Confessions of a reformed managerialist

I have to confess to an enthusiastic managerialist youth, most evident in the paean to corporate management in my article What Sort of Overgovernment? in the 1975 Red Paper on Scotland (when I was 32) edited by the even more youthful Gordon Brown. The "management of change" literature which flooded the market in the 1990s was even the subject of a chapter in my In Transit – notes on good governance in 1999 but the experience of New Labour's Performance targeting began to raise doubts in my mind - crystallised by "The Audit Explosion" pamphlet which had been published a few years earlier

Most of us are aware of the new managerial layer which blocks us all – in one way or another. It’s become the butt of comedy and is our everyday experience whether as consumers being frustrated by call-centres; as office-workers angered by managerial pretensions and bullshit or as doctors, nurses, teachers and academics reporting to new managerial levels who complete the forms to keep the audit machine ticking over. 

But I want to understand how on earth we’ve allowed this to happen… to explore, in my own case, how I become first enthused, disappointed and, ultimately, disillusioned. After all, I had been exposed in the early 1970s both to the anarchical element of Ivan Illich’s philosophy and to the practicalities of community action. How on earth could I fall prey to the seductions of managerialism?

And what do I mean by the term, anyway? What exactly is this "managerialism"

Stewart Clegg is one of the most experienced writers on management and wrote a decade ago a marvellous little article called "Managerialism – born in the USA" which begins with the words of the Bruce Springsteen song. It's actually a review of a couple of important books on the subject and starts with their attempts to define managerialism. According to one, it is

what occurs when a special group, called management, ensconces itself systematically in an organization and deprives owners and employees of their decision-making power (including the distribution of emoluments)—and justifies that takeover on the grounds of the managing group’s education and exclusive possession of the codified bodies of knowledge and know-how necessary to the efficient running of the organization, (2009: 28).

By contrast, Thomas Klikauer emphasizes ideology:

Managerialism combines management knowledge and ideology to establish itself systematically in organizations and society while depriving owners, employees, (organizational-economical) and civil society (social-political) of all decision-making powers. Managerialism justifies the application of managerial techniques to all areas of society on the grounds of superior ideology, expert training, and the exclusive possession of managerial knowledge necessary to efficiently run corporations and societies …

Basically therefore it's

• a claim to special knowledge (similar to that made in medieval times by priests!)

• a successful attempt to muscle ahead in the status stakes

Those of you interested in pursuining these issues further should look at this list 

I should emphasise that these are not management textbooks – or the pop-management 

stuff you buy in airports. They are rather critical reflections on this body of thinking. 

Key
Articles

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

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

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

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

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 and u8seful 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 racy 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 google excerpt 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 managerialism.

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