Epiphanies
(or “Eureka!” moments) are memorable – and I therefore remember some ten years
ago being in the flat I had for a couple of years in central Bishkek. I was
flicking through a book I had picked from my kitchen shelf - Reformation –Europe’s House Divided - and suddenly realising that the intense disputations about religious doctrine
in this period were remarkably similar to contemporary economic disputes. Other
people, of course, have developed this theme of the religious role taken by
modern management and economics – for example Susan George in her 1994 book
Faith and Credit - a tough critique of the World Bank which was the subject of a brilliant satire here
And
a recent book was entitled The New Holy Wars – economic religion versus environmental religion
In
the early 90s, a book actually bore the title Economics as Religion – and its Introduction can be read here
You
would think that “Management” offers an easier target since it patently has
less reason to claim scientific status - not that this has prevented such
claims being made! Charles Handy’s Gods of Management is actually about “cultures” of management and resists the temptation to
explode the pretensions of management gurus.
It
is not easy to find a book on “management as religion” – although there are
several classics which have a go at the management gurus and one of them
(Russel Ackoff) actually (and famously) wrote A Little Book of F-Laws
Eventually
my search produced a 1997 book The Faith of the Managers - when management becomes religion
So
much damage has been done to the arbitrary drive for “Efficiency” that one
would have thought the time is overdue for a savage critique of the religion of
management,
There
is, of course, an academic discipline called “Critical Management Studies” one
of whose foremost proponents is Chris Grey whose small book about studying organisations is a clear and powerful read. But the discipline as a whole is a let-down and
rarely offers good insights - "Against Management" is a good example
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