ABSTRACT
The foregoing analyses lead to the conclusion that the textbooks serve to construct the subject position of management, a space in which the identity of manager is achieved. The empirical study showed that managers enact a managerial role that involves portraying themselves as managers, maintaining the visual façade of management, controlling themselves strictly to prevent the mask slipping, and so carrying out the symbolic role of manager. The subject position contained within the textbooks is thus reconciled with that occupied by managers. They symbolize rationality, culture, control. They symbolize the phallus, the law, the enactment of science. They symbolize order, the keeping in abeyance of chaos, the necessity for a structured world. They symbolize modernity. The textbooks, and management degrees, proffer a judgemental gaze for internalization.
