Who put the cult in culture?

This paper subjects the management blockbuster 'Built to Last' (Collins & Porras 1992) to paradigmic analysis through the medium of the Burrell & Morgan (1979) framework. The interest is to explore the extent to which such a popular text could equally appeal to both populist and evidence-based business academic audiences, and to explore how the authors' have engineered this dual appeal. The authors are explicit as to the research aims and research design underlying their inquiry, and are not reticent in making claims for the intellectual robustness and practical transferability of findings derived from their innovative research approach. This clarity of research purpose greatly facilitates the process of assessing the extent to which the authors satisfy their own criteria - an assessment which the authors themselves challenge the reader to engage with in their opening ‘methods’ chapter.