The organizational restructuring performative act under shareholder value management ideology

Abstract

Purpose:

This paper’s objective is to present the dynamics involving an organizational restructuring process conducted in a Brazilian subsidiary of a centenary American industrial corporation which claimed to be seeking, by means of this process, to increase the value of the company’s shares, but, which results reveal the distance between the promises and outcomes of this process, unveiling the symbolic-performative nature of such a process.

Methodology:

The chosen research method was the case study. The data collection involved the participant observation of a company manager (2010-2015); the conduction of non-structured interviews to the company’s managers, directors and CFO (2013-2015); documental research to the company’s internal and public sources (2010-2015); and bibliographical research to scientific papers, business press, market analysts and specialized media (2010-2015).

Results:

The narratives of success found in the company’s reports portray the restructuring myth as a continuous strategy, through which the company reinforces its efforts in delivering good results to shareholders. And, despite the outcomes of the case study not supporting these narratives, its performative nature legitimize the company’s commitment to the SHV management ideology towards stakeholders of the capital market, even in face of the adoption of anti-shareholders’ postures, such as anti-takeovers measures, the merging of the CEO and Chairman positions, its CEO perks, etc.

Contributions:

Paradoxically, although the researched company operates under the cold logic of finances, and under pressure to create shareholder value, it revealed to be subject to the dynamics in which the search for symbolic legitimacy plays a decisive role in maintaining its position within the hierarchy of the socially constructed field of the Management in face of other stakeholders present in the field, reinvigorating the precepts of Bourdieu’s Field Theory and the Neo-Institutional Theory.

Keywords:
Performative organizational restructuring; financialization; Celebrity CEO; symbolism, myth