The Pharmakon of Innovation

While popular management handbooks tends to promise concrete lessons, prescriptions and advice for how to make an successful organization, this paper argues that there can resides considerable ambiguity and obscurity in the writings of management gurus. In the discourse on management innovation, the concept of management is attributed a curious dual function, as being, on the one hand, the ‘toxic’ that can ‘kill’ innovation, and, on the other hand, ‘cure’ that will make the organization innovative. Informed by Derrida’s reflection upon the dual meaning of Plato’s concept of pharmakon, as being both ‘poison’ and ‘remedy’, we will engage with the management guru Gary Hamel’s book The Future of Management. Although Hamel attempts to establish a clear-cut distinction between principles of management that obstructs and those managerial principles that facilitate innovation, it is ultimately indeterminate weather management is the cure or the poison for innovation. We will therefore show how management is the pharmakon of innovation.