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IJRDM
38,4
234
Received January 2009
Revised August 2009
Accepted November 2009
International Journal of Retail &
Distribution Management
Vol. 38 No. 4, 2010
pp. 234-257
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0959-0552
DOI 10.1108/09590551011032072
Brilliant mistake! Essays on
incidents of management
mistakes and mea culpa
Mark Palmer
Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK
Geoff Simmons
University of Ulster, Newtownabbey, UK, and
Ronan de Kervenoael
Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine students’ perceptions of managerial mistakes and
why (and why not) managers admit mistakes.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper provides a reflective account of how students’
perceive management mistakes and deal with admitting “mea culpa” – “I am to blame”.
Findings – The findings show a range of attitudes: they highlight the intermingling pressures
associated with the cultural environment and mistakes; they identify media characteristics and its
influences on mistakes and mea culpa; they highlight ceremonial processes and tasks that shape and
influence the declaration of mea culpa; and they identify how the psychology and sociology of mistakes
confronts and affects students. Taken together, the study highlights the varying degrees of wariness
that is carried forward by the students from vicariously learning about management mistakes.
Originality/value – This paper links up with recent discussions on retail failure and retail
pedagogy. It is hoped that this paper will encourage more academics to address, and engage with,
management mistakes creatively in their teaching.
Keywords Managers, Human failure, Business failure, Retailing, Curricula, United Kingdom
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
It is widely acknowledged in retailing theory that success courts failure and vice versa –
as epitomized by the early work of Malcolm McNair and, specifically, the vulnerability
phase in “The wheel of retailing” (Hollander, 1960; Brown, 1987, 2007). Most
notably, studies investigating corporate failure have provided many insights into the
relationship between failures and near-failures (Mellahi, 2005; Mellahi and Wilkinson,
2004, 2005) and into retailing failures more precisely (Mellahi et al., 2002; Burt et al., 2003;
Jackson et al., 2004; Brown, 2007). In a similar way, and although not always exclusively
concerned with failure per se, the internationalization of retailing and the role of
The authors gratefully acknowledge the reviewers’ comments on an early draft of this paper.
The authors also acknowledge the assistance of a British Academy Grant (SG-52497) on
corporate resistance and contestedness.
international retail divestment activity in particular, has thrown into prominence the Management
intimacy of investment and divestment as well as success and failure (Alexander and mistakes and
Quinn, 2002; Palmer, 2004; Palmer and Quinn, 2007). What is most pronounced within this
work, in spite of different emphases and theoretical horizons, is a shared sense of the mea culpa
contested nature of processes of change and the various ways that management mistakes
puncture retail success and failure.
One significant outcome of this process can be seen in the industries emerging 235
from the mistake-making phenomenon. In retailing, arguably the growth in factory
outlet retail parks is a result of management mistakes – stemming from excess stock
allocation, cycle product design, or sourcing products that are not delivered and/or sold
on time (Fernie, 1996; Reynolds et al., 2002; Whyatt, 2008). More generally, the consulting
industry, the specialist investment bank industry and the loan-to-own private equity
industry – as part of which people consult on how to avoid, repair and clear up mistakes
have all grown considerably over the last two decades from management mistakes
(Haarmeyer, 2008; Tien et al., 2008).
This research is limited, however, in two important ways. First, as Palmer (2008,
p. 444) observes:
[. . .] the developing and opening of stores, store swaps, partnering, acquisitions or the
sourcing of products in supply chains, or any of the dimensions of [. . .] retailing, cannot be
solely viewed in “passive terms”.
The central point advanced here is that the retail firm is contested, as seen from
the interventions of regulatory authorities over planning proposals and counter-appeals
of store development (Alfasi, 2004), shareholder activism in retail firms (Palmer and
Quinn, 2003, 2005a), consumers eschewing stores, formats, concepts, merchandise
(Humphrey, 2007; Palmer and Quinn, 2007; Palmer et al., 2010), or organized employee
strikes and mobilizing government-lobbying practices by groups of indigenous retailers
(Palmer, 2004). However, this contestedness is often downplayed in the teaching of
corporate growth, which largely reports it as a rather smooth, staged and
straightforward process (Hughes et al., 1998; Pfeffer and Fong, 2002; Friga et al., 2003;
Mintzberg, 2004; Acito et al., 2008; Navarro, 2008). In practice, however, management
must wrestle day-to-day with mistakes that are not just of their own making but those of
colleagues, subordinates, or previous management teams. We suggest that mistakes are
particularly identifiable and rich critical incidents of this contestedness. Second,
academics are increasingly critical of the curriculum in not reflecting the extant research
undertaken in this field (Hackley, 2003; Palmer, 2007, 2008). For the most part, success
dominates curricula and teaching in business schools today, which arguably sets
beyond dispute deeply assumed values and beliefs for those studying it (Hackley, 2003;
Jarzabkowski and Wilson, 2006; Brown, 2007). If, as suggested in the literature, most
ventures fail – a particularly pertinent point in the current global economic recession –
should business and management curricula not be designed to prepare students for
coping with the inevitability of mistake making?
This paper argues that it is imperative for students to learn about the contested
nature of growth and, in particular, the role of management mistakes in this process
before graduating and joining the corporate retail world. The current global economic
malaise has accentuated the need for such a contribution. Therefore, the overall purpose
IJRDM of the study is to investigate students’ perceptions of managerial mistakes and why
(and why not) managers admit mistakes. There are three specific objectives:
38,4
(1) to make the case for the importance of channelling students’ thinking through
an understanding of the ever-present nature of management mistakes;
(2) to investigate students’ perceptions on studying management mistakes; and
236 (3) to explore students’ perceptions of why (and why not) management admits
mistakes.

While mistakes are not unusual for any individual, firm or industry, the retailing
setting highlights issues of considerable theoretical importance and relevance for
understanding management mistakes. First, the retailing sector offers an accessible site
for observing the visible foreground practice of retailing (Palmer and Quinn, 2005b).
Therefore, mistakes are particularly identifiable and rich, not least because retailers are
part of the everyday experience for consumers. Second, the retail landscape –
increasingly so in the current global economic downturn – invariably reveals a long list
of failures and near failures, e.g. M&S, The Pier and Envy, Woolworths, Dolcis, The
Works, Select, The Toy Zone, The Sleep Depot, Base, Empirestores and Elvi. The scale
and scope of this activity thus offers the potential for more complex theoretical insights.
Third, the retail sector receives a large degree of media attention and coverage,
particularly where there are accusations of wrong doing, which can provide insight into
how mistakes emerge (Alfasi, 2004; Fritz, 2005; Dawson, 2007). The role of the media in
relaying accounts of management mistakes and mea culpa is therefore theoretically
important (Barry and Elmes, 1997). Finally, a recent study of retailing management by
Palmer et al. (2010) revealed that management’s operational impatience places more
emphasis on the immediate grounding of the retail format. We suggest that this
operational-orientation, in turn, imposes more dynamism, stress and expediency in the
decision-making process, which can lead to management mistakes. The retail sector,
therefore, provides a theoretically rich context for the study. Any concerns about the
specificity of ideas and concepts from the retail sector are addressed by integrating
themes from the broader literature and actual examples of retail practice in the
students’ accounts.
To determine how mistakes are conceptualized in the literature, the following section
begins by providing a definition of a mistake, along with a discussion on the overlaps
and disparities that management mistakes appear to have with constructs in the
literature. Following on, the paper presents a rationale for why studying mistakes is
important. The methodology is then outlined along with a discussion of the findings,
emerging theoretical contributions and conclusions.

Defining mistakes and a literature synthesis of overlapping theories

Vaughan (1999, p. 284) defines a mistake as “acts of omission or commission by
individuals or groups of individuals, acting in their organization roles, that produce
unexpected adverse outcomes with a contained social cost”. More presciently and
generally, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a mistake as “a wrong judgement or
a wrong action or statement proceeding from faulty judgment, inadequate knowledge,
or inattention”. With both definitions, there is a negative association of “wrong doing”,
either from action or inaction. They also seek to explain the premises of committing a
mistake, which they attribute to erroneous judgment, lack of knowledge or a failure to
pay attention. This implies that, conventionally, mistakes are said to be made Management
unintentionally and due to various personal failures. Vaughan (1999) structures her mistakes and
discussion around the environment and mistake (i.e. how mistakes are regulated by
authorities and professions), organization characteristics and mistake (i.e. how the mea culpa
structure, processes and tasks shape, generate and influence mistakes) and cognition,
choice and mistake (i.e. how the psychology and sociology of mistakes “normalizes”,
confronts and affects individuals on a day-to-day basis). 237
The most challenging aspect of reviewing the literature on management mistakes is
the way it is central to several theories, overlapping in the fields of organizational
failure, organization learning, psychology and sociology. Management mistakes are
frequently discussed when there is “organizational failure”. Indeed, this is evident
across the various definitions of failure in the literature. Cannon and Edmondson (2001,
p. 163) define failure as:
[. . .] deviation from expected and desired results. This includes both avoidable errors and
unavoidable negative outcomes of experiments and risk taking. It also includes interpersonal
failures such as misunderstanding and conflict.
More precisely, Cameron et al. (1988, p. 231) define failure “as a deterioration in an
organization’s adaptation to its microniche and the associated reduction of resources
within the organization”.
A particularly notable feature of research in this area is that which grapples with
distinguishing between different levels and events of failure. In other words, when do
management mistakes become, or lead to, corporate failure? One line of enquiry
differentiates between “failure” (i.e. organizational failure) and those “failures” (i.e.
non-fatal “individual” failures, which might be contributory causes towards eventual
“failure”) (Mellahi and Wilkinson, 2005). Similarly, Cannon and Edmondson (2005,
p. 302) differentiate between small and large failures:
An important reason that most organizations do not learn from failure may be their lack of
attention to small, everyday organizational failures, especially as compared to the
investigative commissions or formal “after-action reviews” triggered by large catastrophic
failures. Small failures are often the “early warning signs” which, if detected and addressed,
may be the key to avoiding catastrophic failure in the future.
Management mistakes therefore can result in negative outcomes, ranging in magnitude
from small everyday mistakes to large-scale strategic and structural consequences.
Other studies focus on the antecedents of mistake making, both from the corporate
perspective and that of the individual manager/employee. According to Hammond et al.
(2006, p. 119):
[. . .] at every stage of the decision-making process, misperceptions, biases and other tricks of
the mind can influence the choices we make. Highly complex and important decisions are the
most prone to distortion because they tend to involve the most assumptions, the most
estimates and the most inputs from the most people.
A review of the literature also reveals a body of research that provides evidence of links
between mistakes and learning (Hughes et al., 1998; Finkelstein and Sanford, 2000;
Tjosvold et al., 2004). Cannon and Edmondson (2005) argue that focusing on the
learning opportunities of small failures can allow organizations and their managers to
minimize the inherently threatening nature of failure to gain experience and momentum
IJRDM in this learning process. This literature concentrates on the positive side of mistakes,
38,4 which also resonates with the learning organization literature in which Senge (1990)
and other colleagues suggest that “intelligent” mistakes are inevitable and even
essential for firms driving innovative growth initiatives. Much of this learning comes
from redefining and experimenting with (small) failures; the business world has thus
recognised the learning potential within identifying, analysing and deliberately
238 experimenting with failures (Cannon and Edmondson, 2005). For Husted and
Michailova (2002), learning from mistakes is highly valuable, not only at individual, but
at group and organizational levels. However, individuals often do not freely and openly
share knowledge about the mistakes they have made. Baumard and Starbuck (2005,
p. 283) point out that “the learning that should follow failure often does not occur and
when it does occur, mistakes often teach the wrong lessons”. Learning by observing
other companies and acting in a similar way has been identified by researchers as a
common organizational learning mechanism (Senge, 1990; Huber, 1991). Therefore,
firms frequently collect information regarding what other companies, especially
competitors, are doing, and why and how they do it. If a particular practice is found to
be a costly mistake, it will often be avoided.
Management mistakes are central to organizational learning theory and have had a
long history in theories of psychology and sociology. As Vaughan (1999) notes, this
literature is theoretically rich and abundant, offering theoretical explanations on three
levels of analyses. The first level, the institutional, emphasizes how aspects of the
environment can shape mistakes. The second level considers how institutionalized
cultural understandings mediate between the environment and the cognitive practices
of individuals. The third (and most developed) area of research development has sought
to understand individual-level involvement with an undesirable event. This work
connects with the importance of the psyche of the individual managers and employees
that make (important) decisions. For Mellahi (2005), the responsibility for failing
organizations lies with top management. Ma and Karri (2005) attribute corporate
failure to top managements’ gross negligence, arrogance, overconfidence and
self-aggrandisement. Related to this is the work of Levinson (1994), which explores
the psychological roots of corporate failure. Levinson (1994, p. 430) notes that:
[. . .] the combination of collective masculine competitive striving, attachment to aggressive
self-images and established corporate structures, and efforts to avoid failure and indictment
reinforce organizational narcissism.
The literature also suggests that mistakes are closely bound up with the mechanism of
coping with blame. The concept of outcome anticipation lies at the heart of admitting
mistakes. Elaboration on the potential outcomes of mistakes not only makes people
conscious of (un)desired standards and end-states, but also provides them with
information as to whether an act has the potential to move them towards a desired
end-state, or away from an undesired one. Husted and Michailova (2002) outline several
anticipated outcomes:
.
Uncertainty about colleague reaction might dissuade employees from disclosing
their mistakes.
.
Uncertainty about future negative consequences for career development often
prevents individuals from admitting mistakes.
 .
Uncertainty as to where the locus of responsibility lies, i.e. whether it is with the Management
individual or the team. mistakes and
.
Uncertainty over the degree of acceptance or hostility towards mistake making. mea culpa
Therefore, considering future outcomes makes people more conscious of the possible
effects of their mistakes and more aware of the standards to which to compare those
outcomes. Lee et al. (2004) argue that organizations also exhibit self-serving attribution 239
bias by making less internal and controllable attributions for negative as opposed to
positive events. Put differently, management attribute successful outcomes to
themselves (and accept the adulation that entails), while disassociating themselves
from anything related to a mistake – what Heider (1958) called attribution theory.
Attribution theory explains the process by which causal attributions affect outcomes
by way of cognitive, emotional and motivational mechanisms (Lee et al., 2004; Hareli
et al., 2005; Martinko et al., 2007). Hareli et al. (2005, p. 665) consider the role of
employees’ emotions in confronting and relating failures, concluding that the:
[. . .] conditions that enhance guilt feelings in work is to the benefit of all parties involved
when the motivation is to learn from that failure and to maintain a good relationship between
the organization and the employee. In contrast, a threatening atmosphere (inducing fear) not
only works against such effects but also blocks some of the desirable effects that guilt might
have had in the same context.
Although this literature provides us with useful insights into our understanding of
management mistakes, from a range of different theoretical perspectives, much less
obvious is the role of business curriculum in developing and preparing students for
management mistakes, and the mechanisms for coping with mistakes.

The role and (re)production of business curriculum

Studies suggest that curricula introduce, create and preserve knowledge doctrines and
set beyond dispute deeply assumed values and beliefs for those studying it (Hackley,
2003; Jarzabkowski and Wilson, 2006). One of the most dominant influences embedded
within university business curricula, according to Brown (2007), is the logic of success.
How to find, court and manage it? How to use management tools to unlock it? How to
sustain it? Success, therefore, is defined and judged according to (current and local)
culturally hegemonic standards set by the curricula. But which activities and
behaviours should be valued and which should not? Who defines development? Indeed,
these questions have become a consistent feature of research in business and
management, with concerns that students – the future business leaders – are not
adequately prepared for the workplace.
In an early critique, Calkins (1961) stated that business education is suffering from
ill-defined, confused purposes and an inadequate appreciation of the needs of students
or business. A decade later, Livingston (1972) argued that several facets of management
are entirely missed out by management school curricula. More recent studies are now
questioning the relevance and adequacy of management school curricula being taught
today, with their direct influence on students’ performances (Mintzberg and Gosling,
2002; Pfeffer and Fong, 2002; Friga et al., 2003; Mintzberg, 2004; Acito et al., 2008;
Navarro, 2008). Arguably, this disjunction can be linked to the long-standing curricula
alignment problem. Pfeffer and Fong (2002, p. 80) state that “a large body of evidence
IJRDM suggests that the curriculum taught in business schools has only a small relationship to
38,4 what is important for succeeding in business”. Mintzberg and Gosling (2002) have also
noted that contemporary business education focuses on the functions of business more
than the practice of managing.
The problem is more multifaceted and complex than the curricula alignment
problem however. Other research fronts have opened up, with recent studies now
240 stressing the value of: revisiting the role of business and management schools (Starkey
et al., 2004); the chasm between academic work and practice (Stiles, 2004; Jarzabkowski
and Wilson, 2006); and the type of modular business curriculum (Atwater et al., 2008).
At one level, studies have acknowledged the unique challenges for business schools, as
opposed to other university faculties. Prince (1999) states that:
[. . .] business schools find themselves at the interface of the business and academic worlds.
They therefore have to cope with the changing external environment earlier than other, more
sheltered faculties of the university.
Another feature of this debate is the disjuncture between teaching and research. As the
aforementioned literature suggests, it would be entirely wrong to conclude that
management mistakes has not been an important research domain across the literature.
Indeed, many articles contain insights into mistakes. Yet, these are often not reflected in
traditional textbooks (Hackley, 2003; Jarzabkowski and Wilson, 2006; Palmer et al.,
2010), or remain marginal texts (Hartley, 2005). That is to say (institutionalized
mainstream) curricula textbooks often lag behind the state of research in the field. In
this sense, one cannot assume published research articles are built into the pedagogy in
a systematic way. This can be seen in the way that traditional textbooks report “success
stories” that would lead students to believe that corporate success is devoid of
impasses, failures, mistakes, turnarounds, crisis, divestments and retrenchment
periods (a point recently taken up in the retail literature, Burt et al., 2003; Wrigley and
Currah, 2003; Palmer and Quinn, 2007). Furthermore, the diffusion of ideas from journal
research into mainstream textbooks is frequently a slow process, particularly where
subject areas are dominated by longstanding incumbent textbooks (Palmer, 2008).
A number of observations may be made regarding the aforementioned literature.
First, when management mistakes are discussed, it is often conflated with large-scale
corporate failure – a crisis. This is perhaps inevitable given that management mistakes
are heavily influenced by failure. Yet, management mistakes can be more mundane:
mistakes in management reports or warranties; in promotional price discounts and
press releases; in the shop window display and in-store merchandising; in the delivery
to the wrong store; hiring and promoting the wrong employee(s); in sourcing products
that cannot be assembled or delivered on time; and in delisting a product or in product
recalls. Second, the organizational learning literature suggests that, not only is
first-hand experience – experiential learning – important, but that people can learn
vicariously from the observable portion of management: the who, what, when, and
where aspects (Palmer and Quinn, 2005b). In this regard, students or competitors can
gain an understanding of management mistakes through observation, particularly
those that come to light in a controversy following accusations, reactions to
accusations, and counter accusations. Third, it is argued that curricula is organized in
ways that ignore the importance of agency and systematically discourages participants
from communicating their subjective understandings of particular curricula practices.
More importantly, if students are influenced by the mistakes made by management, Management
how do these mistakes shape their perceptions? Do students empathize with managers mistakes and
who have made mistakes? Do they consider mistakes to be part of an intellectual
journey towards career development, corporate progression, or innovative growth? mea culpa
How would/could they cope with this process? It is to these questions that this study
now turns.
241
Methodology
In order to address these questions, 62 students on a BSc Marketing degree programme
were asked to write an extended essay on their perceptions of management mistakes
and mea culpa in the retailing sector. The participants in the study were studying a final
year, first-semester course called strategic issues in distribution and retailing at a
UK-based post 1970s university – Aston University. Although not representative of the
overall student population, the sample provides an adequate mix of males and females,
age ranges (18-27), social backgrounds, and employment statuses for initial theorization.
The students were informed that their assessment was designed as part of a research
project to elicit perceptions on management mistakes. The written essay comprised
50 percent of the overall assessment relating to a 20 credit module. The students had six
weeks to complete the essay. To ensure that students’ perceptions were not influenced
by the course syllabus, retail failure and related issues were not covered until week
seven – after the submission date of the extended essay. The assignment statement
brief read as follows: “It is very rare for management to acknowledge mistakes and still
more uncommon in management vocabulary to admit ‘mea culpa’ – I am to blame.
Critically discuss and evaluate this statement”.
The study adopted and adapted a range of research data collection tools (Figure 1)
based upon a previous study by one of the authors (Palmer et al., 2009), jointly
supported by Aston University’s Higher Education Learning and Management Centre,
and the Centre for Learning, Innovation and Professional Practice. Following this
method, the format of the extended essay comprised two stages:
(1) a priming stage; and
(2) a second stage comprising the essay and a personal introspective account.

Stage one
Exercise I: paper dialogue
Question: Make a list of TEN nouns or phrases or words you would use to describe what you think
about mistakes (e.g. shock)

Stage two
Exercise II: the essay Exercise III: introspective account
Brief: “It is very rare for management to This part is a reflection of your subjective
acknowledge mistakes and still more personal thoughts on the issues raised when
uncommon in management vocabulary to writing the essay – an autobiographical Figure 1.
admit “mea culpa” – I am to blame. Critically account of initial impressions, stresses, The extended essay data
discuss and evaluate this statement.” anxieties, joys etc collection tools
IJRDM In the first part of the essay, students were asked to write down ten words that
38,4 described management mistakes. A paper dialogue approach (Tee and Liang, 2005) was
utilized to stimulate, trigger and prompt thoughts here. In the second stage, students
were asked to write an essay on the title brief. As previously discussed, the retail sector
receives a large degree of media attention and coverage, particularly surrounding
controversies where there are often (counter-) accusations of wrong doing (Alfasi, 2004;
242 Dawson, 2007). Fritz (2005) suggests that accusation-led controversies can provide
critical incidents around which mistakes emerge and mea culpa is challenged. For this
reason, students were guided towards accusations as opening moves in controversies,
where critical incidents of mistake-making function and public discourses emerge and
are more visible.
In the second part of Stage 2, students were asked to reflect on and write up a
personal introspective account of the essay-writing process (see Brown (2005) for an
extended discussion on the personal introspection technique). Taken together, the
research exercises facilitated triangulation and, hence, attempted to unearth a more
complete picture of the students’ perceptions of management mistakes and why (and
why not) management admit mistakes. Rather than impose a prior conceptualization or
framework within which to evaluate the findings, this study adopted Strauss and
Corbin’s (1990) interpretation of grounded theory, which allows for the emergence of
important themes and patterns in the data while assuming some prior knowledge of the
research field. The analysis used Gibbs’ (2002) analysis framework, which divides this
process into three stages: opening coding to identify relevant themes (each author
conducted this individually); axial coding to refine the categories; and selective coding
which links the categories together and enables a story to be told. Themes were
identified based on their persistence across the participants. Two forms of verification
were used in the analysis. First, the convergence on the same interpretation was
achieved through ongoing discussion and debate between the three researchers.
Second, the findings present rich quotations from the actual student essays, which
invite readers to assess the efficacy of the themes based on the evidence.
Furthermore, recent consumer research has also pointed out the unilateral
dominance of polycentrism in research that privileges speech over writing (see Brown
and Reid (1997) for an extended discussion). Verbal conversations, therefore, take on an
autopoietic characteristic. That is, students might suppress emotions, appear rational,
and non-confrontational. However, methods such as the paper dialogue approach and
the extended essay enables sensitive issues to be addressed anonymously, as students
often distrust authority (for example academics) not least because of the perceived
institutional norms and rules of universities. The findings are discussed in the
following section using excerpts from the students’ essays to illuminate and
contextualize each theme. As stage one functioned to prime the students, the findings
section begins by reporting from stage two.

Findings
The findings highlighted many different, but real and understandable, issues and
apprehensions on management mistakes. The students draw upon a variety of retail
cases. Beyond consideration of retailing case studies, the students also supported their
arguments by drawing upon their own placement experiences (all spent one year on
industrial placement). These are now discussed in turn.
Management mistakes and cultures Management
The students’ accounts of management mistakes are closely bound up in the culture of mistakes and
success. According to students, mistakes are “tangled up” in a web of intersecting and
pressurizing cultural practices (home with parents, popular cultures, peer communities mea culpa
and clubs, studies, etc.). This appeared in three ways in the essays. The first pointed to
management mistakes being seen as the last taboo of society, which had created a
modern “cultural averseness”. This is revealed in the following quotations: 243
The fact that making mistakes is such a taboo highlights a deeper issue within society at
large, where success is the ultimate goal [. . .] Because successful people and organizations are
often placed on a pedestal of superiority, seeing them fail is a public reminder of their
fallibility, which then acts as a self-esteem boost to “regular” people. It can be argued that it is
this cultural averseness to failure that affects whether managers acknowledge mistakes and
claim responsibility for them (Essay 3).
The cultural acceptance of failure significantly affects whether an individual managing a
company would admit their mistakes or not, as it could, in some cultures lead to
overwhelming shame and failure (as in the case of Japanese failures and the images of CEOs
apologizing during the 1990s). However, the cultural acceptance of failure – especially in
Western economies – remains concealed and hidden away (Essay 9).
A second success-related theme relates to the cultures of global ambition endemic in
management mistakes. The students point to the globalizing ambition of management
leaders, which overstretched firms and contributed to management mistakes. The
accounts show that students perceive that firms or managers appear to quickly adjust
or bypass local, regional, or even national experience to become an international
operator:
Our environment is full of “iconic global brands” and “iconic global leaders” which has led to
success being taken as an unquestionable fact. This international success has produced a
number of myths or slogans of a totalistic sort – for example, “Time and Place Have
Disappeared”, “Saving Planet Earth”, or “The New World Order” Worst still, it has produced
a long list of restless megalomaniacs – typically male – who are want to turn the world blue,
orange or impose yellow smiley faces on everybody [. . .] (Essay 62).
Another issue emerging from the accounts is that students are anticipating a staple diet
of excess based on the business curriculum. Precisely because of this several students
suggest that the business curriculum nurtures management mistakes:
It is common to hear in lectures and/or read in textbooks that any ambition must include
internationalization/globalization. Somehow a strategy is underdeveloped unless it involves
some form of participation on the global stage. The mantra is where next? where next? where
next? We are being saturated with these questions in our studies and our lives. Do we really
have carte blanch? Do or should all strategies lead to the “globalizing” one? (Essay 53).
This raises the question about the dominance of the sanguine side of the curriculum. One
of the problems with being lectured on all things global is that we start to form and
(re)produce shared folklore about it. It also begs the question as to what extent the
ambitious-filled curriculum leads students astray. Has stressing the role of marketing
myopia inadvertently fuelled megalomania? Notwithstanding the answers to such
questions, the overall effect of this might be to compound megalomania and
management mistakes.
IJRDM Another – indeed related – manifestation was in the way management mistakes
38,4 came about from the cultures of immediate gratification. It is not surprising then that
several students highlight how the modern environment nurtures their fantasies of
instant success:
TV programmes such as the X-Factor provide a sense of success appearing over night.
Success, it seems, is just around the corner. The ladder to success is shorter. Pilgrimages are
244 no longer prolonged. Mistakes are the unwelcome and uninvited guest in the firm. The thrust
is to succeed and it seems that nobody cares how this is achieved. The end is what counts –
sadly it is what we are judged on. Nobody wants to hear about the difficult process of getting
there [. . .] (Essay 6).
[. . .] today’s society expects and demands us to be instant success. This “instant” trend
appears in a range of activities, for example, instant messaging, instant celebrities, instant
coffee, instant refunds, instant DNA detection, instant replays, instant recipes, instant credit,
instant access accounts, instant news, instant recognition and so on. For us, even university
surveys will judge us on how soon we get a job! It appears there is no waiting in wanting
anymore (Essay 4).
Because of the pressures of immediacy, the probability of making mistakes increases,
not least because of the haste in which action is taken, but also because the emphasis is
placed on the short-term to the detriment of either the medium or long-term.

Mistakes and media

The students’ accounts pick up on the role of the media in mediating and moderating
management mistakes. More than half the students identified the role of the media in
shaping disclosures of mistakes and mea culpa. Three themes stand out from the student
accounts. The first concerned the way visible mistakes make the headlines. Separately or
together, these serve a complex multifaceted role – as authority, controller, or an
absolving actor. The students draw upon a variety of skeleton punch-line narratives –
from “doing a Ratner” to “doing a Rodney”, through cartoons and captions as epitomized
in the Dilbert cartoon series. The ritual efficiency of skeleton punch-line narratives are
preferred by media, with sound bites having the largest ceremonial impact:
Mistakes are often the butt of jokes and mocking in the media [. . .]. unleashed like a punch
line, making it cut more deeply. Add to that the usual hyperbole of jokes and the way that
each part of the media seeks that revelation to out-maneuver and out-wit the other, with the
“redtops” leading the way, humour is arguably at the centre of this debate and has much to
answer for in the cover-up culture [. . .] (Essay 42).
There is a whole generation of students that have grown up with Dilbert cartoons and this is
now part of the folklore of doing management. If management use clichés, then the audience
connects with them, serving to undermine the manager. The television series, The Office, also
extenuates and builds threads of humour around these mistakes and the ways to hide
mistakes (Essay 53).
The second issue concerned the extent of the media’s role in accounting for management
mistakes with the emerging array of modes of programmes, forums and blogs – what
some students referred to as Martini Media – any time, any place and anywhere:
Management mistakes rarely (or are able to) go unnoticed by the business news wire
networks such is the array of channels. Not only do management that make significant
 mistakes have to contend with mainstream such as TV, magazines, etc. along with business Management
outlets MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal Online, Reuters, but other specialist media outlets for
retail and blogs as well. Blogs are the new way to expose. We are all would-be self-publishing mistakes and
and “citizen journalists” – nowadays anyone can identify and run with a story (Essay 24). mea culpa
In my view, if it were not for investigative and under cover programmes [for example, BBC’s
Watchdog, Panorama] getting involved in their business, many mistakes would never see the
light of day (Essay 6). 245
Retail firms are extremely visible when trading on the ground. Indeed, Tesco went to great
lengths in America to cover their pilot stores within warehouses. Retailers will always tell
you that mistakes always show in the store, while accountants will always tell you all the
mistakes are buried in the footnotes in annual reports. Not much arguably has changed there.
Yet in today’s environment, everybody is a pundit on retail and willing to blog it. With its
Fresh and Easy format in America, Tesco have encountered the strategy pundit – the
Perishable Pundit, Triplepundit, the axe-to-grind-pundit all pointing out its mistakes in the
market!! Nowadays the media brings forward the voice of the pundit [. . .] (Essay 17).
The last quotation is extremely insightful. The relevance of frequent experiential
contact with the high street stores has given consumers a window through which to
view corporate strategy dynamics and strategy trends. Most, if not all, shoppers
immediately recognise and place where the firm’s positioning quality-price axis lies and
can cite the fast-fashion turnaround times of Zara and Hennes and Mauritz (H&M).
Sunday newspaper supplements also carry in-depth reflections on corporate activity,
impending acquisitions, rich-lists, and entrepreneurial autobiographies. The sense of
the “being” – mediated by broadcaster status and internet blog and twitter access – has
elevated everybody to the status of pundit with the opportunity to engage.
The media dimension was again evident in the assessment of the essays, albeit in
quite a different way. Some students empathized with the plight of management – as
regards what some described as a “witch-hunt” to find who is to blame and the
ceremonial ritual of “a public hanging”. The essays also draw attention to the role of
“tall poppy syndrome” and the extent to which the media expose both the expression of
authority and abuse of power:
Due to advances in technology and the need it seems to sensationalise even the slightest of
stories (for example, Sky News and its presenters), the role of media coverage has had a large
part to play in mea culpa [. . .] It seems like organisations are required to respond even quicker
to the media now as they can expect the issue to spiral beyond their control [. . .] (Essay 5).
Evident in today’s culture of celebrity with shows like The X-Factor is the way that humans
are engrossed on seeing each other fail – it’s now prime time Saturday night entertainment.
Similarly, the reporting of the downfall of “retail giants”, “bellwethers”, “bastions of the High
Street” crumbling under the pressure reminds them of their fallibility. It seems society seek
solace in the axiom – the-bigger-they-are-the-harder-they-fall (Essay 14).
The essayists highlight the media’s willingness to reveal dramatic mistakes and their
thirst for blaming, criticizing, objecting and insulting, which they see as more
pronounced than ever before. Put another way, as the diagnosis of management
mistakes becomes more contested, it is likely that accusations will be more frequently
used as opening moves in controversies, which strike at the perceived flawlessness of
businesses. The media strike at, and bring into sharp contrast, the disparity between
such flawlessness and our everyday experience. The students’ accounts bestow the
IJRDM media with the authority in reconciling, or more often than not, exacerbating the agony
38,4 of retail firms who have “slipped up” in their operations.

Management mistakes and individuals

Students varied enormously in their responses to stimuli they thought were characteristic
of those individuals making mistakes. When it comes to individuals, most students
246 discussed a variety of metaphors and analogies of management mistakes, remarking upon
the ritual of “sweeping mistakes under the carpet” or “piling the skeletons in closets” or
“burying failures”. This is highlighted in the discourse individuals use in relation to
mistakes. The students’ accounts pick up on the way the discourse surrounding mistakes
is changing. Students highlight a number of phrases that are often used by management to
acknowledge mistakes. For example, the phrases “lessons learned” and “regrettable
circumstances” are frequently used to mollify investors at annual general meetings or to
aid editors and investigative journalists interrogating management (in)actions. As one
student put it:
Failure and mistakes are dirty words, so much so it appears that in both everyday practice
and theory, a whole new range of new vocabulary has emerged. Deferred success, unintended
outcomes, negative outcomes, lack of progress, lack of success, resistance and so on. What
this tells me as a student is that management can no longer look failure straight in the eye
(Essay 34).
The essays ultimately acknowledge the inevitability of the mistake-making
phenomenon, and are of the opinion that mistakes are going to occur regardless of
the rituals and discourses associated with them. The following quotations highlight the
students’ views of the sunny side of things:
A failure can only be viewed as a negative if managers refuse to learn anything from it
(Essay 2).
Mistakes are unavoidable. They are part and parcel of the human being. So managers and
employees have to deal with them, not avoid them [. . .] Instead of hiding unavoidable
mistakes, organizations have to incorporate them in their management culture in order to
take a benefit from them (Essay 14).
Why is this more apparent in the retail sector? I believe the nature of the competition,
particularly the transparency of the retail strategists work – location, product offerings, shop
layout, all engender and enforce a need to remain secretive [. . .] (Essay 46).
Some students speak of the courage it takes to not look the other way when things go
wrong, particularly in light of the short-term business pressures that undermine this
perspective:
Managers are biased towards success; society has told us that in business the goal is to
succeed and to admit fault is a sign of weakness not only in the company but also in the
management. From my research for this essay, this courage appears to be in decline, perhaps
short supply (Essay 18).
Willingness to admit mistakes is a sign of strength, not weakness; but as I have found out
myself, in business this opinion is found few and far between. Short-term sales cultures
prevail in retailing – footfall (people, cars, provenance) and spend (product sales, shop sales,
conversion, average spend). These dominate and are the basis of all failure (Essay 16).
Most essayists devote up to a third of their arguments to narcissism. For most, Management
narcissism strikes at the heart of the mistake-making issue both in terms of why
management make mistakes and consequently how they cope with them. Some of the
mistakes and
students’ observations on this subject are as follows: mea culpa
Leaders in any walk of life it seems will not admit to mistakes due to the damage it may have
on their credibility whilst decision making [. . .] to keep the feeling of power and invincibility
(Essay 5). 247
If the manager has narcissistic tendencies then they are more likely to blame someone else or
find a “scapegoat”, as they resist change and believe in their organisation so much that they
think that the current processes and strategies will always apply and work (Essay 8).
There is a general consensus among the students, therefore, that narcissism, in particular,
contributes to senior management mistakes. Yet another issue relates to mistakes as a
vital constituent in the learning process. The students’ comments also shed light on the
learning culture perspective:
In my opinion, innovation needs to be a free process, where employees don’t hold back good
ideas for fear of failure. If employees see a manager making the occasional mistake, and
admitting to it, it may reinforce the fact that it is acceptable, and that they will not be
reprimanded for doing it themselves. This will create a better working environment for the
employee [. . .] (Essay 2).
Admitting mistakes is first of all the opportunity to improve [. . .] We can wonder to what
extent failure can be sometimes more beneficial than success (Essay 10).
While recognising the value of mistakes, it is entirely a different proposition admitting
mea culpa.

“Mea culpa” and mistakes

The students frequently ask why someone should confess to a mistake. Some students
discuss the wilfulness of mea culpa as a ceremonial confession, one for (re)producing
and (re)distributing power amongst actors which judge, punish or forgive:
Coming clean can result in a severe backlash. It’s this backlash which forms the basis of
regret and repentance in the 21st century commercial world. Yesteryear’s equivalent of
tarring and feathering, sackcloth and ashes are still around albeit is a different guise
(Essay 56).
Some students draw attention to the potential anguish that appears to be associated
with admitting a wrong judgement or a wrong action. This anxiety may motivate
management to exonerate themselves, attributing causes elsewhere. This (re)produces
a wider net of a “blame culture” inscribed in and re-created through different modes of
management discourses, manoeuvres and solutions:
Managers can dissociate themselves with failure by blaming external factors [. . .] [utilizing]
management speak by blaming “headwinds” for potential failures to come. By doing this,
managers’ distance themselves from strategic mistakes, and consequently, any blame, by
attributing it to factors which are out of their control (Essay 22).
The manoeuvring can also be seen more acutely in the way that management
portray themselves as “hapless victims”, with mistakes being entirely out of their
control – the blame-it-on-the-rain-variety. These accounts have a weak emphasis
IJRDM on agency – “things just happened to us”. Collectively or individually, mistakes are
38,4 primarily down to markets misfiring, competitors manipulating and regulators
malfunctioning:
Whilst on placement in Halfords, it was evident that leaders spread the blame amongst people
instead of taking it on themselves [. . .] Leaders tend to be like politicians, they like to work
around the blame and suggest other ideas instead of simply taking the blame on themselves
248 (Essay 61).
If you work in a company that has a blame culture, you’re more likely to try and get out of
problems and point the finger rather than accept responsibility [. . .] I think management have
a responsibility to manage; not point the finger or accept the mistake on their terms, but
instead provide the necessary tools for the problem to be sorted out (Essay 47).
The accounts also underline the relations of power, not only in terms of individual
reputations being at stake, but the reputation of the whole department and indeed firm:
Admitting a mistake and taking blame may be detrimental to a manager’s future career path
[. . .] When admitting mistakes to colleagues, managers feel vulnerable and ultimately can be
left in a weak position in terms of the power they possess within the organisation. They are
exposing their flaws to their closest colleagues, and more importantly, in my view, they are
exposing their flaws to their opposition in terms of promotions and job opportunities
(Essay 2).
In my view, mea culpa is not good for the CEO or an executive of an organisation within the
retailing sector to admit to unless it is used for strategic purposes. I feel that it would leave the
CEO in a position where they may lose respect, power and control. Whilst I agree we all make
mistakes, I think for a CEO to take on the blame can be detrimental to a company’s
organisational structure and culture. This could lead to a loss of direction and vision for the
company which could lead to employee uncertainty; it could deflate employees if they lose
respect or begin to doubt their leader (Essay 60).
For the most part, students’ accounts are armed with a prescriptive mindset – students
seek to offer solutions to the blame culture problem:
The environment is always unstable, so if a leader is to attribute blame to it, then they should
equally attribute success to it. Far too often it seems the individuals who are willing to take
the plaudits of success, will not accept the scathing attacks of failure. Is that leadership?
(Essay 51).
Within organizations that adopt a “blame culture”, the nature of the business is based on
reprimanding employees who make mistakes, rather than re-educating employees so they do
not make the same mistake again, which I believe would be more beneficial to both employee
and organisation [. . .]. Admitting blame can actually work in a manager’s favour. By showing
remorse and strength of character through accepting responsibility, the manager may actually
receive a lighter penalty and even be viewed in a better light because of it (Essay 29).
Furthermore, the students’ essays suggest that attribution of blame is not a
straightforward task. There is inaccuracy in identifying the causes of the mistake and
the “guilty parties”; inaccuracy in the responsible parties accepting the blame; and
inaccuracy in reporting it. Mistakes, therefore, carry forward the momentum of
obfuscation (e.g. the “mum effect” or keeping “mum” to conceal).
Another related issue in their evaluation is the way that mea culpa practices are seen
as a strategic tool, to be deployed as a means to deflect heat and mitigate against any
criticisms and negative publicity spurred by a business failure; thus minimizing Management
stakeholder dissatisfaction, as suggested by two students: mistakes and
As leaders, managers have to make the right choice and it is often a battle between the mea culpa
company’s image and their own [. . .] Depending on the nature of the retailer and the problem
they face, admitting “mea culpa” can, and should, sometimes be the answer (Essay 37).
Mea culpa could be used as a vital tool used in the event of negative outcomes. It can be used 249
to defuse and deflect away criticism. It can be used to re-engage disenchanted colleagues [. . .]
In my opinion it would be effective to use mea culpa as a strategic and crisis decision tool in
business organizations (Essay 6).
Up until now, the paper has concentrated on the students’ perceptions of management
mistakes. In the next section, the paper summarizes, discusses and provides an
explanation for the students’ observations.

Discussion
This research aimed to investigate students’ perceptions of managerial mistakes and
why (and why not) managers admit mistakes. The interpretation of management
mistakes and mea culpa by the students can be explained in a number of ways. First, the
students’ interpretations of management resonates with a body of research, which
provides evidence that mistakes are inextricably linked to: success (Sull, 2005); learning
(Hughes et al., 1998); and, as activities that are closely bound up in collective cultures
(Pérez-Arce, 1999). There is, therefore, much to learn from the conditions of mistakes,
including: ambition, global orientation, and instant success. These (re)interpretations –
what Pérez-Arce (1999) termed “interpretive frames” – help explain cultural averseness
to mistakes. An interesting point emerges here: students echo the ideas of
organizational learning theory, which are open to mistakes, whilst simultaneously
viewing society’s mistakes as disdainful and blame-centric. Students, however, appear
to grapple with the polymorphic nature of mistake making (Palmer et al., 2009); that is,
being simultaneously enriched (e.g. the beginnings of new experiences and learning)
and impoverished (e.g. failure, frustration, media), by the experiences of mistake
making.
Second, the findings illustrate how students perceive the media to be instrumental,
yet excessive, in their portrayal of corporate mistakes. This, in part, may relate to the
way mistakes were observed as critical incidents surrounding controversies and also
(counter-) accusations. In such cases, the role of media can be understood in co-creation
terms. This co-creation of media content can be seen from its interaction with the firm,
the professional media outlets, as well as lesser known activists and self-appointed
“retail analysts” and “retail pundits” filtering and sifting content across different
international, national and local spheres of influence. Besides, the traditional places
where mistakes are observable, such as annual report and web sites, mistakes are also
more visible in other micro media outlets appealing to every conceivable interest, belief,
prejudice and opinion. Contradictions therefore emerge and reside, not only between
individuals, but within them as well (Bakhtin, 1981). While this is an ongoing process,
arguably this media (co)creation particularly occurs for retail firms during the
Christmas and New Year trading period, or more generally with the opening –
(a curtain-raising market entry event), or a closing event (a curtain-closing market
withdrawal and even entire collapse), or simply where controversy might lurk. That is,
IJRDM the ones that are most intense, most prominent or most visible. Yet, as Sull (2005)
38,4 explains, many mistakes are mistakes-in-progress, enacted through time, rather than
visible one-off moments in time. Sull (2005) draws attention to the temporality of
management mistakes, arguing that actions during lulls between periods of radical
change determine long-term success. Sull (2005) asserts that major changes, whether
they are “golden opportunities” or “sudden death threats”, are relatively rare events
250 that occur just once or twice a decade, which engage in a strategy of so-called “active
waiting”. This perspective redirects us towards equally important periods of apparent
quiescence of the mistake-making activity – what is sometimes referred to as
inactivity, dormant, or the holding periods – which is overlooked in the existing
research into management mistakes and strategy more generally, and to a large degree
is omitted from student accounts.
The role of the media in mistakes and mea culpa can also be understood as a
ceremonial ritual event – variously referred to by the students as witch hunting,
tarring and feathering and tall poppy syndrome. Foucault (1980) states that “the
confession is a ritual of discourse in which the speaking subject is also the subject of
the statement; it is also a ritual that unfolds within a power relationship, for one does
not confess without the presence (or virtual presence) of a partner who is not simply the
interlocutor but the authority who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates
it, and intervenes in order to judge, punish, forgive, console and reconcile”. Mea culpa
is in effect a ritual process, which stands out all the more starkly when the media take
up this authority, particularly with humour. The undermining and bemusement ritual
of mistakes from various media sources is also a reminder of Balkhtin’s (1965, p. 11)
opposition idea between “[. . .] a boundless world of humorous forms [. . .] [and] the
official and serious tone of medieval and ecclesiastical and feudal culture”. That is to
say, even the most light-hearted humour can be official and deadly serious – a version
of playing fool to catch wise. While this ritualisation may subvert the serious tone of
the mistake, it does not subvert the mistake, the actor(s), the firm or the industry more
generally.
Third, the students’ essays suggest that neither management mistakes nor the
attribution of blame is a straightforward task. In other words, mistakes and the
attribution process can be mistaken – misdiagnosed with further mistakable
repercussions. Furthermore, the students’ accounts draw attention to the increasingly
contradictory and contested commentary on management mistakes. As discussed in
the review of the literature, management mistakes are often conflated with wholesale
corporate failure. Indeed, most of the students’ accounts associate mistakes with failure,
yet both are not always synonymous. This is evident in the role of ex ante bankruptcy
arrangements for retail firms, such as Whittard of Chelsea, Zavvi, USC, and The
Officers Club where administration is a de facto way to jettison strategic mistakes
across store networks, and restructure capital structure debt-levels. This framing and
reframing of mistakes and strategizing, the reinterpretation and shifting of ownership
back to the original owners, introduces significant complexities and obfuscation in
understanding and reporting on management mistakes. The use of “mea culpa” as a
strategic and crisis decision tool as described by some students, the various ways it is
adopted and adapted, is arguably little understood in the literature.
The final significant point drawn from the students’ accounts of management mistakes
is the way that narcissism figures (Levinson, 1994; Stiles, 2004; Ma and Karri, 2005).
It figures in understanding the reasons (motives) why the “lived experience” of Management
management practice is insufficiently represented in the “storied experience” – which mistakes and
management tell themselves and others (and researchers) about their work and the stories
told through training courses, books, journals and so on. As White and Epston (1990, mea culpa
pp. 11-12) explain:
[. . .] the structuring of a narrative requires recourse to a selective process in which we prune
from our experience, those events that do not fit with the dominant evolving stories that we 251
and others have about us. Thus, over time and of necessity, much of our stock of lived
experience goes unstoried and is never “told” or expressed.
It is precisely this selective practice and denial (Maccoby, 2004), which is emphasized
by the students’ accounts – specifically in relation to narcissistic authority and
relations of power through which cultures of blame emerge and are promoted in the
workplace. This clearly has implications for teaching narcissistic students – sometimes
referred to as the “me generation” – and the various pedagogic initiatives used to
dampen student narcissism (e.g. more frequent feedback, assessment, grading, focus on
evaluation in assessment, less group work to prevent grade inflation and shaping
inaccurate self-perceptions of knowledge and skills, and more lecturer-student
interaction).

Contribution to retail literature and concluding remarks

A decade on from Vaughan’s (1999) pessimistic assertion that the rise of formal
organizations wrought new possibilities as a result of mistake, misconduct and
disaster, we have witnessed the near collapse of the entire western banking system.
This, in turn, is having a perverse affect on the retail landscape, where there is a spate of
failures, bankruptcies, retrenchment and restructuring taking place. Clearly this is a
murky and highly contested environment, and our data has concentrated on only one
aspect of Vaughan’s dark side – how students perceive the practice of management
mistakes and mea culpa. While there exists a vast array of books and articles on the
subject describing successful retail firms (like Wal-Mart or Tesco), or individuals (like
Branson, Green), there is an overall lack of theoretical matters for debate on the subject
of management mistakes. Recognising this concern, this paper has attempted to build
on a theoretical perspective, which recognises that channelling students’ thinking
through an understanding of management mistakes – as well as the various ways that
management cope with mistakes – can be instrumental in shaping the values of the
next generation of retail business leaders. The paper highlights students’ perceptions of
management mistakes and why (and why not) management admit mistakes. Indeed,
when given the opportunity to observe management mistakes, it is concluded that
students are simultaneously enriched and impoverished, liberated and constrained, in
part because such experiences are both positive and negative; not only related to
stressful occasions (e.g. failure, frustration and media scrutiny), but also interconnected
with positive effects (e.g. ethical, the beginnings of new experiences and learning).
There are therefore clear benefits to including management mistakes and mea culpa in
business and management course curricula.
More specifically, the theoretical contribution of this paper rests in several areas.
First, broadening the conceptual space of mistake making is important because it
helps to explain why mistakes happen, and why (and why not) managers admit
IJRDM mea culpa – “I am to blame”. Theoretical scrutiny of management mistakes under
38,4 different conditions of (counter-) accusations in management dialogue – such as
reproaching, blaming, complaining, criticizing, objecting, and insulting – is generally
limited (Vaughan, 1999). Second, the study broadens the boundaries of and adds
nuances to theory because it details students’ accounts of management dialogue around
critical mistake-making instances or controversies, and the various ways in which
252 management react and cope with these incidents. The student accounts therefore help
to extend the three streams of literature and simulate a range of research topics for
mistake studies. In doing so, it offers potential avenues for progressive theoretical and
empirical possibilities, for example, in long-drawn-out retail planning controversies,
male-dominated corporate retail board environments, retail management apologies and
retail corporate rituals. Third, the study provides insights into the perceptions of
students and their (in)ability to recognise the conditions of mistake making as well as
the ways to cope with this business inevitability. That is, it adds to literature on retail
management pedagogy, not least because in practically considering future outcomes,
it is argued, that this will make students more conscious of the possible effects of their
mistakes and more aware of the management cases to which to compare those
outcomes. Finally, this study provides insights into contestedness between social
groups with different relationships to, and experiences of, management mistakes.
Towards this end it widens the explanations of growth that point to the “often bitter,
rivalry between new and established retailing institutions” (Brown, 1991, p. 135),
specifically the dialectical (Gist, 1968) and the crisis-response (Stern and El-Ansary,
1977) conflict-based theories. This research attempts to chart and extend this
theoretical route into understanding contestedness of retail change.
The management mistakes studied stimulate discussions on a range of questions
including: who and what is determining the (im)balance in business curricula? Why is
there a lack of research activity in this area? Quite why certain mistakes can have
destructive effects, yet simultaneously constructive effects in terms of innovation and
risk taking, is also worthy of closer examination. Few studies actually tackle questions
relating to institutional pressures and cultures; why are certain retail firms more
accepting of mistakes? How do corporate rituals in the retail firm shape mistake
making? How do management cope with the consciousness of a wrong doing? Major
questions also surround the processes involved in obfuscation, evasion and cover-ups –
advanced “sneaky clean” skills in practice, yet rarely seen or questioned in the (retail)
management curriculum. How can research identify a phenomenon when it is treated as
a management taboo? How can research techniques access the “hidden transcript” that
characterizes the discourse that takes place “off stage” beyond direct observation?
A final way in opening up an agenda, the research findings highlight an awareness of
narcissism in mistake making and the ways that retail management pedagogy might
dampen narcissism amongst “me generation” students. For example, via more frequent
feedback, assessment, grading, less group work, which is fuelling grade inflation and
shaping inaccurate self-perceptions of knowledge and skills, or via more international
exchanges, to encourage world views. In closing, this paper embraces the spirit of the
oft said phrase that a stumble may prevent a fall, and calls on researchers to broaden
the explanatory scope of mistake-making research, to encourage more academics to
address, and engage with, management mistakes creatively in their teaching, so that
students are given more insights into brilliant mistakes and treading more carefully.
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About the authors

Mark Palmer is a Senior Lecturer at Aston Business School, Aston University. His research
builds on a wide range of theory to explore the contested process of retail corporate strategizing
and market development. This work draws upon the insights of consumers eschewing markets,
stores and products; market and corporate divestment, interventions from institutional investors;
and the mobilizing practices of corporate activists. This work has been published in the Journal
of Economic Geography, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management,
International Review of Retail, Distribution & Consumer Research, Environment & Planning A,
and the Journal of Strategic Marketing. Mark Palmer is the corresponding author and can be
contacted at: m.j.palmer@aston.ac.uk
Geoff Simmons is a Lecturer in E-Marketing within the Department of Marketing,
Entrepreneurship and Strategy at the University of Ulster. Geoff lectures on a range of
undergraduate and postgraduate marketing programmes. His main research interests are in
marketing’s relationship with other strategic orientations, internet branding and internet Management
marketing adoption by small businesses. He has published on these areas within journals such as:
International Small Business Journal, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Strategic mistakes and
Marketing, and the Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development. mea culpa
Ronan de Kervenoael is a Lecturer in Marketing at Sabanci University and network Lecturer
at Aston University. He received his PhD from Sheffield University, UK. He has held research
positions at Lancaster University, ITSM de Monterrey and Manchester University. Ronan has a
particular interest in consumer choice, anti-choice, and resistance. His wider research interests lie 257
under the umbrella of consumer behaviour and retailing.

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