Ideology at work: Ambiguity and irony of value-based management in Bang & Olufsen

Abstract

Over the past few decades, the ambition of establishing a ‘corporate culture’ has largely vanished from corporate agendas. Instead, resources and energy are spent on creating ‘value-based’ organizations. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Human Resources Department of Bang & Olufsen, a Danish producer of ‘high-end’ home electronics, I offer an explanation of this shift in managerial ideology from ‘culture’ to ‘value’ — I argue that much of the attraction of value-based management resides in the double-edged semantics of the word ‘value’ and its promise to accommodate economic bottom-line value and deep-seated moral and aesthetic values. My material suggests, however, that this ambiguity confuses more than it clarifies and leads to ironic and counter-intentional consequences. The identification of the values, which was meant to congregate the employees, came to symbolize and engender a split between staff and other parts of the company.