How managers ‘make meaning’ of business tournament rituals

In this paper, we examine how managers ‘make meaning’ of business tournament rituals (BTRs)— recognition-based contests in which participating firms get social endorsements and winners receive prestigious awards. In exploring two UK BTRs, we found that managerial orienting systems, made up of beliefs about the identity of their firm, competitors, and customers, and what it takes to compete in their environments, drive managers to compete in BTRs. Their interpretive view of BTRs as sources of strategic capabilities and hard market power, we argue, is constructed, and projected to the viewing public through a set of four distinct but ‘durationally indivisible’ temporal frames: validating identity and values, competence signalling, product/service differentiation, and market and industry visibility; these may operate in combination or serially account for the observed managerial preoccupation with BTRs. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory, practice, and future research.