From Library Journal
Mary Kay, Tupperware, and other direct selling organizations offer an alternative work approach, and have grown despite their apparent defiance of organizational and workplace trends. This, Biggart proposes, has implications for traditional firms. Instead of bureaucratized environments, these organizations offer autonomy, an ideology espousing family values, recognition readily achieved, upward mobility linked to success in recruiting additional dealers, and charismatic leaders who give the preponderantly female dealers a sense of community. This eminently readable book will interest and challenge specialists in organization, work, and women's studies, as well as those whose curiosity has been piqued by the almost cult-like enthusiasm of direct sellers.- Frieda Shoenberg Rozen, Pennsylvania State Univ. , University ParkCopyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Book News, Inc.
Biggart (management and sociology, U. of Cal., Davis) details the social and cultural factors that have given rise to direct selling and explores the dynamics of its organizational life. She draws on a significant body of economic and historical research and on in-depth interviews with more than ninety direct sales distributors, managers, and trade association executives. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.


Book Description
Tupperware Home Parties, Shaklee Corporation, Amway, Mary Kay Cosmetics--theirs is an approach to business that violates many of the basic tenets of modern American commerce. Yet these direct selling organizations, fashioned by charismatic leaders and built upon devoted armies of door-to-door representatives, have grown to constitute an $8.5 billion a year industry and provide a livelihood for more than 5 million workers, the vast majority of them women.

The first full-scale study of this industry, Charismatic Capitalism, revises the standard contention that the rationalization of social institutions is an inevitable consequence of advanced capitalism. Nicole Woolsey Biggart argues instead that less rational organizations built on social networks may actually be more economically viable.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The first full-scale study of this industry, Charismatic Capitalism revises the standard contention that the rationalization of social institutions is an inevitable consequence of advanced capitalism. Nicole Woolsey Biggart argues instead that less rational organizations built on social networks may actually be more economically viable.

FROM THE CRITICS

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