Charismatic Capitalism

Direct Selling Organizations in America

Nicole Woolsey Biggart

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780226227269
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Soziologie

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.

Index

“Adoption,” 86

Adventure capitalism, 159

Advertising agencies, 30

Agents Credit Association, 31

Aldrich, Howard, 102, 180n.11, 187n.2, 209n.5, 211n.25

Alford, Robert, 188n.4

Alternative organizations, 101–2, 135, 203n.11

A. L. Williams Company, 1–2, 5, 116, 118, 177; family management in, 76, 80, 93–94

American Dream International, 107, 111

American ethic, 104–8, 109–10, 121, 141

American Express, 123

American Way Association (Amway), 46

Amway Corporation, 5, 18, 62, 123, 176; in Asia, 173; beliefs in, 107, 111, 118; control in, 144, 145, 148, 150, 156, 157; family management in, 80, 86; history of, 46–47

Anti-Propaganda Committee, 35

Ash, Mary Kay, 47, 87, 126–27, 143, 144, 208n.1; ideology of, 77, 78, 95, 112–13

Asia, DSOs in, 173

“At-will” doctrine, 64

Auster, Ellen, 211n.25

Authority relations, 197n.5

Avacare, 112

Avon Corporation, 47, 186n.55

Bamforth, K.W., 211n.26

Barnard, Chester, 202n.3

Baron, James N., 57

Basic H, 119

Baxandall, Rosalyn, 72

Belief: as critical to sales, 117–19; and organization, 99–100

Bell, Daniel, 59

Bellah, Robert N., 199n.26

Bendix, Reinhard, 159, 181n.19, 197nn.5, 9

Benson, Susan Porter, 182n.5

Berger, Bennett, 101, 201n.55

Berle, Adolf, 180n.15

Bernard, Jessie, 75

Better Brushes, 33

Beveridge, Frank S., 33, 42

Bielby, William T., 57

Biggart, Nicole Woolsey, 101, 188n.3, 196n.4, 202n.5, 212n.33

Booty capitalism, 159

Boulton, William R., 209n.6

Branch office companies, 24–26, 32, 41–42, 47

Braverman, Harry, 190n.29

Breakaways, 17–18, 44

Brubaker, Rogers, 211n.24

Budgetary economizing, 103, 104

Bumble Bee award, 153

Bureaucracy: compared with DSOs, 3–5, 11, 12–13, 48, 57, 58, 68–69, 136, 149, 153, 159; controls in, 128, 129, 130, 168, 204n.23; defined, 6; ideological bases of, 99–100; ins...