Teaching management tools: a proposal for a pedagogical method of dissection

Management tools, taught as toolboxes providing solutions to clear-cut problems, can be part of a “representationist myth”. In reality, however, as necessarily simplifying representations of the activity, tools are in semiotic tension with management situations. How can we imagine teaching management tools in a way that doesn't mask, but rather exposes, the representational and semiotic tension inherent in them? This article proposes a dissection method, easy to implement in the classroom, in five stages: selection, inscription, (in)invisibilization, performativity and re-conception. A case study is presented in the third part, which shows that this method, by uncovering the semiotic tension surrounding management tools, enables us to make the link with societal and organizational issues.