The world of business is a world of culture: a world of rituals, artefacts and idioms which is fit for anthropological andsociological analysis. The notion of performativity serves as a useful vehicle to analyse the culture that do characterisebusiness schools, consultancy firms, corporations, investment banks, start-up companies and other sites of business life.This notion refers to performance in the sense of efficacy in the achievement of tasks, but also to the institutive capacities ofknowledge and to an idea of practice as acting and staging. This research project seeks at providing sound social-scientificknowledge on the performativity of business through a theoretical clarification of the concept and a set of empiricalinvestigations in three relevant areas. The first area is education in business administration. The project analyses theperformativity of the case method of instruction and of similar pedagogical techniques that emphasise singularity, exemplarityand realism in the provision of meaningful and effective narratives. The second area is management consulting. The projectanalyses the performativity of consultancy missions and management devices, with a focus on the practices of presentationand communication used by consultants in order to construct convincing realities. The third area is entrepreneurial finance.The project analyses the performativity of business models, business plans and business cases in the orientation ofinvestment and financing in entrepreneurial settings. Empirical investigation in all three areas is grounded in a qualitative,case-based approach. The research project aims at generating detailed and original factual evidence of the performativityof business in all three areas, and also at providing a coordinated and rigorous assessment of performativity as problematicreality in today s risk-oriented global business culture.