Market Rationalism from a Top Management Perspective: An Explorative Study in a Finnish Context

Abstract

The paper explores the way in which the managerial ideology of market rationalism as conceptualized by Kunda and Ailon-Souday (2005) is characteristic of the way top Finnish managers in global metal and forestry corporations perceive their roles and organizations. We conducted an exploratory qualitative study consisting of 35 interviews in order to discover whether market rationalism emerged as a contemporary management paradigm in the perceptions of top managers. In particular, we explore here how the ideological and technological features of market rationalism are discussed by these top managers, and how they use its rhetoric. Our findings substantiate the ideas of market rationalism as put forward by Kunda and Ailon-Souday (2005); they provide initial empirical support for this alleged management paradigm, as well as some critique. In theoretical terms, market rationalism seems to fit rather well into Guillen’s (1994) paradigm categorization and in this respect it could be seen as a management paradigm...