Mythmaking in management education: the case of the AGSM (1976-1986)

This article shows how an organisation may rapidly adopt a ruling myth as an entire construct with the support of the organisational elite, and then as swiftly abandon it as the organisation's ruling myth when the elite finds it produces a performance loss measured in the external environment. Our evidence is based on a detailed study of the start-up phase of the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) from its foundation in 1976. Our analytical method emerges from a dynamic model of organisation operation and adjustment recently proposed in the corporate strategy field. The principal findings suggest that researchers on organisational myths, as well as management educators and their clients, should be sensitive to alternative forms of myth development, and should be specially careful in using the traditional “life-cycle” models of myth creation[1]. The life-cycle models portray myth development and abandonment as gradual evolutionary processes. Our article points to a more disjointed process of mythmaking. © 1988, MCB UP Limited