A study of a rhetorical mechanism used in management concepts development processes

The development, the dissemination and the adoption of management innovations (ideas, concepts and management methods) are the result of complex processes that involve rhetorical mechanisms. Literature has highlighted these mechanisms since the mid-90s until today. The purpose of this article is to highlight a rhetorical mechanism, which, to our knowledge, has so far not been studied in the literature: the decontextualization. This means that the management situation is connected to a generic category and the consultant's work (or more generally the promoter of the concept) consists in showing that a particular management situation is actually an instance of a set of situations in which the concept is to be applied. In order to infer and highlight such a mechanism, we made a discourse analysis on a construct widely used in management: the concept of integration; concept largely introduced by Mary Parker Follett, consultant and management guru in the years 1920s and 1930s.