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Thus, each subcultural grouping needs to be contacted with messages ‘framed’ in a way that secures its commitment to, or at least participation in, the co-operation (Snow et al. 1986). This is possible because the features of a forthcoming technolog ical discontinuity are always at least somewhat ambiguous. An inspiring vision of the implications of such changes may therefore partly promote its own realisation (Gagliardi 1986; Field 1989). To summarise the argument so far, on the basis of the above mentioned literature, it can be argued that both the managers’ actual skills and capabilities and their personal charisma affect their power to enforce co-operation within the managerial hierarchy.

Accordingly, we believe that analogical reasoning and comparison between social movements and management mobilisation may yield significant new insights to the conceptualisation of the latter (cf. Tsoukas 1991; 1993:343). The more concrete justifications for such an approach include the fact that management like social movements, creates its power through mobilisation of the resources possessed by separate actors such as personnel or external supporters (McCarthy and Zald 1977). Like social movements, management also represents collective and sustained change action for or against some other social entity or state (Smelser 1963).

In this spirit, discontinuous technological change may take place because in itself it may entail various positive outcomes for those who participate in its formulation and implementation. For example, besides the usual official objectives for new technology, such as increasing profitability or gaining competitiveness, an emerging business exploiting new technology permits ‘scientists’ to increase their knowledge and ‘business people’ to expand their businesses (Burgelman and Sayles 1986). The political coalition approach thus predicts that whenever a coalition holding a critical amount of power and expertise is created, technological change can emerge.