Best Reads in 2019

Just a few years back, people were predicting the demise of the book – at least in its “real” as distinct from “virtual” form. E-books, we were told, would make physical books obsolete. For once, however, the neophiliacs seem to have been proved wrong…..In 2017, for the first time real books had positive growth but sales figures for virtual books declined…

Although publishing giants continue to gobble up other publishers – most famously in recent years my favourite, Penguin – small publishers somehow continue to grow and seduce us with their wares.

There is, of course, a downside to this – that we are swamped by the number of new titles which churn from the printing presses….

Indeed I have, half-seriously, raised in my blog the idea of rationing at least non-fiction books to which I am most partial

On the question of real or virtual books, I feel I can be reasonably objective since I am both a great reader of real books and writer of E-books (at least 12 if you include the edited annual collection of posts) ….

Virtual books are functional but simply do not satisfy aesthetic and ergonomic needs. 
I heed to be able to flick the pages quickly to find the index and recommended reading; scribble comments; check pages I’ve already marked,.....I need, indeed, to smell the pages….

The E-book published at the beginning of the month - To Whom it May Concern – the 2019 posts – has several annexes, including my list of favourite blogs and of non-fiction classics of the past century.

I realise it would have been useful have added an indication of the books which most impacted on me during the year – and to see whether they passed the tests I had suggested in 2018 we might use to decide whether to purchase yet another non-fiction book.

I start with the oldest. In many cases the hyperlinks explain what I found interesting about the book and sometimes the commentary there will actually allow you to access the book itself. In a few cases the hyperlink in the title itself will give you the entire book (or at least some sample pages)

 The British Regulatory State – high modernism and Hyper-innovation; by Michael Moran (2003). This gave a very different interpretation of the modern UK state from the one found in most textbooks

Monoculture – how one story is changing everything; FS Michaels (2011) A very readable explanation of neoliberalism

“The Righteous Mind” Jonathan Haidt (2012). The link explains…

The Capitalist Papers – fatal flaws of an obsolete system; Jerry Mander (2012) Ditto

The New Few – a very British oligarchy; Frederick Mount (2012) Ditto

A Life in Pictures; Alasdair Gray (2012) Ditto

Dealing with Dysfunction – innovative problem-solving in the public sector; Jerry de Jong (2014) A highly original perspective on good decision-making.

The Road to Character; David Brooks; (2015) The link explains

Interestingly, the books which left the biggest impression were all produced in the last 2 years. They are -

The Econocracy – the perils of leaving economics to the experts; Earle, Moran and Ward-Perkins (2017)

The Lure of Greatness – England’s Brexit, America’s Trump”; Anthony Barnett (2017)

Capitalism – the new anxieties;  Paul Collier (2017)

The Fear and the Freedom; why the second world war still matters; Keith Lowe (2017). A history book which reminds me of Theodor Zeldin in the way it uses portraits of individuals as a hook on which to hang the narrative.

The Laws of Human Nature; Robert Greene (2018)    

Reckless Opportunists – elites at the end of the establishment by Aeron Davis (2018)

Bullshit Jobs – a theory; David Graeber (2018)

The Dawn of Euroasia – on the trail of the new world order; Bruno Macaes (2018)

Lost Connections; Johann Hari (2018)

The Square and the Tower – networks and power from the Freemasons to Facebook (2018)

Post-Modernism – an intellectual history

The matrix presented in the last post tells the same story as did the Indian parable of three millennia ago of the blind men who encounter an elephant

They have never come across an elephant before and learn and conceptualize what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. 

The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true

This seems to put post-modernism and its claims in its place – is it really all that new?

That’s the question which this post considers…

Some time ago I came across a reference to a short book written in 1944 which I had never heard of – The Abolition of Man – which seemed to anticipate the threat which the “anything goes” strand of post-modernism would bring (which I have taken to calling - the “whatever” response). It was penned by a very well-known figure of CS Lewis and is summarised here – the full version can actually be downloaded here.  

It seems that Lewis (father of Daniel D) took the threat so seriously that he wrote a dystopian novel about it – That Hideous Strength whose plot is summarised in great detail here; serialised here; and available (courtesy of Gutenberg) in entirety here

Rashomon was a famous Japanese film, made in 1950, which considered an event from four different perspectives – a few years before I learned this knack, operating as I have described elsewhere in the no-man’s land between classes, between different academic and professional fields and, from the age of 50, even between different countries.

And it was political scientist Graham Allison’s Essence of Decision – explaining the Cuban missile crisis (1971) which helped me appreciate the significance of what I had felt, in my youth, to be, quite simply, personal tensions.

That book set out three very different ways of understanding the events of October 1962 when the world stood on the edge of nuclear war (see the diagram at p23 of that link). His 1969 paper in the American Political Science Review rehearsed the basic argument – which outlines first a “rational model” of decision-making; then one based on “organisational behaviour”; and finally one based on “governmental politics”.

The clearest explanation of the phenomenon, however, is probably the earliest – American sociologist Peter Berger’s The social construction of reality (1966) whose significance I didn't recognise at the time

Frame analysis” – variously attributed to anthropologist Geoffrey Bateson (1972) and Erving Goffman (1974) – was the technical term given to the recognition of diverse and divergent perceptions of “reality” and one which I came across during a part-time course I was taking on policy analysis – actually the UK’s first such course in the mid 1980, run by Lewis Gunn. 

I can still remember the room I was in when we discussed the concept and the frisson experienced - although when I google the term, I can’t find a satisfactory article – all gibberish, associated with the field of communications studies.

But it was, probably, Gareth Morgan who popularised the notion that we could view organisational reality in many different ways. His Images of Organisation appeared in 1986 and pointed out that nine different metaphors (or “ways of seeing”) had developed about organisations eg as a “machine”, as a “brain”, as “cultures”, even as a “psychic prison”. And each of these have very real and distinctive effects on the way we think about organisations.

A drawing made the same point visually – see, for example, p 26 or so of Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of really Effective People (1990) – some saw an old woman, others a young thing with a bonnet….

Like David Harvey in The Condition of Post-modernity – an enquiry into cultural change; (1989), I’m not sure when I first came across the expression “post-modern” to describe the age which has taken the celebration of diverse ways of looking at events to such extremes that “anything goes” and “fake news” flourishes.

Harvey is a geographer and better known for his exegesis of Marxism – and it’s only now I have come across this book of his on postmodernism which seems at first glance to be quite the best thing I know on the subject

Of course, the question everyone poses when the subject turns to postmodernism is – what was modernism? For which the best read is Marshall Berman’s All that is solid melts into air (1982) which was the subject of a famous exchange between Perry Anderson and the author in 1984 in the pages of the New Left Review 

Further reading

https://www.preceden.com/timelines/62885-postmodernism-timeline-1939-2001; The Preceden website is a very useful tool I didn’t know about – and this entry helps us understand PM

The Saturated Self – a collage of postmodern life; K Gergen (1991) A psychologist’s take on the matter

Self and modernity on trial – a reply to Gergen which contains a great summary of the book

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/postmodernism

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/04/marshall-berman-living-urban-city-modernism-dissent/

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/marshall-berman-archive-cities-modernism-signs-in-streets

One Dimensional Man; Herbert Marcuse (1964) which can be accessed here

http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/ronald-aronson-herbert-marcuse-one-dimensional-man-today

Common cause (2010) a vivid example of how postmodernism now drives the marketing machine

57 Varieties of Capitalism

Last October I developed a table in what was probably the most important post of the year – one in a series about capitalism. The table listed 11 academic disciplines; showed how 3 “schools” of thinking could be discerned in each discipline; and how they tended to treat the subject.

The key variable distinguishing these schools was the extent to which they recognised the realities of power. I named them “market theoreticians”; “mixed” and “critical-realist” respectively.

The subsequent matrix produced 33 different “lens” with which to try to understand the system which rules over us with Minotaur-like voraciousness. I was proud of the result – I had never seen it done before. Of course there was a school of political economists which developed in the 1980s and 90s called the Varieties of Capitalism approach – but this focused on essentially two basic models. 

My matrix is distinctive in 3 ways – first that so many academic fields are listed. At best people will mention economics, sociology and political science – with little recognition that economics has several very different sub-fields. And I might have added “complexity science” which has rapidly developed its own specialism.

The second original aspect of the table is the recognition of three very different “schools” or approaches…Most economists, of course, still adhere to highly theoretical and unrealistic assumptions which were explored (and exploded) in this recent post

But political and behavioural economists – let alone the sociologists, geographers and even psychologists have been muscling in….Indeed I have had to add the psychologists to the table…giving 36 "lens" or squares

And the final distinctive aspect of the table is the identification of so many books – almost 50 covering most of squares…
I have selected the books which appear in the table according to whether they portray a world of “perfect competition” in which, according to the theory, no one has any power or, at the other extreme, a world of large companies and groups exercising power (legal and illegal). 

We are prone these days to use ideological labels too easily – so I want to avoid that by using less obvious labels.

- “Market theoreticians” (column 3) are those whose writing is based on the totally unrealistic assumptions of perfect competition

“Mixed economy” therefore covers those who clearly argue for what used to be called “the mixed economy” and are quite clear that they wish a better, more balanced capitalism;

- The “critical-realist” label covers those who go further in their critical approach, extending their analysis to the role exercised by dubious and illegitimate power players who try to buy democracy and whose activities threaten the planet’s very survival.

Some academic disciplines, of course, like economics, are almost exclusively associated with one school (market) whereas others are more pluralist 

Needless to say, the allocation to one particular column is arbitrary and could be disputed – as can the choice of illustrative authors and books (not all of which I have actually read)

The table is, however, a rather superb example of what post-modernism has done to us – which I will explore in a subsequent post   

The table is, however, a good example of what post-modernism has done to us

 Key Texts about the future of capitalism – by academic discipline and “approach”

 

Academic Discipline	1. Critical-Realist	2. Mixed approach	3. “market theoreticians”
Economics	Debt and Neo-Feudalism; Michael Hudson (2012)  Credo – economic beliefs in a world of crisis; Brian Davey (2015). Davey is not a career or conventional economist!   23 Things they didn’t tell you about capitalism; Ha Joon-Chang (2010)	People, Power and Profits – progressive capitalism for an age of discontent; Joseph Stiglitz (2019) The Future of Capitalism – facing new anxieties; Paul Collier (2018) Shifts and Shocks – what we’ve learned, and still have to, from the financial crisis; Martin Wolf (2014) Conceptualising Capitalism – institutions, evolution, future; Geoff Hodgson (2015)	Why Globalisation Works; Martin Wolf (2004)     most of the discipline
Economic history	Capitalism and its Economics – a critical History; Douglas Dowd (2000) Never Let a Good Crisis go to waste; Philip Mirowski  (2013)	Crashed – how a decade of financial crises changed the world Adam Tooze (2018)	Economic historians by definition have a strong sense of political and other institutions
Political economy	Inside Capitalism – an intro to political economy; Paul Phillips (2003) Susan Strange - States and Markets (1988) - Casino Capitalism ; (1986) - The Retreat of the State (1994)	Austerity – the history of a dangerous idea; Mark Blyth (2013) Yanis Varoufakis - And the Weak Suffer what they must – Europe, austerity and the threat to global stability (2016) - The Global Minotaur (2012)	The discipline still rediscovering itself but, again, by definition, has a strong sense of the importance of institutions
Political Science	Crisis without End - the unravelling of western prosperity: A Gamble (2014)  Democracy Incorporated – managed democracy and the spectre of inverted totalitarianism; Sheldon Wolin (2008)	Paul Hirst eg Revisiting Associative Democracy; ed Westall (2011).  The Great Disruption – human nature and the reconstitution of social order; Francis Fukuyama (1999)  Mammon’s Kingdom – an essay on Britain, Now; David Marquand (2015)	Only a few brave pol scientists trespass into the economic field – although it is becoming more fashionable
Policy analysis/Think Tanks		“The Locust and the Bee – predators and creators in capitalism’s future”; G Mulgan (2015)	An Intro to Capitalism (IEA 2018)
Sociology	Wolfgang Streeck. - How will Capitalism End?; (2016) - Buying Time – the delayed crisis of democratic capitalism (2013) End of capitalism? Michael Mann (2013) Capitalism; Geoff Ingham (2008)	Vampire Capitalism – fractured societies and alternative futures; Paul Kennedy (2017)	The sociological voice is still inspired by C Wright Mills, Veblen, Weber and Durkheim
Geography	David Harvey - Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (2014) - The Enigma of Capital (2010) - A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism (2005).	Danny Dorling - A Better Politics – how government can make us happier (2016 - Injustice (2014)	The geographers are a bolshie lot - with a strong sense of geo-politics
Environment	Come On! Capitalism, short-termism, population and the destruction of the planet; (Club of Rome 2018).	Why we can’t agree about Climate Change; Mike Hulme (2009) Natural Capitalism – the next industrial revolution; Paul Hawken (1999)	they pride themselves on their technocracy
Management and man’t studies	“The Dictionary of Alternatives – utopianism and organisation”; M Parker (2007)	Rebalancing Society; Henry Mintzberg (2014) Peter Senge Charles Handy	Most mant writers are apologists – apart from the critical mant theorists
Religious studies	Laudato-Si – Pope Francis’ Encyclical (2015). Accessible in its entirety here	The Crisis of global capitalism – Pope Benedict XVI’s social encyclical and the future of political economy; ed A Pabst (2011)	Questions of Business Life; Higginson (2002)
Psychology	Herbert Marcuse What about me – the struggle for identity in a market based society?; Paul Verhaeghe (2014)
Journalism	Post Capitalism – a guide to our Future; Paul Mason (2015) ….  The Capitalism Papers – Fatal Flaws of an Obsolete System; Jerry Mander (2012).	How Good Can we be – ending the mercenary society Will Hutton (2015)  Capitalism 3.0 Peter Barnes (2006)	They don’t enjoy the tenure of the academics (altho Hutton is a college Director)

Is Organisational Reform really all that sexy?

The last 2 posts have tried to direct readers to posts they may have missed last year - relating to one of the three subjects which most occupied my thoughts viz the nature of the economic beast which had us in its grips. You can read these thoughts more easily on “To Whom it May Concern” – the latest version of which is accessible by clicking on that title in the list in the top-right corner of the blog’s masthead.

Today I want to switch the focus to the section of the collection which is entitled “What is it about Admin Reform which makes it so sexy?” But first I owe my readers some explanation of why I continue to be so fixated about public management reform….Quite simply I find the writings on the subject less than satisfactory because they are produced either by academics (who reify and obfuscate) or by think-tankers (who simplify and exaggerate). It’s very difficult to find material written by practitioners – or, even better, by those who straddle boundaries of discipline, nation or role.

I came to full adult consciousness in the 1960s, getting my first taste of political power in 1968 and of political responsibility and innovation in 1971 when I became Chairman of a Scottish Social Work Committee.

“Reform” was very much in the air – although no one could then have imagined what an industry public administrative reform would become. Indeed, in those days, the only management author you could find in the bookstores was Peter Drucker. And the only books about reform were American….

The opening pages of my How did Administrative Reform get to be so Sexy? try to convey a sense of what it was like to be an early pioneer of organisational change in the country. My position in academia encouraged me to develop a habit of publishing “think-pieces” often in the form of pamphlets in a Local Government Research Unit which I established in 1970 at Paisley College of Technology – this 1977 article gives a good example of the style.

The same year I published a little book about the experience of the new system of Scottish local government and, for the next decade, musings on my experience of running a unique social strategy in the West of Scotland. 

In Transit – notes on good governance (1999) were the reflections which resulted from my first decade living and working in the countries of post-communist central Europe. Eight years then followed in three Central Asian countries and strengthened a feeling about the inappropriateness of the approach we “foreign experts” were using in our “technical assistance”.

In 2007 I tried to interest people in the NISPace network in a critique called Missionaries, mercenaries or witchdoctors – is admin reform in transition countries a religion, business or a medicine? – but to no avail.

I started blogging in 2008 with a website which is still active – publicadminreform - clearly signalling that I wanted to use it to reach out to others. Sadly that has not happened…but it has not stopped me from continuing to “talk to myself” on this blog and from trying to produce a book which does justice to the thoughts and experiences I’ve had in about 10 countries over the past 50 years….

So let me try to summarise why I persevere with this fixation of mine –

-       Authors in this field focus either on students or experts in government, academia and think tanks.

-       I know of only a handful of books which have been written for the general public

-       Most writers about PAR have known only one occupation – whether academic or think-tanker – and one country

-       I’ve occupied different roles (political, academic, consultancy) in different countries and can therefore see the issues from many sides

-       few authors have bothered to try to explore the possible reasons for the stratospheric and continued rise in interest in administrative reform

-       New cohorts of politicians, public servants and even academics arrive in the workforce without a good sense of the history of this subject

Post	What sparked it off	Why it’s worth reading
Time to reclaim public services Time to get the Finger out	Oxfam report for Davos Rereading last year’s draft book about administrative reform	Gives us the encouraging lessons from the experience of those who have rolled back privatisation
The invisible power of managerial ideology	Going back to Burnham	Explores the question we rarely ask
How did it happen? part II	My 1999 book “In Transit – notes on Good Governance”	Looks at how reform was seen in the 1990s
a Rare voice of clarity – part III	Gerald Caiden	A prescient voice
Machiavelli’s Warning – part IV	A reminder of the strength of organ inertia	A first stab at an answer to the question
The Managerial Turn - part V	Clarifying professionalism	First we rubbished the professionals
“Not with a bang, but a whimper” - Part VI	We don’t seem to have learned much in 40 years……	Key lessons are however extracted
Chris Pollitt RIP	Belated acknowledgement of a great scholar	Those who express important truths in a clear language deserve honour
Looking for purpose	“The Puritan Gift” is a rare critique of how modern management has poisoned us all	Has a good summary
Peter Drucker’s Deadly Sins of PA – part VII	The Grand Old Man of management says it better	Important proverbs
Wresting politics back from the technocrats	an article being hyped as “the new practice of public problem-solving”	Technocracy is the new enemy
Workforce management – an idea whose time has come	Laloux book	Summary of one of the most important books about organisations in recent years
Let the Fingers do the Talking	an article being hyped as “the new practice of public problem-solving	Good references
Real Control	Workforce management again
The Virus affecting the world	Neoliberalism
Blowing up departmental silos	Hilary Cottam’s book	Time to take this issue seriously
Plain speaking - words and PAR	A rare article about translation  should leave us wondering why international summits are not more conflictual..