Alaric Bourgoin, Les equilibristes. Ethnographie du management, Presses des Mines, 2015
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17433
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Alaric Bourgoin, The tightrope walkers. An ethnography of management, Presses des Mines, 2015
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Alaric Bourgoin, The tightrope walkers. An ethnography of management, Presses des Mines, 2015
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132                                                         Tecnoscienza – 10 (1)

   Alaric Bourgoin
Les equilibristes. Ethnographie du management [The tightrope walkers.
An ethnography of management], Paris, Presses des Mines, 2015, pp.
308

Paolo Rossi Università di Milano-Bicocca

    I approached this review of Les Équilibristes by Alaric Bourgoin,
somehow lost in a double translation between the French language used
in the book and my Italian and between my Italian and the English used
in this review. Something that is well known, and yet, this time such feel-
ing was exacerbated by semantic issues related to one of the core topics
tackled by Bourgoin: the idea that the main goal of the job of managing
consultants – the profession on which the research is focused – is “value
enacting”, mettre en valeur, in the original French.
    Such formulation does not refer to the production of value in eco-
nomic and financial terms, although this is a relevant dimension of the
notion of value. However, Bourgoin does not deal with the definition of
the notion of value per se, being aware that this could be a sort of impos-
sible mission. Vice-versa, he is interested in understanding how manage-
ment consultants “enact the value” of their practices.
    Mettre en valeur – here tentatively translated as “value enacting” – is a
way to address, in French, issues related to valuation, an English neolo-
gism introduced by John Dewey, which does not have a French corre-
sponding term. Rather than using ‘valuation’ or ‘valorization’ (the latter
existing in French), Bourgoin has preferred to use mettre en valeur,
which, in turn, does not have a translation in English. He has chosen this
expression in order to stress the active, situated and relational dimension
of valuation and, at the same time, to refer to what he calls “the double
tension of the object at the heart of the value enactment of management
consultancy” (p. 141, my translation), namely the fact that both the con-
sultancy service and the consultant need to be transformed in objects of
value.
    The reference to Dewey’s valuation is a clear indication that Bourgoin
takes a pragmatist stand, common to many recent sociological approaches
to economics, and particularly delved by the ANT derived approach to
economics, as developed by Michel Callon, who signs the preface of the
book, and by Fabian Muniesa, supervisor of the Ph.D. thesis from which
the book is taken, who signs the forewords.
    Pointing to the fact that I was lost in such double translation is rele-
vant for framing the main thesis proposed by the book: the work of man-
agement consultants revolves around the notion of value in an emergent
as well as polymorphic way. The value of the work of management con-
sultants can be depicted as an achievement that emerges in various forms


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Book Review                                                               133
and has several implications for their stakeholders: clients, consultancy
firms, practitioners, scholars, researchers, etc. Therefore, the work of
management consultants is both a performative practice that is embedded
in heterogeneous organizational settings and a continuous (yet unstable)
construction and reproduction of a repertoire of practice across different
settings. In other terms, Bourgoin argues that is possible to identify both
continuity and discontinuity – as well as improvisation – in the work of
management consultants. Discontinuity and improvisation are due to the
fact that the value of this work cannot be objectified, since consultants
are not experts, who own a specific and codified savoir and provide to
their customers a uniform and commensurable service. However, their
activities are not mere ‘ephemeral’ performances, built on subjective abil-
ities. In his view, the successful deployment of a number of socio-material
practices in heterogeneous organizational settings is the basis for the
foundation of the value of the activities of management consultants.
    His analysis stems from a very thorough experience as management
consultant. Bourgoin worked around two years for a large French consul-
tancy firm. In this period, he simultaneously played two roles: on the one
hand, he was employed as a consultant and, on the other, he was a re-
searcher. As such, he had the opportunity to direct follow very complex
projects of organizational design and restructuring.
    Therefore, the relevance of the study carried out by Bourgoin – de-
scribed as an auto-ethnography – goes beyond his investment in hours
and hours of observation. The point is that his presence in the field was
not limited exclusively to an activity of participant observation, since he
actually worked as a consultant while conducting his research. As such,
his research recalls the methodology of clinically inquiry proposed by
Schein (2001), as well as a more ‘traditional’ action research approach.
Being a consultant allowed him both to gain access to deeper strata of da-
ta (Coget, 2009) and to ‘change the system’ (Schein 1995). Bourgoin ac-
tually pursued both goals, even if he did not overtly declare to his clients
that he was conducting a scientific research study.
    It is important to stress another element that highlights the peculiarity
and the complexity of his methodological positioning: he was able to ex-
plore several organizations, having the possibility of directly analyzing the
relationship between consultants and clients in heterogeneous settings.
He fruitfully exploited this opportunity and this allowed him to study the
dialogical yet dialectical construction of this fundamental interaction. It is
thus difficult to file the methodological position of Bourgoin under a spe-
cific category. Basically, he did not conducted a proper clinical inquiry,
because he did not declare to the clients his engagement in a scientific
research. However, his study cannot be considered a mere process of par-
ticipant observation. It is important to underline that he was aware of his
peculiar position and this led him to adopt a reflexive approach (Cunliffe
2003).


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134                                                           Tecnoscienza – 10 (1)

    The familiarity that Bourgoin has acquired with this field and this pro-
fession can be caught in the structure of the book. Chapters are organized
in a sequence that outline a sort of dialogue between empirical data and
theoretical conceptualizations. In the introduction Bourgoin shortly out-
lines two streams of the literature developed by organizational research-
ers on the topic of management consultancy. These streams are presented
as juxtaposed poles: a more traditional functionalist approach is con-
fronted with a more recent critical approach. This juxtaposition is some-
how a rhetoric construct for demonstrating the existence and the broad-
ness of a space in-between that Bourgoin aims at filling emphasizing the
processual and socio-material dimension of consultancy.
    This space is explored in the first chapter of the book: an immersive
journey in the work of a management consultant. Bourgoin presents an
ethnographical account of one of the most important projects he has been
involved. His experience is clearly very vivid and this allows him to lead
the reader into the multiple layers of complexity of the work of a consult-
ant. Reading this chapter, it is possible to notice the intensity of this job
as well as its fragility: consultants are called by their clients to provide so-
lutions, yet they have to legitimate their presence within the organizations
they enter. As Bourgoin argues, this ambivalence comes from a persistent
contradictory perception of their professional status. On the one hand,
consultants may be considered as experts who are providers of a reliable
support to organizations. On the other hand, they risk to be perceived as
“charlatans” who play persuasive performances mainly oriented to legiti-
mize their role and the effectiveness of their action. His account offers an
in-depth analysis of the way consultants interplay between these contra-
dictory interpretations of their work.
    In the second chapter, Bourgoin proposes five practices through
which processes of value enactment are carried out: a) the commercial
formulation of the service; b) the graphical presentation of the diagnosis;
c) the report of the activity; d) the situated development of skills; e) the
production of the authority of the consultant. These practices are per-
formed under a tension between the necessity of producing value and the
necessity of being considered valuable.
    Readers of Tecnoscienza will find particularly interesting the parts
dedicated to two of the practices that clearly emphasize the material di-
mensions of this profession: the graphical presentation of proposals of
changes and the construction of a report for accounting the amount of
hours spent for a consultancy. The first practice deals with the use of a
specific software (typically Microsoft Powerpoint). Instead of claiming
the limits of the use of this technology for organizing and presenting data
and information in organizational settings, Bourgoin describes the use of
Powerpoint as a complex semiotic process (p. 169).
    The production of a report of the time spent for carrying out a consul-
tancy is an even more complex process. This is a practice that is purposed


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Book Review                                                                135
to ‘justify’ the value of the work of a consultant. As such, Bourgoin argues
that the presentation of a timesheet is a performative practice with several
meanings that connects a micro-practice (the daily recording and classifi-
cation of work hours) with a macro-practice concerning the allocation of
resources within an economic transaction between clients and providers
of consultancy (p. 197). According to Bourgoin, producing a timesheet
conveys rigor to the professional action of the consultant as well as it ‘dis-
ciplines’ the clients. From this point of view, a timesheet appears a
boundary object that connects two social words (Star and Griesemer
1989), developing a standardized representation of a commercial agree-
ment. However, in spite of this standardization, the creation of a time-
sheet is a practice that reproduces the tensions that may emerge when the
different ambitions of clients and providers of consultancy activities col-
lide, both at the micro-levels and at the macro-levels of the interaction
between those actors.
    In the end, I can say I really appreciated reading this book. Firstly, it
draws light over a profession that is scarcely considered by social scienc-
es. Secondly, it is a brilliant representation of the socialization into a pro-
fession. I particularly appreciated the ability of Bourgoin to zoom across
different levels of observation, connecting micro dimensions to broader
issues of theorization, as suggested by Nicolini (2009). Overall, as readers
of Tecnoscienza will also appreciate, the most valuable merit of this book
is that, by assuming “a conception of value enacting essentially borrowed
from STS” (p. 140, my translation), it stresses the material basis of the
construction of a relational professional activity.
    However, it is important to report some (very few) critical points.
First, the work of Bourgoin presents a slightly weak methodological
framework. The narrative construction of the book combines different
sketches. While the first chapter is a dense immersion into a large and
complex project, the following chapters are based on more and diverse
consultancy experiences. This combination reinforces the solidity of anal-
ysis proposed by the author, but it provides a sometimes kaleidoscopic
representation of the work of consultants. As a consequence, the possibil-
ity of identifying a pattern of practices for enacting value to these activi-
ties appears more critical and problematic.
    This weakness is emphasized by a sort of feeling of ‘closure’ of the
overall analysis. It offers a limited understanding of the diffusion of man-
agement consultancy across industries and companies, as well as it does
not provide a critical reflection over the scalability of his interpretation
in, for instance, smaller organizational settings.
    Finally, The richness of Bourgoin’s work could provide a valuable
contribute to the debate about the tension between process of value en-
acting and the practice (as well as the procedures) for pricing economic
activities. Although this a typical economical question and domain, eco-
nomic sociologists are striving for providing a more sociologically orient-


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136                                                            Tecnoscienza – 10 (1)

ed analysis of this topic (e.g., Uzzi and Lancaster 2004; Beckert 2011).
However, his choice of adopting an auto-ethnographical lens impels him
to catching the possibility of bridging this analysis with this emergent
field of research.
    In spite of these comments, I suggest reading Les Équilibristes. In my
opinion, it is a successful as well as enjoyable book.


References

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Nicolini, D. (2009) Zooming In and Out: Studying Practices by Switching Theo-
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Schein, E.H. (1995) Process Consultation, Action Research and Clinical Inquiry:
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