This book is about quality redundancy and its replacement by the "performativity" norm. Performativity is a linguistic, social, and political mechanism that produces the intended performance. The author, Alexander Tsigkas, sees this book as a natural continuation of his prior book The Lean Enterprise – From the Mass Economy to the Economy of One. He argues that performativity is the flip side of quality on a coin called identity, and in postmodernism, that is, in the age of Industry 4.0 and beyond, companies should be aiming for performativity and achieve quality as one of its many consequences. The author, therefore, encourages modern businesses to transition from quality orientation as conformance alone to a performance orientation.

The author brings forward historic, current, and philosophical perspectives in charting performativity as a new goal for modern businesses. Many examples, case studies, and conceptual constructs are used to drive in the idea of how to create a performative enterprise.