The road to organisational populism

Since populism is considered to be inherent to politics and each
organisation a place where politics thrives, this article coins the concept of
organisational populism to help firms and employees alike identify and use
their voice against the phenomenon. We adapt Mintzberg’s political arena and
then Rosanvallon’s three-fold simplification social, procedural and
hierarchical) to the management sciences. Both studies help us construct a
theoretical perspective on organisational populism (OP). In addition, the three
simplifications present different characteristics and lead to specific behaviours,
which then flourish thanks to the organisational populist leader’s ability to
manipulate employees’ emotions. Dangerous by definition, this form of
populism progressively increases the level of psycho-social risk and
accentuates suffering at work by multiplying conflicting demands and by
deepening the denial of stakeholder’s vis-à-vis organisational reality.