In this chapter we explore possible volatility in audience orientations in more depth by asking: How and why do audience members’ consumption orientations shift throughout the communication process? Drawing on interview data with management practitioners who have attended management guru lectures, we stress the need for a more dynamic understanding of audience responses that can account for the individual-level variability in consumption orientations. First, by showing how individual audience members’ orientations are not necessarily limited to a single category and cannot be considered a permanent state, our findings seek to move beyond conceptions of managers’ attitudes towards management gurus and their ideas as relatively static. In particular, we identify three forms of shifts (involvement-induced, utility-induced and alternating) in managerial audience members’ consumption orientation amongst individual audience members that may occur during the communication process. Second, we explain how these shifts are related to the individual audience members’ expectations and broader management knowledge consumption pattern.

This chapter asks: How do the rhetorical practices and persuasive strategies deployed by gurus potentially enhance receptivity towards their management ideas? Drawing on detailed analyses of video recordings of real-time management guru-audience interaction, the chapter describes how management gurus manage the delicate task of presenting ideas that many, if not all, of the members of their audiences do not use. On the one hand, gurus endeavour to create and maintain a positive atmosphere in the auditorium by providing audience members with opportunities to laugh collectively and engage in displays of group cohesiveness without having to unequivocally display agreement with their management ideas. In this way gurus are able to generate a positive atmosphere during their lectures regardless of the extent to which audience members agree or disagree with their ideas. On the other hand, gurus also routinely seek to minimise the likelihood of a negative atmosphere emerging when they convey ideas that are likely to be at odds with the management practices used by many audience members. The gurus do this by avoiding directly confronting or criticising their audiences.

In this chapter we ask: How and why do audience members vary in the way they are attracted to a guru and the management ideas they are promoting? Using analyses of interviews with management practitioners who have attended guru lectures, the chapter indicates how a broader and more fine-grained understanding of consumption activity is essential in providing a more advanced view of audience differentiation and helps to better understand the success and impact of management ideas among a managerial audience. First, our analysis reveals four different key managerial audience members’ consumption orientations – the gratifications that individual member seek – (devoted, engaged, non-committal and critical) towards gurus and the management ideas they are promoting. Second, the findings show how audience members’ orientations are constructed in relation to their perceptions of different key audience activities (selectivity, involvement and utility) at different stages of the consumption process. Third, the chapter explains how, and to what extent, the use of these orientations relates to the design of the guru lecture and the audience members’ background characteristics.

In this chapter we ask: How do gurus present their ideas as being generally applicable, significant and potentially relevant to individual audience members? The chapter shows how management gurus use stories about change to communicate the successful application and adaptability of their ideas, to construct an ambiguity that allows scope for managerial audience members to tailor the ideas to different contexts. Regardless of whether these stories are framed as epiphanic or non-epiphanic, they exhibit three common practices. First, the stories exemplify the gurus’ ideas by focusing on a particular case and on singular themes, making them more easily apprehensible and enabling the audience to collectively concentrate on a narrow set of events. Second, the stories are told in an engaging and entertaining manner, which heightens audience attentiveness and thereby makes the stories more memorable. Third, following the stories, gurus move from the particular to the general in order to demonstrate the applicability of the ideas exemplified by the stories to a wide range of contexts. This generally coincides with, and is marked by, a shift to a serious (or more serious) footing.