Charismatic Capitalism: Direct Selling Organizations in America

Nicole Woolsey Biggart

University of Chicago Press, Mar 15, 1990 - Social Science - 231 pages

Tupperware Home Parties, Shaklee Corporation, Amway, Mary Kay Cosmetics—theirs is an approach to business that violates many of the basic tenets of modern American commerce. Yet these direct selling organizations, fashioned by charismatic leaders and built upon devoted armies of door-to-door representatives, have grown to constitute an $8.5 billion a year industry and provide a livelihood for more than 5 million workers, the vast majority of them women.

The first full-scale study of this industry, Charismatic Capitalism, revises the standard contention that the rationalization of social institutions is an inevitable consequence of advanced capitalism. Nicole Woolsey Biggart argues instead that less rational organizations built on social networks may actually be more economically viable.

About the author

Nicole Woolsey Biggart is Professor of Management and Sociology at the University of California at Davis. She is the author of" Charismatic Capitalism: Direct Selling Organizations in America" (1989), and co-author (with Gary G. Hamilton and Marco Orru) of "The Economic Organization of East Asian Capitalism" (1996).

Bibliographic information

• Title: Charismatic Capitalism: Direct Selling Organizations in America
• Author: Nicole Woolsey Biggart
• Edition: illustrated, reprint, revised
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1990
• ISBN: 0226047865, 9780226047867
• Length: 231 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Marketing / Multilevel; Social Science / General; Social Science / Sociology / General