“There’s no trick to it, it’s just a simple trick!”

That line from The Simpsons came to my mind when I read this Financial Times essay by Jonathan Guthrie:  If you can fake authenticity in the new year, you will have it made. Authenticity was already a buzzword in business and politics before the credit crunch. It will become an essential virtue following the curtain ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

That line from The Simpsons came to my mind when I read this Financial Times essay by Jonathan Guthrie:  If you can fake authenticity in the new year, you will have it made. Authenticity was already a buzzword in business and politics before the credit crunch. It will become an essential virtue following the curtain twitch that revealed so many Masters of the Universe to be Wizards of Oz. At one executive leadership seminar I attended recently, the trainer explained that authenticity was the main attribute delegates needed to radiate, including “different types of authenticity for different audiences”. This means being a technocrat in the boardroom, a pragmatist among middle managers and an Average Joe on the shop floor. One does wonder if this increases the likelihood of bloggers -- who were in on the ground floor of this whole "constructed authenticity" deal -- making it in the corporate world. 

That line from The Simpsons came to my mind when I read this Financial Times essay by Jonathan Guthrie

If you can fake authenticity in the new year, you will have it made. Authenticity was already a buzzword in business and politics before the credit crunch. It will become an essential virtue following the curtain twitch that revealed so many Masters of the Universe to be Wizards of Oz. At one executive leadership seminar I attended recently, the trainer explained that authenticity was the main attribute delegates needed to radiate, including “different types of authenticity for different audiences”. This means being a technocrat in the boardroom, a pragmatist among middle managers and an Average Joe on the shop floor.

One does wonder if this increases the likelihood of bloggers — who were in on the ground floor of this whole “constructed authenticity” deal — making it in the corporate world. 

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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