examine the intersection of the books/seminars used to promote popular management ideas (i.e., the texts), the managers who are their intended audience (as literal readers of printed material and as attendees at seminars), and the private and business lives of the managers (the culture/s of which shape the semiotic codes used by the managers to determine how the texts are consumed and interpreted). Below, we define those features of semiotic theory in general, and socio-semiotics in particular, that inform our study.

Semiotics

As defined by Eco (1976), "Semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign. A sign is everything that can be taken as significantly substituting for something else" (p. 7, emphasis in the original). Obvious examples of signs include traffic signals, paper currency, religious symbols, the words we use in speaking, and the letters we use in writing. Other examples of signs include such things as clothing and food, which not only cover and nourish our bodies, but also define occasions (e.g., as formal or informal) and indicate social status (e.g., blue collar as distinct from white collar). Much of the human artifactual and social world, then, is comprised of signs and is thus amenable to semiotic study. Semiotics has been used to analyze a wide range of artifacts and the social practices with which they are associated, including amusement parks (e.g., Gottdiener, 1995), films (e.g., Turner, 1990), occupational/organizational culture (e.g., Barley, 1983), professional wrestling (e.g., Barthes, 1972), television (e.g., Fiske, 1987), and urban spaces (e.g., Greimas, 1966).

Semiotics (or semiology as European scholars prefer to call it) traces its roots back to two turn-of-the-century thinkers: the Swiss structural linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1966), whose Course in General Linguistics was originally published in 1915, and the American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1991), whose writings on semiotics were published in several journals during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Working independently of one another around the turn of the twentieth century both scholars labored to establish a science of signs. The socio-semiotic approach that informs our analysis is an extension of the work of Peirce. For this reason, the definition and taxonomy of signs used in this paper are rooted in the work of Peirce.

Signs. The sign is the basic unit of semiotic analysis. As Gottdiener (1995) explains:

Peirce conceived of the sign as a three-part relation: a vehicle that conveys an idea to mind, which he called the representamen; another idea that interprets the sign, which he called the interpretant; and an object for which the sign stands. (p. 9; emphases in the original)

Peirce (1991) suggests that there are three types of signs: symbols, icons, and indices. A symbol is connected to its object through shared cultural practice; the connection between a symbolic sign and object is arbitrary. A dollar bill is an example of a symbolic sign; it has a specific worth only because we agree that it does. Corporate logos are another example of symbols. It is through shared cultural convention that we recognize McDonald's Golden Arches as representing a fast food franchise.

An icon partakes of some characteristic of its object; the connection between iconic sign and object is through resemblance. Examples of iconic signs are blueprints, diagrams, portraits.

An index has, as Fiske (1990) describes it, has "a direct existential connection with its object" (p. 47). Smoke is an index of fire; a moving weather vane of wind. Medical diagnoses, meteorological forecasts, and the findings of forensic science are all semiotic undertakings that rely upon the interpretation of indexical signs. The existential connection between an object and its representamen need not be physical, however. The social world is filled with indexical signs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is an index of the stock market's vitality, a diploma of one's education, a Mercedes of one's wealth. Of course, like other signs, these can be misleading. One can possess a diploma without being educated or a Mercedes without being wealthy. As Eco (1976) points out, "semiotics is in principle the discipline of studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth; it cannot in fact be used 'to tell' at all" (p. 7). The code that is the focus of our analysis is comprised primarily of indices (e.g., a company's willingness to pay for a manager to go to a seminar is frequently seen by our interviewees as an index of that manager's relative status within the company).

Codes. Signs are neither used nor understood in isolation from one another. As Turner (1990) explains, "Semiotics sees social meaning as the product of the relationships constructed between 'signs'" (p. 45). These relationships are organized according to codes. As defined by Fiske (1987), "A code is a rule-governed system of signs, whose rules and conventions are shared amongst members of a culture, and which is used to generate and circulate meanings in and for that culture" (p. 4). Codes indicate what is permitted and what is taboo. The culinary, linguistic, and sartorial conventions of any culture are examples of semiotic codes. For example, our culture's culinary code indicates which wine goes with which meat, while our sartorial code dictates what clothing is appropriate for what occasion (the tux required for a formal affair would be inappropriate for a family picnic).

The recognition of behavioral and affective regularity is common among interpretive theories. What makes semiotic theory unique, however, is that it redirects the researcher's attention from behavioral regularity to the code that shapes the behavior. In addition, semiotic inquiry frequently charts the inconsistencies inherent within the codes, which, as described by O'Sullivan. Hartley, Saunders, and Fiske (1983) "are, by their very nature, full of gaps and inconsistencies and subject to constant change" (p. 37). As a product of semiotic inquiry, our analysis identifies the code that governs the managerial preference we uncovered and charts inconsistencies in the application of that code. Because our work is informed by socio-semiotic theory, there is an additional dimension to our analysis.

Socio-Semiotics

Socio-semiotics is an extension of semiotic theory that has become increasingly influential during the past two decades. As defined by Gottdiener (1995), socio-semiotics "takes as its object of analysis the articulation of signs between systems and exo-semiotic processes of politics and economics" (p. 25). According to Gottdiener, four premises inform such inquiry. First, socio-semiotics sees signs as shaped by, and shaping, the cultural and material worlds of which they are a part. Second, the codes which organize and govern sign usage and interpretation are codifications of ideologies. Third, socio-semiotics recognizes the importance of lived experience and thus attempts to account for the interaction of the users and makers of signs within their social and material worlds. Finally, signs make possible and are made possible by social interaction.

Socio-semiotic inquiry differs from other forms of semiotic inquiry in that its primary focus is upon the connections between semiotic codes and the exo-semiotic socio-cultural reality that shapes and is shaped by them. That is, socio-semiotics does not look at semiotic codes as a self-contained system in isolation from other socio-cultural factors. Thus, in addition to identifying and charting the code that governs managerial preferences with respect to information acquisition, our analysis also seeks to explain how the code reflects the environment in which managers operate and shapes their response to that environment.

Charting the Code: Regularities, Inconsistencies, and Ironies

Without exception, every one of the managers we interviewed expressed a clear preference for obtaining information about popular management theories through seminar attendance as opposed to reading. This finding is in keeping with Crainer's (1996) observation, with which we opened this paper

The code shaping this preference contrasts the act of acquiring information through attending seminars with the act of acquiring information by means of reading. The word "seminar" is used by interviewees to cover of a number of group learning activities: conferences, teleconferences, and lectures. Interviewees "read" popular management in two different ways. In "reference reading," the managers quickly skim only those sections of a book that might have some bearing upon the work at hand. In "cover-to-cover reading," the reader selects a book with the purpose of gathering ideas of general usefulness that may or may not directly relate to a specific work project. This distinction between "reference reading" and "cover-to-cover reading" is one that the interviewees themselves make.

For the most part, the interviewees indicate that what they call "reference reading" is done in the office, while "cover-to-cover reading" (as they put it) is reserved for the areas outside the workplace. In contrast to "reference reading," "cover-to-cover reading" is perceived by managers to provide a broader perspective and more information regarding an issue. However, "cover-to-cover" reading requires a greater investment of time and interest on the part of managers than does "reference reading." "Cover-to-cover reading" is the form of reading against which managers contrast seminar attendance.

A review of the transcripts and surveys reveals that the managers interviewed say they acquire information about popular management ideas through both seminar attendance and reading books. All the interviewees reported attending seminars. Likewise, all the interviewees admit to reading at least one popular management book, though the number of books they said they read and the time they reported that they devoted to reading varied considerably from one respondent to another. The attributes managers assign to seminar attendance and to the act of reading are the basis of the code that is the focus of our analysis. As articulated by the managers, these attributes are viewed as sets of oppositional pairs, which we arrange and define as follows:

(1) Active versus passive: the styles of learning managers say they use to comprehend new information.

(2) Work-related versus leisure: the appropriateness or inappropriateness of reading books and attending seminars on company time.

(3) Social versus solitary: the process of learning new information in the company of others or alone.

(4) Status-enhancing versus status-detracting or status-neutral: the way reading books and attending seminars is perceived to lift or lower the status (i.e., social standing) of the person or organization who participates in these activities.

(5) Time-efficient versus time-inefficient: the perceived amount of time required to read a book or attend a seminar.

The pairing of oppositions such as those listed above is one means through which codes organize signs (i.e., generate shared meaning) (Greimas, 1966; Hawkes, 1977). In such codes, one sign comes to have meaning as it is contrasted with another (e.g., in a directional code, the notion of left has a meaning that contrasts with that of right, up with down).

Active Versus Passive

According to Salaman and Butler (1990), several assumptions made by management educators and trainers regarding the conditions under which managers learn have been largely accepted as fact. One of these assumptions is that managers prefer strategies of learning that are action-oriented. In describing this assumption, Salaman and Butler state that managers are said to learn best through experiential and active means. This view of managers and their training preferences has prompted trainers and consultants to fill their seminars with activities and exercises with obvious relevance to the learners' experience. Salaman and Butler, however, question the assertion that seminar attendance is a form of active learning. They contend that seminars, though viewed as active (in that they involve participants in doing things) might also be viewed as passive (in that participants expend little effort to apply the ideas to their own situations or problems).

In keeping with Salaman and Butler's (1990) observation, the managers we interviewed indicate that they perceive seminar attendance to be a more active and effective means of acquiring and assimilating information than reading, which is perceived by managers to be passive and less effective. This point is expressed by Manager O, who, when asked if he prefers to acquire information through reading or seminar attendance, states, "Assuming it is a good seminar, probably the seminar I would enjoy more." When asked why, Manager O explains, "Just because I think it is a more active way to learn. I think you probably tend to remember more." In assessing books as a means of acquiring information, Manager O states, "I'd say they are a less effective means of assimilating the information."

In discussing the balance scorecard, which is one of the newer ideas to be introduced by the management book industry, Manager B echoes the same sentiment:

I think in a day's seminar I can probably learn more about the balance score card than I can by reading the book. For a start, with live personal contact more of your senses are involved in the communication. Which is a better way to communicate.

Manager B gives the following example of how active learning techniques used in seminars helped him remember and use one popular management theory on the job:

Blake Mouton, it wasn't the book. I mean I went to their management grid course, which used to be widely distributed. I went for two weeks to a live in. I lived/slept the management grid for two weeks. I guess I probably put 4 or 5 collective weeks in over the years of management training on the Hersey stuff. And then some stuff by McBur, McBear, or however you pronounce their [sic] name. I hear it said every kind of way - McBer. Which was sort of a follow-on in many ways to Hersey. So it is not so much reading books. It really has been going to - courses is probably not the right word - but I don't know what you call them. But where you actually experience the idea. The idea is presented and argued and debated among a group of executives. I couldn't recite to you the Blake Mouton book, but I can still draw the grid and I can explain to you where it is and I can look at the quadrants and all that stuff. But that probably is a measure of whether the idea stayed with me. The idea has. I can even remember the author in this case, which is very rare. Most things I have collected in my rusty old computer I couldn't tell you who the author was.

Put simply, in keeping with the findings of management studies, Manager O and Manager B both see seminars as a more dynamic and effective means of learning than reading.

However, Manager B's and Manager O's statements suggest one of the ironies of the code shaping their preference for seminars. First, the managers told us that they prefer seminars because they are a less time-consuming, and thus more efficient, means of acquiring information. And yet, they state that they are willing to devote hours, whole days, and even weeks to acquire information that might have been acquired just as easily in a few hours worth of reading. (We will explore this temporal irony more thoroughly later.) There is another irony worth mentioning at this point, though. Managers say they are willing to invest so much time because they believe that the seminar format is more active than reading, and thus better facilitates their learning. And yet, with rare exceptions such as that of Manager B (cited above), most of the managers interviewed were easily able to describe many of the activities they participated in while attending seminars but were often hard-pressed to recount what it was they were supposed to have learned from these activities.

Work-Related Versus Leisure

The managers interviewed indicate that they see seminar attendance as a work-related activity. This perception is based, in part, on the fact that the lectures, seminars, and teleconferences managers attend are both sanctioned and financed by the companies for which they work. Companies pay for the cost of seminar registration, transportation to seminars, and membership fees for the associations that organize seminars. Moreover, often, but not always, seminars are held during traditional work times (i.e., Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.) and are sometimes conducted on work premises (if not some other business-oriented environment). Managers are permitted, even encouraged, to spend hours, days, and sometimes weeks away from the job in order to learn about new ideas and develop managerial skills at the expense of their companies.

Regardless of whether a seminar lasts for days or weeks, is held at a university, hotel conference room, or in the managers' offices, a seminar is still coded by our interviewees as work-related, attendance at which is thus indexically related to work. A comment offered by Manager B illustrates this point:

I go to courses at places like Harvard. And I will take two weeks off. In fact, six months ago I did take two weeks off and attended a course for very senior executives at Harvard where I listened to the ideas of the latest thinking - particularly this was a marketing thing - I guess from some of the best business professors in the world. I guess Harvard would be right up there. And I read all the casework that went with that course as a means of kind of forcing myself to stay current. I really don't see any other way I can do it I think reasonably but to just take myself out of the office and go someplace where I devote a week or two weeks to intellectual pursuits I guess. It is really updating myself just to make sure that I am not missing trends.

The coding of seminar attendance as work-related may explain the popularity of the seminar as a way of packaging information. As the interviewees explain, in seminars they are able to acquire knowledge without incurring personal expense or squandering personal time; their companies foot the bill and free up the work time needed to attend seminars. Ironically, the two weeks Manager B spent away from the office attending a seminar were also two weeks he spent away from his family and home (a fact he did not comment upon). The encroachment on his personal time was greater than if he had spent a few hours reading the same material at home

In contrast to the views expressed above regarding seminar attendance (active, work-related), the coding of popular management theory book reading by the interviewees is more complex. Though the subcode of seminar attendance remains constant over changes in time and place, the subcode of reading is highly context specific. When the context changes, the application of the code changes: when managers are at work, their reading of popular management texts is coded as a leisure activity (i.e., they say it is not productive); when they are at home, their reading is coded as work (i.e., they say it is not fun - in fact, many managers told us that while on vacation they enjoy reading fiction and other escapist literature); and when they are in airports or hotels on business trips, reading is once again coded as work (perhaps because such places are liminal - betwixt and between, neither home nor work - reading in such places, where observed productivity is not expected, is viewed by those we interviewed as a work-related activity). Reading, then, is a boundary-spanning activity.

The managers we interviewed code reading on the job as a leisure activity, they say, because it does not produce an immediate tangible result, nor is it a service or a recognizable managerial function. It is not, in their view, obviously (and, we might add, indexically) related to work. A comment offered by Manager F illustrates this point:

It looks odd to walk by an office and see someone with their [sic] head staring down and reading as opposed to what appears to be more productive work action-wise. That may not be the case, but that is perception.

And a negative perception it is. When Manager F was asked what he would think about an employee who read management books on the job, he responded, "I would probably think that they [sic] have nothing to do. . . . That's unfortunate, but that's perception."

Manager R observes that in the context of his company culture, reading on the job is associated with "idleness" and "unproductivity." As he puts it, "If you take time to read books on the job you are looked on as a slacker or that you are not completing your primary tasks." A similar point is expressed by Manager M, who, when asked how the reading of a popular management book is perceived in his company, stated:

Probably not very positively. And I think there again, the [organizational] culture is such that "Gee, you should be doing that kind of frivolous thing stuff on your own time." I mean it would be viewed kind of in terms of you need to be performing the tasks we pay you to do. And reading a book on company time is not one of those things. I mean even though it is something that you are probably gaining some knowledge from.

According to manager O, reading at his workplace is coded this way:

In the overall [Company AA] culture I would say it would be looked upon negatively. This may be something not totally appropriate for work hours. That is a little bit of a grey area. It kind of depends on the situation. But I would say generally it would be a negative.

As the comments above indicate, the representamen, the act of reading in the office, is indexically associated by the managers we interviewed with such terms as "frivolous," "unproductive," "inappropriate," "negative," and "slacker." The rules that govern these associations are culturally specific. In other words, the act of reading a popular management book is interpreted through a system of rules that are part of each organization's culture. In the organizations whose managers participated in this study, it is implicitly understood that the reading of books in the office is taboo. As Manager R puts it, "Reading just isn't done. . . . Tradition does not lend itself to having someone read at their [sic] desk. That is traditionally frowned upon."

This traditional proscription against reading popular management books at the workplace governs the reading habits of the managers interviewed. Indeed, almost all of the interviewees admit that they refrain from reading popular management books in their offices. As Manager L explains, "I don't feel comfortable reading a book in the office - especially with the glass wall that I have." When asked if he would read books in an office without a glass wall, he responded: "No, this is the first year that I've had a glass wall and I don't think I have ever really read books in the office." This comment illustrates the degree to which this manager has been enculturated into the anti reading-in-the-workplace bias of the organization for which he works.

The only time most of the managers interviewed confessed to reading popular management books in their offices was when they were referring to them in order to gain some insight regarding a current project (i.e., "reference reading"). For example, when Manager S was asked whether he felt guilty about reading a book on the job, he responded:

Well, if I have a particular problem, I will use a book as a reference. I may have three or four books out where I am getting reference materials, for example, if I have to make a presentation. But to sit and read one cover-to-cover . . . I generally don't read them cover-to-cover anyway. If I have a specific need about something, I'll go find it, and I'll do that at the office. But many times that's because I am getting ready to make a presentation or getting ready to engage a group in a discussion about something.

As noted earlier, the reading of popular management theory books is a code governed activity. The code that shapes the way books are consumed in most of the organizations included in this study could be stated as follows: reference reading is an index of work, and therefore it is permitted in the work place, but cover-to-cover reading is an index of unproductiveness and frivolousness, and hence it is prohibited (or, at the very least, strongly frowned upon).

During the course of this study we did find an organization (i.e., Company EE) in which this coding of at-work reading was absent (though this absence was temporary). Indeed, of the seven organizations included in our study, Company EE was the only organization which (at one time) actively encouraged workplace reading through a formal book reading program in which one hour every week was set aside for the reading of books, in a group setting, on company time. The implementation of the book program on the part of Company EE's management was a self-conscious decision that deliberately ran counter to the traditional prohibition against reading books at work (and thus recognized the code prohibiting reading by breaching it). All employees, and not just managers, were a part of the reading program. Eventually, however, the program was abandoned because managers determined that it left employees insufficient time to complete more ostensibly work-related tasks. As Manager E puts it, "We kind of ran out of time doing that [reading]."

We also discovered a manager who admitted to violating the prohibition against reading books at work. General Manager R professes to read books openly in his office, even though he acknowledges that such reading is taboo in his company's culture. As he explains, the reading of books is a conscious decision on his part to effect change in his department. The message that Manager R hopes his reading communicates to employees is that "it is OK to think and be stimulated at work. In fact, that is what we pay you for." Manager R might be granted the license to read at work because he is highly placed and well respected. In Manager R's view, the restriction against reading is ironic. As he explains:

We don't reward that behavior [thinking]. Isn't it paradoxical that we are paying them [employees] to think, yet we don't give them time. We are raised to believe that appreciating "busy" is important. Yet thinking is what is important. That's what we ought to promote and reward. Reading books and stimulating thinking - we don't reward those kind of practices. We don't think it is value-added to read books on our time.

These two exceptional cases demonstrate that the decision to allow reading popular management books at the office on company time is recognized by those who do so as a break with traditional office protocol. This recognition serves to underscore the pervasiveness of the very code they break.

While the act of reading popular management books in the office is coded as a leisure activity, the reading of these same books at home or on vacation is considered by interviewees to be work. The shift occurs through a redefining (i.e., receding) of "reading" on the part of the manager based upon the context in which the reading takes place. At the workplace, the representamen that is being interpreted is the act of reading, while at home, the representamen that is being interpreted is the content of the book. Because the content of popular management idea books is work-related, the reading of these books at home is perceived to be a work-related activity. In much the same way, the content of fiction books is leisure-related, and thus the managers code the reading of these books as a leisure activity. Interviewees, then, who read books at home or on vacation with the intent of escaping the pressures and problems encountered during the workweek told us they prefer books with leisure content and shun books with work-related content. For example, when Manager C was asked how often he read popular management books, he responded:

Not often. . . . Now that doesn't mean that I haven't read management books. It is not something I regularly do on a monthly basis. My book reading I use for diversion from what I do every day from a business standpoint. That means I will read fiction or non-fiction that is totally unrelated to what I am doing how many hours a day I work a week. So I don't read a lot of management books.

This comment indicates that, for some managers at least, the negative coding of certain kinds of reading is not due to an aversion to the act of reading itself. As the following excerpt reveals, Manager L also prefers fiction because, he says, it allows him to escape:

If I read four [business] books a year, I would be surprised. I tend to do more reading of articles or pieces of books rather than read books cover-to-cover. But I read a lot of books that are non-business related as an escape. So I do enjoy reading.

When asked in a follow-up question whether business books are an escape, Manager L stated:

Well, they're an escape over some other things. I mean there are levels. As an example, if I were taking a business trip to California, I might be reading a business book while I was going out rather than just going through my in-box. If I was going on a vacation with my wife, I probably would not read a business book because I would be trying to escape totally.

This comment emphasizes the importance context plays in the coding of reading.

The managers we interviewed claim to do most of their reading about popular management ideas in airports and in hotel rooms while on business trips. The reason for this practice, they explain, is twofold. First, going on a business trip is considered by the interviewees and the organizations that employ them to be a work activity. Second, the act of reading such books or business trips, based upon their content, is labeled by the interviewees as work-related when it takes place outside the office. Because the label applied to reading matches the one applied to making a business trip, interviewees say they feel comfortable, and even enjoy, reading popular management books in airports or in hotels. In short, while at work, the very practice of reading is viewed as a leisure activity, while at home and in airports/hotels, the content of a book determines whether the reading of it is coded as work or leisure.

Up to this point, our discussion of this feature of the code has focused on how the application of the code changes as the context in which books are read changes. In the remainder of this section, we explore in greater detail an irony that we only touched upon before: while managers are permitted to acquire knowledge through seminar attendance on company time, they are prohibited from acquiring the same knowledge through reading on company time, even though both forms of information are ostensibly used for the betterment of the organization.

This ironic feature of the code does much to influence the amount of popular management idea books managers say they read. Many of the managers interviewed stated that they only infrequently read popular management books because they lack the time to do so. Managers lack the time to read, they say, because they are discouraged from reading at work and are disinclined to read popular management theory books at home. Manager F came to recognize the implications of this dilemma while being interviewed. When asked why he does not read books in the office, he replied, "If I am in my office I think I should be doing other things versus reading, which I can do on personal time. Of course that means that I have no personal time."

In contrast to book reading, managers are permitted, even encouraged, to attend seminars during the workday. Thus, seminars enable managers to acquire knowledge without seeming to squander personal time (though, as we noted earlier, seminar attendance sometimes takes managers away from home for days or weeks at a time). When reading about popular management ideas while away from the office, however, managers say they resent using their leisure time to learn what they perceive to be work-related information. Thus, the coding of seminar attendance as work and reading in the office as leisure shapes the choices managers make regarding how they acquire information. If managers read any popular management books at all, they say they do so while on business trips or (reluctantly) in their own homes. Given that most interviewees complain of having little time for any form of leisure activity due to their demanding work obligations (a point that will be discussed in the section on time efficient versus time inefficient), the interviewees state they are predisposed to acquiring information in a way that does not impose upon their leisure time. The contradiction in the way reading at work and attending seminars is coded influences managers' preference for attending seminars over reading popular management books.

Social Versus Solitary

According to Mintzberg (1975), "Managers strongly favor the verbal [oral] media - namely, telephone calls and meetings" (p. 52). That managers prefer oral means of acquiring and disseminating information has been noted by several scholars (e.g., Davis & Luthans, 1980; Huczynski, 1993; Mintzberg, 1975, 1994; Stewart, 1976). Stewart (1976), for example, states that "management is a verbal [oral] world whose people are usually instructed, assisted and persuaded by personal contact rather than on paper" (p. 92). In summing up such work, Huczynski (1993) argues that managers find the ideas of management writers more accessible when they hear them in person than when they read their books.

Our study supports such observations. The managers interviewed indicate that they perceive seminar attendance to be a social and, therefore, a more enjoyable (as well as effective) means of acquiring information than reading, which is perceived by managers to be a solitary (and less effective) process. For example, when asked why he preferred attending seminars over reading books, Manager O responded: "You have the interpersonal interactions there just to make it more meaningful and sink in a little more." When asked to comment on the act of reading, he stated: "It is just a less effective means of assimilating the information." In short, interviewees perceive that the kind of interaction with others facilitated by seminars facilitates the process of learning.

The managers interviewed identified two levels of interaction present in seminars but absent in book reading. First, they say, there is the opportunity at seminars for those attending to interact with the speaker through question and answer sessions. As Manager R explains, "When you read about ideas, it is a monologue; when you hear a speaker, it is a dialogue, because you can ask questions and the speaker asks you questions." Interestingly, even if managers do not have the opportunity to directly interact with the speaker (as is the case in some teleconference seminars, for example), the process of hearing the speaker present ideas in person is still viewed as more interactive than reading. This point is expressed by Manager M, who states:

I have done it both ways: where the presenter is actually there or maybe it is a satellite hook-up. I think that is probably the most common of the ones I have been to lately where you've got several presenters. You're sitting in a big room and it is just like a satellite feed. Those aren't quite as interactive as if the person is actually there. But either way, you just feel like there is some give and take and that kind of reinforces what you are there to learn.

The notion that seminar attendance is more interactive than reading in that it facilitates dialogue between presenter and participant is in some instances paradoxical. Dialogue between presenter and participant is not always a given; the degree to which presenters interact with participants is a product of the structure of the seminar and the style of the speaker.

In addition, the quality of the interaction between participant and presenter is perceived to be more effective pedagogically than that which typifies the relationship between author and reader. According to Manager G, hearing an author speak is more "inspirational" than reading the author's book - so much so, in fact, that Manager G uses the lecture as a litmus test for deciding whether to purchase and read the book the author discusses. As he explains:

The thing that really inspires me more than anything else is if I have an opportunity to hear the author speak. The way that person comes across gives me an indication of the types of things they may write about or the perspectives they might have.

In discussing managers' preference for seminar attendance, Huczynski (1993) observes that seminars enable attenders to become "immersed' in the speaker's personality. In other words, the speaker's performance itself is valued in addition to the ideas presented. To sum up, learning approaches coded as effective by the interviewees are those in which there is the potential for interpersonal/social interaction. The perception that seminar attendance affords participants the opportunity to interact with the presenter and that the quality of that interaction is higher because it is personal shapes managers' preference for learning via seminar attendance.

The second, way seminar attendance is perceived to be more interactive is that it affords attenders with the opportunity to converse with other managers. Seminars are often designed to facilitate such interaction among attenders through planned times for networking and by dividing attenders into small groups that discuss the ideas presented in the lectures. During these discussions, ideas presented in the lectures are discussed, problems are defined, and potential solutions are offered.

Seminar attendance is the preferred over reading because, the interviewees say, they associate such interaction with others with effective instruction and learning. A comment offered by Manager R exemplifies this point:

At intermission you can go out and talk about some of the ideas that have been presented. When you are talking about specific subjects, it helps to add color and richness to the ideas when you can talk about them with your peers. It helps you get more in depth.

Manager R goes on to say that "it is easier to learn in a group because the conversations with others stimulates perspectives and ideas that you wouldn't get by yourself." Seminar attendance, then, is perceived by most of the interviewees to be a social process, and thus a more enjoyable and effective way to learn.

One contingent of managers from Company EE are an exception to this rule. As a result of the implementation of a plant-wide reading program, these managers have come to conceptualize reading as a potentially social experience. In this program, employees from the entire plant gathered together for one hour per week to publicly read and discuss popular management books. The managers who participated in these group readings say that they created a context that facilitates personal growth and organizational commitment. The findings in this study are consistent with claims advanced in the current literature cited earlier: Managers prefer oral means of acquiring and disseminating information. The managers we interviewed code seminar attendance as a more effective means of learning because it is interactive. Those managers who stated that they find reading to be an equally effective means of acquiring information say they conceive of reading as a social process, but this is an exception to the general view.

Status-Enhancing Versus Status-Detracting or Status-Neutral

Another reason managers say they prefer seminars to reading is because they see seminars as enhancing their status. This enhancement of status is indexically linked to the cost of seminars. The cost of a seminar is considerably more expensive than the price of a popular management book, many of which are available in inexpensive paperback editions. Indeed a seminar conducted by a book's author can cost from $10,000 to $50,000 (or more), while the cost of the author's book ranges from a mere $5 to $25. Rather than making seminars an unattractive means of acquiring information, however, their expense actually makes them more desirable because the ability to pay for and attend a seminar is a form of conspicuous consumption that is valued by members of the business community.

As defined by Veblen (1948), conspicuous consumption is a way of publicly displaying wealth, and thus displaying the status associated with wealth. Hence, the ability of an organization to bring in an expensive consultant to conduct a seminar is a means of displaying that company's financial wealth and status. By extension, when managers attend a seminar they are seen, by themselves and others, as being important enough in the life of their successful organization to be selected to attend such an expensive and time-consuming event. Their attendance, then, is an index of their statues. In this way, seminar attendance enhances the reputation of the attender. As Stuller (1992) observes:

Executives and their companies have made the frontline gurus rich and famous. Bringing in a consultant was once a shameful state secret: Now, the hiring of a well-known guru is trumpeted by executives, not unlike Hollywood types who appear on Entertainment Tonight to brag about their new personal trainer or a month long stay at the Betty Ford Clinic. (p. 21-22)

The following comments, by Manager B, illustrate seminar attendance as conspicuous consumption and status-enhancing. First, Manager B stresses his organization's ability to afford the best (i.e., conspicuous consumption):

Hammer [the reengineering guru]. And once again, we had him in here personally. Having got titillated, we had him in here personally and all senior management sat through his seminar. And we actually paid Hammer to come. And that's typically what we do. . . . We pay them the 50 grand or whatever it is to come spend the day with us.

In this excerpt, Manager B discusses his own attendance at seminars in a way that emphasizes the status-enhancing elements of such attendance: their cost, the prestige of the presenter, the fact that senior management attended. In other comments, Manager B highlighted the status-enhancing features of another seminar he attended: the status of others attending, "very senior executives"; the location, Harvard, which is regarded as one of the most prestigious American institutions of higher learning; and the reputation of the seminar speakers, "some of the best business professors in the world."

In contrast to seminar attendance, the reading of popular management books as a mode of information acquisition is coded by our interviewees as status-detracting. Those who read are seen as time-wasters whose attention ought to be upon business and not books. According to Manager H,

It also has been my experience that the guys that have the time to sit around and read three or four books a week, usually those were the companies that I sure like to go after because they really weren't minding their business. . . . It has been my experience that most of the managers, or CEOs, or presidents, or COOs or even managers of functions including in my time at [an oil company] and at [another oil company] as well as running Company BB, the guys that spend all of their time studying or trying to manage some type of new idea that they read in some textbook usually were the most unsuccessful and usually the kind of people we tried to avoid because they got in the way. They didn't seem to have the intuitive feel or the experience; they always thought that there was something in a book that would help them. And that was the way they tried, I think, tried to develop some type of expertise. And it comes across many times as superficial. Usually people can tell that or smell it.

As the statements cited above suggest, the managers we interviewed expressed an open contempt for the act of reading about popular management ideas that stands in stark contrast to the positive feelings expressed earlier regarding seminar attendance. Reading is seen by managers as a waste of time (done by those who are not important enough to have something better to do), though managers are enthusiastic about attending prolonged seminars. In addition, management ideas acquired through the act of reading are coded as ineffectual, while the same ideas are coded as valuable and insightful when acquired through seminar attendance.

Time-Efficient Versus Time-Inefficient

According to the managers interviewed, the chief barrier in acquiring knowledge of any new concept or technique is lack of time. Senior managers in particular reported having many responsibilities that make significant demands on their time. They not only have obligations within their organizations - such as strategy setting, dealing with acquisitions and mergers, staying abreast of market conditions, and managing the business - but they also have many obligations that are external to the organizations for which they work. Senior managers sit on boards of other companies, charitable organizations, and schools. They have personal and family obligations. Moreover, changes in the structures of many organizations due to downsizing, delayering, and reengineering have placed even greater demands on managers' time. As Manager B explains: "Managers are buster today than yesterday. In the industry we're in, there are fewer people. And with the downsizing, we're all pressed more than we've ever been pressed." Manager B goes on to say that "these days I get virtually no time to do anything else but [my company's] business." In common with most of the executives and middle managers interviewed for this study, Manager B reports working from 60 to 80 hours a week. Time constraints due to the demands of their jobs as well as other responsibilities dictate that managers acquire management information as efficiently as possible.

The managers interviewed indicate that they perceive seminar attendance to be a more time-efficient means of obtaining information than reading. As Manager M states,

You can spend one day at a seminar and feel like you have covered more territory than if you read through the book. It is hard for me to find time to sit down and read straight through a book in one day. If you feel like you can get comparable information or at least a distillation of it in a short time at a seminar and come away with a similar result, that is another advantage for the seminar

In addition to Manager M, over a dozen of the other interviewees cited time constraints as the chief reason for not reading more books about popular management ideas.

This feature of the code is filled with irony. The interviewees say that seminars are a less time-consuming than reading, and thus a more efficient means of acquiring information; yet, they report devoting hours, whole days, and even weeks (see Manager B's comments in the section entitled "Work-Related Versus Leisure") to the acquisition of information through attending seminars that might as easily have been acquired in a few hours worth of reading. Indeed, reading might be a more efficient means of acquiring knowledge, especially given that the vast majority of interviewees report skimming and skipping sections of books they deem irrelevant or useless. One cannot skip or skim at a seminar, however. This advantage is noted by Manager R: "I can do it [read] at my time; I can filter out the irrelevant. I can skip over the parts that are irrelevant. I can go back and reread complicated concepts. It gives me more freedom to do what I want to do." Manager R comment suggests that the control managers have over how and when a book is read should make reading a more time efficient means of learning than participating in a seminar in which the attender has considerably less control over when and how learning is accomplished.

In depicting his frustration about the limited control seminar attenders typically exercise over the process of learning in such a setting, Manager R offers an example of how he defied expected protocol and fired a consultant whose message he perceived to be irrelevant:

I threw her out of a seminar. I had invited her down to give a seminar which was absolutely irrelevant. And I was hoping that we'd find some more effective techniques to get more participation in teams. She couldn't answer the question and went on about some dribble about what they did at Johnsonville, which is a very small business. And I was expecting some creative and innovative ways to get under-performing teem members to perform at eagle levels. She had no solutions. And in fact just went on with some cliches and rhetoric. . . . She talked about old line managers. The way you came up was by being the toughest, and the biggest, and the baddest buffalo. And that you could no longer lead being a tough buffalo and make it in today's world. You have to be more of a duck or a goose was the analogy because they change leadership when they are flying. I just thought it was an inane principle. So we ran her out. I had thirty people. I paid over $3,000 for her to come here for one day. And I thought it was a tremendous waste of time. So I just paid her and got her out of there. The point here is we spend a tremendous amount of time and money and we knew in the first hour that it is going to be irrelevant. And you owe the audience the respect to take up their time with value-added information, not irrelevancies.

Manager R's account of firing a consultant is unusual. Indeed, none of the other managers we interviewed report having dismissed a consultant. In fact, Manager R believes that most managers would have felt committed to sit and listen docilely to the consultant, wasting valuable time on irrelevant material. Skipping a session in a seminar or firing a consultant is considerably more difficult than skipping a chapter in a book. In short, the coding of seminar attendance as a more time-efficient means of acquiring information is ironic given the limited control managers might exercise over selection and scheduling of seminars and the amount of time seminars take.

Conclusion

The information business people rely upon to be competitive is packaged in a variety of ways. As consumers of such information, this study's interviewees, in keeping with Crainer's (1996) observation, express a clear preference for one form of packaging (seminar attendance) over another (reading). In accordance with the code shaping this preference, they perceive seminar attendance to be a more effective, time-efficient, and status-enhancing mode of acquiring management information than reading, which, regardless of its relative merit, is deemed to be status-detracting, less effective, and less efficient. As we have noted, these perceptions are filled with ironies (e.g., seminars, though more time-consuming than the act of reading, are perceived to be more time-efficient). One irony we have not as yet pointed out is that the demands of the working world are products of choices made by managers and their peers to adopt, even embrace, certain ideas. In the words of Manager B, "Managers are busier today than yesterday. In the industry we're in, there are fewer people. And with the downsizing, we're all pressed more than we've ever been pressed." The managerial decision to downsize has created a poverty of time for those left in organizations and a greater need for knowledge to guide them through the hectic business climate they themselves have created.

We suggest that the ironies we have identified in this paper reflect an attempt on the part of the managers whom we interviewed to negotiate the complicated and contradictory demands of their working and private lives. This attempt relies upon the implicit knowledge the managers possess of the code we have described and their sophisticated application of it. On the surface, it would seem illogical for managers to prefer seminar attendance to reading as the best means of obtaining information: reading is less expensive than attending seminars; reading an entire book takes less time than that devoted to most seminars, and is thus more efficient (though it is not perceived to be so by those we interviewed); in addition, managers are able to exercise greater control over the reading process (by skipping and skimming and concentrating upon only relevant information) than they enjoy with respect to seminars. When we look beneath the surface, however, we can see some of the reasons why it is that managers prefer seminars despite the fact that they are more expensive, less efficient, and less controllable than the act of reading.

We argue that, in light of the code we have described in this paper, the choices mangers make regarding how they obtain information enable them to define their activities and themselves and to satisfy needs that are not related to information gathering. For example, by coding "cover-to-cover" information-gathering reading as a leisure activity when done at the workplace (and thus proscribed) and a form of work while at home (and viewed, therefore, as an unattractive use of time), managers relegate this activity to, and define it as acceptable in, liminal times and places (e.g., airports, travel, hotel rooms) in which very little is expected of them in the way of professional productivity or interpersonal relationships. Coded in this way, the act of "cover-to-cover" reading is moved to the margins of most managers' lives. And yet, the need for the information still exists. This leaves a vacuum that is filled by seminar attendance (which is coded as having more legitimacy than reading). As we noted earlier, through such attendance managers define themselves, their place within the organizations for which they work, and their organizations' relative position with respect to other organizations. In a seminar setting, these definitions are enacted periodically and publicly, while reading is frequently (though not always) a solitary activity.

The social nature of seminar attendance has other implications as well. In many respects, they are conducted like religious revival meetings, as an article in The Economist notes:

Today's management gurus [those who write and present seminars about popular management ideas] are not so much latterday Buddhas as would-be Billy Grahams. They deal in tub thumping certainties rather than calm reflection; and think nothing of ranting and raving, shouting and imploring, in order to ram their point home. That theological point, when you disentangle it from the neo-scholasticism about "re-engineering the accounts department" or "realising the potentialities of video-conferencing" is a parody of evangelical sermons: "Listen and your company will be saved; ignore me and it will go the way of all the others, down the tube." ("A continent without," 1994, p. 62)

Seminar presenters are as much preachers as they are teachers, perhaps even more so. In attending their productions, managers seek more than information, they seek inspiration. And they seek it in the company of others with whom they share common interests and common goals. Some of the managers we spoke to say that they leave the charismatic presentations and communal atmosphere of seminars with more energy, more enthusiasm, and greater dedication (though it is questionable how long those feelings last). None reported feeling the same after having finished reading a book.

Of course, we acknowledge that much of the definitional activity we have just described is, in all likelihood, not consciously engaged in by managers. That is, managers do not think to themselves, "If I defined seminar attendance in such-and-such a way, I would enjoy certain benefits." Instead, we suggest that managers interpret their participation in seminars in accordance with a semiotic code that is implicitly understood by managers. Just as speakers of American English have some knowledge of the language's structure, grammar, and vocabulary, they are often hard-pressed to make this knowledge explicit - that is, they might know what words go where without being able to explain the rule governing such usage. In much the same way, though the managers we interviewed demonstrated a rich and detailed knowledge of the code governing their preference for seminars, this knowledge was implicitly understood and was expressed through anecdotes, value statements, and personal observations rather than through explicit articulation of the code and its rules. Making explicit that which is implicit is one of the goals of socio-semiotic inquiry such as that reported here.

Our study points to the need for more research into the ways in which managers prefer to acquire the information they need to do their jobs. The focus of this paper has been upon the preferred means of becoming educated about popular management ideas. We wonder if the prohibition against reading texts about popular management ideas while at the workplace extends to other forms of business reading (e.g., The Wall Street Journal). If not, why not? Perhaps such reading, which is done quickly and involves much skipping, is perceived to be yet another form of "reference reading." We also think it would be especially fruitful to chart the reading habits of middle-managers and ground-level managers. Perhaps ambitious people at these levels of management code reading management texts differently, in part because they see it as a means of upward mobility and in part because they are not as likely to obtain the same information while attending the kinds of prolonged and expensive seminars frequented by upper-level managers such as those we interviewed (and, indeed, do not always have the choice of doing so). We suspect that the codes governing the preferences of these managers differ in several significant ways from those that govern the preferences of upper management. We argue that the careful study of these codes will also prove to be as worthwhile as the one reported here.

NOTES

1. Saussure (1966) draws a distinction between individual acts of discourse, which he labels la Parole (i.e., speech), and the structure which shapes those individual acts and gives them meaning, which he refers to as la Langue (i.e., language). Barthes (1968) defines la Langue as "both an institution and a system" (p. 14) and la Parole as "an individual act of selection and actualization" of that institution/system (p. 15). A casual conversation between two friends is an instance of la Parole, while the syntax governing their sentences and the meanings attached to the words they use, as well as the words themselves, is shaped by la Langue. The conversation, as an instance of la Parole, can be observed and recorded, while the existence of la Langue can only be inferred inductively based upon such observation, because the entire range of the structural and semantic possibilities of la Langue are never realized explicitly but are implicit in the specific instances of discourse that constitute la Parole.

Sonya Pagel is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Seattle Pacific University.

Robert Westerfelhaus is a doctoral candidate in the School of Interpersonal Communication at Ohio University. Send correspondence to him at Lasher Hall, Ohio University, Athens, OH 47501 <westerfe@oak.cats.ohiou.edu>

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Appendix A: Questionnaire

1. On average, how many popular management books do you read over a six-month period (fill in number).

_____ books per six months

2. About how many hours per week do you read management books?

_____ 0-1 hours _____ 1-2 hours _____ 2-4 hours _____ 2-6 hours _____ 6-10 hours _____ 10 hours or more

3. Where do you get most of your popular management books (Rank order 3 of the items below, "1" being the greatest source).

_____ a. bookstore _____ b. library _____ c. given by or borrowed from your boss _____ d. given by or borrowed from a co-worker _____ e. given or borrowed to you by a professional in another company

4. How often do you discuss popular management books with others in your organization?

_____ a. never _____ b. rarely _____ c. sometimes _____ d. often _____ e. very often

5. How often do you discuss popular management books with managers or executives outside your organization?

_____ a. never _____ b. rarely _____ c. sometimes _____ d. often _____ e. very often

6. Which of the following best describes what usually makes you select a particular popular management book? (check as many as best apply)

_____ a. It's been recommended _____ b. I like the title _____ c. I've read about the book in a magazine or newspaper _____ d. The publisher's blurb on the book makes it sound interesting and useful _____ e. I've heard it discussed at work _____ f. I like the author's work or reputation _____ g. Other (please specify) _______________

7. What is the title of the popular management book you have most recently read or are currently reading?

_______________________________________________

8. What are your three "all time" favorite popular management books?

a. ____________________________________________ b. ____________________________________________ c. ____________________________________________

9. Rank the following reasons for reading management books in order of importance to you, with "1" being the most important reason.

_____ stay abreast on current management trends _____ to solve organizational problems _____ enhance organizational performance _____ entertainment _____ share ideas with employees _____ required by my boss

10. What other materials do you use which contain management information? (check as many as you like.)

_____ a. audio cassettes _____ b. video tapes _____ c. articles in magazines _____ d. articles in newspapers _____ e. lecture _____ f. other (please specify) _______________

11. In your view, what is the most important quality of a "good" popular management author? (Rank order 3 of the items below, "1 " being the most important quality)

_____ a. skill at writing and expressing ideas _____ b. successful experience consulting with companies who are implementing ideas discussed in the book. _____ c. graduate education (Ph.D. or Master's degree) in business. _____ d. successful, first-hand experience as a manager or executive. _____ e. experience researching organizations as a scholar.

12. How many popular management books do you currently own?

_____ number of books

After the following questions, please put an "x" by the one response you agree with.

13. People who read management books tend to be more effective managers.

_____ a. I strongly agree _____ b. I agree _____ c. No opinion _____ d. I disagree _____ e. I strongly disagree

14. Overall, how useful do you think management books have been to you?

_____ a. very useful _____ b. somewhat useful _____ c. not very useful _____ d. not at all useful

15. To what extent do you believe that management books make promises which they do not actually deliver?

_____ a. to a great extent _____ b. somewhat _____ c. no opinion _____ d. hardly at all _____ e. never

16. Generally speaking, it is better not to depend on outside consultants for help with organizational concerns

_____ a. strongly agree _____ b. agree _____ c. no opinion _____ d. disagree _____ e. strongly disagree

17. What is your age group?

_____ a. 18-24 _____ b. 25-34 _____ c. 35-44 _____ d. 45-54 _____ e. 5564 _____ f. 65 or over

18. What is your current title?

_______________________________________________

19. What is the highest level of education you have completed?

_____ a. graduated from high school or vocational school _____ b. some college work _____ c. graduated from college _____ d. some graduate work _____ e. master's degree _____ f. doctoral degree (Ph.D., J.D., M.D.) _____ g. other (please specify) _______________

20. In what ways have management books been valuable or useful to you?

_______________________________________________