The Managerial Creed

Anything which smacks of the managerial is suspect these days – but have we really pinned down what it is we find so objectionable – apart from the proliferation of the breed and their counter-productivity? And, given the way Artificial Intelligence and robots threaten to make managers redundant, should we not just treat what James Burnham called (in 1941) the “managerial revolution” as an embarrassing hiccup?  

It’s difficult for younger people to realise there was once a time when managers hardly existed. I well remember when the concept of management first became fashionable in the UK – in the early 1970s, when professionals ruled the roost as accountants, engineers, educationalists, lawyers or medics. I have to confess to being part of the first generation which became enthusiasts for the promise of management. 

It was actually a priest in South America who most effectively set the cat amongst the pigeons of UK professionalism with his anarchistic critiques of the grip which educational and medical castes had on our minds - namely Ivan Illich of Deschooling Society (1971) and Medical Nemesis (1974) fame. I used to tour the various professional associations in Scotland in those years – using both the Illich critique and the insights I had gained as a Chair of one of the new Social Work Committees to challenge the conventional wisdoms of these professions.

And it was for this reason that, under the influence of John Stewart of the Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV), I became an early convert to the idea of corporate planning and management which was then fashionable - although its time soon passed, with complaints about “silo management” being, if anything stronger  in recent years (see Gillian Tett’s 2015 book below). Getting agreement about priorities is, of course, the easy part – making those priorities stick when it comes to implementation is the rather more difficult part– particularly for political organisations.

I’ve had a curious relationship with management over the past half century – the first half of my adult life, from age 25, was spent as a reforming politician where the Directors of professional services were amongst my closest colleagues (my paid job in academia was a bit of a sideline). That changed in the second half of my life - when I entered the project management world of consultancy where I was generally Team Leader of small groups of professionals trying to develop the capacity of organisations in ex-communist countries. That was, quite frankly, very much a question of the blind leading the blind since we “westerners” were only subject specialists (usually of only one country’s system) and had little experience of change management – let alone understanding of the context in which we were working. So I made a point of doing my homework on what the literature of “change management” (which had started in the mid 1980s and was a decade later the most popular field) had to say. Out of historical interest, I’ve reproduced the Annotated Bibliography for change agents I did in those days. 

The blog has several times suggested that there are religious overtones to economics and management – culminating with this post last year which listed the relevant books, including The Faith of the Managers by Stephen Pattison (1998) 

By seeing much of modern management as in some ways a profoundly religious and ethical activity that looks different to those who are managed rather than managing, I hope to place it in a new light. Management is deified by some and demonized by others. Subjecting it to a partial critique that emphasizes religious and ethical features should help both protagonists and detractors to see management for what it is - a human activity with strengths, weaknesses, possibilities and pitfalls.

Management is an important and necessary function in the modern world. No organization that is in any sense organized can do without some kind of management function, and it is unhelpful and unrealistic to hope that management will go away or can be dispensed with.

Rather, management needs to be improved and made more effective.

This might be expedited in part by helping both managers and the managed to become more self-consciously aware and articulate about the nature of this activity and the assumptions upon which it rests.

Readers will be familiar with my view that we need shorter books – authors really do need to compress their thoughts more clearly and in a shorter format. There’s far too much padding. That’s why I favour those articles which try to give an overview of the literature on a subject. I see that I noticed this in what I think was the last post on managerialism  almost three years ago. The subject is, correctly in my view, now beginning to attract more attention. 

For the moment I aim to skim the books I’ve listed below – and then perhaps come back to you with my thoughts. I should emphasise that these are not management textbooks – or the pop-management stuff you buy in airports. They are rather the critical reflections on that body of crap.

The two best articles in the immediate list below are the Doran one and the last one 

Key Articles

NPM – the dark side of managerial enlightenment; Thomas Diefenbach (2000) Focused on the issues raised by the market-based new public management.

Managerialism – an ideology and its evolution; Christine Doran (2016) A very clear and useful overview of the literature

Managerialism and the continuing project of state reform Janet Newman and John Clarke (2016) A rather more academic treatment of aspects of public sector reform

A Zizekian Ideological critique of managerialism Keith Abbott (2018) A typically compressed and far too clever academic argument of a sort which gives academia a bad name

The Political Economy of Managerialism; Eagelton_Pearce and Kanfo (2020) which explores why this discipline seems to have ignored this issue

The Managerialist Credo; Glover, McGowan and Tracey (2021) A quite excellent overview of the topic

Books

Managerialism – the emergence of a new ideology by Willard Enteman (1993) rather pedantic treatment by a US academic focusing more on socialism, capitalism and democracy than on managerialism

Managing Britannia – culture and management in modern Britain; Robert Protherough and John Pick (2003) 

Against Management – organisation in the age of managerialism; Martin Parker (2004) I didn’t find this book all that interesting when I first skimmed it quite a few years ago – but that probably says more about my impatience with a lot of sociologists  

The Making of Modern Management – British management in historical perspective Wilson and Thomson (2006) Very thorough treatment by 2 British economic historians    

The Age of Heretics – a history of the radical thinkers who reinvented corporate management Art Kleiner (2008) a US journalist examines the past half century for key moments in a racey read.

Management and the Dominance of Managers – an inquiry into why and how managers rule our organisations; Thomas Diefenbach (2009) suggests that the question of how managers have gained their excessive power has not been sufficiently explored…..This article of his is in “academese” but you can still sense his concerns

Rethinking Management – radical insights from the complexity sciences; Chris Mowles (2011)

A delightful and very thoughtful book from an experienced consultant trying to rethink his profession from first principles….

Confronting Managerialism - How the Business Elite and Their Schools Threw Our Lives Out of Balance Robert R. Locke and J.-C. Spender (2011) Locke is an American Prof who has been very critical of managerialism

Managerialism – a critique of an ideology   Thomas Klikauer (2013) written by a German who started as an engineer and trade unionist and now teaches Australian MBA students, this is a superb and comprehensive attack on the pretensions of manageriaism.l

The Silo Effect – the peril of expertise Gillian Tett (2015) Tett is a financial journalist and anthropologist and this is a very practical attack on groupthink

Strategic management and organisational dynamics Ralph Stacey and Chris Mowles (2016) a very thorough and critical assessment which contrasts “realist” and “postmodern” approaches and suggests a better, more reflective way

The Triumph of Managerialism? New Technologies of Government and their implications for value edited by Anna Yeatman, Bogdan Costea (2018) Have only google excerpts

Anarchism, organisation and management Martin Parker (2020) This is an update to his 2004 book – he’s also published an interesting dictionary of alternative organisations