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Manifest Destiny in a Technological Age
Fortune magazine is perhaps one of the most read American business periodicals. Its features include industry trends as well as prescriptions for business and professional success. For example, its cover stories advise readers of "The 100 Best Companies to Work For" (Levering & Moskowitz, 2000); celebrate success, as in "The Young and the Loaded" (Warner, 1999); and warn of potential hazards, such as "Finished at 40" (Munk, 1999) and "Why CEOs Fail" (Charan & Colvin, 1999). They also describe changing industry operations, "The e-volution of Big Business" (Alsop, 1999), and provide business strategy, "Internet or Bust: Don't Get Left in the Dust" (Hamel & Sampler, 1998). The widespread popularity of business periodicals such as Fortune, coupled with Americans' proclivity for mass-mediated advice on personal and business success, render these stories potent forms of managerial discourse.
Accordingly, I contend that popular media periodicals such as Fortune help shape popular management discourse in a number of ways. First, they provide interpretive and agenda-setting functions for managerial discourses; that is, through their widespread consumption, these periodicals draw attention to, and shape perceptions of, particular workplace practices, management trends, and economic relations. Relatedly, these periodicals disseminate the managerial gospels and practices of financially successful business executives, entrepreneurs, and authors. Finally, through their stories, images, and advertisements, business periodicals such as Fortune articulate preferred managerial identities and work-related expectations for aspiring readers. Given these functions, I believe that it is important to explore popular business periodicals because they operate in the everyday world as a medium for promulgating particular and partial points of view on profound technological, economic, and social changes. By normalizing or celebrating the periodicals' preferred interpretations of these changes, dissent is stifled or trivialized.
In accord with my concerns, I briefly explore how Fortune articulates preferred interpretations of the new information-based economy and its relationship to globalization. I compare Fortune's read with an alternative and dissenting point of view, a point of view that directly contradicts Fortune's celebratory stance. My analysis consists of a detailed reading of 36 issues of Fortune that were published between 1998 and 2000 and a key word search at Fortune's Web page. My analysis reveals that Fortune's preferred reading is constructed in large part...