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Ève Chiapello &#38; Patrick Gilbert (2019)Cambridge University Press About the book. No organization is immune from the influence of management tools. Such tools as norms, indicators, ranking, evaluation grids and management control systems have moved outside the managerial and consultancy realm within which they were first developed to reach public administrations and policy-makers, as well as a range of other governmental and non-governmental organizations. Taking management tools out of the practical and utilitarian contexts to which they are often consigned and approaching them from a social analytical perspective, this book gives primacy to these everyday objects that constitute the background of organizational life and remain too often unquestioned. Bringing together developing streams of research from anthropology, political science, social psychology, sociology, accounting, organisation theory and management, Ève Chiapello and Patrick Gilbert offer an unprecedented theoretical synthesis that will help managers, scholars and policy-makers to unpack the functional and dysfunctional roles and effects of management tools within and across organizations.This book is an extended and updated version of a former French book publication from 2013.Excerpt. "The conventionalist approach.The notion of convention, put forward by the  economics of conventions (Economie des Conventions, the school of  thought to which Eymard-Duvernay and Thévenot's  research belongs),  actually includes two different accepted meanings (Biencourt et al.,  2001). According to one, the convention allows the resolution of a  problem concerning the coordination of action in a context of  uncertainty (e.g., choosing which side of the road to drive  on). To this strategic perspective (elaborated by game theory),  conventionalist economists have added an interpretative and cognitive  perspective. According to them, the convention allows the coordination of both  behaviours and representations. Key to coordination is actors'  agreement over the characterisation of situations and the things and  people engaged in situations. In both cases we can refer  to 'conventions' because, as different ways to act are possible, there  is a plurality of evaluation models and ways of getting people to agree  (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006). The judgements are expressed through  'reality tests' that allow the worth of the  beings involved to be established (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006;  Wagner, 1994). When these tests are formalised they presume investment  in forms and, the wider their validity, the more it will be said that  they are 'instituted'. Their institution means that  they are accepted as legitimate. They are supported by a system of  justification that incorporates a definition of the common good  ('polities' in the models of Boltanski and Thévenot (2006)). We can  consider that certain management tools, e.g., performance  evaluation systems, equip the reality tests of the business world  (Bourguignon and Chiapello, 2005). Numerous works have studied economic  phenomena from a conventionalist perspective (Diaz-Bone and Salais,  2011; Eymard-Duvernay, 2006a, 2006b; Karpik, 2010).  Although the plurality in market functioning and the multiplicity of  enterprise types have been made visible, this approach has rarely taken  an interest in management tools themselves. This is because, with their  background in economics, conventionalist authors  have sought above all to develop an alternative concept of markets as  opposed to 'standard theory' (Favereau, 1989). A notable exception is the work by Eymard-Duvernay and Marchal (1997) who were looking at the  different ways of evaluating workers in the job market, just as Eymard-Duvernay (1989) had earlier sought different  models of quality for products. They found that tools and devices for  personnel selection were equipped with diverse 'skills conventions'.  Management tools sometimes appear as the means to  disseminate a convention and to frame its interpretation. In the view  developed by Gomez (1994, 1997), management tools are (along with other  elements) part of 'material devices' that ensure the dissemination,  understanding and repetition of the convention.  Mercier (2003) studied the transformation of the forms of management at  the RATP (Paris region transport authority). Particularly through the  setting up of performance contracts and individual interviews, a double  transformation emerged regarding the 'convention  of effort' that regulates the employment relationship and the 'quality  convention' that concerns production. The definition that predominates  in these analyses is that of a convention that is rarely formulated or  formalised but does in fact regulate behaviours  and decisions. The works inspired by this perspective are most  interesting for the study of management tools as they deal with formats  and formatting of information (accounting, indicators, classifications),  which are not themselves management tools but are  frequently found in their composition […].The sociology of quantification and classifications.Desrosières, whose work is devoted to these  questions, differentiates the notion of 'quantification' from that of  'measure', which 'inspired by the traditional epistemology of natural  sciences, implies that something exists in an already  measurable form according to a realistic metrology, like the height of  the Eiffel Tower'. However: ”the immoderate use of the verb 'to measure'  leads us into error by leaving in the shadows the conventions of  quantification. The verb 'to quantify' in its active  form (making numbers), supposes that a series of conventions of  equivalence should be drawn up and explained beforehand, thereby  implying comparisons [...] inscriptions, encodings, codified procedures  that can be replicated and calculations leading to the  same expression in numbers. Measurement properly speaking comes  afterwards, as an implementation of conventions.” (Desrosières, 2008,  pp. 10- 11, our translation). This sociological approach was applied  very early to the different classifications used by the  statisticians of the INSEE (French National Institute of Statistics and  Economic Studies), whether it was industrial classifications (Guibert  et al., 1971) or those of socio-professional categories (Desrosières,  1977). Desrosières and Thévenot (1988) show  that drawing up a classification of socio-professional categories was  informed by categorisations developed in other social arenas.” p. 118-121Presentation &#38; Table of contentsLink to the book