Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on ‘Enterprise’: Control and Autonomy in a Direct Selling Organisation

Abstract

Entrepreneurialism within organisations has been praised for serving employees and employers alike, but it has also been criticised as exercising power over employees in an unobtrusive, yet effective way. Within the literature from both advocates and critics, two dichotomies prevail. First, 'enterprise' is considered as a monolithic concept that is either 'liberating' or governing employees; second, it tends to be viewed as strongly opposed to 'bureaucracy'. Recent studies have started to challenge these hitherto often one-sided characterisations by showing that individuals react and respond differently to entrepreneurialism and that bureaucratic elements can co-exist within entrepreneurial companies. However, by drawing on empirical evidence from an entrepreneurial company, we demonstrate that enterprise within an organisation itself is a complex and paradoxical instrument of power and governance in organisations. We suppose that enterprise cannot stand on its own but is instead based upon organisational practices that are at the same time liberating and controlling, entrepreneurial and bureaucratic. Such a view not only allows one to pay attention to the fractions that are caused when the ideal of the individual self-made man is transferred to organisations, but also to question the enterprise discourse itself.

The Role of the Distributor Network in the Persistence of Legal and Ethical Problems of Multi-level Marketing Companies

“…At the local Amway meetings, only recruiting is honored by applause. Whereas at Mary Kay meetings recruitment is presented as an extra to one's The Role of the Distributor Network in the Persistence of Legal and Ethical Problems of… sales business, at Amway, recruiting is seen as the first and foremost way to build up one's business (see also Groß and Jung 2009). Whereas at Mary Kay, distributors are invited to ask enthusiastic Mary Kay clients whether they want to join the company as distributors (Groß 2008), at Amway, the training organization recommends distributors to try to recruit others.…”

“…Most MLMs present working for them as an attractive 'business opportunity,' enabling distributors to earn a handsome amount of money, either part time or full time (Koehn 2001). Legal, but still recruitingoriented companies seek to make newcomers believe that recruiting others is the silver bullet to earning a substantial amount of money or to becoming rich in a rather short time (Groß and Jung 2009;Koehn 2001;Walsh 1999a). Newcomers and existing distributors are motivated by exemplary calculations demonstrating the ease of recruitment, the ease of selling, and the high market potential.…”

“…31 Whereas other authors have described and explained several advantages of the industry (Albaum and Peterson 2011;Brodie et al 2004;Crittenden and Albaum 2015), this article focuses on its problems: since their very beginnings in the 1920s of the last century, the industry has had to face and deal with problematic behavior on the individual distributor as well as the company level (e.g., see Biggart's historical overview chapter 2, 1989). These problems include that (1) some MLM companies operate as de facto pyramid schemes (Juth-Gavasso 1985; Keep and Vander Nat 2014;Koehn 2001;Vander Nat and Keep, 2002;Walsh 1999b), (2) income opportunities are misrepresented (Groß and Jung 2009;Herbig and Yelkurm 1997;Koehn 2001;Taylor 2014;Walsh 1999a), (3) customers are harmed by exaggerated and/or illegal product claims (Koehn 2001), (4) distributors misuse their friends and family members to earn money (Bloch 1996;Koehn 2001;Lan 2002;Walsh 1999a), and (5) that some MLMs have cult-like organizational cultures (Bromley 1998;Groß 2010) that restrict their members' ability to reflect on the (ethical) quality of the company's business practices.…”

Liberté toujours? Gerechtigkeit und Gemeinschaft in neoliberalen Arbeitsregimen am Beispiel der Amway GmbH

“…Passend zu ihrem US-amerikanischen Ursprung versteht sich die Amway Corporation als ein Unternehmen, durch das seine Mitglieder als selbstständige Unternehmer finanzielle sowie persönliche Freiheit erlangen können (Biggart, 1989;Groß & Jung, 2009 (Schwarz & Schwarz, 2001, S. 32) und ein Motivationsbuch verspricht, dass jeder "ich wiederhole, jeder, der bereit ist, im Network Marketing zwei oder drei Jahre hart zu arbeiten", sich ein Zusatzeinkommen von zumindest 75.000 Euro erarbeiten könne (Schwarz, 1999a, S. 27).…”

“…Die eher am amerikanischen als am deutschen Beschäftigungssystem orientierten Wertvorstellungen in Amway (Biggart, 1998;Groß, 2008;Groß & Jung, 2009) …”