This chapter asks: How do the rhetorical practices and persuasive strategies deployed by gurus potentially enhance receptivity towards their management ideas? Drawing on detailed analyses of video recordings of real-time management guru-audience interaction, the chapter describes how management gurus manage the delicate task of presenting ideas that many, if not all, of the members of their audiences do not use. On the one hand, gurus endeavour to create and maintain a positive atmosphere in the auditorium by providing audience members with opportunities to laugh collectively and engage in displays of group cohesiveness without having to unequivocally display agreement with their management ideas. In this way gurus are able to generate a positive atmosphere during their lectures regardless of the extent to which audience members agree or disagree with their ideas. On the other hand, gurus also routinely seek to minimise the likelihood of a negative atmosphere emerging when they convey ideas that are likely to be at odds with the management practices used by many audience members. The gurus do this by avoiding directly confronting or criticising their audiences.

In this chapter we ask: How and why do audience members become involved in using management ideas in their wider social contexts? Based on interviews with management practitioners who have attended management guru lectures, the findings presented in this chapter contribute to developing a broader understanding of significant, but relatively unexplored, areas of potential impact related to the social use of these ideas. First, by identifying three main forms of fan involvement associated with the use of management ideas which primarily occur outside an organisation (exaltation, socialisation and marketisation), the findings advance our view on the potential scope and primary aims of management idea use beyond organisational implementation. Second, we show how these forms vary significantly in their main drivers which are rooted in audience members’ differential skills sets and relevant communities – outside the setting of an organisation – they relate to. In addition, we show how these skills are made productive via different identificatory and commodificatory practices, and explain how these have specific implications for the broader impact of ideas.

In this chapter we ask: How and why do audience members vary in the way they are attracted to a guru and the management ideas they are promoting? Using analyses of interviews with management practitioners who have attended guru lectures, the chapter indicates how a broader and more fine-grained understanding of consumption activity is essential in providing a more advanced view of audience differentiation and helps to better understand the success and impact of management ideas among a managerial audience. First, our analysis reveals four different key managerial audience members’ consumption orientations – the gratifications that individual member seek – (devoted, engaged, non-committal and critical) towards gurus and the management ideas they are promoting. Second, the findings show how audience members’ orientations are constructed in relation to their perceptions of different key audience activities (selectivity, involvement and utility) at different stages of the consumption process. Third, the chapter explains how, and to what extent, the use of these orientations relates to the design of the guru lecture and the audience members’ background characteristics.

In this chapter we not only challenge the current views of the nature of contemporary managerial work – to one that includes a conceptualisation of management practitioners as audience members both within and beyond mass communication settings, but also contribute to bridging and extending the currently disconnected approaches to studying the impact of ideas. On the basis of these findings, the book argues that current approaches to studying the impact of management ideas need a much deeper and broader view by further integrating important aspects of flow concerning scope and agentic meaning making particularly in relation to (A) the dynamics of managerial audience activities, (B) the protracted involvement of managerial audiences, (C) the managerial audience members’ social uses of ideas and (D) the managerial audience members’ textual productivity.

In this chapter we ask: How do gurus present their ideas as being generally applicable, significant and potentially relevant to individual audience members? The chapter shows how management gurus use stories about change to communicate the successful application and adaptability of their ideas, to construct an ambiguity that allows scope for managerial audience members to tailor the ideas to different contexts. Regardless of whether these stories are framed as epiphanic or non-epiphanic, they exhibit three common practices. First, the stories exemplify the gurus’ ideas by focusing on a particular case and on singular themes, making them more easily apprehensible and enabling the audience to collectively concentrate on a narrow set of events. Second, the stories are told in an engaging and entertaining manner, which heightens audience attentiveness and thereby makes the stories more memorable. Third, following the stories, gurus move from the particular to the general in order to demonstrate the applicability of the ideas exemplified by the stories to a wide range of contexts. This generally coincides with, and is marked by, a shift to a serious (or more serious) footing.

What distinguishes observed-score methods from other types of method described in this book is that they typically use raw scores1 to match examinees from the reference and focal groups. As a result, there is no need to fit a latent variable model such as an IRT model (the disadvantages of using latent variable models are that they often require large sample sizes to obtain accurate parameter estimates, and they require acceptable model fit to obtain valid DIF statistics [Bolt, 2002]). Another advantage of using observed-score methods is that many of the procedures provide an effect size measure in addition to a hypothesis test. Many of the effect sizes, in fact, have well-established benchmarks that test developers and researchers can use to classify an item as exhibiting negligible, moderate, and large DIF. Because of these advantages, observed-score methods are a popular approach for testing DIF.

IRT is a powerful scaling technique that provides a collection of latent variable models that describe performance at the item level relative to an examinee’s latent variable. IRT models have several attractive features that make them appealing for test developers and researchers to use to construct educational and psychological tests (Lord, 1980). The models can be applied to educational achievement tests such as TIMSS, as well as to psychological latent variables such as depression or anxiety measures. IRT is the driving force for the development and widespread use of computerized adaptive testing. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce IRT and its fundamental principles and applications so that the reader who is unfamiliar with IRT will have sufficient knowledge to apply the IRT DIF methods described in Chapter 4.

The concept underlying measurement invariance is often introduced using a metaphoric example via physical measurements such as length or weight (Millsap, 2011). Suppose I developed an instrument to estimate the perimeter of any object. My instrument is invariant if it produces the same estimate of the object’s perimeter, regardless of the object’s shape. For example, if my instrument provides the same estimate of the perimeter for a circle and a rectangle that have the same true perimeter, then it is invariant. However, if for a circle and a rectangle of the same true perimeter my measure systematically overestimates the perimeters of rectangles, then my measure is not invariant across objects. The object’s shape should be an irrelevant factor in that my instrument is expected to provide an accurate estimate of the perimeter, regardless of the object’s shape. However, when we have a lack of measurement invariance, the estimated perimeter provided by my instrument is influenced not only by the true perimeter but also by the object’s shape. When we lack measurement invariance, irrelevant factors systematically influence the estimates our instruments are designed to produce.

Methods for testing DIF in IRT are model based, in that they require fitting a latent variable model in both groups. IRT provides a convenient and powerful framework for evaluating whether an item is functioning differentially by comparing each group’s parameter estimates or IRF. In fact, DIF can be defined explicitly from the IRT models as the difference in the probability of responding to a category (e.g., correct response for a dichotomous item) for examinees with the same ability from different populations (Lord, 1980). This definition is consistent with comparing the IRFs or item parameter values between groups. In other words, if the parameter values or IRFs are identical in both populations, then the probabilities of responding to a category are the same and therefore the item is DIF-free. However, if the IRFs differ in the populations, then the item is functioning differentially (Lord, 1980).