In this chapter we ask the question: How is the social use of management ideas in organisational contexts related to the relative power positions of individual audience members? Based on interviews with management practitioners who have attended management guru lectures, the chapter sheds essential light on how and why different audience members may actively use management ideas in an organisational context as the ‘natural setting’ of idea consumption. First, we offer a broader view on the nature of agency that plays a role shaping the organisational use and ultimate impact of management ideas by revealing how the interpersonal use of management ideas involves three different forms of resource-related power (influence, force and domination). Second, rather than considering agency in the organisational use of management ideas mainly in terms of such a top-down direction, our analysis suggests the importance of accounting for multiple directions as audience members’ accounts reveal how the forms of power are deployed and reconstituted in relational interactions of a downward, lateral or upward fashion.

This chapter develops a critique on the current approaches to studying the impact of management ideas. We found that, in the light of the broader flow of management ideas, the extant streams of literature on diffusion and implementation both apply relatively narrow scopes with respect to the local-extra-local relationships involved in the adoption decision, and have each paid limited attention to the agentic meaning making related to the adoption dynamics. In other words, prior work on the impact of management ideas has considered only parts of the broader flow of these ideas, leaving critical aspects concerning scope and agency under-conceptualised. In response to these challenges, we posit that studying management practitioners as audience members is necessary to deepen our understanding of the complexities concerning their impact on management and organisational practice and beyond. After all, managerial audiences are likely to play a critical role in how ideas flow between different contexts, and, given the omnipresence of the current business media as well as management education, being an audience member is an essential part of the contemporary managerial role.

In this chapter we not only challenge the current views of the nature of contemporary managerial work – to one that includes a conceptualisation of management practitioners as audience members both within and beyond mass communication settings, but also contribute to bridging and extending the currently disconnected approaches to studying the impact of ideas. On the basis of these findings, the book argues that current approaches to studying the impact of management ideas need a much deeper and broader view by further integrating important aspects of flow concerning scope and agentic meaning making particularly in relation to (A) the dynamics of managerial audience activities, (B) the protracted involvement of managerial audiences, (C) the managerial audience members’ social uses of ideas and (D) the managerial audience members’ textual productivity.