Overcoming Managerialism? How??

Overcoming Managerialism: Power, Authority and Rhetoric at Work, by Robert Spillane and JeanEtienne Joullié

ISBN: 9783110758160Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Press., ix+225pp., €89,95 (hbk.) 2022

Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer and Catherine Link

Many people have used the term managerialism somewhat loosely from the time of Enteman’s seminal book Managerialism: the Emergence of a New Ideology (1993). Since then, we have been edging closer to an acceptable definition of what managerialism actually is. This is even more the case since Locke & Spender (2011) and Klikauer (2013) when a reasonable working definition for managerialism emerged (Wikipedia, 2022).

Managerialism combines management knowledge and ideology to establish itself systemically in organisations and society while depriving owners, employees (organisational-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.

Robert Spillane and Jean-Etienne Joullié start their illuminating ‘Overcoming Managerialism’ – not with their definition of managerialism – but with ‘Authority in the Golden Age’ (Chapter 1). This is followed by ‘Authoritarianism, Conformity and Obedience’ and ‘A Theory of Managerial Power’. Chapter 4 discusses ‘Authority and Argumentation in the Boardroom’, while the next chapter focuses on ‘A Critique of Management Education’. Chapter 6 is about ‘The Rhetoric of Managerial Authority’ followed by ‘The Misuse of Psychology’. The last three chapters are on ‘Machiavellian Ingenuity or Moral Intelligence’, ‘Purposive Ethics for Managers’, and ‘From Managerialism to Heroic Management’. This management book ends – not with a conclusion that could have highlighted what can we learn from all this? – with: ‘Summary: Ten Contentions’.

Judging by Robert Spillane and Jean-Etienne Joullié’s Table of Contents it is clear that this book is not so much about managerialism as about management. The term managerialism features only once – at the very end of the book

The Introduction gets off to a bad start. While their term ‘profitably’ might be an unfortunate choice of wording, their introduction begins with managerialism as a practice, analysed as ‘manifestations of the decline of authority’ (p. 1). Foremost, managerialism is not a ‘practice’ but an ideology. So much we know, ever since Enteman’s Managerialism: The Emergence of a New Ideology (Enteman, 1993). This inextricable link between managerialism and ideology has been further supported by Locke & Spender (2011) and even more so by Klikauer’s Managerialism – Critique of an Ideology. Contrary to the authors’ claim, Managerialism is not about a ‘manifestations of the decline of authority’. Instead, managerialism provides ideological legitimacy to authority. Providing legitimacy remains one of the key tasks of managerialism.

Commencing with a somewhat misplaced emphasis on Aristotle’s philosophy as a legitimiser of authority (p. 23), Chapter 1 is largely on the history of authority. This chapter is completely devoid of the word ‘managerialism’. This is continued in Chapter 2. Throughout the next chapters, many aspects of management re-tell what we already know –particularly on the issues of authority and power (p. 51).

Chapter 3 argues that ‘human beings are tool-using animals’ (p. 62). Not quite. Chimpanzees and other animals can use tools but what they cannot do is make tools. A stick used to chase way an enemy never becomes a spear (De Waal, 2017).

Next, we are told, ‘the alternative to slave labour is paid labour’ (p. 65). Again, not quite. Humanity has always included other modes of labour than slave labour – from Stone Age Economics (Sahlins, 1974) till today (Parker et al., 2014).

Beyond all that, arguments like ‘the recurrent corporate scandals of the 2000s…’ (p. 83) appear to be designed to create the impression that corporate scandals are a thing of the 2000s. Yet corporate scandals started long before Carson’s

Silent Spring (1963) and will continue long after Reuter’s most recent news outlining, ‘UK institute pushes ethical code after corporate scandals’ (Reuters, 2022). Perhaps a quick glance at Wikipedia’s List of corporate collapses and scandals would have shown that corporate scandals are not an issue of the 2000s. Instead, starting with the Medici Bank in 1494 – i.e., a period that marked the early beginnings of capitalism – there is the distinct possibility that corporate scandals are an inherent feature of capitalism – a seditious thought of pure heresy!

It does not get any better with ‘the malaise which currently besets management studies’ (p. 90). The problems of management studies are not a ‘malaise’ but a structural feature of management studies. This has been the case ever since the semi-charlatan Frederic Taylor published a little booklet called Scientific Management without having done a single scientific experiment (Lepore, 2009). Over the years, little changed with management studies (Klikauer & Simms, 2021). Management studies is not ‘beset’ with these problems – as the authors like to imply – but the very creator of this.

Secondly, the authors argue on critical management studies (CMS) that ‘the research program of critical management studies cannot deliver definitive outcomes…’ (p. 93). Traditional management studies can’t do this either, some might argue. Besides, ‘deliver definitive outcomes’ is not the point of CMS (Klikauer, 2015).

Sailing closer to the truth, Robert Spillane and JeanEtienne Joullié argue in their sub-chapter on ‘Weeding the Managerialist Garden’ (p. 112), that ‘managerialists happily participate in an orgy of linguistic manipulation’ (p. 133). Firstly, managerialists do not just ‘participate’ in an orgy of linguistic manipulation. They actively invent and propagate such manipulative orgies. Secondly, and apart from the fact that managerialism is an ideology, managerialism is, to a large extent, about language manipulation – much more so than simple management was ever able to muster (Klikauer, 2007; 2008).

Interestingly, Robert Spillane and Jean-Etienne Joullié mention Baritz’s The Servants of Power (1960) without –perhaps deliberately – reflecting on the fact that management and managers are a key institution that functions as servants of power. The same is true about rafts of well-paid business school professors (Parker, 2018). Perhaps Upton Sinclair was not wrong after all when saying, ‘it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it’.

Of course, Robert Spillane and Jean-Etienne Joullié are right when saying ‘Maslow [is] ever popular with managerialists’ (p. 136). Yet. Maslow remains vastly more popular with traditional management writers (Cullen, 1997). Problems continue when Robert Spillane and Jean-Etienne Joullié say ‘Machiavelli’s political philosophy is not a science’ (p. 162). True, and neither is management studies.

After all of that, Robert Spillane and Jean-Etienne Joullié’s book finally arrives on the subject of the book’s title, Overcoming Managerialism. In their chapter on ‘From Managerialism to Heroic Management’, the authors start with ‘there have been managers for thousands of years’ (p. 177). This is a fairly common and frequently rehearsed ideology.

The term ‘management’ and even the very word ‘manager’ come from menagerie, ménager, and manejar meaning ‘to rule the horses’. Today, managers no longer rule over horses. From the dawn of capitalism on, they have ruled over workers. In other words, modern management is a form of domesticating workers. Historically, managers and management remain a function of capitalism (e.g., Fayol, 1916; Burnham, 1941). Management remains a profoundly modern word that only came into existence with capitalism.

Robert Spillane and Jean-Etienne Joullié even argue that ‘in a heroic society, individuals are what they do’ (p. 190). Besides the fact that most of us like to live in a ‘democratic’ – and not in a ‘heroic’ society (whatever a heroic society means!), management writers seem to cling onto the idea of heroism and leaders like a drug addict to crack-cocaine (Bolchover, 2005; Tourish, 2013 & 2020).

Worse, management writers like to link the image of heroism to battles, the military and wars. As one might have expected, Robert Spillane and Jean-Etienne Joullié continue with ‘successful military commanders…and in the sporting arena’ (p. 190). These two – military and sport – are some of the most preferred ideologies of management studies. Yet, when we go to work, there is no war and no sports arena. We do not even dress up in uniforms – military or otherwise, except for the ubiquitous and highly conformist business suit. Military commanders and heroes exist only in the twisted hallucinations of management studies or are used as an ideological vehicle to legitimize a profoundly un- (if not anti-) democratic institution: the institution of management. It is not at all surprising to see that the word ‘democracy’ is avoided in the same way it is shunned in China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan.

Perhaps the essence of Robert Spillane and Jean-Etienne Joullié’s book can indeed be summed up in one key sentence placed at the very end of the book: ‘overcoming authoritarian managerialism with authoritative management’ (p. 196). What Robert Spillane and Jean-Etienne Joullié advocate is not a move forward to a post-managerialism world but a reactionary return to – as they call it ever so deceptively –‘authoritative management’ meaning commanding and selfconfident; likely to be respected and obeyed

In conclusion, Robert Spillane and Jean-Etienne Joullié’s ‘Overcoming Managerialism’ wants us to adhere to a nondemocratic but commanding management that simply is to be obeyed. This is presented as TINA: there is no alternative. All in all, this book is an overwhelmingly conservative – if not

outright reactionary – work advocating a return to the mirage of a heroic management. The book delivers next to nothing that helps us understand what managerialism is and how it can be overcome.

Thomas Klikauer teaches MBAs at the Sydney Graduate School of Management, Western Sydney University.

Catherine Link is a lecturer at Western Sydney University in hospitality and work integrated learning, in particular simulations and student outward mobility. Contact: T.Klikauer@westernsydney.edu.au

References

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Bolchover, D. (2005). The Living Dead – Switched off Zoned Out, The Shocking Truth about Office Life, Chichester: Capstone Press.

Burnham, J. (1941). The Managerial Revolution – what is happening in the world, New York: The John Day Company (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962).

Carson, R. (1963). Silent Spring, London: Hamish Hamilton.

Cullen, D. (1997). Maslow, Monkeys, and Motivational Theory, Organization, 4(3): 355-373.

De Waal, F. (2017). Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Enteman, W. F. (1993). Managerialism: the Emergence of a New Ideology, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Fayol, H. (1916). Managerialism Industrielle et Generale (Industrial and General Managerialism), London: Sir I. Pitman & Sons, ltd. (1930).

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Klikauer, T. (2015). Critical management studies and critical theory: A review, Capital & Class, 39(2): 197-220.

Klikauer, T. & Simms, N. (2021). Snake Oil Salesmen of Management Studies, ZComm, 4th April 2021.

Lepore, J. (2009). Not So Fast – Scientific management started as a way to work. How did it become a way of life? The New Yorker. Retrieved from www.newyorker.com

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Reuters. (2022). UK institute pushes ethical code after corporate scandals. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/ business/uk-institute-pushes-ethical-code-after-corporatescandals-2022-06-19/, June 20, 20227:48 AM GMT+10

Sahlins, M. D. (1974). Stone Age Economics, London: Tavistock Publications.

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