Conceptual history and the interpretation of managerial ideologies

Abstract

This article introduces key elements of ‘conceptual history’ from the work of Reinhart Koselleck (1985, 2002).We argue that his combination of an existential conception of his toricity with the notion of ‘concept’ as a mediator of existence and culture opens up unex plored avenues for interpreting management ideologies.We illustrate conceptual history with the example of ‘play’ in recent managerial literature. On the one hand, if we situate the analysis in the 20th century, ‘play’ seems to have changed its conceptual place in rela tion to ‘work’ from a ‘destructive’, to a ‘recreational’, and – recently – to a ‘creative’ force in work organizations. On the other hand, if we change the horizon of periodization to the last five centuries (as approximating modernity), the managerial concept of ‘play’ continues and intensifies certain central themes of modern culture: self-assertion, world alienation, and ethical inarticulacy. Conceptual history, we argue, can be used as a pro ductive analytical strategy for historical material whose dynamic is otherwise hard to grasp and ‘stabilize’ in a coherent account.