The manager – a suitable case for treatment
Norman Jackson, University of Leicester
Pippa Carter, University of Leicester
The 1960’s can be seen as the golden age of liberal managerialism, at least as far as people management was concerned. According to the ethos of the period, workers liked work, under the ‘correct’ conditions they were happy to do more, money was not an over-riding concern, they wanted to be ‘managed’ as long as it was done humanely and the prospects for continuous and unlimited ‘improvement’ were never better. True, there was an unfortunate pluralism underlying the work situation but a congruency of goals was attainable. All this was underpinned by a reassuring knowledge base easily communicable to managers and very acceptable both ideologically (for capital) and in terms of ego, for managers.
As the optimism of the ‘60’s matured into the more conflicted ‘70’s, for those ‘knowledge producers’ unconvinced by both the functioning of capitalist organisations and the veracity of managerial-friendly knowledge, the focus of critique was largely epistemological. Undoubtedly, such a critique was crucial and, one could argue, successful, and it was, of course, one in which SCOS was heavily implicated. What has been less successful, however, is the influence on management practice of this ‘new knowledge’. Far from having a meliorating effect on managerial excess, they have in this period become more excessive. The pluralistic/humanist fantasy has been superseded by a unitarist/autocracy, albeit ‘informed’ by a rhetoric of workers as the organisation’s most valuable asset.
In the early days of the emergent epistemological critique of Managerial Functionalism, there was a sense, certainly amongst the more optimistic critics, that managers were badly served by the then dominant knowledge base. The articulated ideology of ‘modern’ management was fairly benign (think QWL movement) and what was needed was a commensurately robust set of knowledge tools for them to be able to realise their worthy vision. Subsequent experience has shown a marked reluctance on the part of managers and many of their educators, to make use of this ‘new knowledge’ other than, perhaps, to identify ‘the enemy’ and to take remedial steps to maintain their purity.
In this paper we want to suggest that the ‘epistemological age’ is now over as regards critique. The project of ‘deconstructing’ Managerial Functionalism is now mature, theoretically. The problems of capitalist organisations are well understood by a much larger constituency than ever before and are now the subject of routine ordinary language discourse, informed by a string of ‘disasters’ both actual and pending –pensions, fuel supply, environmental catastrophe, fraud etc. However, following the analysis proposed by Deleuze and Guattari, desire still wins out over interest. The recent re-emergence of a political-economic critique suggests an awareness of the need for ‘structural’ change, rather than an expectation of behavioural change driven by critical knowledge, for action rather than mere understanding.
In this vein, we want to argue for the targeting of ‘the manager’ as the obstacle to meaningful change in organisation – the manager as pathogen. As long as managers owe blind allegiance to capital, they can only operate within an ideologically approved knowledge base, sympathetic to the ‘needs’ of capital. The idea that managers can be educated to see the error of their ways was clearly a non-starter. Using Lyotard’s insight that (management) power is being able to talk about others (the managed) in a language that they do not share, we want to develop the idea of managers becoming an increasing threat and a potent obstacle to finding practical solutions to pressing problems. As Baudrillard argues, we get farther from the solution, but all the time nearer to the problem.