How the Materialization of a Managerial Model Contributes to its Take Up: The Case of ‘Liberating Management’ in France

There is a long-standing interest in managerial techniques and their effects on the behaviour of organizational actors. Several authors have shown that managerial techniques may influence human action by bypassing their original objective, developing an ‘agency’ effect. If their writings have stressed the underlying rationalities of the tools, they have not focused on the consequences of their materiality. We explore the hypothesis that the materiality of management tools amplifies their agency, as it leads to combining the determining effect of the tool, and the strength relative to its materiality. We propose then to analyse the progressive materialization of an innovative management model, that of ‘liberating management’ in France. We analyse to what extent this materiality influences its transposition and implementation in new contexts.