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Read the Book or Attend a Seminar? Charting Ironies in How Managers Prefer to Learn

Seattle Pacific University

Robert Westerfelhaus

Ohio University, Athens

This paper reports an empirical study in which 22 managers were interviewed regarding how they prefer to learn about popular management ideas. The man agers indicated a clear preference for obtaining such information through seminar attendance rather than the reading of books. Through an analysis of the interview transcripts informed by socio-semiotic theory, the authors identify the semiotic code shaping this preference, chart its regularities and inconsistencies, and uncover sev eral ironies in how this code is used and understood. These ironies reflect and give rise to contradictory responses on the part of managers which enable them to negotiate the conflicting demands placed upon them by the various competing value systems which govern and complicate their working and private lives.

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