Managerialism

Managerialism
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Managerialism
A Critique of an Ideology
Thomas Klikauer
School of Management, University of Western Sydney, Australia
©Thomas Klikauer 2013
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
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permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
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as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2013 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
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Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
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country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
To the
victims of Managerialism
Contents
List of Figures and Table viii
Acknowledgements ix
1 Introduction: Managerialism and Society 1
2 Managerialism as Ideology 24
3 Annihilating Social Change 45
4 Spreading Managerialism 58
5 The Culture of Managerialism 85
6 Managerialism and Authoritarianism 99
7 Managerialism and Positive Thinking 116
8 Shaping Science – Shaping Democracy 136
9 Management Studies 151
10 The Age of Managerialism 178
11 Challenges to Managerial Thinking 202
12 Beyond Managerialism 230
13 Roadblocks to Post-Managerialism 248
14 Conclusion: A Post-Managerial World is Possible 267
Notes 278
Index 346
vii
List of Figures and Table
Figures
10.1 The Development of Managerialist Universities 191

10.2 The Historical Development of the Managerialist 191
University
Table
10.1 The Link between Managerial Science and 189

Managerialism
viii
Acknowledgements
My deepest appreciation goes out to my wife Katja Klikauer for proof

reading this book comprehensively and most thoroughly. I am most
obliged to Stephen Ackroyd (UK) and Paul Adler (USA) for their contin-
ued and untiring assistance but above all to Robert Locke
(USA/Germany) for providing a fountain of knowledge on
Managerialism. For forwarding book chapters and articles, I would like
to thank John Child, Abbey Hyde, and Christopher Sheil. This book
has received no administrative, technical, editorial support or funding
from the University of Western Sydney or any other source. I am grate-
ful to those at UWS who shielded me from the worst excesses of
Managerialism. My appreciation also goes to the Hans-Böckler-
Foundation (www.boeckler.de/36912.htm). Finally, I would like to
show my appreciation to Palgrave’s commissioning and contractual
team (converting royalties into books), and, above all, its editorial
group for its surgical dedication in transforming my manuscript into a
presentable book.
ix
1
Introduction: Managerialism and
Society
Today, most of us spend most of our days inside companies, firms, and
corporations. These firms are democratic exclusion zones run by man-
agers under the institutional heading of management. Management
not only encompasses the actual affairs of business organisations but
also other institutions. The first step to successful management is an
institution that trains managers: the business/management school.1
The second is the actual structure set up by management: managerial
regimes operating inside firms and companies. The third is not an
institution but an ideology.2 In the words of Scott & Hart (1991:40),
‘Managerialism, like any ideology, is defined by its ends and by the
means used to achieve those ends’. Today, Managerialism has entered
the public domain with roughly a million Google hits.3 There are
endless numbers of people who call themselves managers, rafts of pub-
lications, textbooks, academic and quasi-academic journals, and huge
numbers of academics employed by management schools. Yet despite
all this, there are very few books on Managerialism4 with some notable
exceptions.5
Today, an initial attempt to define Managerialism comes from
Wikipedia.org describing it as ‘the belief that organisations have more
similarities than differences, and thus the performance of all organisa-
tions can be optimised by the application of generic management skills
and theory. To a practitioner of Managerialism, there is little difference
in the skills required to run a college, an advertising agency, or an oil
rig. Experience and skills pertinent to an organisation’s core business
are considered secondary. The term Managerialism can be used dis-
paragingly to describe organisations perceived to have a preponderance
or excess of managerial techniques, solutions, rules and personnel,
especially if these seem to run counter to the common sense of
1
2 Managerialism
observers. It is said that the MBA degree is intended to provide generic

skills to a new class of managers not wedded to a particular industry or
professional sector. The term can also be used pejoratively as in the
definition of a management caste.’
American management expert Robert R. Locke defines Managerialism
as ‘what occurs when a special group, called management, ensconces
itself systemically in an organisation and deprives owners and em-
ployees of their decision-making power (including the distribution of
emolument), and justifies that takeover on the grounds of the manag-
ing group’s education and exclusive possession of the codified bodies
of knowledge and know-how necessary to the efficient running of the
organisation’.6 Today, Locke’s definition can be extended because
Managerialism has extended itself from the limitations of business
organisations to society.7 Hence, a more appropriate approximation to
a definition might be:
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.
This transition from management to Managerialism has historic

origins. After 18th and 19th century’s simplicity of running small work-
shops, firms, and small companies, factory administration, i.e. manage-
ment, grew larger.8 Management installed itself as the sole institution
with specialised knowledge – managerial knowledge – to administer
factories.9 During the early 20th century factory administration was
turned into management. Subsequently management expanded its
operations. By adopting legitimising ideologies such as competition,
efficiency, free markets, greed is good, etc. management mutated into
an ideological operation that today has infected all sections of human
society. In historical terms, this occurred at first where ‘Scientific
Management’ was invented, i.e. in the USA. Managerialism’s chrono-
logical trajectory could only ever be from management to
Managerialism. Historically, management and Managerialism were not
Introduction: Managerialism and Society 3
paralleling movements nor was the latter an ideology that formed the
practical expression of management. Management entered the scene
before Managerialism appeared.
In terms of an historical chronology, Managerialism is a genuine US-
American term because the USA has been at the forefront of manage-
ment techniques (Taylor, Ford, Drucker, Porter, etc.) with the possible
exceptions of French writer Henri Fayol (1916) and partly German soci-
ologist Max Weber (1864–1920). Consequently, it was in the USA
where management first became Managerialism. ‘During Herbert
Hoover’s years as Secretary of Commerce and then as president,
Managerialism was further honed, until it became the sword’s-point of
reform in the Roosevelt era. Managerialism was credited with the pros-
perity of the Eisenhower 1950s.’10 In short, management is an early
20th century term (Taylor, Fayol, and Ford) while the term
Managerialism belongs to the late-20th century. Managerialism merges
management with ideology, thereby assisting an expansion of some-
thing rather simplistic, trivial, mundane, and to be honest, rather dull:
the administration of a company. ‘Management, to put it plainly, is
boring’ (Scott & Hart 1991:39). But this boredom quickly expanded to
become something that transcended simple factory administration.
Subsequently, management mutated into a full-fledged ideology under
the following formula:11
Management + Ideology + Expansion = Managerialism
When management mutated into an ‘-ism’, it joined a family of

‘-isms’.12 Put simply, ‘-isms’ indicate an informal, often derogatory and
unspecified doctrine, system, and practice. In other words, ‘-isms’ are
belief-systems with a cognitive content that is held up as being true.
Hence, an ‘-ism’ is accepted as authoritative by a group or school. In
short, ‘-isms’ represent a doctrine consisting of a shared set of common
ideological beliefs and practices. To turn management into an ideo-
logy, management first needed to come up with a proper ideology.13 It
has become commonplace to see ideology as a set of ideas that consti-
tute goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as
a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things. It provides a
worldview phrased as a set of ideas that are proposed by a dominant
class or group. Members of such a group or society receive the ideology
in order to create a false consciousness. As Jaeggi outlined, ‘ideologies
are the means by which the predominant situation is instilled in the
hearts and minds of the individual’.14 Ideologies are used to create
4 Managerialism
socialisation and engineer compliance so that the victims of ideolo-

gical socialisation do not rebel but support a given ideology. The main
purpose behind an ideology is twofold:
1. It adheres to a common set of ideas where conformity already exists.

This is done through normative thought processes.
2. It is the task of ideologies to cloak the reality of, for example, a
given institution that is based on contradictions.
‘Managerialism is about playing out … a cacophony of aberrations and

inconsistencies’.15 Ideology seeks to masquerade uniformity and an
overall goal based on a set of easy to digest principles such as, for
example, competition, deregulation, efficiency, free markets, and pri-
vatisation.16 Ideologies are systems of abstract thought applied to
public matters, thereby making ideology central to politics and society.
Implicitly, a catch-all umbrella-ideology such as Managerialism seeks to
redirect thinking away from truth and into a specific direction that is
invented by a hegemonic and powerful group.17
As with most ‘-isms’, Managerialism is, in the majority of cases, used
pejoratively rather than favourably. Where Managerialism is dom-
inant, its ideology is made to appear as common sense and requires no
further explanation, e.g. competition, the free market, etc. These
assumptions are backed up through an ideological legitimacy delivered
by universities housing management schools that generate thousands
of MBAs and MAs in marketing, finance, operations management, and
Human Resource Management. The university association seeks to
level management up to the realm of science in an attempt to equalise
management with science on par with physics or at least with econom-
ics. University generated management ‘science’ as a whole serves
primarily as a PR exercise to legitimate management.18
Where Managerialism needs a name (free enterprise, business com-
munity, etc.) the choice is usually one that conceals the profit interests
leading to ‘New Public Managerialism’, ‘Neo-Managerialism’, and ‘New
Managerial Nonsense’ in the public sector and ‘shareholder value’ in
the private sector.19 ‘Shareholder value’ comes along synonyms for
organisational goals, organisational outcomes, organisations objectives,
adding value, ‘Triple Bottom Line’ (PPP = people, planet, profit), ‘The
Real Bottom Line’, and so on. All of them conceal the profit motive.20
As an ideological cloaking device, shareholder-value is of particular
interest in the way it represents managers as mere agents of share-
holder principals. The central doctrine of Managerialism is that the dif-
ferences between, for example, universities and car companies are less
important than their similarities and that the performance of all organ-
isations can be optimised by the application of generic management
skills and knowledge. It follows that the crucial element of institu-
tional reform and restructuring, to use one of Managerialism’s most
favourite buzzwords, is the removal of obstacles to ‘the right to
manage’.21
Historically, the rise of Managerialism has gone hand in hand with
that of reactionary programmes of market-oriented reforms – e.g.
Thatcherism – and economic rationalism and Neo-Liberalism else-
where. Nevertheless, Managerialism and Neo-Liberalism are not the
same even though they share certain affinities. Neo-Liberalism has a
definite political programme – as outlined by Herrn von Hayek – in the
form of privatisation, deregulation, annihilating welfare states, aggres-
sive anti-unionism, restrictive fiscal policy, redirection of public spend-
ing, tax reform, interest rates, floating exchange rates, trade
liberalisation, liberalisation of capital account of the balance of pay-
ments, promoting market provision, legal security of property rights,
and the financialisation of capital. In contrast, Managerialism is not
primarily concerned with such political issues.22 Its prime concern is
the management of capitalism and society in its image. Both – capital-
ism and society – should mirror the way corporations are managed. For
Managerialism, management and managerial techniques applied to
corporations are the guiding principles, for Neo-Liberalism it is the free
market.23
Neo-Liberalism is about economics and politics, Managerialism
primarily deals with corporations and management and the function
of both inside ‘managerial economics’.24 Neo-Liberalism even pretends
to serve the common good, Managerialism has no common good. But
perhaps the clearest point of difference between both remains demo-
cracy.25 Managerialism is not a democratic programme. It does not seek
to influence politics to get democratically elected representatives to
further its political ambitions. Managerialism is primarily about getting
its managerial-reactionary programme carried out at company and
societal level.26 For Managerialism politics and democracy are simply a
hindrance on the way to efficiency and competitive advantages.27 In
sum, Neo-Liberalism is about democracy while for Managerialism the
extermination of democracy is no more than an, albeit welcomed, side-
effect. Inside the neo-liberalist project, democracy and politics are
important. Inside Managerialism, none of them exists. For
Managerialism, there are no democratic solutions to problems, only
6 Managerialism
managerial ones. Managerialism is not about Rousseau’s volonté générale

(general will) of the people but about engineering-like approaches to
societal problems that have been converted into technicalities.28
While Neo-Liberalism’s background is economics, Managerialism is
an outgrowth of management. At first glance, Managerialism may even
appear inconsistent with traditional free-market thinking that promotes
ideals such as competitive markets supplied by firms. For Neo-
Liberalism the free market is one of the key ideologies, for
Managerialism it is merely an obstruction. This has been perfectly
expressed by one of Managerialism’s main ideological flagships, the
Harvard Business Review,29 when its former editor Magretta (2002:80–81)
made the following stunning revelation:
Business executives are society’s leading champions of free

markets and competition, words that, for them, evoke a
worldview and value system that rewards good ideas and hard
work, and that fosters innovation and meritocracy. Truth be told,
the competition every manager longs for is a lot closer to
Microsoft’s end of the spectrum than it is to the dairy farmers.
All the talk about the virtues of competition notwithstanding,
the aim of business strategy is to move an enterprise away from
perfect competition and in the direction of monopoly.
Managerialism’s ideology, rhetoric, and factual interests are worlds

apart when it comes to advocating ‘free markets’ while simultaneously
seeking to establish monopolies even though Managerialism may be
consistent with Neo-Liberalism’s ideology of ‘advocating’ free markets.
Neo-Liberalism neglects to mention that this inevitably leads to a
monopolisation of the economy with a handful of corporations occu-
pying a domineering position. Managerialism actively seeks to estab-
lish this.30 Similarly, when Managerialism engineers takeovers of public
entities, it takes corporations as ‘the’ model. A relentless application of
managerial techniques to public administration paralleled by an
expansion of Managerialism into public policy areas brought the previ-
ously relatively unknown idea that Managerialism entered the public
mind. ‘The managerial revolution attracted very little public attention
because Managerialism did not call attention to itself; it was a dull
affair that appealed to the mentality of the accountant, not the charis-
matic’.31 This was set to change.
Overall, Managerialism rejects any plea of a fundamental difference

between the operations of a hospital and the manufacturing and mar-
keting of soft drinks. In both cases, it is claimed, the optimal policy is to
design organisations responding directly to consumer demand, and to
operate such institutions using generic management techniques applic-
able to all corporations. The main features of Managerialism at the level
of managerial regimes, for example, are unremitting organisational
restructuring, sharpening of incentives, and expansion in number,
power, and remuneration of senior managers, with a corresponding
downgrading of the role of skilled workers.32 This is accompanied by the
trilogy of ‘downsizing-rightsizing-suicising’. It extends to outsourcing
and the managerial reduction of employees to a material inventory
framed as human resources, human capital, and human material, lower
their income, and reduce their working conditions. All of these manage-
ment measures are supported by Managerialism’s ideology.
For the purpose of this book, ideology may be seen as ‘knowledge in
the service of power’.33 This sharply distinguishes ideology from
philosophy or philo-sophia ϕιλοσοϕι′α – the love of wisdom. Unlike
ideology that creates, or even simply invents knowledge for a specific
purpose, philosophy carries connotations to studying general and fun-
damental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence,
knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. In Hegelian philo-
sophy, for example, philosophy is seen as serving nobody apart from
itself. It seeks to understand the world by examining its opposites
through analysing two sides of an argument, positives & negatives,
pros & cons, and thesis & anti-thesis. Examining these relationships
creates knowledge.
Being a rather one-dimensional affair, ideology, on the other hand,
is not geared towards examining positives and negatives. It does
neither exist in-itself (Kant) nor for-itself (Hegel. It exists because it
serves a purpose: ‘knowledge in the service of power’. Its task is not
knowledge, understanding, and wisdom but covering up, eclipsing,
and distorting. Its telos is that of Hegel’s master-slave relationships in
which ideological knowledge serves a master.34 Philosophy, by con-
trast, is to a large extent defined by epistemology – Greek ε′πιστη′µη
episte-me- – meaning knowledge, understanding, and λο′γοζ logos as the
‘study of’. By contrast, ideology can be seen as a set of ideas constituted
as goals for actions. The main purpose behind an ideology is to make
individuals adhere to certain ideals cementing ‘the given’ as factum
brutum and status quo. Ideologies create distorted forms of knowledge
and understanding while serving its masters (Hegel).
8 Managerialism
In short, Managerialism is an ideology that does not serve truth but

invents knowledge in the service of power for one of the foremost
powerful institutions in today’s society: management. When manage-
ment metamorphosed into an ideology, it expanded not only ideolo-
gically but also institutionally with setups reaching Managerialism’s
standard broadcasting-system of corporate mass media. These special
and ideological organisations come, for example, in the shape of busi-
ness lobbying organisations, employer federations, and institutions like
the OECD, GATT, IMF, World Bank, The World Economic Forum in
Davos, etc.35 Not surprising, therefore, is the institutional and ideolo-
gical expansion of Managerialism in corporate public relations, its
adoption by language experts, and the invention of what Don Watson
has described as ‘weasel words’:36
Managerialism, a name for various doctrines of business

organisations, also comes with a language of its own, and to such
unlikely places as politics and education. Managerialism came to the
universities as the German army came to Poland. Now they talk
about achieved learning outcomes, quality assurance mechanisms,
and international benchmarking. They throw triple bottom line,
customer satisfaction and world class around with the best of them.
Finally, there is also a specific version of capitalism that has developed

since management and subsequently Managerialism has taken the
helm. It is not Adam Smith’s 18th and 19th century free market capital-
ism, nor is it 20th century social welfare capitalism.37 Managerial capi-
talism has successfully combined consumer capitalism with the main
ideology of the 21st century: Managerialism. This has been linked to
Managerialism’s main transmission system of corporate mass media.
Together, they have infiltrated every eventuality of human existence.
This has created a managerial society based on competition, the free
market, efficiency, corporate growth, deregulation, corporatisation,
and privatisation.38 It is Managerialism that ideologically shapes our
society. Today, a child of such a managerial society can enter a private
kindergarten, a private school, a private university and a private work-
place without ever experiencing any not-for-profit institution.39
Together, management, managerial regimes, Managerialism, and
managerial capitalism have ‘managed’ to penetrate society so effec-
tively that it warrants the term managerial society.40 They have pro-
duced a managerial system and a managerial society without any

serious opposition. But Managerialism’s reach has also extended from
managerial regimes deep into the crypto-academic subject of manage-
ment studies. Management studies have relinquished nearly all forms
of critical scholarship in order to be a functional and ideological auxil-
iary.41 The exclusion of an opposition under Managerialism’s TINA –
there is no alternative – operates not only in management studies, but
also in managerial regimes, in managerial capitalism, and in society.
Today, one might, for example, quite legitimately and perhaps even
urgently ask:42
Does the annihilation of any serious opposition to Managerialism

allow, for example, global warming, climate change, corporate envi-
ronmental vandalism, resource depletion, and the passing of peak
oil to wipe out the human race?43
Managerialism’s effort to eclipse such a possible global catastrophe

overshadows the search for potential causes. Managerialism has anaes-
thetised society as the case of global warming demonstrates.44 The
causes remain unidentified, unexposed, and un-attacked because they
have receded before the all too obvious threat of Managerialism.
Equally obvious is the need for being prepared to living on the brink of
environmental destruction, to face the global environmental chal-
lenge, and to prepare for an environmentally sustainable life in a post-
managerial society.45 But guided by Managerialism, we still submit to
the commercial production of the means of global destruction, to
perfecting wasteful goods and services, to being trained ‘for’
Managerialism in what had once been ‘our’ school and ‘our’ university,
and to defend the offenders and that which they create.
We can relate the causes of the danger of global warming to the way
in which Managerialism has organised and continues to organise indi-
viduals into consumers and human resources.46 By doing so, indi-
viduals are immediately confronted with the fact that society – befallen
by Managerialism – has become richer and perhaps even ‘better’ as it
perpetuates environmental devastation. Managerial capitalism makes
life easier for a greater number of people by extending the mastery of
nature. Under these circumstances, corporate mass media have little
difficulty in selling particular interests as those of all. They have been
successful in giving particular managerial interests the aura of being
universal, attaching corporate interests to truly universal interests of
humanity. Managerialism’s specific needs have even been portrayed as
10 Managerialism
universal needs and aspirations. Their satisfaction promotes business

and a commonwealth deprived of any ‘common’ wealth in favour of
truly corporate wealth. Managerialism appeals to be the very embodi-
ment of reason. But this is no longer Enlightenment’s critical reason as
envisioned by Immanuel Kant. It is management’s instrumental reason
cleansed of critique.47
And yet societies under Managerialism remain irrational. Their irra-
tional quest for perpetual productivity and growth is destructive to the
development of free human faculties. It squanders human progress by
the violence of constant competition in a Hobbesian business war of
bellum omnium contra omnes. This creates not only social pathologies
but also real human casualties such as the working poor, workplace
alcoholism, mass-unemployment, poverty and misery at local,
national, and global level as found in Davis’ Planet of Slums.48 The
managerial society’s growth depends on repression of all options
directed towards humanised post-managerial living.49 This repression is
different from the one characterising preceding and less developed
societal stages. It no longer operates from a position of ethical and
social immaturity but from a position of strength. The ideological and
material capabilities of Managerialism are immeasurably greater than
ever before. Hence, the scope of Managerialism’s domination over indi-
viduals is also massively greater than ever before.
Managerial society distinguishes itself by conquering centrifugal
social forces through technology, consumerism, and ideology – rather
than terror – and on a duality of overwhelming efficiency and ever-
increasing living standards. To investigate the roots of these develop-
ments and their historical alternatives is the aim of a critical theory of
Managerialism.50 This is a theory which analyses Managerialism in the
light of its used, unused, and abused capabilities in order to improve
the human condition. In the standards for such a critique, value judge-
ments play a part.51 The way of organising managerial societies is meas-
ured against other possible ways which offer a better chance for
alleviating the struggle of humanity for a decent, humane, and ecolo-
gically sustainable life. In other words, a specific historical practice is
measured against its own historical alternatives. From the beginning, a
critical theory of Managerialism is confronted with the problem of his-
torical objectivity.52 This is a problem that arises at the two points
where the analysis implies value judgements:
1. The first is the judgement that human life is worth living, can be,
and ought to be made worth living. This is the very question
German philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) asked in his mas-

terpiece on ethics, Minima Moralia: ‘can there be right living in the
false’?53 The answer to his question underlies all intellectual efforts.
It is the Kantian ‘what is’ that is inextricably linked to ‘what ought
to be’ as the philosophical imperative of theory. Its rejection rejects
theory itself.
2. The second judgement is that, in managerial societies, specific poss-
ibilities exist for the ethical and environmentally sustainable
advancement of human life. And there are specific ways of realising
these possibilities.
An analysis of Managerialism in the spirit of critical theory has to

demonstrate the objective validity of these judgements and such a
demonstration has to proceed on theoretical, ethical, and philosoph-
ical grounds. On the downside, Managerialism has available an ascer-
tainable quantity and quality of ideological and material resources. But
how, for example, has Managerialism used these resources for the
optimal development and satisfaction of human faculties reducing and
eliminating toil, suffering, and misery? Managerialism needs to be
examined from the standpoint of this and from the perspective of
theory that also remains always historical theory. History is always a
realm of viable alternatives. Therefore, among the various possible and
actual modes of organising and utilising the available resources, which
ones offer the best way for human, ethical, and environmentally sus-
tainable development? In order to identify and define possibilities for
an optimal development, critical theory must abstract from the ‘actual’
organisation and utilisation of resources found in management. It
must advance to the more abstract and general levels, namely manage-
ment’s prime ideology of Managerialism.
Critical abstractions refuse to accept ‘the given’ managerially engi-
neered universe of manufactured facts claimed to speak for them-
selves.54 In the final context of validation, such a transcending analysis
of these facts occurs in the light of Managerialism’s asphyxiated and
denied possibilities. This validates the very structure of a critical theory
of Managerialism. It is opposed to the philosophical idea of meta-
physics by virtue of the rigorously historical character of such trans-
cendence. Post-managerial possibilities must be within the reach of
managerial societies. They must have definable goals of practice. By the
same token, any abstractions from Managerialism must be expressive
of an actual tendency – that is, their transformation must reflect non-
managerially determined needs of the underlying population. Critical
12 Managerialism
theory is concerned with those historical alternatives that haunt

Managerialism with their subversive tendencies and forces set against
TINA.55 But the values attached to such alternatives do become facts
when they are actualised into reality.
Managerialism confronts such a critique with a situation that
deprives society of its very basis. Managerial progress extends its entire
system of domination, coordination, and the treadmill of infinite com-
petition to society, thereby creating forms of existence and of power
that appear to reconcile those forces opposing Managerialism.
Managerialism has almost totally defeated, refuted, and incorporated
all protest in the name of the liberal prospects of freedom from toil.
Contemporary managerial societies and Managerialism seem to be
capable of containing social change. They have rendered obsolete any
qualitative change which would establish different institutions sup-
porting a new direction of post-managerial living and a post-managerial
mode of an environmentally sustainable existence.
This containment of social change is perhaps the single most impor-
tant achievement of Managerialism.56 The general acceptance of
Managerialism has been combined with the decline of pluralism and
the creation of what philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) once
called one-dimensionality.57 Managerialism’s one-dimensionality is
manifested, for example, in the initial collusion of big business and
weakened labour, however, the subsequent exclusion of labour by its
pacification through improved living standards eliminated one of
Managerialism’s most dangerous opponents.58 Simultaneously, it elim-
inated the second voice in economics, leaving one-dimensionality
behind. This has also occurred within deregulated state authorities tes-
tifying to the integration of opposites that has been the result and pre-
requisite of Managerialism’s achievement. Managerialism’s origins
evolved from the establishment of management that really arrived at
the scene during the early years of the 20th century with two key publi-
cations: Frederic Taylor’s ‘Scientific Management’ and Henri Fayol’s
‘Administration Industrielle et Generale’.59 By contrast, Managerialism’s
origins date back to the second half of the 20th century, when manage-
rial writers first elaborated on an early concept of Managerialism.60
Managerialism started to attain concreteness in an historical mediation
between ideology and managerial practice. This historical intervention
occurred in Managerialism’s awareness of the two great classes which
faced each other in society: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.61 This
dates back to 19th century liberal-capitalism when both were still two
basic classes. Since then, capitalist developments have altered the struc-
ture and function of these two classes in such a way that they no
longer appear to be agents of historical transformation. As far as still
relevant, an overriding interest in preserving the institutional status
quo unites former antagonists. To the degree to which managerial
progress assures the consumptive growth and ideological cohesion of
managerial societies, the very idea of qualitative change recedes. In the
absence of demonstrable agents of qualitative social change, any
critique of Managerialism is thus thrown back. There is almost no
ground left on which critical theory and managerial practice, thought,
and actions meet. Even the most empirical analysis of historical alter-
natives is made to appear to be no more than an unrealistic specula-
tion. Any commitment to such alternatives looks like being a matter of
personal preference and youthful foolishness.
And yet, this absence fails to refute critical theory. In the face of
apparently contradictory facts, critical analysis continues to insist that
the need for qualitative change is as pressing as ever. It is needed for
managerial societies, humanity as a whole, and for every human being.
The union of growing productivity and growing environmental
destruction, Managerialism’s brinkmanship of environmental annihila-
tion, and the surrender of thoughts to managerial commands link
global human survival to much needed decision-making inside the
‘empire’ of Managerialism.62 Managerialism remains linked to the
Greek ‘emporos’ – emporium – a store selling a wide variety of goods. It
is a place of a wide variety of ideologies that make up Managerialism
and that has been able to sustain the preservation of misery in the face
of unprecedented wealth. This constitutes the most impartial indict-
ment of Managerialism. Even if this is not Managerialism’s sole raison
d’être – but a by-product – its sweeping rationalities of efficiency and
infinite growth remain deeply irrational.
The fact that the vast majority of the population has been made to
accept Managerialism does not render it less irrational and less repre-
hensible. The distinction between true and false consciousness, real
and faked interest remains meaningful. But this distinction itself must
be validated. Human beings can find their way from false to true con-
sciousness, from managerially induced false to real interest. But they
will only do so once they are in need of changing the present environ-
mentally destructive way of life and of denying the counterfeit positive
offered by Managerialism. It is precisely this need which
Managerialism manages to repress by ‘delivering the goods’ on an
increasingly larger irrational global scale. Managerialism and its
entourage of semi-scholarly management academics have been able to
14 Managerialism
use the scientific conquest of nature for the scientific conquest of

human beings. The mantra of management studies is not critical think-
ing or historical hermeneutics but the control of nature, markets, cor-
porations, and humans now termed human resources. Confronted
with the total character of the achievements of Managerialism, critical
theory is left with a rationale for transcending Managerialism. This
vacuum fills the theoretical structure of critical theory because critical
theory was developed during a period in which the need for refusal
and subversion was embodied in the action of effective social forces.
These categories once were oppositional concepts. They defined the
actual contradictions in 19th century European pre-managerial society.
The categories Managerialism expresses are the acute conflicts between
ethics and Managerialism. Managerialism remains antagonistic to
society and ethics. Similarly, individual, class, private, community, and
family denote spheres and forces not yet fully integrated into the man-
agerial ‘orbit’. The term ‘orbit’ best describes Managerialism’s asphyxia-
tion of individuals signifying planetary movements guided by invisible
forces (Adam Smith) confined to an externally engineered perpetual
treadmill of orbiting between managerial- and consumptive regimes.
Quite like planetary movements, they too, still remain – albeit unmen-
tioned by Managerialism – spheres of tensions and contradictions.63
With Managerialism’s growing ‘system-integrative’ powers, these cate-
gories are exposed to the real danger of losing their critical connota-
tions.64 They tend to become descriptive, deceptive, and ideological. To
recapture the critical-reflective intent of these categories and to under-
stand how this intent has been cancelled by Managerialism marks a
fight against Managerialism’s regressive character. Positioned against
that, critical theory joins the historical practice of a ‘critique of an
ideology’ as critical thought that moves from critical philosophy to
Managerialism. Jaeggi has identified the key objectives of a ‘critique of
ideology’:65
1. Critique of ideology always means a critique of domination;

2. it is a critique of something that is managerially made but made to
appear natural and irreducibly given;
3. it is a critique of legitimising mechanisms;
4. it sets out to highlight inner inconsistencies of Managerialism and
Managerialism’s contradictions between the managerial reality and
its own ideology;
5. it brings to light distortions in an individual’s understanding of the
world and of themselves;
6. it emphasises deformations in an individual’s self-understanding as

a social entity,
7. it is a critique of the current state of affairs understood not just as a
methodological instrument but also as part of a critical process
directed towards emancipation.
Such a critique results from the fact that its analysis is forced to
proceed from a position ‘outside’ the orbit of Managerialism by high-
lighting Managerialism’s positive and destructive tendencies. In
modern Managerialism, it is ‘the whole’ that is in question.66 Just as
Hegel once said ‘the truth is the whole’.67 At the same time, the posi-
tion of critical theory is never mere speculation. It must have an histor-
ical position in the sense that it must be grounded on ethical, societal,
and economical capabilities. This puzzlingly moving target still
involves one more ambiguity. The chimera of Managerialism will
fluctuate between contradictory premises:
1. Managerialism’s ideological hegemony remains capable of contain-

ing qualitative change for the foreseeable future; and
2. there are nevertheless forces and tendencies in existence that may
break this containment, expose Managerialism, and eventually shift
managerial societies towards post-managerial environmentally sus-
tainable living.
The hegemonic ideological domination of Managerialism has made it

next to impossible to give a clear answer on which of these two
options will prevail.68 Both tendencies are there, side by side, but with
the first tendency remaining dominant. Whatever preconditions for a
reversal may exist is being used by Managerialism to prevent it.
Perhaps total environmental destruction, a sudden awareness of the
seriousness of natural resources depletion, a rapidly deteriorating envi-
ronmental and human condition, or conceivably a global weather or
harvest catastrophe may end Managerialism’s domineering position.69
But unless the recognition of what is being done and what is being pre-
vented subverts present day consciousness and the behaviour of indi-
viduals, not even an environmental catastrophe might lead to a
qualitative change towards post-managerial living.70
To raise awareness of these contradictions and impending problems,
any analysis today is forced to focus on Managerialism. It is
Managerialism that underwrites the global apparatus of production, its
distributive functions, and ideological hegemony. Managerialism is
16 Managerialism
more than just the sum-total of ideological instruments invented by

management. It can never be isolated from its environmental, social,
economical, and political effects. Instead, Managerialism has success-
fully built a system which determines production, consumption, repro-
duction, and rejuvenation of an ideological apparatus and its own
ideological operations that service management while sustaining man-
agerial capitalism. Both – management and Managerialism – are still
expanding.71 In this, Managerialism tends to carry totalitarian features
virtually colonising all socially needed occupations, professions, skills,
and attitudes.72 But Managerialism also shapes individual needs and
aspirations while simultaneously sidelining democracy, degrading it to
the occasional ritual and media spectacle of ‘competition for leader-
ship’ reduced to occasionally ticking-a-box under the annihilation of
deliberative democracy.73
Managerialism has even obliterated the classical liberal opposition
between private and public existence and between real individual and
managerially invented needs. All of this is today guided by
Managerialism that lends its services to new, more effective, and less
democratic institutions for the achievement of ever more pleasant
forms of social control and cohesion.74 The totalitarian tendency of
managerial controls seems to assert itself in yet another sense.
Managerialism has also infected less developed and pre-managerial
regions and societies. It spreads an image of a world created for the
global assimilation to worldwide managerial capitalism under the
banner of globalisation.75
In the face of these totalitarian features, the traditional notion of the
‘neutrality’ of theory can no longer be maintained. It sounds simply
obscene. Managerialism organises these obscenities through a customer
and human resource existence that involves managerial technologies
and ideologies often presented as a prefabricated choice between
Managerialism and non-development. It anticipates specific modes of
utilising human beings while simultaneously rejecting alternative
modes and cultures. But once the managerial project has become oper-
ative in society’s basic institutions and relations, it tends to become
exclusive. It has the ideological capability to determine the develop-
ment of society as a whole as an ideological universe. The latest stage
in the realisation of Managerialism’s specific historical project is the
ideological system-integration of human existence and the natural
environment as elements of domination.76
As Managerialism unfolds, it shapes the entire universe of discourse
and action, intellectual and social culture. The medium of technology,
ideology, culture, politics, and the economy are merged into an

omnipresent system under Managerialism swallowing up and repulsing
all alternatives. This is the height of TINA because productivity and
growth potential are used to stabilise the managerial society and
contain managerial progress within the framework of ideological dom-
ination.77 To maintain this is the task of Managerialism. The ideolo-
gical orbit of Managerialism includes several areas that have come
under its sphere of influence. This is what Habermas has described as
the ‘colonisation of the lifeword’.78 What is significant here is the critical
assessment of an ideology, not a discussion of the institutional layouts
of managerial and societal organisations that are governed, influenced,
organised, and dominated by the ideology of Managerialism. There are
still institutions that have only been partially infiltrated and there are
those that have completely been colonised by Managerialism.79 As a
consequence, the term ‘Managerialism’ is not used with an institu-
tional meaning but as a unifying yet dictating ideology. While recent
advancements of Managerialism make it nearly impossible to select
societal organisations that have not come under the influence of or are
outright governed by Managerialism, the discussion focuses on several
key institutions that have been infected by Managerialism, exist
because of Managerialism, pre-date but became important for
Managerialism, or are in the general vicinity of Managerialism.
Predominantly ten key terms are used:
1. Managerialism: remains the key ideology that provides the glue

linking all areas of influences and spheres that are organised under
its principles. Managerialism is a pure ideology. Managerialism is
essentially the belief in an overall mission to spread ideas and
knowledge from management into every sphere of society
Managerialism deems relevant to be colonised. Managerialism is
missionary. Turning management into an ‘;ism’, it has no central
planning authority. There is no smoke-filled dark backroom in
which evil capitalists meet, there is no grand master-plan, and
there is no headquarter of Managerialism.80 Instead, Mana-
gerialism provides a worldwide ideology to which everyone has
been made to subscribe. Managerialism is not neo-liberalism with
its political programme as expressed by Herrn von Hayek.81 Instead
of being driven by economic-political imperatives, Managerialism
is driven by managerial imperatives.
2. Management: can be defined as hierarchy of control operative inside
managerial organisations such as firms, companies, corporations, etc.
18 Managerialism
Management in business and organisational studies is the act of

getting people to accomplish managerially desired goals and
objectives (codeword = profit) using human/material resources
efficiently and effectively. Management comprises planning,
organising, staffing, leading, directing, and controlling an organ-
isation.82 Resourcing encompasses the manipulation of human
resources, financial resources, technological resources and natural
resources. Management remains one of the key institutions of
Managerialism. It is at the centre from which the ideology of
Managerialism emanates. The key to understand management has
been made very clear by one of management’s finest, the former
General Motor’s CEO – Alfred Sloan – who said, ‘the point is that
General Motors is not in business to make cars, but to make
money’.83 The role of corporations and management has never
been expressed any better.
3. Corporate Management and Governance: these represent the
upper section of management, the so-called top-management
together with CEOs that translate the wishes of shareholders (cor-
porate owners) into managerial actions.84 This group sets itself
apart from middle-management and even more so from line-
management. In order to prevent managers from making too
many decisions that purely benefit themselves rather than the
corporation and that might be detrimental to a corporation, an
indirect system of ‘corporate governance’ exists that includes a board
of directors that hires, fires, and self-compensates management.85
4. Managerial Regimes: are set up to govern business entities. They
include management and non-managerial staff in the form of
what Managerialism calls ‘human resources’.86 Human Resource
Management itself prefers to call people subordinates and under-
lings. Such a regime establishes hierarchical, hegemonic, author-
itarian, and asymmetrical rule based on ‘rulers’ and those to ‘be
ruled over’. Managerial regimes are engineered by one group (man-
agement) over another (employees) in a non-democratic way.
Managerial regimes are non-synonymous to cultures because they
are not created for human enjoyment; they have not developed
organically; and they are not defined by a common set of
shared meanings but by a set of managerial meanings invented to
dominate.87
5. Management Studies: is a crypto-scientific enterprise to set up
managerial support structures at university level. It is a ‘study’, not
an ‘-ology’ and not a science.88 It is not science because the quest
for truth is superseded by ‘the science of making money’ dedicated

to teaching ‘the promise of money, the knowledge of money, and
the source of money’.89 It is specifically set up to support manage-
ment while appropriating the aura of neutrality and science – the
reputational remnants of a past pre-managerial era – that still
exists at universities to be used for the managerial project.
Management studies supply management with managerial know-
ledge (usually through vocational textbooks in a Cosmopolitan-
like appearance)90 inventing ever more ideological tools and
providing legitimacy to management and Managerialism.
6. Management Schools: are set up as part of a university. They are
the institutional expression of management studies. Their task is
to separate management studies from unwarranted influences of
those faculties that have not yet been aligned to Managerialism.
Management schools are part of increased ‘managerialisation’ – the
process of turning previous non-managerial institutions into man-
agerial institutions.91 It converts previously publicly-administered
universities into managerial universities. This is less and less
needed as the managerialisation of universities progresses. The
final task of management schools is to provide management with
the skills to train human resources to be compliant and functional
inside managerial regimes as carriers of Managerialism.92
7. The Managerial Society: Once management became more ideolo-
gical after it had safely set itself up as the domineering institution
inside companies, management’s need for a system-stabilising
ideology found its expression in Managerialism. At this stage,
management had organised its operations sufficiently without the
interference of unwanted influences. Trade unions and external
demands from social-welfare states, NGOs, etc. had been weakened
or eliminated.93 Armed with that, management expanded its oper-
ation into society. This led to a colonisation of the lifeworld by
management’s prime ideology of Managerialism, thereby creating
the managerial society.94 It is a society in which democracy and
the public sphere have taken a backseat. They feature as electoral
spectacles while key societal institutions have been steadily con-
verted into managerial institutions. Today, the ideology of
Managerialism has infiltrated virtually all key sections of society,
thereby stabilising the managerial society.
8. Corporate Mass Media: To convert 20th century social-welfare soci-
eties into managerial societies, Managerialism needed unhindered
access to people and relied on mass support. As a consequence, it
20 Managerialism
was in dire need of a source of transmission. Corporate mass media

provided the solution. Their media corporations are not different
from any other corporation. Both share the same interest in
Managerialism. Put together, it became relatively easy to utilise
organisations already run by management and covered by the
same ideology for the broadcasting of Managerialism.95 This has
been vital to the successful takeover of society and to stabilise
managerial capitalism.
9. Managerial Capitalism: is fundamentally different from earlier ver-
sions of capitalism when compared to 18th to 19th century liberal
capitalism and to 20th century’s welfare and mass-consumer capi-
talism.96 Key to managerial capitalism, however, is perhaps what
the 31st president of the United States (1929–1933), Herbert Hoover,
had to say: under Managerialism ‘living is based upon free enter-
prise, both in social and economic systems’.97 In other words, the
free enterprise sets the prime directive for capitalism. It is no
longer the other way around. While liberal capitalism did not
include consumerism but Marx’s proletarians, today’s mass con-
sumerism has largely replaced poverty and created affluence for
many. Under managerial capitalism, ‘managers promised to give
the people what they wanted: opportunities for material affluence
and social harmony’.98 In managerial capitalism, the conflict of
‘individual firm-vs.-capitalism as a system’ has been won by indi-
vidual firms. The corporate thinking of management and their
individual interests governing capitalism has damaging conse-
quences for capitalism as a system. So far, the ideology of
Managerialism has been able to cover these conflicts up while
shifting the pubic mind into the direction of globalisation.
10. Managerial Globalisation: Globalisation’s history dates back to
imperialism. The term of globalisation suggests a qualitative differ-
ence between imperialism and globalisation. The former operated
with direct control over nations while the latter subdues such
nations via the ideology of Managerialism. These nations are made
to believe that they can only have a place at the table of the rich if
they think and act like the rich. While the ideology of
Managerialism and managerial capitalism are exported, many are
still excluded from corporate globalisation. But Managerialism is
set to change this.
These ten key terms construct the reality of Managerialism and sur-
rounding elements. In order to discuss Managerialism, this book is
subdivided into 14 chapters. It begins with an introduction outlining

Managerialism’s historical origins and its transition from management as
factory administration to a full-fledged ideology. It also distinguishes
between ideology and philosophy and how management became an
‘-ism’. While delineating the difference between neo-liberalism and
Managerialism, it thrashes out the relevance of Managerialism. The
second chapter explains the Managerialism-society interface, contrasts
human freedom with Managerialism and shows how managerial ideology
leads to repression and totalitarian thinking. It finishes by outlining
Managerialism’s impact on workplaces, society, and academia. Finally, it
highlights managerial irrationalities found in its eternal growth paradigm.
Chapter 3 shows how the working class lost its role as a revolution-
ary force by explaining changes at work and the role of labour before
and after mass-consumption. It describes the move of managerial tech-
niques from management into society highlighting the process of
‘managerialisation’. It explains how changes at work corresponded
with changes in society and makes clear how the human mind has
been trapped by Managerialism, showing how the ideological enslave-
ment has affected society. Chapter 4 explains the role of Mana-
gerialism on managerial regimes in greater detail by detailing the
changing role of labour under management while emphasising the
function of time – labour time, leisure time, and free time. It discusses
the demise of organised labour with the conversion of trade unions
from class-agent to pressure-groups.99 This leads to Managerialism’s
political programme discussing issues such as global warming, environ-
mental destruction, and possibilities for post-managerial living.
Chapter 5 explains how Managerialism shapes corporate and societal
culture including the ‘rationality of irrationality’. It emphasises
commercial culture by describing the ideological character of
Managerialism contrasting it to pre-managerial, managerial, and post-
managerial cultures. Chapter 6 explains the authoritarianism of
Managerialism by examining Milgram’s experiments. It relates these to
managerial regimes to show the need for an authoritarian ideology. It
also elaborates on Fromm’s ‘fear of freedom’ by linking authoritarian-
ism to management and society. Finally, it shows how authoritarian
institutions create ‘distance’ between actors and thereby increase the
potentials for immorality. This relates to the role of victims in man-
agerial processes as management applies a Sophie’s Choice like
prisoner-dilemma to individuals.
Chapter 7 contrasts human happiness to the theme of ‘unhappiness
consciousness’. It describes the linguistic methods used by Managerialism
22 Managerialism
and shows the scope of infiltration of managerial language into society.

Managerial language fixes and arrests meaning. The chapter also contrasts
one- with two-dimensional thinking (ideology-vs.-critique), describes the
role of history and memory as a counterbalance to Managerialism, and
discusses how Managerialism seeks to re-shape our image of history.
Chapter 8 analyses two main ways of validating Managerialism:
a) through science and b) through democracy. It also delineates how
philosophical concepts became managerial concepts and outlines the rel-
evance of the Hawthorne study for Managerialism.100 This relates to the
task of management studies.
Chapter 9 highlights how Managerialism shapes management
studies and examines the latter from the standpoint of philosophy. It
discusses key ideologies of management studies, explains why ‘think-
ing inside the box’ is beneficial to management studies, and highlights
the intellectual and scientific limitations of management studies. It
also shows where corporate behaviour mirrors Managerialism and dis-
cusses the role of numbers and mathematics in management studies by
outlining the difference between dialectical and one-dimensional
thinking. Chapter 10 discusses Managerialism’s use of science by com-
paring human values to the values of Managerialism. It elaborates on
the principles of commerce, ethics, and Managerialism’s monism.
Chapter 11 explains the role of thought that exists beyond
Managerialism and positions critical concepts against Managerialism. It
explains the ideological content of positive thinking and positivism by
elaborating on its historical origins and explains the limitations
Managerialism exercises on academic research. The chapter also
describes how ‘Critical Management Studies’ (CMS) remains part of
management studies, why it is not part of critical theory, and why it
provides system-correctives in support of Managerialism. Instead of
CMS’ system-integrative programme of a management-compliant
critique from ‘within’, the theoretical parameters of critical theory
come from ‘without’. Critiquing Managerialism from ‘without’ is
further explained in Chapter 12. It delineates the role of critical theory
for emancipation from Managerialism and thrashes out the ability of
the human mind to think beyond ‘the given’.101 It highlights what lies
beyond Managerialism, shows why a negation of Managerialism leads
to a more human existence and why Managerialism carries the seeds of
an alternative already in itself. Finally, it sets out four parameters for
post-managerial environmentally sustainable living.
Chapter 13 highlights the contradictions between Managerialism’s
promise of infinite growth and planet earth’s finite natural resources. It
explains why post-Managerialism can never be achieved by purely

technological means, discusses the difference between ‘quantitative’
and ‘qualitative’ change, and sets the parameters of post-managerial
human rationality. The chapter discusses why ethical life and environ-
mental sustainability are contradictory to Managerialism. It outlines
elements of a post-managerial society by drawing out the role of envi-
ronmental sustainability in post-managerial living.102 Finally, this
chapter also charts out how the removal of Managerialism creates
space to think and experience and to develop self-consciousness. The
final chapter shows how human imagination can be freed from man-
agerial ideology and how this can lead to images of post-managerial
living. It highlights the conversion of corporate exploitation to an
environmentally sustainable use of natural resources by advocating a
planned use of earthly resources, incurring a move from a corporate to
a democratically controlled use of environmental resources. Finally, it
discusses the need to move towards post-managerial living, elaborates
on current popular protests and methods of social change and, as a
final point, explains the ‘Ethics of Resistance’.103
2
Managerialism as Ideology
A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in

the managerial society as a token of material-commercial progress.
Indeed, what could be more rational than the suppression of indi-
viduality under the ‘managerialisation of everything’? Managerialisation
– making something managerial – turns every eventuality of human
existence into a manageable issue. Simultaneously, it standardises every-
thing while promising individualism and individuality. You no longer
have a sex-life but you ‘Manage Your Sex Life’; we do not have real
marriages but we manage our marriages, we do no longer have an edu-
cation but managers who manage education.104 The resulting manager-
ial society is governed by a painful demand for performance inflicted
on everyone. Managerialism engineers the free competition among
unequally equipped managerial subjects. Under its ideological banner
of globalisation it has curtailed the prerogatives and national sover-
eignties unleashing global corporations and their ideological resources.
That this managerial order involves economic, social, political, cul-
tural, ideological, and intellectual domination may be a regrettable yet
also promising development.
The rights and liberties which were such vital factors in earlier stages
of society yield to a higher stage of the managerial society. Under
Managerialism, they have lost their traditional rationale and content.
Freedom of thought, speech, and conscience were – just as free enter-
prise which they promote and protect – essentially critical ideas,
designed to replace an obsolescent material and intellectual culture by
a more rational one.105 Once institutionalised, Managerialism sealed
the fate of rights and liberties converting them into supporting ideolo-
gies of a managerial society to which they had become an integral part.
This achievement cancels out many of their original premises. To the
24
Managerialism as Ideology 25
degree to which freedom from want remains the concrete substance of

all freedom and real possibility, Managerialism has converted this
freedom into something that has lost its former content. Independence
of thought, autonomy, and the right to opposition are being deprived
of their basic critical function under Managerialism which seems
increasingly capable of satisfying the needs of individuals through the
way in which it manages them.
Such a managerial society may justifiably demand acceptance of its
ideologies and managerial institutions reducing opposition to a discus-
sion and promotion of alternative policies ‘within’ the managerially
defined status quo. Managerialism even tolerates and promotes its own
‘internal’ critique through what became known as ‘Critical
Management Studies’ (CMS).106 CMS’ critique is not on Managerialism
but comes along as a critique from ‘within’ management to create
better managers. It has a stabilising function by providing a system-
corrective critique that functions like self-regulatory and self-improving
cybernetics. CMS does not challenge the managerial status quo, does
not expose the ideologies of management studies, management, and
Managerialism. It does not confront anti-democratic managerial
regimes inside corporations and, most importantly, it neither defies
managerial capitalism nor does it deliver post-managerial alternatives.
In this respect, it seems to make little difference whether the increas-
ing satisfaction of needs is accomplished by an authoritarian or a non-
authoritarian system. Under the promise of rising living standards,
non-conformity with the managerial system itself is made to appear
socially useless and politically obscene – and even more so when it
threatens to disrupt the smooth operation of the managerial whole.
Indeed, at least in so far as the necessities of life are involved, there
seems to be no reason why the production and distribution of com-
mercial goods and services should not continue to proceed through the
competitive curtailment of individual liberties.
From the beginning the much acclaimed ‘freedom of enterprise’ was
not altogether a blessing. As the liberty to work or to starve spelled into
toil and suffering, insecurity and fear remained the norm for many.
Individuals today are compelled to prove themselves on eternal com-
petitive markets under the ideological formula: ‘labour-equals-a-
marketable-commodity’. This occurs despite the fact that labour
(Orwellian Oldspeak) – human resources (Newspeak) – is not a com-
modity and that no ownership is established over employees.107
Labour, employees, and human resources are not ‘our most important
asset’ as a common ideological statement tries to make us believe –
26 Managerialism
people are not synonyms of possessions, belongings, and possessions.108

Ownership is only established over commercial goods, machinery, and
possession. Therefore, labour and commodity markets are fundamentally
different despite their ideological equalisation under Managerialism.
As Managerialism and indeed the managerial society broadcasts the
free managerial subject, real human freedom is vastly disappearing.
This marks one of the greatest achievements of Managerialism. Its
human resources are part of a refined system encompassing every even-
tuality of working life.109 In the managerial processes of mechanisation
and standardisation, standard employee ID-Cards with standard bar-
codes, only differentiated by individual pictures, have become the
signifier of this process. They are engineered to give the impression of a
faked individuality but there is no longer an uncharted realm of
human freedom beyond what Managerialism deems necessary. It
marks Managerialism’s detachment of what it means to be human. The
very structure of human existence has been altered. The managerial
world is imposing upon everyone a system of artificially invented
needs and alien possibilities.110 The individual is free to exert micro-
scopic levels of inconsequential autonomy over life’s irrelevancies
while simultaneously life’s path has been set through the managerial
society: private kindergarten, private schooling, an oscillation between
work and consumption, and death.
The managerial apparatus is organised and directed towards the mass
satisfaction of inconsequential needs. But its ideology can never be
decentralised. Managerialism has to remain the central ideology. Such
central control however does not prevent individualised levels of
autonomy – it renders them possible. This is Managerialism’s goal. It
remains within the capabilities of a free society marking its managerial-
ist rationality.111 In actual fact, however, the contrary trend operates as
well: the apparatus imposes its managerial requirements for its own
defence and the expansion of working and shopping time while simul-
taneously reducing free time. It reduces truly human culture in favour
of a managerial, materialistic, and petit-bourgeois culture.112 By virtue
of the way Managerialism has organised its managerial base, contem-
porary managerial societies tend to produce a totalitarian corporate
mass culture that no longer carries representations of culture.113
But Managerialism’s totalitarianism is no longer terroristic or violent,
nor is it a version of Orwell’s panoptical super-state. It has been
achieved through the manipulation of human needs by vested inter-
ests.114 Thereby it precludes the emergence of an effective opposition
against the managerial whole. It is not a specific form of ideology
inside Managerialism that makes for this new form of totalitarianism

but Managerialism as a whole, paralleled by a specific system of out-
sourced production linked to advanced distribution. This is compatible
with the well-managed spectre of a pretended – but deeply one-
dimensional and managerial – pluralism of political parties that have
been made subservient to corporate newspapers, TV-networks, tabloid-
TV, and internet sites, integrating even the so-called ‘countervailing
powers’.115 Today, Rousseau’s volonté générale can no longer assert itself
against the ideological power of Managerialism. Attacking capitalism
has been made equal to attacking consumerism and the petit-bourgeois
lifestyle engineered through corporate mass media. Politics is no longer
in charge over Managerialism’s ideology presenting itself as a machine-
like engineering process covering management, corporations, and
society.116
In the wake of spreading the global ideology, governments of pre-
capitalist, pre-managerial and – subsequently – today’s managerial soci-
eties can no longer maintain and secure themselves when they succeed
in mobilising and organising mass resistance against Managerialism
and corporate interests.117 CEOs not only represent corporate power,
they have also become semi-public officials exercising a broader role
well beyond the parameters of corporations. This situation renders it
very advisable for state governments to pay special attention to what
corporations have to communicate either individually or through their
lobbying associations. In numerous ways governments recognise that
CEOs need to be encouraged to invest. While governments can – hypo-
thetically – prohibit certain kinds of activities, they can never
command corporations to invest. CEOs tend to appear as functionaries
performing neutral business functions that states regard as indispens-
able. Therefore, CEOs are never left knocking at state doors, they are
sympathetically welcomed in. These attentive attitude towards corpo-
rate interest – that every state government is structurally forced to
assume – substantially eases the ideological efforts of corporate
door-knockers even though this system remains well oiled by
Managerialism.
The asymmetrical corporate→state relationship is not only built on
what corporate power can achieve via its ideological lobbying associa-
tions but also on the latter’s ability to refuse investment – thereby
making a state suffer the debilitating effects of decreased investment.
Managerialism’s asymmetrical and ideological relationship has
extended from corporations to markets, and deep into the arena of pol-
itics. Managerialist ideology forces states to exploit managerial,
28 Managerialism
scientific, and mechanical productivity converting simple administra-

tive tasks into managerialist exercises while converting administrative
state departments into managerialist organisations run as crypto-
private institutions as soon as they become available to managerial
civilisation. And this productivity mobilises the managerial society as a
whole, above and beyond any particular individual or group interests.
The brute fact is that the managerial machine’s ideological power has
long surpassed the power of individuals and political systems. This
renders Managerialism the most effective political instrument of any
society that ever existed. Its basic organisation operates as a machine-
like process broadcasting the ideology of Managerialism.118
But this may be reversed. Essentially, Managerialism’s power is only
a projected power directed against human beings and human
freedom.119 The extent to which managerial regimes are conceived as
machines and mechanised accordingly becomes the potential basis of a
new freedom for human beings. Contemporary managerial civilisation
demonstrates that it has reached the stage at which ‘the free society’
has become pure ideology. It can no longer be adequately defined in
the traditional terms of political, ethical, and intellectual liberties. This
is not because these liberties have become insignificant but because
they are too significant to be confined within the ideological paradigm
of Managerialism. New modes to realise a new freedom for human
beings are needed that correspond to the ideological capabilities of
Managerialism. Such new modes can be indicated only in negative
terms – against Managerialism – because they amount to a negation of
managerial modes that reaches beyond Managerialism, managerial
regimes, and even beyond corporate mass media. ‘In many Western
industrialised societies today, adults spend on average between 25 and
30 hours per week watching television [fostering a] mediasation of
modern culture [as] the general process by which the transmission of
symbolic forms becomes increasingly mediated by the managerial and
institutional apparatuses of the media industry.120 Accordingly,
freedom would mean freedom from corporate mass media,
Managerialism, the managerial economy, and from being controlled by
managerial forces and managerial relationships. It means freedom from
the daily struggle for existence and from earning a living inside man-
agerial regimes. Political freedom would mean emancipation of indi-
viduals from media-shaped politics over which they have no effective
control. Similarly, intellectual freedom would mean the restoration of
individual thoughts now engineered by corporate mass media that
ensure mass indoctrination in support of Managerialism. It would
mean the abolition of ‘public opinion’ that has become a ‘published

opinion’ of around 200 owners and controllers of global corporate
mass media in favour of an ‘individual opinion’.121 The unrealistic
sound of these propositions is indicative – not of their utopian
character but of the strength of the ideological forces preventing their
realisation.
The most effective and enduring form of Managerialism’s warfare
against emancipation is the implanting of material and ideological
needs. It regards as obsolete many forms of human life such as com-
munal living and virtually all alternatives to the present corporate struc-
ture of existence. The intensity, satisfaction, and even the character of
human needs beyond simple biological levels have all been precondi-
tioned by Managerialism. Whether or not the possibility of doing or
leaving, enjoying or destroying, possessing or rejecting, or simply
seizing human needs can be realised depends on whether or not this is
desirable for a post-managerial society. In this sense, human needs are
historical needs. To the extent to which managerial societies demand
the repressive development of individuals, these needs themselves and
Managerialism’s claim for satisfaction are subject to overriding critical
standards.
This distinguishes true and false needs. ‘False’ needs are those that
have been superimposed upon individuals resulting in repression.
These falsified needs perpetuate drudgery, aggressiveness, misery, disso-
lution, depression, rampant competition, suffering, poverty, and injus-
tice. False needs are created by a false reality that is based on
Managerialism’s application of Hobbes’ bellum omnium contra omnes.122
There does not have to be a ‘war of all against all’ even though
Managerialism claims it as TINA. The commercial satisfaction of some
of these false needs might be most gratifying to individuals but this
gratification remains artificial, maintained synthetically, and protected
by ideology. It serves to asphyxiate the development of the human
ability to recognise the destructiveness of Managerialism and to grasp
the chance of curing their lives from Managerialism’s pathologies.
The result of living with Managerialism’s destructiveness is euphoria
in unhappiness. Managerialism needs to broadcast the ‘needs to relax’,
to have fun, to live in blissful ignorance, to be entertained and dis-
tracted, to behave and consume in accordance with advertisements, to
love and hate what others love and hate, to read and watch what
everyone reads and watches, to agree with the Zeitgeist and the public
mood, to go along, and to belong to this or that category of false
needs. Such needs have pleasurable and containment functions as they
30 Managerialism
are determined by external powers over which individuals have no

control. The development and satisfaction of these needs is driven by
homogenising ideologies. Just as the President of Nabisco Corporation
once said, ‘one world of homogeneous consumption [I am] looking
forward to the day when Arabs and Americans, Latinos, and
Scandinavians will be munching Ritz crackers as enthusiastically as
they already drink Coke or brush their teeth with Colgate’.123
No matter how much these needs may have become the individual’s
own, reproduced and fortified by the conditions of a commercialised
existence, no matter to what extent consumers identify themselves
with them and find themselves in their satisfaction, they continue to
be what they were from the beginning: synthetic products of
Managerialism whose dominant interest demands mass conformity.
The prevalence of repressive needs is an accomplished fact – accepted
in ignorance and defeat – but a fact that must be undone in the inter-
est of humanity, of all those confined to a life in misery, and that of a
suffering environment. A continuation of this can no longer be the
price of over-consumptive satisfaction. The only needs that have an
unqualified claim for satisfaction are the vital ones – nourishment,
clothing, shelter, and human culture. Their satisfaction constructs the
prerequisite for a realisation of all other needs. For an awareness to no
longer blindly accept managerial requirements as a supreme law of
thought and behaviour, the managerial orbit of false needs and faked
satisfactions remains a managerially invented ‘fact’ to be questioned in
terms of truth and falsehood.
Despite all efforts by the advocates of Managerialism to turn
Managerialism into a non-historical, managerial, objective, and engi-
neering science, Managerialism and its pretended objectivity remain
historical. The judgement of managerial needs and their satisfaction,
under the given conditions, involves non-managerial standards which
refer to an ethical and environmentally sustainable development of
individuals. Inside managerial regimes, human resources – formerly
workers – remain individuals. But under Managerialism, there are no
individuals left, only resources ‘that’ – or ‘who’(!) – have been deni-
grated to an optimal utilisation of Menschenmaterial – human resource
material downgraded to a number on a managerial excel-spread-
sheet.124 As a resource, they are made controllable and calculable
through ‘hard’-HRM’s infamous head count.125 This follows Human
Resource Management’s idea that there is ‘hard-vs.-soft’ HRM. The
former indicates ‘hard’ issues such as head-counts, profit-orientation,
and economic rationality, the latter ‘soft’ issues such as workplace sat-
isfaction. This creates a self-contained ideology that contrasts ‘one’

rationality with ‘another’, thereby creating an ideological appearance
while simultaneously stabilising the ideology of HRM and
Managerialism.126
The truth and falsehood of managerially invented needs is to be
measured against objective conditions to the extent to which a univer-
sal satisfaction of vital human needs progressively alleviates toil and
poverty, seen as universally valid standards. But even as historical stan-
dards they do not vary according to the stage of development while
they can also be defined as contradictions to managerial standards. In
the final analysis, the question of what are true and false needs must be
answered by critical-reflective individuals themselves, that is, if and
when they are free to give their own answer. As long as they are kept
incapable of being autonomous whilst being indoctrinated and mani-
pulated by corporate mass media, their answer to this question cannot
be taken as their own.
By the same token, however, no institution inside managerial soci-
eties should be able to hijack the right to decide which needs should be
developed and satisfied. Any such institution is reprehensible,
although our revulsion does not do away with the question: how can
people who have been objectified inside and outside managerial
regimes by the ideology of Managerialism create the conditions of
human freedom? The more rational, managerial, ideological, and total
Managerialism’s repressiveness becomes, the more unimaginable are
the ways through which individuals might break their ideological
servitude and seize their own emancipation. To impose managerial
reason and ideology upon an entire epoch is a paradoxical, scandalous,
and pathological idea. One might dispute the righteousness of
Managerialism which ridicules this idea while simultaneously turning
every population into managerial objects – human resources and con-
sumers – of its anti-democratic system.
All emancipation depends on consciousness of servitude (Hegel) but
the emergence of this consciousness is today hampered by the predom-
inance of commercially invented needs and satisfactions which – to a
great extent – have become the individual’s own. Historical processes
have always replaced one system of pre-conditioning by another. The
optimal goal is a replacement of false needs by true ones and the aban-
donment of repressive satisfaction as engineered by Managerialism and
mass marketing. The distinguishing feature of Managerialism is
its effective asphyxiation of human needs. This demands emancipation
from what is tolerable, rewarding, calming, entertaining, and
32 Managerialism
comfortable – the very features that sustain and absolve the destructive
power and repressive function of Affluenza.127 When affluence merges
with influenza it creates the pathology of Affluenza. To further that,
Managerialism controls the overwhelming need for managerially
created, mass-marketed, and consumed – environmentally unsustain-
able – waste. It even invents the false need for work regimes that are
neither real nor a necessity. Three examples highlight this point: cor-
porate marketing (codeword B2B: business-to-business) where one cor-
poration markets its goods and services to another corporation;
corporate finance where one corporation (a bank) finances while the
other one, for example, makes motor-cars; and finally, corporate share-
ownership where one corporation owns another corporation, mani-
fested – to some extent – in corporate governance.128
The need for commercialised modes of relaxation smoothes and pro-
longs the dumping down and stupefying of society. But the need to
maintain the deceptive liberty of free competition comes at a price.
While sharpening competition, corporate press that censors itself with
its unwavering dedication to Managerialism also offers free – i.e. ra-
tional – choice between brands, logos, and i-gadgets that are only
cosmetically different from other products.129
Under the rule of repressive Managerialism, liberty has been turned
into a powerful instrument of domination. The range of choice open
to individuals is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of
human freedom. The criterion for free choice can never be an absolute
one, nor can it be entirely relative. Free elections of masters have never
abolished masters or slaves. Free choice among endlessly insignificant
varieties of goods and services can never signify human freedom.130
These goods and services sustain managerial domination over life, toil,
suffering, alienation, fear, and environmental destruction. The produc-
tion and reproduction of managerially superimposed needs over and
above individuals can never establish autonomy but it can testify to
the efficacy of marketing. However, the insistence on the efficacy of
managerial controls is open to the objection that we can overrate the
indoctrinating powers of corporate mass media.
The preconditioning of human beings does not start with the mass
production of newspapers, books, magazines, radio, television, movies,
and commercial internet-sites but with the ideological colonisation of
society. People enter managerial societies as preconditioned receptacles
of a long process of socialisation.131 The decisive command in this
process is a near total annihilation of contrast, the elimination of
conflict, the replacement of positives and negatives, and the end of
binary thinking in favour of linear and one-dimensional thought

processes. There has been a comprehensive annihilation of thinking
that involves ‘thinking space’ between ‘the given’ and those possibil-
ities to be found outside the parameters of Managerialism. Schooling
and education under Managerialism have almost eliminated this think-
ing space.132 The ideological equalisation of class distinctions reveals its
ideological function. If human resources and their managers enjoy the
same television programme and visit the same resort places, if a typist
is as attractively made up as the daughter of her employer, if they all
read the same newspaper and watch the same TV shows, then such an
assimilation indicates not the disappearance of classes but the extent
to which the needs and satisfactions that maintain and support
Managerialism are shared by the underlying population.133
Indeed, the most highly developed areas of contemporary manager-
ial society – institutions that transplant managerial into individual
needs – are so effective that the difference between them seems to be
purely theoretical. One can no longer distinguish between mass media
as instruments of information and entertainment and as agents of
manipulation and indoctrination. There is a merger between the
horrors and the comforts of their functional architecture. But it makes
a difference whether one works for national defence or corporate gain.
There is a discrepancy between private pleasures and the commercial
and political utility involved in supplying new human resources to the
managerial process. This confronts one of the most worrisome aspects
of Managerialism: the link between supposedly rational goals of man-
agement and its irrational ends.134 The management of productivity
and efficiency, management’s capacity to increase and spread comforts
and to turn waste into needs, management’s destructiveness and con-
structiveness, and the extent to which the managerial civilisation
transforms everything into an extension of corporate outcomes
redefines the very notion of rationality. Still, people in managerial soci-
eties no longer recognise themselves in their petit-bourgeois commodi-
ties. They have been made to believe to find happiness in cars, iPods,
iPhones, split-level middle-class homes, flat-screens, and modern
kitchen equipment. Managerialism implies an underlying promise that
one TV makes you happy and two TVs make you twice as happy.
The very mechanism which ties individuals to managerial societies is
changing. Social control is anchored in new needs that Managerialism
continuously produces. It has established a new form of conformity
while removing Orwell’s Big Brother that is today only associated with a
TV-show. Simultaneously Foucault’s Panopticum became obsolete.135
34 Managerialism
Mass-consumerism and Managerialism have rendered obsolete all

dystopian ideas based on mass-surveillance, terror, and horror. Today,
the effectiveness of managerial ideology on the managerial apparatus
has become the major instrumentality of subjugation.136 Moreover, the
successful system-integration of individuals into managerial capitalism
does no longer need to be accompanied by more obvious forms of sup-
pression such as the justice apparatus, police-states, and armed forces.
In the contemporary period, the controls of Managerialism appear to
be the very embodiment of reason in the form of instrumental ratio-
nality.137 Managerialism’s instrumental rationality is presented to be
for the benefit of everyone. It is through this rationality that
Managerialism has made it possible that contradictions seem irrational
and all counteractions against Managerialism appear unfeasible.138 No
wonder that the ideological power of corporate mass media has been
injected into human beings to the point where even individual protest
is eradicated at its roots. The intellectual and emotional refusal ‘to go
along’ is made to appear neurotic and impotent.139 This is the psycho-
logical and pathological aspect of Managerialism that marks the con-
temporary period. The power of Managerialism seems to have
eliminated all possibilities of new forms of existence. But the term
‘injection’ perhaps no longer describes the way in which individuals
reproduce and perpetuate managerial ideology. Injection suggests a
variety of relatively spontaneous processes by which a self transposes
the ‘outer’ into the ‘inner’. It implies the existence of an inner dimen-
sion – distinguished from an external requirement – as an individual’s
consciousness that exists outside of mass public opinion and conform-
ing behaviours.
The idea of ‘inner freedom’ here has its reality.140 It designates the
private space in which human beings may become and remain them-
selves. Today this private space has been invaded and whittled down
by the ideological power of Managerialism transmitted by corporate
mass media. The new trilogy – Managerialism, mass consumption, and
corporate mass media – claims the entire individual while modern
organisational psychology and behaviourism have long since ceased to
be confined to managerial regimes.141 The manifold processes of ideo-
logical injection seem to be solidified in an almost mechanical way.
The result is adjustment and an identification of individuals with
Managerialism and through this with managerial societies as a whole.
This immediate and almost automatic identification only appears in
highly developed managerial societies. It is a product of sophisticated,
scientific, and ideological manipulation and business corporations
reaching well beyond their traditional confinements. In this process,

the ‘inner’ dimension of the mind in which opposition to
Managerialism’s status quo can take root has been washed away. The
loss of this dimension, in which the critical and emancipatory power
of negative thinking (Kant and Hegel) was once located, has no longer
a home.142
While Kant’s and Hegel’s counterpart was the irrationality of reli-
gious superstition, critical thinking’s new counterpart is Managerialism
and the ideological process in which it silences and reconciles the
opposition inside managerial regimes and managerial societies. The
impact of ideological progress has turned Enlightenment’s critical
rationality into instrumental rationality and into the submission of
facts to Managerialism and, above all, to the crypto-academic field of
management studies. Through the dynamic capability of producing
more and bigger facts of the same sort, the field of management studies
perpetuates itself. The efficiency of the managerial system dulls indi-
viduals’ recognition of the world.143 The structure of Managerialism
contains no facts which do not communicate the repressive power of
the managerial system. If individuals find themselves in the things
which shape their life, they do so not by their own critical reflection
but by accepting the ‘Iron Law of Commodities’ and the oppressive
rule of Managerialism.144
This suggests that concepts such as alienation seem to become less
and less obvious when individuals are made to identify themselves
with their existence as human resources and consumers that has been
superimposed upon them. There is no longer any space left for
reflection and self-development. This identification is not an illusion
but reality even though it remains engineered by Managerialism. But
this reality also constitutes a more progressive stage of managerial
alienation.145 Meanwhile, the subject which is alienated is swallowed
up by its alienated existence inside managerial regimes (work)
and managerial societies (ex-work) that is sold as TINA, the one-
dimensional parameter set by Managerialism. The achievements of
Managerialism almost defy critical reflection and justification.
Managerialism has established a circular self-reinforcing mechanism of
an equilibrium that stabilises and controls an alienated society.146
Before Managerialism’s tribunal even the ‘false’ consciousness of
managerial irrationalities (ends) and instrumental rationality (means)
becomes true. This absorption of ideology into reality does not,
however, signify the End of Ideology.147 On the contrary, in a very
specific sense Managerialism represents more ideology than all its
36 Managerialism
predecessors, inasmuch as ideology has become the process of production

itself. It marks the historical point where the production of ideology
and the ideology of production merge into one. Hence, the production
of ideology has become an integral part of managerial societies because
it supplies an ideology that makes people not only accept but also
conform and even feel comfortable with the commandments of
Managerialism, may it be inside managerial regimes or inside shopping
malls. In a provocative form, this proposition reveals the political
aspects of Managerialism while it frames management ‘science’ as
value neutral. The managerial apparatus and the goods and services
which it produces ‘sell’ their ideology to the whole of society. The
means of mass communication, the commodification of food and
clothing, as well as the irresistible output of the corporate entertain-
ment industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain
intellectual and emotional reactions which bind consumers more or
less pleasantly to the managerial apparatus and through that to the
entirety of society.148
These ideologies promote the false consciousness of endless con-
sumerism which is immune against its own falsehood. As consumer
products become available to more individuals in more global regions,
the spreading of their ideological content ceases to be managerial in
character. It becomes an overall way of life. Meanwhile, all this still
promises a good way of life enshrined in petit-bourgeois commodities.
Management ‘promised to give the people what they want: opportun-
ities for material affluence and social harmony’.149 This life – we are told
– is much better than ever before. This good way of life works against
qualitative change asphyxiating individuals in quantitative increases
under the motto ‘the more the better’. This is underpinned by an ideo-
logy that tells us perpetual economic growth will benefit all.150 With
that emerges a global pattern of thoughts and behaviours in which
ideas, aspirations, and objectives are shaped by Managerialism. By their
very content they disallow any transcendence of the managerial orbit
of dialogue and action. Simultaneously, challenging concepts set
against Managerialism are repelled, reduced, or made to work for
Managerialism when redefined by instrumental rationality.
This may be related to the human development as envisioned by
behaviourism which is never absent in textbooks on organisational
behaviour, organisations psychology, HRM, and management
studies.151 Their common feature is an anti-theoretical and one-
dimensional version of empiricism extended to the treatment of concepts
and individuals. Meaning has been restricted to a representation of
managerial operations and individual behaviours in order to be sup-

portive of Managerialism. Adopting the singularity of the managerial
viewpoint involves much more than a mere restriction of human
senses. It means a far-reaching manipulation of human habits and
thoughts. Researchers can no longer permit themselves to use the crit-
ical faculties in human thinking. As a consequence, management
studies can never give an adequate account. This mode of managerial
thought has become the predominant tendency in many fields of acad-
emic endeavour. Simultaneously, many critical and non-managerial –
perhaps even subversive – academic fields and concepts have been side-
lined, marginalised, or eliminated.
The radical empiricist version of management studies in conjunction
with Managerialism’s ideology carries the assault against all non-
managerial disciplines in academia. This provides the methodological
justification for a debunking of subjectivity, an eradication of the
human element, and the conversion of those whose critical minds and
Enlightenment faculties remained intact until the arrival of
Managerialism. They too were made to join The Servants of Power.
Those incapable or unwilling to ‘modernise’, were culled by
Managerialism during one or the other managerially invented restruc-
turing programme. Theoretically, this marks positivism’s version of
instrumental rationality, the denial of the transcending elements of
Enlightenment’s critical reason. It shapes an academic field of study
servicing managerially required forms of organisational (mis-)behav-
iour, i.e. the conversion of human behaviour into non-human,
damaged, pathological, and perhaps even inhuman behaviour as
required by Managerialism. Already in his Administrative Behavior
(1947), Herbert Simon ‘touched all the proper bases of logical pos-
itivism, which, he said, could serve as the model for management’s
scientific research’.152 Only when one ignores the manifold shortcom-
ings of positivism as outlined, for example, by philosopher Max
Horkheimer (1895–1973) is it possible to carry through the ideology of
Managerialism, objectification, positivism, and empiricism that dom-
inate today’s scientific endeavours.153
Outside the managerial-academic complex, far-reaching changes in
individual habits of thought are even more serious. This serves to adapt
ideas and goals to those calibrated by Managerialism and to enclose
them inside the managerial system. Simultaneously, this is designed to
repel those that are incompatible with Managerialism. The hegemony
of Managerialism, however, does not mean that cold rationality
rules absolutely and that the spiritual, metaphysical, and demagogic
38 Managerialism
occupations are vanishing.154 On the contrary, there is a great deal of

‘worship together this week,’ ‘why not try God’, Zen, New-Ageism,
occultism, card-reading, star-signs, and so on.155 But such modes of
obscure protest and escapism are no longer contradictory to the status
quo, no longer negative, and no longer directed against Managerialism.
They form an ideological-ceremonial part of a massive reshaping of
society and in the image of behaviourism that has – since its invention
– never been absent from any textbook on organisational psychology
and management studies.156 However, they remain harmless, quickly
digested, and simple while mirroring Managerialism’s KISS – keep it
simple stupid! Importantly, they have asphyxiated people inside the
status quo as part of their healthy diet.
Managerial thought is more systematically promoted by the propo-
nents of neo-liberal economics, management studies, corporate lobby-
ists, business journalists, and the transmitters employed by corporate
media organisations.157 Their one-dimensional orbit of reporting is
populated by half-truths and self-validating statements that are relent-
lessly and monopolistically repeated to achieve the status of hypnotis-
ing definitions in support of Managerialism. Even ‘free’ has become a
codeword for unfree institutions that operate under Managerialism
while free enterprises are places of corporate unfreedom. Transcending
modes of human freedom such as democracy, never mind more threat-
ening ideas such as industrial democracy, social-democracy, collec-
tivism, and, worst of all, anarchism and communism are framed as
propaganda and have been eliminated through TINA.158 Managerialism
and corporate mass media have defamed and destroyed all that can be
seen as an encroachment on private enterprises. This includes, for
example, the protectors of nature against the ravaging commercialisa-
tion through corporations.159 It can also be found in something very
simple like establishing public services which may hurt private profit
and the ideology of Managerialism. Instead we are told private com-
panies are better suited than governmental institutions in attempting a
‘Privatisation of Everything’.160 The totalitarian logic has no counter-
part when TINA rules unhindered and unquestioned.
Inside managerial regimes meanwhile ‘freedom’ marks the way of an
institutionalised existence by non-democratic means. All other tran-
scending modes of freedom are made to appear as subversive, illusive,
utopian, and unrealistic. In the camp of Managerialism, non-
managerial ideas and even non-conformist behaviour are seen as sub-
versive and controversial. The movement of critical thought is stopped
at gates setting limits on reason itself. Such limitation of thought is
certainly not new. Ascending modern instrumental rationalism in its

speculative and empirical form however depicts a remarkable contrast
between critical rationalism in scientific and philosophic method on
the one hand and an uncritical quietism towards the pathologies
created by managerial institutions on the other. The great French
philosopher Descartes’ (1596–1650) ego cogitans was able to support
‘great public bodies’.161 Meanwhile British philosopher Hobbes
(1588–1679) thought that ‘the present ought always to be preferred,
maintained, and accounted best’.
Philosophical reasoning has always been evident in the experience
and awareness of misery and injustice. Yet existing political settings
never permitted any dissociation from the established order. However,
a political dimension which developed into an effective opposition was
always present. With Managerialism’s gradual closing of this dimen-
sion the self-limitation of thought assumes significance. The inter-
relation between scientific-philosophical and societal-managerial
processes, between theoretical, moral, and practical reason asserts itself
‘behind the backs’ of modern scientists and, even more so, manage-
ment writers employed by management schools. Managerialism bars a
whole category of oppositional operations and dissident thoughts and
behaviours. Consequently, their concepts are rendered illusory and
meaningless. The managerialised curricula in privatised or private
schools and managerial universities – even in those departments ‘for-
mally’ separated from management schools – make sure of that.162
Historical transcendence appears as incomprehensive, reprehensible,
and metaphysical transcendence unacceptable to Managerialism and
its quasi-scientific thought that defines management schools. The
managerial and behavioural point of view that is practised as a habit
has become the one-dimensional vision of the managerial orbit of dia-
logue, action, behaviour, needs, and aspirations. Hegel’s famous
‘cunning of reason’ has been made to work for the interest of manager-
ial power that constitutes the very heart of management.163 The former
Harvard Business Review editor Magretta (2002) explains; ‘managers [are]
people in positions of institutional power’.164 The insistence on man-
agerial concepts turns against any efforts to free thought in favour of
the given reality and towards a suppression of alternatives. Theoretical
and practical reason and academic and social thought meet on the
common ground of Managerialism which turns scientific and manage-
rial progress into instruments of domination. But progress has never
been a neutral term. It used to move towards specific ends before it
became hijacked by Managerialism. Now it moves towards managerially
40 Managerialism
defined ends enshrined in The Real Bottom Line, shareholder-value,

and profit-maximisation. These ends however have as a by-product the
degeneration of the human condition.
Today’s managerial society is approaching the stage where continued
material progress demands the radical subversion of managerial direc-
tions. This stage is reached when managerial processes have ‘improved’
production to the extent that the prevailing levels of exploitation of
natural resources for commodity production can no longer be sus-
tained by the earth’s environment. From this point on, the destructive-
ness of managerial progress ends its own ideology. Managerialism will
no longer be able to serve as an instrument of domination and
exploitation that is ideologically removed from the environmentally
destructive ways of the corporate production of things and services. At
this point in time ideology becomes so removed from social and envi-
ronmental reality that its content is eroded and its present form of
management is increasingly exposed as pure ideology. To prevent this,
Managerialism is limiting all rational understanding of this as long as
possible. It can never allow science and production to become sub-
jected to a free play of critical faculties. Instead, it is forced to
camouflage the struggle between nature, earth’s environment, and
managerial capitalism. These conditions imply the abolition of
Managerialism because there can never be any pacification between
the unlimited environmentally ravaging character of corporate
exploitation and the natural limits set by earth’s global environment.
The term ‘pacification’ seems better suited to designate the historical
alternative of a world which advances towards such a self-created end
whilst still being covered up by Managerialism. Even before reaching
an alternative vision, the looming awareness of an existence of society
at the brink of the devastating future that global warming has in store
constitutes challenges to Managerialism’s ideological paradigm.
However, faced with environmental annihilation, a strange ‘pacification’
has befallen managerial society. Managerialism still makes individuals
believe that it can win the struggle with nature, that there is a technical
solution to the contradiction between perpetual growth and finite
global earthly resources. Competing needs, desires, and aspirations
organised by vested interests in dominating nature can never secure
human existence. Yet Managerialism still pretends that its ideologies
offer the only way to circumvent the looming environmental disas-
ter.165 Meanwhile, it perpetuates the destructive forms of this struggle.
Today’s fight against the historical alternatives, towards environmen-
tally sustainable post-managerial living, finds its political will in a crit-
ical, if not negative, orientation of thought towards the so-called ‘given

facts’.
Validated by the accomplishments of mass consumerism that justify
the promise of eternal growth, the managerial status quo defies all
transcendence. Even when faced with the possibility of eternal envi-
ronmental destruction, Managerialism closes itself against all alterna-
tive thought concepts outside its own realm. Managerialism’s solutions
framed as practical, realist, real world, and hands-on, in theory as in
practice, have become the theory and practice of a containment of
alternatives. Beneath these observable contradictions, Managerialism
remains a thoroughly static system. It is self-propelling in its oppressive
productivity and its supposedly beneficial competitiveness. Con-
tainment of progress towards environmental sustainability goes hand
in hand with its ideological growth into the direction of an intimidat-
ing environmental abyss. In spite of the theoretical as well as practical
shackles imposed by the managerial status quo, the more managerial a
society becomes the more Managerialism appears capable of organising
individuals against alternatives.166 Advanced areas of managerial
societies exhibit these two features:
• an un-relinquishing trend towards consummation of managerial

ideologies and irrationalities
• linked to intensive efforts to contain all critiques and alternative
concepts within the established institutions of managerial societies.
Here lies one of the key internal contradictions of Managerialism,

namely the irrational element in its own rationality – its rational
means (e.g. monetary cost-benefit analysis) to achieve irrational ends
(global environmental annihilation).167 Managerialism which has
made science and progress its own, has organised an ever more effec-
tive domination over individuals and nature for an ever more effective
abuse of earthly resources producing ever greater environmental van-
dalism.168 It becomes irrational when the success of these efforts opens
new dimensions of global environmental genocide. To quote the
horse’s mouth: ‘40 years ago, (…) Paul Erlich (The Population Bomb,
1968), the Club of Rome (The Limits to Growth, 1972), and William
D. Nordhaus and James Tobin (Is Growth Obsolete?, 1972) all warned in
vivid and uncompromising terms that conventional economic growth
was on the verge of ruining the world.169 Once again events suggested
that the warnings were misplaced: Energy and commodity prices fell,
deregulation delivered the benefits of more-intense competition, and
42 Managerialism
the technology revolution boosted opportunities and productivity’.170

In other words, because their predictions have not yet been fully mate-
rialised, Managerialism dismisses them outright. Meanwhile,
Managerialism has brought material comforts to a great number of
people while its catchphrase ‘businesses clearly have a major role to
play in any strategy for saving the planet’ depicts Managerialism’s
inability to think outside its organisational box.
Organisations created for environmental protection remain funda-
mentally different from business corporations created for the commer-
cial exploitation of earth’s resources as well as for an unhindered
continuation of unsustainable consumerism. Institutions that exist for
the sole purpose of competitive struggle can never serve environmen-
tally sustainable life. Life as an end in-itself (Kant) is qualitatively dif-
ferent from an existence as a commercial means to a corporate end
(profits). A qualitatively new mode of existence can never be envisaged
as a spin-off to management change. Qualitative change involves a
transformation of the basis on which managerial societies rest. This
can never be a change towards sustaining managerial institutions
through which competitive individuals as aggressive objects of
Managerialism have been mobilised.
Under Managerialism, society is engulfed by total mobilisation while
Managerialism’s missionary character demands that nobody can be
excluded and all must adhere to its ideas and concepts. After all, man-
agement is ‘everyone’s business’.171 This total mobilisation takes shape
in all spheres of managerial societies. It creates a managerial union by
combining some features of former welfare-states with those of
Managerialism. This indeed creates a ‘new managerial society’.
Traditional trouble spots are being cleaned out, marginalised, success-
fully isolated or integrated while disrupting elements are eradicated.
The main trends are familiar: concentration of what was once known
as ‘a national economy’ in the hands of a few multi-national corpora-
tions.172 Inside a global economy based on Managerialism, states are
reduced to provide stimulating incentives for FDI (foreign direct invest-
ment), supporting corporations but never being a controlling force.173
The age of deregulation has truly ended the states’ power over corpora-
tions. Their task now is to hitch corporations to a worldwide system of
business alliances, monetary arrangements, managerial assistance, and
corporate development schemes. The gradual assimilation of blue-
collar and white-collar population into corporate human resources
assures that these carry the attitudes of conformism as described in
Whyte’s ‘Organisation Men’ in support of global Managerialism.174
But Managerialism not only provides global leadership for business,

it also engineers leisure activities and aspirations in different social
classes. It fosters a pre-established harmony between scholarship and
the managerial purpose. Managerialism invades the private household
by engineering public opinion through corporate mass media. In other
words, it opens the bedroom to corporate mass media. In the political
sphere, these trends manifest themselves in the non-oppositional, uni-
fying, and converging position of ‘centre-left-vs.-centre-right’.
Bipartisanship in most policy areas and all economic areas – a universal
support for corporations – overrides almost all formerly competitive
political parties. Managerialism has long colonised domestic policies
where the programmes of all main political parties become ever more
undistinguishable, even down to the degree of hypocrisy and clichés.
The commercial marketing success of selling soap and dish-washing
liquid has extended to selling political candidates when professional
marketing agencies run election campaigns applying managerial-
marketing knowledge seamlessly to political processes.175
The unification of opposites buries the very possibilities of social
change when it embraces those who are backing the system of environ-
mentally destructive progresses. The very classes that once embodied
the opposition to the system as a whole have vanished. Today’s man-
agerial societies are no longer defined by post-WWII collusions
between Big Business and Big Labour. With the engineered and largely
successful weakening and subsequent demise of organised labour, this
sort of policy becomes increasingly less relevant to Managerialism. In
some cases, trade unions have become almost indistinguishable from
corporations. In others, they have simply been derecognised by man-
agement. We have also seen the phenomenon of combined union-
corporate lobbying against environmental protection, for example.
Many unions have agreed to work within Managerialism’s frame-
work and this did not come merely on tactical grounds, but because
their social and membership base has been weakened and their objec-
tives altered by the transformation from a social-democratic into the
managerial version of capitalism. Once, great political parties had
played an historical role of opposing the prevailing system. Today,
their remnants are condemned to be pro-business in order to be
allowed air-time by corporate mass media business, threatened by the
media’s motto ‘if it’s not on TV, it does not exist!’176 Today these polit-
ical parties testify to the depth and scope of the system-integrative
powers of Managerialism.177 It is exemplary to the prevailing condi-
tions when ‘qualitative’ inconsistencies of conflicting interests are
44 Managerialism
made to appear as minor ‘quantitative’ discrepancies, for example,

when insignificant arguments over a 2.2% or 2.3% wage increase add
more to the stability of the managerial system than any counter-system
force could ever muster.
Such conflicts within managerial societies have been modified and
arbitrated under the interrelated double impact of managerial progress
and Managerialism. Class struggles have become struggles of mortgages
and cheap consumer goods. The proletarian milieu has been trans-
formed into questions of petit-bourgeois lifestyles.178 Andre Gorz’s
‘Farewell to the Working Class’ has been completed.179 All contradic-
tions of Managerialism have been suspended and mobilised against any
threat that could destabilise Managerialism. Instead, managerial capital-
ism shows an internal unison unknown at previous stages of civilisa-
tion. It demonstrates cohesion on very material grounds. Mobilisation
against an enemy (trade unions, petty-criminals, radical political
parties, green movements, anarchistic internet hackers, and the ever
illusive terrorism, etc.) works as a mighty stimulus.180 It redirects even
the critical minds away from Managerialism under what became known
as the ‘Politics of Symbols’ and the ‘Politics of Fear’.181 By focusing on
system-external threats, managerial societies sustain high living stan-
dards, annihilate opposition, and sustain Managerialism’s hegemony.
On these grounds arises an orbit of Managerialism in which even
repression is measured and conflicts are used to stabilise the beneficial
effects of growing productivity. Meanwhile the real and present danger
of global warming is placed on the back burner. Two possible scenarios
arise from this.
Are global warming and environmental destruction only temporary
and do not affect the very roots of the classical conflict of a capitalist
mode of production manifested in the contradiction between corporate
ownership and ethical-environmental sustainable production; or is the
transformation of an antagonistic structure resulting in a fictitious
resolving of contradictions, rendering them tolerable to all as a per-
manent solution?182 If the second alternative remains true, four issues
need to be highlighted: (i) how does this change the relationship
between managerial capitalism and the fundamental critique discussed
here; (ii) how has Managerialism managed to eclipse these elementary
contradictions; (iii) how has Managerialism made it possible that the
general public tolerates the pathological and environmentally destruct-
ive side-effects of Managerialism; and (iv) can Managerialism annihilate
social change? These four aspects build the key theme of the next
chapter.
3
Annihilating Social Change
The classical Marxian theory envisaged the ‘capitalism→socialism’

transition as a revolution when a proletariat destroys the apparatus of
capitalism but retains the organisational apparatus while subjecting it
to socialisation. There is continuity in the revolution because certain
organisational rationalities, freed from irrational restrictions and
destructions, can be sustained in post-managerial societies. This is of
fundamental significance for the notion of post-Managerialism as a
specific negation of managerial capitalism. Although the present devel-
opments in management are subject to the commandments of
Managerialism, they do not, like other factors, end with the cessation
of these directives. Even in the process of revolution when unsustain-
able relations of production are overcome, technology remains. Once
subordinated to post-managerial thinking, a new post-managerial for-
mation of human and environmental sustainability continues to
develop – perhaps with extra momentum. Contrary to an ideological
misbelief, technology does not develop through leaps but by a gradual
accumulation of elements of a new quality, thereby replacing previous
technologies.
In managerial capitalism, rationality is, in spite of its irrational use,
embodied in the managerial apparatus. This applies not only to pro-
duction facilities, tools, finances, and exploitation of natural resources,
but also to the manipulation of labour. In the past, workers were made
auxiliaries to the machine assembled by scientific management. The
same applies to today’s human resources who remain auxiliaries to
more modern machinery: computers, laptops, blackberries, software,
iPads, and IT.183 Nevertheless, an ever increasing fragmentation of soft-
ware-guided work tasks is sold as specialisation. This specialisation is
45
46 Managerialism
mirrored in management studies which are defined by an overspecial-

isation of fragmented research.184 An endless repetition of highly
detailed, fractured, theory-free, and disconnected research leads to the
label ‘expert’. Repetition and fragmentation are two of the most impor-
tant denominators of management studies. Fragmentation and repeti-
tion in service-knowledge capitalism is mirrored by fragmentation and
repetitiveness in management research and curricular, perhaps with
the difference that mind-numbing IT work occurs at symbolic levels.185
While the form of capitalism has changed, viewing human beings as
mere add-ons to machines has remained and, if anything, has grown
stronger under the heading ‘human capital’.186
Critical thinking remains critical of management’s conversion of
human beings to human capital, emphasising that the managerial
apparatus can never introduce any qualitative change. The ideology of
human capital points into the opposite direction. To the degree to
which Managerialism engulfed the individual’s public and private exist-
ence in all spheres of the managerial society, it also became a medium
of control and cohesion in the political sphere.187 This system has suc-
cessfully incorporated the labouring classes – as human resources – into
its structure that demands the continuous oscillation between manage-
rial- and consumptive regimes. This has advanced to such a degree that
qualitative change would necessarily involve the transformation of
society itself. Such a deep-structure modification presupposes that indi-
viduals become aware of the fact that they are alienated from what was
once their own universe. It demands that their consciousness becomes
aware of the total impossibility to continue to exist inside present day’s
managerial orbit. The need for qualitative change becomes an urgent
matter of post-managerial life or global death.
The negation of Managerialism, however, must exist prior to such a
change. The notion that emancipatory historical forces develop within
managerial societies remains a cornerstone of any theory that critically
examines and transcends Managerialism. It is precisely this new con-
sciousness existing within such a space that is required to transcend
historical practices. But it is also this sphere that Managerialism has
declared off-limits. Under Managerialism, subjects and objects only
constitute instrumentalities ‘for’ a managerial whole with their own
‘raison d’être’ but no ‘volonté générale’. However, in Managerialism’s
accomplished overpowering system lies also its negation. Its supreme
promise of an ever more comfortable existence for an ever growing
number of people comes with the peril that people can no longer
imagine a qualitatively different universe. This is flanked by a capacity
Annihilating Social Change 47
to contain and manipulate human imagination turning it into an inte-

gral part of the managerial orbit.
On the dark side of Managerialism there are those whose life is hell.
They are kept in line by Managerialism’s manipulative-ideological bru-
tality that revives and simultaneously reaches far beyond medieval and
early modern practices. Meanwhile, for the less underprivileged,
Managerialism takes care of their need for micro-liberties by satisfying
their material needs to make their servitude palatable. The underprivi-
leged have been made unnoticeable except when tabloid-TV and
printed tabloids parade them as lazy, slackers, welfare cheats, and
asocial elements satisfying the pettiness of petit-bourgeois resentment
of Nietzschean proportions.188 This accomplishes four things:
• it stabilises managerial society;

• it atomises society by inventing artificial points of segregation;
• it replaces solidarity and a community spirit with resentment, greed,
and envy; and
• politically, it provides an electoral programme to annihilate welfare
states.
Under this impact, individuals in managerial societies undergo a deci-

sive transformation. For the labouring class, this meant mechanisation
and computerisation, thus reducing the intensity of physical energy
expended in labouring. This evolution has great bearings on the socio-
logical concept of the worker. The worker was primarily the manual
labourer who expended and exhausted his physical energy in the work
process even when working with machines. But management’s pur-
chase and use of labours’ physical energy often resulted in sub-human
working conditions – signified in Satanic Mills and the overseer’s whip
– that have now been increasingly exported through Managerialism’s
outsourcing and off-shoring.189 Managerial-ideological terms such as
‘off-shoring’ and ‘outsourcing’ camouflage the dark side of a still pro-
gressing international division of labour. Just because Charles Dickens’
sweatshops190 have been relocated to the backstreets of a slum in some
developing country, it does not mean that they have ceased to exist as
the label inside your next $19 blue jeans or super-cheap $5 t-shirt
testifies.191
Meanwhile, the managerial appropriation of surplus-value still
entails the revolting inhuman aspects of exploitation. It does not
denounce the physical pain, suffering, and misery of labour under
globalisation. This remains the real and tangible element of global
48 Managerialism
wage slavery and alienation.192 It remains a pathological dimension of

managerial capitalism. At the same time, the ever more complete com-
puterisation of human resources under managerial capitalism sustains,
if not enhances, exploitation while modifying the individual attitudes
and social statuses of those exploited. In managerially organised and
computerised work, repetitive and habitual reactions still fill a large
part of daily work. What remains is a life-long, exhausting, stressful,
stupefying, and inhuman wage-slavery even when ideologically
reframed by HRM.193 It is even more stressful because of increased
speed-ups, mental and managerial demands, and new forms of control
that software and HRM exert on human resources.194 Modern work-
stations increasingly depict post-office-like cubicles in large open-plan
settings designed to isolate service and knowledge industry workers
from each other. This form of drudgery is the very expression of man-
agerially asphyxiated individuals. Human resources are mentally
trapped inside software systems accompanied by all the trimmings
HRM can muster such as performance management, performance
related pay, KPIs (key performance indicators), ‘Balanced Scorecards’,
360-degree appraisals, etc.195 Management has mutated from the 18th
and 19th centuries’ overseer’s whip to 20th century’s personnel manage-
ment relying on punishing systems called ‘Theory X’ – and further on
to HRM’s more advanced apparatus of controlling human resources
under reward systems – ‘Theory Y’.196
Under Managerialism, this kind of masterly enslavement is essen-
tially the same for low level managers, supervisors, IT-experts, bank-
tellers, academics, high-pressure salespersons, television announcers,
and the like. The standardisation of all routine managerial and non-
managerial jobs has advanced. During the historically pre-
Managerialistic system of capitalism, a proletarian was no more than a
beast of burden because a labourer’s body produced the necessities and
luxuries for the life of a few while living in filth and poverty.197
Workers represented the living denial of society. But Fordist mass-
production and even more so Fordist mass-consumerism have altered
this forever. In this process, ‘management leaders saw themselves as
the stewards of modernisation’.198 Henry Ford ran over Karl Marx con-
verting an impoverished working class into the petit-bourgeois middle-
class of the managerial society and thereby creating a fertile ground for
the ideology of Managerialism.
Today’s Post- and neo-Fordist non-unionised workers live a life of
self-denial. Like all other human objects of a managerially invented
division of labour, they are being incorporated into managerial regimes
(work) and managerial society (consumption). Inside these managerial

regimes an organisational order – framed as corporate culture – inte-
grates atomised human fragments ideologically. Management’s ideo-
logical machine instils some drugging rhythm within the newest
corporate fads and HR-ideologies. It is generally agreed that manage-
ment-dependent ‘scripted’ motions are performed by groups of workers
and individuals following pre-programmed patterns and thereby
yielding corporate satisfaction.199 The results of such hyper-Taylorism –
often linked to Human Resource Management’s performance manage-
ment instruments – are often revolt (Marx), resistance (Adorno,)
resentment (Nietzsche), or an outright ‘cynical’ attitude among human
resources – workers – who despite all this remain favourable to the re-
production of managerial ideologies that lead to certain kinds of false
satisfactions.200 Management studies frames this as a strong in-group
feeling – teamwork – that underlies a corporate identity.201 Each team-
member – overseen by a management appointed team-leader – is made
to believe they are part of something bigger, a corporation, led by a
Great Leader, a CEO.202
Managerialism’s ideological push for leadership appears on top of an
appeasement of workers and their conversion into compliant human
resources so that post-bureaucratic self-management through HRM
techniques produces new forms of improved enslavement.203 Under
HRM and organisational behaviour modification/manipulation human
resources are made to believe that ‘work is fun rather than oppres-
sive’.204 This faked fun-culture that extends not only to their minds
and bodies but also their soul and heart is designed to overlay the fact
that human beings remain corporate instruments.205 The ideological
process of the managerial orbit breaks the innermost privacy of
freedom and joins feelings, sexuality, and labour into one. This process
is paralleled by the assimilation of jobs, lifestyles, privacy, images,
thoughts, attitudes, and political convictions. Assimilation is shown in
the invention of ever new occupations and an increase in occupational
stratification engineered through HRM techniques. Everyone has a job-
title and a position inside an organisational pyramid-like hierarchy,
thus enabling them to look down towards increasingly weaker sections
of the corporate pyramid until the last one in the chain has only a
spouse or a pet to look down to. With its idea of an everlasting hierar-
chy Managerialism fulfils its own destiny. In managerial establish-
ments, hierarchical asymmetries have absorbed ‘blue-collar’ workers
into the mindset of ‘white-collar’ workers. As the number of non-blue-
collar non-production workers increases, manufacturing is outsourced,
50 Managerialism
downsized, franchised, off-shored, and relocated. This changed the face

of manufacturing capitalism towards service and knowledge capitalism
and eventually mutated into managerial capitalism. And the propor-
tion of those assigned managerial occupations is on the rise.
This quantitative change mirrors an alteration in the character of the
basic instruments of profit-making. At the more advanced stages of
Managerialism, the managerial apparatus is no longer restricted to
companies, markets, and capitalism, it is forced to colonise societies.
To the extent to which the managerial machine becomes itself a
system of ideological tools and as such extends far beyond individual
work processes and corporations, it asserts its growing and ideological
dominion by reproducing ‘professional’ managers in society.206
Virtually all individuals are being integrated directly or indirectly into
the managerial ensemble. The illusion of professional autonomy of
anyone employed inside managerial regimes was never more than a
form of professional enslavement. But this specific mode of enslave-
ment was at the same time also a source of the professional – albeit
limited – power. Being made to believe in ‘doing good’ they carry out
the hidden transcript of what Bauman so pointedly labelled as ‘solicit-
ing the cooperation of its victims’ (1989).207 Managerialism has devel-
oped a process by which its victims experience restricted managerial
power enabling them to influence a process which threatens wider
society and humanity. Asphyxiated inside the managerial paradigm,
they carry out the wishes of Managerialism while having been made to
believe to act with a moral consciousness. Simultaneously, a new class-
without-class consciousness has been created into which these profes-
sionals were absorbed.208
Anyone losing their professional autonomy is still a member of the
managerial class.209 It is this subservient class-without-class conscious-
ness that embodies the strength of Managerialism. It has been achieved
with individuals as instruments of managerial production regimes and
subsequently in the service-knowledge industry’s bureaucratic func-
tions and creates ever-growing numbers of managers, some with pro-
fessional training in management studies and some without. It has not
cancelled but modified the notion of an organic composition of capital
and with it the theory of the creation of surplus value. The managerial
machine now starts to create value by merely transferring its own value
primarily to R&D (research and development) and to marketing with
production relocated to distant places. Under managerial capitalism,
Managerialism can never eliminate the fact that surplus value remains
the result of the exploitation of living labour.210
Today – as has always been the case – the managerial machine

remains embodied through the combination of living labour power
(people) with dead labour (machinery, computers, etc.). This preserves
managerial capitalism by determining living labour. Managerialisation
remains occupied with converting labour into a managerial organ con-
trolled by managerial regimes. Fundamentally, this remains as an unal-
tered relationship between dead and living labour where productivity
remains one-dimensionally determined by management that defines all
individual outputs. Moreover, a very detailed measurement of indi-
vidual output has become possible under sophisticated HRM techniques
such as the ‘Balanced Scorecard’ directly linking labour to The Real
Bottom Line.211 This means, in its largest sense, an effective heightening
of measuring work output. With that, management can calculate the
output of a single human resource against The Real Bottom Line. This is
generalised as a managerial concept underwritten by Managerialism’s
ideology of individual achievement set in relation to competitive
advantage.212 It increases management’s power over each human
resource’s output linked to intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.213
This change has been part of the historical system of managerialisa-
tion itself. The meaning of managerialisation did not arise with the
introduction of factories. It arose out of more recent and more sophis-
ticated techniques invented by mid-20th century management writers
that Baritz (1960) termed The Servants of Power. It operates on the
simple premise: work and managerial output even of petty-managers
can be measured when hooking a human resource directly to The Real
Bottom Line. This process is ideologically supported by Managerialism
placing an ideological harness around the necks of human resources
through performance management.214 The measured output is, of
course, solely determined by management ever since Frederick Taylor
invented ‘(Un-)Scientific Management’.215 Taylor (1911:59) said ‘he
[the worker] should be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he resembles
the mental make-up of the ox [so that management only needs] to
train an intelligent gorilla [because a worker] is so stupid that the word
“percentage” has no meaning to him’.216 Perhaps it is because of
Taylor’s derogatory language and his obvious distaste for human
beings that management heavily relies on his book labelled ‘scientific’
and expressing objectiveness, value neutrality, and science by describ-
ing persons as ‘ox’ and ‘gorilla’. Perhaps this is the very reason why
Frederick Taylor is still held in high esteem.
What is at stake is far more than management’s own system of man-
aging. What individuals are experiencing under Managerialism is a
52 Managerialism
significant alteration of the relation of workers to other classes and

below that of organising work. What is at stake is the compatibility of
managerial progress with the very institutions in which managerialisa-
tion developed. These changes in the character of work, the managerial
apparatus of production, and of management itself have been success-
fully linked to Managerialism. Like a virus, they have infected attitudes
and consciousness of labour.217 Turned into human resources they con-
tinue to experience organisational changes through the ritual of
restructuring.218 This became manifested in the ideologically steered
system integration of the labouring class within managerial capitalism
marking a shift in consciousness.219 Such a fundamental change in
consciousness is only understandable when linked to the correspond-
ing changes in the individual’s societal existence.
The consistent diminishing of political independence is linked to an
overall transformation of managerial capitalism. Assimilation in needs
and aspirations, in the standard of living, in leisure activities, and in
politics derives from a greater integration inside the managerial orbit
itself. It rests in the ideological reproduction of this orbit as system, not
social integration. In the present situation, this has pathological fea-
tures such as work-intensification, stressful jobs, bullying, increased
demands on psyche, systematically and managerially created mass
unemployment indicating system-failure that remains hidden while
the victims of unemployment are abused by corporate mass media. It
also indicates the overall strengthening of the position of management
and corporations and an increasing impotence and resignation on the
part of workers and their fast vanishing organisations. Impotent and
demoralised human resources are handed over to the ideological appa-
ratus of HRM that defines attitudes, feelings, and lives. The chances of
a worker’s promotion ‘through the ranks’, for example, has declined
dramatically as management prefers management school graduates.
Simultaneously, management’s ideology frames the decline of promo-
tions as ‘career opportunities’ and at worst, as ‘searching for talent’.220
Still, Rousseau’s (1750) quote towers more true today than ever before:
‘we no longer ask if a man has integrity but rather if he has talent; we
do not ask if a book is useful but merely if it is well written. Rewards
are showered on clever minds, but virtue receives no honours’.221
However, there are other trends. The same Managerialism which
invented the managerial ‘community’ under the ‘corporate culture’
logo also generates larger interdependences which create resentment,
hostility, and cynicism among workers.222 There is the appearance of
enthusiasm and eagerness played out under what became known as
‘Impression Management’.223 Only when Managerialism applies all its

ideological tools, a pretended desire of workers to join actively in
applying their own brains to managerial problems can be found. In
some managerially more advanced corporations, human resources are
even made to show a vested interest in the organisation. This is the fre-
quently observed effect of what is called ‘involvement’ in capitalist
enterprises.224
Managerialism implements a weakening of negative dispositions of
the working class that no longer appears to be the living contradiction
to the managerial order. This trend is strengthened by the ideological
effectiveness of the managerial organisation of corporations marking
an increased acceptance of the so-called ‘managerial prerogative’ and
the ‘right of management to manage’.225 Domination is transfigured
into pure ideology. Capitalist bosses have long lost their identity as
responsible agents.226 They have become faceless shareholders made
invincible and, best of all, non-responsible to what corporations do.227
Today, management mediates the role of bosses by establishing a hier-
archy of control. In managerial language: ‘ownership and hierarchical
control make it easier to manage a complex system as a system’.228
Individuals are no more than one element in a strictly hierarchical
system. This also makes it easier for management to shift the blame
when things go wrong. When fully intended consequences cannot be
externalised, they are put on someone else to foot the bill while success
is claimed as managerial success.229 These structures are handy for
management when discarding its own responsibility. Inside the many
levels of managerial hierarchies, complex organisational charts, and
networks of functional assignments, responsibilities – especially ethical
responsibilities – vanish into thin air. It is only in those rare cases
when organisational experts are made to testify in court hearings
under a judge forced by public pressure that the average person gets a
brief glimpse into the managerial system of ‘hide-and-seek’. These
structures only come to light when real culprits of corporate malprac-
tices and crimes are identified.230 A classical case is American Insurance
Group’s $165,000,000 bonus paid to ‘the bonus boys’ in their corpo-
rate department that used toxic credits, thereby partly causing the
global financial crisis of 2008 (cf. Enron).231
The function of management inside a corporate machine is to run
the affairs of corporations, take the glory when successful, and exit
themselves from negatives. These negatives are actions that have been
deliberately designed by management in Drucker’s ‘ruthless game’ of
high profits versus management’s ability to externalise negatives such
54 Managerialism
as, for example, Thalidomide, Bhopal, Ford Pinto, Nestle Baby Food,
asbestos, BP and the Gulf of Mexico, etc.232 When uncovered,
Managerialism labels them as misdeeds, failures, unfortunate, problem-
atic, and their favourite ‘bad-apple-ideology’ claiming that corporate
crime is not systemic but a case of a few bad apples while simultan-
eously issuing a ‘get-out-of-jail-free-card’ for corporations and managerial
capitalism.233 Meanwhile, the impact of corporate management that
knows no borders between accepted levels of corporate destructiveness
and corporate crime reaches far beyond the boundaries of corpora-
tions. The vast hierarchy of executives, CEOs & CFOs, managerial
boards, the ‘Free Market Missionaries’,234 organised lobbying groups
for Managerialism, the wordsmiths of Managerialism (lobbyists
camouflaged as think tanks), their business press, commercial news
networks, internet presence, etc. extends far beyond individual
corporations.
Managerialism has even successfully entered into scientific laborato-
ries and research institutes, governmental departments, and today sets
national and global research agendas. It has done so through direct
links into the world of science via external – i.e. corporate – research
grants, industry partnerships and a raft of other managerially invented
names designed to hide the ever growing takeover of science by
Managerialism.235 The second and perhaps even more dangerous way
Managerialism influences, if not pre-designs research is through the
ideological takeover of universities. This has been described in the
words of Watson’s ‘Managerialism-Germany Army’ analogy noted
earlier.236
Managerialism’s tangible source of exploitation of science disappears
behind the facade of objective rationality and value neutrality.
Academic and scholarly frustrations are deprived of their specific
target. There is nobody to grasp, nobody to hold accountable, or ethi-
cally responsible. There are faceless funding bodies in remote offices to
which individual scientists need to send their research proposals for
funding approval. There, not scientists but educational managers, ex-
scientists turned managers, or boards exposed to public sentiment
rather than science, hold judgement. Universities under the dictate of
Managerialism are made to compete for these funds and have, there-
fore, set up special managers who are experts in the word-crafting of
such proposals – in the name of competition or, as one of
Managerialism’s top-gurus put it, ‘Competitive Advantage’.237
Thousands of top research scientists around the world are busy filling
in forms for funding applications under Managerialism’s dictate
instead of dedicating their time on our social ills, breast cancer

research, astrophysics, mathematics, and the like. In short, ‘the force of
money has become paramount … more like an idol, an end, rather
than a means of accomplishing educational objectives’.238
All of this remains hidden under the managerial veil that conceals
the reproduction of inequality and enslavement within science, uni-
versities, and academia, and in wider society.239 With managerially
defined progress as its ideological weapon, unfreedom in the sense of
subjugation to Managerialism of every human being inside the man-
agerial apparatus is perpetuated and intensified. Simultaneously,
Managerialism pronounces itself and its setups as a form of liberty,
freedom, comfort, and material advancement while simultaneously
condemning society to asphyxiation manifested in a highly narrow
vision of commercial advancements in petty-commodities and middle-
class lifestyles paralleled by a systematical impoverishment of the Geist,
spirit, or human mind (Hegel). The novel features of Managerialism’s
overwhelming rationality are manifested in its irrational enterprise.
The manipulation of the Geist increases the depth of managerial pre-
conditioning which shapes our instinctual drives and aspirations
obscuring the difference between false and true consciousness.
Meanwhile, inside managerial regimes and through Managerialism,
four key changes have manifested themselves:
• a utilisation of managerial-ideological rather than physical controls

(humiliation, beatings, force, coercion) was ideologically supported
by the change-over from personnel management to Human
Resource Management;
• the structural change in the character of work (manufacturing→service
industry) decreased technical control (e.g. assembly line) while increas-
ing ideological control;240
• an assimilation of occupational classes in one ideologically deter-
mined class of petit-bourgeois middle-class resulted in a move from
societal solidarity to individual competition, selfishness, and
egoism;241 and
• a false equalisation of human ‘freedom=choice’ that reduces real life
choices to mere consumptive choices among only cosmetically dif-
ferentiated consumer goods.
The annihilation of the freedom to live life is compensated by the fact

that decisions over life and death, personal and environmental security
etc. are made at places over which individuals have control. These are
56 Managerialism
disconnected and dehumanised institutions – often labelled ‘board of

directors’ and the more infamous and insidious ‘management meet-
ings’.242 While guided by Managerialism, they set the terms and condi-
tions of an existence inside companies and corporations. The
ideologically entrapped slaves of developed managerial civilisation are
sublimated slaves, but they remain slaves as slavery is determined by
obedience, accommodation, and subjugation, not by harsh labour and
chains.243 It is defined through the status of being an instrument, a
tool, a human resource, a consumer, and the accompanying asphyxia-
tion of individuals inside the managerially defined status quo. This
marks a pure form of servitude: to exist as an instrument or a thing.
And this mode of existence is not abrogated if the ‘thing’ is animated,
entertained, and is allowed to choose its material comfort. If indi-
viduals do not feel their own humanity in a ‘being-as-thing’, they
remain a pretty, clean, educated, well-dressed, mannered, mobile, and
electronically connected ‘thing’. Conversely, as the ‘thing-ification’ or
reification tends to become totalitarian by virtue of its managerial
form, managers themselves become increasingly dependent on
managerial ideologies and the apparatus they have invented and
manage.244 Even their own illusive autonomy and pretended self-
determination has been handed over to a system.
The mutual dependence between system and individual no longer
marks the dialectical relationship of Hegel’s ‘Master and Servant’ which
was born in the struggle for recognition.245 Instead, an ideological but
vicious circle enclosing both – Master and Servant – as mere functions
has been established. While they still believe to rule, managerial rule
has long become the rule of an ideology setting the terms and condi-
tions of managerial behaviour.246 The pressure of an ideologically engi-
neered global competitive rat race among corporations has taken the
initiative and the power to take the crucial decisions out of the hands
of individual management. It has placed global decision-making
powers in the hands of corporations nailed to their own ideology of
Managerialism. Meanwhile, an entire system of corporate managers,
strategic management, and managerial scientists employed by vast
managerial empires charged with responsibility only towards their
shareholder’s interests has been installed to conduct itself in accor-
dance to Managerialism and to provide a belief-system for the illusion
of managerial decision-making powers.247
The very future of the managerial profession and corporations
depends on this. It depends upon management’s ability to sustain the
ideology of Managerialism and on individuals accepting Managerialism
as the sole guiding principle enshrined in consumerism. It depends on

people buying what the managerial profession and corporations have
dreamed up and what their marketing apparatus has convinced us to
be ‘the latest technology’, ‘the must-haves’, etc. It is the ‘Steve-Jobs-
isation’ of human existence.248 As the managerial establishment relies
on marketing, consumer capitalism, and mass-consumption for self-
preservation and growth, management relies on corporations for their
personal advancement and for knowing what kind of products and ser-
vices marketing can convince us we need, how much they will cost,
and how long it will take to get them. A functionary cybernetic system
of a vicious circle seems indeed the proper image of a managerial
society. It is furnished with the self-generation of its own ideology but
it is also self-sustaining, self-expanding, and self-perpetuating. It has its
own pre-established direction driven by the growing needs which it
generates itself and, at the same time, contains. It is the modern
version of an autopilot that has been set in motion making it hard to
locate the switch-off mechanism.
4
Spreading Managerialism
There are prospects that Managerialism’s chain of ideological encir-

clement and repression may be broken. This requires an attempt to
project Managerialism’s present development and that of managerial
capitalism into the future, assuming that a relatively normal capital-
ist evolution takes place until – a quite possible – global environmen-
tal destruction occurs. This means for theoretical purposes,
temporarily neglecting the ‘real and present’ possibility of an imme-
diate end of human civilisation through instant resource depletion
and environmental destruction.249 On this factually rather problem-
atic assumption, Managerialism would remain a permanent feature
and so would managerial capitalism. At the same time, the latter
would continue to be capable of maintaining and even marginally
increasing living standards for a slowly but steadily declining part of
the global population. This might be possible for a limited time in
spite of and through intensified production accompanied by environ-
mental destruction as well as the systematic waste of resources and
natural and human faculties. The capability to increase living stan-
dards has asserted itself in spite of and through several wars, two
world wars, numerous recessions, a relative long period of peace
when one discounts the so-called Cold, Korean, Vietnam, Balkan,
Afghanistan, and Iraq Wars, the War on Drugs with 60,000 deaths in
Mexico alone, an apparently unending War on Terrorism, and
numerous other little bombings, engineered civil wars, incursions,
and invasions. One might also need to discount the immeasurable
physical and intellectual regression brought about by Managerialism.
In the above assumption, managerial capitalism’s material base for its
58
Spreading Managerialism 59
capability to increase living standards would continue to be available

to reach five key achievements:
• a growing productivity of labour signifying managerial progress;

• a plateauing and declining global birth rate and an organisation of
global migration movements;
• a permanency of the global managerial economy with a continuing
supply of consumer goods;
• an ideological mass integration of the majority of people within
capitalist countries into the system imperatives of Managerialism
testifying to increased ideological capabilities of corporate mass
media; and
• a successful submission of underdeveloped areas of the world
through managerial capitalism, modern management techniques,
Managerialism, and most importantly, international trade deter-
mined by regions most advanced in managerial capitalism.
But the continued conflict between the ideological capabilities of man-

agerial societies and their destructive and oppressive resource utilisation
in all parts of the world necessitates intensified efforts to impose the ideo-
logical requirements of the managerial apparatus on all populations. It
means that Managerialism must continue to convince entire populations
to get rid of anti-managerial policies allowing corporations unhindered
access to their resources and markets to destroy local economies. The
managerial codeword is downsizing-rightsizing-outsourcing-suicising.
Managerialism has to ensure the continuous creation of false needs so
that saleable goods can lead to profits. It has to make sure that the desire
to work for corporations is seen as a natural part of life and as TINA. The
system thus tends towards global, total, and utter dependence on
Managerialism. This represents a moment that would eliminate the dif-
ference between corporate governance and political governments. It is
the moment when Managerialism supersedes democracy.
Managerialism is able to strengthen the established harmony
between the interest of the public and private corporations and that of
customers and servants. However, advancements in privatisation,
labour’s increasing accommodation to management, and increasing
profits by-themselves would not be enough to sustain this system of
ideological domination. Managerialism and managerial thinking has to
colonise every eventuality of human life. There are centrifugal tenden-
cies, from within and from without. One of them is inherent in
managerial progress itself, namely, the application of ever more
60 Managerialism
sophisticated managerial knowledge to all eventualities of human exist-

ence. This expansion of managerial techniques is more than a quantita-
tive growth of management. It is a fundamental change in the character
of the basic managerial forces infiltrating every aspect of human life. It
seems that Managerialism as an ideology has no limits when it comes to
what is socially and politically possible. The fact remains, however, that
Managerialism is incompatible with a human society because it is based
on the private exploitation of human labour, represents an inauthentic
ideology, damages the human Geist (Hegel), deprives individuals of self-
actualisation, is unethical, converts human needs into commercial
needs, and leads to global environmental destruction.
As large-scale managerial systems advance, the creation of real
wealth depends less on the labour time and the quantity of labour
expended. Under managerial capitalism, it depends on the power of
managerial instrumentalities and the accompanying ideology of
Managerialism. These managerial instrumentalities and their hege-
monic effectiveness are no longer matched by organised and increas-
ingly unorganised labour. Instead, their effectiveness depends on the
attained level of managerial science, ideology, and progress. In other
words, it depends on an application of managerial ideology and
science to managerial regimes, managerial capitalism, and managerial
society. Labour becomes encircled by managerial ideology. Rather than
relating to themselves, individuals as human resources are made to
relate themselves to managerial processes, supervisors, HR-regulators,
and their ideologies. Whyte’s new ‘Organisation Men’250 as created by
Managerialism remain locked inside Managerialism with no participa-
tive rights but still as the principal agents of managerial profit-making.
The transformation from simply being management’s underlings
and subordinates towards being active carriers of Managerialism is a
task to be achieved by Managerialism. In other words, Enlightenment’s
promise of developing self-critical (Kant), self-reflective (Hegel) and
mündige (Adorno) individuals has resulted in creating managerial indi-
viduals. The managerial theft of the human mind and spirit that drives
the wealth of petit-bourgeois middle-class and the managerial society
itself remains the economic base of this new form of Managerialism in
which large-scale corporations and management organise managerial
capitalism. As soon as the mental capabilities of human labour, in their
immediate form, have ceased to be the source of wealth, labour’s
mental capabilities will cease to be a determinant factor and can be
outsourced. But the managerial need to exploit labour’s mental capa-
bilities continues to be high, showing no sign of declining.251
Long working hours may be an excellent measure of the ‘busy

society’ that busies-away human lives under the common phrase ‘I am
busy’. In the managerial society, being busy has become synonymous
for being active, energetic, entrepreneurial, trendy, going with
Managerialism’s Zeitgeist.252 Perhaps it has also become the measure of
petit-bourgeois wealth. After more than two generations of consumer
capitalism, the managerial exchange-equation of ‘labour-time-equals-
wages-equals-consumer-goods’ has been turned into such a normality
that we all subscribe to it wandering along like a flock of sheep on
tranquilisers. ‘Going With The Flow’ is Managerialism’s normality
asphyxiating individuals inside managerial regimes and managerial
societies.253 Meanwhile, human values such as inquisitiveness, curios-
ity, questioning things, Adorno’s Mündigkeit, Kant’s self-determination,
and Hegel’s self-actualisation have ceased to exist.
With the decline of manufacturing and the rise of entirely manager-
ial industries – and, above that, of Managerialism – a growing class of
petty-managers – middle-management, line-management, supervisors,
overseers, section-leaders, team-leaders, etc. – has multiplied their
numbers strengthening petit-bourgeois values such as selfishness
which moral philosophy describes as moral egoism.254 This class of an
inward-looking, self-centred, and petty-managerial ‘mass’ has ceased to
be the condition for developing societal cohesion and solidarity.
Meanwhile, their ideology as shaped by Managerialism has turned
something as simple as idleness into a synonym for laziness while the
non-productive managerial class has been attributed with ‘hard
working’, equalised to working long hours.255 The laziness of not pro-
ducing anything except managerial power, ideologies, and corporate
hierarchies has been made invisible. Simultaneously, conditions for
developing universal intellectual faculties of human beings have been
systematically eroded. Instead, Managerialism has been made to appear
as an unchallenged catalyst of today’s society. But it remains merely a
catalyst in the base of qualitative change. Managerialism remains a
managerial instrument of turning ‘quantity-into-quantity’ disqualify-
ing ‘quality’ change. It is Managerialism’s ‘change without change’ just
as there is Neo-Liberalism’s ‘reform without reform’. It marks the quintes-
sential par excellence of ‘change management’, constant changes without
change asphyxiating individuals inside managerial regimes and the man-
agerial society.256 The ideological process of Managerialism expresses the
transubstantiation of labour into petty-managerial human resources.
Ideologically separated from the rigid structures of 20th century personnel
management, the newly atomised individual of the modern corporation
62 Managerialism
becomes a highly dependent acting object, an object of managerial

power.257 The human subject has vanished into thin air.
Shortly after Managerialism became the very expression of this
process, it started to colonise the whole of society. The reification of
human labour power, driven to perfection under managerial tech-
niques such as KPI (key performance indicators), performance man-
agement and other sophisticated HRM-methods, has cut the last
chains that once tied individuals to paternalistic companies of the
20th century. The ideological configurations of Managerialism, HRM,
and individualism go hand in hand. They operate a mutually reinfor-
cing regime in which management and HRM disappear as actors by
moving an employee’s understanding of managerial processes onto a
managerial/technical level (e.g. KPIs determine the employee’s perfor-
mance, not management’s directives). Management as the true insti-
gator of a managerial/HRM regime disappears into thin air.258
Together with corporate mass media, this is the very mechanism
through which labour is ideologically enslaved in the ‘Age of
Managerialism’. Subscribing to Managerialism has been made a realm
of total necessity. It closed two-dimensional thinking with the elim-
ination of alternatives to Managerialism and ended free time as a time
in which a person’s private and societal existence was able to consti-
tute itself. To overcome this would mark an historical transcendence
towards a post-managerial civilisation. At the present stage of manage-
rial capitalism, very few people inside the managerial society – includ-
ing the remnants of organised labour – oppose Managerialism.259
Managerialism insists on an extensive, complete, total, and compre-
hensive utilisation of the human mind and therefore opposes any free
time to contemplate, to think, and in particular to think critically.
Individuals are kept on a perpetual double treadmill of selecting only
slightly cosmetically different consumer products, spending time in
shopping malls, being entertained by the entertainment industry, and
being exposed to the corrosive ideology of Managerialism.
Once manufacturing capitalism had been replaced by managerial
capitalism, consumerism and Managerialism became the new ideolo-
gies starting to propose a more efficient utilisation of capital with
capital being circularly employed inside financial capitalism to increase
profits – not to increase production. Structurally, this hampers
intensified efforts to raise the productivity of labour whilst
Managerialism’s ideology of productivity increases. The fight between
corporate finance and operations management has long been won by
the finance department. In other words, the continuation of
Managerialism’s asphyxiation of productive regimes may indeed

weaken the competitive national position of capital, resulting in long-
range depressions as seen by the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. As a
minor side-effect, this crisis consequently reactivated visions of class
conflict expressed in the ‘Occupy Wall Street Movement’ (occupy-
wallst.org).260 Their efforts became more realistic as class contest
shifted towards the pathologies of corporate globalisation.
Overall however, a crisis like this represents more of a manageable
annoyance to managerial capitalism. By the power of Managerialism,
this threat to managerial capitalism’s competitiveness by itself will
only compel the so-called advanced world to accelerate rationalisation
of the managerial process. Today, advances in managerial ideology
encounter virtually no resistance on the part of organised labour as it
is successfully beaten by Managerialism and corporate mass media.
Any other resistance (e.g. occupywallst.org) does not appear to be
accompanied by political radicalisation. 261 It remains a minor irrita-
tion to managerial capitalism. It is a ‘threat’ (!) that Managerialism
and corporate mass media can manage. In most countries with devel-
oped corporate mass media as Managerialism’s most significant ideo-
logical apparatus, protest movements and the leadership of labour do
not go beyond the common managerial-economic framework. The
once centrifugal forces of labour unions and other resistance move-
ments have been absorbed by the framework set up by Managerialism
(ideologically) and managerial capitalism (materially).262 The rising
proportion of conformist managerial human labour power (managers)
inside the managerial process indicates a paralleled decline in opposi-
tional political power.
In view of the increasing weight of the managerial-ideological
element that has long surpassed the simple notion of white-collar,
political radicalisation would have to be accompanied by the emer-
gence of an independent political consciousness and action. No
longer does there exist the transition from ‘willingness to talk’
towards ‘willingness to act’ with the latter appearing increasingly
unlikely among 21st century managerial white-collar.263 Managerialism
appears to have foreshadowed this and seems to have raised the barri-
ers for such a transition. Managerialism’s drive to integrate the
growing white-collar element inside managerial societies appears to
have been highly successful. This integration is to be understood in
Lockwood’s (1964) ‘system’ rather than ‘social’ integration because
Managerialism is an apparatus that systematically encircles the minds
(Hegel’s Geist).
64 Managerialism
This has further marginalised and reduced trade unions that are still
operating on the glorious heritage but declining relevance of blue-
collar. Meanwhile, Managerialism combines four aspects:
• petit-bourgeois values such as egoism, selfishness, and individual-

ism;264
• a systematic negation of historically relevant working class achieve-
ments such as free public education, universal healthcare, public
hospitals, unemployment benefits, age pensions, public infrastruc-
ture, democratic and public institutions, etc.;
• an overall distortion of labour’s role in society building through
wage increases, lowering income gaps between occupational groups,
regional areas, man and woman, improving working conditions;
and
• eroding trade unions and other working class institutions through a
concerted and relentless assault by corporate mass media to the
point of irrelevance.265
This resulted in a decline of working class consciousness and the com-

plete annihilation of political radicalisation. Historically, the presence
of white-collar workers in labour unions had already reduced labour’s
power by means of reaching for ever more compromises. These petit-
bourgeois and selfish groups became the signifier of ‘The Age of Me-
First Management’.266 They have never identified themselves with the
interests of labour and perhaps neither with those of a community as a
whole. In sum, Managerialism’s systematic fostering of petit-bourgeois
ideology while simultaneously demolishing trade unions has elim-
inated labour’s collective base reducing it to be merely a pressure group
(e.g. Greenpeace, Red Cross). Their power of providing alternatives to
Managerialism such as ‘democracy-vs.-authoritarianism’, alternative
models of social life such as ‘humanity-vs.-competition’ and ‘profits-
vs.-sustainability’ has been converted into TINA.
Under these circumstances, prospects for containing the remaining
centrifugal anti-managerial tendencies depends primarily on
Managerialism’s ability to adjust all elements of society to it. This
means, for example, the continuation, if not strengthening, in the fos-
tering of a quasi-religious belief in markets. Marginally, but still impor-
tantly, Managerialism also impacts on vastly decreased government
spending, a reduction of direction, planning, and national and interna-
tional scope of foreign aid that is already largely spent inside
developed countries themselves. This extends to an erosion of
comprehensive social security, diminished public works on a grand

scale, and the ‘privatisation of everything’.267 The dominant interests
inside society have already accepted these requirements and entrust
their prerogatives to effectively support Managerialism. On the other
side meanwhile, the prospects for a containment of anti-Managerialism
advocating social change in the present system of managerial civilisa-
tion appears to increase. Despite this, such a discussion is from the
outset confronted with a double incomparability:
(a) historically, chronologically, and globally, Managerialism is in

many countries still at an earlier stage of managerialisation. There
are still large sectors at a pre-managerial stage; and
(b) structurally, managerial setups remain institutionally different to
democratic institutions (pretended democracy on the spectacle of
media-guided elections vs. total authoritarianism inside manager-
ial regimes or society’s democracy vs. management’s command-&-
control structure).
The historical backwardness of substantial geographical regions still rel-

atively untouched by Managerialism not only enables but compels
managerialisation to proceed without waste and obsolescence, without
restrictions of political-democratic systems and civil societies.
Managerialism will impose its interests of private profit and it will do
so with pre-mediated offerings to satisfy still unfulfilled material-
consumptive needs before, perhaps simultaneously with, or if needed,
against local political needs.
Managerialism’s structural irrationality of global managerialisation –
converting every eventuality of life into a managerial element – is
more than only a token or a threat. It remains a serious advantage of
this system. Managerialism is unlikely to disappear once advanced
levels have been reached. But there is also an inbred design-fault in
Managerialism that carries the seed of its own destruction: competitive
managerial capitalism enforces total control over all natural and
human resources by dictatorial means. And, after having attained the
goal of ‘catching up’, all societies are to be managerial societies. But
Managerialism’s stranglehold of totalitarian controls over human
resources ‘might’, and over earthly natural resources ‘will’ reach a
point where qualitative change is bound to take place. Some of these
pre-managerial societies might seek emancipation from Mana-
gerialism’s ideological iron grip before Managerialism has ingrained
itself.268 They will produce forces against Managerialism pronouncing
66 Managerialism
that corporate exploitation and environmental destruction does not

mean progress. This can be the core of an emancipation originating in
pre-managerial societies.
All of this might be easily ridiculed but it is hard to refute because it
has the merit of knowledge. Managerialism’s material and intellectual
conditions that serve to prevent genuine self-actualisation will be at
the centre of many still pre-managerial societies just as they provide
the core of managerial ideology. This argument debunks
Managerialism’s repressive ideology of market freedom according to
which human emancipation can only blossom under a life of free
markets, suffering, toil, inequality, poverty, wastefulness, and environ-
mental harm. Nonetheless, managerial capitalism will first create the
material prerequisites of human freedom for its members before it can
transcend towards a free post-managerial society. It must first create
wealth before being able to distribute it. But this can never justify
Managerialism, as wealth creation can be achieved ethically and envi-
ronmentally sustainable. But the contradictory conditions of manager-
ial capitalism must first enable slaves, workers, and human resources to
learn, see, and think before they know what is going on and what they
can do to change it. To the degree to which they have been precondi-
tioned to exist as human resources – not as human beings – and be
content with their managerially assigned roles, their emancipation
necessarily comes from ‘without’ but never from ‘above’.
The outcome of the tranquilising and camouflaging cloud corporate
mass media has created on the orders of Managerialism has been
expressed to perfection by the former Harvard Business Review editor
Magretta (2002:10&142) when stating that management gives you your
‘marching orders [so that] thousands of people (…) march in the same
direction’.269 The HBR-editor forecasted Managerialism with precision.
Indeed, today, thousands, if not millions of people march in the same
direction under the guidance of Managerialism. Daily, they diligently
march to their cars, buses, trains, and airport lounges in the morning to
arrive at corporate offices, dressed virtually the same, reading the same
indistinguishable and indifferent newspapers owned by a handful of
global media corporations. At work, they use the same computer soft-
ware (Microsoft) and virtually do the same things (sitting on a desk,
writing memos and reports, attending meetings, etc.). In the evening,
Magretta’s ‘thousands of people march’ home the same way, watch the
same TV channels or different channels with the same mind-numbing
and dumped-down tabloid-TV content. They all do the same, have the
same attitudes, and think the same. All of that is seen as normal, as rep-
resenting freedom, and as living in a democratic society with no alterna-

tives. Skilfully, Managerialism has established at least three key beliefs:
we are free, the managerial society guarantees freedom, and that any
challenge to this leads to unfreedom. This constitutes a reversal of what
is real through a truly ‘camera obscura’-like ideology.270
Facing the near total victory of managerial ideology, those who are
made to believe that they are free are spending eight to ten hours inside
managerial regimes of non- democratic unfreedom. Having been infected
by Managerialism, they live in a ‘free’ society, from time to time ticking a
pre-arranged box on a piece of electoral paper after a marketing-organised
spectacle of media-guided elections. They must be forced to see objects as
they are and not as they are made to appear through media-imposed
images guided by Managerialism and transmitted by global media corpo-
rations. They must be shown the road to humanity and environmental
sustainability that exists behind competition, selfishness, environmental
destruction, and petit-bourgeois consumerism. But despite all the critical
truth anti-Managerialism can muster, these arguments can never in
themselves (Kant) answer the time-honoured questions of ‘who educates
the educator?’ and where is the proof that anti-Managerialism is holding
the key to post-managerial and environmentally sustainable living?271
The question is not invalidated by arguing that it is equally applicable
that certain forms of corporate decision-making are fateful decisions on
‘what is good for us’ and that these are better made by a cast of manager-
ially appointed experts who have been appointed to be the only ones
who understand the market.
Meanwhile on the side of politics, those who have won the media-
engineered spectacle of elections increasingly offer a ‘Pepsi-vs.-Coke’-like
choice between two or three political parties all claiming to represent ‘the
middle’. For Managerialism, the middle is simply a codeword for being
pro-Managerialism. Those representing anti-Managerialism are squeezed
to the edges so that they can conveniently be pushed off the media-table
in order to be disposed of. In short, the resulting so-called elected repre-
sentatives have been endorsed by the non-representative institution of
Managerialism violating Rousseau’s volonté générale. The so-called elec-
torate is only requested to sign a pre-selected candidate, certified by
Managerialism, and made popular by the popular press or tabloid-TV.
Freedom of choice is a freedom to select pro-Managerialism candidate A
or pro-Managerialism candidate B.
Still, the only possible excuse – as weak as it may be – for the ‘rule of
anti-Managerialism’ is not so much global resource depletion, world-
wide suffering, inhumanity, misery, slum-life, inequality, and poverty
68 Managerialism
but the inevitable menace of global environmental destruction. This

scenario may be more terrible than the risks that a future post-
managerial society might hold. It indicates the very opposite of Pascal’s
Wager.272 The conservative theologian Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) advo-
cated in The Wager that believing in God is a safe option and compli-
ance to the church is the moral duty of humans. The unsafe option is
to recognise that God does not exist and to free oneself from the reli-
gious bondage. The Wager culminates in: believe in God and obey the
church, and no punishment will come to you (Pascal). Managerialism’s
Wager is: believe in Managerialism and obey its will and no harm will
come to you. Support managerial capitalism and the trimmings of
petit-bourgeois consumerism will rain down on you.
However, the brutality of dialectical logic insists that all slaves, includ-
ing modern human resources, must be ‘other-directed’ and stay unfree
before they can become free and that the end must be operative in the
means to attain it. The emancipation of ‘subordinates’ (HRM-language)
must be the action of those human resources. Emancipation can only
come from those who seek emancipation. A post-managerial society
must become reality with the first act of an anti-managerial revolution.
This must already be in the consciousness and actions of those who
today carry the imperatives of an anti-managerial movement. There is a
‘first phase’ of a non-managerial re-construction of society during which
the image of the new environmentally sustainable and post-managerial
society is still stamped with the birthmark of Managerialism from whose
womb it emerges. But the qualitative change from the old to the new
occurs at the moment when this phase begins. Accordingly, the second
phase is constituted in the first phase. The qualitatively new mode of life
generated by the fresh mode of post-managerial life appears in the anti-
managerial revolt marking the end of ‘our’ managerially dominated
society. The post-managerial and environmentally sustainable construc-
tion begins with the first phase of a revolt against Managerialism. By
the same token, the transition from the managerial-pathological side
– each according to their position in managerial hierarchies –

towards
– each according to their needs, interests, and abilities –
is determined by the first phase. This is not only done by the creation
of the post-managerial and material base but also – as an imperative –
by the mode in which it is created. Control of the managerial process
by those deemed subordinates, underlings, and human resources is

supposed to initiate a development that distinguishes the history of
free human beings from the ‘pre’-history of human unfreedom under
Managerialism in which individuals have always been ‘objects of
power’.273 In this post-managerial society the former objects of
Managerialism first become human individuals who plan and use the
instruments of their labour for the realisation of their own humane
needs and faculties. Not for the first time in human history people
would act freely and collectively under and against externally imposed
so-called ‘necessities’ that currently limit freedom, humanity, and envi-
ronmental sustainability. Therefore, all repression imposed by manage-
rially invented so-called ‘necessities’ – markets, competitors,
share-prices – would be exposed as ideologically imposed necessities.
In contrast to this conception, the actual developments in present-day
managerial societies are suggesting not to postpone the qualitative
change to the second phase any longer. Instead, given the seriousness of
the looming global environmental destruction, we are compelled to act.
The transition from Managerialism to a post-managerial sustainable
environmental awareness and a non-wasteful society remains – in spite
of everything – a qualitative change. Meanwhile, the current enslave-
ment of individuals through the ideological instruments of
Managerialism continues in a highly rationalised and vastly efficient
form. The situation of hostile coexistence between Managerialism and
environmentally sustainable alternatives may explain, for example,
Managerialism’s strong ideological offensive against environmentalism
and the terroristic features assigned to environmentalism by corporate
mass media.274 But any revolt against Managerialism will also set in
motion forces perpetuating managerial progress as an instrument of
domination. Again, assuming that global warming and its consequence
of environmental destruction and other catastrophes are just fakes – as
advocated by Managerialism – managerial progress would still make for
continued increases in materialistic living standards for many. The man-
agerial economy might be able to exploit the productivity of labour and
capital without any significant resistance for decades to come.
Managerialism has achieved a considerable increase in working
hours as a trade-off for material-consumerist comforts. And it accom-
plished all this without abandoning the hold it has over people. There
is no reason to assume that managerial and consumptive progress skil-
fully linked to an increase in managerial ideology will make for auto-
matic emancipation releasing critical-negating energies. On the
contrary, contradictions between the general but constantly growing
70 Managerialism
managerial and ideological forces and their enslaving organisations

found in individual corporations have become permanent features of
managerial capitalism. This is represented in a conflict of the overall
ideological needs of ‘the system of capitalism’ (e.g. high wages as dis-
cretionary income for petty-consumerism) set against the ‘specific
needs of an individual corporation’ (wages-equal-cost ideology that
equals cost-reduction that in turn equals wage-reduction). Our man-
agerial rulers are capable of delivering the material goods of petty-
consumption and tie entire populations to their ruling ideology.
Managerialism’s prospects for a containment of qualitative change
inside the managerial system seem to be parallel to those in advanced
capitalist managerial societies. A post-managerial base of environmen-
tally sustainable production and organisation would represent a deci-
sive difference. In such a post-managerial system, the organisation of
environmental sustainability would no longer separate the immediate
producers and organisers (employees) from control over the means of
sustainable production and thus relinquish class stratifications that are
still the very base of our system. This however is a core threat to
Managerialism.
And yet hardening class distinctions are not the motor of the man-
agerial process itself. They are built into social processes as the division
between capital and labour is built into the managerial process based
on the private ownership of the means of production. These privately
owned means of production – corporations – are run by structurally
depersonalised managerial institutions overseen by shareholders while
simultaneously made visible through what Bolchover (2005) calls ‘The
Great Leader’ – corporate CEOs.275 Consequently, most sections of the
ruling strata are no longer separable from the managerial process
because Managerialism has made them part of the managerial struc-
ture. But they remain replaceable without demolishing the basic insti-
tutions of managerial capitalism. This is the first half-truth of
managerial conformity that has already entered deep into a society in
which everyone is replaceable and exchangeable and nobody is unique
or a person in-itself (Kant) while simultaneously the ideology of indi-
vidualism is broadcasted.276 The second half of the truth is that quan-
titative change would still have to turn into qualitative change.
Inasmuch as such qualitative change can never leave the material
base of managerial capitalism intact, equally, it can never be confined
to a mere political transformation. If such change is designed to lead to
Hegelian self-actualisation at the very base of human existence, namely
in the dimension of necessary labour, it would mark one of the more
elementary and comprehensive transformations.277 Any new way of

distributing the necessities of life, regardless of work performance,
would indicate an end of performance management, KPIs, manage-
ment, and Managerialism. This would reduce working time to a
minimum allowing for universal education in Aristotle-Rousseau-
Freire’s comprehension rather than a narrowly defined managerial,
functional, technical, and vocational knowledge-transfer with use-&-
exchange value only inside Managerialism.278 These forms of universal
education are preconditions rather than the contents of self-actualisation.
While the creation of these preconditions may still occur under
superimposed Managerialism, their establishment would almost cer-
tainly invite Managerialism’s closing stage. A mature, free, mündige
(Adorno), environmentally sustainable, and post-managerial society
would continue to depend on some forms of division of labour which
may involve an inequality of organisational functions, however, such
inequality is necessitated by genuine social needs, organisational
requirements, and the physical and mental differences among indi-
viduals.279 Executive and supervisory functions would no longer carry
privileges of management ruling over others in the name of particular
– namely corporate – interests.
The transition to a post-managerial state might gain additional
urgency given the global environmental destruction, resource deple-
tion, peak oil, and peak soil and hence might also be appropriately
labelled ‘revolutionary’ rather than ‘evolutionary’.280 But one shall
never suspect that Managerialism in its established form would
develop, or rather be forced to develop, the conditions for such a tran-
sition. There are strong arguments for this assumption. One empha-
sises the powerful aggression that entrenches Managerialism’s displays.
Aggression towards humanity and nature might be Managerialism’s
raison d’être but it may also propel a driving force to create the precon-
ditions for emancipation. One can dispense with the notion of an
instinctive power-drive in human nature as Axelrod, Nowak, and
Highfield have shown conclusively.281 This is a highly dubious psycho-
logical concept and grossly inadequate for a critical analysis of
Managerialism.
The question is not whether Managerialism would simply give up its
privileged position once the level of possible qualitative change has
been reached, but whether Managerialism can prevent the attainment
of this level. In order to do so, Managerialism has to asphyxiate nearly
all intellectual growth up to the point where its own domination can
still continue to appear rational and profitable. At this point,
72 Managerialism
Managerialism would still be able to encircle the underlying popula-

tion by linking it to trivial consumerism and petty-jobs even if they are
only McJobs.282 Managerialism might also still be able to present itself
as the exclusive guardian of the economic interest and all those estab-
lished institutions created to support managerial capitalism. Again, the
decisive factor here seems to be the global situation in which global
warming, resource depletion, and environmental destruction force
Managerialism to cease its domination. Despite this, the need for an
all-out utilisation of human progress may become critical for the sur-
vival of humanity in which the merits of ever-growing material-
consumptive living standards – as promised by Managerialism – can no
longer be sustained. In the end, environmental facts may prove
stronger than Managerialism’s hostility.
If such a development would, for example, start in backward coun-
tries, this might alter the prospects of advanced managerial countries
by constituting forces that may grow into a relatively independent,
unified, solid, and anti-managerial power.283 There is plenty of evid-
ence that formerly colonial and semi-colonial regions and countries are
forced to adopt the way of Managerialism. This is no longer called
imperialism but occurs under the ideology of globalisation which is
nothing other than Managerialism’s attempt to camouflage its true
intentions, namely to become the sole global power in its own right.
There are managerial models set in motion that convert backward-
ness into a process of managerialisation. So far in some countries
managerialisation still coexists with a complete pre- and even
anti-managerial culture. These countries enter into the process of man-
agerialisation with a population untrained in the values of self-
propelling professionalism, petit-bourgeois selfishness, efficiency, and
managerially induced instrumental rationality.284 There are still a few
remaining regions with people who have not yet been transformed
into labour separated from the means of production and who are ready
to embrace or oppose Managerialism. In the latter case, a pathway
essentially different to Managerialism would build a non-managerial
system in accord with environmentally sustainable needs of the popu-
lation. But Managerialism’s aim has always been to appease the strug-
gle for emancipation. In these backward areas it never takes place in a
vacuum. Management always comes with Managerialism attached to
it. Both occur in a specific historical situation in which capital accumu-
lation requires an ideological order.
The introduction of management and Managerialism occurred in
three historical stages: first, capitalist firms became complex operations
demanding a sophisticated administration. This created management
that soon re-invented itself as crypto-‘scientific’ management in order

to set up horizontal and vertical divisions to stabilise management’s
power and rule.285 At the horizontal level, one finds the separation of
tasks as prescribed by Frederic Taylor. This is the fragmentation of work
into minuscule, senseless, monotone, and repetitive tasks that indi-
vidually make no sense but put together establish production. At the ver-
tical-hierarchical level, Taylor simply ‘stole’ craft-knowledge about how
to make things from craftspeople, converted it into a quasi-scientific
process via measurements, and located it as far away from workers as
possible. This supported – some say invented – management. In a
second step, ownership and management separated. Management
became a fully self-contained entity reaching beyond mere administra-
tive and bureaucratic means.286 This created managers who are people
in positions of institutional power.287 Thirdly, managerial knowledge
of company-management reached beyond companies entering into
non-managerial domains while it simultaneously became ‘knowledge
in the service of power’. With this, a new ideology was born – the ideo-
logy of Managerialism. After this process was completed, management
knowledge paralleled by Managerialism started to colonise societies,
converting them into managerial societies and also began to infiltrate
distant regions.288 Managerialism invented a widespread presumption
that nobody can remain immune and all need rapid managerialisation
and an adherence to Managerialism. This has been made up as TINA in
striking similarities to the Borg of the US TV show Star Trek:
We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships.
We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness
to our own.
Your life as it has been is over.
Your culture will adapt to service us.
Resistance is futile.
➜
This is Managerialism. Lower your defences and surrender

your society.
We will add your biological-technological distinctiveness to
our own.
Your pre-managerial life as it has been is over.
Your culture will adapt to service Managerialism.
Resistance is futile.
74 Managerialism
Managerialism will make sure that eventually all societies adhere to its
ideology while, at least partially, spheres deemed irrelevant to
Managerialism may remain intact. During the transformation of under-
developed societies into managerial ones, these societies must discard
most, if not all pre-managerial forms of life. This especially applies to
countries where even the most vital economic needs are far from being
satisfied resulting in low living standards. The ruling elites in some of
these countries call for Managerialism to be adopted and from there
the standardisation, commercialisation, and managerialisation of all
areas of life takes off.289
But in these same countries the dead-weight of pre-managerial and
even pre-bourgeois customs and conditions still offer some resistance to
the superimposed development of managerial capitalism. The manager-
ial process, however, remains a process of ‘system’, not ‘social’ integra-
tion requiring systematically induced mass obedience to a system of
anonymous powers. But Managerialism means more than colonialism,
19th century slavery, and 20th century imperialism. It means the total
destruction of nearly all formerly known values and institutions.
It is reasonable to assume that, during the historical cause of the
three versions of capitalism – liberal, consumer, and managerial capi-
talism – the containment of resistance has taken different forms and
became more sophisticated.290 In contrast to colonialism and imperial-
ism, Managerialism will proceed inside, if not with the support of
liberal-democratic forms. Perhaps only very few underdeveloped coun-
tries can make a direct historical leap from a pre-managerial to an envi-
ronmentally sustainable form of a post-managerial society bypassing
Managerialism. If the uncompromising conversion of Eastern Europe
provides any measure, it seems likely that superimposing managerial
ideology onto these countries will bring about a period of total
Managerialism that is more rigid than the adaptation of it in many
advanced countries today. To sum up, most backward areas are likely
to succumb to Managerialism with a few becoming more or less terror-
istic-religious systems of primary accumulation.291 However, another
alternative appears possible. If Managerialism and mindless con-
sumerism are introduced to backward countries and if this encounters
strong resistance from indigenous and traditional modes of life and the
labouring class, a resistance movement is not altogether too unrealistic.
This, however, has to be built on the very tangible prospect of a
better, environmentally sustainable, and easier life compared to pre-
managerial traditions. Simultaneously, it has to avoid becoming a
version of progress aligned to Managerialism.
Such indigenous progress would demand sustainably planned eco-

nomic policies instead of superimposed Managerialism. Traditional
modes of life and labour can extend and improve life for all on the
grounds of environmentally sustainable self-actualisation. This elim-
inates oppressive and exploitative forces whether material, ideological,
dictatorial or religious. So far, many of these underdeveloped societies
appear to be incapable of assuring the development of human exist-
ence. Social revolution and real agrarian reform would be prerequisites
to avoid the infiltration of Managerialism.292 Indigenous progress
seems indeed possible in areas where the natural resources – freed from
corporate encroachments – are sufficient, not only for subsistence but
for environmentally sustainable human life. And where they are not,
they can be made sufficient by the gradual and piecemeal aid of sus-
tainable technology and non-managerial forms of organisation within
self-determining frameworks rather than corporate colonisation. If this
is the case, then conditions would prevail which neither exist in man-
agerial nor in developing societies. Instead of corporate colonisation,
immediate producers themselves would have a chance to create, by
their own labour and leisure, their own progress and determine its rate
and direction.
Self-actualisation would proceed from that base. Work for necessities
could transcend itself towards work for human gratification. This is not
possible under the present managerial-ideological assumptions of free
markets, competition, and The Real Bottom Line. The initial revolution
might convert ideological (Managerialism) and material (management)
exploitation. This, however, is hardly conceivable as spontaneous actions.
Moreover, indigenous progress would presuppose a change in the policy
of the great managerial power bloc of G7, G20, GATT, WTO, World
Bank, IMF, OECD, etc. which shapes the world in the image of Mana-
gerialism. It means abandoning corporate globalisation that mirrors neo-
colonialism through semi-corporate financial instruments.293
The previous prospects of containment of change, offered by the pol-
itics of consumer capitalism’s rationality, depended on the prospects of
welfare states. Such states were capable of raising living standards and
establish ‘relative’ equality. This capability was inherent in many
advanced societies. A streamlined apparatus was set up as a separate
power over and above individuals. But the mutually supportive system
of consumer capitalism flanked by welfare states always depended for
its functioning on an intensification of material development, expan-
sion of productivity, and the ‘perpetual-growth’ ideology.294 Under
such conditions, a decline of freedom was no longer simply a matter of
76 Managerialism
moral and intellectual deterioration and corruption. It was an objective

societal process insofar as the production and distribution of an
increasing quantity of goods and services created and sustained com-
pliance to the consumerist attitude.295 But this distribution always
remained unequal. Managerialism entrenches and justifies this. In that
way, ‘the managerial elite would always get more than its fair share of
the loot’.296 With their administrative rationality, welfare states
remained states of incomplete freedom. When Managerialism took
over, this system of conditional unfreedom became total unfreedom.
Managerial capitalism enforced The Privatisation of Everything,297 dereg-
ulation, and tax-cuts disproportionably favouring the already wealthy.
Managerialism always transplants corporate affairs into societal affairs
resulting in a systematic restriction of:
(a) free time that is time not spent either inside the sphere of con-
sumerism or inside managerial regimes; and
(b) the quantity and quality of goods and services corporations make
available for vital individual needs. This is combined with a
decline of living standards for some sections of society while
simultaneously keeping the majority comfortable, consuming, and
pacified. At the same time, this majority is made to view the mar-
ginalised as welfare cheats. A significant growth of resentment as
engineered by corporate mass media has been detected.
(c) The critical ‘intelligenzia’ capable of comprehending and realising
possibilities of self-actualisation has been systematically neu-
tralised in three major ways:
i. it has been marginalised rendering the critical ‘intelligenzia’
largely irrelevant;
ii. where possible, it has been eliminated from the public arena,
e.g. when entire university departments have been closed
down; and
iii. it has been deprived of airtime in corporate mass media under
the mottos of ‘if it’s not on TV – it does not exist’ and ‘when it
bleeds, it leads – when it thinks, it stinks’.298
Late managerial society has increased rather than reduced the need for
parasitical and alienated functions. Advertising, public relations, indoc-
trination, and planned obsolescence are no longer un-managerial over-
head costs but rather elements of production costs and ideological
advancements. In order to be effective, the production of socially
unnecessary waste requires continuous progress in managerial instru-
mental rationality. Managerialism demands the relentless utilisation of

advanced communication techniques and science. This is flanked by a
carefully engineered mass acceptance of rising inequalities in living
standards as an almost unavoidable result of corporate-media manipu-
lated societies.299 The ever growing productivity of labour creates
increasing surpluses. Hence, there is a never-ending mantra of produc-
tivity gains – working harder and longer – that must be achieved and
broadcasted by corporate mass media on an almost daily basis.300 But
these gains are privately appropriated and no longer distributed down-
wards and equally.
All this is paralleled by Managerialism’s drive towards ever-increasing
consumption and global competitiveness as a relentless mantra as
advocated by one of Managerialism’s main apostles, Michael Porter.301
As long as this constellation prevails, it reduces the use-value of human
freedom. There is no reason to insist on self-actualisation if existence –
rather than life – in managerial societies is comfortable or even good.
This is the rational and material-consumptive ground for the
unification of opposites into one-dimensional managerial thinking and
for a common electoral behaviour as engineered by Managerialism.302
On this ground, the transcending forces within managerial societies are
asphyxiated. Qualitative change appears possible only as a change
from outside the managerial societies. Rejecting Managerialism on
behalf of abstract-philosophical ideas such as human freedom, global
ethics, environmental ethics, and animal liberation, has been made
unconvincing. The recent loss of critical liberties that had once marked
the real achievements of the two centuries that followed
Enlightenment, modernity’s official starting date in 1789, seems to be
the result of unreserved destruction given the forces mustered by
Managerialism.
On the other side, Managerialism remains capable of making
managed life secure and comfortable which makes spending 8+ hours
per day in alienating managerial regimes, five days a week for 30+
years in a lifetime appear as an acceptable price to pay for such con-
sumptive-material comforts. Hence, two key questions of modern
society emerge:
• as long as a substantial majority of individuals are satisfied to the

point of contentment with commercial goods and services handed
down to them, why should they insist on creating post-managerial
institutions with human and environmentally sustainable forms of
production?303 and;
78 Managerialism
• if individuals have been ideologically pre-conditioned so that these

satisfying goods also include thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and aspi-
rations, why should they wish to think, feel, and imagine for
themselves?
After almost 350 years, Pascal’s previously mentioned Wager is still

with us.304 While it positioned ‘believe-in-God’ against ‘not-believing’
and took the former as the safer option, today we are asked to believe
in Managerialism which has made itself out to be the safer choice.
True, the mental comforts and material commodities offered may be
bad, environmentally harmful, made by sweatshop labour, and waste-
ful and unnecessary rubbish, but Hegel’s Geist, ethics, and superior
knowledge are no telling arguments against the satisfaction of petty-
materialistic needs. For its validity most parts of the present critique on
Managerialism rests on conditions that have long passed the settings of
20th century welfare states. For example, the more compliant, if not
outright supportive, aspects of this critique have been shown in the
fight for comprehensive social legislation, consumer protection, state
regulation, and adequate government expenditures for social services
to combat the more obvious societal pathologies of Managerialism
(cf. universal health care in the USA).305 By contrast, denouncing the
oppressive capabilities of Managerialism means to attack the oppressive
capabilities of managerial capitalism as a whole.
Managerial societies remain systems of subdued and pretended plu-
ralism because of a near universal adherence to one-dimensional man-
agerial thinking. Under Managerialism, virtually all competing
institutions concur in solidifying the power of the whole over the indi-
vidual. Still, for the managed individual, the pretence of pluralistic, but
in its last consequence, managerial thinking is no better than total
Managerialism. One institution might protect individuals against the
other while another mitigates the impact of the other but the possibil-
ities of escaping are negligible. The global rule of Managerialism’s law
is to some extent the law of lobbyists who, through ‘wining-and-
dining’, bribes, kickbacks, and incentives, have infiltrated officials,
bureaucrats, public servants, parliamentary secretaries, politicians,
campaign financing etc. They shape parliamentary bills long before
they become laws.306 Today, each country’s capital inhabits more lob-
byists than elected representatives. While being restrictive in terms of
democracy, this represents managerial above democratic law, as far as
law has not been deregulated to create legal-free spaces to be occupied
by Managerialism for the benefit and power of Managerialism. The
removal of regulation creates no vacuum but Hobbes’ bellum omnium

contra omnes assuring Managerialism’s supremacy inside formally plu-
ralistic societies. However, this form of pretended pluralism under
Managerialism’s one-dimensionality accelerates the destruction of plu-
ralism. Today’s managerial society is indeed a system of diminished
countervailing powers. Pluralism and its countervailing powers that
were once the forces in liberal dreams have long been forced to cancel
each other out, thus establishing the higher unification of pure
Managerialism. Managerialism and its colonised institutions have a
fivefold interest:
• to defend their established position,

• to extend it beyond corporations and societies deep into the global
arena,
• to combat the historical alternatives through TINA,
• to contain qualitative change, and
• to make even the very thought of alternatives impossible.
It is George Orwell’s Big Brother without a Big Brother as Managerialism

has no centralised mission control desk. It has made its system robust
and immune against critiques, challenges, and negations from ‘within’.
Under Managerialism, the reality of pluralism has long become ideo-
logical, manipulative, and deceptive. Managerialism’s version of plural-
ism seems to extend rather than reduce manipulation and
co-ordination to perpetuate rather than counteract the power of
system integration. Under Managerialism, free and democratic institu-
tions no longer compete with authoritarian-managerial ones. The
enemy is no longer a deadly force within a pluralist-political system.
Managerialism and corporate mass media have rendered the most
serious enemies such as communism, anarchism, and socialism to no
more than historical obscenities.307
Meanwhile, the deadly force of Managerialism stimulates growth and
system-stabilising initiatives, not by virtue of the magnitude and man-
agerial impact, but by virtue of the fact that managerial societies as a
whole comply with Managerialism. In the words of the Harvard
Business Review: ‘we need t o apply the discipline of management to
ourselves’.308 But Managerialism can never rest. It needs a real or
invented enemy (communism→terrorism) that is permanent in order
to justify its existence by pretending to be a counter force and thereby
distract from reality. With the successful demise of anarchism, com-
munism, socialism, trade unions, and so on, the pool of those that can
80 Managerialism
be held up as enemies is shrinking. Even terrorism may one day reach

its use-by-date.309 The quest to cultivate an enemy is not an emergency
situation but the normal state of affairs. The threats of terrorism have
to be kept up in peace as in war – perhaps more in peace than in war.
This marks the triumph of the perpetual Politics of Fear.310 Fear is thus
being built into Managerialism’s system as a consistent power base
affecting at least four levels:
• management regimes (fear of demotion, dismissal, reprimand, loss

of income),
• management schools (cuts to research funding, fear of not being
promoted),
• management society (fear of being marginalised, excluded, socially
isolated), and
• management capitalism (exposure to poverty, unemployment, desti-
tute living).
Neither the growing productivity nor relatively high material living

standards for some – never all – depend directly on threats and fear.
But their use for the containment of social change and the perpetua-
tion of servitude is of great value to Managerialism. The enemy is not
identical with an actual threat. It is an ‘irrational’ (a nebulous) enemy,
not a rational fear (a train coming towards you) but precisely this irra-
tionality is the very reason for its overwhelming effectiveness. Once
again: the insanity of the whole absolves the particular insanities and
turns corporate crimes against humanity into a rational enterprise of
protecting us from the enemies.311
Managerialism entices people – fittingly stimulated by public and
corporate authorities – to live a life of total mobilisation. This appears
sensible not only because of an illusive terrorist enemy but foremost
because of corporate investments and employment possibilities. It
makes even the most insane calculations appear rational.312 This is the
demagogic rationality of Managerialism – poverty, misery, and starva-
tion of five million people is preferable to that of ten or 20 million.313
Despite the claims of Managerialism to be able to lift millions out of
poverty, never before have more people suffered from poverty – rela-
tive and absolute – as today.314 And this is not restricted to the devel-
oping world. As the usually highly neo-liberal magazine ‘The
Economist’ only recently noted, World Bank’s former chief economist
and Nobel Prize winner
Mr Stiglitz is surely right to focus on the issue of global poverty.

Across the developed world, the average worker is suffering a
squeeze in living standards while bankers and chief executives are
still doing very nicely. This dichotomy is bound to have social and
political consequences.315
Managerialism’s rational insanity is manifested in a civilisation that

justifies its wealth by the pathology of its ‘better that 800 million go
hungry to bed than 900 million’ calculus proclaiming its goal to end
global starvation while simultaneously undermining the UN’s
Millennium Goals (www.un.org/millenniumgoals).316 After 200+ years
of capitalism, the ideological promises to end poverty will continue as
does global starvation. Under these circumstances, even the remaining
promises towards liberties are kept tidily within the managed whole. At
this stage of increasingly unregimented markets, ‘global competition’ is
alleviated to a God-like status incorporated into an unquestioned
belief-system. Its intensification enhances the all-inclusive rat-race for
bigger and faster turnovers and perpetual growth.317 In this race, indi-
viduals are set against individuals just as corporations are set against
each other. Above that, virtually all political parties compete for the
gratitude of Managerialism. But even the existence of ‘Affluenza’ still
promotes a never-ending quest for the satisfaction of marketing-
invented artificial needs.318 This greatly strengthens the contemporary
form of Managerialism and its potentials directed against qualitative
change even in the face of the looming catastrophes of global
warming, peak oil, and global environmental destruction. Democracy
is no longer an effective instrument to find Rousseau’s volonté générale
and to restrain capitalism – if it ever was – because Managerialism has
successfully restructured the public sphere turning it into a mirror of
itself.319
For Managerialism, democracy is no more than one of a range of
efficient systems of domination.320 It is only ‘one’ way to acquire and
sustain power. For democrats democracy is an end-in-itself (Kant), for
Managerialism it is ‘a’ means to power. Democracy might need capital-
ism but managerial capitalism has never needed democracy as it is not
tied into Managerialism’s genetic makeup. Managerialism remains an
historical freak of a highly ideological form of capitalism, human servi-
tude combined with commercial freedom and non-democratic totalitar-
ianism with consumer happiness. Its potency is sufficiently indicated by
its ability to frame managerial progress into progress for all even when
it threatens the global environment. The most powerful opponent of
82 Managerialism
Managerialism remains, of course, the danger of a total destruction of

all life on earth. But other factors are at play which may preclude the
pleasantries of a positive ending of managerial totalitarianism:
• a pretended and mass media engineered fun culture,

• mass manipulation,
• a colonisation of all spheres of civil society by Managerialism,
• Managerialism’s rule by democracy paralleled by managerial regimes
that are democratic exclusion zones,
• a privatisation of profit paralleled by a socialisation of debt (e.g.
Global Financial Crisis),
• its rationality of irrationality found in its promise of infinite eco-
nomic growth based on finite earthly resources,
• the perpetuation of the pre-established harmony between organised
and spontaneous behaviour, and
• a preconditioning of ‘free’ thought, personal attitudes, and indi-
vidual convictions.
All of this highlights the ideological form of managerial capitalism. It

retains a need for private appropriation, unequal distribution of
wealth, and a (de)regulator of the economy that has been handed over
to corporations in favour of ‘industry self-regulation’ which is
Managerialism’s codeword for ‘corporate’ self or no regulation. Despite
the general acceptance of this, nobody would seriously suggest that
regulations against murder, assault, and theft are unnecessary because
of ‘crime-gang self-regulation’.
Managerialism has largely succeeded in linking the realisation of the
general interest to that of Managerialism’s particular, corporate, and
vested interest. In doing so, societies continue to face the conflict
between Managerialism’s growing potential of mass appeasement, the
rat-race, and an eternal struggle for existence and conversely a need for
post-managerial and environmentally sustainable living. This conflict
perpetuates the inhuman existence of those who form the base of the
managerial pyramid, those who are the people paraded by corporate
mass media as asocial elements. At the bottom of Managerialism’s
human pyramid are the working poor, the just being poor, the out-
siders, the marginalised, the unemployed framed as job-seekers, the
unemployable, the underclass of the Lumpenproletariat, those deemed
welfare cheats, persecuted minority groups, inmates of prisons, and
those deemed to be placed in mental institutions.321 Abused are all
those for whom Managerialism has no use. Simultaneously, managerial

capitalism, managerial regimes (frustrating work, alienation, bullying,
harassment, etc.) and Managerialism (ideology of markets, hard work,
individual worth established through what you ‘have’ rather than what
you ‘are’, etc.) create mental illnesses at global levels and a pharmaceu-
tical industry that – for cash – happily helps out.322 This includes a
worldwide pandemic of depression.323 Those who create these societal
and managerially induced mental illnesses stigmatise the victims who
are unable to keep up with the business pressure of market insanity.
Managerialism spreads its favourite ‘blame-the-victim’ ideology.
Simultaneously, the perpetrators of Managerialism are portrayed as
sane.324
In contemporary managerial societies, the enemy is no longer back-
wardness nor the legacies of 20th century state terror, fascism, and
Nazism, Pinochet, etc. that perpetuate the oppressive features of
‘catching up with and surpassing’ countries like England and the USA.
These legacies are no longer ideologically useful when the so-called
developed world fights against the so-called less industrialised world
(e.g. from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq). The new mantra is to
compete with them and priority is given to Managerialism over
blatant chauvinism, nationalism, militarism, and all too obvious
racism.325 After a ‘torturous’ and ‘torturing’ past, these countries have
achieved internal pacification while they continue to compete against
each other without military force. And even the so-called free com-
petition has been eliminated or at least organised through the establish-
ment of regional trading blocs (EU, NAFTA, ASEAN, etc).
Simultaneously, Managerialism has increased ‘worker-vs.-worker’ com-
petition in a ‘race to the bottom’. Parallelling the human race to the
bottom, today’s Managerialism has created supportive institutions
‘for’ corporations (i.e. World Bank, IMF, G7, G20 etc.) at a global scale
that are useful when subjugating ever more countries.326 This
pacification means the emergence of a genuine one-dimensional
world economy under Managerialism’s direction. However, this does
not mean the total demise of national states, national interests, and
national businesses and institutions.327 Managerialism makes them
work together in a carefully crafted game of ‘competition-vs.-alliance’
that boosts the global reach of its ideology while targeting anti-
managerial forces.328
This is precisely against what Managerialism is mobilising. A fateful
interdependence of those few remaining sovereign social systems
84 Managerialism
inside the managerial world has become expressive of the fact that the
double-conflict
• between human progress and corporate interests and

• between individuals and their masters
has become global and truly total. When human beings meet the chal-
lenge of corporate globalisation, for example, they meet their own
capabilities. The spectacular development of all managerial forces after
the subordination of human interests to profitability diminishes these
capabilities. When sustainable environmentalism challenges manager-
ial capitalism, it too meets its own capabilities. The spectacular human
comforts, private liberties, limited freedom, and alleviation of the
material burden of life are all part of Managerialism.329 But managerial
capitalism has distorted these capabilities beyond recognition. In the
last analysis, Managerialism remains exposed to a struggle against a
form of life which would dissolve the very basis of human existence on
a global scale.
5
The Culture of Managerialism
Having discussed the system integrative imperatives of Managerialism,

an achievement only rendered possible by its own growing ideological
forces and a relentless expanding colonisation of human beings and
nature, this section turns to Managerialism’s corresponding powers of
integration inside an authoritarian mass culture. Managerialism has
colonised what was originally termed ‘how things are done around
here’ – which is also called ‘corporate culture’ under management
studies. Managerialism uses this term even though it is neither related
to fine art nor is there a shared set of commonly established values and
meanings inside managerial regimes. What management studies call
‘corporate culture’ is a rather one-dimensional affair. It is the domina-
tion of culture based on the hegemony of management inside manage-
rial regimes. In these regimes, those who invent corporate culture and
foster its existence exist next to those who are forced to accept it in a
‘take-it-or-leave’ or ‘my way or the highway’ option. But there is also a
non-managerial societal form of culture that is increasingly exposed to
Managerialism’s ideological forces. Managerialism has taken over soci-
etal culture while simultaneously corporate management has created a
one-dimensional culture inside corporations. On this Lyford P. Edwards
noted in 1927 ‘no class will permanently be allowed to exercise power
over society without being responsible to society for the way power is
exercised’.330 Managerialism’s intention is to escape this inevitability
for as long as possible. To portray itself as rational, Managerialism has
converted critical rationality into instrumental rationality. This has
three implications:
a) it cuts off critique enshrined in Kant’s Three Critiques (1781, 1788,

and 1790) by eliminating the term ‘critique’;
85
86 Managerialism
b) it has reconstituted Enlightenment’s critical rationality as instru-

mental rationality; and
c) the irrationality of rationality is an unfolding of capitalist rational-
ity while irrationality has become reason. Reason is frantically used
for the development of corporate productivity, conquest of nature,
environmental pollution, and the exhaustion of resources, con-
stant enlargement of commercial goods and their accessibility to
broad strata of the population. It is irrational because higher pro-
ductivity, domination of nature and human beings, and social
wealth have become socially and environmentally destructive
forces.331
Managerialism’s rationality of irrationality is also expressed in the fact

that environmental devastation, as irrational as it may be from the point
of view of human beings and nature, still appears rational under the
managerial perspective because it contributes to The Real Bottom Line.332
Managerialism converts these irrationalities into rationalities.333
A widespread awareness of such irrationalities is painfully avoided by
Managerialism and the quasi-scholars of management studies. The liq-
uidation of oppositional view points to this ‘rational-means-for-
irrational-ends’ ideology has been made an element of corporate culture
and the teaching ‘culture’ that dominates management schools.
Managerialism’s Servants of Power – often conditioned by previously
held managerial positions and then camouflaged as academics – engage
in the process of ‘ideologification’ – the conversion of management
knowledge into pure ideology. They are employed to make irrational-
ities appear rational in the form of cost-benefit analysis, prisoner-
dilemma, transaction cost analysis, cost-cut techniques, etc.
The conversion of irrationalities into managerial and instrumental
rationality prevails in contemporary managerial society. This, together
with privatisation, commercialisation, and the creation of an author-
itarian culture represent some of the real achievements and distressing
features of Managerialism. Managerialism has skilfully linked the
dumping-down of mass taste, as engineered by corporate mass media,
to the filling of un-useable space between TV-commercials. This works
like a tandem to validate its authoritarian culture in which neither
Rousseau’s volonté générale nor Hegel’s self-actualisation prevails.
Instead, there are celebrations of faked autonomous personalities and a
pretended humanism in the form of very occasional TV depictions of a
starving child. This is, of course, never linked to the oversupply of food
and commercial things in the managerial world. The link that their
The Culture of Managerialism 87
poverty has something to do with our wealth never occurs. Even – or

especially – globalisation avoids such links.
Global poverty is framed as ‘their’ poverty casted as tragic cases and
linked to ‘their’ problem of overpopulation even though Africa has far
less people per square-kilometre than Europe. But the pathologies
created by managerial capitalism only occasionally interrupt the petit-
bourgeois romantic Mills and Boons mindset of the commercially suc-
cessful and easy to digest fare of Hollywood-, Bollywood- and
tabloid-TV. What is happening is not the deterioration of a free culture
into mass and authoritarian culture but the refutation of culture
through the reality of managerial mechanisms driven by commercial-
isation and amplified by globalised corporate mass media. The manage-
rial-commercial reality of corporate mass media simply exchanges
‘human’ culture with ‘corporate’ culture.334 Celebrities, action heroes,
people with no talent in talent-shows, soap-opera figures, silly game-
shows, self-appointed experts, mind-numbing commentators, disguised
lobbyists, religious and evangelist believers, and celebrity CEOs repre-
sent today’s popular culture. It makes silliness an everyday affair, crime
becomes cool, violence acceptable, and corporate crime a normality.
The normality of corporate crime is not surprising. Time Magazine
noted upon reflecting on the 1980s ‘what began as the decade of the
entrepreneur is becoming the age of the pinstripe outlaw’.335 These are
the heroes, economic experts, and half-gods. Today’s generation Y
knows Paris Hilton but not Mary Wollstonecraft, Rosa Luxemburg or
Simone de Beauvoir.
But these commercially invented fake heroes betray hope and
destroy truth which is no longer preserved in ‘our’ authoritarian
culture. Culture always existed as a contradiction to socio-economic
reality when only a privileged minority enjoyed its blessings and repre-
sented its ideals. These two antagonistic spheres have always coexisted.
But culture has always been accommodating. Today, it is mass fabri-
cated to eclipse the disturbing truths of the global human condition.
The novel feature of culture under Managerialism is that it merges pre-
viously antagonistic elements such as ‘culture-vs.-commercialisation’
through an obliteration of nearly all oppositional and transcending
elements once found in culture. The liquidation of a two-dimensional
culture – free-vs.-authoritarian – takes place not through the denial and
rejection of ‘human values’ but through their wholesale incorporation
into the managerial order. Managerialism ensures that their ideological
reproduction is displayed on a massive scale. In fact, they serve as
instruments of social cohesion that stabilise managerial societies.
88 Managerialism
The significance of free literature and art, the ideals of humanism,

the sorrows and joys of individuals, the fulfilment of the personality,
images of a more compassionate life, and more are sacrificed in the
competitive struggle over market shares in a globalised economy.336
Perpetual competition and its culture speak violently against any alter-
native to Managerialism as these are daily administered and sold. The
fact that they rarely, if ever, contradict managerial capitalism which
sells them appears obvious and is simultaneously an indictment of
Managerialism’s authoritarian character.337 Before people know and
feel that advertisements and political platforms are no longer true and
right, they hear and read them and even let themselves be guided by
them. They are made to accept managerial values as ‘traditional’ values
and make them part of their mental equipment. Corporate mass com-
munication blends together harmoniously – and habitually unnoticed
– saleable art, commercial culture, politics, religion, moral attitudes,
Managerialism’s ideology, and marketing commercials. Managerialism
brings culture to one single denominator: the commodity format.
The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Classics
from Bach to the Marseillaise and Stravinsky are downgraded to
enhance movie themes and escalator and shopping mall backgrounds
only to be interrupted by ‘cheap soap in isle 5’ soundbites. This repre-
sents exchange value – not human value. It centres on managerial
rationality cementing the status quo in which individuals have been
asphyxiated. Meanwhile, all critical and contradictory rationalities
have been purged. As the great words of freedom and human
fulfilment are pronounced by corporate leaders and their campaign-
sponsored politicians on radio, TV screens, and via the internet, they
turn into meaningless sounds which obtain meaning only in the
context of managerial propaganda, ideology, business, discipline, and
relaxation. This assimilation of the human ideal by managerial reality
testifies to the extent to which rebellious ideals have been incorpo-
rated. Managerialism has translated nearly everything in society into
managerial terminology. Problems that can be managed through the
superior tools of management carry no contradictory value. The
conflicting elements of a truly pluralist society have been rendered to
nothing more than the remnants of a past culture that has been com-
prehensively destroyed by Managerialism.
The perversion is indicative of the fact that today’s managerial
society is confined to a materialisation of ideals. The capabilities of
Managerialism have progressively reduced the realm in which true con-
ditions of human beings were represented and indicted. Mass engi-
neered commercial culture has become part of material culture and

managerial ideology. Through this transformation culture loses the
greater part of its truth. But truth does not sell cars, washing machines,
and the latest iPhone, iPod, or iSomething. The remnants of a human-
and Enlightenment culture whose moral, aesthetic, and intellectual
values managerial societies still acknowledge were a pre-managerial
culture in an historical-chronological sense. Their validity was derived
from an experience of a world which no longer exists. Managerialism
has made sure that this cannot be recaptured because it represents, in
its final analysis, an invalidation of managerial society. Moreover, it
constituted to a large degree an emancipatory culture, even when the
bourgeois period gave it some of its most lasting formulations. Its
authentic works expressed a counter-culture before the entire sphere
was taken over by business and industry in the form of a managerial
and profitable order.
The immediate post-feudal order found its rich and even affirmative
representation in art and literature. This culture remained post-feudal
until it became increasingly overshadowed, broken, and refuted by a
new and rising dimension. Eventually, some of the new characteristics
of the post-feudal culture became irreconcilably antagonistic to the
capitalist order. But in today’s modern literature, for example, the
older and romantic dimension of a bygone feudalist past was – and
perhaps still is – represented by quasi-religious, supernatural, and spir-
itual heroes. Modern mass media designed them to sustain the estab-
lished order. Their antagonistic characters have been mellowed into
submission to the new regime of managerial capitalism. Above that,
even today’s rebellious counter-culture has been incorporated by cor-
porate mass media – e.g. the $10 Che Guevara T-shirt in your local
shop. This counter-culture is paraded as irrational and silly and used to
stabilise Managerialism. It still shows disruptive characters such as
non-commercialised artists, prostitutes, adulteresses, great criminals
and outcasts, misfits, the recalcitrant, warriors, the rebel-poet, devils,
fools, and those who do not earn a living being trapped inside manage-
rial regimes, but these characters are not presented in an orderly and
normal way as prescribed by Managerialism. They have not disap-
peared from the literature of managerial society. But they survive
essentially transformed. The vamp, the anti-national hero, the Avatar
fighters against corporate colonisation,338 Woody Allen’s neurotic
housewife, bank-robbing gangsters, and the charismatic movement
perform a function that is very different from and even contrary to
that of conforming mass culture. Under Managerialism, they no longer
90 Managerialism
represent images of another way of life but are portrayed as freaks and
types of an insane life, thereby serving as an affirmation rather than
the negation of the established managerial order. Surely, the world of
their predecessors was backward and pre-managerial, a world with the
good conscience of inequality and toil, in which labour was still an
adversarial class.339 But it was also a world in which human beings
were not human resources and not yet organised as mere instrumental-
ities of a managerial process. With its code of forms and manners, with
the style and vocabulary of its literature and philosophy, this past
culture expressed the rhythm and content of a universe which has
been comprehensively annihilated by Managerialism.
In the verses and prose of the counter-culture lies the rhythm of those
who wander and ride in carriages, having had time and pleasure to
think, critique, contemplate, feel, and narrate. It is an outdated and sur-
passed culture and only dreams and childlike regressions can recapture
it.340 But some elements of this culture carried over and are still being
found in managerial culture. Its most advanced images and positions
seem to survive the absorption into managerially invented comforts and
stimuli.341 Despite the overwhelming power of corporate mass media,
they continue to haunt the spirit of Managerialism.342 The threat of the
possibility of their rebirth has never ceased. They remain expressions of a
free consciousness capable of alienating established forms of managerial
existence. This sort of literature and art opposes managerial formations
even when it ornaments them. In sharp contrast to concepts denoting
an individual’s relationship to himself and to his work in managerial
capitalism, the artistic alienation that takes place under Managerialism
in conjunction with corporate mass media no longer represents a con-
scious transcendence of an alienated existence.343
Managerialism’s conflict with world progress, the negation of the
domineering order of Managerialism, and the anti-bourgeois elements
in commercial literature and art do not exist because of the aesthetics
of the managerial order nor are they a romantic reaction to
Managerialism. Romantic is a term of condescending defamation
which is easily applied to disparaging avant-garde positions, just as the
term ‘decadent’ far more often denounces the genuinely progressive
traits of a dying culture than the real factors of the decay created by
managerial capitalism. But traditional images of alienation can indeed
be romantic as they are aesthetically incompatible with managerial
societies. Their total incompatibility with Managerialism signifies their
truth. What they recall and preserve in memory is an image of a non-
managerial future. These are images that would dissolve Managerialism
which suppresses it. Managerialism could be invalidated by these sub-

versive forces and destructive contents of truth. In this transformation,
truth finds its home in the negation of Managerialism. But many of the
alienating works of a quasi-intellectual culture have become familiar
goods and services. Their massive reproduction and consumption pro-
vides no more than system-stabilising change in quantity, namely
growing acceptance of Managerialism and a de-democratisation of
culture and education. Simultaneously, this also means that the truth
of education and art is of a higher – non-managerial – order. Today,
even the term ‘higher education’ is no longer ‘high’ but vocational in
character.
What has changed in the contemporary period is the difference
between the two orders and truths. The absorbent power of
Managerialism depletes the artistic dimension by assimilating its antag-
onistic contents. In the realm of culture, the one-dimensional and
managerial totalitarianism of Managerialism manifests itself precisely
in a harmonising pluralism. Under Managerialism, most contradictory
works and truths are made to appear as if they can peacefully coexist in
indifference. Prior to the advent of Managerialism, cultural assimila-
tion in literature and art were essentially alienations between
affirmative and counter-culture.344 Their main task was not seen in sus-
taining and protecting contradictions. It was Hegel’s famous ‘unhappy
consciousness’ of the divided world. They were a rational, cognitive
force, revealing dimensions of The Human Condition (Arendt) which
fended off capitalist and bourgeois reality. Their truth was not an illu-
sion but utopia that insisted on creating a world in which corporate
pathologies, horrors, and terrors of an existence under capitalism were
called up, recognised, suspended, and eventually eliminated.
It seems that Managerialism’s growing competence to manipulate
corporate processes also increases its capacity to manipulate and
thereby control human instincts. This is done to utilise human
instincts for the managerial, ideological, and commercial order. It
creates a faked but working form of societal cohesion that stabilises
society. Social cohesion is of high value to Managerialism because it
can be used to strengthen instinctual roots directing them towards
goals useful to Managerialism. An instinctive awareness of a ‘clear and
present danger’ of a looming end of human life as we know it through
globalised resource depletion and environmental destruction has been
‘instrumentalised’ – turned into an ideological instrument – by
Managerialism. It has created a helpless TINA-acceptance of managerial
capitalism as the only adequate way out of a global-environmental
92 Managerialism
Armageddon. Managerialism has turned this into an instinctual

approval on the part of its victims. In short, capitalism has created the
problem of environmental destruction but Managerialism’s ideology
presents managerial capitalism as the solution. Truth has been con-
trolled, manipulated, and turned against itself.
Managerial societies tend to reduce and even absorb environmental
opposition in the realm of civic society through pro-managerial polit-
ical parties while in managerial regimes the same is achieved through
PR-programmes such as corporate social responsibility mirroring what
occurs in civic society as a mutually reinforcing tandem.345 The result is
a degeneration of mental organs incapable of grasping contradictions
and alternatives. Remaining dimensions of non-managerial rationality
of a Hegelian unhappy consciousness 346 are countered through a mass
engineered authoritarian ‘culture’ of fun. It reflects the belief that man-
agerial reality is the only possible reality and that managerial capital-
ism – in spite of everything – delivers material goods, personal
comforts, and civil liberties. Today, people are convinced that the
managerial apparatus is an effective agent that delivers systematic
thoughts and actions to which their personal thoughts and actions can
and must be surrendered. In this transfer, the managerial apparatus has
even assumed the status of a moral agent.347
Nevertheless, Managerialism remains intimately linked to a negative
and immoral side of human behaviour. Such behaviours feature obedi-
ence to authority and a submission to regimes of fear. Managerialism
never works without fear ranging from job-loss to crime. Fear remains a
useful agent rather than an essential element of Managerialism. But it
persists under Managerialism despite advances in criminology. A
general and factual decline in crime and a move away from punishing
towards reforming people has not eliminated fear. An actual decline in
crime, however, has been paralleled by an increase in crime reporting
where tabloid TV’s evening news consist of celebrity-‘news’, indi-
vidualised crime, and the weather. This leads to the popular view that
punishment is important even though the chance of becoming a
victim of criminal violence is actually declining. Tabloid-TV operates
under two strictly enforced ‘mission statements’: ‘never let the facts get
into the way of a good story’ and ‘violence-equals-viewer-numbers-
equals-advertising-revenues’. Amplified by corporate mass media, pun-
ishment regimes are still prevalent and even on the increase in the
form of punitive actions. As a result, most managerial societies support
harsh punishments while in managerial regimes disciplinary action is
accepted as a necessity.348 Under such regimes, management does not
view individuals as human beings but as underlings to be punished

when ‘underperforming’ as outlined in McGregor’s Theory X (1960 &
2006).349
Historically however, this was the task of 18th and 19th century
workhouses, prison-factories, and the like where the origins of man-
agement can be found in the form of the domestication of people as
maneggiare (to handle tools) which derives from horse domestication
(cf. French manege for riding school, Salle du Manège). This equates
horses with humans while viewing both as tools to be handled and
disciplined. Management advanced human-to-horse to human-to-
human domestication and further into superior-to-subordinate rela-
tionships in which underlings are forced to act according to
management’s ‘will to power’ (Nietzsche). Like horses, management
makes underlings fear punishment from above.350 Simultaneously, it
creates the appearance of being the sole source of authority and
power. The guiding principles are fear, anxiety, and terror created by
those in managerial authority. This became known as Macho-
Management.351 But the persistence of punishment comes from a time
when horse domestication was important.
Perhaps the three foremost philosophers of such regimes are Niccolò
di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469–1527), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)
and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900).352 None of them,
however, is a prime exponent of moral philosophy focusing uniquely
on punishment. Machiavelli was a political writer and strategist focus-
ing mainly on power, how to achieve it, and how to maintain it. Power
was to be used in support of and as a benefit to ‘The Prince’ (1532).
Hobbes’ and Nietzsche’s concern was personal advantage over others
rather than punishment. Hobbes saw this as a bellum omnium contra
omnes – dog of war – while Nietzsche viewed it as exercising the right
of the strong superhuman [Übermensch] against the weak. Nevertheless,
significant contributions to ethical philosophy on punishment and
obedience have been made. American psychologist Stanley Milgram
(1933–1984) and the Polish-British moral philosopher Zygmunt Bauman
have significantly advanced our understanding of punishment and
obedience to which Milgram’s obedience theories and Bauman’s
20th century masterpiece ‘Modernity and the Holocaust’ have been fun-
damental. Both are concerned with perhaps the most elementary ques-
tion of the 20th century: how could the Nazi Holocaust happen? Both
thought that obedience to authority is linked to the immorality of
punishment regimes. Their findings are as relevant to management as
those of behaviourism.353
94 Managerialism
During the mid-20th century, behaviourists such as Burrhus Frederic

Skinner (1904–1990) began to notice the effects of fear and punish-
ment. Skinner himself viewed this as ‘what a fascinating thing! Total
control of a living organism’.354 He found that people can be manipu-
lated through the fear of punishment and that their behaviours can be
re-designed. Punishment along with positive and negative reinforce-
ment became core elements of Skinner’s theory on conditioning. In
Skinner’s biological, animalistic, and mechanical model people were
regarded as reactive victims of environmental causal forces with restric-
tive choices and limited capacities for self-direction. Skinner’s condi-
tioning theory has been eagerly picked up by Managerialism’s Servants
of Power. It quickly entered the domain of management in the form of
organisational behaviour and organisational psychology.355 Today, it
enters the mind of virtually all management students as a standard
chapter found in next to ‘ALL’ textbooks on organisational behaviour
and organisational psychology while entering management- and HRM-
textbooks in various disguised and ‘not-so-disguised’ forms. With this,
management has established rafts of performance measures with
wages, salaries, and bonus incentives being key elements of positive
reinforcement. Negative reinforcement occurs through the withdraw-
ing and withholding of privileges while punishment is represented in
demotions, explicit threats, cutting piece rates, reprimands, dismissals,
wage cuts, disciplinary action, etc. Not surprisingly, relationships
at work often represent Jackall’s (1988) ‘Moral Maze’ designed by
behaviourism:356
The underlying assumption [of behaviourism], according to

one critic, seems to be that ‘the semi-starved rat in the box,
with virtually nothing to do but press on a lever for food,
captures the essence of virtually all human behaviour’.
In Chomsky’s devastating critique of Skinner’s manipulation of human

beings under behaviourism, he noted ‘except when physically restrain-
ing, a person is the least free or dignified when he is under threat of
punishment’.357 Viewed from the standpoint of moral philosophy,
behaviourism represents an ethical minefield.358 Greek and modern
virtue ethics, Kantian, Hegelian ethics, and utilitarianism are in stark
contradiction to behaviourism.359 One of the more radical oppositions
to existence under behaviourist punishment regimes comes from
Existentialism.360 The core of Existentialism rests on the following

premises: there is no inherent human nature; the concept of radical
freedom is linked to self-determination; being human means being
free; the invention of so-called ‘I must’ necessities are delusions; and
radical freedom means accepting responsibility. The moral philosophy
of Existentialism rejects behaviourism as immoral. Precisely ‘because
of’ all this Managerialism relies heavily on behaviourism. Performance
measures, key performance indicators, performance related pay, for
example, are all based on the key managerial assumption that people,
and therefore workers, are inherently lazy and need to be forced or
enticed to work (Theory X or Y). For that, they need to be manipulated
through behaviourism to modify or manipulate their human to corpo-
rate behaviour.361 This assumption is accepted ‘as given’ ideology just
as Maslow’s endlessly rehearsed ‘Hierarchy of Needs’.362
Nevertheless, moral philosophy rejects all these so-called ‘given facts’
portrayed by Managerialism as eternally determined and as a ‘natural’
hierarchy. Rather than depicting human nature, the hierarchy of needs
remains a human invention operating ‘pre’- not ‘de’-scriptive. Perhaps
this explains why most managerial textbooks contain Maslow’s
thought-limiting and disabling rather than enabling hierarchy. The
second reason why the ‘Servants of Managerialism’ view these hierar-
chies as relevant is because they can easily be made to appear natural
and unchangeable. Hierarchies are vital to Managerialism reproducing
managerial and societal stratifications rather than producing the truth
about ‘The Human Condition’ (Arendt).363
The ethics of radical freedom (Existentialism) is in clear opposition
to Managerialism’s ideology of hierarchy. Existentialist ethics alone is
capable of destroying Managerialism which creates conditions of
unfreedom under the ideological cover of self-invented business neces-
sities such as the ideological justification of market determined busi-
ness needs, economic necessities, and the like.364 Managerialism’s
obvious anti-freedom and deterministic ideology is commonly covered
up through invented facts-of-life examples. Managerially constructed
determinism deforms human life negating human freedom while
cementing and stabilising asymmetrical power relations between man-
agement and underlings. When existentialist ethics denotes ‘to be
human means being free’, Managerialism’s counteract is human
unfreedom. To Managerialism, human beings are no more than
human resources/materials representing a cost-factor and ‘costs have to
be kept low’.365 Human freedom does not feature while this model is
transferred to society at large.
96 Managerialism
But freedom remains a core element of humanity ranging from

Aristotle to utilitarianism, Kant, Hegel, Rawls, Bauman, and Adorno.
On the contrary, fear of punishment is an impediment to human
freedom and dignity.366 In addition, it may not be punishment itself
but the simple fear of punishment that eradicates human freedom and
dignity. The fear of punishment is only superseded by physical
restraints – slave labour – as the strongest form of denial of freedom.
Today, management hardly restrains ‘those who make things’
(Aristotle) physically. While the fear of punishment has never ceased,
it has been seamlessly incorporated into managerial models. Models of
obedience and punishment avoidance operate highly dictatorial
systems overseen by people in authority. Adults brought up in author-
itarian homes under strict, harsh, inconsistent, and emotionally repres-
sive parental regimes are often left with weak egos and low self-esteem.
They are the ideal human ‘material’ to be converted into human
resources. Previously made dependent on pleasing and obeying their
parents, they flawlessly obey the superimposed command structure of
Managerialism. This structure is impeccably carried over from parents
and schooling to a world made up by Managerialism and representing
a total negation of Hegel’s self-actualisation and Adorno’s
Mündigkeit.367
In this, there are always those who control others and those who are
controlled whether in Skinner’s laboratory situations, in schools, man-
agerial settings, or in a society governed by Managerialism. Linked to
conditioning, this sets up a controlling top-down structure suitable to
Managerialism while diminishing the need for control.
Simultaneously, this model extinguishes human equality, the human
quest for mutual and equal recognition (Hegel), self-actualisation,
Mündigkeit, justice, and freedom. Those exposed to behavioural
methods of mental manipulation are seen as objects and treated
accordingly.368 Obviously, they are denied access to the shaping of
these methods. Crucially, the manipulated are not even aware of the
fact that they are being manipulated. Unawareness, rather than self-
awareness and self-reflection, is essential to Managerialism and behav-
iour modification.369
This constitutes the very foundation of organisational psychology,
HRM, and workplace behaviour modification. In all these models,
Managerialism’s rule is created not only behind the back of its victims
but in non-democratic, authoritarian, and dictatorial top-down set-
tings. It is created without any input and awareness of those to whom
the rules are applied. This is nothing more than a deception that
negates almost all versions of ethics known today. The managerial

maze and Skinner’s maze-laboratories are based on strict divisions
between two entities:
i) those for whom these regimes are designed (employees), and

ii) those who design, oversee, apply, and administer them
(management).
In management as well as in Skinner’s animal testing, to avoid pun-

ishment means that managerial rules – corporate policies – must be
precisely obeyed. Yet management does not administer Skinner’s elec-
trical shocks to animals inside a box and the days of an overseer’s
whip are long gone, at least in the so-called developed world.370 On
the basis of Skinner’s behaviourism, The Servants of Managerialism
have invented somewhat more sophisticated sanctioning regimes. In
work as much as in social regimes designed by Managerialism, disobe-
dience to such regimes will lead to penalties such as fines, demeaning
work tasks, demotion, cancellation of bonus payments, the loss of
income and employment. This creates not only regimes that punish
but also setups that diminish the likelihood of punishment by creat-
ing compliant individuals. To achieve this, corporations need support-
ive, uncritical, and affirmative academic faculties. With their
assistance, management can create corporate cultures, induction pro-
grammes, reward structures, behavioural adjustments, organisational
behaviours, and inevitably the ‘Organisation Man’.371 Once human
beings have been successfully converted into managerial human
resources by internalising organisational rules, punishment becomes
less eminent.372
To achieve this, strict rule-following is demanded from those on the
receiving end. The driving force behind this is Managerialism’s eleva-
tion of self-preservation to an all-important mode of existence.
Through alienating control and sanctioning regimes individuals are
solely preoccupied with the demands of those in power and how to
avoid causing them anger. Many observers have even detected the rise
of the corporate and social psychopath as an inescapable conse-
quence.373 Non-textbook views on managerial realities have long found
that management is a narcissistic process. Narcissistically operating
managers tend to act through ‘Management by Fear’ based on giving
and receiving orders as the sole determinant of managerial conduct.374
Adorno has summed this up as the ones who know better turn into the
ones who humiliate others through bossy privilege.375
98 Managerialism
In this structure, each actor is confined to a clearly defined position

in which even those at the bottom are still made to believe that they
have subordinates. In some cases, the lowest subordinates are ex-
ternalised when power relations shift downward until external indi-
viduals are viewed as inferior. The pressure engineered by management is
re-diverted to people outside of the managerial domain. They become
places where managerial regimes offload pathological pressures created
by Managerialism’s ‘structural violence’.376 As a result one finds harass-
ment and bullying of partners, beaten wives and girlfriends, husbands,
children, pets, neighbours, road-rage, violence at sports fields, against
acquaintances, and against ‘friends’. These are the hidden but high
costs of Managerialism. Patterns of such cemented hierarchies define
authoritarian, asymmetrical, aggressive, violent, unequal, and dom-
ineering relationships inside work and society. These pathologies,
while essential to authoritarianism in management and society, are a
mere, albeit welcomed, by-product of Managerialism. They are built
into Managerialism’s ‘Banality of Evil’ inside pyramid-like structures in
which each level has authority over the immediate below and over all
echelons below that.377
Hierarchy and authoritarianism are structurally set against those at
the bottom rather than against those who manage. Managerialism’s
corporate and social pyramid-hierarchy works effectively against pro-
motion and social mobility with those in lower positions having
numerically a much lesser chance to be promoted to the top.378 For
them, the top remains pure illusion. As a consequence, Managerialism
has an even greater need to keep the illusion of advancement, getting-
ahead, promotion, and promote-ability alive. Authoritarian hierarchies
exist in all companies and attain particular significance. Each promo-
tional level provides additional barriers against promotion. This
asphyxiates individuals inside rigid, sharply divided, and hardened
borders that are set against organisational and social mobility resulting
in a demand for Managerialism’s ideology. Hierarchies, punishment,
coercion, and conformity are created to stabilise and sustain authority
and are greatly supported by pay structures, praise, and formal
appraisal systems, obedience, and punishment. Until today, nobody
has better explained these issues than Stanley Milgram.
6
Managerialism and
Authoritarianism
One of the foremost experts on obedience is Stanley Milgram with his

‘Obedience to Authority’.379 Perhaps his key finding was that situations
powerfully override personal disposition as determinants of behaviour.
When people face a moral dilemma between what an authority
demands of them and what their personal moral standards tell them,
the former wins, especially inside authoritarian structures. Under
Managerialism and with management as the sole authority, managerial
regimes are prime areas of this. Management is even in a position to
engineer specific situations and systems that powerfully override per-
sonal moral dispositions. In short, inside sociology’s ‘agency-vs.-
structure’ model, managerial structures determine (im)moral behaviour.
The principle moral agent is no longer the self but has been transferred
to management.380 But Milgram’s obedience experiments have also
shown that ordinary people are much more likely to obey orders
– even immoral ones – when the authority is perceived to be legit-
imate.381 Hence, Managerialism’s strong focus on legitimising manager-
ial rule over society.
The key is that power is enshrined in institutions and an institution’s
power is linked to people in authority. This is how Managerialism
defines management and society. Power can be seen as the capacity of
management to achieve its aims even in the face of social opposition
and resistance.382 Managerialism’s ideology of legitimacy is designed to
raise the probability of subordinates obeying its commands. Hence,
domination entails the obedience of all making them comply with
Managerialism’s will. It also means that those who obey Managerialism
will do so because they are made to believe that it is in their interest to
do so under ideological phrases like ‘we know what is best for you’ and
‘we are all in one boat’. Domination works best when Managerialism’s
99
100 Managerialism
authority is accepted as legitimate and therefore legitimisation remains

a key component in its ideology.
The ideology of accepting Managerialism as a legitimate authority
has been established through a long-term relationship. Historically,
this may well have started with slaves and masters, feudal lords and
peasants and continued with workers and bosses, employees and
employers, human resources and management. But it has also been
part of everyone’s individual historical genealogy from obedience to
parents, teachers and school principals to supervisors, line-managers,
and HR managers. Milgram’s experiments have only brought to light
what people are forced to repeat over and over again. But people’s will-
ingness to obey authority in Milgram’s experiments remains an expres-
sion of social dominance, of the acceptance of authority, and of
obedience that has long become part of everyday life.
Not surprisingly, Managerialism can claim legitimacy through its
own ideology, rules, and governing practices. The right to manage and
management’s right to issue commands to be obeyed are based on
workers’ belief in the formal correctness and validity of managerial
rules, corporate policies, and organisational procedures.383 Formal rules
are essential because managerial forms of authority work best through
a semi-legalistic detachment.384 In that way, rules are made to appear
independent of individuals assuming legitimacy above managing indi-
viduals. Hence, authority no longer depends on individuals who might
not be trusted. Instead, it depends on an engineered ideology that rules
and demands obedience. It coerces individuals into scripted behaviour
and ritualises routine-bound obedience. Milgram noted:
It has been reliably established that from 1933–1945 millions

of innocent persons were systematically slaughtered on command.
Gas chambers were built, death camps were guarded, and daily
quotas of corpses were produced with the same efficiency as the
manufacture of appliances.385
The mass manufacturing of death and that of commercial goods follow

the same principle: obedience to authority. Today, this marks a prime
element of Managerialism. Crucially, it does not rely on individuals
but on processes, officialdom, rationality, rules, procedures, perfor-
mance management, instrumental rationality, and managerial recruit-
ment and selection processes. Individual monsters, psychopaths, and
evil people cannot mass manufacture death and ‘compliance of the
Managerialism and Authoritarianism 101
victims’ (Bauman). This depends on formal, objective, non-democratic,

official, depoliticised, authoritarian, impersonal, uncritically accepted,
dehumanised, and ultimately immoral rules.
The essence of obedience to authority is that it has ‘not’ taken over
older forms of managerial control but continues to exist whether
Theory X or Y is applied, whether performance management is used,
whether balanced scorecards are drawn up and so on. It may come
inside different HRM-packages but it is obedience to authority that is
essential. Managerialism assures that it is found in managerial regimes
and in everyday life. The authoritarian structure of corporate existence
is mirrored in the authoritarian structure of everyday life. Not even the
ritualised obedience to cyclically rehearsed media-spectacles of elec-
tions can alter that. A leader to an authority – called state – is selected
while this has been deliberately set up as far removed from the sphere
of management as possible.
It is submission to an authority over which people have no control
that engineers and reinforces authority and domination. Confined to
authoritarian structures through upbringing and socialisation and
through years of capitalism and managerial authority, people have
internalised authoritarian structures. These include a subconscious
adherence to an authority-creating ‘money and power code’.386 Life
without it has been made unthinkable. Hence, the extreme opposite –
e.g. anarchism – has to be portrayed as the worst imaginable evil of all
and is to be feared by everyone. Philosopher Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
has called this phenomenon ‘The Fear of Freedom’.387 Fromm’s thesis is
that humans are conditioned to live in authoritarian structures and
they are made to fear losing it. In exchange for material petty-
bourgeois wealth inside consumerism, individuals accept the dom-
ineering authority of Managerialism. Disobedience is punished through
demotion, non-promotion, job loss, and poverty. This represents
Managerialism’s unspoken trade-off between managerial regimes and
society inside capitalism. It means conformity to a point where people
have given up expressing their individuality except for cosmetic varia-
tions of standardised consumer goods, accepting anomie, isolation,
loneliness, hopelessness, and powerlessness that is covered up through
superficial mass entertainment, sentimental music, and the mind-
numbing repetition of manufactured movies repackaging the same
stories over and over again.
In this, individuals cease to be themselves. They entirely adopt the
kind of personality offered by cultural patterns and therefore become
exactly as all others are and as the managerial society expects them to
102 Managerialism
be. The discrepancy between the ‘I’ and the mass-engineered consumer
society disappears. For management, individuals have to cease being
themselves because management does not depend on individuals who
are ‘themselves’ but on organisational members who have accepted
their assigned place as non-democratic corporate citizens of society.
Managerialism depends on the manipulation of human personalities
into personalities that have been constructed as organisational and
societal personalities. Only then are they useful to management and
society. This is achieved through the application of the psychology of
behaviour modifications.388
The cultural pattern offered to individuals is the sole existing form of
life in managerial regimes and society. Within companies and corpora-
tions it exists as organisational culture created by management while
on the outside a commercialised culture organised through marketing,
corporate movies, standardised mass-taste, and commercialised art
reduced to saleability is to be found. Individuals in these regimes
become exactly as all others are inside companies and societies. They
are what Managerialism expects them to be. Aloneness and powerless-
ness as feelings disappear by submerging individuals in a managerial
culture internally and a commercial culture externally.389 Both are
driven by Managerialism concealing the pathologies of human isola-
tion and subjection.
Milgram has issued warnings. When individuals merge into such
structures, new creatures replace autonomous individuals, unhin-
dered by the limitations of individual morality, freed of human inhi-
bition, mindful only of the sanctions of authority. While we would
like to believe that when confronted with a moral dilemma we will
act as our consciousness dictates, Milgram’s obedience experiments
teach us that in a concrete situation with powerful constrains,
the human moral sense can be easily trampled. 390 This has five
implications:
i) It is Managerialism’s intention to convert human beings into

human resources and consumers merging them into organisa-
tional-commercial structures and thereby fulfilling Milgram’s first
condition.
ii) Managerialism replaces autonomous individuals with organisa-
tional-commercial members and consumers confining them to an
existence inside a double-hierarchy of work and shopping gov-
erned by authoritarianism. It prevents self-actualisation from
becoming reality.
iii) Managerial prerogatives, organisational cultures, hierarchies of

command-and-control, etc. assure that individuals are confined to
an existence freed of human inhibition to obey command rather
than morality.
iv) Managerialism makes individuals mindful of sanctions of manage-
rial authorities overriding their own moral standards.
v) Management fulfils Milgram’s condition by setting up concrete sit-
uations with powerful constrains leading to an ability to easily
trample our moral sense in managerial regimes and society.
Such authoritarian systems consist of a minimum of two persons

sharing the expectation that one of them has the right to prescribe
behaviour for the other. A legitimate authority is one who is perceived
to be in a position of control within a given situation and that the
power of an authority stems not from personal characteristics but from
a perceived position in a given structure.391 Management is surely an
authoritarian system. It consists of two: manager and employee. Both
share the expectation that management has a right to prescribe behav-
iour for non-managerial employees. It also occupies a self-created posi-
tion of control and is perceived as such by employees. Crucially, the
power of managerial authority stems ‘not’ from personal characteristics
of managers but from management’s perceived position inside a man-
agerial regime.392
Inside such obedience-reinforcing regimes there is a propensity for
people to accept definitions of action provided by any authority legit-
imised by Managerialism. That is, although subjects perform actions,
they allow an authority to define their meaning. In other words, once
employees have been made to accept managerial authority as legitimate,
they also accept and carry out managerially defined actions and allow
management to define the meaning of such actions. By doing so, those
who obediently carry out managerial actions deprive themselves of the
morality of such actions. With numbing regularity decent people
knuckle under the demands of managerial authority. They perform
callous actions. Individuals who in everyday life are responsible and
decent are seduced by the trappings of managerial authority, by the
managerial control of their individual perceptions, and by the un-
critical acceptance of managerial definitions and the demands
to perform.393 The most significant outcome of this is a shift in
moral responsibility from individuals to an authoritarian structure.
Managerialism thrives on this. It reaches to the core of Managerialism:394
104 Managerialism
the most far-reaching consequence of the agentic shift is that

a man feels responsible ‘to’ the authority directing him but feels
no responsibility ‘for’ the content of the actions that the authority
prescribes.
This marks the core by identifying Managerialism’s shift of morality

from ‘individual-to-authority’. It is no longer an agent, human, indi-
vidual, a person, an employee or a worker who is made to feel respons-
ible. In authoritarian work regimes guided by management and the
much acclaimed organisational culture, employees are made to transfer
their individual responsibility to managerial authority.395 They are no
longer responsible towards the self (Kant) but towards someone else.
Self-conscious morality is replaced by managerial immorality depriving
human beings of morality under a system invented by Managerialism.
The conversion of human beings into human resources, the right of
management to manage, a hierarchical command-and-control struc-
ture, the application of McGregor’s Theory X instead of Theory Y, the
communicative chain-of-command, and their subsequent application
to wider society are all invented to assure Managerialism’s triumph.
It is no longer what subjects do but for whom they do it that counts.
They conduct an action that has been disassociated from human moral
standings because morality has shifted from an individual self towards
an invisible authority underwritten by Managerialism. This is the core
of Managerialism. Separating morality from agencies and action creates
actors whose morality is disconnected from their action. Management
and even society can claim to be in the clear because immoral acts are
carried out by others. With that Managerialism has performed a Harry
Houdini-like vanishing act of morality. No longer is anybody con-
fronted with the consequences of immoral decisions – like ‘Eichmann
in Jerusalem’.396 The Nazi, the manager, the prison guard, the general,
the ‘Mission Accomplished’-politician397 have evaporated. Perhaps this
is the most common characteristic of organised evil. It has become true
for the organised evil in modern society as well as for the managerially
organised evil in modern workplaces.
With the elimination of morality, immoral acts are carried out while
Managerialism secures itself against internal threats. With the engi-
neered demise of trade unions, there is virtually no resistance left
against Managerialism.398 Any justification they might have offered for
refusing to be involved was an explicit or implicit condemnation of
managerial authority. Today, challenging managerial authority has

been made impossible through an all-encompassing and totalitarian
structure of complete socialisation, Managerialism’s ideological offen-
sive, and its hegemony cemented by corporate mass media and sophis-
ticated managerial techniques. As a consequence, Managerialism’s
authority remains unchallenged. There no longer is any disapproval of
authority neither implicit (absenteeism, work-to-rule, etc.) nor
explicit (trade unions). Surrounded by such a supportive structure,
Managerialism is perceived to be normal and accepted as given.
Prior to Milgram’s obedience experiments, Asch has shown that
group pressure almost predetermines the ‘truth-vs.-conformity’
dilemma.399 Conformity to Managerialism seems to be sufficient to
override moral truth. In general, however, management is not about
truth but about conformity to so-called organisational goals, share-
holder-values, and profit-maximisation. This structure stresses the
importance of situational manipulation. In other words, highly pre-
structured environments found in managerial regimes establish situa-
tional manipulation in order to make individuals obedient to
managerial authority. Combined with the displacement of morality
from the ‘self’ to a managerial ‘structure’, obedience to managerial
authority becomes cemented.
In sum, Milgram has proven how easily individuals can be made to
carry out inhuman commands. The subjects in his experiments were
normal people who carried out inhuman commands when placed in
an authoritarian situation and under authority. Accordingly, neither
the Nazis, nor Milgram’s experiments or management need monsters
and psychopaths to create Willing Executors.400 Ordinary people will do
it in all three cases. Crucial is, however, to place individuals inside an
authoritarian structure that overrides individual and societal morality.
Ordinary humans become obedient objects of power depicting limitless
capacities to yield to authority and act against helpless victims. This
can be achieved without necessarily relying on strong punishment
mechanisms because authoritarian managerial structures alone are
capable of achieving obedience to managerial command.
In addition to the displacement of morality, the willingness to
inflict suffering increases with distance. In short, it is easier for top-
management to be cruel to those most distant to them. The example of
the ‘Union Carbide’ plant in Bhopal, India, illustrates this. With a large
geographical distance between Union Carbide’s – now Dow Chemicals
– US-headquarter and India and a large hierarchical distance between a
white American CEO and an Indian plant worker, the suffering and
106 Managerialism
death of Indian people became a distant issue.401 The same goes for the
famous textbook-case of ‘Ford Pinto’ motor-cars.402 Ford’s top-
managers never met the victims of exploding gas tanks. Bhopal’s
workers and Ford’s customers died far away from top-management.
The same goes for Nestle-formula babies, the tobacco, asbestos, fast-
food and a sheer endless number of other industries and corporations.
In short, there is an inverse ratio between executioner and victim. The
greater the distance between managerial decisions and those affected
by them, the greater the cruelty management executes and Mana-
gerialism normalises.
For a CEO it may be morally painful to dismiss a ‘personal’ assistant
but it is easy to close a plant in some distant country. To ensure
that distance is maintained, management, and even more so top-
management, has structurally isolated and, more importantly, insulated
themselves against those who suffer. This is done through rafts of
measures ranging from separated car parks to refreshment areas, from
different floor levels (height-equals-power) to business class air travel
(front-equals-power), to outsourcing, and global production networks.
Through that, most top-managers never see, touch, or even hear those
who are made to suffer. They become invincible figures on an excel-
spreadsheet. A hierarchical separation between cause (management)
and effect (dismissal of those who make things, Aristotle) has to be
engineered without which management cannot do. This separation
not only represents physical but also moral distance. Since MADD
(moral attention deficit disorder) increases with distance, management
is at pains to engineer distance, hierarchies, and chain-of-commands to
remove themselves from moral responsibilities.
Mediating managerial action, splitting actions between stages delin-
eated and set apart by hierarchy and authority, cutting-up cross-
functional specialisation are some of the most proudly advertised
achievements of rational management. But the meaning of Milgram’s
discovery is that, immanently and irretrievably, the process of rational-
isation facilitates inhuman behaviour that is cruel in its consequences,
if not in its intentions (Kant). The more rational the organisation of
action, the easier it is to cause suffering – and to remain at peace with
oneself. Despite – perhaps because of – Managerialism’s ideology of de-
layering, corporations retain layers upon layers:
1. CEO
2. CFO
3. top-management
4. divisional-management
5. geographical and regional-management
6. plant-management
7. departmental-management
8. middle-management
9. line-management
10. section-leaders
11. shift-leader
12. team-leaders
13. workers.
Instead of preventing inhumanity, management relies on Milgram-like

structures in which hierarchies and authorities have to be maintained.
Management has done this ever since its invention while using self-
management as an ideology and viewing ‘self-organisation’ as
flawed.403 Because of decades of Managerialism’s ‘flattening hierarchy’,
de-layering, and restructuring, there is no corporation without hierar-
chy.404 The process of instrumental rationality – as opposed to Kant’s
critical rationality – remains fundamental for Managerialism. This is
manifested in management’s belief that ‘numbers are important’ and
in the rational act of allocating resources (material and humans). This
sort of rationalisation converts managerial decisions from active into
passive. It is no longer the CEO or manager X who makes a decision
but by becoming depersonalised decisions turn into ‘accounting
demands’ and ‘market needs’. The deception through language knows
no end in Managerialism.405 Immorality is hidden behind the veil of
managerial language that rationalises, naturalises, and eventually neu-
tralises managerial decisions in order to appear moral where immoral-
ity is exercised. It looks as if George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four has
been correct: the more moral managerial language becomes the more
immoral acts follow.
The more rational the managerial organisation of action, the easier it
causes suffering. Suffering is never administered as suffering but inside
a managerially constructed process of rationalisation. The language
behind which suffering is administered appears rational. It is no longer
called ‘fired’ and ‘kicked out’ but ‘retrenched’, ‘seeking other oppor-
tunities’, ‘set free’, and the all time favourite ‘let go’. This seeks to elim-
inate the detection of a managerial decision in the minds of the
victims. The rationality of ‘obedience to authority’ neutralises suffering
and creates a protective shield for management. While acts of
immorality are committed, rational managers remain at peace with
108 Managerialism
themselves because they are not to blame. It is the job, the career, the
demands of top-management, the market, trade unions, the govern-
ment, economic circumstances, and the weather that is responsible but
never management. Management has only done its job in a rational
way and according to neutral cost-benefit rationalities and corporate
policies to which management is more loyal than to customers,
employees, and the environment.
While relieving itself from ethics and loyalty, management con-
versely demands loyalty from employees. Loyalty is seen as performing
one’s duty as defined by a code of discipline. It is management that
demands loyalty and relies on an invented duty to be carried out by
others. And it is management that defines duties and codes of disci-
pline. It is psychologically easy to ignore responsibility when one is
only an intermediate link in a depersonalised chain of evil action and
when one is far removed from the consequences of managerial actions.
This is why ‘chain-of-command’ is important to management. The
responsibility for unethical actions is dissolved inside a managerial
hierarchy.406
The readiness to act against one’s own better judgement, and against
the voice of one’s consciousness, is not just the function of authorita-
tive command but a result of exposure to a single-minded, unequivo-
cal, one-dimensional and monopolistic source of authority. Kant’s
self-determination and Hegel’s moral institutions remain one of the
best preventative medicines against morally normal people engaging in
morally abnormal actions.407 This highlights the fact that lines of
authorities and monolithic organisational structures do not support
ethical conduct. They tend to engineer the opposite. Unethical behav-
iour is born out of an exposure to single-minded, unequivocal, and
indisputable sources of authority. Management is such an institution.
There are next to no dissenting voices within non-democratic manage-
ment. Managerial power, leadership, ideology, and TINA do not leave
any room for that. Managerialism has no place for self-determination,
Mündigkeit, critical self-reflection, autonomy, and humanity.408 This is
Managerialism’s image of society.
If self-actualisation linked to democracy and checks-and-balances
remain the best preventative medicine against normal people engaging
in morally abnormal actions, then management represents all but the
total opposite. The ways of preventing unethical behaviour have been
negated by Managerialism. The managerial buzzword for such non-
existence is ‘organisational culture’ which is a managerially engineered
‘culture’ with clear command-and-control structures, mentoring, stew-
ardship, and strong leadership. This renders management incapable of

ethical actions because its very own setup acts against it.
But behaviourist psychological manipulation, obedience to author-
ity, and punishment regimes carry one more element. Similar to
Milgram, Bauman links these ethical problems to ‘soliciting the co-
operation of the victims’.409 For philosopher Zygmunt Bauman, the
Holocaust is not a failure but a product of modernity, not created by
insane monsters but through the administration of rational managerial
means. It was the ‘rationality of irrationality’ that prevailed. The
instrument applied to achieve the mass extermination of Jews, Sinti,
Roma, communists, trade unionists, homosexuals, and countless other
groups defined as non-Aryans, was modernity’s instrumental rational-
ity. This served the most irrational goal – a pure Germanic race. The
Holocaust was not an antithesis of modern civilisation but an applica-
tion of modern managerial and organisational principles. For Bauman
(1989) the concentration camp Buchenwald was part of our West as
much as Detroit’s River Rouge, Ford’s car plant.
But in carrying out mass murder, the Nazis could count on Jewish
co-operation by installing a so-called Judenrat. Elderly Jewish people of
small villages, towns, cities, hamlets, the Warsaw ghetto, and so on
were assembled by the Nazis and given the rational ‘choice’ between
delivering a certain number of Jewish people for ‘resettlement’ (exter-
mination in gas chambers) or, if they failed to do so, the SS would take
twice as many, including the Judenrat, away.410 Diligently, the Judenrat
delivered time and time again until nobody was left and the Judenrat
itself was put into cattle-trains destined for Auschwitz.411 It was Sophie’s
Choice executed thousands of times over.412 It turned ‘choice’ into a
weapon against those who were already constructed as ‘objects of
power’ inside the German management of death. In that way, Jews
were part of that social arrangement which was to destroy them.413
The relentless managerial logic of mass extermination was based on:
we do not decide who is to die; we only decide who is to live. On that
premise, many Judenrat leaders wished to be remembered as benevo-
lent, protective gods because they were able to save a few while oiling
the Nazi death machine. And so the death machinery of the calcula-
tion of loss avoiding, cost of survival, and lesser evil, was set in opera-
tion. In such a situation the rationality of the victims has become the
weapon of their murderers. But then the rationality of the ruled is
always the weapon of the rulers. Co-operation of the victims with
designs of evil – their persecutors – was made easier by the moral
corruption of the victims.414 Bauman (1989:149) concludes, almost
110 Managerialism
everything was done to achieve maximum results with a bare

minimum of costs and efforts. Almost everything – within the realm of
the possible – was done to deploy the skills and resources of everybody
involved, including those who were to become victims of a ‘successful’
operation. In Bauman’s (1989:150) final words:
The Holocaust could be made into a textbook of scientific management.
Accordingly, the Holocaust – the greatest mass murder in human

history – has only been possible through the application of modern
management techniques. It made the most hideous crimes possible
using just three rather banal core elements against those to be killed:
(i) the victims were turned into objects of power;

(ii) the Nazis relied on the cooperation of the victims; and
(iii) the victims were made to be part of the logic of death when ratio-
nality and choice were used as weapons against them.
These three managerial principles can be found in any modern corpo-

ration. Firstly, human beings are made part of a managerial process
through their conversion into human resources representing
‘Menschenmaterial’ – human resource/material in Nazi terminology.
With that, they are confined to an existence as objects of managerial
power. The right to manage and the managerial prerogative represent
core elements of all management and are exclusively reserved for man-
agement. Inside managerial processes human beings are assigned the
unethical status of being objects of power. This is what Managerialism
seeks to transport into society.
Secondly, a managerial machine does not function without the co-
operation of the victims who are totally excluded from managerial
decision-making while simultaneously being exposed to managerial
power. Management is faced with one of the most enduring contradic-
tions. It needs co-operation but also hierarchy and control over those
with whom it is co-operating. This is a contradiction not gone un-
noticed by many. Just like choice has been used against those who co-
operate in the case of the Judenrat, management uses the very same
methods to achieve co-operation. For example, management con-
structs situations where its ideology – management ‘must keep costs
down’ – becomes elementary. These cases are administered by a
Sophie’s Choice-like prisoner dilemma. It gives lower managers and
non-managerial staff a choice inside a tidily controlled setup engi-

neered by management. For example, management demands that 20%
of operating costs have to be cut otherwise the whole department will
be dissolved. To achieve this, management often sets up its own
version of a Judenrat in the form of participating project teams and
committees comprised of victims who – just like the Judenrat – cooper-
ate with management to achieve cost-cutting. It represents no more
than a standard mode of operation exercised day-in and day-out in
thousands of companies. It also represents inhumanity.
In that way, those who make things (Aristotle) are made part of a
managerial arrangement that can destroy them. Management’s logic of
cost-cutting is based on the maxim: we do not decide who is to be dis-
missed; the committee only decides who is to remain in the depart-
ment. Hence, many committee members wish to be remembered as
benevolent and protective gods who saved the department from being
dissolved by sacrificing a few! And so the cost-cutting machinery of cal-
culating loss-and-benefits, cost of survival, and lesser evil, is set in
operation. In such a situation the rationality of those depending on
management has become the weapon of their managers. But then the
rationality of the ruled is always the weapon of managerial rulers. In
short, the employees’ co-operation was made easier by their moral cor-
ruption. The example of a Sophie’s choice-like prisoner-dilemma when
applied to managerial cost-cutting and Judenrat highlight some striking
similarities between management- and Nazi-methods. Any departmen-
tal cost-cutting exercise not only ‘could’ but actually ‘is’ made into
textbooks of scientific management.
Managerialism frames ‘soliciting the cooperation of victims’ in cost-
cutting exercises as employee participation. Judenrat-style participation
is used for quality control, outsourcing, downsizing, relocation, etc.
Managerialism turns instrumental rationality and free choice into
managerial weapons. It is the department’s manager’s free choice to
take up management’s offer of closing the department or cutting costs
by 20%. It was the Judenrat’s free choice to deliver a certain number of
Jewish people to the SS or be taken away themselves. The issues at
hand may change but the destructive logic of choice stays the same.
Beyond that, the above mentioned three core concepts are exposed
to immoralities when systems of ‘fear of punishment’ are in operation,
of which death in Nazi concentration camps remain the most extreme
form. In management meanwhile, it is dismissal based on cost-cutting
that serves as management’s version of punishment. It is administered
to those who fail to live up to managerially engineered standards
112 Managerialism
framed as KPIs. For any SS man who ran a concentration camp failure
to comply with authority often meant nothing more than being
moved to another division or being placed at the Eastern Front. In
most cases, failure to carry out orders for mass-killing did not mean
facing the firing squad. Similarly, failure to comply with managerial
orders often does not mean dismissal of a manager but a re-assignment
to a down- or upwards position, the move to a different department, or
demotion. No more. Yet most people obey authority without any need
of threats by superior officers.415
In recruitment, both operating systems again depict surprising simi-
larities. Bauman’s judgement is that the overwhelming majority of SS
men, leaders as well as rank and file, would have easily passed all the
psychological tests ordinarily given to American army recruits or
Kansas City policemen. Milgram noted, if a system of death camps
were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi
Germany, one would be able to find sufficient personnel for those
camps in any medium-sized American town. Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo Bay torture and prisoner abuse scenes (2004–2006) have
proven this beyond reasonable doubt.416
Neither the SS, nor the US Army, nor any city police department,
and certainly not management are in general need to look for psycho-
pathic monsters when recruiting ‘Willing Executors’.417 They need
ordinary people who show a readiness to obey orders and authority, a
willingness to submit themselves to the legitimacy of managers in
authority, and to carry out rational and objective demands. This is part
of a process that operates objectively and with objectivity. By its objec-
tivity [Sachlichkeit], the SS disassociated itself from such ‘emotional’
types like Streicher, that ‘unrealistic fool’, and also from certain
‘Teutonic-Germanic Party’ bigwigs who behaved as though they were
clad in horns and pelts. SS leaders counted on organisational routines,
not on individual zeal as well as on discipline, not ideological dedica-
tion. In other words, what management needs are not zealous operators
but those who rely on organisational routines. It needs discipline – not
ideological fanatics. Management needs those who can coldly and
rationally carry out depersonalised, dehumanised, and immoral cost-
benefit analyses even when it means incurring ‘civilian casualties’.418
On discipline, objectivity, and modern rationality the historian and
philosopher Mumford (1895–1990) noted, necessary to the construction
of managerial ‘megamachines’ is an enormous bureaucracy of humans
which act as ‘servo-units’, working without ethical involvement.419
Technological improvements such as remote control by satellite, radio,
internet, instant global communication, and assembly line organisa-

tions dampen psychological barriers against the end result of their
actions. Adolf Eichmann remains the prototype of a Nazi official who
conducted the organisational logistics behind the Holocaust. Mumford
collectively refers to people willing to carry out placidly the extreme
goals of these megamachines as Eichmanns.420 The structure of multi-
national corporations and even managerial capitalism as such has set
up such gigantic megamachines shaping the everyday life of almost
everyone and reaching even into bedrooms through TV-advertise-
ments. Not everyone may be a manager or worker but nearly everyone
is a consumer. Inside marketing regimes that set up consumption – cor-
porate megamachines run by managers – management has created
colossal bureaucracies.
Today’s human resources are indeed made to act as ‘servo-units’ to
serve an impersonal entity called corporation.421 They perform through
an equally impersonal entity that operates through impersonal tech-
niques called key performance indicators and balanced scorecards.422
The structural setup and ideology of Managerialism makes them work
without ethical involvement. This diminishes management’s psycho-
logical barriers against the end results of their managerial actions
because the consequences occur at a relative distance from manage-
ment.423 While Mumford called the people creating all this the
‘Eichmanns’, modern managers are no Eichmanns. Their business is
not the mass extermination of human beings but the creation of value
for shareholders.424 Their prime job is to maximise shareholder-value.
Milton Friedman has already argued that the shareholder must always
come first.425 The difference between Mumford’s ‘Eichmanns’ and
management is the end result; their objective methods and measure-
ments are largely similar. They measure their success in numbers – the
number of dead people per day (Auschwitz) versus monetary numbers
for shareholder-value, headcounts per output, turnover, and profit.
Managerial objectivity is expressed in numbers because management
means dealing with numbers in an objective world which all too often
means dehumanisation.426 Managerial command-and-control struc-
tures are only good as long as they support the bottom-line expressed
in numbers that matter. Hence management has developed its own
specialised vocabulary, much of it quantitative because of two factors:
management requires the discipline of quantifications and numbers are
essential to organisational performance. The cruellest thing about
cruelty is that it dehumanises its victims before it destroys them. And
the hardest of struggles is to remain human in inhuman conditions.
114 Managerialism
The dehumanisation of humans takes place in two ways under man-

agement: internally and externally.427
Management dehumanises human beings by converting them into
resources with ID-numbers, bar- and access-codes. Management allo-
cates to them a set of numbers ranging from employee numbers to
office numbers that indicate rank, power, and authority. Numbers also
indicate performance measures through key performance indicators,
monetary remuneration, and a number assigned through the infamous
Balanced Scorecard. Externally, management can assign numbers to
customers and suppliers indicating their depersonalised and dehuman-
ised status as, for example, units of profits. In such an objective
number-world, it is indeed hard to remain human. In ‘Why are the
Problems of Business Ethics Insolvable?’, British philosopher Alasdair
MacIntyre (1983:351&358) noted that428
we ought always to remember that the keenest of all students of

business ethics, Karl Marx, remarked: that we ought not to make the
individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially
remains (Capital, Vol. 1, Preface to the First Edition) … the remedy
lies not in the perceptions or the resolution of individuals, but in
changing the forms of corporate life.
In other words, the problem of immoral behaviour carried out by the

SS or by management is not the individual SS-officer or individual
manager but structural determinants. Without modern management
techniques, the Holocaust would not have been possible. Both man-
agement and the operators of the Holocaust needed Fayol’s (1916) six
basic principles: forecasting, planning, organising, commanding, coor-
dinating, and controlling.429 They needed to establish situational
power over individuals to create organisational and managerial obedi-
ence to managerial authority. And both needed to depersonalise and
dehumanise their victims through engraving numbers on Jewish fore-
arms or by assigning status implicating Staff-ID-numbers, performance
management numbers, and the numerically expressed units of con-
sumers. Both rationalise and establish distances to their victims
through a clear division of ‘Jew-vs.-SS’ or ‘management-vs.-worker’,
management’s downtown headquarter versus sweatshop factories in a
distant country, and management versus an unseen, faceless, and
unnoticed customer.
As employees and consumers are exposed to management, indi-
viduals might be no more than puppets controlled through strings. But
at least individuals are puppets with perceptions and awareness. And

perhaps awareness is the first step to liberation.430 To prevent this,
Managerialism smothers such awareness while management has
several answers to that. Firstly, management, and even more so
Managerialism, are designed to create false perceptions of reality. The
idea of ‘perception management’ testifies to this.431 Secondly, a wrong
or false perception reduces or distorts awareness. As a consequence, the
ideology of Managerialism has to be kept up at all times. Thirdly,
Managerialism is keen to avoid any awareness of the hidden mecha-
nisms management applies to create obedience to managerial author-
ity. It does so through corporate mass media, privatised schooling,
sanitised textbooks, and university degrees cleansed of all critical
content.432 Fourthly, the understanding that our awareness is the first
step to our liberation is painfully avoided by management. It is not
part of the structure of management, management education, and
Managerialism. Fifthly, Milgram emphasised that the mutual support
provided by men for each other is the strongest bulwark we have against
the excesses of authority. Hence, management has established a substan-
tial portfolio seeking to prevent this from occurring. Mutual support,
mutualism, altruism, and human solidarity are systematically destroyed
under the ideological onslaught of Managerialism through an indi-
vidualisation of relationships in work and society. This creates not only
alienation but also a relentless promotion of positive thinking.
7
Managerialism and Positive
Thinking
With Managerialism, consciousness has been relinquished through

reification and the invented managerial necessities of markets, com-
modities, and things. Necessity, morality and guilt have no place in
this ideology. Corporate managers can give a signal that liquidates
hundreds of jobs, lives, and – in economic terms – confines people to
endless circles of poverty, destitution, depression, and violence on our
‘Planet of Slums’.433 Yet managers can still declare themselves free from
all cramps of conscience and live happily thereafter.434 Renouncing
morality and guilt does no longer leave even microscopic traces of an
unhappy consciousness, a concept reaching back a very long way.
Perhaps it all started with the collusion between fascism and capital-
ism and Horkheimer’s famous dictum ‘those who do not wish to speak
of capitalism should keep quiet about fascism’.435 The antifascist
powers that beat fascism on the battlefields reaped the benefits of Nazi
scientists, generals, and engineers. They had the historical advantage of
a late-comer. What begins with the horror of concentration camps
turns into the practice of training people for abnormal conditions, a
subterranean human existence, and a daily intake of authoritarian
Managerialism. Again, the self-invented neutrality of managerial ra-
tionality shows forth over and above its politics. It serves the politics of
domination that Managerialism has brought about.
The world of concentration camps was not exceptionally monstrous
nor was it ‘pre’-managerial.436 What we saw there was an image, and in
a sense the quintessence, of infernal Managerialism into which we are
plunged every day. Through corporate mass media Managerialism
transmits its ideology, making us oblivious to the fact that while
Nazism killed 60 million people during the 20th century, today’s
tobacco corporations already killed 100 million and that about 25,000
116
Managerialism and Positive Thinking 117
people die every day of hunger and hunger-related causes, according to

the United Nations.437
Simultaneously however, two things are established: firstly, we all
know about these things in the back of our minds. This knowledge has
been planted so that nobody is forced to say ‘I didn’t know’. But it has
been located in the far back of our minds and erased from the present.
Secondly, consumerism has turned us into consumers that do not want
to be disturbed by the harshness of life in global sweatshops which rep-
resent an existence enforced on millions.438 It seems that even the
most hideous transgressions, crimes against humanity and our envi-
ronment can be repressed in such a manner that they cease to be a
danger to Managerialism. If there were a sudden eruption to
Managerialism, it would only lead to functional disturbances in indi-
viduals without disturbing the functioning of Managerialism. Mental
hospitals and psycho-pharmaceuticals ‘manage’ these disturbances.439
Meanwhile Managerialism’s ‘Happy Consciousness’ has no limits. It
arranges computer games depicting death, precision-killing, and
disfiguration in which fun, esprit de corps, and strategy are mixed with
point-scoring and rewards, thereby preparing our youngest for man-
agerial reward-schemes.440
The Rand Corporation, for example, which unites scholarship,
research, military, Managerialism, and the good life knows how to
guard the free world.441 In this corporation, managerial planners are
not worried. The cost of taking chances, of experimenting and making
a mistake may be fearfully high. But here RAND’s advocacy of
Managerialism comes in. RAND’s management has transfigured man-
agement into a managerial game adding crypto-scientific value to
‘destructive opportunism and dysfunctional game playing, favouritism,
keeping the boss happy, avoiding criticism, form “in-groups”, and the
use of methods such as “distracting, subverting, delegitimating, block-
ing, delaying, networking, positioning, coalition building, outmanoeu-
vering, and otherwise promoting initiatives at the expense of others”
in addition to “using misinformation to confuse others, spreading false
rumours to undermine others”, and keeping “dirt files” to blackmail
others’.442 Managerial planners can gain valuable experience without
risk when playing the mind-game of Managerialism’s favourite pris-
oner dilemma.443
To understand the managerial game one should participate.
Understanding comes from experience. Just as the high priest of
Managerialism, Peter Drucker explained, business can look like ‘ a
seemingly mindless game of chance at which any donkey could win
118 Managerialism
provided only that he be ruthless’.444 Anti-social and inhuman ruth-

lessness can be learned, trained, and conditioned. Hence, management
studies and management consultants have invented the RAND
Corporation’s own special training sessions for what they call ‘strategic
management’.445 These are, for example, based on managerial typolo-
gies such as prospector, analyser, defender, and reactor corporations.446
Because managerial players have come from different management
departments, we might find a physicist, an engineer, and an economist
on such a team. One version of the management game, for example,
follows five steps:
(i) The team will represent a cross-section. The first day is taken up by
joint briefings on what the game is all about. This includes study-
ing managerial rules. When teams are finally seated around maps
in their respective rooms the managerial game called ‘strategy’
begins.447
(ii) Each team receives its management policies and corporate mission
statement. These statements, usually prepared by a member of a
control group, give an estimate of a management situation at the
time of playing, some information on policies of the opposing
team, the objectives to be met by the management team, and the
team’s corporate budget.
(iii) In the strategic management game, one corporation’s objective is
to maintain a deterrent capability throughout the game that is to
maintain a force capable of striking back at an opposing corpora-
tion (unfriendly takeovers). Another corporation’s strategy is
to achieve superiority over other corporations creating a
monopoly.448
(iv) The corporate budgets of the two corporations compare with
actual corporate budgets of real corporations.449 There is a corpo-
rate game director who interprets game rules based on a rule book
complete with diagrams and illustrations. But problems inevitably
arise during the strategic management play.
(v) The game director also has another important function: without
previously notifying corporate managers, he introduces new meas-
ures to increase the effectiveness of corporate managers.
These are a few outlines that explain the managerial game of strategic
management. Obviously, in Managerialism’s ‘Happy Consciousness’,
guilt-feelings over whipping out other corporations or eliminating
hundreds of jobs and livelihoods have no place. The managerial cost-
benefit calculus ‘takes care’ of consciousness and morality. When the

existence of a corporation is at stake, there is no crime except that of
not defending it against other corporations. Under Managerialism’s
invented conditions, crime and guilt become a solely private affair.
This sort of schizophrenia reflects the mentality of bipolar disorder car-
rying connotations to The Corporate Psychopath.450 It is also known as
moral attention deficit disorder (MADD), moral silence, moral deaf-
ness, moral blindness, or moral amnesia.451 Freud has revealed that in
the psyche of individuals, crimes against mankind are part of an indi-
vidual’s case history but they are also in the history of the whole.
Managerialism suppresses this fatal link. Those who identify them-
selves with the corporate whole, who are installed as the great manage-
ment leaders and defenders of free enterprise can make mistakes, but
they cannot do wrong, and they are not guilty. They may become
guilty, however, after the managerial identification no longer holds.
In the present state of Managerialism almost all managerial writing
confirms this. Many crypto-intellectual writers only produce trivial
pro-managerial literature. They no longer dare to call evil by its
name. Managerialism’s Happy Consciousness is the belief that
Managerialism’s reality is rational, that the managerial system delivers
the goods, and that managerial ideology helps us all. This is reflected
in a new conformism which is a facet of managerial rationality trans-
lated into obedient behaviour. It is new because it pretends to be ra-
tional to an unprecedented degree. It sustains Managerialism which
has produced it. In the world’s most advanced areas, Managerialism
has eliminated the more primitive irrationality of the preceding stages.
This improves life more regularly than before.
Today, the main wars of annihilation have already occurred and
Nazi extermination camps have been abolished while Managerialism’s
Happy Consciousness repels all historic connections to modern man-
agement. But during recent years, and this is perhaps more obvious
than it was in previous decades, torture has been reintroduced by the
leaders of the free world. Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib are normal
affairs. What took place during colonial wars – a time that already
claimed to be the height of the civilised world – carries on even today
and is still practised, albeit with good conscience.
Otherwise, peace reigns among managerial-capitalist nations. The
power over individuals that Managerialism has acquired is daily
absolved by its efficacy and ‘managerialness’. Managerialism assim-
ilates everything it touches. It absorbs every opposition. It plays with
contradictions and demonstrates this as managerial culture showcasing
120 Managerialism
it with overconfident pre-eminence. At the same time, the depletion,

and simultaneously destruction of environmental resources and the
proliferation of industrial waste demonstrate its opulence and the high
levels of commercial well-being. The managerial community is too well
off to even care. It is supported by the mind-numbing language of
Managerialism.452 This sort of mass engineered comfort, the managerial
superstructure over the unhappy base of society, filters through corpo-
rate mass media mediating between masters and dependents. Its pub-
licity agents and business lobbyists shape managerial communication
in which managerial behaviour expresses itself. Its language testifies to
identification and unification and to the systematic promotion of
positive thinking.453 It is a rigorous ‘Assault on Reason’ that eliminates
any critical perspectives.454
Rather than being two-dimensional with pros-&-cons, managerial
modes of speech appeal to the simplicity of one-dimensional thought,
behaviours, and habits.455 It is Managerialism’s favourite KISS: keep it
simple, stupid! In these habits of thought, tensions between appear-
ance and reality, fact and factor, substance and attribute disappear.
Elements of autonomy, discovery, and critique recede before designa-
tion, assertion, conformity, affirmation, assimilation, and imitation.
The magical, authoritarian, and ritual elements of Managerialism have
long permeated everyday speech and language. Managerially guided
communication is deprived of opposites (+/–). But these are the very
epistemological stages of a process of cognition and cognitive evalua-
tion. With Managerialism, concepts that comprehend facts and
thereby transcend them have lost their authentic linguistic representa-
tion. Without them, managerial language expresses and promotes the
immediate identification of reason and fact. Truth becomes circularly
established when Managerialism ideologically links essence and exist-
ence to things and their functions.456 These ideological features created
by Managerialism reappear as features of managerial speech shaping
everyday social behaviour. The functionalist approach to language has
advanced significantly under Managerialism. This functionalism repels
non-conformist elements. Vocabulary and syntax are equally
affected.457
Managerialism expresses its ideological requirements always indi-
rectly in its language. But this is not totally without opposition. The
popular language strikes with spiteful and defiant humour at the
official and semi-official discourse (www.dilbert.com). Slang and collo-
quial speech have rarely been so creative when working against
Managerialism. It is as if employees feature as anonymous spokes-
persons of an invisible and extra-managerial world asserting their

humanity against the overwhelming powers of Managerialism. But
their rejection, resistance, and revolt remain subdued inside manager-
ial regimes. On the other hand,
• corporate think tanks and lobbyists of Managerialism,

• CEOs in executive offices of corporations,
• representatives of neo-liberal government machines,
• the public faces of privatised schools and public infrastructure
utilities,
• the news presenters of commercial TV, the business press, and
quasi-scholarly management tabloids,
• line-management, time-keepers, supervisors, and middle-managers,
• corporate efficiency experts and management consultants,
• bank-tellers, telephone-marketing callers, answering services, assist-
ants in call centres, and people at the service desk,
• semi-academics in management studies, and
• members of political beauty parlours and PR agencies providing the
most fashionable and consumable political leaders with appropriate
make-ups and facelifts as prescribed by marketing agencies right
down to the use of Botox
… all speak the language of Managerialism. It is the ward of

Managerialism that orders, manages, and organises, entices people to
shop, to buy, and above that to accept the overall ideological message
that is transmitted in a style that shows sophistication and versatility
in linguistic creations geared towards digestion, simplicity, and accept-
ability. It uses a syntax in which the structure of a sentence is abridged
and condensed in such a way that no tension, no space is left between
the parts of a sentence. It excludes critical thinking before it can even
be considered.
Managerialism’s refined forms of linguistic distortions militate
against developing non-managerial meanings. It is an inherent feature
of Managerialism to make its concept synonymous with corresponding
sets of managerial-economic operations. It recurs in a linguistic ten-
dency to consider the name of management rather than what lurks
behind – Managerialism.458 Things and issues have been made indica-
tive of their function. Names of properties and processes are assigned
ideological values to distance Managerialism (ideology) from manage-
ment (apparatus). The former uses, invents, and produces ideology
while the latter assumes neutrality, objectivity, and technicality
122 Managerialism
pretending to be value-free. This has set up a mutually reinforcing

tandem of a linguistic-ideological success story that represents a form
of ideology that identifies things and their functions based on their
usefulness to Managerialism. As a habit of thought, the quasi-scientific
managerial language shapes the expressions of social, political, and
economic behaviour.459 This marks the triumph of Managerialism.
Managerialism’s concepts tend to be absorbed through the ward of
global mass communication. They have next to no other content than
that designated by Managerialism as expressed in their publicised and
standardised usage. Global mass media have no other responsibility
than to shape and standardise global behaviours and attitudes to create
a global mindset for global consumption. But Managerialism remains
hidden behind clichés and as clichés they govern our speech, writings,
thinking, and attitudes.
This sort of managerial communication however precludes genuine
development of meaning. In general, all languages contain innumer-
able terms which do not require development of their meaning, for
example terms that designate objects or implements of daily life,
visible nature, vital needs and wants. These terms are generally under-
stood through their mere appearance and responses which are linguis-
tic expressions but they can also be managerially distorted. Normally,
they are adequate to the pragmatic context in which they are spoken.
However, the situation is very different with respect to terms which
denote things and occurrences beyond the non-controversial context.
Here, Managerialism and its ideological influence on language
expresses an abridgement that no longer carries human connotations.
With Managerialism, the names of things are no longer indicative of
their original meaning. Their actual manner of functioning has been
re-defined by Managerialism, thus ending the true meaning of things.
In managerially distorted communication, nouns govern sentences in
an authoritarian and totalitarian fashion.460
Sentences become mere declarations to be accepted. Simultaneously,
managerial sentences repel critique, qualification, and any negation of
their managerially codified meanings. In the one-dimensional manager-
ial realm of communication, human meaning creation has long become
a place of managerial dialogue that is no longer ‘discourse’ in the
scholastic understanding of the word. With Managerialism, validating,
critical, negative, and analytical propositions appear like magic-ritual for-
mulas. Many times rehearsed and hammered into the recipient’s mind
by corporate mass media, they produce the effect of enclosing the
human mind, encircling it as prescribed by managerial formulas.
This is the self-validating hypothesis in propositional forms inside

the realm of managerial crypto-discourse. Nouns such as ‘freedom’,
‘equality’, ‘democracy’ and ‘environmentalism’ imply, analytically, a
specific set of attributes which occur invariably when the noun is
spoken or written. For Managerialism, terms such as human rights, for
example, become ‘corporate social responsibility’, globalisation is used
instead of imperialism, global warming instead of climate change, busi-
ness community instead of a real and organic community, economic
growth instead of alternatives, egoism, selfishness, and individualism
instead of collective, and objectivity instead of subjectivity.461 They
have all changed their meaning.462
On either side, transgression of prevailing managerial communica-
tion beyond its own closed and sealed analytical structures is framed as
incorrect, controversial, ideological, and mere propaganda. With
Managerialism, the means of enforcing its untruths and the degree of
punishment for speaking the truth are very different. In the managerial
realm, management speech as invented by highly paid wordsmiths
moves from synonyms to tautologies.463 But it never moves towards
qualitative differences. Its managerial structure insulates the governing
noun from those of its contents which would invalidate or at least
disturb the accepted use of the noun in statements of Managerialism,
corporate management, and so-called ‘public’ – i.e. publicised – opin-
ions. The high frequency of ritualistically rehearsed and regurgitated
ideas of Managerialism renders them immune against contradiction.
Facts such as that the much acclaimed ‘human freedom’ means no
more than ‘managerial servitude’ and that ‘equality’ is factual ‘inequal-
ity’ are barred. These are disqualified from being expressed through a
closed definition of these concepts in terms of the powers of
Managerialism that shape the realm of mass communication. Today,
virtually all forms of public-political communication have become
structured in a corporation-like manner: delegating downwards and
reporting upwards. The result is the familiar Orwellian language of, for
example,
‘globalisation equals progress’

and
‘progress equals globalisation’.
Community has been made synonymous to business community,

freedom means the freedom to do business, etc.464 But this is by no
means the language of managerial totalitarianism only. Nor is it any
124 Managerialism
less Orwellian if contradictions are no longer made explicit in a sen-

tence but are encapsulated inside a noun. The fact that political parties
working for Managerialism and the perpetual economic growth of cap-
italism are called social-democratic, democratic, and Labour no longer
comes as a surprise. That a despotic government is made to appear
democratic by corporate mass media and that rigged elections are sud-
denly free elections are familiar linguistic features long after George
Orwell.465 Relatively new, however, is the general acceptance of these
misrepresentations by public and private opinion and the suppression
of their monstrous content.466 The spread and the effectiveness of
managerial language testify to the triumph of Managerialism over the
contradictions it creates and contains. They are unashamedly repro-
duced without exploding inside society. This is the true, naked, and
raw power of Managerialism in coalition with corporate mass media.
The outspoken, obvious, and blatant contradictions have been made
into a device of managerial speech supporting Managerialism’s ideolo-
gical platform. The syntax of ideological abridgement proclaims a
faked reconciliation of opposites by welding them together in a firm
and familiar structure.467 Managerialism has long succeeded in
showing, for example, that the waste of any chemical plant, oil-spills
killing wildlife, death by asbestos, lung-cancer due to smoking, even
the potential end of life of the earth itself are no more than harmless
fall-outs, fakes, and imaginations of mad scientists.468 Once considered
the principal offense against logic, contradictions now appear as a
principle of the logic of manipulation and as realistic caricatures of
dialectics. It is Managerialism’s own logic that can afford to dispense
with logic. It can play with unavoidable consequences of managerial
growth-logic which results in global warming and environmental
destruction. This is managerial capitalism with the ideological mastery
of mind and matter.
The sphere of mass engineered communication in which opposites
vanish has a firm basis. Its beneficial destructiveness serves
Managerialism. Total commercialisation of every sphere of Habermas’
lifeworld has overlaid formerly antagonistic spheres of life. This new
union expresses itself in a smoothening of linguistic mergers of for-
merly conflicting parts.469 To any critical mind not yet sufficiently con-
ditioned in the ways-and-means of Managerialism much of
public-managerial speaking, printing, and broadcasting appears utterly
surrealistic. Captions such as ‘corporations seek economic harmony’,
and advertisements such as a ‘we have something for everyone’ may
still evoke the naive reaction that corporations, economic harmony
and serving everyone are irreconcilable contradictions under manager-

ial capitalism. The critical mind may still find that logic no longer
exists and that there is no language capable of correctly pointing out
the existing contradictions. Nobody has ever been part of an economic
system of harmony. It remains a fantasy inside class society.
Nonetheless, Managerialism renders this sort of ideological language
rational and perfectly normal.
Its ideological validation rests not primarily in the fact that this lan-
guage sells – politicians, Managerialism, soap and soup – but rather
that it promotes the immediate identification of a particular-manager-
ial with the general-universal interest. Managerialism and corporations
are made to appear as institutions who secure prosperity with no global
annihilation through global warming and environmental destruction
in sight. It is only a very occasionally made ‘slip of the tongue’ that
announces the truth. Such an announcement can reveal connections
in a far less ideological form than is normally permitted.470 The
unification of opposites which characterises Managerialism is one of
the many ways in which Managerialism makes itself immune against
expressions of global protest and refusal to go along. But how can
protest and resistance fight the fight when the established order
advertises
• that managerial capitalism is not really at the brink of environmen-

tal disaster,
• that markets can solve global warming, and
• that corporate profits can rise eternally?471
In exhibiting its contradictions as mere tokens of truth, the sphere of

managerial discourse cages itself against any critical discourse which is
not on its own terms. By its sheer capacity to assimilate any other term
to its own, Managerialism offers the prospect of combining the greatest
possible tolerance with the greatest possible unity. Nevertheless its lan-
guage testifies to the repressive character of a one-dimensional unity.
The language of Managerialism speaks in constructions which
• impose upon recipients a slanted and abridged meaning,

• block development of non-managerial content, and
• create a mindless acceptance of what is offered.
This is one of the clearest expressions of ideology. The fact that a specific
noun is almost always coupled with the same ‘explicatory’ adjectives and
126 Managerialism
attributes turns a sentence into a hypnotic formula which, endlessly

repeated, fixes and asphyxiates managerial meaning in a recipient’s
mind.472 Listeners of managerial language no longer think of essentially
different and possibly true explications of the noun. Managerialism’s
language construction reveals its authoritarian and ideological character
once the cloaking elements of its ideological content have been
removed. They have in common a syntax which cuts off developments
of meaning by creating asphyxiated managerial images which impose
themselves with an overwhelming and petrifying concreteness. It is a
well-known technique of the advertisement and marketing industry
where it is methodically used for establishing a commodity, corporate,
and political image. These political-commercial images stick to the mind.
Products and politicians are sold that way. Like soap and Coca Cola,
advertisers and corporate PR experts must find the most easily digestible
ideology to create the maximum impact. What goes for soap and ideolo-
gies also goes for politicians and corporate CEOs.
This promotes the self-identification of individuals with managerial
ideology and the functions they perform. In the most advanced sectors
of functional and manipulated communication, the language of
Managerialism and mass marketing imposes – in truly striking con-
structions – the authoritarian identification of individuals with their
managerial functions and their assigned place in managerial society.
This structure leaves no space for distinction, development, and differ-
entiation of meaning. It moves, lives, and breathes ideology.
Dominated by personalised and hypnotic images, ideology can proceed
to give some essential information. But narratives always remain safely
within the well-edited framework of commercial interests as defined by
a corporate publishing policy that regulates content, form, and style.473
Use of the hyphenised abridgement, for example, is widespread in
Managerialism, for example, forward-thinking, well-financed, off-shore,
mid-career, in-house training, self-managed work-teams. Such construc-
tions are never accidental. They are particularly frequent in phrases
joining management, technology, ideologies, the social world, and eco-
nomics. Terms designating quite different spheres and qualities are
forced together into a solid, overpowering managerial whole. The effect
is again a magical and hypnotic one. It presents a projection of manager-
ial images which convey unity of contradictions where none exists:
the father-figure CEO of a corporation generating high returns of

investment is also the one annihilating animal and plant life framed
as resources.474
This language use allows management to reduce anxiety and suffering

that come with the job by creating anxiety and suffering elsewhere.
Management people who speak and accept such language have been
ideologically immunised against everything non- and anti-managerial
while simultaneously being made highly susceptible to everything
Managerialism tells them. Frequently, the combination of synthetic
words is not quite as gentle as Managerialism likes it to be as in the
case of shareholder-value and profit-maximisation. Sometimes it may
still convey a threat. But the effect is similar. The imposing structure
unites actors and actions of violence, power, protection, and propa-
ganda in one lightning flash. Most managerial abbreviations – MBA,
ltd., CEO, CFO, SHRM, ROI, CSR, Inc., CMS, OD, MRP II, HBR, HRM,
MGMT, SWOT, MBO, R&D, ROI, MBWA,475 TQM, JT, OB, IT, MYOB –
are perfectly reasonable and justified by the length of the unabbrevi-
ated designata. However, one might venture to see a Hegelian ‘cunning
of reason’ in some of them.476 In any case, they often help to repress
undesired questions.
These abbreviations only denote what has been institutionalised by
Managerialism while transcending connotations are being cut off.
The meaning is fixed, doctored, and ideologically loaded. Once sanc-
tioned by Managerialism’s Servants of Power, these terms become
semi-official, being constantly repeated in managerial and, increas-
ingly, every-day usage, thereby losing all cognitive value. Finally,
they serve merely for recognition of unquestionable facts in the style
of overwhelming concreteness. Once identified with its managerial
function, a thing becomes more real than one that is distinguished
from its function. The linguistic expression of this identification lies
in an increased reliance on the functionality of nouns and in syntac-
tical abridgement. This creates a basic managerial vocabulary and
syntax which stand in the way of differentiation, separation, distinc-
tion, and contradiction. This managerial language constantly
imposes images that operate against the development and expression
of critical concepts.477
In its ideological indirectness, the language of Managerialism
impedes theoretical and critical conceptual thinking. It blocks critical
thinking. The managerial concept does no longer identify a thing with
its pre- and non-managerial existence. Such identification may well be
the legitimate and perhaps even the only way Managerialism can
create meaning. But managerial definitions remain highly specific
usages of concepts for very specific purposes. Managerial language seg-
regates a thing from its original social context placing it inside the
128 Managerialism
one-dimensionally established reality of Managerialism.478 These

authoritarian tendencies are expressive of a certain asphyxiation of the
modes of managerial thought.
Abridgement of managerial concepts inside fixed images asphyxiates
the development of self-validation. Managerialism’s hypnotic formulas
are immune against contradictions. It is the identification of a thing or
a previous person – now a human resource – with its function inside a
managerial regime that defines this ideology.479 These tendencies
reveal Managerialism’s mindset in the language it speaks. The linguistic
behaviour blocks conceptual development by working against abstrac-
tion and mediation. It surrenders to the immediate facts repelling
recognition of the factors behind the facts.480 It fends off recognition of
the facts and of their historical content. In and for Managerialism, the
organisation of managerial communication is of vital importance as it
serves as a vehicle of coordination and subordination. The unified
managerial language is an anti-critical and anti-dialectical language. In
it, managerial and behavioural rationality absorb the transcendent,
negative, and oppositional elements of reason that are elements of a
tension between Kant’s ‘what is’ and his ‘what ought to be’, in
Hegelian terms, between essence and appearance, potentiality and
actuality, the positive and the negative. This sustained tension defines
a two-dimensional universe of discourse which is the universe of crit-
ical abstract thought as well as that of Aristotle, Enlightenment, and
human development as such. In that, two dimensions remain antago-
nistic to each other. The reality partakes in both of them so that dialec-
tical concepts develop real contradictions. In its own development,
dialectical thought assists to comprehend the historical character of
contradictions and recognise processes of their mediation as historical
processes. The other dimension of thought is always an historical
dimension. Its potentiality is always an historical possibility and its
realisation remains an historical event.
Managerialism’s suppression of this dimension marks a suppression
of history. But management and Managerialism are two of those sub-
jects with their own negative side and their own dark history. Deleting
and reframing their own history renders both parts of an ideology. The
‘Satanic Mills’ remain the skeletons in the closet of Managerialism’s
own history. Their denial means the denial of a history based on the
brutality of 18th and 19th century factory regimes. The denial of its
bloody history is an academic and political affair. Yet, Managerialism
strongly insists to be non-political. This is exactly the point where
management studies mutate into ideology.
It is the suppression of its own ruthless, harsh, unforgiving, violent,

bloody, and torturous past that is indicative of Managerialism’s
future.481 While Managerialism’s future invokes no qualitative change,
it negates past, present, and future. It is an asphyxiated realm of man-
agerial dialogue in which categories such as human freedom have
become interchangeable and even identical with their opposites.
Managerialism reframes history in an Orwellian fashion repulsing his-
torical realities ideologically to secure its own existence. The horror of
early factory regimes and today’s outsourced sweatshops, the idea of a
post-managerial world with post-managerial living based on environ-
mental sustainability, the preconditions of true, non-money-driven,
and non-media-guided democracy, and the content of human freedom
have been comprehensively annihilated under Managerialism.
If … managerial dictatorships rule and define managerial societies,

if … neo-fascist, militaristic, openly chauvinistic, misogynous, and
authoritarian regimes are functioning as accepted and equal
partners,
if … welfare programmes of enlightened capitalism are successfully
defeated by labelling them as socialism (e.g. US universal health
care), and
if … the foundations of democracy are reduced to a corporate media
spectacle,
then many traditional and historical concepts have been invalidated

by Managerialism’s ideological power and they are in urgent need of
redefinition. But managerial redefinitions are falsifications that –
imposed by the power of Managerialism and the powers of the man-
agerially invented facts – serve to transform Managerialism’s falsehoods
into accepted truths. The language of Managerialism remains a radi-
cally anti-historical language. Managerialism has little room and little
use for historical reasoning. But its fight against its own history is part
of a fight against a dimension of the mind in which centrifugal facul-
ties and forces might develop faculties and forces that may hinder the
relentlessly colonising advancements of Managerialism. While
Managerialism seems to be apprehensive of the subversive contents of
memory, remembrance of the past may give rise to dangerous
insights.482 It can be a mode of dissociation from managerially
invented facts. It can create a mode of mediation which breaks – for
short moments – the omnipresent power of Managerialism’s ideology
that dictates the so-called ‘facts-of-life’. Meanwhile, managerial regimes
130 Managerialism
have changed their shape ever since their invention. 19th century
factory regimes became 20th century administered workplaces, and
these became managerial regimes supported externally by
Managerialism and corporate mass media.
But in personalised events which reappear in the individual memory,
the fears and aspirations of humanity still assert themselves. It is
history which memory preserves. But even this can succumb to today’s
totalitarian power of the behavioural and mind-manipulative powers
of Managerialism.483 The progressing rationality of Managerialism
tends to liquidate the disturbing elements of time and memory. But
critical reflection and recognition of the past and present can still
counteract Managerialism. They militate against ‘The Closing of the
Mind’.484 Such a critical awareness of a past that informs the present
might establish critical counter-managerial discourses and behaviours
leading to a possible development of concepts which might destabilise
or even transcend the closed world of Managerialism. This is the true
power of comprehending Managerialism from an historical perspec-
tive.485 But Managerialism stays clear of its own history and of histor-
ical writings. And it has never produced a great work of historical
significance.486 Its crypto-scholarly academics, consultants, and other
writers on management are kept away from such engagements. As an
example, this has been illustrated in the following way:
James and J. S. Mill wrote books that changed the course of history
while working for the East Indian Company, a multinational
corporation. Today they wouldn’t.
Today they would be attending countless meetings, seminars, and
conferences to update their knowledge of work-related subjects,
all of them conducted in the mind-maiming language of
Managerialism.487
Today, the world of James and J. S. Mill no longer exists even in the pre-
viously non-managerial world of universities. With ‘the industrialisa-
tion of academic work’, Managerialism’s KPI-language has been
enshrined in academics’ ‘individual workload agreements’.488 These are
neither agreements nor individual because all academics are measured
against managerially invented KPIs. This is a pre-set management tool
to manage academics by delegating downwards and having academics
to report upwards.
This sort of performance management measures countless meetings

against research measured in quantitative outputs on a scale that has
become more and more geared towards managerial meetings rather
than intellectual endeavour. The managerial KPI structure for acad-
emics, for example, is set against books but in favour of a fast produc-
tion of academic journal articles measured by numbers. The
enshrined short-termism supports the managerial tool of university
workloads and the managerially driven quasi-academic output. Only
sophisticated tricks, invented numbers, etc. or what an Enron-boss
once called ‘creative accounting’ can bypass academic-managerial
KPIs and allow academic engagement in the tradition of James and
J. S. Mill. For the most part of academic life, Managerialism has suc-
cessfully excluded this from universities in favour of a sheer endless
number of miniscule and often quite senseless journal articles. These
produce ever more facts and figures on the flat planes of human
ignorance.
‘Oh, s/he publishes a lot’, is a standard phrase and praise(!) in acad-
emic life. As a consequence, there has been a marked decline in books.
Most ‘academic’ books are no more than textbooks representing look-
alikes of Cosmopolitan. But it is the quantity – not quality – of journal
articles that counts. These short, highly formatted, and standardised
journal articles are academics’ bread and butter. The output driven
anti-book league has gone so far as to suspect anyone of evil when
publishing a book, even when – preferably – written ‘from within’
rather than ‘about’ management and, of course, excluding
Managerialism.489 The most likely, nevertheless, is the general text-
book. Commonly, it tends to be a-historic or perhaps includes a short
token chapter on the favourable side of management – never
Managerialism. This is done in a one-dimensional and non-critical
way.490
However, confronted by Managerialism, the object of critical
reflection is to develop historical awareness. As such, it is essentially a
value judgement with a rejection of Managerialism as an ideology. Far
from necessitating an indifferent relativism, management studies very
occasionally enter the realm of management history in which the
existence of the working men is largely denied. There are next to no
workers in management and management history. The task of such
history is not a search for truth and falsehood, progress and regression
but to find supportive evidence to prove that management is a univer-
sal and timeless enterprise. A not so atypical statement on the history
of management is, for example,
132 Managerialism
Historically, businesses were defined by what they made. When

photographers rejected Eastman’s innovation, he came close to
losing his company. Then came the insight about value that
changed history … in the annals of business history, few of the
creators of great business models actually set out, with analytic
forethought, to develop anything as abstract as a model.
The very first sentences on management history in Magretta’s manage-

ment book are good examples of how management writers see history
and the role of businessmen because they are defined by what they
made.491 It was not the worker in a 12-hour-day labouring in a dark
and industrial, accident prone factory for less than basic wages who
produced things but a businessman. It comes at no surprise that man-
agement writers go so far as to make claims that Eastman – a single cor-
poration – changed history! Forget the French Revolution – it was
Eastman-Kodak that changed history! But the annals of ‘business
history’ – if such a thing exists at all – are cleansed of the people who
actually carried out industrial labour. We are left with the ‘Great CEO’
as the creator of great business models. This is just ‘one’ example of
how the past is altered in order to suit Managerialism.
In short, only an anti-managerial perspective of management history
can discover the factors which made the facts. They direct our atten-
tion to the reality of human life which established masters and ser-
vants, bosses and workers. They open up the mind to managerially
induced projects that limit thought in order to direct it into a one-
dimensional route while simultaneously eliminating alternatives.
When this critical consciousness speaks, it opens the closed sphere of
managerial dialogue and the asphyxiating ideology of Mana-
gerialism.492 Managerialism’s ideology evokes endlessly the same frozen
predicates that disallow open development. The few distinctively anti-
management and the ‘very’ few anti-Managerialism writings provide
examples of such an unpacking.493
Today, the triumph of the managerial language and the ideology of
Managerialism combined with the power of corporate mass media
have already deleted many words in our vocabulary such as, for
example, bourgeoisie and proletariat as well as general strike and
industrial democracy.494 Our heroes are no longer those who have
achieved universal healthcare, public schooling for all, the eight-hour
day, universal suffrage, human rights, human freedom and liberty, full-
employment, civil rights and so on but TV-celebrities, the Great CEO,
and movie stars.495 In the depoliticised world of corporate mass media
and Managerialism, the bourgeoisie is no longer the subject of manage-

rial progress. It has been replaced by Managerialism itself. Today, liber-
ation, conquest of nature, and the creation of social wealth have
become mere perversions and destructions of these achievements.
Simultaneously, the proletariat no longer carries the attributes of total
oppression and total defeat of oppression.496 Even the very word ‘prole-
tariat’ has been wiped out together with the terms ‘labour’ and
‘worker’. Today, we are mere human resources.
The dialectical relation of opposites has been rendered impossible by
the de-recognition of a subject framed as a non-historical agent whose
identity no longer constitutes itself in and against the historical prac-
tice, in and against a reality that has become increasingly a managerial
reality. Yet critical discourse still develops and states the conflict
between a thing and its function but this conflict no longer finds lin-
guistic expression in sentences which ideologically eclipse contradic-
tions. The conceptual counterpart to a managerial reality has been
destroyed by Managerialism. Managerialism’s all-Orwellian language
has annihilated contradictions in favour of one-dimensionality.
Contradictions are no longer demonstrated, made explicit, explained,
and denounced. This is illustrated through a contrast between two lan-
guages by referring to the style of the oppressed versus the style of
Managerialism as broadcasted by corporate mass media.497
However, the non-critical and non-cognitive ‘qualities’ of the man-
agerial language can be detected. They can be found – albeit only
through a non-managerial mode of critical reflection – in the speeches
of management leaders, CEOs, corporate PR, and a highly supportive
and submissive business press. All of them largely refrain from a crit-
ique of Managerialism, barely mentioning the word. If they do crit-
icise, it is a fig-leaf sort of critique that comes from within and is
designed as a system corrective that enhances Managerialism. It is
always a critique ‘from within’ and never ‘about’ Managerialism. The
language has succumbed to the hypnotic ritual of Managerialism that
contains its present-day formulations.498
However, the managerial ritualism of corporate communication is
more damaging where it infiltrates critical-dialectical language itself.499
The requirements of competitive Managerialism under a total subjection
of individuals to a managerial apparatus appear in the transformation
of language into an authoritarian language. These requirements – as
interpreted by management leadership which controls the managerial
apparatus – define what is right and wrong, true and false. They leave
no time and no space for a discussion which would project disruptive
134 Managerialism
non-managerial or – even worse – anti-managerial alternatives. Today’s

managerial language no longer lends itself to ‘discourse’ at all. It has
been replaced by managerial communication of delegating downward
and reporting upward. By virtue of managerial power, it pronounces its
own facts in self-validating articulations. The cybernetic self-stabilising
system of managerial language does not demonstrate and explain.
Instead, it orders, delegates, and commands (Fayol) by communicating
managerial decisions, paradigms, invented acts, corporate policies,
dicta, orders, and top-down instructions. Where it defines, these
definitions become separations of good from evil presented as value-
free while being deeply prescriptive. The managerial language of
corporate policies, for example, establishes unquestionable values on
rights and wrongs. Simultaneously, it claims to be value-free.
The language of Managerialism moves in tautologies but they are ter-
ribly effective. They pass judgement in a prejudged form while also
pronouncing condemnation. For example, the content that defines
terms such as ‘trouble-maker’ is that of the penal code which in today’s
HRM-language is called disciplinary action, behaviour modification,
and more directly MBF = management by fear. HRM-language repre-
sents self-validation that promotes a specific managerial attitude. It is
the language of managerial power (factual) but also the language of
Managerialism (ideological). The growth of both and of managerial
societies as such condemns any emancipatory opposition. The lan-
guage which tries to recall and preserve the original truth has been
made to appear as a ‘ritualisation’. And counter-managerial actions
have also been converted into mere rituals that habitually reject non-
managerial behaviours and emancipatory ideas such as, for example,
industrial democracy. These ideas have been converted into hollow for-
mulas before ceasing to exist altogether. With their linguistic death,
these emancipatory concepts pass away and – in a subsequent step –
can be deleted from the consciousness of the public. This marks yet
another triumph of Managerialism and corporate mass media.
Proletariat, general strike, industrial democracy, council democracy,
syndicalism, revolt, and revolution no longer exist. Direct control from
below by the people for the people interferes with Managerialism while
emancipatory ideals can no longer fight against management because
both have merged into one paradigm supported by an ideology that
tells us that we can never live without management.500 In an ideolo-
gical coup d’etat management has been made ‘the’ symbol of progress,
modernity, Enlightenment, and even emancipation.501 Any challenge
to the ‘management-equals-progress’ ideology would weaken the
efficacy of the whole. No-one opposes the concepts of Managerialism

that have asphyxiated society inside an a-historical non-continuum
relinquishing the need to develop forward-looking models. Future
social, economical, and global pathologies, the effects of environmen-
tal destruction, resource depletions, peak-oil, etc. are projected into
nowhere vanishing from the radar of Managerialism. Managerialism
blocks the much needed dialectic of past-present-future. The ritualised
authoritarian language of Managerialism has spread over the contem-
porary world through the non- if not anti-democratic means of corpo-
rate mass media. It is Managerialism broadcasted by corporate mass
media that shapes our image of the world, science, society, and
democracy.
8
Shaping Science – Shaping
Democracy
In the orbit of Managerialism, there is virtually no society left that

remains unaffected by its authoritarian ideology. The substance of the
various alternatives for post-managerial living no longer constitutes alter-
native modes of life. What society is left with are the anti-alternative
models and techniques of managerial manipulation and control.
Everyday language has been colonised by Managerialism readily
reflecting its ideology so that language itself has become an instrument
of control even where it does not transmit direct orders but informa-
tion. It demands obedience and choice, submission and freedom.
While in the critical mind these represent contradictions that cancel
each other out, for Managerialism they are unities. Managerialism’s
language controls by reducing linguistic forms and symbols of
reflection, abstraction, development, critique, Adorno’s Mündikeit, and
contradiction. It substitutes critical concepts with idyllic, romantic,
material, comfortable, and calming images and denies, negates, and
absorbs transcendent vocabularies. It does not search for real truth but
establishes and imposes its version of truth while simultaneously
declaring alternatives as falsehoods. But this kind of language use is
not pure linguistic terrorism. It seems unwarranted to assume that all
recipients believe or are made to believe what they are being told. The
true power of the magical, hypnotising and ritual language of
Managerialism is:
People do not believe it and do not care, and yet act accordingly.
Many do not necessarily believe Managerialism’s statements but

Managerialism justifies itself in managerial action, in getting the job
136
Shaping Science – Shaping Democracy 137
done, in selling and buying, and in refusing to listen to others. The

language of Managerialism has become the language of advertising.
Thereby, it bridges the gap between two formerly very different realms
of the pre-managerial society. While 20th century capitalism had been
defined by Fordist arrangements, i.e. manufacturing, strong unions and
employers, and state involvement, 21st century managerial capitalism
has eliminated, diminished, isolated, and marginalised trade union
power and reduced the state to a neo-liberal nightwatch state while
simultaneously becoming more involved in ideologies such as
Managerialism. This seems to express the degree to which domination
and Managerialism have ceased to be separate and independent func-
tions. But it does not mean that the power of professional managers
decreases – on the contrary, it accelerates. The more global the chal-
lenge they build up in order to meet it, the more normal environmen-
tal destruction becomes; the closer and the more real global warming
becomes, the greater the power of Managerialism.
Managerial domination has long been incorporated into the daily
performances and relaxation of citizens. The symbols of politics are
those of business, commerce, and Managerialism. The vicissitudes and
mutations of managerial language are paralleled in the vicissitudes and
mutations of political language and behaviour. In the sale of equip-
ment for relaxing entertainment, in the television show of competing
candidates for a washing-machine or democratic leadership, the merger
between politics, Managerialism, and fun has been completed. But this
merger remains fragile, fraudulent, and perhaps fatally premature.
Managerialism and the relentless promotion of fun-culture have not
yet completed the politics of total domination. It represents only an
outer layer of the managerial realm in which everyone is trained to
target and to translate the negative into the positive so that individuals
can continue to function – albeit depressed – but physically fit and
reasonably well.
Institutions such as free speech and freedom of thought do no longer
shackle the ideological coordination of managerial reality. What is
taking place is a sweeping redefinition of thought itself, of its function,
and content. The coordination of individual behaviours within man-
agerial societies reaches into the most intimate layers of the mind
where they become reality.502 These concepts are taken from an intel-
lectual tradition but they are translated into managerial terms. It is a
translation which has the effect of reducing the tension between crit-
ical thought and Managerialism by weakening the negative power of
thought. And this is also a philosophical development.
138 Managerialism
Philosophical concepts can be taken to designate a mental represen-

tation of something that is understood, comprehended, or known as
the result of a process of reflection. This same thing may be an object
of daily practice, a situation, Managerialism, or even a literary novel. In
any case, if these concepts are comprehended [begriffen und auf ihren
Begriff gebracht, Hegel], they have become objects of thought. As such,
their content and meaning is identical with and yet different from the
real objects of immediate experience. Identity and concepts can denote
the same thing. Different views are results of reflections that have
understood a thing in the context and in the light of other things.
They do not have to appear in the immediate experience but are
explained in the form of mediation. A concept never denotes one par-
ticular concrete thing. It is always abstract and general. This is so
because concepts comprehend more than a particular thing, namely a
universal condition or relation which is essential to the particular
thing. This determines the form in which it appears as a concrete
object of experience. If concepts of concrete things are products of
mental classification, organisation, and abstraction, then these mental
processes lead to comprehension only inasmuch as they reconstitute
the particular thing in its universal condition and relation.
Similarly, all cognitive concepts also have a transitive meaning. They
go beyond descriptive references of particular facts. If such facts are
those of a managerial society, for example, these cognitive concepts
also reach beyond such a particular – managerial – context. They reach
into the processes and conditions on which such a managerial society
is based. They even enter into those facts and ideologies that make up,
constitute, sustain, and potentially destroy the managerial society. By
virtue of their reference to such an historical totality, cognitive con-
cepts always transcend managerial contexts. But such transcendence
remains empirical because it renders facts recognisable as what they are
in reality. The excess of meaning over and above managerial concepts
illuminates the conceptual limitations of managerial ideology. It chal-
lenges the deceptive form in which managerial facts are allowed to be
experienced. Therefore there are tensions, discrepancies, and conflicts
between managerial concepts and the immediate fact of a thing. These
are conflicts between words referring to concepts and those referring to
things. Therefore, the notion of reality is that of an historical and uni-
versal reality.
The uncritical and accommodating character of managerial modes of
thought that treat concepts as mere mental devices and translate uni-
versal concepts into mere particularities of Managerialism can be chal-
lenged. Where these reductive concepts govern an analysis of human

reality, they arrive at a false concreteness that is isolated from those
conditions that constitute its reality. In this context, the critical treat-
ment of the managerial concept assumes a political function.
Individuals and their behaviours are analysed in the sense of their
adjustments to the parameters of Managerialism. While Managerialism
emphasises that thought and expression, theory, and practice are
‘brought in line’ [gleicheschaltet503] with facts of their existence, this can
never occur without leaving room for a conceptual critique of these
facts. The political and ideological character of managerial concepts
shows forth most clearly when conceptual thoughts have been
methodically confined to the service of controlling and improving
existing managerial conditions. As much as Managerialism seeks to
establish this, it can never be fully accomplished within the framework
of existing managerial institutions and its entourage of ‘willing execu-
tors’ inside and outside of management studies.
If today’s given format of Managerialism is and remains the ultimate
frame of reference for theory and practice, there is something inher-
ently wrong with present organisational psychology, organisational
behaviour, HRM, management studies, and the present organisation of
science as a whole.504 As a consequence, science under the supervision
of Managerialism has become more inhumane and more managerial.
Today, to have good labour-management relations rather than bad
ones, to have pleasant rather than unpleasant working conditions, and
to have harmony instead of conflict between environmentally sustain-
able living and the growth-paradigm of Managerialism is presented as
human advancement.505 In its final consequence, all this marks a lethal
‘rationality of irrationality’ outlined in Bauman’s masterpiece Modernity
and the Holocaust.506 But ‘(ir)-rationalities’ of this kind of managerial
‘science’ appear in a different light if a given managerial society
becomes an object of critical theory.507
Critical theory aims at the very structure of the managerial society as
represented in all its particular facts and conditions that determine the
latter’s place and function. Managerialism’s ideological and political
character becomes apparent, and the elaboration of adequate cognitive
concepts demands going beyond the fallacious concreteness of pos-
itivist empiricism.508 Managerial concepts become false to the extent to
which they insulate and atomise facts, stabilise them within a repres-
sive whole and accept the terms of this whole as the terms of their
analysis. The methodological translation of the universal into the par-
ticularities of Managerialism becomes a repressive reduction of
140 Managerialism
thought.509 Just one beloved, often rehearsed, famous example of man-

agement studies, HRM, and organisational psychology illuminates this:
the study of the much celebrated Hawthorne Works of the Western
Electric Company.510 It is an old study conducted close to a century ago
but it still carries value even though research methods have since been
much refined. The Servants of Power have perfected their ideological
tools. But the substance and function have remained the same.511
Moreover, this mode of thought has since then infiltrated other
branches of scholarly activities and entered even into philosophy. But
it has also assisted in shaping and manipulating human beings –
reframed as human resources – with whom it was – apart from the
efficiency of managerial regimes – initially concerned. The managerial
concepts in this study determined the methods of improved manager-
ial control. They became part of management studies and of almost
any corporate ‘HRM-department’ in order to pacify workers and elimi-
nate their organisations. In the words of a worker (p. 223),512
the management couldn’t stop us on the picket line. They couldn’t

stop us by straight-arm tactics and so they have been studying
human relations in the managerial and political need to find out
how to stop unions.
‘Hawthorne’ starts with investigating worker complaints about working

conditions and wages, when researchers hit upon the fact that most of
these complaints were formulated in statements which contained
‘vague, indefinite terms’. They lacked objective reference to standards
which are generally accepted in management studies and had charac-
teristics essentially different from the properties generally associated
with managerial facts.513 In other words, the complaints were formu-
lated as general statements such as ‘washrooms are unsanitary’, jobs
are ‘dangerous’, and ‘pay rates are too low’. Guided by the rules of
managerial thinking, researchers set out to translate and reformulate
these assertions in such a manner that their vague generality could be
reduced to particular references. These are terms designating a particu-
lar situation in which a complaint originated and thus accurately pic-
turing conditions in the ‘Hawthorne’ company.
As a result, the general form had been dissolved into specific state-
ments identifying particular operations and conditions from which a
complaint originated. Such a complaint was taken care of by changing
these particular operations and conditions. For example, a statement
like ‘washrooms are unsanitary’ was converted into ‘on such and such
occasion, I went into this washroom, and the washbowl had some dirt
in it’. The managerial inquiries consequently ascertained that this was
largely because of the carelessness of some employees. As a remedy, a
campaign against throwing papers, spitting on floors, and comparable
practices was instituted. An attendant was assigned to oversee wash-
rooms. These examples show how most complaints were re-interpreted
and used to introduce improvements.
Another example: a worker, ‘Joe’, made a general statement that
piece rates on his job are too low. The interview reveals that his wife
was in hospital and that he was worried about medical bills his family
had incurred. In Joe’s case the latent content of a complaint consisted
of the fact that Joe’s present earnings were insufficient to meet his
recent financial commitments – because of his wife’s illness. Such
translation changes the meaning of the actual proposition
significantly. The un-translated and non-manipulated statement
formulates a general condition in its concrete generality: ‘wages are too
low!’ It goes beyond any particular condition, any specific factory, and
beyond any worker’s particular case. In its original generality the ori-
ginal statement expressed a sweeping indictment which took a particular
case as a manifestation of a universal state of affairs. It suggests that the
latter might not be changed by the improvement of the former. The
un-translated and non-manipulated statement established a concrete
relation between a particular case and the whole. It is this whole that
includes the conditions outside of any respective job, outside of any
respective plant, and outside of any respective personal situation.
The universal character of workers’ statements is comprehensively
eliminated in the translation executed by managerial researchers. This
operation makes a managerial, therapeutic, if not cosmetic, treatment
possible leaving the more fundamental pathologies of managerial
regimes untouched. Workers remain utterly unaware of these
processes.514 For them, their complaints may indeed have that particu-
lar and personal meaning. But the non-managerial language workers
use asserts its objective validity against the reality of managerial
regimes and even against the reformulated results of managerial
research. In their originality, they express conditions as they are. The
concreteness of the particular case which was translated by The
Servants of Power achieved its pre-designed result in a series of abstrac-
tions, thereby destroying the real concreteness and universal character
of the case.
This linguistic conversion by so-called management scientists, HRM
experts, and organisational psychologists relates general statements to
142 Managerialism
personal experiences of workers who made them. It individualises

statements on the collective of workers made by workers. It annihilates
the collective and class of working people. But is it necessary to point
out that, in this sort of crypto-scientific, supposedly value-neutral, and
objective translations and manipulations, the managerial researcher
merely follows the process of managerial research as defined by the
ideology of Managerialism.
The asphyxiation and individualisation of work experiences inside
managerial regimes are not workers’ doing. They remain the task of
managerial researchers not to think critically in terms of critical theory,
but to train management and workers in the ways and means of
Managerialism. It is this sort of managerial training that places high
currency on effective methods of dealing with human resources.515
While appearing technical yet warranting analysis, the ‘human’ in
human resource has been converted into an object of power under
Managerialism that focuses on ‘resource’ rather than on ‘human’. But
for ideological reasons the prefix ‘human’ is still needed in order to
maintain the irrational belief-system of ‘good – i.e. human – manage-
ment’ among people in and outside of management studies. The man-
agerial-ideological mode of thought and research has also been
colonising other dimensions of the intellectual community. In this
context, ‘functionalisation’ – the conversion of individuals into func-
tions – has effects reaching far beyond managerial regimes. Once the
personal discontent is isolated from the general unhappiness and uni-
versal concepts that work against the ‘functionalisation’ of human
beings have been made to evaporate into particularistic references,
such cases become treatable. They become manageable under the ideo-
logical parameters set by Managerialism.
The above outlined case represents more than just ‘a’ case. It is one
of Managerialism’s prime ideological textbook instruments to exem-
plify the system-integrative powers of Managerialism.516 Reframed to
mirror Managerialism, the case shows how to portray universal state-
ments as personalised incidents of a non-universal mode of thought,
thereby dispensing with all universals. But the truth remains in the
original meaning of the non-ideological and un-translated statements,
different from Managerialism’s version. The goal of managerial ideo-
logy is to personalise and privatise genuine and universal claims of
workers. Private affairs have been misused to solve class problems.
Medical bills have been used to negate the fact that wages are too low.
The end result is to make workers believe that that there is nothing
wrong with managerial capitalism. Workers, or better human
resources, should realise that the whole affair was caused by individual
personal hardship and that this was part of ‘his’ personal situation –
not managerial capitalism. But such individualised situations, as indi-
vidual as they may be, are similar to many other individual situations.
Yet the real beauty of Managerialism’s ideology of individualism is that
it remains individualised even though multiple and standard examples
are played out daily. In that way, ‘Joe’s case’ has been subsumed under
that of a personal hardship case. Workers as members of a class have
ceased to exist. Managerialism has successfully converted them into
‘the’ employee with personal problems employed by the Hawthorne
plant.
Nonetheless, ideologically trained authors of management studies
are well aware of the implication of what they have achieved. One of
the fundamental functions to be performed in managerial organisa-
tions is that of Human Resource Management. Its job requires that, in
dealing with human resources, one must be thinking of what is on
some particular employee’s mind in terms of a human resource ‘that’
has had a particular personal and individual history. HRM thinks in
terms of a human resource whose job is in some particular place – for
example a factory – that brings ‘it’ into association with a particular
person or groups of people. A pretended individualisation of standard
work arrangements in standard managerial regimes is part of HRM. In
line with their management training and the ideology of individual-
ism, HR managers tend to reject what is on workers’ minds in general
just as they reject collective ideas and collectivism as such.
Meanwhile in reality, one can take the statement ‘wages are too low’
at face value, leaving aside the problem of verification. The subject of
the proposition is wages, not the particular remuneration of a particu-
lar worker on a particular job. Joe who made the statement might only
think of his individual experience but, in the form he makes his state-
ment, he transcends his individual experience. The predicate ‘too low’
is a relational adjective. It requires a reference point that is not desig-
nated in his proposition: ‘too low for whom or for what?’ This refer-
ence point might again be an individual who made the original
statement. The general noun ‘wages’ carries the entire movement of
thought. This is expressed by making the other propositional elements
part of a general character. The reference point remains indeterminate:
‘too low, in general’ and ‘too low for everyone who is a wage-earner
like the speaker’. The proposition is abstract. It refers to universal con-
ditions for which no particular case needs to be substituted. Its
meaning remains transitive and set against an individual case. Its
144 Managerialism
general proposition calls indeed for a translation into a more concrete

context, but one in which the universal concepts are not defined by a
particular set of operations such as, for example, the personal history
of worker A and his special function in plant B. The concept ‘wages’
refers to wage-earners in general. However, under managerial concepts
such as performance management and performance-related-pay, uni-
versal concepts have been individualised. Simultaneously, the class
character of wages has been ideologically removed. It represents an
unjustified amputation because wages remain fundamental to employ-
ment relationships. To eliminate this, Managerialism is eager to inte-
grate workers’ personal histories and special job-assignments into the
managerial approach.
Furthermore, Joe’s present earnings, due to his wife’s illness, are
claimed to be insufficient to meet ‘his’ current obligations. Note that in
this translation the subject has been shifted. The universal concept of
wages has been replaced with ‘Joe’s present earnings’, the meaning of
which is fully defined by the particular set of operations Joe has to
perform in order to buy food, clothing, housing, medicine, etc. for his
family. The transitiveness of meaning has been abolished. The class of
wage-earners has been made to evaporate together with the subject of
wages. What remains is a particular case that has been stripped of its
transitive meaning. It becomes susceptible to accepted managerial stan-
dards. What is wrong with it? – Nothing. The translation of concepts
and propositions as a whole is validated by Managerialism to which
organisational researchers address themselves. Managerialism’s ideo-
logy works because the pathologies it creates are externalised. States,
civil society, and increasingly families have been made to bear a con-
siderable part of the costs. This is because they have been made willing
to do so through Managerialism flanked by corporate mass media.
The universal concepts that appeared in the original and un-
translated complaint are made to appear as remnants of the past. Their
persistence in speech and thought where indicated obstructs the ways
to see work from the perspective of Managerialism. Insofar as HRM and
organisational psychology have contributed to alleviating the worst
excesses of subhuman conditions, they have been part of progress. But
they also testify to the ambivalent rationality of managerial progress
satisfying its repressive power and repressive fulfilments. The elimina-
tion of transitive meaning has remained a feature of managerial-
empirical research conducted under the supervision of Managerialism.517
This characterises a large number of so-called empirical and value-
neutral management studies designed to fulfil an ideological function
in the interest of the prevailing order. The result is that, in managerial

terms, access to critical meaning has been abolished. The investigation
is asphyxiated within the confinements of Managerialism in which
management (factually) and management studies (conceptually) vali-
date their propositions. By virtue of its methodology, the empirical has
become ideological.518
The same logic is used in transferring managerial regimes to the
spheres of civil society and democracy. Even though managerial regimes
remain staunch exclusion zones for democracy, Managerialism still has
a profound impact on democracy and democratic society which have
been neatly separated from managerial regimes so that the important
area remains a democracy free zone. Meanwhile, in the democratic
sphere, judgements imply evaluation of, for example, an election
process. This is done in terms of the requirements for maintaining
democratic albeit managerial societies. This in turn requires a definition
of democratic sets of choices between two alternative definitions: the
‘mandate’ versus the ‘competitive’ model of democracy.519
Mandate theories, which find their origin in the classical concep-
tions of democracy, postulate that the process of representation derives
from a clear-cut set of directives which the electorate imposes on its
representatives. An election is a procedure of convenience and a
method for insuring that representatives comply with directives from
constituents. Today, this preconception has been rejected as unrealistic
because it assumed a level of articulated opinion on the campaign
issues not likely to be found. This rather frank statement of fact is
somehow alleviated by the comforting doubt on whether such a level
of articulated opinion has existed in any democratic electorate since
the extension of the franchise in the 19th century.
In contrast, the competitive theory of democracy assumes that a
democratic election is a process of selecting and rejecting candidates
who are in competition for public office. This definition – in order to
mirror the prevailing ideology of Managerialism – requires criteria by
which the character of political competition is to be assessed. Political
competition can produce a process of consent but it can also produce a
process of manipulation. A set of four criteria has been offered:
1. A democratic election requires competition between opposing can-

didates which pervades the entire constituency.
2. The electorate derives power from its ability to choose between at
least two competitively oriented candidates, either of whom is
believed to have a reasonable chance to win.
146 Managerialism
3. A democratic election requires parties to engage in a balance of

efforts to maintain established voting blocs, to recruit independent
voters, and to gain converts from the opposition parties. A democra-
tic election requires parties to be engaged vigorously in an effort to
win an election.
4. But, win or lose, political parties must also be seeking to enhance
their chances of success in the next and subsequent elections.
These definitions describe pretty accurately the factual state of affairs

in many democracies. The criteria for judging a given state of affairs
are those offered by the given state of affairs. The analysis is asphyxi-
ated. The range of judgement is confined ‘within’ a context of facts
which excludes judging the context in which the facts are made as
these are man-made facts inside which meaning, function, and devel-
opment are determined.520 These sorts of investigations become circu-
lar and self-validating, lacking any critical content. If democracy is
defined in the limiting – but rather realistic – terms of an actual process
of elections, then this process is democratic prior to the results of the
investigation. To be sure, frameworks based on managerial thinking
still allow and even call for distinctions between consent and manipu-
lation. Elections can be more or less democratic according to the ascer-
tained degree of consent and manipulation.
It would be a grave error to overlook Managerialism’s ideological
power to create consent and to deny its manipulative pressures.521
Beyond this hardly illuminating statement an analysis inside these
confinements remains possible by asking whether consent itself is the
work of skilful and sophisticated manipulation.522 The actual state of
affairs of managerial societies and managerial capitalism provides
ample justification for this. Again, an analysis must raise this in tran-
scending terms towards transitive meaning of concepts of democracy
that reveal the level of manipulation in present democracies. It is pre-
cisely such a concept that remains most realistic because it does not
define democracy as a clear-cut control of representation by an elec-
torate. And this concept is by no means inappropriate. It is in no way a
figment of the imagination and speculation. Instead it allows three
things to occur:
(i) it defines the historical intent of democracy;

(ii) it includes conditions upon which struggles for democracy were
fought; and
(iii) it explains why, in Habermas’ terms, democracy remains an

unfinished project of modernity.523
Moreover, this concept is impeccable in its semantic exactness because

it means exactly what it says. This model (i–iii) resembles a real elec-
torate imposing political directives on representatives (mandate model)
rather than representatives imposing their ‘will to power’ (Nietzsche)
on an electorate which then selects and re-elects them (competitive
model). An autonomous and free electorate – free from indoctrination,
colonisation, and ideological manipulation – might indeed be on
a level of articulate opinion.524 Therefore, the concept ‘mandate-
democracy’ is rejected as unrealistic by Managerialism. It has to be if
one accepts the factuality of Managerialism’s ideology that has
‘colonised the lifeworld’ (Habermas) as described in valid criteria of
sociological analysis. Under Managerialism colonisation, infiltration,
indoctrination, and manipulation have reached a stage where manage-
rially guided mass opinion has reached a level of massive falsehood.525
It increasingly fulfils Adorno’s dictum ‘there can be no way of living a
false life correctly’. Today, this is the actual state of affairs in manager-
ial societies but Managerialism has made sure that it is no longer
recognised as such. As a consequence, any analysis which is method-
ologically committed to reject transitive concepts commits itself to a
false consciousness as expressed in Adorno’s words. In its final stage, it
becomes ideological presenting ever more empirical details to create an
aura of science.
Not too many authors are even aware of this. The combination of
empiricism and ideological inflexibility has serious implications in
assessing the degree of democratic consent. Indeed, this is consent not
so much to political candidates and their policies but to the overall
ideological theme of Managerialism. But this is not enough because as
a consequence, consent to Managerialism has become a democratic
process. Hence, consent as engineered by Managerialism has to be
assessed in the light of critical theory. This needs to be a four-stage
assessment in terms of the content of Managerialism, its objectives, its
values, and its ideology. These steps involve transitiveness of meaning.
However, the stepping stones of such an assessment need to reach
beyond the belief-system that democracy is nothing more than an
effectively organised competition between a few political parties.
Under Managerialism, league tables showing electoral and polling
results present results of ideologically induced so-called ‘public’ orien-
tations.526 They show the degrees of public compliance to managerial
148 Managerialism
ideologies and the level to which Managerialism has successfully neu-

tralised most, if not all, critical and anti-managerial opinions.
In Managerialism’s system of democracy, established parties, their
policies, and their system-integrative and system-stabilising party
machines are never questioned. Furthermore, the pretended political
difference between these parties remains unquestioned as far as the
single most vital issue – relentless, unchallenged, and unquestioned
support for managerial capitalism – is concerned. Inside the manager-
ial-ideological framework, questions that seem essential for an assess-
ment of the true state of democratic processes are avoided. Such a
circular system-conforming analysis operates with concepts of demo-
cracy that empirically assemble detailed features of an established form
of democracy without creating much meaning. But for Managerialism,
democracy has never remained imperative. Instead, stability, pre-
dictability, command, mass-support, control (Fayol’s ‘contrôler’), and
efficiency remain imperatives. These managerial principles are seam-
lessly applied to democracy – just as Managerialism demands.
Nevertheless, the managerial-competitive concept remains inade-
quate to the subject matter at hand because it is unable to highlight
the qualities that distinguish democratic and non-democratic systems.
Efficiency, for example, works in and for both, rendering ‘democracy-
vs.-non-democracy’ meaningless. But for Managerialism, it is not
democracy that is relevant but an efficient management of the social
affairs of managerial capitalism. Efficiency is also not sufficient if the
task of a theoretical analysis of democracy is to be more than a descrip-
tive one. If the mission is to comprehend and recognise the facts of
democracy for what they are and what they really mean, then
Managerialism’s efficiency measure is grossly inefficient. In any social
theory, recognition of facts must include a critique of facts according
to the Kantian dictum that in modernity everything must be exposed
to critique based on his trilogy of critiques: ‘Critique of Pure Reason’,
‘The Critique of Practical Reason’, and ‘Critique of Judgement’.527
Apart from being strongly non-critical, and this is not only in the
philosophical understanding of the word, concepts such as efficiency
are not even useful to sufficiently describe facts. Under positivism and
empiricism that remain dominant in management and social science,
they only ascertain certain aspects and segments of facts while never
examining the factors behind the facts that created those facts in the
first place.528 They are strictly anti-reflective of the whole. Instead, they
compartmentalise, shelf, and dissect democracy into minute descrip-
tive entities and thereby their empirical character becomes deeply
ideological. Certainly, Managerialism has numerous channels of possible

influence on legislators and government officials. This can be and has
been measured as a distance between people and institutions that exist
inside managerial societies. They all have detached the voting popula-
tion from democracy.
Managerial capitalism and the lobbying agencies of Managerialism
have introduced several institutions that bring additional stability to
democracy over and above Managerialism’s steering capacities.529
These institutions have significantly increased the security of desirable
and predictable outcomes.530 Democracy under conditions of
Managerialism depends much less on the insecurity of changing voting
behaviours because many previously existing risks have already been
successfully eliminated by Managerialism aligned to corporate mass
media. Today’s democratic structures are designed to be complex
(voting, polling institutions, think-tanks, electoral systems, political
party structures, corporate mass media, upper and lower houses, corpo-
rate lobbying, parliamentarian systems, executive, legislative, judiciary,
debating rules in parliaments, etc.). All of these are distancing institu-
tions between a voting public and ‘what comes out at the other end’.
Significantly, none of the key institutions of democracy is usually
labelled ‘Managerialism’ with perhaps ‘lobbyists’ being the most
‘direct’ access of Managerialism to democracy. Managerialism is not an
institution; it has no form, no central committee, and no leader. It
operates in stealth, by ideology, and remains dangerous. Nevertheless,
or better because of this, Managerialism has an overwhelming but
‘indirect’ access to influence and manipulate the democratic process.
There are many elements in the ‘people-vote-lawmaking-people’ chain
that provide security for pro-managerial outcomes.
For Managerialism, this also separates an ever declining number of
people who are relatively active in relation to political issues from
those who are relatively inactive (increasing). The de facto elimination
of substantial sections of a voting population from direct participation
in the democratic progress is a decisive element for opening up space
to be filled by institutions and ideologies operative in managerial soci-
eties, namely Managerialism in the form of corporation-government
links.531 Meanwhile the politically inactive sections of society are
exposed to the dissemination of so-called un-political but opinion-
shaping information. Information is skilfully mixed with entertain-
ment to create infotainment.532 Infotainment serves the depoliticised
mind as it does no longer take account of different political and eco-
nomic ideas other than those of Managerialism. This marks the
150 Managerialism
triumph of corporate mass media and Managerialism’s lobbying organ-

isations that have successfully colonised public issues.533
By virtue of this colonisation, the managerial injunction is designed
to work against transitive concepts which might show the facts in their
true light and call them by their true name. That this remains the case
is powerfully supported – in democracy as in managerial regimes –
through rafts of uncritical academics that have been conditioned to
view the world from inside the box that Managerialism has established
for them.534 It provides a secure and thought-limiting frame of refer-
ence. Meanwhile, the positivist and descriptive analysis of so-called
facts blocks any critical comprehension of facts. Thereby, it becomes
an element of the ideology of Managerialism that invents and sustains
these facts. Proclaiming the existing managerial reality as its own
norm, management studies, for example, fortify in the individuals a
faithless faith, a belief in the inevitability of managerial capitalism – a
deeply fatalistic and deterministic notion. This has turned them into
instruments that serve Managerialism. It is what British philosopher
Zygmunt Bauman called ‘soliciting the co-operation of the victims’.535 It
worked with the Judenrat, it works in corporations, and it works in
society in general. This model of behaviour submits to the overwhelm-
ing power of Managerialism. To make all this work for Managerialism
is the task of management studies that have become somewhat of an
ideological, indispensable, and ever-growing ‘base-institution’ of
Managerialism.
9
Management Studies
In traditions of Western thought, the idea of reason remains the core

concept guiding formal and managerial logic, research, and teaching in
management studies. Inside this, an antagonistic structure of reality
and thought were to become reality if managerial ideology was not to
eclipse the true state of affairs. The managerial world is a world of
direct, immediate, and non-reflected experience in which managerial
regimes, Managerialism, semi-academic and quasi-scholarly subjects
such as management studies exist. According to the prevailing ideology
of Managerialism, the reality of managerial regimes must never be fully
comprehended, transformed, or even subverted. The managerial order
is to remain the only reality there is. Hence, management studies’
guiding principle is the equation of
Reason = Truth = Reality.
It is value-neutral, objective, and avoids joining the subjective and

objective worlds into one antagonistic unity. Managerial reasoning
remains un-reflected reasoning deprived of all its original critical
content as outlined in Kantian Enlightenment.536 Its emancipatory
powers have deliberately been annihilated so that critical reason has
no longer any transformative powers. The power of the negative no
longer establishes theoretical, practical, and ethical reasoning. The
truth of human beings and things has been eliminated in management
studies in favour of finding ever new ways to manage better, more
efficient, and for greater profits. This is the condition in which human-
beings/human-resources become manageable. Attempts to demonstrate
the non-managerial truth in theory as in practice are not a purely sub-
jective but an objective condition. Management studies make no
151
152 Managerialism
account of this. This was the original concern of Western thought and
the origin of its logic. The new logic does not operate in the sense of a
special discipline of philosophy but as a critical mode of thought
appropriate for comprehending reality. Management studies have suc-
cessfully distanced themselves from this. In the totalitarian sphere of
positivistic, managerial, and empirical research, management studies
might just represent one of the latest pathological mutations of the
idea of pure reason that died long ago.537
Several stages in the development of the idea of pure managerial
reasoning inside a process by which logic became the logic of managerial
domination can be identified. Such an analysis of the ideological
content of management studies contributes to the understanding of
managerial reality by focusing on Managerialism’s union of ideology
and practice. Management studies have all but relinquished the philo-
sophical concept of theory in favour of practice and practical applica-
tions.538 As a consequence, management studies gives high currency to
practical, ‘real life’, and ‘real world’ solutions in its propagandistic text-
books.539 The field is largely defined by theory-free textbooks rather
than theoretical and non-theoretical books, by journal-science, and
practical conference papers. Often, theory means no more than associ-
ating names of authors and inventors with so-called key management
concepts.540 This is, of course, not only an anti-theoretical project but
also one that eliminates history so that historical processes become
invisible. The process no longer shows an unfolding of theoretical, his-
torical, critical, and practical reason. The historically and theoretically
closed managerial realm depicts a terrifying harmony of freedom and
oppression, productivity and destruction, growth and regression. It is a
pre-designed version of reason without being an historical project.
Meanwhile, management studies, as well as their predecessor of eco-
nomics, share certain basic assumptions of human behaviour expressed
as continuities. Within this continuum, different modes of thought
once clashed with each other even though today’s management studies
have placed a ‘veil of ignorance’ over them. Nonetheless, they once
belonged to different ways of apprehending, organising, and changing
society and nature.541
Historically, the destabilising tendencies of conflicts and the subver-
sive elements of critical reason started to clash with the power of pos-
itive thinking and positivism even ‘before’ management studies were
born. This development ended when the pathological-ideological
achievements of Managerialism triumphed over all contradiction. Such
conflicts date back to the origins of philosophical thought. They found
Management Studies 153
striking expressions through contrasting ‘dialectical’ from ‘formal’

logic. In classical Greek philosophy, reason was a cognitive faculty dis-
tinguishing ‘what is true’ from ‘what is false’. In management studies
this is no longer the case. In their original conception truth and false-
hood were primarily a condition of being and of reality. Only on these
grounds properties of propositions are to be made. True discourse
reveals and expresses the value of reality as distinguished from appear-
ance. In the world of management studies, the appearance of being
scientific has value in-itself (Kant) because management studies appear
as a value-free, objective, and engineering-like science. As a conse-
quence, truth is rendered irrelevant while everything supporting ‘The
Real Bottom Line’ has become highly relevant as profits are better than
no profits.542 The latter is not simply nothing. It is potentiality a threat
to management containing destructive elements which management
studies use inside their preferred mode of thinking inside system
theory so that cybernetic self-adjustments lead to an improved Real
Bottom Line.543
It is not a struggle for truth. It is a struggle against destruction. Truth
has been eliminated from managerial equations. The task is to prevent
efforts that appear to be destructive to the established managerial
reality. In philosophy meanwhile, it is a struggle for truth that saves
reality from destruction. Truth commits and engages human existence.
It is essentially a human project and therefore not one of
Managerialism. If human beings have learned to see and know what
really is, they will act in accordance with truth. This is not so in man-
agement studies that have even managed to eliminate human beings
and with them ethics as such. Hence, management ethics has mutated
into a tautology or a bad joke.544
These problems reach deep into philosophy. The philosophy of epis-
temology, for example, is in-itself ethics and morality remains deeply
epistemological. This conception reflects the experience of a world
antagonistic in itself. It is a world afflicted with negativity, constant
questioning, examining, and threatening itself. But it is also a world in
which individuals can prevent destruction. To the extent to which the
experience of an antagonistic world guides the development of philo-
sophical categories, philosophy moves in a universe which is broken
into two dimensions: positives and negatives, pros-&-cons, appearance
and reality, untruth and truth, un-freedom and freedom, master and
slave (Hegel), management and employees. Meanwhile management
studies have established a one-dimensional world in which appearance
is reality, untruth is truth, un-freedom is freedom, masters are slaves,
154 Managerialism
and management and employees are more or less the same. They are
‘all in one boat’. Conveniently forgotten is that one group does the
rowing while the other enjoys the upper deck.
These philosophical distinctions are not by fault abstractive. They
are rooted in the experience of the philosophical universe. In this uni-
verse, there are modes of being in which human beings and things are
‘by’ themselves and ‘as’ themselves (Kant). These are modes of thought
in which reality can exist as a distortion and limitation. While philo-
sophy originated in dialectics (+/–), management studies’ origin lies in
linear engineering-like simplicity, e.g. Fayol, Ford, and Taylor.545
Meanwhile, the philosophical universe of discourse corresponds to an
antagonistic reality. Management studies represent the very opposite.
Managerialism can never accept that it represents no more than a dis-
torted view of reality. It can never accept that its version of reality is
not universal but a particular and sectarian view. Hence, management
studies, by definition, must exclude philosophy which renders them
ideological. Contemporary PhD candidates in management schools do
no longer even know what the ‘P’ in their PhD actually stands for.
Their PhDs have been cleansed of all remnants of philosophy. They
have been distanced from philosophy through years of mind-numbing
training regimes, manipulation, formatting, non-philosophical condi-
tioning, and socialisation during years of authoritarian schooling.
Their natural inquisitiveness has been eliminated to such an extent
that they have no inclination and no intuition to engage in self-
reflection, criticism, or philosophy.546
To some extent, classical Greek philosophy relied on what was later
termed in a rather derogative sense: intuition. This is a form of cogni-
tion in which the object of thought appears clearly as it really is. It has
essential qualities while existing in an antagonistic relationship to its
immediate situation. It is not a mysterious faculty of the mind, not a
strange immediate experience, nor is it divorced from conceptual
analysis. But still it is rejected by management studies outright.
Intuition was the preliminary terminus of analysis. It is the result of
intellectual mediation which is something that management studies
find abhorrent. In management studies, there can never be a mediation
of concrete experience. The notion of ‘essence’ serves as an illustration.
Analysed in the condition in which human beings find themselves in
their universe, they seem to be in possession of certain faculties and
powers which should enable them to live a good life.547 For manage-
ment studies there is no such thing as a ‘good life’, only good market
shares, good returns of investment, etc. But the ethics of a ‘good life’
denotes a life free from toil, dependence, violence, domination, and

the ugliness of environmental destruction. These are terms neither
conceptualised nor with any meaning inside management studies. In
non-managerial thinking, it means to live in accordance with the
essence of nature and human beings. Management studies respond to
this in two ways: ignorance and diminishing its importance as much as
possible.
The ethics of a good life remains relevant to philosophy and for that
it analyses human subjects in their ability to make critical judgements.
This contains value judgements such as, for example: freedom from
toil is preferable to toil and an intelligent life is preferable to a stupid
life.548 In the words of the world’s ultimate philosopher, Socrates
(469BC–399BC),549
an unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.
Philosophy was born with these values – management studies were

not. Quasi-scientific thought in the tradition of positivism that sup-
ports management studies had to break the union of value judgement
and analysis. After the historical period of Enlightenment and the suc-
cessful establishment of a capitalist version of modernity, it became
increasingly clear that capitalism needed to sideline, marginalise, and,
if possible, eradicate philosophical-humanist values. These were seen as
obstructive when managing business organisations and managerial
capitalism. Nor can they play any part in the increasing environmen-
tally destructive transformation of nature, i.e. resource extraction, pro-
duction, and manufacturing in capitalism. Early liberal-capitalism and
even more so present day managerial capitalism with Managerialism at
the helm and management studies as its preferred scientific base have
deemed philosophical concepts such as ‘good life’ and ‘humanity’ inef-
fective and unreal. Hence, virtually no corporate CEO of the Fortune
500 is a philosopher, the result of which is shown in the well-known
pathological consequences that have been observed throughout the
history of managerial capitalism.550
Already the Greek conception of philosophy contained historical ele-
ments such as: the essence of human beings is different from that of
slaves. The free citizen of Greek states compared to barbarian civilisa-
tion illustrated an ontological stabilisation of this difference. But this
development does not invalidate the distinction between essential and
contingent nature and between true and false modes of existence. To
philosophy, the modes of being are modes of movements. This is a
156 Managerialism
transition from potentiality (Kant) to actuality (Hegel). It is also a step

that management studies seek to avoid. Generations have been cor-
rupted through Managerialism’s one-dimensional focus on business,
efficiency, and competitiveness leaving a trail of social pathologies and
environmental destruction behind.551 By contrast, a philosophical
quest proceeds from the human world to the construction of a reality
which is subject to the painful difference between potentiality and
actuality. The non-managerial world has sidelined such negativities
pretending to exist independently.
According to Aristotle, the perfect reality always attracts the world
below as the final cause of all being. The unity of positives and nega-
tives is reflected in creation and destruction. In the ideological con-
straint of thought and in the madness of managerial greed sits the
destructive refusal of a human way of life. Truth transforms the modes
of thought and existence. Hence, management studies shy away
because reason and freedom can never converge. However, this
dynamic – seen as a philosophical rather than a managerial dynamic –
has its inherent limits. Management studies are modes of existence
which can never be true because they can never rest in the realisation
of human potentialities as the joy of being. This is what German
philosopher Adorno meant by:552
there can be no way of living a false life correctly.
In managerial reality, any existence that is spent by procuring the pre-

requisites of purely material existence is an untrue and unfree exist-
ence. Obviously, this reflects the condition of managerial societies
based on the proposition that freedom is incompatible with the activ-
ity of procuring the necessities of managerial progress. Management
studies have made this up to be the natural and functional aspect of a
specific class – the managerial class. Under management studies, the
cognition of truth and true existence implies managerial – not human
– freedom. Under Managerialism, this means that nobody is to be
excluded from the entire dimension of such activities, thereby creating
an asphyxiated oscillation between working and consuming. Any pro-
claimed end to this, in fact even to highlight this at all, constitutes an
anti-managerial constellation par excellence.
The dividing line between pre-managerial and managerial rationality
does not lie between managerial societies based on unfreedom and
those based on freedom. Instead, managerial societies are organised in

such a way that the procuration of necessities is constructed as a full-
time and life-long occupation of specific managerial classes that remain
unfree and are prevented from human existence in its philosophical
sense. Managerial societies’ unfreedom rests in handing over the
‘human free will’ to the ‘invisible hand of markets’, a mindless quest
for careers, an eternal hunt for the next bonus, and personal gains
inside managerial regimes in which even the winner of the rat-race is
never to realise that he – even or perhaps especially as the winner – is
still nothing more than a rat.553 This is a life wasted away in mind-
numbing activities, senseless daily actions, bleak and standardised
offices, and alienating shopping malls.554 In this sense, the classical
proposition according to which truth is incompatible with ideological
enslavement through Managerialism’s inventions such as ‘economic
necessities’ has been made to appear valid. Ideology also implies that
freedom of thought, action, and speech must remain a privilege as long
as this enslavement prevails.555 Despite the renaming of slaves into
workers, labourers, employees, associates, and the current and more
fashionable term ‘human resources’, George Orwell’s (1949:210) state-
ment remains:
from the point of view of the low,

no historic change has ever meant much more than
a change in the name of their masters.556
Their roles just as their names have been superimposed onto them.
And even their ways of thinking and speaking depend on performing a
superimposed function. They depend on fulfilling managerial require-
ments. This, in turn, depends on those who set and control these
requirements. The true dividing line between the pre-managerial and
the managerial project lies in the manner in which subordination to
managerially invented necessities has been organised by management
(managerial regimes) and Managerialism (society). In this mode of
freedom and unfreedom, truth and falsehood correspond to the organ-
isation of managerial societies. With the help of management studies,
Managerialism has made sure that thinking subjects are no longer
masters of pure contemplation. Equally, masters of practice are no
longer guided by human considerations while management studies are
not guided by critical theory. A corporate philosopher remains as
158 Managerialism
unreal as a philosopher-manager. But still, the truth can be known by

all while knowledge is ‘potentially’ accessible to everyone. The key to
Managerialism is the word ‘potentially’. It is a ‘potentiality’ that is
increasingly converted into an ‘improbability’. What Adorno has
termed ‘The Cultural Industry’ will make sure of this.557
Like any worker, employee, or human resource, the slave in Plato’s
Meno is capable of grasping the truth of a geometrical axiom – truth
beyond corruption and ideology.558 But truth is a state of being and of
thought. In managerial regimes however, the latter is the expression
and manifestation of the former. But even in the area of
Managerialism, access to truth remains merely a remote potentiality –
even for management studies, as long as it is not living in and with the
truth. Bound by ideology, management studies must first of all remove
the ideological cover installed by Managerialism. The mode of manage-
rial existence and, adjacent to it, an existence inside the orbit of man-
agement studies is too removed from the existence of Plato’s slave. In
management studies, slave existence, just as the existence of workers,
remains an unreported and undocumented alien element of a dehu-
manised and engineering-like managerial process. Workers only receive
ideology. If individuals no longer had to spend their lives in a manage-
rially invented realm of necessities, truth and a true human existence
would be real in the sense of universalism.559 This is one of the reasons
why management studies make this less and less possible, day by day.
Of cause, it is not the main purpose of management studies but that of
its accomplice, namely Managerialism. In sharp contrast to manage-
ment studies, philosophy envisages the equality of human beings
while at the same time it also investigates the factual denial of this
equality in managerial ideologies.
Management studies provide foundations that ideologically secure
the idea that necessities have to be procured and served in such a way
that increasingly the entire time of individuals is spent with it. In that
way, truth – seen as freedom from material necessities – can never be
allowed. Inside management studies, the historical barriers asphyxiat-
ing and distorting the quest for truth are made to work eternally. If
truth presupposes freedom from toil and if this freedom is, in manage-
rial reality, a prerogative of a minority, then reality allows such a truth
only to be an approximation for a privileged group. This privileged
group consists roughly of two sections: those living off corporate
wealth and those serving Managerialism. But this managerial state of
affairs contradicts the universal character of truth.560 Today, it is the
endless mutually reinforcing relationship between Managerialism,
management, and management studies that defines and prescribes the

realm of management studies: forecasting, planning, organising, com-
manding, coordinating, and controlling.561 This, of course, means that
the best life is a life prescribed by Managerialism.
For philosophy, these contradictions remain unsolvable. But
Managerialism has managed to make them no longer appear as contra-
dictions because its very existence depends on the continuation of
slaves, serfs, employees, and human resources. Outside of management
studies, it is philosophy that transcends this.562 But it was German
philosopher Hegel who made us aware that the ‘Owl of Minerva’
spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.563 It means that phi-
losophy always comes to understand an historical condition just as it
passes away. It leaves history behind, un-mastered, and elevates truth
safely above the historical reality. There, truth is reserved intact as an
achievement of thought. It remains intact because its very notion
expresses the insight that those who have been forced to spend their
lives to ‘earn a living’ and those engaged in the ‘science of making
money’ (management studies) have been rendered incapable of living a
true human existence. Just as German philosopher Adorno noted ‘there
can be no way of living a false life correctly’.
Nevertheless, the concept of truth remains at the centre of philo-
sophy. As such, it reflects that human life does not have to be a false life.
Once it has overcome Kant’s ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’ barriers,
it is capable of engaging with the philosophy of truth.564 This may
even serve as a model of critical and non-instrumental rationality. It is
the rationality of anti-Managerialism, of a two-dimensional universe of
discourse. It sharply contrasts with the way of thought and behaviour
that developed in the execution of the managerial project. Aristotle
uses the term ‘apophantic logos’ in order to distinguish a specific type
of logos. It discovers truth and falsehood. Its development is deter-
mined by the difference between truth and falsehood. It is the logic of
judgement but in the emphatic sense. This contradicts management
studies’ claim of being value-free, not judgemental, and dedicated to
facts and figures. Aristotelian philosophy proceeds to establish pure
forms of all possible true and false predications which become a formal
logic of judgements. When German philosopher Husserl (1859–1938)
revived the Aristotelian idea of logic, he emphasised its original critical
intent.565 And he found this intent precisely in the idea of ‘logic of
judgement’.
But the classical idea of logic is detrimental when the structure of a
judgement refers to a divided reality. This is exactly the point where
160 Managerialism
management studies depart from the scene because of their pretence

that management is an undivided entity and that employees and man-
agement have the same interests.566 Meanwhile, critical discourses
move between the experiences of being and non-being, essence and
fact, honesty and corruption, potentiality and actuality. Aristotle and
later Hegel abstracted from this unity of opposites the general forms of
propositions and their connections. Even today, decisive parts of this
formal logic remain committed to Aristotle. Prior to this formalisation,
the experience of a divided world found its logic already in Platonic
dialectic. Terms such as being, non-being, movement, the one and the
many, identity, and contradiction are methodically kept open, ambigu-
ous, and not fully defined.
This way of thinking is more than alien to management studies. They
do not have an open horizon. They can never submit to an entire uni-
verse of meaning that is analysed in the process of open, free, and undis-
torted communication.567 Management studies represent the very
opposite of these forms of communication in which propositions are
submitted, developed, and tested in a critical and open dialogue, in
which partners are led to question and challenge the unquestioned man-
agerial universe. Nobody in management studies enters into such a new
dimension of discourse. Otherwise, such discussants were free and their
discourse would be addressing human freedom. This is impossible in
management studies. There is no managerial discourse that focuses on
this. In fact, even the term ‘discourse’ in the full meaning of communi-
cation theory is non-existent in management studies. Management
studies have rehearsed management’s idea of communication as being
about reporting upwards and directing downwards.
Communication is vertical, hierarchical, and asymmetrical, non-
horizontal and definitely not based on ‘mutual and equal recognition’
(Hegel).568 The destructive and truth-preventing hierarchies of manage-
rial regimes are mirrored in management studies: CEOs and professors,
top-management and associated professors, middle-management and
lecturers, top-products and top-journals, managerial careers and acad-
emic careers. Respective salary scales have been adjusted accordingly.
This makes it easer for Managerialism’s crypto-academics to move
seamlessly between industry and academia. In this context, the term
management is strictly avoided in favour of the less ideological and
more neutral sounding word ‘industry’. It avoids connotations of being
biased while simultaneously keeping up the appearance of being value-
neutral, non-ideological, and objective.
Simultaneously, Managerialism seeks to enhance the equation of

‘management-equals-academia’ down to the level of KPIs (key perfor-
mance indicators) while human beings/human resources are supposed
to remain inside what is provided to them by semi-corporate educa-
tional university management.569 As such academics never reach
beyond Managerialism’s initial settings. Careers are made confining
oneself to Managerialism’s communicative one-dimensionality.
Meanwhile in non-one-dimensional and non-managerial communica-
tion, many terms have a multitude of meanings because the conditions
to which they refer have many sides, implications, and effects. They
cannot be antiseptically insulated and stabilised on the altar of
Managerialism’s objectivism.570 Their logical development responds to
the process of reality. The laws of thought are laws of reality.
In what Habermas has termed ‘communicative action’, these
thoughts and realities become the laws of reality if thought under-
stands the truth of immediate experience. This is the true form of
reality and ideas. For management studies this can never be realised.
But there are contradictions – rather than correspondences – between
dialectical thought and a given reality. The true judgement judges this
reality not in its own terms – as management studies does – but in
terms which envisage its subversion. In Kantian philosophy, this is the
moment where ‘what is’ meets ‘what ought to be’. Since this is highly
subversive, it is highly rejected by management studies.571
In this subversion, reality comes into its own truth. This form reveals
the basic dialectical proposition focusing on the negative character of
an empirical reality. Judged in the light of their essence and ideas,
human beings and things exist as other than they are. For example, the
managerial idea of human resources negates human beings.
Consequently, thought contradicts what is managerially given. Truth
envisaged by thought is a concept that is totally alien to management
studies. Nevertheless, the essential potentiality is not like the many
possibilities which are contained in a given universe of discourse and
action. The essential potentiality is of a very different order. Its realisa-
tion involves the subversion of management studies’ established order.
Thinking in accordance with truth is a commitment to live in accor-
dance with a truth that remains non-managerially guided. The subver-
sive character of truth inflicts upon thought an imperative quality
implying the term ‘ought’. This contradictory, two-dimensional style
of thinking is the inner form of dialectics and of all philosophy
and deeply rejected by management studies. The un-reflected and
162 Managerialism
non-philosophical truth of management studies can never be nor

produce truth. In sharp contrast to management studies’ one-dimensional
thinking, any judgement must always contain negations. It judges con-
ditions in which virtue is not simply managerial knowledge and
human beings do not simply perform managerial functions for which
their supposed ‘nature’ has been manipulated.
Verification of propositions involves a process in fact and in
thought.572 A categorical statement turns into a Kantian categorical
imperative. It does not state a fact but the necessity to bring about a
fact. This renders management studies’ a mere belief-system of ‘facts-
speak-for-themselves’ trivialities. Dialectical thought understands the
subjective character of interpretations and the use of language together
with the critical tension between ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’.
However, the recognition of this state of being intends a concrete prac-
tice. Seen in the light of truth, ‘given facts’ appear false and negative.
Under management studies however, this can never be the case.
Thinking inside the paradigm of management studies never leads to
truth in terms of any ‘other’ – non-managerial – logic and in terms of
another universe of discourse.573 Under management studies, there can
only ever be the logic of Managerialism. Inside such a one-dimensional
paradigm, there is no ‘other’ logic. On the other hand, the non-
managerial project includes – if not relies on – different ‘other’ modes
of existence such as realising truth in the words and deeds of human
beings.
The critical philosophical project of involving human beings as soci-
etal beings and ‘polis’-beings, seen as a movement of thought with
ethical content, is deeply rejected by management studies.574 Unlike
non-discursive management studies, the Socratic discourse is a polit-
ical, philosophical, and ethical discourse inasmuch as it contradicts
established institutions. Meanwhile management studies’ task is not to
contradict the established institutions of management. For that reason,
it can only ever deliver a critique from ‘within’, never ‘about’ manage-
ment.575 It delivers a stratified discourse and a stratified critique. The
stratification of knowledge has made some serious progress under
Managerialism.576 Management studies have developed layers of acad-
emic journals with, for example, the:
• Academy of Management Review (non-critical theory);

• Academy of Management Journal (managerial knowledge); and
• Harvard Business Review (practice and ideology).
The AMR offers at times a somewhat mild critique from ‘within’. It is

read by academics in management studies. The AMJ generally does
not even include the mildest critique and is read by many academics
and some managers. The crypto-academic HBR offers next to no crit-
ique and is read by many managers and some academics. The
stratification of knowledge relies on the following formula: access to
power and critical knowledge are in a reciprocal relationship. The
closer to the power centres of management, the less critique and
reverse: the further away from the centres of managerial power, the
more likely one finds critique that always comes in the mildest poss-
ible form and as system-stabilising critique. Journals like these offer
access to the power centre of management only to those writings
deemed ‘appropriate’. Anything critical is framed as ‘controversial’
and rejected outright. The common practice to protect Managerialism
against serious critique by the gate-keepers – journal editors – is a
‘desk-rejection’, i.e. an article is not even sent out to the closed club
of internal reviewers often based on ‘old-boys-networks’ and those
who have proven themselves worthy of entering into Managerialism.
In that way, critique is degenerated into mere system correctives.
This is portrayed as ‘being critical’ – e.g. the recent invention of
‘Critical Management Studies’ as another fad to stabilise
Managerialism.577 Simultaneously, real critique is marginalised and
excluded. In all of that, the guiding principles do not come via con-
spiracies. There are no specially selected academics sitting in dark
backrooms inventing evil plans of Managerialism, even though there
are journal editor meetings at management conferences. The super-
glue that creates the sole and all-accepted ideology remains
Managerialism. It is this ideology that defines the terms and condi-
tions of management studies.
As a consequence, in any definition of management, for example,
issues such as virtues, justice, ethics, humanity, human beings, self-
determination, democracy, and critical knowledge are excluded.
Finally, on page 216, the former Harvard Business Review editor
Magretta (2002) defines management:
because we have been defining terms as we’ve gone along, we can

now venture to say what management is. Management is the dis-
cipline that makes joint performance possible. Its mission is value
creation, where value is defined from the outside in, by customers
and owners in the case of a business; …578
164 Managerialism
The key in ‘makes joint performance possible’ is the term ‘perfor-

mance’ that is the codeword for profits just as ‘value creation’.
Meanwhile ‘joint’ means making workers work for us. It would be
highly subversive to undertake a formulation of any managerial
concept involving, for example, the community, Aristotle’s polis, or
Hegel’s ‘Sittlichkeit’. Thought inside management studies has deprived
itself of the power to bring about any qualitative change towards
improving either ‘The Human Condition’ (Arendt), the polis, or envi-
ronmental sustainability. Managerialism and management studies have
become unable to transcend themselves. Both operate with a strong
dissociation from the material practice of those over which manage-
ment rules as well as areas from which philosophy and critical thinking
originate.
Management studies and Managerialism equalise ‘philosophy=ideo-
logy’ for two reasons: (i) it levels themselves and their own ideology up
to philosophy while also (ii) reducing philosophy downward to a mere
ideology. Philosophy is dedicated to truth and serves nobody while
ideology has a specific telos – sustaining Managerialism – and serves
power. Simultaneously, Managerialism dissociates itself from anything
seen as ‘critical’. By virtue of this dissociation, ‘critical’ theoretical, con-
ceptual, and philosophical thoughts, for example, are seen as abstract
and placed into the furthest corners of the managerial sphere. In sharp
contrast, critical philosophy shares abstractness with genuine thought.
But nobody really thinks who does not abstract from what is given,
who does not relate facts to the factors which have made them, and
who does not in his mind undo these facts. For Managerialism, this
simply does not exist or is covered up by its belief-system of being
‘practical’ while despising theory and abstractness.579
Nevertheless, abstractness remains to be the very life of thought.
This is what creates authenticity and it remains imperative to acknow-
ledge that abstraction is an historical event in an historical continuum.
Perhaps in evolutionary terms, the human mind developed via abstract
thinking when early humans sat around campfires inventing abstract
plans to hunt ‘abstract’ animals which they imagined in their minds.
Since those days, abstractions proceeded on historical grounds and
remain related to the very basis from which they move: an established
human universe. Even when critical abstractions arrive at negating the
universe of management, the basis survives in the negation. To some
extent, it creates possibilities of a new position. Transcending concepts
can never be committed to a separation between intellectual and
manual labour that testifies not only to the existence of a managerial
society but also to its previous forms of human enslavement under feu-
dalism and slavery.
In historical terms, today’s management studies appear to remain on
the level of Plato’s idealistic slavery state: ‘retaining-while-reforming’
enslavement while organising it within its ideology of Managerialism.
The very same appears within management studies. Reforming workers
into human resources, constantly restructuring them, and encircling
them with ever more elaborated managerial techniques – KPIs,
Balanced Scorecards, etc. – has been made to appear as ‘reform’ while
simultaneously retaining their enslavement inside what Hegel calls
‘master-slave-dialectics’ that is presented as eternal.580 But the world
has moved on since Plato’s idyllic slavery states. Plato’s successor was
Aristotle, the philosopher-king who always combined theory and prac-
tice giving priority to the supremacy of theoretical work. While
Aristotle’s ‘theoretical’ work can hardly be described to be subversive,
management studies has buffered itself even against anything remotely
smelling of ‘theory’. In its understanding, theories are often down-
graded to mere ‘models’ presented in matrix-like fashions or as a list of
three-to-five key points. The rejection of theory is only the first layer of
defence against critique and philosophy. Any highlighting of the
human condition under management as a modern form of enslave-
ment which might, in its final consequences, lead to what German
philosopher Hegel called self-actualisation has to be avoided.
But management studies can rest in peace. Those – workers, employ-
ees, human resources – who bare the brunt of the untrue reality of
managerial regimes and who are most in need of attaining its subver-
sion, were, in historic terms, never the main concern of philosophy.
Greek philosophy has never been about ‘the ethics of resistance’.581
Traditional philosophy has always rejected this and continues to do so
to such an extent that the oppressed human subject has vanished.582
But even philosophy without containing ‘the ethics of resistance’ is
suspect to management studies. In his Conflict of the Philosophy Faculty
Kant (1794) writes that ‘the philosophy faculty can never lay aside its
arms in the face of the danger that threatens the truth entrusted to its
protection, because the higher faculties will never give up their desire
to rule’.
But when viewing management studies from a philosophical per-
spective, the concept of ‘idealism’ is of interest because of the notion
of supremacy of thought, consciousness, and self-consciousness. It was
this idealism that pronounced the impotence of thought in an empir-
ical world which philosophy transcends and corrects in thought. It
166 Managerialism
created a rationality in the name of which philosophy passes judge-

ments. But on the downside, idealism also contained an abstract and
general purity which made it immune against the world of human suf-
fering. This is a world in which even idealist philosophers, today’s
managerial researchers, and the ideologues of Managerialism have to
live.583 With the exception of the materialistic heretics of philosophic
thought – who in management studies are kept at arms-length – ideal-
ism as well as management studies have rarely been afflicted by the
afflictions of human misery.
Paradoxically, it is precisely this critical intent in philosophy that led
to idealistic purifications aiming at the empirical world that has
mutated into instrumental rationality (management) and positivism
(science).584 Both remain the dominant and domineering modes of
thinking, behaving, and researching in management studies. In sharp
contrast to management studies, philosophy defines its concepts in
terms of potentialities which are of an essentially different order of
thought and existence. But these philosophies find themselves blocked
by Managerialism that has entered universities, academic life, faculties,
funding bodies, and the human brain just as expressed in Watson’s
‘Managerialism-Army’ analogy noted earlier.585
In many cases, philosophy and some of its entire departments have
already dissociated themselves from their own critical potentialities.
Like management studies, they have proceeded to construct a realm of
reason and instrumental rationality purged from nearly all remnants of
critical philosophy. In management studies and their accommodating
philosophy two dimensions of thought – essential-vs.-apparent truth –
no longer interfere with each other. Their concrete dialectical relation
has been turned into a purely abstract epistemological and ontological
relationship. It has also been segregated from everyday affairs in real
life and even inside universities befallen by Managerialism. In manage-
rial universities, academic fields have been subjugated to
Managerialism.586 Critical judgements are no longer passed on to the
realities of managerial regimes.
Under Managerialism holding sway in universities, positivist think-
ing operates with propositions that define the general forms of
thought, objects of thought, and relations between thought and its
objects. The subject of thought has been relinquished of its power that
it once had when it was a universal form of subjectivity from which
universality was not removed. For today’s formal, mindless, formatted,
accommodating, and ‘positive’ individuals, the relations between a
system-stabilising critique from ‘within’ versus a subversive critique

‘about’ and a move from potentiality and actuality, truth and false-
hood are no longer an existential concern. These modes of thought
have been removed from management studies and banished to the
distant matter of ‘pure’ philosophy. This not only explains the lack of
ethics but also the rise in unethical behaviours in society, managerial
capitalism, and corporations.587
But the contrast between dialectical and formal logic remains strik-
ing. In formal logic, as applied by management studies, thought is
organised in a manner very different from that of dialogue. In this
formal logic, thought is indifferent towards its objects. This suits man-
agement studies where measurability and quantification count even
though this contradicts Einstein’s famous dictum:588
not everything that counts can be counted,

and not everything that can be counted counts.
But to create the aura of being scientific, Managerialism is happy to

sacrifice the dictum of the most important and famous scientist the
world has seen. This goes along with testifying to ‘Jerry Mander’s
Eleven Rules of Corporate Behaviour’. These 11 rules – the profit imper-
ative; the growth imperative; competition and aggression; amorality;
hierarchy; quantification, linearity, segmentation; dehumanisation;
exploitation; ephemerality; opposition to nature; and homogenisation
– have never been conceptualised by management studies.589
Corporations are mere expressions of those who manage them – man-
agement – and since their prime ideology remains Managerialism, Jerry
Mander’s ‘Eleven Rules of Corporate Behaviour’ demonstrate the key
managerial ideologies to perfection:
(i) The Profit Imperative

Profits remain the ultimate measure of managerial decision-making.
They take precedence over communities, well-being, workers’ health,
public health, peace, environmental preservation, and even national
security.590 Management will even find ways to trade with ‘enemies’ on
a list of changing composition (e.g. Cuba, North Korea, Iran) while the
public is made to despise these countries. The profit, competition, and
growth imperatives remain the most fundamental drives.
168 Managerialism
(ii) The Growth Imperative

Corporation’s existence depends on whether they can sustain growth.
Their relationship to investors, stock markets, banks, and perceptions
of the public depends on this. The growth imperative also fuels man-
agerial desires to find and exploit scarce resources in obscure parts of
the world. The resulting environmental destruction is clearly visible as
the world’s few remaining pristine places are sacrificed to corporate
resource exploration. The peoples who inhabit these resource-rich
regions are pressured to give up their traditional ways and climb on the
eternal production-&-consumption treadmill. Corporations bring ‘less
developed societies into the modern world’ to create infrastructures for
capital development turning some parts of the population into new
workers and, more importantly, into new consumers. Managerialism
claims that companies do this for altruistic reasons to raise the living
standard, but corporations have no altruism. Privately, corporations
have the imperative to expand.
(iii) Competition and Aggression

Management places every person inside managerial regimes in fierce
competition with all others. Anyone interested in a corporate career
must adjust their abilities, knowledge, and skills to corporate needs.
This is to gain an edge over other corporations, over other sections
inside corporations, and even over a colleague within the company.591
Every human resource is expected to be part of a ‘team’ while simul-
taneously displaying the contradicting skill of showing ‘leadership
qualities’ and on top of that, a readiness to climb over their own
colleagues. Managerialism holds that competition improves individual
work efforts, corporate performances (profits), and therefore benefits
society at large. Managerial societies have accepted these ideologies
utterly. Living by standards of managerial competition and aggression
on the job, human beings have been robbed of avenues to express
softer, more personal and more humane feelings thus resulting in the
known pathologies (violence, alcoholism, bullying, depression, dissolu-
tion, resentment, etc.).
(iv) Amorality
Not being human means for management not to have human morals
and altruistic goals. Corporate decisions that are inhuman, immoral,
and unethical are made without misgivings.592 In fact, corporate execu-
tives praise ‘non-emotionality’ as a basis for ‘objective’ – read: corpo-
rate – decision-making. Corporations, however, seek to hide their
amorality and attempt to act as if they were altruistic. Corporate efforts

that seem altruistic are in reality public relations ploys framed as ‘cor-
porate social responsibility’ that represent self-serving projects. Hence,
corporate advertising is about how corporations work to clean the
environment. A company that installs offshore oil rigs will run ads
about how fish are thriving under their rigs. Logging companies
known for their clear-cutting and slash-&-burn practices will run mil-
lions of dollars worth of ads about their ‘tree farms’. It is an Orwellian
rule of thumb that corporations tend to advertise the very qualities
they do not have in order to allay negative public perceptions. How
Managerialism deals with negative public perceptions has been shown
by Corporatewatch:593 ‘Ronald Duchin, senior vice-president of PR spy
firm “Mongoven, Biscoe and Duchin”. MBD works to divide and
conquer activist movements’. Activists, he explained, fall into four dis-
tinct categories: ‘radicals’, ‘opportunists’, ‘idealists’, and ‘realists’. He
outlined a three-step strategy:
1. isolate the radicals;

2. ‘cultivate’ the idealists and ‘educate’ them into becoming realists;
3. then co-opt the realists into agreeing with industry.
The realists are made to believe that corporations care. But when cor-
porations announce ‘we care’, it is almost always in response to the
widespread perception that they do not have feelings and morals. If
the benefits do not accrue, the altruistic pose is dropped. When Exxon
realised that its cleanup of Alaskan shores was not easing the public
rage about the oil spill, it simply dropped all pretence of altruism and
ceased working. Simultaneously, its CSR policy still reads: ‘our commit-
ment to high ethical standards, legal compliance, and integrity is
reflected in our safety and environmental policies and practices world-
wide’.594 This might just do Managerialism’s trick of converting CSR-
idealists into ‘agreeing with industry’.
(v) Hierarchy
Corporate laws require that corporations be structured into classes of
superiors and subordinates within a centralised pyramidal structure:
chairman, directors, chief executive officer, vice presidents, division
managers, and so on. The efficiency of hierarchies – mirroring military,
government, and most institutions of society – is never questioned.
The effect on human society in adopting hierarchies is to make them
seem natural. We have all been placed within a pecking order. Some
170 Managerialism
jobs are better than others, some lifestyles are better than others and so
are some neighbourhoods, some races, some kinds of knowledge; men
over women; westerners over non-westerners; humans over nature.595
This represents the falsehood of hierarchies and Managerialism.
Thanks to corporate mass media, alternatives such as non-hierarchical
modes of organisations – in existence on the planet since millennia –
remain, bar a few token ones, unknown.596
(vi) Quantification, Linearity, Segmentation

Corporations require that subjective information be translated into
objective form, i.e. numbers.597 The subjective aspects of environmen-
tal foresting, for example, cannot be translated, and therefore never
enter corporate equations other than: ‘forest-equals-resource-equals-
profit’. When corporations are asked to clean up their smokestack
emissions, they lobby to relax the standards in order to contain
costs.598 The result is that a predictable number of people are expected
to become sick and die but these are externalities. The operative corpo-
rate standard is not ‘as safe as humanly possible’, but rather, as ‘safe as
possible commensurate with maintaining acceptable profit’.599
(vii) Dehumanisation
In management, human resources are viewed as ciphers, as non-
managerial cogs in the wheel, expandable, exchangeable, and replace-
able by others or by machines. As for management, they nonetheless
must practice a style of decision-making that ‘does not let feelings get
in the way’. This applies as much to firing employees as it does to
dealing with the consequences of corporate behaviour on environ-
ment, workers, and communities.
(viii) Exploitation
All corporate profit is obtained by two simple formulas:
1. profit equals the difference between the amount paid to an

employee and the economic value of the employee’s output,600
2. profit is the difference between the amount paid for raw materials
used in production (including costs of processing) and the ultimate
sales price of processed raw materials.
Karl Marx was right:601 a worker is not compensated for full value of his
or her labour – neither is the raw material supplier. The owners of
capital skim off parts of the value as profit.602 Profit is based on under-
payment. Capitalists argue that this is a fair deal, since both workers
and the people who mine or farm resources (usually in Third World
environments) get paid.603 But this arrangement is inherently imbal-
anced. The owner of the capital – corporation/bank – always obtains
additional benefits. While workers make a wage, owners of capital get
the benefit of a worker’s labour, plus a surplus profit on what a worker
produces, which is then reinvested to produce yet more surplus.
(ix) Ephemerality
Corporations exist beyond time and space: they are legal creations that
only exist on paper. They do not die a natural death and they outlive
their own creators. They have no commitment to locale, employees,
communities, societies, regions, and neighbours. They have no moral-
ity, no commitment to place, and no physical nature. A factory for
example, while being a physical entity, is not a corporation.
Corporations can relocate all of their operations at the first sign of
inconvenience: demanding employees, high taxes, and restrictive envi-
ronmental laws. The traditional ideal of community engagement is
antithetical to corporate behaviour.
(x) Opposition to Nature

Though individuals who work for corporations may personally love
nature, corporations are intrinsically committed to intervening in,
altering, and transforming it. For corporations engaged in commodity
manufacturing, profit comes from transforming raw materials into
saleable forms. Metals from the ground are converted into cars. Trees
are converted into boards, houses, furniture, and paper products. Oil is
converted into energy. In all these activities, a piece of nature is taken
from where it belongs and processed into a new form. All manufactur-
ing depends upon intervening and reorganising nature. Once natural
resources have been exploited in one part of the globe corporations
move on to another. This transformation of nature occurs in all soci-
eties where manufacturing takes place.
In managerial capitalism, this process is accelerated because capital-
ism and corporations must grow by extracting resources from nature
and reprocessing them at an ever-quickening pace – called productivity
improvements. Meanwhile, the consumptive end of the cycle is also
accelerated by corporations that have an interest in convincing people
that commodities bring material satisfaction. Inner satisfaction, self-
sufficiency, contentment in nature or a lack of desire to acquire wealth
are subversive to corporate goals. Banks finance the conversion of
172 Managerialism
nature, insurance companies help reduce the financial risks involved.

Yet,
on a finite planet, this process cannot continue indefinitely.
(xi) Homogenisation
Managerialism’s rhetoric claims that a commodity society delivers
greater choice and diversity than other societies. ‘Choice’ in this
context means ‘product choice’ in the marketplace: many brands to
choose from and diverse features on otherwise identical products.604
Actually, corporations have a stake in all of us living our lives in a
similar manner, achieving our pleasures from things that we buy in a
world where each family lives isolated in a single family home and has
the same machines as every other family on the block. The ‘singles’
phenomenon – hyper-individualism and social isolation – has proved
even more productive than the nuclear family, since each person
duplicates the consumption patterns of every other person.
While Mander (2001) has outlined these rules focusing on corpora-
tions, Managerialism has converted them into general commands for
society as a whole. Whether human beings are mental or physical
beings, whether they pertain to managerial society or to nature, indi-
viduals become subjected to the same managerial laws of organisation
and calculations. The managerial quality is a quantitative quality only.
It preconditions order inside corporations and inside societies. This is
Managerialism’s logic for the managerial society. It is the price we all
are made to pay for Managerialism’s universal control over its employ-
ees and over everyone who has been turned into a consumer. We are
all shoppers! Nobody is to escape Managerialism and the linearity and
quantifiable instruments of sophisticated marketing instruments of
mass control.605
The ideology of a managerial logic itself is an historical event in the
development of the mental and physical instruments for mass control
and the calculability of human behaviour. In this undertaking the field
of management studies had to create theoretical harmony out of actual
discord. It had to purge thought from critique and contradictions. It
compressed complex processes into easy to digest formulas. Hence
Magretta’s (2002:2) words that ‘management has discovered its true
genius – turning complexity and specialization into performance’.
Performance is the codeword for profits. The notion of conflict
between essence and appearance has been expended or simply ren-
dered meaningless and its material content neutralised. The principle
of identity has been separated from the principle of contradiction.

Under management studies, contradictions are simply made to appear
as faults of incorrect thinking. Well defined in their managerial func-
tion, management concepts become instruments of prediction and
control. Managerial logic is therefore the first step on the long road to
one-dimensional crypto-scientific thought.
It also marks the first step for a specific version of management
studies: mathematisation. The process of mathematisation turns every-
thing into a mathematical equation because numbers are important for
management. As Magretta (2002:120) outlines ‘simple numbers help us
to face reality and to make sense of events in ways that our intuition
alone cannot do’. Converting everything into numbers has never
helped ‘us’ but it helps management. The managerial version of reality
is a reality expressed in managerial numbers. This is the only version of
reality that counts. Today’s management schools represent the exact
opposite of Albert Einstein’s Princeton University office sign men-
tioned above.
Einstein’s universal truth has been rendered meaningless by manage-
ment studies. Reality is still required to adjust to the modes of thought
of Managerialism. The methods of logical procedure are very different
in philosophical- and managerial logic but behind all difference lies
the construction of a universally valid order of thought that has to be
negated by management studies. Long before Managerialism emerged
as an object of rational control and calculation, the mind was made
susceptible to pure empirical positivism.606 This is Foucault’s ‘Order of
Things’ in which all terms are mindlessly organised into a coherent
logical system and freed from all contradiction.607 But if contradictions
are persistent and not deniable, management studies simply manage
them. Under Managerialism every eventuality of human existence,
philosophy, science, employment relations, economy, and human
conduct can be reduced to a question of manageability. But manage-
ment studies always distinguish between universal-human and man-
agerially calculable objectives. Simultaneously, they annihilate the
incalculable and subjective dimension of thought.
Managerial logic foreshadows the reduction of secondary to primary
qualities in which the former become the measurable and controllable
properties of the human condition. The elements of thought can then
be scientifically re-organised in such a way that Managerialism organ-
ises social reality. Managerialism and management studies have linked
elements of thought in such a way that they can be adjusted to the
rules of thought that have become the rules of managerial control and
174 Managerialism
domination. In contrast, pre-managerial modes of domination remain

fundamentally different from managerial modes. They are as different
as slavery is from free wage labour and the unorganised slaughter of an
entire population of a captured region (e.g. Rwanda) from the manage-
rially perfected Nazi death-machinery.608
However, history remains the history of domination and the man-
agerial logic of thought remains the logic of domination.609 Managerial
logic has invented its very own validity for its laws of thought. And
indeed, without such a perverted version of universality, managerial
thought would be a private, non-committal affair, incapable of under-
standing the smallest sector of management. This is the never men-
tioned downside of management studies’ trumpeted famous ‘Harvard
Business School Case Study Method’.610 In management studies as in
reality, thought is always different from individual thinking. Even if
one starts thinking of an individual person in a specific managerial sit-
uation, one finds them partake in a supra-individual context. Thereby,
one starts to think in general concepts. Hence, all objects of thought
are universal. But it is equally true that the supra-individual meaning
and the universality of concepts are never merely formal ones. They
are constituted as an interrelationship between thinking and acting
subjects and their world to which management studies have no access.
The knowledge that logical abstraction is also sociological abstraction
has been removed from managerial logic.
When managerial logic is one-dimensional, there can only ever be
‘one’ mode of thought among others.611 The sterility of managerial
logic inside management studies has never been noted by management
studies itself. Contrary to managerial logic, philosophic thought devel-
oped alongside and even outside the narrow confinements of pure
logic. In their main efforts, idealistic philosophy, materialist philo-
sophy, rationalists, and even empiricists owe everything, even their very
existence, to these philosophical traditions. Managerial logic remains
deeply non-transcendent in its very structure. It is anti-Kantian as it is
anti-Hegelian. Instead, it canonises and organises thought within a
fine-tuned framework beyond which no transcendental conclusion can
pass. It remains pure analytics designed to maintain the prevailing
structures from within. Managerial logic continues as a special, particu-
lar, non-universal, and somewhat segregated discipline. Management
studies exist outside the substantive development of philosophic
thought. They remain essentially unchanging in spite of rafts of ever
new concepts. When external concepts reach into the sphere of man-
agement studies they are an adjusted version accommodating
Managerialism. It is the job of the gatekeepers of management studies

to assure that.
Indeed, management schools and the rationalists and empiricists of
management studies have never had any reason to object to the mode
of thought which had canonised its general form of positivist thinking
and logic. Their intention was in accord with positivistic scientific
validity and exactness.612 It disallowed any interference with the con-
ceptual elaboration of a new experience and new facts that came from
‘critical’ fields. The contemporary mathematical and symbolic logic of
management studies is certainly very different from its classical prede-
cessor. However, both still share their radical opposition to dialectical
logic. In terms of this opposition, managerial logic still expresses
similar modes of thought that are cleansed of the negatives that still
emerge from the origins of logic and philosophic thought. The
denying, deceptive, distortive, and falsifying powers of the manager-
ially established reality have become overpowering.
Simultaneously, the dedication to be objective, exact, and scientific
has become ideological. Management studies have eliminated the
scientific subversion of an immediate and non-mediated experience
which establishes the truth of science. This is set against a mediated
experience that does not develop the concept of truth. Management
studies no longer carry in themselves the protest and the refusal that
was a core promise of Enlightenment.613 The uncritical quasi-scientific
truth which they propose to be accepted does not contain in-itself a
judgement condemning the established reality of managerial capital-
ism. In contrast, critical and dialectical thought is and remains unsci-
entific in the eyes of management studies. This is to the extent to
which everything un-managerial is deemed purely subjective judge-
ment. Simultaneously, the value judgements that management studies
impose upon every thought by their character of being an ideology are
framed as value-neutral.
German philosopher Hegel detected in the philosophy of his time
the fear of the object. He demanded that genuine scientific thought
had to overcome this fear. Hence, dialectical logic cannot be formal. It
is determined by objects and by what is real rather than by what man-
agement studies perceive to be real. Critical concreteness works against
a system of managerial principles that are required by such a cyber-
netic system of internally self-stabilising circular logics organised as a
reflection of system theory.614 They reduce everything to its function in
managerial regimes – functionality supersedes humanity. Human
beings become human ‘resources’ rather than ‘human’ resources.
176 Managerialism
Managerial system thinking can never move under, beyond, or

outside of managerial rules that make managerial rationality real.
Instead of management studies’ system theory that accommodates
one-dimensionality, it is the rationality of contradiction, the opposi-
tion of forces, tendencies, and elements, which constitute reality.
Unlike management studies’ beloved system theory, Managerialism
exists as a living contradiction between essence and appearance. It is
the object of critical thought of an inner negativity that is the specific
quality of this concept. The dialectical characterisation defines a
Hegelian movement of management from what management is not
(negative) to what management is (positive). Hence, it is the two-
dimensional development of contradictions (+/–) that determines man-
agement (thing) but also the structure of dialectics (thought).
Dialectical philosophy can undo abstractions of managerial logic
that deny the concreteness of uncritical non-reflected experiences
framed as objectivity in management studies. The problem is the
extent to which management studies’ objectified experience is asphyx-
iated inside things as they appear and happen to be. This version of
objectivity represents nothing more than a limitation and even false
experience. Management studies can only ever attain truth if they have
been freed from themselves and from their deceptive objectivity which
conceals the factors behind the facts. As long as ‘facts speak for them-
selves’, ideologies are upheld and management studies remain trapped
in their own ideology.
Simultaneously, management studies fail to understand their world
as an historical universe in which managerially established facts are in
fact the work of an historical practice of human beings. It is this intel-
lectual and material awareness and conceptualisation of reality that
provides a sense-making tool to data and experience. This is also the
reality in which dialectical logic comprehends the world. Only when
historical content enters into the dialectical concept and determines
methodologically its development and function, true understanding
comes to light. Dialectical thought attains its concreteness through
linking structures of critical thought to those of reality. It is only
through this process that truth becomes historical truth. The tension
between essence and appearance (Hegel), between ‘what is’ and ‘what
ought to be’ (Kant) can only ever be an historical tension. The negativ-
ity of the objective world can only be understood as the work of an
historical subject which can never be found using the tools of manage-
ment studies. From this perspective, reason becomes historical reason
contradicting management studies’ established order. It challenges
management studies on behalf of existing societal forces that reveal the

irrational character of the managerial order. It is geared towards a crit-
ical rational mode of thought and action that targets ignorance,
destruction, brutality, environmental destruction, and oppression.
The transformation of Managerialism into historical dialectic under-
standing has to retain the two-dimensionality (+/–) of philosophic
thought as critical and negative thought. From that standpoint essence
and appearance, ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’, positives and nega-
tives confront each other in a conflict between actual forces and capa-
bilities. They confront one another not as ‘reason-vs.-unreason’ and
not as ‘right-vs.-wrong’ because both are part and parcel of the same
universe. In management studies they have become artificially sepa-
rated. In terms of Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology’ (1807), the slave-employees
become capable of abolishing master-management.615 Master-
management becomes capable of improving the life of the slave-
employees by reducing their exploitation. The philosophical concept
of critical reason pertains to the movement of thought and action. This
is a theoretical and a practical requirement. Dialectical logic under-
stands contradictions as necessities belonging to the very element of
thought. It does this because contradiction belongs to the very charac-
ter of the object of thought.
Conversely, the established reality of management studies operates
against the logic of contradictions. It favours those modes of thought
that sustain conventional forms of Managerialism and those modes of
organisational and societal behaviours that reproduce and improve
them. Managerialism has invented its own logic and truth. Any effort
to comprehend them in this way and to transcend them presupposes a
different logic from what is proposed by management studies. Such
modes of critical thought have to be non-managerial in their very
structure. They need to be alien to the crypto-scientific and common-
sense ideologies of Managerialism. The historical concreteness of
dialectical thinking works against quantification and ‘mathematisa-
tion’ pretending that management is a numbers-game. It also strikes
against management studies’ positivism and empiricism. Therefore,
management studies’ modes of thought appear to be a relic of a
bygone past. They are reflective of an ideology that carries elements of
pure positivism, objectivism, and empiricism ‘pre’-dating the age of
Enlightenment.616
10
The Age of Managerialism
In social reality – despite changing names and ideologies – the domina-

tion of individuals by individuals still remains an historical continuum
linking pre-managerial to managerial societies. However, current man-
agerial societies have altered the base of domination to some extent.617
They have done this by gradually changing personal dependence of
slaves on masters, serfs on lords, and subsequently workers on manage-
ment with an additional dependence. This is the new and ideological
dependence on Managerialism.618 It is found in managerial domination
with corporate policies, rules, markets, and corporations all glued
together by the ideology of Managerialism. The managerial order of
things is the result of domination as much as it carries domination
forward. Nevertheless, it also remains true that managerial domination
has generated a form of higher rationality affecting managerial soci-
eties. Together with Managerialism, it sustains its own hierarchical
structures while simultaneously exploiting, ever more efficiently, the
natural resources of planet earth as well as the mental resources of its
knowledge workers within the knowledge and service societies.
The resulting material distribution of the benefits of this exploita-
tion, focused on a shrinking pool of people, is paralleled by an ‘end of
global poverty’ ideology that has been carried over since the dark days
of imperialism. The limits of managerial rationality and its sinister
force appear in the progressive enslavement of human resources by a
managerial apparatus which perpetuates the struggle for existence by
reframing it as Managerialism. The common theme of the endless
treadmill of competition is the ideology of Spencer’s ‘survival of the
fittest’ that corporate mass media have successfully – and wrongfully –
associated with Charles Darwin.619 This ideology covers the totality of
global competition that has been reframed as globalisation to hide
178
The Age of Managerialism 179
connotations to imperialism.620 In centre and periphery, the factual

existence of globalisation and its accompanying ideology ruins the lives
of those who build and run the apparatus of global competitiveness. In
Orwell’s terms, the name has changed – imperialism→globalisation –
but the structure and global pathologies remain very much the same.
At this stage of advancement of managerial globalisation, it has
become clear that something must be wrong with the rationality of
Managerialism itself. It is the fact that economic competition among
corporations represents a version of a modern warfare that ‘like all wars
… have their civilian casualties’.621 Nevertheless, real wars between
countries of a globalised centre are no longer the question of our time.
In business wars meanwhile, corporations themselves are willing to use
the ideology of private enterprise and free competition in order to side-
line government regulations in an attempt the get the upper hand in
the eternal fight over Porter’s ‘Competitive Advantage’.622 However,
the question of what Managerialism calls ‘competitive advantage’
cannot come to rest here.623 The wrongfulness of how managerial soci-
eties are organised comes to light through the ways and means soci-
eties have been teamed up with Managerialism. In this arrangement,
the integration of ‘formerly’ negative and transcending social forces
into the established system of Managerialism has created new social
structures and new global pathologies.624
But Managerialism has transformed this negative into a positive. The
organisation of managerial societies has lead to societies that are
exposed to the danger of becoming totalitarian on external and inter-
nal grounds while simultaneously pretending to be democratic
through the public spectacle of well-rehearsed routines of media-
guided elections. These authoritarian tendencies not only result in the
looming intensification over access to declining natural resources.625
Managerialism has achieved to place the ‘veil of ignorance’ over this by
refuting all alternatives of a post-managerial and environmentally sus-
tainable living. TINA’s one-dimensional ideology equals totalitarian
thinking. TINA – there is no alternative – has been made to appear
natural and as such does not seem to call for an explanation. The tan-
gible benefits of the managerial system are considered worth defending
against anyone and anything.626 The one-dimensional and totalitarian
thinking of TINA has eliminated anything in the vicinity of whatever
remotely looks like a repelling force. These forces have been made to
disappear. They no longer are an historical alternative. Managerialism
– successfully linked to corporate mass media – has even wiped out
180 Managerialism
their heroes.627 Today, Thomas Müntzer, Rosa Luxemburg, Alexandra

Kolontai, Pyotr Kropotkin, Erich Mühsam, Sacco and Vancetti, Emile
Armand, Rudolf Rocker, Buenaventura Durruti, Paul Goodman,
Subcomandante Marcos and many more are long forgotten in favour of
Paris Hilton, Charlie Sheen, Lady Gaga, and the American Idol/Idiot.
But TINA is a mode of thought that is deliberately constructed to
render people incapable of comprehending what is happening and
why pathologies and environmental destruction are occurring. For the
inhabitants of the age of Managerialism these are irrelevant questions.
Nevertheless, TINA and Managerialism are modes of thought and
behaviour immunised against any other than the established rational-
ity of managerial thinking. The degree to which they correspond to
managerial reality, its thoughts and behaviours are expressions of a
false consciousness. But this is exactly what remains imperative for the
preservation of a false order of facts. The false consciousness engi-
neered by Managerialism has become embodied in the managerial
apparatus and in corporate globalisation which in turn reproduces it.
Individuals have been made to accept that environmental destruction
is the price of progress just as death is the price of life. We are made to
consent to renunciation, depression, destitution, and suffering framed
as prerequisites for gratification, fun, obesity, and personal advance-
ment symbolised in managerial petty-consumerism in order to ‘buy
things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we
don’t even like’.628 Managerialism has convinced us that business must
go on and that all alternatives to the domination of Managerialism are
merely utopian, ridiculous, out-of-date, and nonsensical.
Managerialism belongs to an established apparatus. It has been
made obligatory for its continuous functioning and part of the
instrumental rationality of all managerial systems and managerial
societies as such. At times, however, the managerial apparatus defeats
its own purpose but this is only the case when maintaining a con-
sumptive existence on the basis of a dehumanised world. As a conse-
quence, the rationality of Managerialism is even more suspect. But
Managerialism has also achieved the previously unachievable. With
Managerialism, the negative is in the positive, the inhumanity of
managerial regimes has become the humanisation of work, and
enslavement means emancipation.629 This has become reality just as
George Orwell predicted.630 The ideological dynamic of
Managerialism is not that of a critical mind. Instead it is the reality of
a managerial mind in which a crypto-scientific mind has been
cleansed of all traces of Enlightenment thinking.
Managerial societies reproduce themselves inside a growing ensem-

ble of quasi-science, consumerism, material things, and commercial
exchanges which include the managerial utilisation of all human
beings as human resources and consumers. The struggle for existence
and the exploitation of human beings have become ever more
scientific and rational. But the meaning of rationalisation remains
highly relevant in this context. Scientific management and the
scientific division of labour have vastly increased the productivity of
the managerial enterprise. The result of all this is a higher standard of
living. At the same time and on the same grounds, the rational man-
agerial enterprise produced a pattern of mind and behaviour used to
justify even the most destructive and oppressive features of
Managerialism’s global project. Scientific-managerial rationality, instru-
mental rationality, and mass manipulation have been welded together
by Managerialism into new forms of social mass appeasement.
The ecologically destructive and pathological outcomes of this are
the direct result of a managerial application of science. The general
direction in which positivistic science came to be applied has always
been inherent in the ideology of pure science. This locates the point
where theoretical reasoning was turned into ideological practice. In
this, the methodological origins of rationality have been aligned with
key features of the managerial model. The quantification of everything
under Managerialism led to a ruthless explication in terms of mathe-
matical structures – headcounts, 20% cost cutting, financial viability of
production sites, etc. Management has separated means from ends and
consequently separated truth from good and science from ethics. The
managerial application of science has defined and appropriated the
objectivity of nature. Simultaneously, it is cutting all interrelations
among its parts through a division into those parts deemed to be
resources and those judged irrelevant. Inside the managerial orbit, the
role of the subject is no longer constitutive. Under managerially driven
science, a human subject can only play a role as an object of observa-
tion, measurement, and calculation. Human subjects have been exter-
nalised by Managerialism and confined to a well carved out niche
where they can act as an ethical, aesthetic, political agent. Shelved-
away in that way, Managerialism is free to operate at will undisturbed
by ethics and human subjectivity.
But there are tensions between managerial ‘cost-benefit’ rationality
and the human needs and wants of an underlying population. Entire
populations have been turned into objects while individuals’ subjectiv-
ity rarely features under Managerialism despite – or because of – its
182 Managerialism
paralleling ideology of individualism. On the upside there is the philo-

sophic and scientific truth. Today Managerialism’s ideology of the so-
called ‘nature of things’ extends to managerial capitalism. This
ideology defines and justifies managerial repression and suppression
which have been made to appear as perfectly rational. Under
Managerialism, true knowledge and reason demand domination over –
not liberation from – the senses. In that way, Managerialism’s one-
dimensional scientific rationality can emerge as essentially neutral.
What nature may be striving for is scientifically rational and manageri-
ally possible only in terms of the general laws and motions set forth by
Managerialism. Outside managerial rationality, one lives in a world of
human values. These values have been neatly but artificially separated
from the objectives of Managerialism. The only way to rescue a few
abstract and harmless human values from Managerialism seems to be
to disengage with the age of Managerialism. But this incurs sanctions
and is deemed utopian and therefore cannot be really objective.
Human values may have a higher moral dignity, but Managerialism
does not consider them as real and therefore, they count less in real
business.631 The less Managerialism deems something related to human
values, the higher it is elevated. This de-recognition and reduction of
human morals affects those ideas which – by their very nature – cannot
be quantified by management. No matter how much they may be
recognised, respected, and sanctified by human society, Managerialism
considers them irrelevant. But it is precisely their lack of objectivity
that turns human values and morality into factors of social cohesion.
Humanitarian and moral ideas are, by definition, ideal. They tend to
disturb Managerialism. They are validated by the fact that they are
contradictory to behaviours dictated by Managerialism. Good and bad,
morality and immorality, and justice and injustice cannot be derived
from Managerialism. They are philosophical and critical-rational con-
ditions of human life. But they can logically claim universal validity
and realisation. In terms of philosophical reason, they remain matters
of the human enterprise and need no resuscitation by Managerialism.
Only philosophy – not Managerialism – can save the situation. The
distinctively un-managerial scientific character of philosophical and
moral ideas fatally weakens the supportive base-structure of
Managerialism. In Managerialism however, the human idea of morality
is an idea that has become a mere ideal. Morality’s critical content has
been made to evaporate into an irrelevant and distant atmosphere.
Paradoxically, however, the objective world of management has been
left only with quantifiable qualities. As a consequence, management
has become more and more dependent in its objectivity and those car-
rying its ideology forward.
The long process that led up to managerial rationalisation did not
begin with what we today think philosophy is about but with mathe-
matical geometry when it was still part of philosophy. The abstraction
found in mathematical geometry allowed for a replacement of visible
figures through an inclusion of purely mental operations. But this still
retains a loose connection to philosophy even though the kind of
uncritical and ‘never-questioned’ positivism Managerialism uses holds
up while it has overtaken the human subject. In the conflict of ‘object-
vs.-subject’, Managerialism assures that the subject disintegrates. But
still, in some cases, scientists and philosophy arrive at similar hypothe-
ses despite the often purely ideological separation engineered between
both. In these cases, the objective world loses its objectionable charac-
ter and its opposition to the subject. This is a process that incurs some
highly dangerous propositions for Managerialism because of the
humanness of subjects. Subjectivity itself might lead to a humanisation
of Managerialism. This, in turn, might damage Managerialism’s appro-
priation of science for which Managerialism has so hard fought for. As
a result managerial thinking today insists on a conversion of every
eventuality of human existence into a mathematical matter. As
Magretta (2002:14&120) noted
good managers know which numbers to focus on and why basic

numeracy is so powerful [and] simple numbers help us to face
reality and to make sense of events in ways that our intuition
alone cannot do.
Management knows when it can convert something into a number so

that only what can be quantified counts for management.
Management requires that subjective information is translated into the
objectified form of numbers.632 It needs to focus on those numbers that
are important and disassociate themselves from irrelevant ones.
Irrelevant numbers are, for example, the number of family members
affected by mass-redundancies, the psychological suffering caused by
work related stress or industrial accidents, and the number of wildlife
extinct through industrial pollution.633 Managerialism calls them exter-
nalities.634 But numbers also help management to deal with reality.
They help management to appear rational when declaring mass-
redundancies, polluting, and causing industrial accidents.635 It helps
management to redirect attention away from moral issues by neutralising
184 Managerialism
these issues through numbers. Killing five is murder – killing 5,000 is

an industrial ‘accident’ (e.g. Union Carbide’s Bhopal).636 In sum, con-
verting the human condition into numbers is of great help to
Managerialism.
The objective and rational mathematics makes irrational corpora-
tions and their ends appear rational. This is a clear-cut version of ‘the
rationality of irrationality’.637 But these are not extreme statements.
Managerialism will insist that contemporary management refers to
measurable things. Managerial things turn out to be managerial events.
In reality, these events refer to attributes and relationships that charac-
terise the various kinds of human relationships found inside and
outside of managerial regimes.638 But philosophy tells us that all too
often a measurable quantity is not a property of a thing at all but a
property of its relation to other things. Most measurements in manage-
ment are not directly concerned with things but with the same kind of
projections. Managerial events, relationships, projections, and possibil-
ities can be meaningful objectives only for a subject but not in terms of
objectivity and measurability.
Human subjects involved in managerial processes are never the con-
stituting ones. They are passive human subjects for whom managerial
data has been made conceivable as managerial events such as manage-
rial decisions and asymmetrical relationships found in corporate poli-
cies. If this is the case, propositions in management can be formulated
without reference to an actual observer. Disturbance of observations,
for example, are not due to human observers but to instruments man-
agement uses to view the world. Management can never be objective
because it does not think in mathematical terms – it thinks in profit
terms. Objectively speaking, management has a mind of its own. A less
ideological interpretation of management is that in management’s his-
torical development, management science uncovers and defines differ-
ent layers of one and the same managerial reality. In this process,
historically surpassed realities – satanic mills, harsh factory regimes,
brutal domestication of workers and so on – are being cancelled but at
the same time their intent is being integrated into succeeding term-
inologies. This is based on interpretations that imply that progress can
only be measured in managerial, not in human terms. The former must
be quantifiable while simultaneously all non-quantifiable elements are
removed.
This absolute truth of Managerialism is, of course, framed in terms of
Managerialism when reality turns out to be an action without essence.
However, the very concept of progress and truth always features sub-
versive elements that endanger the existence of Managerialism. But

Managerialism also always includes ‘managerialisation’ – turning some-
thing non-managerial into an object of management. With manager-
ialisation much of contemporary social science no longer even
questions the reality of the managerial world. Today’s social science
has largely suspended judgement on Managerialism. Hence, a surpris-
ing lack of books on the ideology of Managerialism can be detected.639
It appears that to consider the questioning of Managerialism’s ideology
has been rendered meaningless and turned into a mere methodological
question. This suspension has resulted in threefold consequences:
1. it strengthens the shift of a theoretical critique away from

Managerialism so that questions regarding what is, what ought to
be, why, and how are not even asked anymore because ‘the prin-
ciple of commerce contributes to the continuation of what is utterly
anti-democratic, of economic injustice, of human degradation’;640
2. it establishes management’s practical certainty as ‘sense certainty’
(Hegel) and ‘the given’.641 In managerial operations, this mutates
into absolute certainty supportive of management’s good con-
science freed from moral commitment to anything outside the man-
agerial context. Even ethics is rendered an externality. To avoid
moral philosophy, business ethics writers are eager to narrow moral
philosophy down to individual behaviour inside managerial
regimes.642 By focusing on behaviour, they annihilate moral philo-
sophy that is, in its final assessment, contradictory to Managerialism.
3. Managerialism’s ‘human→to→resources’ conversion signifies the
objectives offered by the inhumanity and immorality of the man-
agerial process. Managerialism has established this without much
resistance. Rather the opposite has happened. Managerialism has
incorporated ‘resistance’ by formulating managerial strategies to
combat resistance ‘before’ it actually appears, thereby framing it
merely as ‘resistance to change’.643
This threefold conception – principles of commerce, ethics, and pre-

venting resistance – becomes applicable and effective in managerial
reality as a system of instrumentalities often expressed in the finest
terms system theory can muster.644 Under Managerialism, the philo-
sophical ‘being-as-such’, and ‘being in-itself’ (Kant) gives way to the
systematic ‘instrumentalisation’ of and for management. Proved in the
effectiveness of managerial systems when measured against the instru-
ments of management, these conceptions (a–c) predetermine human
186 Managerialism
existence in managerial regimes. But they also project the managerial

direction by organising the whole of the managerial system, starting
with the ‘human→resource’ conversion. Hence, management studies
struggle with a philosophical and ethical notion of human beings. But
in its extreme formulations, Managerialism moves extremely close to a
total annihilation of nearly all philosophical-ethical characterisations
of human beings. It puts philosophy into a ‘camera obscura’ position
in which everything appears upside-down. But Managerialism can only
achieve this through an ideological cloaking device that artificially dis-
solves all opposites.
Managerialism’s one-dimensional comprehension of contradictory
tensions between subject and object has enabled its ideology to solve
the unsolvable while the reality of instrumental rationality has played
out this tension inside managerial regimes. But in some distant corners
of management studies, some people might be aware that even man-
agement’s highly one-dimensional and monistic system is forced to
deal with reality that unfolds in the enduring dilemma of ‘subject-vs.-
object’.645 Perhaps not only those knowledgeable in Hegelian philoso-
phy but also those who are more outside than inside management
studies realise that management and its ideological entourage of
Managerialism always possesses a two-dimensional and antagonistic
reality even though the quasi-scientific spirit of management studies
has increasingly weakened the awareness of this antagonism. With
Managerialism, the Cartesian ‘mind-body’ difference is no longer
deemed appropriate once the ‘mind’ has been colonised by
Managerialism and the ‘body’ has been made to subscribe to manager-
ial regimes.646 As a consequence, Galileo’s idea of the world as a ‘uni-
versal and absolutely pure’ mental image enshrined in Descartes’ ‘I
think therefore I am’ is of no relevance to Managerialism. However,
Descartes’ mind-&-body dualism implies its own negation and there-
fore is able to clear rather than block the road towards establishing a
scientific-ethical universe in which human beings – related to their
own world in philosophical-ethical self-determination and self-
actualisation – and their actions are truthful and objective representa-
tions of the mind. Nevertheless, the positivistic human-eliminating
quasi-science of management studies developed under capitalism has
increasingly come under the ideological control of Managerialism.
Historically and external to managerial corporations, the appropria-
tion of natural resources has been conducted under instrumentalities
that have historically preceded the development of particular manage-
rial organisations such as modern corporations. Modern management
takes the entirety of human beings as raw material for production sub-
jecting it to the considerable powers of Managerialism. In this under-
taking the managerial a priori (Kant) remains a political a priori as it
engages social world and political economy as corporate goals of The
Real Bottom Line, leading to the brutal utilisation of human and
earthly resources. As such, managerial processes remain ‘man-made’
creations.647 On the downside, human beings no longer enter these
societal ensembles as human beings but as human resources shaped
through a long process of socialisation and schooling.648 The apparatus
of Managerialism is as such indifferent to the pathologies it creates.649
Conditioned by schooling and corporate mass media to be employable
inside managerial regimes, today’s individuals are sufficiently pre-
conditioned to accept – if not actively affirm to – the ideology of
Managerialism.650 As such Managerialism has long left the realm of
pure management. It works towards global ends while simultaneously
retarding managerial societies. Managerialism remains neither an
objective nor a neutral project and so are the technologies it applies. A
computer, for example, can serve equally a capitalist or human society.
But Managerialism’s ideology of the neutrality of technology continues
to be contested throughout history, the societies it shapes, and the
ideology that came with it:651
1. a hand-mill yields a feudal society with religion and superstition

(pre-1789);
2. a steam-mill yields a capitalist society with liberalism (19th century);
3. a shopping mall yields a consumer society with consumerism (20th
century); and
4. an ideological treadmill yields a managerial society with
Managerialism (21st century).
This simplified history includes the social mode of production in

which technologies and ideologies have become basic historical
factors. However, when technology and ideology become global forms
of managerial rule, they circumscribe an entire culture. Despite this,
the unchallenged mantra of Managerialism remains: ‘doing well in
today’s world … requires that we all learn to think like managers’
(Magretta 2002:3). Managerialism attacks the term ‘think’ in the HBR-
editor’s statement by telling individuals what to think, when to think,
and for whom. The evolution of ideology as anti-critical, positivist, and
scientific methods as applied by management reflects the transforma-
tion of nature into a managerial reality that has been ideologically
188 Managerialism
reframed as progress for all.652 Managerialism’s reformulation of the

relation between positivist science and managerial society is designed
to merge two separate realms and events:
(1) the quasi-scientific thought with its own internal concepts and its
own internal truth had to be disconnected from modern philo-
sophy and in particular from the trilogy of Enlightenment (Kant’s
Three Critiques 1781, 1788, 1790), and
(2) the use and application of so-called pure science to managerial
regimes had to assist Managerialism in:
a. enhancing The Real Bottom Line which remains the prime
objective of all managerial activities;
b. increasing control over labour through the total incorporation
of human resources into the managerial process;
c. the creation of an overall ideology found in Managerialism;
and finally,
d. the expansion of Managerialism into previously unrelated
areas such as governmental state institutions at first, society at
large later, and finally on a global scale.
No matter how close the interconnection between the developments of

ideology, positivist science and managerial capitalism has been, they
imply and define each other. Pure science is not applied science and as
such receives diminished attention by Managerialism. What science
needs to produce under Managerialism is to show its contribution to
The Real Bottom Line – ‘the science of making money’.653 Science can
no longer retain its own identity and validity unless it demonstrates
managerial utilisation. Moreover, Managerialism extends the ideolo-
gical notion of neutrality of science to technology. Machines and man-
agement have been framed as being totally indifferent towards society.
They provide a useful function in enhancing capabilities as prescribed
by Managerialism. In view of the ideological character of managerial
positivist methods utilised inside the managerial framework, the above
interpretation of the role of science under Managerialism remains
adequate.
A close relationship prevails between the positivist-scientific enter-
prise and its application in the managerial process. There is a close and
directive relationship between the realm of positivist science and man-
agerial institutions and behaviours. In this relationship both move
under the same logic and rationality of domination over nature, the
environment, and human beings. In a rather paradoxical development,
the effort of positivist science to establish rigid objectivity has led to an

increase in dehumanisation.654 The ideology of neutral science and
scientific management is an ideology that we have to give up. It is as
mythical as scientific management.655 Modern science has started out
by destroying the myths and irrationalities of feudalist Dark Ages.
Once converted into positivistic science, it is forced by its own incon-
sistencies to realise that it has created a new myth. Positivist science
with its addiction to objectivity and value neutrality has become an
ideology by aligning itself within managerial capitalism. The links
between science and management have grown into a Lernaean Hydra
expressed in several ways:
Table 10.1 The Link between Managerial Science and Managerialism
Impressions Descriptions
scientific There is an impression of being scientific using spill-over

effects from natural science.
recruiting This supports the important delivery of new ideas by people
fresh ideas conditioned to think inside the ideological box of
Managerialism enshrined in the sole determination of how
to create higher profits, more successful companies, and an
increase in the extraction of surplus value from labour.656
practical and The impression of being ‘practice based’ and connected to
real world link ‘the real world’ supports a strong anti-theoretical stance in
management studies by delivering ‘real results for real
people’, not theories.
selling degrees The ideology of sellable and marketable degrees assists
management schools in their own marketing when attract-
ing – ideally full-fee-paying – students with no interest in
theory, ethics, the quest for knowledge, and no ‘love for
wisdom’. Their one-dimensional interest lies in converting
their ideological and functional degrees into high salaries.
buzz words and A steady supply of new managers from management schools
weasel words is equipped with the latest managerial buzz- and weasel-
words, fads, fashionable ideas, ‘hot issues’, ‘sexy topics’, and
managerial ideologies.
accreditation There is a sophisticated setup between teaching curricular
and curriculum and managerial agencies that strongly influence – dictate –
quasi-academic learning through the process of
‘accreditation’. In return, this assists business schools in
marketing their degrees. The mutually beneficial
arrangement largely determines what is taught while
simultaneously asphyxiating academic freedom.657
190 Managerialism
Table 10.1 The Link between Managerial Science and Managerialism –

continued
Impressions Descriptions
corporate Managerialism’s takeover of teaching is greatly supported

funding through a decline in state funding for research and based on
ideologies such as deregulation, privatisation, and tax-cuts.
Management schools remain successful in attracting so-
called ‘industry’ (i.e. corporate) funding. The combination
of both determines research programmes financed by
corporations and guided by Managerialism.
management Management-supportive and often corporately financed
journals ‘research’ is commonly published in so-called high quality,
A-class, and top-ranking star journals run by gatekeepers
(journal editors). They are peer reviewed in a circular, self-
supporting, and cybernetics-like motion geared towards
supporting management (institution), Managerialism
(ideology), and management studies (quasi-academia).
academic Virtually all of this is linked to promotions that depend on
promotions attracting external funding. Through key performance
indicators codified in performance plans, management
assessesmanagerial academics. Promotions remain linked to
the ‘number’ of so-called ‘high-class’ publications.658 On
that, a journal’s perceived reputation remains important.
Together with attracting external funding, these are the
main tools to assure that academics remain supportive of
Managerialism.
school rankings It is self-evident that Managerialism’s own tools (e.g.
Porter’s positioning model) assist universities and business
schools in determining their ‘position’ in an assumed
educational market.659 A management school’s ranking in
the ‘educational market’ shows students where ‘their’
schools stand determining job prospects for graduates,
salaries, and promotions for managerial academics.
Through a multitude of links, Managerialism has incorporated man-

agement schools and science into its service, thereby creating ‘The
Servants of Power’. It has successfully colonised universities. This
occurred in a two step process in which Managerialism, first of all,
installed management schools inside or attached to universities to gain
scientific legitimacy. In a second step, the ideology of Managerialism
has infiltrated university administration converting 20th century
‘administered’ universities into 21st century ‘managerial’ universities.
Managerialism became a recognisable entity in the privatised ‘educa-
tion industry’, later expanding to state universities where it created
managerialist organisations. The outcome of this is twofold: curricular

developments mirror the demands of Managerialism; vocational sub-
jects – management science – were lifted up to university level to create
sufficiently conditioned human resources ‘before’ they enter employ-
ment. This concluded a threefold process: it converted the elite univer-
sities of Enlightenment into mass universities of vocationalism and
finally into institutions resembling modern corporations operating
under Managerialism.660 Deprived of its critical Enlightenment facul-
ties, rationality became an instrument to enhance affirmation. This
development took the following form:
Elite University Public Mass University Manageralist University
Education = Restricted Good Education = Public Good Education = Commercial Good
th th st
19 Century 20 Century 21 Century
Figure 10.1 The Development of Managerialist Universities
Figure 10.1 shows the development of tertiary education based on

the structural demands of liberal, consumer, and managerial capitalism
showing elite universities, mass universities, and eventually manager-
ialist universities. For Managerialism, universities do not necessarily
have to be privatised. But privatisation coupled with Managerialism –
often introduced by stealth – manifests itself in a withdrawal and
reduction of state-funding resulting in crypto-privatisation that creates
managerialist organisations. It establishes money-driven institutions
willing to adapt to the imperatives of Managerialism. Seen as an histor-
ical development, it reversed the academia-administration/manage-
ment position:
Academic Academic Standard Managerialist Structure of

Faculties Top-Middle-Line-Management
Administrative
Support
Administration Faculties Academic Faculties as Workers/Employees
Elite University Mass University Managerialist University
Figure 10.2 The Historical Development of the Managerialist University
Figure 10.2 shows how 19th century elite universities operated as a

collection of academics supported by a minimal number of administra-
tive staff. This was followed by an equalisation of academic faculties
192 Managerialism
and administration. Pre-Managerialist thinking was perfectly expressed

by a professor of Columbia University talking to the new president,
Dwight D. Eisenhower, ‘Mr. President, we faculty members are not
employees of Columbia University, we “are” Columbia University’.661
This was set to change. Universities under Managerialism reversed the
relationship between administration/management and academic facul-
ties completing a three-stage process of downgrading academics to
mere employees/workers. These human resources are managed by uni-
versity management, thus marking the triumph of Managerialism. A
clear indicator of the progress of Managerialism is when university
Vice-Chancellors behave like corporate chief executive officers (CEOs)
and receive CEO-equivalent remuneration packages.662
Today, managerial ideology is manifested in a university’s organisa-
tional structure and in the organisation of research and teaching cur-
ricula.663 This process that began with the elimination of
independency finally arrived at the conversion of scientific objectivity
into ideology. But under Managerialism this is a very specific ideology.
It defines anything in its way as a possible object for manipulation.
Science itself has become deeply ideological. Pragmatic, positivist, and
objectified science has a view of ‘The Human Condition’ (Arendt 1958)
fitting to the age of Managerialism.
To the degree to which Managerialism has already become the centre
of the scientific enterprise, managerial rationality assumes the only
acceptable form of methodical construction. Under Managerialism it is
Managerialism itself that defines the organisation and handling of all
academic matters as issues of managerial control. It is managerial
instrumentality which lends itself to all purposes and ‘means→ends’
instrumentalities. What counts is a ‘correct’ attitude towards manager-
ial instrumentality and an affirming ‘Geist’ (Hegel) towards Mana-
gerialism. The correct attitude towards science and technology is the
managerial attitude because only managerial logic is able to project
and respond to the realities of managerial capitalism. In the ideolo-
gical-managerial realm of scholarly activities, human beings and
science are framed as neutral. This pretends that objectivity possesses
no ‘telos’ in-itself (Kant) while simultaneously the telos of management
studies is to enhance management’s Real Bottom Line. This highlights
Managerialism’s ideological character. It relates objectivity to a specific
historical form of capitalism, namely managerial capitalism, where the
consciousness of Managerialism prevails.
Managerialism operates a new rationality as an internal rather than
external factor. Science deformed by Managerialism operates a circu-
lar self-reinforcing motion reflective of a cybernetic model of a closed

circuit in which managerial inputs define managerial outputs. It con-
stitutes system theory driven to the extreme but remains pure and
applied Managerialism with anti-theoretical, anti-philosophical, and
hence practical reasoning. The scientific/business enterprise executes
a reduction to secondary research that no longer has any primary
research qualities. Science under Managerialism subscribes predom-
inantly to applied and quantifiable science. But the irrationality of
pure managerial science was never value-free. Hence, Managerialism
has installed the ideology of being value-free. The value of science
under the dictate of Managerialism is to stipulate practical ends. In
that way, science under Managerialism is only neutral to externalities
such as human, ethical, community, societal, environmental, and
above all universal values that may be imposed upon it. For
Managerialism, these values constitute unwarranted and unwanted
‘externalities’. Managerialism’s science has shielded itself against this
through significant advances in ‘the stratification of knowledge’. 664
This stratification works on a positive-to-negative continuum along
which critical knowledge is to be marginalised and managerial
knowledge is to be allowed full access to the power centre of
Managerialism.
But Managerialism’s pretended neutrality has also a positive charac-
ter. Its scientific rationality is made for one specific societal organisa-
tion – management – precisely because it projects its goal (The Real
Bottom Line) onto the content of research, curricula, academia, and
scholarship. Managerialism’s formalisation, functionalities, and objec-
tives are set prior to any application of so-called value-neutral and
objective-scientific methodologies. In this, methodology is superior to
societal, environmental, philosophical, ethical, and critical concerns.
As such Managerialism’s science is a pure form of concrete de-
socialised practice while simultaneously denying it in its ideology.
Historically, science freed human beings from nature but managerial
science has re-installed an external power over human beings, namely
markets, corporations, and managerial capitalism. Inside managerial
societies, human beings are once again unfree. They are governed by a
so-called natural hierarchy of market dependencies finding their clear-
est expressions in corporate and managerial regimes. Inside these
regimes, human beings are called underlings, resources, and subor-
dinates and as such they are related to each other in accordance with
quantifiable qualities, namely as units of labour power calculable in
units of time.665
194 Managerialism
By virtue of the rationalisation of the managerial modes of labour

usage, the uselessness of nearly all human qualities has been trans-
ferred from the universe of human science to that of a daily usage
inside managerial regimes. This is the task assigned to organisational
psychology. But between the two processes of scientific and managerial
quantification remains a sort of parallelism organised as a mutually
beneficial system of reciprocal reinforcement. This new and very man-
agerial quasi-scientific rationality is in-itself managerial. Viewed from
an historical perspective, the parallelism between
1. developments ending in today’s managerial capitalism on the one

hand and
2. the development of science mirroring Managerialism on the other
hand
developed under a common instrumentalist horizon. Scientific obser-

vation, experiment, methodology, research organisations, the coordi-
nation of data, propositions, scientific conclusions and the like never
proceeded in an unstructured, neutral, theoretical, or value-free space.
The project of scientific cognition always involves operations on
objects and abstractions which occur in a given universe of discourse
and action that cannot exist independent of the human subject and
therefore Kant’s insistence of the relevance of subjectivity remains
imperative.666 At the dawn of modernity, more than 200 years ago,
Kant made this very clear.
Science always observes, calculates and measures, interprets, and
theorises from a position in the object-subject universe. This can be
seen in one of the most significant examples. The stars which
Galileo, for example, observed were the same in classical antiquity.
But the different universe of human discourse and human action – in
other words a different social, political, and historical reality –
enabled him to open a radically new direction, a new range of obser-
vation, new technologies, new interpretations of the same data and a
new – more modern – ordering of observed data. The precise
configurations of the historical relation between scientific and soci-
etal rationality at the beginning of modernity remains important.
But other factors remain even more significant for our understanding
of science that led to the takeover of science by Managerialism. It
remains imperative to note that the internal instrumentalist charac-
ter of this scientific rationality has been made possible through the
development of an ‘a priori’ technology. Galileo’s application of
technology together with his – a human subject’s – interpretation

created new knowledge challenging established forms of social
control and domination. 667 As a consequence, it is of great
significance to remember that modern scientific thought – even in its
purest form – does not project particular practical goals such as man-
agerial goals but the universal goal of advancing ‘human’ – not man-
agerial – knowledge. It does not support a particular form of
domination; it rather challenges the status quo.668
However, there is no such thing as domination per se. What is of
concern is managerial domination through Managerialism’s conver-
sion of science into managerial science which is a distorted version of
science that is directed towards managerial goals just as management
directs corporations towards profit goals. It is Managerialism that lives
and breathes domination over others inside managerial regimes and
over those social actors that are external to corporations through the
ideology of stakeholder theory.669 As much as managerial ideologies
proceed in non-abstract forms, they can, therefore, never reject the
factual teleological context of management. It is this that defines the
so-called ‘given’ which always remains a managerial invention floating
in the managerial orbit. It is within this universe that the crypto-
scientific project of management studies occurs. Its TINA-dogma con-
ceives no possible alternatives marking nothing more than a
hypothesised extension of a pre-established reality. The principles of
managerial crypto-science are confined to a priori (Kant) structures in
such a way that these managerial principles can serve as a conceptual
and ideological instrument for self-advancing, advocating, and self-
propelling managerial control regimes.
The ideology of Managerialism lives in correspondence to practical
management. Management-scientific methods leading to an ever more
effective domination of human beings and nature came to provide ever
more rational concepts. These instrumentalities assisted in an ever
more effective domination of man by man. Ideologically, managerial
reasoning – as instrumental rationality – is portrayed as neutral. As
such, it even entered into the service of critical-practical reasoning as a
system-corrective function. This merger is beneficial to Managerialism
and management. Today, managerial domination perpetuates and has
extended itself not only ‘through’ technology but ‘as’ technology. The
latter provides a great legitimising tool for an ever expanding power of
Managerialism that has absorbed all spheres of politics, society, culture,
and economy. It has, in the words of Husserl and Habermas, success-
fully colonised the ‘lifeworld’.670
196 Managerialism
In the managerial universe, technology provides a great rationalisa-

tion of human unfreedom confining human beings to a
‘consumer↔employee’ oscillation. This demonstrates Managerialism’s
impossibility to exist autonomously as a non-determining entity of
human life. But Managerialism has made this unfreedom appear
neither irrational nor political. Instead, it appears as a rational submis-
sion to the managerial apparatus which enlarges the material comforts
of human existence promising eternal increases in labour productivity
and perpetual growth.671 Managerial rationality protects rather than
cancels the legitimacy of domination. Its instrumentalist horizon of
reason opens the rationality for a totalitarian managerial society.
The ceaseless dynamic of Managerialism has become filled with
political content while the logic of its technology has been turned into
an unavoidable and acceptable logic of continued servitude. The once
promised liberating power of technology has been converted into an
‘instrumentalisation’ of human beings.672 This interpretation links
Managerialism’s quasi-scientific project and its methods, models, and
ideologies to the utilisation of human beings for the project of
Managerialism. The specific managerial project merges the inner form
of scientific rationality with the functional and ideological character of
managerial concepts. In other words, the managerial-scientific sphere
represents a projection of nature as a quantifiable matter into its own
ideological apparatus.
But Managerialism can never represent the horizon of a concrete
societal practice preserved in the development of modernity’s scientific
project. Even granting non-managerial and non-instrumentalist but so-
called ‘pure’ scientific rationality, on its own it would still fail to estab-
lish the sociological validity of such a purely scientific project. This is
because the formation of scientific concepts always preserves the
unavoidable interrelation between subject and object.673 In the
scientific universe of discourse, any theoretical-practical link can only
be understood in this way. Such an interpretation has been offered, for
example, by Horkheimer (1937) and Habermas (1987) but also by Swiss
psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980).674 Piaget interprets the forma-
tion of scientific concepts in terms of different abstractions as a general
interrelation between subject and object. Abstractions never proceed
from mere objects. It is next to impossible for a subject to function as a
neutral point of observation and measurement. Equally, subjects are
not mere vehicles of pure cognitive reasoning.
Piaget’s interpretations recognise the internal practical character of
theoretical reason. In contrast to Piaget’s psychological analysis,
German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) offered a genetic

epistemology focusing on the socio-historical structure of scientific
reason. It emphasises the extent to which modern science always
reflects the methodology of a given historical reality within whose uni-
verse it moves. Husserl starts with the mathematics of nature resulting
in practical knowledge. But scientific achievements refer back to a pre-
scientific practice that, for example, constituted the original basis of
Galilean science. This pre-scientific basis of science determines the
theoretical structure of science.
The managerial construction is such a theory and with it, technicality
has colonised the lifeword. In mathematical practice, Managerialism can
attain what is denied to it in the empirical practice creating exactness
where none exists. Hence, it becomes possible to determine an ideal
form of managerial practice with absolute certainty. This, of course, also
carries connotations to what Hegel called ‘sense certainty’.675
Management studies claim to be an exact science with the appearance of
universality. The coordination of the managerial with the human world
enables Managerialism to manage the anticipated and to shape the irreg-
ularities of practical life inside the lifeworld. Managerialism possesses a
formula that enables it to foresights which it uses to guide managerial
practice.676 These foresights are used to manipulate the concrete life of
human beings.677 Through Husserl’s philosophy the pre-scientific charac-
ter of managerially appropriated mathematical exactness and functional-
ity becomes visible. Hence, the central notion of managerial science
emerges, not as a by-product, but as an appropriation of science.
Nevertheless, managerial abstractions from concreteness and
quantifications of qualities yield the promise of exactness and quasi-
universal validity. Inevitably, this also involves a specific experience of
the lifeworld and of a social position from which to analyse the
world.678 But such a societal and universal perspective can never adhere
to management studies’ illusive idea of ‘pure’ science that remains in
fact a narrowed tunnel-view of pre-defined purposive and practical
content. It appears to carry connotations of a massively constructed
form of ‘groupthink’ or ‘homosexual reproduction’.679 This is the
inbred self-referencing and self-validating version of projected
Managerialism rendering it dangerous to everyone. By contrast,
Galilean science is a science of systematic outward anticipation and
universal projection. It remains imperative to recognise that
Managerialism’s internal makeup represents a specific non-universal
inward projection of calculable, controllable, and predictable relation-
ships among exactly identifiable units.
198 Managerialism
In this project, the ability to quantify things and ‘human→resources’

is a prerequisite for the domination of both. It always includes the con-
version of human beings into human resources.680 Managerialism’s
conversion is indicated through ‘→’ as human→resources. While for
the believer in good management they are ‘human’ resources, for
Managerialism they are human ‘resources’. As a highly ideological term
human resources (without the ‘→’) serves Managerialism: believers can
continue an eternal and fruitless quest in finding a ‘human’ side in
management while Managerialism can incorporate believers turning
them into a support group. But because of Managerialism’s ideology of
hyper-individualism, truly individual, subjective, and non-quantifiable
qualities actually stand in the way of a managerially constructed organ-
isation of individuals in accordance with the measurable power to be
extracted from them. Simultaneously, Managerialism remains a
specific, purpose-driven, sectarian, but also a missionary and historical
project of modernity – not post-modernity.681
It is exactly for that reason that Galilean science still remains to be a
non-missionary project. Unlike Managerialism, it never had any inten-
tion of colonising the lifeworld. It remains essentially within the basic
experiential framework and within the universe of ends set by this
reality. But the world of reality and experience is the world in which all
individuals live their practical lives. At stake is an inherent limitation
engineered by Managerialism and its quasi-scientific method by virtue
of which it extends, rationalises, and manages the lifeword. It does so,
of course, by manipulating the structure, culture, and essence of the
lifeworld but without envisaging any qualitatively new modes of
seeing and without qualitatively new relations between individuals and
between individuals and nature. Its continuous hierarchical institu-
tionalisation of human life is based on Managerialism’s use of applied
science used to stabilise an arrested, static, and conservative, but
overall well functioning society. Even its most revolutionary achieve-
ments are no more than constructions aligned to its specific project of
organising managerially guided realities. The systematic self-correction
and self-adjustment of managerial science propels and expands the
same historical sphere and the same basic experience over and over
again. On the routine treadmill of managerial progress no human and
ethical progress is allowed. Managerialism asphyxiates the same formal
a priori that creates material mass-comfort.
No matter how one defines truth and objectivity, they remain
related to human agents, to theory and practice, and to their ability to
comprehend and change the world. This ability in turn depends on the
extent to which an issue is recognised and understood. But managerial

science – by virtue of its own method and concepts – has projected and
promoted a sphere in which dominating nature has remained linked to
dominating human→resources. This is a link that is fatal to the human
universe as a whole. Whenever Managerialism calls up ‘science’, this is
what it projects onto the realm of human existence. Domineering
nature, scientifically mastered and manipulated, re-emerges in the
managerial apparatus of production and the creation of ideologies. The
environmental and social destruction which it produces creates a con-
sumerist existence in which individuals are subordinated to the
masters of the managerial apparatus.682
Its managerial and rational hierarchy is made to appear non-social
and indispensable. If this is the case, then almost any shift in the
current direction of Managerialism constitutes human progress. This
might sever the fatal link between ‘master and slave’ (Hegel) affecting
the very structure of the quasi-scientific legitimising project of
Managerialism. If this hypothesis remains solid, it might incur a devel-
opment into an essentially different direction. Consequently, a human
approach to managerial science would arrive at essentially different
concepts of human beings and nature establishing essentially different
facts. But the rationality and ideology of Managerialism subverts the
idea of reason. However, elements of such a subversion and notions of
other rationalities remain present throughout the history of thought.
Already ancient ideas on a state where human beings attain fulfilment
were filled with tensions between Kant’s ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to
be’. This relates to liberation found in ideas envisioning a ‘coming-to-
rest’ of the present repressive character of managerial regimes leading
to an end of domination. The two contrasting rationalities cannot
simply be correlated using modern methods and ideas of manipulation
and control.
Historically, classical thought was insufficiently committed to the
logic of secular control. Traditional as well as managerial reasoning was
and is necessarily mastery and domination representing the logic of
‘law and order’ by virtue of power and knowledge.683 In subsuming
particular managerial cases under Managerialism’s false universality
and by subjecting it to the managerial realm, this version of thought
maintains its mastery over particular cases. It becomes capable of com-
prehending them, of acting upon them, and above all, of controlling
them. However, thoughts can never completely be made to stand
under the rule of managerial logic. Hence, the unfolding of this logic
remains slightly different in the various modes of managerial thought.
200 Managerialism
For example, Managerialism relies on classical, formal, modern, mathe-

matical, symbolic, and even dialogical logic. All of them rule over dif-
ferent parts of managerial regimes. But they were all developed within
the historical continuum of domination to which they pay tribute.
This continuum bestows itself upon the lifeword. It is the mode of
managerial thinking in its conformist, manipulative, and ideological
character. Simultaneously, those who reject playing the game of dom-
ination are abused and framed with negativity, as controversial, mad,
outsiders, and as speculative utopians.
The scientific concept of controllable human→resources and nature
is projected back onto human beings and nature as an endless matter-
in-function representing the main ingredients of managerial theory
and practice. In this form, the objective world of nature and human
beings entered the ideological construction of Managerialism. This is a
sphere of mental and ideological instrumentalities, tools, means, and
colonising intentions. Just as the master of human manipulations,
behaviourism’s Skinner (1983) wanted it when noting,684
what a fascinating thing! Total control of a living organism …

The underlying assumption [of behaviourism], according to one critic,
seems to be that ‘the semi-starved rat in the box,
with virtually nothing to do but press on a lever for food,
captures the essence of virtually all human behaviour’.
Behaviourism and the manipulation of human→resources and con-

sumers is a truly ‘scientific’ system that depends on converting humans
into ‘objects of power’ (Bauman).685 The processes of validation and
verification may be purely theoretical ones, but they never occur in a
vacuum. They can and do manipulate the human mind but they never
terminate this mind.686 In the realm of Managerialism, the application
of the behavioural system of manipulation – as outlined in virtually
every textbook on organisational psychology and HRM – depends on a
pre-established system of managerial ends ‘in’ which and – more
importantly – ‘for’ which it is developed.687 What appeared irrelevant,
disturbing, challenging, subversive, counterproductive, and foreign to
the manipulative project of behaviourism – codeworded ‘modification’
by Managerialism – is the critical and ‘mündige’ (Adorno) human will
of Kantian self-determination and Hegelian self-actualisation.
Behaviourism’s pure objectivity reveals itself as an objectification of

subjectivity that provides humanity’s ultimate telos.688 But even in the
construction of a behaviourist managerial reality, there is no such
thing as a purely rational scientific order. The process of managerial
rationality remains a deeply ideological process. Only as a manipulated
medium of Managerialism, human beings and nature become ‘inter-
convert-able’ objects of business organisations so that individuals can
be treated as things (human resources) while material things and man-
agerial instruments take on human characteristics (‘the commodity
market was nervous this morning’). The effectiveness and productivity
of the managerial apparatus – under which they are subsumed –
camouflages Managerialism’s manipulative interest that sustains it.
Management’s use of the controlling technology of behaviourism
has become the great vehicle of reification – turning everyone into a
thing.689 It is reification in its most mature, systematic, sophisticated,
and effective form.690 But social positions of individuals and their rela-
tionships to others are never totally determined by objective qualities
of managerial-corporate policies and public laws generated under the
ideological stewardship of Managerialism. Nevertheless these corporate
policies and official laws have enhanced the ideological and uncon-
tainable character of Managerialism. Simultaneously, they are made to
appear as calculable manifestations of managerial rationality.691 The
entire world tends to become exposed to the totality of Managerialism
absorbing everyone and everything in its path. The ideological web of
domination that Managerialism has spun has become the web of
reason itself inside which managerial societies are fatally entangled.
Under these conditions, scientific thought outside Managerialism
assumes the form of a pure, irrelevant, and self-contained formalism.
In the established managerial dialogue, non-contradiction and non-
transcendence is the common denominator. The demise of this or even
challenges to managerial thinking are not in sight.
11
Challenges to Managerial Thinking
A non-managerial redefinition of thought can help coordinate mental

operations with those of social reality. Thought is on the level with
reality when it is cured from managerial transgression reaching beyond
Managerialism’s conceptual framework. This can be done either
through purely axiomatic logic and formal mathematics or as an exten-
sive universe of discourse and behaviour accomplished as Habermas’
‘ideal speech’.692 A critical linguistic analysis of Managerialism can cure
thought and speech from the confusing ghosts of Managerialism. The
emphasis is on the critical and enlightening function of philosophical
analysis that exists independent from any correction to the abnormal,
domineering, and pathological forms of communication and behav-
iour engineered through managerial thought and speech. It is able to
remove managerial obscurities, illusions, oddities, and ideological
belief-systems. If anything, it can expose their ideological content and
correct malformed behaviour in managerial regimes which Hegelian
philosopher Honneth describes as ‘pathological mis-developments’.693
Critical concepts are capable of relating such pathological behaviour
to the managerial society as a whole. By virtue of this, the theoretical
procedure of critical theory becomes immediately practical. Unlike
‘Critical Management Studies’ that appropriates selective elements of
critical theory and adjusts them ‘for’ management studies, critical
theory in the tradition of the ‘Frankfurt School’ does not design
methods to create ‘better’ management, safer planning, greater
efficiency, more human forms of managerial domination, and closer
calculation.694 CMS’ analysis via correction and improvement does not
terminate the affirmation of Managerialism. Instead, it provides pos-
itive thinking in the form of a system-stabilising critique from within –
not about – management and never about Managerialism. Tellingly,
202
Challenges to Managerial Thinking 203
CMS is remarkably silent on the ideology of Managerialism. A critical

philosophical analysis on the contrary is never an application to
advance the course of Managerialism. CMS’ appropriation of sociology
and psychology remains therapeutic. In contrast, critical theory’s rejec-
tion of exact methods and liberation from specters of rather meaning-
less notions such as objectivism may well be considered an end in
itself.695
Moreover, the treatment of thought in a linguistic analysis adhering
to Habermas’ ‘Theory of Communicative Action’ is – in its own affairs
and fights – a rejection of the ideological character of Managerialism.696
But Managerialism’s ideological character is to be assessed by correlat-
ing the struggle for conceptual transcendence against and beyond the
established realm of managerial societies. Like any philosophy worthy
the name, Habermas’ ‘communicative action’ speaks for itself and
defines its own attitude to reality. It identifies as its chief concern the
debunking of distorted forms of communication and its propagation
by Managerialism.697 Within these characteristics, it circumscribes its
position in the tradition of critical philosophy. It is at the opposite
pole of those modes of thought that elaborate their concepts within
Managerialism and are pre-framed as ‘discourse’ while manipulating
human dialogue and behaviours. Such contradicting modes of thought
constitute negative thinking.698 ‘The power of the negative’ is the prin-
ciple governing the development of concepts when contradictions
become a distinguishing quality of reason (Hegel’s Phenomenology
1807).699
This quality of thought is never confined to a certain type of critical
rationalism; instead it remains a decisive element in the non-empiricist
tradition of critical philosophy.700 But the pretended empiricism of
Managerialism is not necessarily positive. Empiricism and positivism
establish realities that depend on a particular dimension of experience
– the managerial experience – which functions as a source of
objectified knowledge and as the sole frame of reference. For example,
it seems that critical philosophy is per se negative towards a managerial
society in which vital social, educational, cultural, environmental,
ethical, and material needs remain unfulfilled.701 In contrast, empiri-
cism moves within the managerial framework which disallows the
highlighting of such contradictions. As a consequence, there must
always be a self-imposed restriction to avoid any critical perspective.
Instead, the prevailing behavioural universe ensures an intrinsically
positive attitude of those confined to Managerialism. In spite of the
rigidly neutral ideology of Managerialism, its pre-bound analysis
204 Managerialism
always succumbs to the power of positive thinking.702 But before trying

to show the intrinsically ideological character of positive thinking, the
apparently arbitrary use of terms such as ‘positive’ and ‘positivism’
must be explained. The first explanation was made by the school of
Saint Simon where the term ‘positivism’ encompassed three issues703
(1) a validation of cognitive thought by experience of facts;

(2) an orientation of cognitive thought to the physical sciences as a
model of certainty and exactness; and finally,
(3) an unquestioned belief that progress in knowledge depends on this
orientation.
Positivism originated in a struggle against all metaphysics, transcen-

dentalisms, religious belief-systems, superstitions, and idealisms that
became visible as obscure and regressive modes of thought during the
historical period of Enlightenment. To the degree to which a given
reality is seen as scientifically comprehended and modified and to the
degree to which a society has become managerial, positivism finds in
Managerialism an ideal medium for the realisation and validation of its
repressive concepts. It creates a false harmony between theory and
practice, truth and facts. For Managerialism, even Enlightenment
philosophies have been turned into affirmative thoughts. This crypto-
philosophic critique criticises management from ‘within’. Simul-
taneously, it stigmatises non-positive notions as mere speculation,
dreams, fantasies, impracticalities, utopian, and controversial.704
Today, the universe of discourse and behaviour which began to
speak in Saint Simon’s positivism has been turned into that of a one-
dimensional managerial reality. In it, the world of management and
the lifeworld – colonised by Managerialism – have been transformed
into pure instrumentalities.705
Much of what was once outside the managerial-instrumental world
and remained unconquered is now made to appear within the range of
managerial progress. On the ground of its own awareness and realisa-
tions, Managerialism repels transcendence. In the advanced stage of
Managerialism, it is no longer necessary to engage into scientific and
managerial progress to motivate repulsion. From this point on,
Managerialism can achieve it on its own. Nevertheless, the existing
contractions inside managerial thought remain because of
Managerialism’s own self-imposed ideological stance. But contem-
porary actions of Managerialism to reduce scope and truth of critical
philosophy remain a tremendous and indispensable enterprise. The
system-stabilising ideology of management studies has already pro-

claimed its own modesty and subordination to Managerialism.
Critical Management Studies appropriate critical theory’s emancipa-
tory qualities while leaving everything as it is. CMS and standard man-
agement studies exhibit academic and intellectual sadomasochism,
self-mutilation, self-humiliation, and self-denunciation of the intellec-
tual enterprise of Enlightenment. Its affirmation of modesty and
dependence captures the mood of righteous contentment within its
own limitations of reason. Once recognised and accepted by
Managerialism as useful, management studies ‘protect’ human beings
from useless mental adventures of emancipatory thinking asphyxiating
them inside an ideology capable of entrapment inside a managerially
constructed existence. However, when debunking management
studies’ substances, it remains imperative to note that management
studies – just as Managerialism – represent powerful ideologies.
Their success provides a crypto-intellectual justification for what
managerial society has long since accomplished, namely the defama-
tion of alternative modes of thought that have the potentials to con-
tradict the established managerial order. It represents one of the finest
versions of TINA ever invented.706 The style in which this sort of quasi-
intellectual behaviourism of management studies’ receptiveness of
Managerialism presents itself, is worthy of analysis. While creating the
image of being ‘critical’, management studies appear to shy away from
even mentioning the world ‘Managerialism’.707 It seems to oscillate
between the two poles of a:
• pontificating authority of Managerialism and an

• easy-going chumminess reflective of Baritz’s Servants of Power.708
Management studies’ tendency towards pontificating and chummi-

ness has been perfectly fused inside their official doctrine of a quasi-
scientific body of knowledge that follows managerial demand to the
letter. The chumminess of management studies is essential inasmuch
as it excludes the vocabulary of critique while simultaneously
working against intelligent non-conformity which is ridiculed as
utopian. 709 The language of management studies remains the lan-
guage which expresses managerial thinking and therefore is no more
than a token of concreteness. However, it is also the token of a false
concreteness. Management studies’ language that provides most of
the material for its analysis is a purged language. It is purged of all
‘unorthodox’ vocabulary and of the means for expressing any other
206 Managerialism
contents than those furnished by Managerialism. Any critical linguis-

tic analyst finds traditional management studies’ purged language
parroting managerial facts. Management studies have taken on the
impoverished language of Managerialism. They insulate it from what
is not expressed in managerial terminology. It is through this
process that managerial language with its inherent elements of pre-
determined meaning colonises the social, political, cultural, and
ethical universe of the lifeworld.
Management studies’ language pays respect to a managerially allow-
able and specifically designed bandwidth of pre-defined and permitted
varieties of meanings and uses. It adheres to the managerial power of
invented versions of common sense and assumed ordinary speech.
Simultaneously, the language blocks an analysis of what managerial
speech really says about managerial societies, management, and man-
agerial capitalism – all of which already speak the thought-limiting
vocabulary of the managerial language.710 The linguistics suppresses
once again what is continually suppressed in the managerial realm of
conforming behaviour. The faked legitimacy and simulated authority
of their appropriation of critical thinking is used to bless those man-
agerial forces that make up the simulated sphere of quasi-academic dia-
logue.711 Meanwhile, non-managerial linguistic expressions in the
tradition of critical theory highlight what managerial language reveals
through its mutilation of human beings and nature. All too often it
is not even structured managerial language which reveals Mana-
gerialism’s ideological character but rather blown-up atoms of
managerial speech, silly scraps of CEO speeches that depict the intel-
lectual level of baby-talk such as
• ‘No, You Can’t Have It All’ (HBR 2012),

• ‘It’s Time To Bring Back the Executive Dining Room’ (HBR 2012),
• ‘this looks to me now like human resources achieving their goal’,
• ‘management saw the market moving’, and
• ‘no contemporary CEO can afford to take capital markets for
granted’.712
Not only Managerialism’s No. 1 flagship – the Harvard Business Review

– is plastered with such baby-talk. But that is all it is – managerial baby-
talk so that Peter Drucker’s ‘business winning donkeys’ can understand
what Managerialism has in store for them.713 It depicts the destructive-
ness of Managerialism framed as KISS – keep it simple, stupid! Given
this, two questions arise from a critical point of view:
1. can managerial concepts ever terminate the actual universe of

human discourse? and
2. is Managerialism’s claim to represent science, exactness, and clarity
not an end in-itself but invented to further managerial ends?
Both questions can be answered affirmatively. The most banal exam-

ples of Managerialism, precisely because of the ‘banality of evil’
(Arendt), are able to show this and thereby explain Managerialism’s
thinking. Such an analysis of Managerialism elucidates because it tran-
scends the immediate concreteness of managerial-ideological claims
and expressions. They transcend beyond the factors which make up a
managerially constructed situation and the behaviour of managers and
affirming academics who speak the managerial speech. They show the
factors that are hidden behind the facts. But managerial speech does
not immediately terminate in the universe of human discourse. It
colonises it and closes options to all different and non-managerial uni-
verses.714 Necessarily, Managerialism’s terms contradict their real
meaning:
• ‘environment’, for example, has nothing to do with nature but

means ‘business environment’;
• ‘sustainability’ has nothing to do with a ‘low carbon footprint’ but
how to sustain a business in the face of increasing competition;
• ‘footprint’ has nothing to do with a carbon footprint but refers to
the footprint a corporation has in a market; and finally
• ‘human resource’ has nothing to do with being human but every-
thing with being a measurable and controllable resource.
These managerial distortions can be highlighted through critical dis-

course analysis that – in its concepts, style, and syntax – provides alter-
natives to the one-dimensional managerial mode of thinking. It is a
different discourse that transpires once managerial communication is
critically examined. It is conceivable that the exact opposite of what
Managerialism has in mind may in fact be the case, namely that every
sentence of Managerialism always contains a little part that is non-
distorted. This is the cunningness of ideology. It also creates the
appearance of an existence inside the human world to which this sort
of managerial language is designed to communicate. The almost
masochistic reduction of managerial speech to the humble and
common is part of Managerialism’s ideological programme. To some
extent, Managerialism must always stick to subjects of everyday
208 Managerialism
thinking to avoid going astray. Only through such a process can it

colonise everyday communication and eventually convert the lifeworld
into a managerial world.715
But Managerialism can also annihilate all alternatives so that
Enlightenment’s and Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ are pressed into a
managerial straitjacket. To do that, Managerialism proposes a manage-
rially defined language usage that fosters the practice never to ask or
seek solutions beyond those that are already proposed by
Managerialism. Problems are solved by arranging and re-arranging
what Managerialism has already given to us – not by seeking alterna-
tive and extra-managerial information. The self-styled intellectual
poverty of Managerialism exposes its commitment to ideological con-
cepts such as ‘the given state of affairs’ or distrusting all possibilities of
extra-managerial experiences and thoughts. Subjection to the rule of
managerially established facts has become total. Only managerially
certified and linguistically expressed facts exist in managerial societies.
When Managerialism speaks in its language we are told to obey in the
aforementioned ‘Star Trek Borg’-like fashion.716
Managerialism’s intellectual prohibitions are severe, authoritarian
and total. Critical philosophy can no longer interfere with the manage-
rial use of language imposing a theoretical ‘stop sign’ onto thinking.
We may no longer advance any kind of theory that is not supportive of
Managerialism. There must not even be any hypothetical considera-
tions. We must do away with all extra-managerial explanation. Only
Managerialism’s description must take its place. One might ask what
remains of philosophy and critical philosophy. What remains of think-
ing, and intelligence without anything hypothetical, without any
explanation? What is at stake is more than the sharpness and human-
ity of critical philosophy. They give us an opportunity of preserving
and protecting the rights of humanity. It is the need to think and
speak in terms other than those of Managerialism as these are still
meaningful, rational, and valid precisely because they are other terms
than those imposed by Managerialism. To achieve this, three things
need to be involved:
1. a broadening and crafting of an entirely new philosophy,

2. a philosophy that undertakes to describe what is happening to
human society after its colonisation by Managerialism, and
3. a philosophy capable of highlighting what it means to eradicate crit-
ical concepts capable of understanding what is happening to society
and what is meant by Managerialism.
To begin with, an irreducible difference exists between the realm of

managerial thinking and its managerial language on the one side, and
that of critical philosophic thinking and language on the other.
In managerial circumstances, business language is indeed one-
dimensional. It is reduced to a practical instrument enshrined in the
anti-theoretical belief-system of Managerialism that focuses one-
dimensionally on so-called ‘real-world’ solutions. By contrast, if philo-
sophical texts and critical reflective discourses use terms such as
• substance and self-reflection;

• human beings rather than human resources;
• human life rather than managerial existence;
• self-fulfilment rather than KPIs;
• happiness (utilitarianism) and enjoyment rather than performance
management;717
• self-determination and self-actualisation (Kant/Hegel) rather than
following markets and share-prices;
• the ‘Kingdom of Ends’ rather than the ‘Kingdom of Means’;718
• human freedom rather than free trade, managerial and business
freedom;719
• mutual and equal recognition rather than alienation
then these philosophical-ethical concepts cannot be reduced to mere

propositions. Inside Managerialism, only a distortion and ‘adjustment’
of their original meaning to create behavioural reactions as a manager-
ially desired outcome takes place. Meanwhile, these words remain
unfulfilled while Managerialism seeks to make sure that they no longer
even exist in thought. The place where they may give rise to other
thoughts is off limits for thinking by the wardens of management
studies. Managerialism has destroyed even the philosophical tradition
of ‘critical mediation’ within the historical continuum where these
terms once helped forming guiding principles for human life.720 Their
content remains unfulfilled and is even defamed as pure utopianism.
The hubris of Managerialism asserts its thesis of a final managerial
identity composed of managerial thought and managerial objects on
everything there is inside the lifeworld. The words with which critical
philosophy is concerned can hardly have a sustained impact on
Managerialism because the latter either eliminated philosophical and
societal terms or distorted them beyond recognition. Thus, exactness
and clarity in critical philosophy can never be attained ‘within’ the
realm of managerial dialogue. However, confining thought ‘inside’
210 Managerialism
management and thereby ‘inside’ Managerialism remains a dangerous

and thought-limiting core belief of Critical Management Studies.
Critical-philosophical concepts aiming at the dimension of facts and
meanings which elucidate the atomised language of managerial ordin-
ary communication from ‘without’ is rendered impossible. However,
for an understanding of Managerialism, a critical discourse from
‘without’ remains absolutely essential as ‘thinking-inside-the-box’
remains what it says: thinking inside the box of Managerialism. This
alone renders, for example, Critical Management Study’s approach of
being ‘within’ management worthless.721 If the sphere of managerial
dialogue itself becomes the object of a philosophical-critical analysis,
the language of philosophy becomes a ‘meta’-language.722 Even where
such an analysis has moved in the humble terms of ordinary language,
it necessarily remains antagonistic to Managerialism.723 Critical ana-
lysis dissolves the managerially established context of one-dimensional
meaning. It positions this against Managerialism’s own reality. It
abstracts from the mediated and invented concreteness of managerial
communication in order to attain true concreteness.
Through philosophical analysis, linguistic analysis questions the
validity of managerial objectivity. This can serve as a critique in
which controversial managerial conditions are staked out. The analy-
sis draws from a larger, denser, philosophical, critical, and ethical
context compared to what Managerialism delivers. As such, it is
removed from the managerial sphere in which managerial concepts
are formed and formulated. When expressed in the utmost simplistic
terms of Hegel, the following appears: one needs day to know night,
one needs darkness to know light, and one needs the other to know
oneself. 724 Day can never be established from ‘within’ day, darkness
not from ‘within’ darkness. It can only be done through references to
something other than day and dark, something external. The very
same applies to Managerialism and management – it can never be
understood from within.
What becomes universal is the larger context in which people live
and act. This transcends the particularity of Managerialism. It gives
such an analysis its meaning and context. Simultaneously, it avoids
appealing to the positivist analysis that cuts off analysis itself. This
larger context of human experience and the real empirical and human
lifeworld include extra-managerial reflections on the unavoidable con-
sequences of, for example, global warming.725 In the field of
Managerialism and management studies such issues are forgotten,
repressed, unknown, made to disappear, and fought against.726 It is a

world in which the ‘daily material comfort’ and ‘individual efforts
directed towards organisational goals’ are perhaps the only two items
that make up all experience. Combining
1. the ‘primary’ sphere of managerial regimes and

2. the ‘secondary’ sphere of blinding consumerism and tabloid-TV
Managerialism has merged both into one unified but restricted realm.
The ideological powers that rule the first also shape the restricted expe-
rience of the second. Establishing this relation is not the job of man-
agerial thought, not found inside its traditional expression of
management studies, and not in its more fashionable way of Critical
Management Studies. In Managerialism, this has become a matter of
communication experts, PR specialists, lobbyists, a supportive business
press, and affirmative academics that have established an interest sym-
biosis between Managerialism, management, management studies, and
corporate mass media.727
They make sure that minimal managerial abstractions justify
Managerialism and the managerial way of life. But inside this way of
thinking, no meaning can ever be ascertained without transgressing
into the critical and philosophical universe. In philosophy, however,
the question remains one of correct linguistic analysis as applied to
managerial terms, buzzwords, weasel words, ideological phrases, and
reformulations. But managerial translations conducted under manage-
ment studies assimilate terms such as ‘freedom’ (business freedom),
‘government’ (corporate governance), and ‘citizenship’ (corporate citi-
zenship) while simultaneously diluting their true meaning. The reality
of the former is appropriated for the distorted and ideological reality of
the latter. The managerially appropriated language is indeed of vital
concern to critical philosophical thought.728 But inside the ideological
field of Managerialism, words lose their humanity. Only critical dis-
course analysis can reveal their hidden meaning. There are concealed
dimensions of meaning that rule managerial regimes and managerial
societies. This is a discovery that shatters the neutral, ideological, and
reified form in which the managerial realm is made to appear. Under
critical philosophical scrutiny, managerial words reveal themselves as
faked replications of real terms, not only in a grammatical and formal-
logical but also in a material sense.729
212 Managerialism
This brings to light the limits which define the meaning and devel-
opment of terms that Managerialism has imposed on human discourse
and behaviour. This is what Habermas meant by the ‘colonisation of
the lifeworld’.730 The historical dimension of meaning can no longer be
elucidated by referring to examples from ‘within’ the managerial
world, analysed with the restrictive tools of management studies.
Management studies can reveal many ambiguities, puzzles, and oddi-
ties, but they remain inside ‘language games’ (Wittgenstein) of intellec-
tual boredom as a kind of ‘Critical Management Studies playground’
on which ‘critical’ managerial academics can play with each other
without disturbing the adult world of Managerialism. When manage-
ment studies orient themselves on the reified ways of managerial dia-
logue, they reduce themselves to clarifying managerial terminologies in
the terms of their own reified sphere. This leads to the cybernetic
asphyxiation of self-reaffirmation that stabilises Managerialism. Any
analysis that uses, for example, Hegelian negatives appears alien and
antagonistic to the managerially trained researcher who is helplessly
unable to understand Managerialism when using established terms
that were taught to him by management schools. Such research
classifies and distinguishes meanings and keeps Kant’s ‘what is’ and his
‘what ought to be’ neatly at bay. It purges thought from contradic-
tions, critical speculations, disobedience, and human development.
Where Managerialism allows minor transgressions, they are not
those of Kant’s ‘critique of pure reason’.731 They constitute minor mis-
demeanours inside the limits of managerial knowledge. They close
rather than open the realm of knowledge beyond Managerialism’s
understanding and managerial logic. In barring access to the emanci-
patory universe, management studies and Critical Management Studies
have set themselves up as self-sufficient worlds of their own.732
Managerial thought is systematically enclosed and well protected
against the indiscretions of disturbing externalities such as critical
theory and moral philosophy. These are framed as ‘controversial’,
external, irrelevant, and subsequently comprehensively rejected. In
this respect, it makes little difference whether the validating context is
that of mathematics, positivism, empiricism, system theory, behav-
iourism, post-modernism, business ethics, logical propositions, or
simply customary usages of quasi-scientific terms. In one way or
another, Managerialism predicts and prejudges all possible meanings
established from outside its own orbit. Its prejudging judgements can
be as broad as the spoken English language, a dictionary, a code of
practices, or a convention. Once accepted, they constitute an empirical
a priori that can never be transcended. But the acceptance of the man-
agerially given still violates the empirical self because it speaks the
mutilated language of scientific objectivism that takes out human sub-
jects and humanity with it. In the history of knowledge, it marks a
return to ‘pre’-Kantian times.
Researchers who experience and express only what is given to them
by Managerialism only have the facts but never the factors. Their
research programme is managerially manipulated before it even com-
mences. By virtue of repression, the managerial world becomes the
result of restricted experiences. The positivist cleansing of the mind
aligns the human mind with these restricted experiences. It is con-
strained to exploring and clarifying managerial ambiguities and obscu-
rities in an effort to iron-out system problems. Managerialism’s
neo-positivism is not concerned with the general ambiguity and obscu-
rity that has established itself as a universal experience of all those
having to exist inside the managerial orbit. It must remain uncon-
cerned because the methods adopted by Managerialism discredit all
alternative concepts. In that way, they can no longer guide an under-
standing of managerial reality in its repressive, rational (means) and
irrational (ends) structure. Hegel’s philosophical-epistemological
concept of ‘negative thinking’ has been annihilated.733
The transformation of elements of Enlightenment into Mana-
gerialism’s positive thinking takes place mainly in the selective and
therapeutic treatment of universal concepts. Their translation into man-
agerial and behavioural terms closely parallels neo-liberal translations.734
The therapeutic character of the managerial analysis is strongly empha-
sised. Managerialism cures one from illusions, obscurities, unsolvable
riddles, unanswerable questions, critical thinking, moral dilemmas, phi-
losophy, and from those ghosts and specters found in ideas such as
‘Another World is Possible’.735 Apparently, Managerialism’s addressee is a
certain group of intellectuals who still have a mind and language that
does not conform to the terms and conditions of Managerialism.
Meanwhile in the management–management studies interface, there
is indeed a sufficient portion of behaviourist psychologists on hand,
versed in the ways and means of organisational psychology, marketing
psychologists and public relations psychologists who can deliver
unique insight into the troubles of wayward intellectuals. In severe
cases, their recalcitrant behaviour, refusal to go along, resistance, and
disruptiveness is diagnosed as being rooted in a general sickness which
cannot be cured.736 ‘Corporate missionaries’ such as the above men-
tioned Ronald Duchin have developed three (see below) distinct
214 Managerialism
categories to deal with such deviant intellectuals – radicals, opportunists,

idealists, and realists – outlining a three-step strategy to mollify them:
1. isolate the radical academics, those who highlight the systematic

pathologies of Managerialism,737 and those who advocate that
‘another world is possible’;738
2. cultivate the idealists of Critical Management Studies, believers in
management ethics, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder
theory, and the like and educate them into becoming compliant
realists of managerial thinking; and then
3. bring them into agreement with Managerialism.739
In some sense, the first group’s disease is a protest reaction against the
sick world in which we live. But the physicians of Managerialism must
disregard the pathologies of managerial capitalism, focus instead on the
‘illness’ of that group of intellectuals and discount all moral problems.
The controllers and gatekeepers of Managerialism have to restore the
patients’ health, to make them capable of functioning normally in the
managerial world.740 They are not philosophers but scalpel-wielding ideo-
logy-physicians. Their job is not to cure the critical mind but to make
the managerial idea comprehensible to it in the terms of Managerialism.
For Managerialism, the renunciation of all critical theory is imperative
because Managerialism is an undertaking that leaves management and
managerial regimes as they are while simultaneously, consistently, and
continuously advocating ‘change management’, and ‘corporate restruc-
turing’. Managerialism does not recognise any other discovery than that
which gives managerial quasi-scholars peace so that they are no longer
tormented by questions which bring into question Managerialism itself.
Managerialism’s motto remains: ‘everything is what it is’.741
Its hostility is most sweeping where it takes the form of toleration.742
This is the case when certain truth values – albeit not others! – are
granted – albeit limited – access to the realm of Managerialism but only
as a delicately separate dimension of meaning and (in)-significance. For
example, Managerialism’s fad of ‘Critical Management Studies’ has been
given airtime in non-core management journals (e.g. ‘Organization’ &
‘Academy of Management Review’) but not in key management journals
such as the Academy of Management Journal and the Harvard Business
Review. This identifies a ‘stratification of knowledge’ as a ‘default setting’
inside a special reservation in which critical thoughts – especially as
Critical Management Studies (CMS) – are legitimately allowed to gain
currency inside the broader domain of Managerialism.
In contrast to CMS’ ‘critique from within’, a true critique from

‘without’ is framed as vague, ineffective, outsider, controversial,
utopian, and contradictory. For Managerialism this is the most effec-
tive way of protecting itself from being seriously disturbed by so-called
‘unfitting ideas’. Whatever truth may be contained in truly critical lit-
erature is framed as a purely poetic truth. Whatever truth may be con-
tained in CMS is a truth committed to the general managerial dialogue
that represents a distorted version of critical theory adjusted to suit
Managerialism. CMS represents a brand new form of the managerial
doctrine. It is a sort of ‘double truth’: it isolates truly critical thinking
as false and denies its relevance while simultaneously providing system
correctives to Managerialism. CMS’s crypto-transcending language pro-
claims total non-interference into the affairs of management (practice)
and Managerialism (ideology). Whereas the truth value of real critique
consists precisely in its relevance and interference with Managerialism,
CMS remains strictly inside Managerialism. Under progressive condi-
tions in which some still think and live, real and non-managerial crit-
ical thought within the modes of critical thinking always insists on, at
least, six points:
1. it always includes Hegel’s and Adorno’s negative (positive-negative-

synthesis),
2. it always relies on critique ‘without’ or ‘about’, not within
Managerialism,
3. it always draws from concepts external to Managerialism,
4. it recognises the ideological character of managerially invented facts
and responds to these facts by going behind them,
5. it is not confined to pragmatic-managerial orientation within the
status quo of Managerialism, and
6. it always remains dedicated towards its transcending, emancipatory,
and liberating programme.743
Truly critical reflection takes place before the managerial-ideological

curtain which conceals what lurks behind as well as before
Managerialism’s ‘veil of ignorance’. But Managerialism has also created
a world in which, as Hegel would say, ‘we ourselves are the ones
behind the curtain’, in Adorno’s terms, ‘there can be no way of living a
false life correctly’. The curtain analogy shows the ideological task
• to create the curtain and draw it;

216 Managerialism
• of Managerialism to make it thicker, look nicer, more legitimate,

and more acceptable;
• of managerial regimes to make sure people remain behind the
curtain;
• of management studies to make the curtain appear scientific and
necessary, and
• of CMS to improve the existence of those kept behind the curtain.
On the other hand, critical theory’s programme is to lift the curtain –

ideological and otherwise – to show what life is like in front of the
curtain, and to emancipate those kept behind it. This marks a ‘fork in
the road’ where critical theory and CMS depart. Management studies
and Critical Management Studies are never able to take on this pro-
gramme. Management, on the other hand, appears as a purified subject
of scientific measurement but never as the subject and object of the
historical struggle of workers with managerial regimes, managerial
society, and managerial capitalism. These struggles are what they are:
historical occurrences. Yet they are as historical as they are present,
even when Managerialism denies the existence of such places where
these struggles remain a brute reality.744 Individuals in this process are
converted into a pure object-world [Hegel’s Dingwelt] and into ‘objects
of power’ (Bauman) which are made to appear actual because ‘they just
are’!745
The world of critical philosophy is a world in which nothing ‘just is’
but where all facts are events that occur in an historical continuum.
Management, on the other hand, represents itself as a non-historical,
technical, and engineering-like affair that simply has no history apart
from highly ideological but nonsensical statements such as ‘society has
always had managers’.746 Managers only appeared under capitalism to
manage capitalist, business, and for-profit organisations and the affairs
of shareholders and owners in managerial regimes. It still took half a
century from Taylor’s quasi-scientific management that portrayed
workers as ‘gorillas and ox’ to the invention of management and even-
tually Managerialism.747 But the more recent and stricter separation of
management science from political economics, sociology, and philo-
sophy is in itself an historical event.
But whether or not science and philosophy are integrated, philo-
sophical concepts remain antagonistic to the realm of managerial
science. Critical philosophy continues to include contents which do
not fulfil managerial demands and behaviours, never positioning man-
agerial propensities favourably inside society. The philosophical uni-
verse thus continues to contain ghosts and specters which may be

more rational than Managerialism’s denial can muster. In that respect,
they are critical concepts that recognise the limits and deceptions of
managerial rationality.
The deliberate neglect and cleansing of the critical-philosophical
dimension has led contemporary positivism on a pathway to the top
arriving as an all-governing ideology that replaced philosophy from
the position it once held. This ideology is capable of moving in a syn-
thetically impoverished world of quasi-academic concreteness creating
illusory problems while destroying any awareness of those social, eco-
nomic, and global pathologies Managerialism has created. Rarely has
an ideology exhibited a more tortuous behaviour. Perhaps this is
slightly unfair, however, it is fair to say that Managerialism has exhib-
ited the ideological capability of artificially disconnecting itself from
the pathologies it, and its factual expressions of managerial regimes,
have created.
Managerialism has even substituted itself with ghosts, myths,
legends, and illusions when explaining away its own social patholo-
gies.748 This not only legitimates Managerialism but also reveals the
extent to which non-managerial ideas, aspirations, memories, and
images have been portrayed as expendable, irrational, and meaning-
less. In cleaning up non-managerial concepts, management studies, for
example, converts human- into ‘organisational’-behaviour in present-
day managerial operations. Simultaneously and silently, it appeases the
victims of managerial regimes by promulgating its ideologies.749 The
discrediting of old ideologies such as the brutal ‘factory administration’
and humiliating ‘personnel management’ has become part of the new
ideology of Managerialism. Not only has Managerialism debunked
them, it has also buried the truth with them. The new ideology no
longer finds its expressions in factory administration but has now
turned into management while personnel management metamor-
phosed into Human Resource Management until a new set of ideolo-
gies will replace it.
Under Managerialism, a whole body of distinctions which people
once found worth drawing out has been rejected, removed from the
realm of reality, and placed in the domain of historical fictions and
mythologies.750 A mutilated and false consciousness prevails under
Managerialism specifically set up as the managerial consciousness of a
future that unilaterally defines its meaning and expression.751 The rest
is denounced and derecognised as fiction and mythology. To the
bystander, it is no longer clear which side is engaged in mythology.
218 Managerialism
Mythology is primitive and immature thought.752 The process of civil-

isation, Enlightenment, critical theory, and philosophy invalidates
myth. This is almost ‘the’ quintessential definition of human progress
once perfectly outlined by Kant. But Managerialism has converted
Kant’s critical rationality into instrumental rationality with cost-
benefit-analysis, ROI – return of investment, market-shares, SWOT-
analysis, scenario planning, shareholder values, profit maximisation,
transaction cost analysis, and many more. With Managerialism, these
instrumental rationalities have taken on mythological status. As a side-
effect, theories which identify and project alternative historical poss-
ibilities are rendered irrational and ‘out of date’. To be precise, they
have been made to appear irrational because they contradict the ra-
tionality of Managerialism. Enlightenment’s dictum ‘everything is
exposed to critical examination’ has been rendered a myth during the
‘Golden Age of Managerialism’ that has replaced the ‘Golden Age of
Management’. Historically impossible elements have been separated
from the possible so that Managerialism’s dreams and fictions can
become the only acceptable pathway.
In the 19th century, theories of socialism challenged the myths of
capitalism and discovered the irrational core of bourgeois myths. Then,
however, a reversing movement occurred. Today, the irrational and
unrealistic notions of yesterday again appeal. Liberalism became neo-
liberalism just as imperialism became globalisation, and the patholo-
gies of 19th century free market policies and colonialism re-emerged
ideologically cleansed of history. Today’s mythologies no longer con-
front their actual historical conditions. Managerialism has converted
the pathological realities of today’s labouring classes into a mytholo-
gical concept.753 The reality of present-day Managerialism has rendered
Marxian ideas a pipe-dream. This reversal was caused when ideology
superseded class contradictions annihilating critical theory and the
facts of class-based societies.754 The charge that critical theory is unsci-
entific and speculative in character derives from the specific character
of Managerialism’s ideology which defines it as irrational while simul-
taneously the mystification of reality is underway. The mythological
qualities of Managerialism are reflected in its power to mystify reality
and its own ideology of ‘the given’. Managerialism’s power allows it to
create a deceptive harmonisation between reality and ideology and a
synchronisation of societal contradictions.
The managerial achievement of today’s managerial society and the
effective manipulation of mental and material productivity have
brought about a shift in the focus of mystification. Managerial ideo-
logy has come to be embodied in the process of production itself. It is

equally significant to suggest that, in managerial societies, the rational
rather than the irrational becomes the most effective vehicle of
mystification.755 Equally, the growth of repression in contemporary
managerial societies has manifested itself in the ideological sphere of
irrational pseudo-philosophies. This regime denies its own irrational
ideologies through the total managerial rationalisation of its ideolo-
gical apparatus.756 Managerialism represents a total mobilisation of all
ideological and mental machineries which did their assigned job and
installed their mystifying power over managerial societies.
Managerialism’s fourfold blindness makes individuals incapable
1. to see behind Managerialism’s ideological and mystifying machinery,

2. to see those who used it,
3. to see those who profited from it, and
4. to see those who pay for it.
Today, the mystifying elements of Managerialism are mastered and

employed in publicity, propaganda, and politics.757 Magic, witchcraft,
New Age, occultism, and ecstatic surrender is practiced in the daily
routine of corporate mass media, at home, in shops, and offices,
designed to conceal the irrationality of Managerialism’s entire enter-
prise.758 For example, the scientific approach to the worrisome problem
of environmental annihilation, the scientific mathematics and calcula-
tions of global destruction and the measurement of spreading the dis-
astrous consequences of wasteful energy consumption is mystified to
the extent to which it promotes behaviours accepting the insanity of
over-consumption paralleled by wastefulness of natural resources and
coal burning at stratospheric levels.759 Managerialism has established
truly irrational behaviours, namely a massive occurrence of simply
‘going along’, paralleled by a refusal to do away with the conditions
that produce these insanities. Managerialism’s mystification has turned
the rationality of environmental science into its opposite.760 But
despite the overwhelming ideological power, the rationality of envi-
ronmental studies is not irrational. The difference between an exact
recognition and analysis of environmental facts is as essential as ever
before.
The trouble is that statistics, measurements, and environmental
studies are not rational enough while their message is distorted
and/or remains unreported by corporate mass media.761 Complex
220 Managerialism
environmental facts are mystified in the machinery of corporate mass

media that operate on the very same principles Managerialism is cover-
ing (up), namely shareholder-value, profit-maximisation, and ROI, the
return of investment. Non-contributing factors to this are mere exter-
nalities and remain irrelevant to corporate mass media.762 The latter
have isolated themselves from the truly concrete context that makes
these facts and determines their functions. Corporate mass media’s task
and programme is ideology.763 But the context of global warming is
larger and different from the context of management, production
plants, shopping centres and malls, share-prices, corporate acquisi-
tions, and stock-options. Managerialism’s system of ‘double-checking’
includes groups of people whose public opinion is polled in order to
check whether the ideological messages of Managerialism are received
by the general public.764
The expected environmental destruction is also more real than this
sort of self-enhancing polling indicates. In a sense, environmental
destruction and global warming should create and determine the facts
to be investigated disregarding the distorted research programme of
Managerialism. But as long as corporate funding bodies exercise power
of cash-starved universities, the stranglehold of Managerialism remains
monetary and relentless.765 Today, the real context in which university
subjects obtain their factual significance is solely defined by
Managerialism. Under Managerialism, the factors in the facts are not
immediate data of observation, measurement, and interrogation.
Managerialism represents indeed the whole which exercises its power
over individuals and the managerial society.
But Managerialism is not an unidentifiable ghost. It has its empirical
hard core in a system of institutions and modern business corpora-
tions. Abstractions from managerial regimes never falsify
Managerialism’s measurements, interrogations, and calculations. But
Managerialism itself falsifies them in order not to conflict with its ideo-
logical programme and not to disturb managerial regimes. They are
mystified by the neutrality Managerialism claims to have established.
In its exposure to the mystifying character of managerial terms, its
vague notions, free market ideology, and its claim that managerial par-
ticularities represent universalities, critical analysis demystifies man-
agerial language by relating it to the repressive context of the
managerially established realm.766
Management studies, however, often spread the atmosphere of
denunciation through their vast apparatus of lobbying groups such as,
for example, the ‘American Management Association’ (AMA) issuing
some of the most ‘esteemed’ (!) journals in management studies and

running one of the most important conferences. By attending its con-
ferences and publishing in its journals a critical academic is called on
the carpet:
You don’t talk like the rest of us, like a CEO, a manager, but rather
like a critical scholar who does not belong here. Of course, we do
not impose on you and your freedom of thought and speech. You
may think as you like. But once you speak, you have to commun-
icate your thoughts to us in our language. We want to understand
you. We can do so only if we interpret your symbols, metaphors,
and images in terms of managerial language.
The vocabulary of the critical scholar sounds improper, queer, absurd,

puzzling, odd, gabbling, and gibbering. Improper and puzzling oddities
have to be removed if managerial understanding is to prevail.
Communication should not be over the head of managerial writers
used to KISS – keep it simple, stupid! Any content that reaches beyond
the managerial field is to be eliminated in order not to agitate the man-
agerial academic and the managerial sphere. Critical philosophical
terms must differ from the managerial ones in order to elucidate the
full meaning of the latter. In the arena of moral philosophy, for
example, management writers have not simply ‘failed’ to achieve that.
Instead, they have made a deliberate choice to reduce moral philos-
ophy to the managerial KISS-level of language and thereby annihilated
the critical potential of moral philosophy while simultaneously adjust-
ing selective sections of moral philosophy to the needs of
Managerialism.767
The established universe of Managerialism bears throughout the
marks of specific modes of domination, authoritarian organisations,
and managerial manipulation to which members of managerial
regimes and managerial societies are subjected. People depend for their
living on bosses and jobs in the productive domain and on families,
neighbours, peers and society in the re-productive domain.768 Guided
through a successful colonisation of the lifeworld, Managerialism
amplifies and transmits its ideology through corporate mass media and
thereby makes individuals speak and mean what Managerialism has in
store for them. They are even made to believe that existence inside
managerial domination is their free choice under the ideology of the
free market; in reality this is rather different as French Nobel Prize
222 Managerialism
winner François-Anatole Thibault (1844–1924) has made us aware in

‘Le Lys Rouge’.769
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike
to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Paralleled by the successful destruction of 20th century social-welfare

states, recipients of unemployment benefits are abused as parasites
through tabloid-TV and corporate mass media that create popular
support of Managerialism’s programme which divests managerial capi-
talism of all social obligations. This moves managerially created
pathologies solely into the domain of those who are on the receiving
end.770 ‘Blame the victim’ becomes a determinant imperative. With
social-welfare at starvation levels, forces to enter managerial regimes
increase. Today’s human→resources are compelled – by capitalism’s
necessity – to identify themselves with managerial regimes as real exist-
ing forms of domination and with the ideological prescriptions of
Managerialism.771 Human beings are converted into ‘things’ (Hegel’s
Dingwelt) oscillating between being a resource in managerial regimes
and a consumer outside of them. The human→to→resource/consumer
conversion includes their person, mind, feeling, and societal function.
We watch tabloid-TV, listen to commercial radio stations, read com-
mercial newspapers and magazines of corporate publishing houses, and
talk to people who talk the talk of Managerialism. Under these circum-
stances, a near completion of Managerialism’s project of colonising the
lifeworld can be detected. Hence, spoken phrases have become mere
expressions of Managerialism. They are no longer expressions of indi-
viduals. In the managerial vocabulary all tensions and contradictions
are made irrelevant.
In speaking a language, people also speak the language of their
masters, managers, tabloid-TVs, and advertisers. They not only express
themselves and their own knowledge, feelings, and aspirations, but
also something other than themselves. Describing ‘by themselves’ their
economic situation from their private homes to the international
scene, they – and this ‘they’ always includes us intellectuals who know
it and criticise it – describe what corporate mass media tells them.
Through that individuals have become mere sounding boards who
mirror back into society what they have been told via numerous
outlets of the corporate mass media broadcasting system. This merges,
and more often even replaces what individuals really think, see, and
feel. The infiltration of mass media’s phrases and marketing language
has become relentless under consumer capitalism.772 Describing to
each other our loves and hatreds, attitudes, feelings, sentiments, and
even resentments, we are made to use the terms of our advertisements,
movies, managers, computer software programmers, Internet providers,
search engines, and commercial best sellers. We no longer ‘feel’ for
others but ‘have’ feelings like possessions which we can invest: I
invested a lot of feelings into this relationship and – like
Managerialism – we expect ROI, the return of investment in human
relations that are no longer relations but exchange interactions.773
When we use pre-formulated mass media words for describing our
cars, foods, furniture, houses, neighbourhoods, friends, colleagues, and
competitors, we understand each other perfectly. ‘We “love” chocolate
and “have” partners, not the other way around’! This must necessarily
be so, for language is no longer private and personal and no longer
societal, it is shaped by the ideology of Managerialism as broadcasted
by corporate mass media. The private and personal is mediated by the
available linguistic material which is the material of commercial adver-
tising. This situation disqualifies human language from fulfilling the
validating function which it can still, at least partially, perform inside a
relatively isolated corner of critical philosophy. What people mean
when they say something is necessarily related to what they do not
say.774 After the colonisation of our lifeworld, what they mean can no
longer be taken at face value – not because people lie but because the
universe of thought and practice in which we live has been converted
into a realm of manipulations. These circumstances are vital for a crit-
ical analysis of Managerialism.
Critical analysis in the tradition of critical theory can achieve what
no other empirical method can do. It can extract from people the
given state of affairs and the managerial ideology that lies beyond it.
Whatever is permitted by this state of affairs is what remains within
distorted and deceptive discourses. Whenever a critique goes beyond
these pre-fabricated dialogues, only the mere skeletons of managerial
and advertising language remain. This is the managerial universe in
which the ghost of deceptiveness is much more ghostly than those
who carry out the analysis. If critical theory is more than merely an
occupation, its task is to show the grounds which make managerial
dialogues mutilated, manipulative, and deceptive. To leave such a task
to the colleagues in management studies and management schools is
to cement Managerialism. This task can no longer be brushed aside
224 Managerialism
with the modest insistence that critical analysis of Managerialism is

merely a process of entangling managerial speech. The task goes
beyond clarifications. It reaches further than a mere inventory and
classification of managerial meanings. It remains possible to distil the
distorting language Managerialism applies. The choice to undertake
this task is open to anyone in possession of a critical mind. It is any-
thing but a fruitless enterprise.
Any clarification in terms of critical theory involves analysing the
ideological content of managerial language in really controversial
areas, recognising the muddled thinking of Managerialism where it
seems to be the least muddled, and uncovering the falsehood of man-
agerial-ideological claims. Critical analysis attains a level on which
specific managerial processes that shape Managerialism become visible
and understandable. With that the problematic issue of meta-language
– language about language – arises. The terms of critical theory, when
analysing the meaning of managerial-ideological terminology, must be
different and distinguishable from the terms used by management.
Management studies and its entourage of Critical Management Studies
are incapable of this because both remain locked inside the paradigm
of Managerialism.775 To achieve this task, they themselves must
develop more than a mere parroting of the synonyms of
Managerialism’s terminology. This is what German philosopher
Adorno calls ‘identity thinking’.776 If non-managerial meta-language is
to break through the totalitarian scope of the managerial realm in
which several dimensions of managerial language are still integrated
and assimilated, it must be capable of rejecting managerial processes
that determine and encircle quasi-academic discussions in manage-
ment studies.
Consequently and unavoidably, there can never be a managerial meta-
language as Critical Management Studies, for example, would like to
have it. Such a meta-language cannot simply be constructed with a
simple view of semantic and logical clarity. The requirement is rather to
make a critical and self-reflective version of language speak what man-
agerial dialogues conceal and exclude.777 What is to be revealed and
denounced is operative within the realm of managerial dialogue and
behaviour. This obligation has rarely been fulfilled.778 It has been
demonstrated how an ‘internal’ examination of speech and writing, of
punctuation, even of typographical errors can reveal the entire structure
of Managerialism’s ideologies, claims, statements, and quasi-scientific
research findings.779 Such an examination – while still outstanding – can
never be asphyxiated ‘within’ the pre-fabricated language of managerial
ideology. Instead, it will need to have a higher-level version of language

in order to extrapolate and illuminate the ideological content of man-
agerial language. It has to leave Managerialism’s KISS – keep it simple,
stupid! – and ‘Occam’s Razor’ behind.780
Words and their syntactic forms are led by the – ideological or other-
wise – context in which they appear. For example, a business magazine
in a specific city, country, or area of Managerialism always espouses
specific ideologies through the pen of business writers or quasi-
managerial academics. The lexicographic and syntactical context opens
into another dimension which is constitutive of a word’s meaning and
function. The ideology of a business editor towards free trade and glob-
alisation (positive) or trade unions and global warming (negative), for
example, is expressed through the usage of pro-managerial and ideo-
logically shaped language. The structure of these sentences assumes
ideological meaning and function that never appear unmediated.781
The crimes against language found in the style of Managerialism relate
to their – always hidden but ideological – style. Deprived of societal
values, managerial syntax, grammar, and vocabulary become immoral,
depersonalised, and dehumanised speech acts in the ideological format
of Managerialism’s crypto-technical language. There no longer is any
room for context, aesthetic, societal, ethical, artistic, or philosophical
descriptions. Beauty, enlightened reading, and comprehension through
critical reflections are made to appear disconnected from the so-called
‘hard-facts-of-business’. Managerial expressions always address what
has been learned inside managerial societies. This enhances conformity
and familiarisation, not de-familiarisation, analytical reflection, or crit-
ical thinking.782
Critical analysis of mass media’s infotainment always confronts the
immediate managerial order. The language of business reports, corpo-
rate news, and infotainment that editors of commercial magazines
found supportive enough to be printed remains firmly inside a man-
agerial tradition that never transforms. Such a restrictive and deliberate
non-analysis – framed as ‘reviews’ even in PhDs – demands the devel-
opment of an internal perspective that never goes beyond the one-
dimensional confinements of Managerialism. As a consequence, an
expressed meaning never depicts the ideology of Managerialism as
interrelated with society, capitalism, and as an antagonistic system.
This is framed in three ways:
1. as an individual project, i.e. a specific communication of a news-

paper article or a speech made at a specific occasion for a specific
226 Managerialism
purpose which, of course, is never related to the big picture of

Managerialism;
2. as an established supra-individual system of ideas, values, and objec-
tives in which an individual project partakes. In that way even a
challenging idea is made to appear as an individual’s opinion
deprived of all critical content; and
3. as being particular to a specific business organisation so that it
integrates different, and even conflicting, individual and supra-
individual projects, converting critiques and alternatives into a
supportive function directed towards assisting Managerialism.
To illustrate this further: a certain business speech, newspaper article,

even private communication is made by a certain individual such as a
CEO. This CEO may be an authorised or even unauthorised spokesman
of a particular corporate or business group. This group sets its own
values, objectives, ideologies, codes of thought and behaviour which
enter in an affirmative way and to various degrees of awareness and
explicitness into individual communication. This individualises a pre-
viously non-individual meaning, constituting a new dimension of dia-
logue different from the original dialogue. It merges individual
communication with ideology. Such an individual-ideological system
is in turn part of the comprehensive and omnipresent realm of ideolo-
gical meaning that Managerialism has invented. It creates a circular
and closed system of meaning in which Managerialism has become the
only allowable reference point. It sets the standards by which most
forms of communication inside the ideological structure take place.
The range and extent of such ideological systems of meaning-creation
varied considerably in different historical periods and in accordance
with the attained level of ideological manipulation:
18th/19th century → Liberalism + free market,

liberal-capitalism imperialism
20th century → Consumerism + welfare state,
consumer capitalism foreign aid
21st century → Managerialism + corporate
managerial capitalism globalisation
The boundaries of the prevailing ideology are clearly enough defined

when ideologies are communicated referring to more than the simplic-
ities and implements of daily life during each historical period of capi-
talism. Under each prevailing ideology – liberalism, consumerism, and

Managerialism – adjacent support-ideologies were invented to stabilise
the main ideology of the period. Together they created an ideological
sense-making framework inside which everything else was to be inter-
preted. Today, Managerialism provides such an ideological framework
for one-dimensional meaning-creation that has effectively united dif-
ferent continents, nations, cultures, regions, linguistic areas etc. into
one global sphere. The ultimate goal of Managerialism was expressed
in one of the most revealing quotes of Managerialism in the era of cor-
porate globalisation. The CEO of the Nabisco Corporation said,783
one world of homogeneous consumption … [I am] looking

forward to the day when Arabs and Americans, Latinos and
Scandinavians, will be munching Ritz crackers as enthusiastically
as they already drink Coke or brush their teeth with Colgate.
Managerialism’s idea of a total global homogenisation is to create not

only a global one-dimensional consumer – flanked by the ideology of
individualism – but also to set up large systems of meaning-creation that
support an ever-extending orbit of advanced forms of global
managerial capitalism. This project has advanced deep into post-
communist societies since the 1990s, thereby turning it into a true global
enterprise. The determining function of Managerialism’s system of
global meaning-creation asserts itself most quickly and rigidly in non-
controversial, de-politicised, and managerially driven spheres of society.
It also operates in an instinctive and emotional manner pretending to be
part of an ordinary universal and social dialogue of everyday affairs.
A genuinely philosophical analysis of managerial meaning-creation
has to decide between authentic and inauthentic meaning, rationality
and irrationality, and sense and non-sense. It has to invoke political,
economical, sociological, psychological, aesthetic, and moral judge-
ments on Managerialism. It is imperative to note that this would be a
place where the intent is to capture the meaning of terms – Hegelian
Begriffe – by analysing their ideological function and usage in manager-
ial dialogues and those between Managerialism and society.784 But crit-
ical philosophy’s contention is that this is precisely what
contemporary scholarly analysis in sociology, psychology, economics,
and, above all, in management studies and their crypto-critical varia-
tion of Critical Management Studies do not do.
228 Managerialism
Critical theory, on the other hand, achieves this by analysing

managerial dialogues from a special universe distant to management
studies because its language remains less distorted by managerial buzz-
words.785 In the circular recycling and reprocessing managerial everyday
language is sterilised and anaesthetised. For example, ‘you are fired’
becomes a question of HRM’s antiseptic ‘retrenchment’ or as a de-
humanised ‘letting you go’, or simply of ‘FIFO – fit in or f*** off!’, framed
as an individual’s inability to adjust to organisational culture. Corporate
pathologies are ideologically ‘reverse-engineered’ and blamed on the
victim. Outside of managerial regimes, multi-dimensional everyday
language has been replaced by managerial language in which different
and conflicting meanings no longer interpenetrate but are kept anti-
septically apart. The explosive historical dimension of meaning has been
silenced: management has been sanitised and ‘de-historised’. All
remnants of the ‘Satanic Mills’ have been eliminated.786
But the real universe of managerial language is that of a struggle for
existence. It is indeed an ambiguous, vague, and obscure universe, and
certainly in need of clarification.787 Such clarifications on managerial
regimes may well fulfil a critical function, and if management studies
would adhere to critical theory, they would certainly achieve this func-
tion. Critical theory approaches this goal to the degree to which it frees
thought from its enslavement through the managerial-ideological
realm of distorted dialogues. It elucidates the negativity of the manage-
rial establishment, focuses on pathologies, domination, liberation, and
emancipation while projecting alternatives to Managerialism. This is
an important process because Managerialism’s positive aspects are
abundantly publicised through corporate mass media. It is imperative
to recognise that critical theory contradicts and projects in its thoughts
and theories more than what German philosopher Hegel once famously
noted as ‘the Owl of Minerva only takes flight as the dusk begins to
fall’. 788 By this Hegel meant that standard philosophy comes too late.
But critical theory can no longer afford to arrive too late at the scene.
Critical theory is more than pure philosophy. One of Hegel’s more
famous students – a certain Neo-Hegelian by the name of Karl Marx –
once noted that ‘philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world
in various ways; the point is to change it’.789 Critical theory is dedi-
cated to the second part of Marx’s dictum.
In conclusion, Managerialism remains a thoroughly ideological
project. Its ideological character represents the very opposite of critical
philosophy. Critical theory and critical philosophy embody a form of
thought that scientism, positivism, and management studies can never
overcome. Still, Managerialism’s ideological efforts are truly remedial

and missionary. After all, they are the ‘Free Market Missionaries that
Manipulate Community Values’.790 To show the reality of what
Managerialism really is and to prove that this is a version of reality that
prevents individuals from being, any critical analysis needs to step
outside the domineering framework and ideological paradigm of
Managerialism.791 In the totalitarian era of Managerialism, the task of
critical theory remains as much a scientific one as it is a social, polit-
ical, philosophical, ethical, global, and ecological task. It can never
adhere to the first part of the 11th thesis on Feuerbach, namely
‘philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various
ways’. Instead it must also be committed to the second part: ‘the point
is to change it’.792
The established realm of Managerialism with its managerial language
tends to thicken society into a totally manipulated and indoctrinated
sphere with powers strong enough to colonise nearly every eventuality
of the lifeworld. It is this global and overarching power of
Managerialism that forces critical theory to engage with Mana-
gerialism.793 But critical theory is not a special discipline or object of
analysis, nor a special version of sociology and political philosophy.
Instead, its intent is to comprehend, analyse and alter the mutilated
reality of Managerialism. Critical analysis does contribute to such
understanding while management studies contribute to Mana-
gerialism’s encircling ideology by their self-referencing and self-
sustaining motion inside the disfigured system of cybernetic manager-
ial dialogue. At best, management studies are entirely inconsequential
and, at worst, they assist in the cementing of the non-controversial by
framing themselves as academically non-controversial. For them,
nothing exists beyond Managerialism.
12
Beyond Managerialism
The commitment of critical theory to deconstruct the pathological

reality of Managerialism shows forth strikingly in its treatment of the
latter. The problem of Managerialism is inherently historical while it
simultaneously exceeds the traditional boundaries of simple manage-
ment. Far from being only an abstract question of epistemology, man-
agerial language as used by Managerialism and questions on the
ideological status of Managerialism have to be at the centre of critical
theory. But the treatment of Managerialism also reveals the position of
critical theory in the intellectual culture and its historical function.
While conventional philosophy and related fields are out to exorcise
metaphysical ghosts such as mind, consciousness, will, soul, self, etc.,
Managerialism, meanwhile, moves relentlessly into position even
against universities, academic departments, and entire fields of scho-
larly endeavour. The result shows, in a strange way, the potentiality of
the destruction. While conventional subjects from sociology, history
and psychology to philosophy haunt these ghosts, Managerialism
haunts these subjects – not because it has to but simply because it
can.794 The idea of not engaging with Managerialism is the idea of a
pre-issued intellectual and departmental death certificate.
Academic discourse believing in the shielding ability of ‘blissful igno-
rance’ towards Managerialism continues to exist, for now, in common,
poetic, cynical, and even obscure language. This distinguishes it from
the managerial mode of behaviour and ideological disposition. To
Managerialism, these cynical, poetic, ignorant, or denying viewpoints
pose only a marginal threat, some of them are nothing more than
entertaining ornaments of a joking larrikin and harlequin previously
found at medieval courts: funny and entertaining but largely inconse-
quential. However, their existence cannot simply be validated by the
230
Beyond Managerialism 231
assertion that they carry subversive elements that might undermine

the whole of a university.795 They may do, but this ‘whole’ is now gov-
erned by Managerialism. Even inside managerialistic universities
Managerialism’s suicidal belief in ‘blissful ignorance’ creates appease-
ment while rendering critical scholarship resentful towards the man-
agerial university. Simultaneously, it confines critical scholarship in an
ever more strengthening ideological power of managerial language
that is taken at face value. But there is a deceptive sphere of one-
dimensional managerial understanding among the managerial elite
that runs such places. Inside it, people are subordinated through man-
agerially administered communication. But its incriminating orbit is
indeed translatable. Its mythological and ideological substance can be
dissolved by exposing it to the power of critical theory.796
However, this dissolution itself must be questioned. Not only on
behalf of critical philosophers but also on behalf of ordinary people in
whose life such dissolution takes place. Managerialism’s infiltration of
their private and working life is not their own doing and their own
saying. Instead, it is made to happen to them and it violates them as
they are compelled by managerially invented circumstances to identify
their mind with the mental processes of Managerialism. This merges
their ‘self’ with the roles and functions which they have to perform in
managerial regimes and managerial societies. Critical theory compre-
hends these processes of translation and identification as managerially
engineered processes. They are disfigurements of the human mind,
intellect, emotions, and body, inflicted upon individuals by managerial
regimes and managerial societies as a whole.797 Therefore, critical
theory can never stop struggling with the ideological ghost of
Managerialism if it wishes to demystify it.
The mystifying character of Managerialism does not adhere to the
concepts of mind, self, consciousness, etc. alone but rather involves
behavioural manipulation that it translates into managerially useful
actions. The translation is deceptive precisely because it translates
managerial concepts faithfully into modes of actual human behaviour,
propensities, dispositions, and even political attitudes. It takes on a
mutilated and organised appearance – that by itself is real enough! – of
the new reality that it has created. This has been perfectly summed up
by the former US president, George W. Bush who said,
we’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.
And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will –
we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study
232 Managerialism
too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors …
and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.798
Managerialism constitutes such an empire. It is history’s actor,

however, even in the battle of the ghosts, forces are called up which
might bring Managerialism to an end. One of the more serious issues
for critical theory is that no particular element of Managerialism cor-
responds directly to the universe of critical philosophy and critical
theory. Philosophy/critical theory and Managerialism have been neatly
segregated and their terminologies isolated, while critical theory’s con-
cepts remain incomprehensible to members of the managerial orbit.
Still, in-themselves and un-reflected, many of Managerialism’s inherent
rationalities make perfect sense and some are even accepted as
unavoidable. Yet Managerialism is not a particular entity ‘over and
above’ its various expressions – management, management studies,
managerial regimes, managerial capitalism, and managerial societies –
but an organised ideology.
However, the way in which things and people are organised, inte-
grated, administered, and managed operates as an entity of
Managerialism. Yet Managerialism remains different from its com-
ponents. As an ideology, it is dangerous. To some extent, Managerialism
covers up the fact that managerial capitalism disposes of human lives
on a daily scale – www.poverty.com – while simultaneously denying
the reality of global warming. CEOs and top-managers who execute
Managerialism’s edicts – if they are identifiable at all – do so not as
individuals but as mere representatives of modern business corpora-
tions. The board of directors and managers meet and decide on policies
that are tangible and effective entities over and above the individual
component. They are tangible
• in corporate records,
• in the results of their corporate policies on human→resources,
• in the environment they have ordered to destroy under what is
called ‘resource exploration’, and
• in the appointments, salaries, and requirements they establish.
Corporate meetings assemble individuals beneath a spokesman, a CEO,

‘A Great Leader’.799 Aware of institutions, influences, and interests,
these managers embody modern business corporations. In their deci-
sions – themselves the outcome of competing institutional and per-
sonal interests – modern business corporations are set in motion,
preserved, reproduced, and promulgated.800 As such corporations are

the ultimate managerial reality capable of overriding entire peoples
that are subjected to ‘its will to power’.801 With the ideological assist-
ance of Managerialism, corporate reality has assumed a superimposed
and independent existence. Corporate statements are made to appear
real and universal so that they can hardly be deconstructed down to
statements concerning the highly particularistic entity of management.
And yet, urges trying to deconstruct and translate them and protests
against this imposed impossibility indicate that there is something
wrong with Managerialism.802 Managerialism ought to be translatable
into its constituents and components, dissected, analysed, and its dam-
aging ideological content exposed. The fact that this has rarely been
done during the past decades marks more than a comprehensive his-
torical and intellectual failure.803
There is a striking disharmony between social, ethical, environmen-
tal, and human needs and those of Managerialism. But there also exists
a disharmony between the lack of democratic representative institu-
tions in managerial regimes in which individuals can work and speak
‘for’ themselves on the one side and what Managerialism advocates on
the other, namely the running of society along business needs with
authoritarian CEOs at the helm.804 It has led to a pathological reality of
sectarian corporate and managerial business institutions which are not
identical with any identifiable human or even democratic entity.
Instead, managerial regimes express various degrees and modes of
reification turning everything and everyone (human beings) into a
thing, a resource. The independence of these regimes, although real, is
a spurious one inasmuch as it is that of managerial powers seen as a
model for the organisation of the whole of managerial society. A
retranslation which would dissolve the faked substance of
Managerialism still remains a philosophical and critical requirement.
But a genuine translation of the modes of Managerialism must be
threefold:
1. it must involve Managerialism’s concreteness;

2. it must acknowledge the reality of Managerialism as an ideology;
and
3. it must call Managerialism, managerial regimes, and managerial cap-
italism by their true name.
Managerialism will resist any analytic dissolution; not because it is a

mythical-ideological entity behind particular entities and performances
234 Managerialism
of managerial regimes but because any analysis would reach the con-
crete and objective ground of Managerialism’s functioning in the man-
agerial, societal, and historical context. Managerialism is a real force
that is felt and exercised beyond managers in their actions, circum-
stances, as well as business, commercial, and commercialised relation-
ships. In a very unequal way, managers share managerial ideology
while their own ideology decides on their existence and their possibil-
ities. The real ghost is Managerialism’s forceful reality that separates
power from individuals while simultaneously exercising it over indi-
viduals and the whole of society. These powers have been successfully
disconnected from democratic processes. The whole is not merely a
perceived psychological concept of Die Gestalt and it is not Hegel’s
absolute [das Absolute].805 It is not even a totalitarian state.806 It is the
managerially established state of affairs which determines the life of
individuals.
However, even if we grant such a reality to Managerialism, do not all
the other universalities have a very different status? They do. But their
analysis remains within the limits of academic philosophy to which
Managerialism has hardly ever been exposed.807 The substance of
Managerialism needs to be extracted from its concrete entity denoting
a distinctively different entity. The critical mind’s ability – different
from confined thinking – includes the ability to think beyond ‘the
given’. This reality might tentatively be described as transformative
modes representing acts that synthesise, integrate, and transcend
Kant’s ‘what is’. In a crude reduction of the dialectical method, this has
been seen as the well-known:808
thesis → anti-thesis → synthesis.
This is somewhat of an ‘a priori’ synthesis of Leibniz’s (1646–1716)

‘transcendental apperception’.809 It is understood as an integration of a
synthesis that follows a particular process that possibly precedes,
shapes, and distinguishes ideas from other minds. Still, this formula-
tion would do violence to Kant’s concept. Kant’s a priority is an empir-
ical one that includes supra-individual experiences, ideas, attitudes,
genealogies, and aspirations of individuals, a particular social group,
and academic research. An individual or a world without it simply
cannot exist.810 In view of these characteristics, consciousness may well
be called a disposition, propensity, and a human faculty linked to
human beings as such. It can never be ‘one’ individual disposition. It is
always a faculty ‘with’ others (Hegel) and is therefore ‘social’ in charac-
ter.811 Constituted as a general disposition, it is common – to various

degrees – to all individuals.
On these grounds, the distinction between true and false conscious-
ness becomes socially, sociologically, and philosophically meaning-
ful.812 It synthesises experiences in concepts which reflect – as fully and
adequately as possible – a given managerial society as it exists. Such a
critical sociological and philosophical definition is indispensable, not
because of any danger of prejudice in favour of sociology – far from it –
but a sociological analysis is needed because Managerialism’s colonisa-
tion of ‘society’ reshapes the ‘social’ experiences of individuals.
Consequently, repressions that individuals experience in managerial
societies in the form of managerial ideologies and their factual expres-
sions in managerial regimes become indistinguishable to scholarly and
academic experiences as well. Hence, the first task of a critical
researcher is to break the restrictions and go beyond Adorno’s dictum
of ‘can there be right living in the false’. Without that, the manager-
ially instituted restrictions of meaning become unbearable and destroy
the project of critical theory entirely. Moreover, today’s restrictions of
experience produce a pervasive tension, even conflict, between ‘the
mind’ and the mental processes, between ‘consciousness’ and con-
scious acts, and between philosophy and sociological facts. The mind
of individuals does not merely refer to mental processes as revealed in
human expressions, speeches, and behaviours. Nor is the mind to be
seen simply as a disposition and faculty as experienced and inferred
from direct experience.
Once infiltrated by Managerialism via its colonisation of society, the
human mind can no longer simply, directly, and un-distortedly express
the things individuals experience inside this society. For example,
experiencing happiness in a business organisation, just as individual
self-determination (Kant) through participating in industrial demo-
cracy, has been made all but totally impossible by Managerialism.813
Simultaneously, this is made to appear normal and acceptable.
Individuals shaped by Managerialism no longer show any disposition
towards these terms. Nevertheless, they remain present. Meanwhile,
their opposites (other-determined, alienated, unhappy, and non-
democratic authoritarianism) determine to a considerable extent
today’s attitudes, behaviours, and understandings. They shape the
formation and range of concepts in the managerial society and they
‘negatively present’ terms opposed to Managerialism. But these remain
specific terms assisting critical analysis. They are present as repelled
material against the colonisation of the mind through Managerialism’s
236 Managerialism
ideology. The absence of managerial terminologies is in reality a positive

factor that explains critical theory’s mental processes. It describes the
true, critical, and non-managerial meaning of words and behaviours.
For a critical philosopher the task is to rectify the wrong that
pervades the realm of Managerialism for those who suffer this wrong –
although the key to Managerialism’s success – in fact and in ideology –
is that individuals may not be aware of the way their mind has been
colonised by Managerialism’s persuasive ideology. Contemporary
analysis in the tradition of management studies shirks this task by
interpreting managerial concepts in terms of an impoverished and pre-
conditioned mind. What is at stake here is twofold:
• the unabridged, un-cleansed, un-sanitised, and un-expurgated

intent of certain critical concepts; and
• their function in the unrepressed understanding of reality as present
in non-conformist, non-submissive, non-thought limiting, but crit-
ical thought.
It seems that the persistence of un-translated managerial ideologies

linked to the asphyxiated thoughts of managerial researchers reflects
the fallacies of what Hegel once called ‘sense certainty’ and ‘unhappy
consciousness’.814 Both constitute critiques of a divided world, neatly
segregated into one ‘which is’ while simultaneously denying ‘that
which can be’. Managerialism has cemented this into an irreducible
difference between universalities and particulars comprehensively
denying the Hegelian dictum that ‘the truth is the whole’.815 This is
rooted in the ideological closing of all alternatives, the thought-
limiting but comprehensive destruction of ‘imaginisation’, and the denial
of any experiences that reach beyond ‘the given’, thereby cementing a
supposedly unconquerable difference between potentiality and actual-
ity that once and for all divides both.816 It is found in the strict separa-
tion of two dimensions, ideologically fortifying a one-dimensionally
experienced world as shaped by Managerialism. The managerial and
the human experiences are made to appear in isolation while the latter
are deemed controversial, abstruse, and utopian.
The managerial realm only comprehends the idea of one possibility
and this is the one that it realises. At the same time, Managerialism is
asphyxiated in its own one-dimensional reality. This describes precisely
the ideological character of positivistic-managerial analysis that seeks
to eliminate all translations from ‘what is’ to ‘what ought to be’ while
believing that one is not linked to the other, that one can exist
without the other, and that day can exist without night.
Managerialism is asphyxiated in its own ideology that proclaims
progress where human progress has ended.817 By eliminating these
translations Managerialism destroys what it seeks to define, namely
Managerialism itself. Managerialism can never define itself by referenc-
ing itself to itself. But as long as it manages to avoid the philosophical
awareness, knowledge, and education of this, it may never come to
light. For example, there are many – more or less satisfactory –
definitions of Managerialism, but there seems to be only one which
preserves the ethical and human content of society and that can only
ever be the utmost non-managerial definition possible. Such a non-
managerial definition captures the condition of human beings and the
relationship between human beings and things. Managerialism
protests against the vague, obscure, philosophical, and inherently
ethical character of human universalism. Simultaneously, it insists on
familiarity and concreteness under a protective shielding invented by
the managerial and quasi-scientific enterprise. But this still reveals
Managerialism’s elementary apprehension, nervousness, and anxieties.
Like all ideologies, it can never relax, never let its guard down, never
waver, never stop, and never rest.
Defence and security are large items in the ideological tradition of
Managerialism. The purged experience seems to be more familiar to
Managerialism than the un-purged thought of critical philosophy.
Managerialism remains deeply embedded in a metaphysical world.818 To
make its ideology work, Managerialism always favours particularity and
relativism over universalism. The universality of being human is
primary and an element of experience. It is not a purely philosophical
concept but has its very qualities in the world with which individuals
are confronted daily. Universal experiences may exist as, for example,
snow-and-rain, love-and-hate, a street, an office, a boss, management, a
particular managerial regime, and even Managerialism. Non-universal
but particular things, such as Managerialism, are events that always
appear in a cluster and continuum of relationships. They appear as inci-
dents and parts in a general configuration from which they are made to
appear inseparable. Managerial ideology can never appear in any other
way without losing its identity. Managerialism is a particular event,
only possible when contrasted against a general background which is
always something more than background. It is the concrete ground
from which Managerialism has arisen, on which it feeds, upon which it
exists, and from which Managerialism eventually will pass away into its
death. This ground is structured through universal concepts.
238 Managerialism
However, in a non-colonised world, the true vehicle of concepts is

the real element of universal and undistorted language.819 Still, even
Habermas’ ‘communicative action’ does not communicate concepts
that are ready-made. It never contains concepts as already fixed and
closed. The positivistic ‘facts-speak-for-themselves’ idea remains an
illusion if not an ideology. A word, such as Managerialism, merely sug-
gests a concept. It relates itself to meaning as long as it has not been
colonised by an ideology. But precisely the relationship of a word to a
substantive and universal concept makes it comprehensible. There is
no ‘everyone understands this differently’ because we can only com-
prehend words after having reached a common agreement on their
meaning. In reality, speech is not put together from succeeding words
but quite the reverse, namely words emerge from the whole of speech.
The Hegelian ‘whole’ only comes to light once cleared from all colonis-
ing ideologies and simple misunderstandings.820 Unavoidably, even the
ideology of Managerialism expresses tensions between potentiality and
actuality. These appear in the relationship between Managerialism’s
qualities (authoritarian, domineering, unfree, and unjust) and the cor-
responding concepts (authoritarianism, domination, unfreedom, and
injustice). But negative statements can sometimes be translated into
positive ones. Managerialism does this by converting, for example,
• its unfreedom into freedom of choice, economic freedom, and

performance;
• its inhumanity into shareholder-value and profit-maximisation;
• its deliberate environmental destructions into ‘Greenwashing’
through corporate environmental policies;821
• its disregard for nature into resource exploration; and
• its fight against consumer protection into corporate social respons-
ibility (CSR).822
When the EU, for example, made a modest proposal to introduce a

simple ‘traffic light’ food labelling (green=good, yellow=okay, red=bad)
in order to signal food high in sugars and fats, food industry lobbyists
quickly persuaded politicians of the error of their idea. The
‘Confederation of the Food and Drink Industries’ spent an estimated
$1.3 billion in order to successfully oppose the change, thereby vastly
outnumbering and outspending consumer and health campaigners.823
Their victory assured that no traffic-light system was introduced on
food. Meanwhile, ‘former energy giant Enron won a host of awards for
its CSR work’.824
These successes of Managerialism do not alter the relationship

between abstract concepts and their concrete realisations – its ideology
remains a triumphant albeit particularistic ideology. A critical conver-
sion of Managerialism’s particularities into the philosophy of univer-
salism can highlight Managerialism’s hidden ideological character by
reformulating seemingly positive meanings into contradictory proposi-
tions. But Managerialism’s ideologically-laden and un-converted state-
ments never directly propose their real intentions. There is more in an
abstract noun – e.g. authoritarianism – than in its qualities (authoritar-
ian) attributed to a particular ideology (Managerialism), thing (corpora-
tion), or condition (managerial regime). Substantive universalism
possesses qualities that surpass managerial-particular experience. But
Managerialism’s ideology does not persist as a figment of imagination.
It exists as a real ideology. No snow is purely white, no corporation is
completely clean, clean coal does not exist, and no cruel beast or man
can be as cruel as corporations. World War II – the deadliest military
conflict of the 20th century – killed over 60 million people. By compar-
ison, cigarette manufacturing corporations can easily measure up:
‘having killed 100 million people during the 20th century, tobacco use
could kill 1 billion during the 21st century’.825 Corporate bestiality is
an inexhaustible force in history and imagination. However, these facts
are covered up by Managerialism in conjunction with corporate mass
media – with an emphasis on the ‘corporate’.826
With Managerialism, the concept of ‘freedom of speech’ entails a
liberty not yet attained. The philosophical concept of the human being
aims at fully developed human faculties that are distinguishing facul-
ties appealing to possibilities and to conditions in which individuals
actually live. It entails what Adorno calls Mündigkeit as critical, self-
reflective, self-determining, and self-actualising individuals speaking
their mouths [Mund]. This concept articulates qualities that are consid-
ered to be ‘typically human’. The explanation of Mündigkeit serves to
elucidate the power of such philosophical definitions, namely assem-
bling qualities that pertain to all human beings. At the same time, they
claim to be the most adequate and highest realisation of human
beings.
Such a universal understanding appears to be a conceptual instru-
ment for understanding the particular conditions of human beings and
things in the light of their potentialities. They are historical conceptu-
alisations of those aspects of which the experienced world consists.
They conceptualise the world with a view of its possibilities. It
is imperative to realise that they do so in the light of their actual
240 Managerialism
limitations. But neither experience nor judgement on what it means to

be human can ever be denied. Such philosophical concepts are devel-
oped in the consciousness of a general condition in an historical con-
tinuum of human society. They are elaborated from a supra-individual
position within societies. This is not an individualistic affair and it is
not that of ‘everyone understands it differently’. To the annoyance of
Managerialism’s ideologies such as postmodernism and relativism
there is a universal human agreement on what it means to be
human.827
Certainly, critical philosophy analyses the possibilities of human
beings and societal organisations of ethical life as outlined, for
example, in Hegel’s Sittlichkeit.828 This has nothing in common with the
ideological possibilities of Managerialism, corporations, and manage-
ment. A managerial universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the
ethical, human, and aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for different
landscapes. But this is by no means the most horrible aspect. What
appears as a managerial necessity from Managerialism’s point of view
may well comprise elements of a different and even non-managerial
order. This may be an essential part of the material from which man-
agerial ideologies are built. But by incorporating ideas and concepts
from the non-managerial realm, Managerialism strengthens its case
while simultaneously showing the inhuman side of its Janus-face.829
Neither the most refined aesthetic sense nor the most exact philosoph-
ical concept is immune against the usurpation by Managerialism. Even
the most disorderly elements can enter into managerial thought. At
the same time, managerial ideologies are made to appear detached
from a societal ground and the contents from which they abstract.
Critical thought proceeds from historical conditions which continue
to operate in abstractions. This is an objective basis on which distinc-
tions can be made between the various possibilities projected by
thought and the conflicting ways of conceptual transcendence.
Moreover, such questions can never be discussed with reference to dif-
ferent philosophical projects – e.g. virtue ethics, utilitarianism, deon-
tology – alone. To the degree to which the managerial project is
ideological, it is also part of an historical project as Managerialism pen-
etrates, infiltrates, and shapes a specific stage of the societal-historical
development. Meanwhile, a critical philosophical concept refers to
alternative possibilities of the very same historical development that
created Managerialism. But any quest for judging criteria always distin-
guishes between Managerialism and philosophical projects. This leads
to an exploration of judging criteria between two fundamentally differ-
ent historical projects and their respective alternatives. There is a

difference
• between actual and possible ways of understanding,

• between locking human beings inside a managerial framework and
changing human beings and human society, and
• between understanding such a project as universal or as particular.830
In speaking and thinking ‘only for itself’ (Hegel), critical philosophy

speaks and thinks from a universal position. It does so through a crit-
ical reflection upon material conditions and ideologies transmitted in
managerial societies. But in doing this, it also speaks and thinks to a
non-managerial universe of post-managerial living. Critical theory
achieves this by guiding the modes of critical thought away from
deceptive ideologies and the trivialities of everyday living. But interac-
tions between collective subjects and a managerial world persist and
even constitute critical theory’s universality. It is objective precisely by
virtue of opposing the apprehending, asphyxiating, and capturing
ideologies of Managerialism. Equally, the formation of critical concepts
remains also ascertained in structures that have not yet been dissolved
into Managerialism.
However, matters confronting human subjects in an historical uni-
verse always appear under an open historical horizon that remains
changeable. By virtue of the structure of a specific epoch of managerial
societies in which the development of managerial ideology takes place
Managerialism can only ever be self-referencing. This structure is
common to all managerial ideologies in respect to managerial think-
ing. It exists under the same managerial conditions, the same manage-
rial regime of production, and the same mode of exploiting social
relationships, human beings, and the environment. But it also repre-
sents present-day conflicts between:
• the interest of those who make things (human resources) and those
who manage them;
• the centre of Managerialism and the exploited periphery;
• preserving nature and exploiting and polluting it;
• an interest in direct human interaction and an interest of those
selling consumer electronics and gadgets;
• an interest in sustainable life and the interest of those marketing
cheap consumer goods; and
242 Managerialism
• the paradigm of perpetual growth and never-ending productivity

increases and the imperatives of environmental sustainability.
These conflicts can only ever unfold in a non-managerial framework.

The objects of thought and perception as they appear to individuals,
prior to all managerial-ideological re-interpretations, have certain qual-
ities in common. They concern two substantially different layers of
reality, namely the one-dimensional managerial-ideological reality and
the two-dimensional human-ethical reality. These two forms have
acquired a collective historical practice while simultaneously they also
govern, supervise, manage, and control the human subject.831
These two elements are ideological and historical and both are inter-
related in such a way that they cannot easily be insulated from each
other. While the ideological aspect of Managerialism can never be elim-
inated, the reality of human life always remains. In managerial reality,
the objective world consists of subjects turned into managerial ‘objects
of power’ (Bauman 1989) as human→resources. As such, they experi-
ence the world as instrumentalities. The managerial context predefines
the form in which ‘human objects’ of managerial power appear. They
are exposed to managers who are people in positions of institutional
power.832 As such, these human→resources appeal to the crypto-
scientists of management studies who reframe them as value-free ele-
ments, instruments, tools, resources, and components of managerial
relationships. They have been made susceptible to managerial organisa-
tions in an efficient and effective managerial-ideological system. From the
perspective of managerial ideology, these human→resources attract a pre-
fabricated version of common sense framed as an unavoidable necessity
in the world of work, production, and eventually consumption.
The organisation of managerial matters is at the same time ideological
as well as a practical project. The term ‘project’ accentuates most clearly
the specific character of Managerialism. It results from a determinate
choice seizing ‘one’ among many ways of comprehending, organising,
and transforming managerial reality. This choice defines the range of
possibilities open on this way and precludes alternative possibilities
incompatible with what would indicate a non-managerial future. Such
non-managerial alternatives have several criteria for truth by differing
from truth as proposed by Managerialism. These criteria must refer to the
manner in which such a non-managerial historical project realises the
given possibilities. They are not merely formal possibilities but those alter-
natives involving the mode of human life and environmental sustainabil-
ity. Such realisation or actualisation (Hegel) is essentially under way.
Even established managerial societies are realisations of concrete ver-

sions of Managerialism and anti-Managerialism. Managerialism’s
project tends to prejudge the rationality of alternative projects in order
to keep society within its own framework. At the same time, every
managerial society is confronted with the actuality and possibility of a
qualitatively different historical practice which might destroy
Managerialism’s existing institutional framework. In other words, the
ideological achievements of Managerialism are never secured.
Managerialism can never rest.
Managerial societies have already demonstrated the ideological value
projected into their own history. This has succeeded in converting the
human struggle with nature into a market-competitive struggle of
Hobbesian proportions. Managerialism seeks a bellum omnium contra
omnes – a ‘competitive’ war of all against all covering everyone and every
society.833 Its ideology also reproduces and protects human existence
with the exception of those who have been used as scapegoats to divert
attention away from the pathologies Managerialism has created. They
are declared outcasts, enemies, aliens, radicals, foreigners, misfits,
hippies, delinquents, and so on. In the ‘blame the victim’ version of
Managerialism’s ideology, these are Managerialism’s most severe victims.
But against the managerial project in full realisation emerges another
project which has the potential to alter the established managerial
totality. It is with reference to such a transcendent project that the
criteria for objective historical truth can best be formulated as criteria
of rationality. Rational are those societies and economic organisations
that can be considered to be moral, human, and environmentally sus-
tainable. Equally, those that are immoral, inhuman, and non-
sustainable are irrational. Likewise, rational are those societies and
economic organisations that are not simply built on ‘means-and-ends’
foundations representing non-sustainability.834 Many of Managerialism’s
prime organisational modes – corporations, etc. – are struggling to
receive the award ‘rational’. Nevertheless, any post-managerial project
must be in accordance with real possibilities that are opened up by a
critical intellectual culture.835 Such a post-managerial project must – in
order to expose the established managerial totality as irrational, unsus-
tainable, and immoral – demonstrate its rationality, environmental
sustainability, and morality in at least four ways:
(i) post-managerial alternatives must offer prospects of preserving and

improving the human, ethical, and environmentally sustainable
achievements of advanced civilisations;
244 Managerialism
(ii) they must redefine the established managerial totality in its patho-
logical structures, irrational tendencies, violence, and inhuman
relationships;
(iii) their realisation must offer a greater chance for the pacification of
human existence within a sustainable global environment; and
finally
(iv) this must occur within a framework of self-determined institutions
which offer a greater chance for human freedom, the development
of human needs and faculties while at the same time being protec-
tive of human beings, plant, and animal life.836
Obviously, such a non-managerial notion of rationality contains – as a

last consequence – value judgements because Enlightenment’s very
concept of reason originated in them.837 Beyond that, the concept of
truth can never be divorced from the value of reason. Pacification, eco-
logical sustainability, the moral treatment of animals and plant life
[www.peta.org], as well as the free development of human needs and
faculties are concepts that can be empirically defined and scientifically
measured. They reach beyond positivism and empiricism – two of
Managerialism’s highly valued ideologies that asphyxiate society. To
overcome those ideologies, they must be included into a systematic
struggle for human life and into any project of post-managerial living.
This is an objective ground of historical rationality. The historical con-
tinuum itself provides an objective ground for determining the truth of
different historical projects. It also determines the sequence of non-
managerial alternatives. The rationality of these possibilities depends
on their actualisation. The truth of a project that transcends
Managerialism is a project that gains truth as it moves towards actual-
isation (Hegel).
Just as many medieval and even modern scientific advances have
been falsified on the basis of discomforting achievements, so can man-
agerial capitalism be falsified through the alternative of post-managerial
living. This would mark a new climax in a long history of critical
scholarship represented in the virtue of critical thinking that perhaps
had Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) as its founding-father. Continuity can
be preserved through rupture when quantitative developments are
converted into qualitative change.838 This would occur precisely at the
moment when Managerialism’s ideology of an eternal treadmill of
growth, competition, and productivity increases meets the factual
world of limited natural resources and nature’s limited ability to cope
with environmental destruction. This would end the very structure of
the established system of Managerialism. The established managerial

rationality becomes irrational when in the course of its global develop-
ment the potentialities of the managerial system come to an end by
the limits of what earth can take. To delay the inevitable in an effort to
sustain corporate profits as long as possible explains Managerialism’s
denial and fight against the science of global warming.839 Such an irra-
tional refutation perverts the historical character of reality.
Managerialism de-recognises the irrationality of its own reality. It pro-
jects the historical negation of its own ideology onto others. It is
Managerialism’s inability to recognise its own negation that deter-
minates the eventual succession of Managerialism’s historical project.
The post-managerial reality will inescapably convert into an histori-
cal possibility that sooner or later will be actualised (Hegel). A
definition, for example, of Hegelian freedom as a comprehended
necessity would no longer have Managerialism’s repressive connota-
tion which it currently has when reframing freedom as business- and
market-freedom. All this may not matter much. What does matter is
that such historical determination would end managerial crimes
against humanity and the environment that corporations continue to
commit and that continue to be covered up by Managerialism and cor-
porate mass media.
Against that, terms such as ‘the self-actualised option’ emphasise an
integration of human freedom as an historical necessity. This termino-
logy opens the proposition that human beings make their own history
but under given conditions. Self-actualisation indicates an overcoming
of the specific contradictions of Managerialism that have developed
within management’s historical system. They are manifestations of the
conflict between human potentials and managerial actualities. There
are still material and intellectual resources available to challenge the
ideological system of Managerialism. And, there is an awareness of the
extent of theoretical and critical-practical freedom that is compatible
to life beyond the system of Managerialism.
These post-managerial alternatives leave open possibilities for develop-
ing available resources, alternative ideas of human living, and of organis-
ing human life ‘within’ – no longer ‘against’ – nature, the environment,
and plant – and animal life. Thus, any limiting of alternatives to ‘within’
the framework of the given situation means that alternatives would lose
their capacity to proceed in different ways. It would merely constitute
a cosmetic shift ‘within’ Managerialism while carrying on its one-
dimensionality. Under private and corporate control, Managerialism has
become incapable of moving into different directions to consumerist
246 Managerialism
progress that might indicate different aims from those of corporate capi-
talism. The closing of alternative and non-cosmetic but ‘real-life’ choices
has primarily become the fate of a privileged minority such as corporate
top-managers, CEOs, and tycoons of media corporations that have
attained prime positions in controlling managerial capitalism.840
Managerialism’s control projects a war against human life and the
environment as a whole accompanied by enslaving necessities result-
ing in unfreedom where even human freedom – framed as economic
freedom – has been handed over to the unpredictability of Smith’s
‘invisible market hand’. The possible abolition of such invented neces-
sities depends on a new form of human freedom. This is not just any
freedom but that of human beings who comprehend managerial neces-
sities as insufferable and unnecessary. As an historical process, a dialec-
tical analysis of managerial necessities involves a certain level of
non-managerial consciousness. It demands the recognition and capture
of emancipatory potentialities involving freedom (Hegel) and
Mündigkeit (Adorno). Such a post-managerial consciousness can no
longer be determined by managerial requirements and the interests of
managerial societies representing unfreedom as shaped by
Managerialism. This occurs to the degree to which the established
managerial society is irrational in its anti-humanism and anti-
environmentalism. A non-managerial consciousness becomes free for
higher historical human rationalities only during a struggle against
Managerialism – not through improving management.841
Truth, emancipation, human freedom, and critical thinking are
enshrined in a rejection of Managerialism, grounded in reason and the
struggle against Managerialism. In that, Marx’s proletariat can no
longer be seen as a liberating, revolutionary, and historical force.842 It
has been pacified to accept the conditions as they are. But the negation
of managerial capitalism occurs if and when all those suffering from
the pathologies of Managerialism are able to remove the ideological fog
that has been engineered. Only then will they become conscious of
themselves and able to alter the conditions and processes that make up
managerial societies. This new and critical consciousness is a prerequi-
site and simultaneously also essential for a critique on Managerialism.
Hegel’s human freedom opens up possibilities of conquering the man-
agerially invented so-called ‘market’-necessity of managerially given
rationalities [Kant’s Zweckrationalität].843
Without this, managerial capitalism’s deterioration into the darkness
of conquering market forces – as cultivated by Managerialism – may
lead to the projected environmental abyss. But human societies have
encountered ‘vicious circles’ of freedom and domination before. Today,
this reappears as a dialectical critique on Managerialism moving from a

system-conforming ideology of improving management towards an
emancipatory framework of post-managerial living. Transcendence
beyond established conditions of Managerialism presupposes transcen-
dence beyond current conditions presented as ‘facts-of-life’ ideologies.
Freedom from oppressive Managerialism has been presented as an
impossibility, idealistic, purely hypothetical, and utopian notion.844 It
can never be accomplished from ‘within’ Managerialism and manage-
ment studies because their ideology of ‘given facts’ renders all alterna-
tives to Managerialism imaginary and as a nonsensical move against
the historical determination of Managerialism. However, any real alter-
native to Managerialism represents in-itself (Kant) a negation of
Managerialism. But they are not real alternatives until managerial ideo-
logies are consciously held in custody in order to break the power of
Managerialism. This attains a more rational and more human condi-
tion through the rejection of Managerialism’s one-dimensional ratio-
nality. A critical rationality invoked in such a movement of thought
and action rejects the given one-dimensionality of Managerialism
opening up spaces for post-managerial alternatives.
The negation of Managerialism proceeds on empirical, theoretical,
sociological, political, psychological, and philosophical grounds. It
remains an historical project, not within but ‘beyond’ Managerialism,
highlighting managerial un-truths. Post-Managerialism opens up a
chance to determine alternatives on these grounds. However, the truth
of an historical project that reaches beyond Managerialism can be vali-
dated ex-post through its own success established through the fact that
it has never accepted the managerial prerogatives. Managerialism
remains false even if it is in ascent on an international scale.845 In the
contemporary period of Managerialism, all historical projects tend to
be polarised along two conflicting totalities, namely ‘Managerialism-
vs.-Post-Managerialism’. The outcome of this and Managerialism’s own
internal contradictions seem to depend on several antagonistic forces:
the false and illogical promise of a perpetual increased productivity;
the myth of endless growth accompanied by environmental destruc-
tion; and social pathologies. These are set against a Post-managerial
alternative of human life on planet earth without environmental
destruction and social pathologies in the most sustainable way
humanly possible. In other words, the higher historical truth lies with
those options offering a greater chance of human survival.846 But the
road to this will not be smooth. Managerialism has placed very serious
roadblocks in the way.
13
Roadblocks to Post-Managerialism
Managerialism’s ideology of ‘positive’, uncritical, and self-comforting

thinking and its entourage of positivist-empiricist management studies
aim to counteract the historical Enlightenment task of critical rational-
ity that is today directed towards post-managerial and environmentally
sustainable living. This critical assignment has always included non-
disconnected forms of meanings able to challenge pathologies such as
those created by Managerialism.847 Today, it enters conceptual thought
as critical, constitutive, contradiction-highlighting, discomforting, and
confronting factors while simultaneously determining its own validity
through the value of non-managerial concepts. To the degree to which
managerial societies have shown to be irrational, any critical analysis
in terms of Enlightenment’s historical-moral rationality introduces
these concepts as critical-negative elements in the form of critique,
contradictions, and transcendence. These elements can never be assim-
ilated with the positivism and the positivistic tendencies of
Managerialism. Instead, they challenge the project of Managerialism in
its entirety, in its intent, and in its validity.
In the analysis of Managerialism and managerial capitalism that
pretends to operate ‘independently’ over and above individuals,
Managerialism’s hidden but existing pathological features – inhumanity,
overproduction, unemployment, insecurity, waste, misery, repression,
and, above all, global environmental devastation – are cloaked. This is
not fully comprehended as long as these features appear merely – more
or less inevitably – as shrouded by-products of Managerialism. They rep-
resent the dark side of Managerialism’s ‘story of growth and progress’
without mentioning the contradiction of ‘endless’ growth based on
‘ending’ natural resources and a natural limit on what planet earth can
suffer in terms of environmental destruction. Totalitarian Managerialism
248
Roadblocks to Post-Managerialism 249
promotes the efficient exploitation of resources as the rationality of irra-

tionality – rational means for irrational ends. The environmental-
destruction industry, managerially framed as ‘resource industry’,
provides millions of jobs and enormous purchasing power. Human suf-
ferings and environmental ulcers, cancers, and pandemics – bird flu,
SARS, swine flue, mad cow disease to name a few – are the hidden conse-
quences of corporate wealth and managerial irresponsibility. Deadly
blunders and corporate crimes on the part of corporate leaders – from
Bhopal via Exxon Valdez to Bernie Madoff and others since – are framed
by Managerialism as a natural part of an eternal competitive war of cor-
porate existence, shelved away through Managerialism’s ‘bad apple’
ideology: they are just a few bad apples. This particular ideology has
been invented with two purposes in mind: the system is not to blame
and we can carry on with ‘business-as-usual’.
Meanwhile, corporate mass media assure a general willingness to
affirm to the managerial and economic madness. The population is
made to ‘buy it’ – this is the buy®ology of Managerialism. But despite
Managerialism’s offensive, the non-managerial side remains part and
parcel of Managerialism’s push for a solidification of social affairs.
Managerialism’s grand project of a faked unification of opposites – e.g.
environmental sustainability versus corporate growth – is designed to
counteract qualitative change.848 This has been paralleled by an ideo-
logy of thorough hopelessness, cynicism, resentment, dissolution,
global mental depression, and a scrupulously conditioned existence
that has made its home in a world where the irrational is framed as
reasonable. That those who commit corporate crimes are more danger-
ous than those incarcerated in psycho-wards has been most instruc-
tively highlighted in Foucault ‘Madness and Civilization’.849
The widespread promotion and tolerance of positive thinking
remains enforced tolerance.850 But it is not enforced by any terroristic
organisation, a secret police state, mass surveillance, sociological-
panoptical instruments, the military, the police, militias, or a political
party but by the overwhelming and anonymous power and efficiency
of Managerialism. As such, it infiltrates and colonises society’s general
consciousness and even the consciousness of management critics in
what became known as ‘Critical Management Studies’. But the absorp-
tion of the negative-critical by the positive-affirmative can never be
validated through Managerialism.
There are numerous examples of Managerialism’s faked harmonisa-
tions of ideologically framed ‘rational’ processes and their irrational
ends. In the above mentioned case of resource exploration, for
250 Managerialism
example, achieving corporate shareholder values (profit) dictates an

efficient exploration – exploitation – while simultaneously manage-
ment’s drive to keep costs down renders environmental demolition
and the annihilation of local communities a mere externality that is
off-loaded onto someone else, i.e. individuals and society. A simple
and equally illustrative case is the motor-car. According to standard
advertising, a new automobile is expected to be beautiful, shiny, pow-
erful, and convenient. Hidden are the environmental ‘costs’ of making
it. While advertising always shows empty country roads, the reality is
traffic jams in city streets. Out of sight are also facts that a car will
inevitably – and by corporate design – deteriorate and be rendered ‘in
need of repair’ and that its beauty and surface are cheap, its power
unnecessary, its engine size senseless, and its weight ridiculous.
Cars are products of automobile corporations that determine the
appearance of ‘my’ car, its beauty, cheapness, workings, and obsoles-
cence. One might assume that a car is not what it could be and that
better cars could be made for less money. But corporate capitalism has
to survive. Wages are high, consumption, turnover, and economic
growth are necessary. Managerialism tells us ‘we have it much better
than before’. One car means happiness, two cars means double the
happiness, and so one. But the contradiction between Managerialism
and reality melts away while both merge in a rather pleasant feeling.
This is what we read in newspapers, magazines, billboards, on TV, and
the internet. It is a mass harmonisation of false realism. Critical
thought strives to define the irrational character of the managerial
rationality which, on the one hand, has become increasingly obvious
while on the other hand is also increasingly hidden through the rising
power and sophistication of ideological manipulation.851
It is this manipulation that defines the tendencies which cause
Managerialism’s irrationality to generate its pretended transformation
while simultaneously handcuffing society onto an ideological treadmill
of consumptive progress amidst human standstill. With this,
Managerialism reaches its own self-established totality because it has
created a historical totality in which it developed forces and capabil-
ities that themselves have become projects inside Managerialism’s
totality. What is left is only the managerial possibility of advancing
managerial rationality which involves a society befallen by
Managerialism. But system-conforming managerial change – change
management and constantly changing but only cosmetically different
consumer products – is necessarily also social, economic, and political
change even though it can only ever be quantitative – not qualitative –
change. Change can only occur to the degree to which it shifts the
direction of managerial progress within the parameters set by
Managerialism. This is displayed in the development of new technolo-
gies, new management techniques, and new forms of consumerism.
These new – albeit managerial – technologies all too often become
instruments of destructiveness.852 Technological advances and quan-
titative changes can never mark a transition to a higher stage of
human civilisation.853
The new technologies have hardly ever been designed and utilised
for a struggle towards human goals. In order to indicate the disturbing
implications of this statement, any really new direction to a post-
managerial world and qualitative progress would constitute a catastrophe
for the established direction of Managerialism. Any qualitative revolu-
tion or evolution outside or against managerial rationality would be a
cataclysmic transformation for Managerialism because it would mark
the emergence of a new idea of theoretical, practical, and ethical ratio-
nality that could, for example, be expressed as: the function of post-
managerial rationality is to promote the art of human life in an ethical
and environmentally sustainable way. In view of this end, post-
managerial rationality would no longer be an attack on the environment,
but instead adhere to its three functions: to life as such, to live an ethi-
cally good life, and to live an environmentally sustainable life.854
But a post-managerial version of rationality can never be simply discov-
ered, recognised, and realised. It has to be developed as a negation of
Managerialism. The historical function of managerial rationality has been
to repress and destroy the urge to live, to live a good life, and above all, to
live an environmentally sustainable life.855 Rationality, in its managerial
application to society, represents not only the very definition of
Managerialism but is also opposed to the ‘trilogy of life’ as (i) life as such,
(ii) live an ethically good life, and (iii) live an environmentally sustainable
life. Under Managerialism, this trilogy has been granted the privilege of
being irrational. It has never been made subject to serious scientific inves-
tigations. The initial rationality of domination had separated the rational-
ity of science and the rationality of what a good, ethical, and a
sustainable life means. Initially, this separation contained aesthetic ratio-
nality as a free play and even a folly of imagination, a transformation
towards the above outlined trilogy. Under Managerialism, ethics and
rationality have been divorced, adjusted to Managerialism and integrated
into the realm of managerial domination.856
The transformation of freedom occurs within a structure that philo-
sophy has always been able to transcend. Philosophy always
252 Managerialism
subordinated itself to the good and ethical life that came from a rather
different structure. This philosophy presupposed a high degree of
freedom from toil, ignorance, manipulation, forced labour, social
pathologies, environmental destruction, and poverty. Emancipatory
thinking was an image that was as unreal as the origins of philosophic
thought in Greek slave-society itself. Today, this philosophy is still
made out to be utopian and unrealistic by those forces interested in a
perpetuation of the pathologies. But throughout its development the
quest for ethical life (Hegel) never ceased. Critical thought continued
to be applicable to an increasingly powerful universe. Many philosoph-
ical concepts could never really be verified in terms of an existing uni-
verse. But historical rather than purely epistemological conditions
determine the truth and the cognitive value of philosophical thought.
The philosophical universe always extends beyond the limits of the
managerial world. Thus, speculations about ethical life, a moral
society, and environmental sustainability obtain an increasingly real-
istic content as Managerialism’s growth paradigm collides with the
earth’s predetermined limits of natural resources.857 Simultaneously,
they also collide with an increased awareness of the manipulative char-
acter or managerial ideologies. On these grounds, Managerialism’s irra-
tionalities are set to experience their physical limits. If the truth of
philosophical propositions – ethical and sustainable life versus
Managerialism – is determined by historical content and by the degree
of historical possibilities, then the relation between philosophy and
Managerialism is illuminated. But this can never be taken for granted.
At the advanced stage of managerial capitalism, scientific rationality
was translated into political-economic power. It became a decisive
factor in Managerialism’s ideological quest to stifle historical alterna-
tives. The question is: does Managerialism’s power tend towards the
global negation of human life or towards the promotion of an ethical
and environmentally sustainable life? Within managerial societies, the
continued application of managerial-scientific rationality has reached a
terminal point. The managerialisation of all socially necessary but
repressive forms of human life as well as labour relations has accom-
panied history.858 This includes all performances that can be exercised
more effectively – not more humanely – by machines, even if – or espe-
cially when – these performances produce luxuries and waste rather
than necessities. But this stage could also mark the end and limit of
Managerialism’s quasi-scientific rationality. Further managerial
progress and growth only ever indicates spiralling U-turns of quantita-
tive and managerially driven growth. This self-propelling loop has the
potential to lead into quality enshrined in environmental sustainabil-

ity and ethical life. It would open the possibility of an essentially new,
post-managerial human reality.
Under such conditions, the scientific project itself would be freed
from all managerial ends. It would be freed to work for an ethical life
beyond managerial necessities, ideologies, manipulations, and domina-
tion. In other words, the global resource depletion and damage done to
earth might be prerequisites as well as a rationale for transcending
today’s managerial reality.859 It would mean a comprehensive reversal
of the managerially invented false relationship between science made
subservient to Managerialism and philosophy. Ideas defining manager-
ial reality – exact, behavioural, controlling sciences – would lose their
character as a result of such a scientific-philosophical transformation.
The conjuncture of scientific and philosophical concepts could project
and define the possible realities of a free and ethical existence. The
amplification of such concepts would mean more than a simple evolu-
tion of managerially defined sciences. It would involve the develop-
ment of a new scientific-philosophic rationality.
So far, managerial science has committed us to an unfree existence.
This new project would mean a new idea of freedom, science, philo-
sophy, and rationality. The finishing point of this project would involve
a break with managerial rationality. Such a break, however, depends on
the continued existence of a distinctively non-managerial base. It is
this base that renders possible the satisfaction of needs, the possibility
of ethical life, an end to environmental destruction, and the reduction
of human suffering.860 It remains the very base of all forms of human
freedom. The qualitative change rather lies in the reconstruction and
successful maintenance of this base under the onslaught of
Managerialism. This does not mean the revival of nostalgic and roman-
tic values and spirituality. These are no supplements for the looming
scientific and philosophical transformation of Managerialism. On the
contrary, the historical achievement of science and technology has
rendered possible the manipulation of some ethical values to serve
managerial tasks and Managerialism’s colonisation of human values –
e.g. management ethics and CSR.861 Consequently, what is at stake is a
substantial redefinition of the manipulated managerial values pro-
moted by Managerialism.
The new ends of post-managerial life would then operate as an ethical
project in the construction of a post-managerial society. Moreover,
these post-managerial ends might assert themselves in the construction
of anti-managerial hypotheses. Science – deprived of ethical values
254 Managerialism
through the ideology of being value-free – would no longer proceed to

the mere quantification of inconsequential measurements. Instead of
managerial cost-benefit calculations, one-dimensionally directed
towards profits as shareholder values, what becomes calculable is the
minimum labour required with which vital needs of all members of a
post-managerial society could be satisfied under the highly non-
managerial provision of available resources used sustainably as opposed
to profits. This would happen in absence of Managerialism, without
being restricted by managerial interests, and without the force of the
accumulation of capital. What becomes quantifiable is the available
range of freedom from managerial thinking.
The obstacles that stand in the way of such a materialisation are the-
oretical and political ones. Managerial societies are about to reach the
point where with respect to the aspirations of human beings, environ-
mental degradation, and resource limitations, human existence is no
longer guaranteed. Managerial goals and their final causes become
increasingly obsolete in management’s own terms. Scientific method
and technology have become science and technology of our historical
phase which have reached their determinate negation. Instead of being
separated from science and left to Managerialism’s preferences and irra-
tionalities, formerly philosophical ideas of emancipation may become
the true project and sole object of science. But this development con-
fronts Managerialism’s so-called ‘objective’ and ‘value-neutral’ science
with the unpleasant task of becoming political and ethical.862 Post-
Managerialism recognises scientific consciousness as political-ethical
consciousness and the scientific enterprise as political-ethical enter-
prise. The transformation of philosophical values into human needs
moves post-managerial possibilities onto a new stage as a conquest
against the oppressive forces prevalent in managerial society.
However, in constituting themselves as political-ethical enterprise,
science, management, and technology pass beyond the stage at which
they presently are. Their faked neutrality becomes subjected to politics
set against their intent and functioning as managerial instrumental-
ities. A post-managerial redefinition lies in the construction, develop-
ment, and utilisation of material and intellectual resources freed from
all managerial interests impeding the satisfaction of environmental
and human needs, preventing the evolution of human faculties, and
obstructing a move towards a sustainable and ethical life. In other
words, it is a moral-rational enterprise. Environmental sustainability
pared with humanistic technology may provide the historical correc-
tions in which human beings can become and remain free in a
progress towards environmental sustainability on the basis of non-

oppression. To the extent to which resource depletion has developed
on a managerial basis, any real and serious correction can never be the
result of managerial progress and technology per se. It involves a polit-
ical-ethical reversal. Post-managerial societies possess the instrumental-
ities for transforming the ethical into the physical and the adventures
of an imaginative mind into adventures of a post-managerial society.
Inhuman and degrading phrases – and realities – such as engineers of
the soul, behaviour modification, human resources, scientific manage-
ment, science of consumption, and the infamous ‘Key Performance
Indicator’ epitomise, in quite miserable form, the ideological dom-
inance of Managerialism and the denial of ethical life. But the consum-
mation of managerial rationality – while translating ideology into
reality – represents an antithesis to ethical life. Meanwhile actualising
ethical values in human reality remains a process of an actualisation of
human freedom (Hegel) and the free development of human needs as
non-repressive sublimation independent of marketing and
Managerialism. In this process, the relationship between intellectual
faculties and needs undergoes an elementary transformation. The free
play of critical-ethical thought and imagination assumes a rational and
directing function in the actualisation of human freedom.863 Ethical
concepts such as justice, freedom, and human dignity obtain their
truth as the only determinants of post-managerial living. They can
never encompass truth and good conscience under Managerialism.
Only in overcoming Managerialism, a rational, ethical, and environ-
mentally sustainable organisation mirroring Kant’s ethics of self-
determination can be established.
Even though the terms ‘environmentally sustainable’ and ‘ethical
life’ only convey poorly enough the intent of the above outlined, they
nevertheless manifest the tabooed and ridiculed end of Managerialism
and its repressive managerial-scientific enterprise. But at this point, a
strong qualification must be issued against all technological fetishisms
as exhibited by Managerialism.864 Managerialism carries ideologies
such as the market and technological solutions to environmental deni-
gration and natural resource depletion as well as the future omnipo-
tence of management.865 The irrationalities and danger of these
managerial ideologies demand forceful condemnations of all
mystifications they express. Technologies and ‘free’ markets – as
Managerialism’s preferred instrumentalities – increase the hegemonic
power of management. However, managerial technologies become
powerless over their own apparatus as managerial ideology replaces
256 Managerialism
them. Still the mystification of the managerial techniques that

Managerialism has instilled is not removed by transferring these tech-
nologies into managerial ideologies.
In a post-managerial society techno-rationality is freed from its pre-
vious exploitative features and determined as social production. The
human will becomes dependent on ethical directions. This allows
space for a collective effort to obtain ethical life with goals set by free
individuals themselves in the spirit of Hegel’s self-actualisation. But it
does not suggest an accumulation of power, rather the very opposite.
Environmental sustainability and power, freedom and power, human
dignity at work and power, and ethics and power are contradictions.866
The reconstruction of post-managerial society’s material base involves
a qualitative and quantitative reduction of power. This creates the
space and time for ethical-sustainable development under self-
determined incentives. The notion of a reversal and subsequent eradica-
tion of power is a strong motive in critical theory. The degree to which
this goal determines the telos of technology simultaneously alters
the relation between technology, human beings, and nature. Post-
managerial living no longer supposes exploitation of nature that is and
remains the prime outcome of Managerialism. But there are two kinds
of engagement with nature: a repressive and a liberating one. The latter
involves reducing human and environmental suffering, misery,
exploitation, violence, and cruelty.
Historically, in nature and in human history, the struggle for exist-
ence was a token of scarcity, suffering, greed, and want. They were
qualities of blind matter and of a realm of immediacy in which life
passively suffered its existence. This domain was gradually mediated in
the course of historical transformations of nature. Eventually, it
became part of the human world and to this extent the qualities of
nature became historical qualities. In the process of human develop-
ment, nature ceased to be mere nature. Eventually, the struggle of
blind forces was comprehended and became organised in the light of
human freedom. Human history became the very negation of nature.
What was purely natural was overcome and recreated by the power of
human reason.
But recently, the philosophic notion that nature comes to itself in
history points to a rather different awareness of the role of nature in
the future of human development.867 Environmentalism and ecology
claim that environmental sustainability is more than just an historical
task but a global-collective task to be accomplished in order to assure
human survival. Nature and environmental sustainability are in-
themselves rational and legitimate objects of science, not only of

reason in-themselves (Kant) but also of reason as freedom (Hegel) set
against domination and for emancipation.
With the evolutionary emergence of human beings as homo faber
capable of transforming nature in accordance with human faculties of
the mind and an awareness of the unavoidable necessities of environ-
mental sustainability, the present phenomenon of the corporatisation
and management of nature as a sub-rationality of Managerialism
assumes negative status.868 It became a realm of scientifically compre-
hended, managerially organised, corporately controlled, and ideolo-
gically overshadowed instrumental rationality. And to the degree to
which managerial rationality has succeeded in subjugating the global
natural environment to its (ir)rational standards and aims, all forms of
biological existence have been exposed to managerial greed and corpo-
rate acquisitions. The reduction of global environmental and biological
resources to corporate utilities as a seamless and smooth ideological
operation has become the historical task of Managerialism. But suffer-
ing, violence, and the destruction of the environment remain cate-
gories of managerial reality and of Managerialism’s heartlessness. The
terrible notion of ‘resource exploration’ – destined to remain forever
part of the exploitative realm of management – remains neither a
philosophical, nor ethical, nor a scientific enterprise.
When PETA asked the Pope for support, he no longer refused on the
grounds that human beings have a moral duty to animals and ill-
treating them is sinful.869 Managerialism, however, remains undeterred
by the Pope and untainted by laboratory and other abuses of animals
even though an animal’s ability to suffer and feel pain is as real and
universal as animal ethics.870 Managerialism derecognises the reality of
hell at its most definite place – here on earth.871 It negates that this hell
on earth is created by management in, for example, animal testing
facilities for cosmetic and pharmaceutical corporations.872 Part of the
managerial hell is the ill-treatment of animals paralleled by the work-
ings of managerial capitalism whose rationality remains irrational. Its
joy, progress, profits, and happiness derive from the ability to exploit
human beings, animals, and nature. The managerial exploitation of
nature takes dominance over human and animal liberation.873
Managerialism’s pretended tranquillity and societal delights are the
result of an ideological mediation of contradiction. But the beauty-
showroom can never be disassociated from animal-testing. Yet
Managerialism instils the glorification of nature as part of its ideology
of Greenwashing.874 This is designed to protect the unnaturalness of
258 Managerialism
managerial capitalism and the anti-environmentalism of

Managerialism in their struggle against human emancipation and
animal liberation. Advancements have long produced the means for
freeing nature from this sort of brutality and suffering by virtue of the
cognitive and transforming power of critical reason. But reason can
fulfil this function only as post-managerial rationality in which human
consciousness and technologies become instrumentalities of environ-
mentally sustainable and ethical life. The function of critical reason
then converges with the function of ethical life. The ancient Greek
notion of a strong affinity between ethical life, technology, and nature
serves as a highly illuminating example. Its philosophy possesses
ethical ideas which guide the construction of social and economic
institutions emphasising these essential relationships upwards to a
specific rationality of post-managerial ethical life.
Unlike Managerialism’s one-dimensionality, ethical life creates
another universe of thought and practice against the existing one of
today’s managerial societies. But in contrast to the managerial ideology
of profit-making, the ethical universe is one of philosophy. However,
this issues a direct, clear, and present threat to the ideological promises
of Managerialism. In various forms, the ethical universe is organised by
the images of life without fear because ethics does not have the power
to bring about fear. Still, the powerless truth of ethical life has never
been framed as being more powerless and more illusory than today.
Yet it has become an omnipresent ingredient set against
Managerialism. This already testifies to the validity of post-managerial
images. The more blatantly irrational Managerialism becomes, the
greater the rationality of the ethical universe.
Management studies have established a specific relationship between
ethics and Managerialism, the reformulation and adjustment of moral
philosophy to the needs of business.875 But the rationality of non-
distorted philosophy, its ability to project existence beyond
Managerialism, its yet unrealised possibility and potentialities can still
be envisaged and validated by its potentials to transform the manager-
ial world. Rather than being the handmaiden of the managerial appa-
ratus, post-managerial ethics would become a technique for destroying
business, the pathologies it creates, and its misery. But Managerialism
has its own take on ethics. The managerial rationality of ethics seems
to be characterised by a reduction of ethics to serve managerial ends.
Under Managerialism ethics is used by the managerial apparatus.
Managerialism requires business ethics and its latest fad of corporate
social responsibility (CSR) as external appearances in order to preserve
itself. These requirements constitute Managerialism’s ideological appa-

ratus in which business ethics and CSR are framed as natural, value-
free, neutral, technical, and non-subjective in order to support
management’s perpetual quest for economic development.
As a consequence, management and business ethics violate them-
selves by supporting oppression.876 Only a transformation of
Managerialism guarantees emancipation. The managerial exploitation
of ethics re-emerges in the managerial exploitation of nature.
Managerialism links ethics to mastery and even to the managerial ‘lib-
eration’ of nature while in fact being directed against emancipation
and nature. The managerial conquest of nature increases blindness
towards Managerialism’s cruelty against human beings and nature. For
global corporations, for example, cultivation of the soil is qualitatively
indifferent from the destruction of soil, thereby negating the environ-
mental morality of, for example ‘land ethics’.877 In Managerialism’s
ideology of agriculture, the meaning of ‘culture’ is taken out of agri-
‘culture’ leaving only agri-business behind which is signified in the
extraction of natural resources, wasteful exploitation, clearing of
forests, and wholesale deforestation.878
Simultaneously, resulting pathologies such as poverty, disease, and
cancerous growth are framed as natural by Managerialism or simply as
human ills or a problem of genes.879 Any reduction or removal of this
would signify emancipation. In Managerialism meanwhile, managerial
civilisations have already achieved the protection of nature in its
gardens, sanctuaries, parks, and reservations. But outside these minia-
ture-patches of – often only marginally, selectively, and temporarily –
protected areas, Managerialism treats nature as it treats human beings:
as instruments of destructive productivity – Schumpeter’s ‘creative
destruction’.880 Through the ideology of Managerialism, managerial
cost-benefit categories enter into the natural world to the degree to
which the managerial machinery is constructed. One of
Managerialism’s main flagships, the Academy of Management Journal,
explains Managerialism’s cost-benefit-dictum to perfection:
1. spend $11 million for anti-pollution equipment to keep from poi-

soning fish in the river adjacent to the plant; or
2. do nothing, in violation of the law, and assume a one in a ten
chance of being caught, with a resultant $1 million fine …881
To the same degree Managerialism’s cost-benefit-dictum enters the

human mind and the minds of those confined to working for the
260 Managerialism
managerial machinery.882 But against Managerialism and similar mis-

conceptions, those labouring inside the managerial machine no longer
signify a romantic interpretation of a looming abolition of labour. The
ideology of Managerialism remains anti-labour framing labour as
‘human resources’.883 Managerialism’s ideology of labour is as ideolo-
gical in today’s managerially guided societies as it was during feudal-
ism. But the once definite human struggle with nature has increasingly
been converted into a struggle with Managerialism whose powers over
individuals have become more rational and more ideological. To sup-
press any awareness of this ideology is more necessary than ever
before.
Meanwhile, the managerial ideology of ‘undeniable necessities’ con-
tinues relentlessly.884 However, any awareness and subsequent organ-
isation towards qualitatively different ends would change the extent of
socially necessary production and distribution. And this change, in
turn, would affect human agents and the production and reproduction
of their needs. Free time, for example – freed from work and conspicu-
ous consumption – allows transformative processes of individuals into
different subjects. To avoid this, people have been made to oscillate
between work- and consumptive regimes. But people freed from this
would be different people able to alter the process of managerial pro-
duction and thereby reconfiguring the historical character of human
needs. In a free, ethical, and rational society, the so-called ‘necessities
of life’ will be others than those produced in and for irrational manage-
rial societies. Meanwhile the consumerist-material prosperity of man-
agerial societies covers up the devilishness of a Dante-like inferno.885
Managerialism spreads its repressive productivity, obscene ideas like
perpetual growth, and invents ‘false needs’.886 It remains repressive pre-
cisely to the degree to which it promotes the satisfaction of invented
marketing needs which require an infinite continuation of a compet-
itive rat race that denies that even the winner of this race will still be a
rat. But the deplorable ideology of ‘catching up with one’s peers’ comes
along engineered obsolescence and unhappiness flanked by the means
of environmental destruction. The obvious comforts generated by
Managerialism, and even more so the support which these give to a
system of profitable domination, facilitate their infiltration of the still
developing areas of the world under the ideology of globalisation. The
introduction of the managerial apparatus still means a tremendous
project in managerial, ideological, and corporate terms. However, the
interrelation between managerial and manipulative know-how has
become faster while the link between profitable productivity and dom-
ination has been cloaked by Managerialism that always includes a

quest for new and ever more sophisticated ideological weapons used
for the containment of emancipation.
To a great extent, it is the obscene quantity of cheap commercial
consumer goods, services, work, and engineered but manipulative and
mass-manufactured recreation in overdeveloped countries that gener-
ates the containment of awareness. Consequently, qualitative change
presupposes a quantitative change in today’s pathological and unsus-
tainable levels of wastefulness framed as ‘high living standard’ while
signifying ‘Affluenza’.887 The standard of over-consumptive and waste-
ful living found in many managerial societies is not a suitable model as
it contradicts environmental sustainability. In view of what this ‘high
living standard’ has made of individuals and the environment, the
question arises: is all this worth the sacrifices and the victims made for
the advancement of Managerialism? This question has ceased to be
irresponsible. The materially ‘over-affluent’ society has become a
society of permanent mobilisation under the banner of competitive-
ness, consumption, and Managerialism’s push for global dominance.888
Managerialism seeks to eliminate the risk of environmental annihila-
tion by denying it. But its ideology has been accompanied by the per-
petuation of drudgery, monotony, emptiness, passivism, determinism,
resentment, and apathy, eclipsing human frustration and suffering
through a relentless promotion of positive surface-fun that covers up
deeply felt unhappiness at work, home, and in shopping centres.
Under these circumstances, emancipation from the over-affluent man-
agerial society does not mean a romantic return to healthy, fateful
poverty, moral cleanliness, and the simplicity of a past that was never
simple, clean, and healthy. On the contrary, the elimination of
Managerialism’s profitable wastefulness will increase human well-
being, social wealth, and environmental sustainability. A post-
managerial world indicates an end of the permanent mobilisation for
global competition.824 The denial of human satisfactions would no
longer be an individual’s own denial that finds its compensation in the
cult of fitness and mindless entertainment. In today’s world of post-
welfare-states, human qualities such as solidarity, communitarian and
social existence supported by public not-for-profit institutions has been
framed as asocial, unpatriotic, out-of-date, and ‘against-the-free-
market’ – a term that has been applied so frequently that it has merged
into a single word.890 It is Managerialism’s toughness of market com-
petition seen as bellum omnium contra omnes that transfers brutality
into every corner of human life.891 It disallows any disobedience to the
262 Managerialism
tyranny of a ‘terms-and-conditions’ setting managerial minority that

has been successfully nurtured and is well informed on societal and
political affairs.
Any sensitive intelligent individual sickened by what is being perpe-
trated is eliminated from the public sphere.892 Managerialism ridicules
any action of protest, rebellion, and refusal. These expressions of
humanity have been marred by the political cult of ‘compromising’
that favours the ruthless advancement of Managerialism. With this,
the need to cover oneself, the capability to cheat the cheaters, and to
live and think in spite of humanity marks the new doctrine. In crypto-
totalitarian managerial societies, alternative human attitudes are ren-
dered to be merely escapist attitudes. Even resistance in the form of a
personal withdrawal of mental energies away from managerially
required activities and attitudes is only for a few. But this remains only
a rather inconsequential aspect of redirecting critical and non-
conformist energies. It leaves Managerialism fully operational and, as
the philosopher Wittgenstein would have said, ‘it leaves everything as
it is’.893 Against that and a false individualisation, self-determination
and self-actualisation presuppose free available energies which are not
expended in superimposed managerial regimes demanding intellectual
labour and a full commitment to Managerialism. Strapped to the
infinite treadmill of a ‘working-consuming’ oscillation ideology as sus-
tained by Managerialism, energies and room for non/anti-managerial
thinking has been all but eliminated.
Critical energy must be free energy in the sense that it is not organ-
ised and distorted by Managerialism and channelled into competition,
production, and the marketing of goods and services to satisfy manage-
rial capitalism. Simultaneously, managerial capitalism renders indi-
viduals incapable of achieving a life of their own, leaving them unable
to grasp the possibilities that lie beyond material satisfaction.
Managerialism has set in motion a path-dependency that predeter-
mines human existence: birth → schooling → work → consuming and
→ death. This version of Managerialism’s ‘human-supply-chain-
management’ has been neatly set out with room for manoeuvring,
resistance, and rebellious attitudes. The deadly rationality of the man-
agerial society asphyxiates individual existence on the path to global
environmental destruction. An enslaving contentment engineered by
corporate mass media and generously supported by Managerialism per-
vades managerial societies. But any emancipatory energy directed away
from managerially required performances would stop sustaining
Managerialism’s destructive prosperity. It would imply decreasing the
pathological standards of human servitude to Managerialism and

enable individuals to develop ethical rationalities that allow for an
environmentally sustainable existence.
However, it remains understandable, even reasonable and rational
that managerial civilisation considers legitimate a slow slaughtering of
millions of people during the looming environmental crisis of global
warming that is set to devastate global food production.894 The already
visible sacrifices of all those who have no adequate care, food, shelter,
and protection is framed as an isolated, disconnected, and distant
event. Any awareness that their poverty and our wealth and senseless
over-consumption occur at the same time at the same place – planet
earth – and are related is neatly avoided. Nevertheless, the moral fail-
ings of Managerialism become more visible with the production of ever
higher levels of consumerism accompanied by global poverty and envi-
ronmental destruction. This occurs even when it indicates a premed-
itated annihilation of human life in the interest of sustaining
Managerialism. The contradiction between sustainable human exist-
ence and Managerialism leads to a planned deprivation of life on
behalf of corporate interests.895 Managerialism is free of moral scruples
and this is made understandable and even rational because managerial
capitalism depends on an ever increasing number of consumers and
supporters.
The constantly regenerated excess capacity and instantly wasted con-
sumer goods must be managed.896 However, the requirements of
profitable mass production are not identical with those of humanity
and environmental sustainability. The problem is not only primarily
that of adequately caring for the environment but an awareness of
global environmental destruction. The crime is that managerial soci-
eties with growing consumerism aggravate the struggle for existence in
the face of its possible alleviation. Managerialism’s relentless drive for
‘more’ operates as corporate aggressiveness, no longer simply within
nations but on a global scale. The global expansion of Managerialism
also spans down to intimacy invading the inner space of privacy
through a relentless colonisation of human relationships. Mana-
gerialism has virtually eradicated any possibility of isolation in which
individuals were able to experience and think for themselves.
Paradoxically, this is paralleled by a rise in loneliness and social isola-
tion. While Managerialism disconnects people, it simultaneously
covers everyone with conforming blankets woven together by an
homogenising ideology. Human intimacy, sociality, and privacy inde-
pendent of any colonisation by Managerialism that once was the sole
264 Managerialism
condition of satisfied vital human needs are no longer accessible to make

sense of philosophical concepts such as freedom, self-actualisation,
Mündigkeit (Adorno), emancipation, Sittlichheit (Hegel), autonomy, and
independence.897
The integrity of undistorted non-managerial thoughts and undis-
torted human-to-human communication has become the most inac-
cessible item of managerial societies. It is available only to the selected
– albeit marginalised – few. Managerialism’s ideological triumph over
what was once called culture reveals its ideological origins, intentions,
and forces. Ironically, a democratisation of corporately engineered and
manufactured culture can only become actualised (Hegel) once demo-
cracy is no longer reduced to a spectacle engineered by corporate mass
media.
Managerial societies have even succeeded in ending privacy for those
seeking public office. The denial of privacy is paralleled by a denial of
freedom and this has been extended to individual and universal
freedom. It corresponds to the granting of micro-liberties reinforcing the
repressiveness and power of Managerialism. The degree to which indi-
viduals are allowed to break the officially sanctioned ‘peace’ (!) is meas-
ured by the impact it has on Managerialism. The more inconsequential
the protest, the more it is granted and sometimes even supported.898
This is frightening because it expresses the lawfulness of ineffective
protest against managerial capitalism and Managerialism. The legal-
political system has been organised to contain autonomy, resistance,
and any formation of anti-managerial protest among individuals,
groups, collectives, and society at large. This legal-political system has
been flanked by corporate mass media. In managerial societies, an ever-
larger part of the entire populace has been turned into an
homogenised captive audience exposed to the relentless advertising of
Managerialism’s ideology. Individuals are no longer captured by total-
itarian regimes – democracy has been granted – but their mind has
been colonised by Managerialism. Existence in managerial societies no
longer reflects fascism, Orwell’s Animal Farm, a super-surveillance state,
or an omnipotent political party.899 Instead, the liberties of individuals
are mirrored in the corporate mass media as amusement, infotainment,
and affirmative-positive elevation compelling everyone to partake in
managerially invented sound-bites, sights, smells, feelings, and
common attitudes. Managerial society has no need for protecting indi-
vidual privacy when millions willingly expose their privacy on com-
mercial tabloid-TV and Internet sites from Big Brother to YouTube and
Facebook. Even within an individual’s own four walls, the right and
respect that they once enjoyed has been washed away in ‘our free’
society.
Societies were once defined by more fundamental achievements than
mere private autonomy. And yet, the evaporation of individual and
private autonomy is paralleled by well-functioning institutions of man-
agerial (work) and political (ex-work) freedom. In managerial societies,
conforming socialisation begins at home with an authoritarian parent
who has been conditioned earlier and has transcended generations that
were conditioned in the ‘ways and means’ of capitalist societies. The
socialisation continues through schooling, technical trainings, appren-
ticeships, colleges, and streamlined university conditioning – behav-
iourism – thereby asphyxiating the still developing human mind early
on, continuously, and successfully.900 But any actualisation of human
autonomy, self-determination, and self-consciousness demands condi-
tions in which anti-repressive dimensions of individual experiences in
society can come to life again. Emancipation can only occur ‘from’
repression. Managerial society’s offerings are footed on managerially
invented – but as universal presented – necessities and an equally false
pretence of consumer satisfaction. Manufactured needs and manufac-
tured satisfaction organise human existence in managerial societies.
The more the invented needs are perceived as real and individual needs
and the more they are perceived to achieve satisfaction, the more they
stabilise Managerialism. But precisely by virtue of their faked and insta-
ble character they may actually create the primary subjective prerequi-
site for qualitative change towards post-managerial living.
The utopian mind-game of an absence of Managerialism, advertising,
ideologies, pre-fabricated sound-bites, and the colonising and indoctri-
nating powers of corporate mass media through infotainment and
tabloid-entertainment would plunge individuals into a most disturbing
abyss.901 In such a space, individuals would have a chance to wonder,
think, experience, know themselves and others, and what human life
could mean beyond managerial societies and Managerialism. Deprived
of Managerialism, faked needs, mass marketing, and the ideological
power of corporate mass media, individuals could ‘re’-learn the ABC of
human self-consciousness, self-actualisation, and freedom again.
The words, sentences, models, and concepts that individuals would
create in such a space might come out very differently from the dis-
torted language pre-determined by private schooling, mass-entertain-
ment, the force of a $120bn global marketing industry, and the
ideological power of Managerialism.902 Conditioned by decades of
Managerialism, such a situation would constitute an unbearable
266 Managerialism
nightmare for many. This shows the depth of distortion, infiltration,

and colonisation Managerialism has achieved. It has made people
support the continuous existence of environmentally destructive
global corporations paralleled by a worldwide increased risk of cancer
and pandemics and the fact that our world has one billion obese
people while another billion go hungry. And it supports unsustainable
ways of producing food to name just the most obvious managerial
pathologies.903 People can no longer tolerate being deprived of the
entertainment and managerial ideology which makes them capable of
reproducing the arrangements of their own destruction. This achieve-
ment is one of the more outstanding successes of Managerialism.
However, a simple non-functioning of a television set, a blackened flat-
screen, no access to websites, a dysfunctional email-programme,
unwatched mass-media infotainment, or an unread tabloid newspaper
– and the space gained by such an event to open up people’s minds –
might just begin to achieve what the inherent contradictions of man-
agerial capitalism could never achieve: the disintegration of
Managerialism accompanied by an awareness that a move towards a
post-managerial world might be possible.
14
Conclusion: A Post-Managerial
World is Possible
Managerialism alters the relationship between the rational and the irra-
tional. Contrasted with the fantastic and insane aspects of managerial
rationality (means), the realm of the irrational (ends) becomes the
home of those who make us believe that they and the system they rep-
resent are utterly rational. But the ideas which Managerialism pro-
motes as ‘the’ way of life become increasingly irrational. Total
environmental disintegration may well be the price for the next super-
cheap deal on a toaster, a car, a fridge, or a flat-screen. Today, follow-
ing the completion of ‘the structural transformation of the public
sphere’904 and Managerialism’s colonisation of the lifeworld,905 man-
agerial societies manage, shape, define, or at least infiltrate all normal
forms of human-to-human interactions. This structure validates even
human communication in accordance with Managerialism’s require-
ments. Values alien to Managerialism no longer have other media of
communication.906 They are largely excluded from the public sphere
and banned into the realm of abnormality, obscurity, utopia, and
fiction. But this domain still has space for freedom of expression
enabling non- and anti-managerial writers and artists that do not
conform to the ideology of Managerialism to call things by their true
name. While Managerialism’s Orwellian Newspeak governs com-
municative interactions and human thinking in managerial societies,
there are still those who name the otherwise unnameable.907
It is no longer human imagination that speaks but Managerialism. It
is Managerialism’s false reality that justifies and supports everything
except those who talk the talk of resistance against the spectre of
Managerialism. Imagining this means overtaking managerial imagina-
tion.908 But ugliness, torture, misery, environmental destruction, and
human suffering on epidemic scales still haunt many inside managerial
267
268 Managerialism
societies. This is the setting in which the great human achievements of

management science and technology – as announced by the Harvard
Business Review on a monthly scale and in the daily but ordinary busi-
ness – take place. Meanwhile, efforts to save and improve human life
have become a futuristic promise in the face of looming environmental
disaster. The wilful play with non-managerial fantasies and the human
ability to act with good conscience contra Managerialism testify to the
extent to which human imagination remains the prime mechanism of
human progress. It is also one that – like many others in managerial
societies – is methodically and meticulously abused by
Managerialism.909
Setting the movement, manner, and appreciation of post-managerial
and environmentally sustainable life, the power of post-managerial
imagination far exceeds the manipulation of words that – necessarily –
remain part of Managerialism. It shows faked managerial sense-making
for what it is: (managerial) nonsense. But it also turns this nonsense
into sense, leading to previously unimaginable realms of undistorted
thinking that encroach on managerial ideology, mystique, objectified
science, false life, industrial death, simulated joy, and misery.910
Managerialism still reveals its terror in its rampant ideological fights
against environmental sustainability, in the management of destruc-
tive manufacturing plants, resource extraction, and in animal laborato-
ries. The latter remain hidden through ideological inventions such as
the modern ‘Business Park’ usually set in pleasing surroundings.
Simultaneously, corporate headquarters display deluxe interiors, mini-
(and-not-so-mini-)bars, soft wall-to-wall carpeting, exquisite lounge
chairs, sweet background music, television, internet, and the infamous
‘$6,000 shower-curtain’.911
The paralleling of pleasantry with global horror in such realisations
does hardly penetrate into the consciousness of the inhabitants of
managerial societies who have been shielded from critical awareness by
corporate mass media. Managerialism takes this for granted, justified
by the managerial achievements of CEOs and top-management ‘alone’
when business success is converted into ideological might rather than
objective right. Upon these achievements, Managerialism even flaunts
its ‘soaring compensation packages and such perks as corporate jets’
as perfectly rational in the existing order.912 But these are mere tokens
of managerial inventiveness exposing the limits of imagination about
what the corporate world is capable of. The obscene segregation of
rampant Managerialism from social reality is designed to destroy those
ideas capable of opposing managerial extravagance and the unsustain-
Conclusion: A Post-Managerial World is Possible 269
able ways in which managerial capitalism conducts itself. Managerial

progress is always accompanied by progressive and repressive rational-
isations even if these are imaginary figments. But the archetypes of cor-
porate media horror, silliness, and joy overlay the reality of a looming
environmental disaster. The daily media appearance of them depicts
the irrationality of the entire structure.
In reducing and even cancelling the human space of imagination,
managerial societies have forced critical imagination to prove itself on
new grounds. Critical reflections and critical theory have to produce
counter-managerial images that are translatable into historical capabil-
ities and projects. These translations will never be as bad but they will
distort those images that have been presented by Managerialism.
Separated from the realm of material production and managerially
invented needs, human imagination is never merely simple play. It
may be invalid in the realm of managerial necessity but is committed
to ethics, humanity, and truth of post-managerial living. Obviously,
Managerialism seeks to cancel such imaginations, images, and ideas of
post-managerial living through its own logic and its own managerial
version of truth.
In the light of the capabilities of managerially guided societies, this is
not all just a play of the imagination tarred with managerial (im)poss-
ibilities. The managerial idea of a ‘science of imagination’ assumes an
ever increasing ideological image.913 The possibility of a managerial-
rational character of imagination has long since been acknowledged
and successfully exploited by Managerialism. It has also been appropri-
ated by organisational psychology whose task is the behaviour mani-
pulation of individuals aligned to behaviourism and manifested in an
acceptance of managerial rationality. Behaviourism’s Skinner once
noted, ‘what a fascinating thing! Total control of a living organism …’
The underlying assumption [of behaviourism], according to one critic,
seems to be that ‘the semi-starved rat in the box, with virtually
nothing to do but press on a lever for food, captures the essence of vir-
tually all human behaviour’.914 For the better part, this is the image
that Managerialism’s organisational psychology has in mind for
human beings.
This imagination is used as a therapeutic force by management. But
this therapeutic power may go much further than simple managerial
behaviour manipulation. Psychology has never remained immune to
the process of managerial reification.915 Nevertheless, individuals are
possessed by images and suffer from them. ‘Organisational’ Psychology
knows this well and also knows the consequences. Managerialism’s
270 Managerialism
ideology prefers the term ‘organisational’ rather than ‘managerial’ psy-

chology just as it prefers behaviour ‘modification’ rather than the more
truthful term ‘manipulation’ – it happens behind the backs and
without the knowledge nor the awareness of its victims, e.g. employ-
ees. For Managerialism, the term ‘organisational’ creates the impression
of neutrality. Nevertheless, this kind of psychology only knows muti-
lated individuals. It works against the psychological faculties of human
beings in order to create ‘The Organisation Men’.916
‘Organisational’ psychology organises and destroys more than it is
permitted to do. Realising this might create an unimaginable horror – a
psychologically deformed and manipulated human being rendered
incapable of its own thoughts. It is a monstrosity that sacrifices human
culture for managerial-corporate goals achieved through the full use of
psychology’s most repressive apparatus. Its irrationality shines through
when human imagination is used for the construction and redirection
of human beings to fit the managerial apparatus, thus creating a com-
pliant organisational existence. This is the imagination of those who
are possessed by the images of managerial domination; meanwhile the
images of exploitation, human suffering, and global environmental
destruction are repressed. To emancipate human imagination from
Managerialism means to express managerial repression of what has
been framed as freedom that perpetuates managerial repressiveness.
But such reversal is not purely a matter of psychology, philosophy, and
ethics. It is humanity directed against the basic managerial institutions
in the way they have been developed, defined, and sustained. It is a
matter of individuals no matter how organised or unorganised they
may be. Thus the key question to be faced is:
How can managerially indoctrinated individuals who have been

exposed to Managerialism’s psychological-ideological mutilations
and forced to reproduce managerial domination, emancipate them-
selves from themselves and from Managerialism? How can
Managerialism’s vicious circle be broken?
Paradoxically, it is not the creation of post-managerial institutions that

present the greatest difficulty. Managerial societies themselves are
changing or – at least partially – are beginning to change some of their
basic institutions in the direction of post-managerial living and
environmental sustainability. The development of images of post-
managerial satisfaction of all human needs is the prerequisite of
post-managerial living. This is incompatible with the prevalence of
managerial-corporate interests standing in the way of attaining this

goal. Qualitative change is conditional upon planning for the whole
set against the caprice of the free market. The so-called free market that
is in reality divided up and organised through a handful of multi-
national corporations, is no longer unplanned as Managerialism’s own
ideology of ‘strategic management’ insists. Nevertheless, it always rep-
resents the sectarian interests of corporations and Managerialism.
A free, rational, ethical, environmentally sustainable, and post-
managerial society can emerge only on the basis of qualitative change.
The institutions within which post-managerial living can be envisaged
disobey traditional classifications of authoritarian, democratic, cen-
tralised, and liberal institutions.
Today, opposition to the planning of sustainability in the name of
liberalism, markets, corporate freedom, competition, and corporations
denies the reality of 21st century human and environmentally sustain-
able living. Managerialism’s opposition serves as ideological scaffolding
for its repressive interests. The goal of authentic self-actualisation by
individuals depends on effective social and environmental controls
over the production and distribution of necessities. This demands the
achievement of post-managerial levels of human culture, ethics, mater-
ial, as well as environmental and intellectual capacities. Rationality,
once stripped of its exploitative features and re-merged with ethics to
become moral rationality rather than Managerialism’s instrumental
rationality, would once again turn into the guiding standard for devel-
oping the sustainable use of resources for all. As such, the recent ideo-
logy of a faked contradiction between rationality and ethics has to be
overcome.
In this realm, ethical controls over resources and their use become
rational if established through meaningful self-actualisation that
becomes effective in the realm of human decision-making. This also
relates to the production and distribution of surplus and to an indi-
vidual’s ability to set human and environmental goals. In any case, the
combination of ethical authority and direct democracy is subject to
infinite variations according to the degree of development of the post-
managerial society.917 Self-actualisation will remain real to the extent
to which individuals are not dissolved into a mindless collective as por-
trayed by the propaganda machine of Managerialism. The ideological
‘Megamaschine’ indoctrinates and manipulates individuals rendering
them incapable of knowing and comprehending the true state of
earthly resource depletion and our ability to evaluate alternatives to
Managerialism.918
272 Managerialism
In other words, post-managerial societies would be rational, ethical,

environmentally conscious, and free to the extent to which they are
organised, sustained, and reproduced by an essentially new historical
project. Today, the asphyxiation of managerial societies denies these
requirements. The power and efficiency of Managerialism, the thor-
ough colonisation of the human mind with managerially invented
quasi-facts, the thought-requirements of conformist behaviour, and
engineered aspirations downgraded to petit-bourgeois greed, still work
against the emergence of ethically and environmentally conscious
individuals. They also work against the notion that the much needed
replacement of managerial control might be termed ‘control from
below’.
But transformative notions have always been and still remain valid
wherever individuals have been made to live conformist lives inside
repressive societies. However, where a social class has been rendered
merely an auxiliary to the managerial way of life, the ascent to control-
ling a new and post-managerial way of life might be prolonged by the
ideological power of Managerialism. Meanwhile, however, the undeni-
able facts of Managerialism’s unsustainable ways remain and are visible
despite Managerialism’s strong and partially successful propaganda.919
This validates critical theory’s examination and opposition to
Managerialism as well as its pathological and lethal developments.920
Even confronted with the facts of global warming, there is an increas-
ing level of irrationality in the rising of the ideological powers of
Managerialism. This is also visible in corporate and societal wasteful-
ness and in Managerialism’s quasi-religious belief-system of eternal
economic growth. It becomes manifested in Managerialism’s aggressive
demand for global expansion, an unvarying obliteration of the natural
environment, a global intensification of exploitation under the
heading of competition, the so-called ‘global production networks’,
and the dogged continuation of alienation, social pathologies, and
dehumanisation.
They all point to the historical alternative of commonly and perhaps
communally planned, sustainable use of natural and human resources
for a reduction of suffering to a bare minimum. It marks a transforma-
tion of managerially guided commercialised leisure time into free time
capable of easing the global struggle for existence. But Managerialism
has disconnected and fractured these facts and their alternatives. For
example, the rise of cancer deaths has been successfully disassociated
from industrial food, the use of chemicals in them, the obesity epi-
demic, and the steady poisoning of our human environment.921
Managerialism has created a world of mutes and objects without a

subject seeking to cement a deterministic view that these can never be
moved into a new direction. Critical theory offers a non-deterministic
remedy that cannot be found in the positives of managerial ideology. A
dialectical-critical concept comprehends all contradictions between
human existence and Managerialism, between managerially given facts
and their alternatives and by doing so it transcends these managerially
given facts. This is the very essence of critical theory’s claim to truth.922
It is also what defines historical possibilities – even necessities. Their
actualisation can only be in a practice that corresponds to critical
theory. Meanwhile, the ‘praxis’ (Aristotle) of Managerialism vetoes
such responses. On theoretical and empirical grounds, however, critical
theory pronounces its own hopefulness. Just as Walter Benjamin once
said ‘it is only for those without hope that hope is given’.923
But human reality and its history have shown that contradictions
such as ‘humanity-vs.-Managerialism’ do neither self-explode nor
implode by themselves. The threatening showdown between stream-
lining and rewarding managerial domination linked to consumptive-
materialistic achievements versus a human quest for self-actualisation
and environmental sustainability renders its denial by Managerialism
impossible. Yet it may well continue for some time due to the fact that
global misery, organisational pathologies, stupefying media infotain-
ment and tabloid-TV as well as environmental destruction remain
unmanageable within the confinements of managerial thinking. On
the downside, the continuous growth in the managerial conquest of
nature simultaneously grows the conquest of Managerialism over all
human beings.924
Managerialism’s conquest reduces societal freedom that remains a
fundamental necessity for human emancipation. It is found in the
freedom of thought that is, in a sense, a thought freed from the ideo-
logical constrains of the managerial world. It reflects the consciousness
of Managerialism’s repressive character. There is a need for breaking
out of the entire structure that Managerialism has invented. At present,
this need does not prevail where it should be the driving force of an
historical practice directed towards emancipation. The objectively
given need for qualitative change of Managerialism has not yet been
actualised. Without it, even the most critical consciousness remains
powerless to alter Managerialism’s ‘ways and means’. No matter how
obvious the irrational character of the managerial system has become,
the necessity of qualitative change and critical insights into it has
never alone been sufficient for capturing alternatives to Managerialism.
274 Managerialism
Confronted with the omnipresent efficiency of the managerial system

of a consumptive but mind-numbing existence, alternatives to
Managerialism inevitably appear utopian. But in a world of finite
earthly resources, Managerialism cannot endlessly offer a sufficient
stage of over-consumption and wastefulness.925 This truth might force a
rethinking of the so far managerially driven one-dimensional accom-
plishments of science, productivity, and growth that have – so far –
been able to eliminate the utopian features of alternatives. The manage-
rial reality cannot forever seek to disqualify environmental sustainable
alternatives to Managerialism. This means that a critical theory of
Managerialism can never relinquish engaging with the field of manage-
ment studies. But a critical theory of Managerialism will never succumb
to the fallacies of misplaced methodological concreteness – framed as
objectivity – and thereby will not perform an ideological service while
simultaneously proclaiming the elimination of value judgements.
Renouncing value judgement means renouncing moral philosophy.
Science without moral philosophy incurs pathologies. Any dialectics of
a critical theory of Managerialism testifies to this philosophical truth by
critically reflecting on its own situation as well as that of Managerialism
which it analyses. The response suggests itself when considering critical
theory’s greatest strength, namely its ability to demonstrate the emanci-
patory tendencies that lie within managerial societies.
But a critical theory of the managerial society is confronted by the
presence of the objective and subjective censoring forces of
Managerialism. These continue to move individuals towards manager-
ial (ir)rationalities and unfree institutions by continuously restructur-
ing existing institutions of management (corporations) and
Managerialism (ideological institutions’ lobbying, think tanks, etc.)
designed as obstacles to the progress of environmental sustainability
and human emancipation.926 These run on ideological grounds which
are not erected for the idea of emancipation. The inevitable dawn of
post-managerial living is blocked and distorted by the material and
ideological productivity and the distorting faculties called up by
Managerialism. But even without demonstrating critical theory’s eman-
cipatory forces, a critique of Managerialism remains valid and rational.
In conclusion, the actualisation of inherent possibilities that already
exist inside Managerialism marks an adequate expression of historical
alternatives directed towards human self-actualisation and environ-
mental sustainability. Any unchaining of alternatives to Managerialism
incurs the development of anti-managerial forces on a larger scale than
those forces that focus on managerial regimes. Change towards post-
managerial living must bring to a standstill the managerial wasteful-

ness of corporate conquests of our natural environment. The growing
dissatisfaction over global corporate exploitations and environmental
vandalism experienced by many people must be highlighted. Post-
managerial living means the development of human faculties seeking
environmental sustainability. Today, some of these possibilities are
gradually realised through means and institutions ‘inside’ a still man-
agerial society but many have been designed to reduce, eliminate, and
cancel emancipatory potentials. On the whole however, this process
affects means, not ends. It marks a system-stabilising critique from
‘within’ rather than a fundamental and transformative critique ‘about’
Managerialism.
At its most advanced stage, domination functions as Managerialism.
In overdeveloped regions of the globalised world, mass consumption
and the managerial way of life are still presented as ‘the good life’. This
marks one of the ideological forms of managerial domination.
Meanwhile, the negation of Managerialism remains to be the purest
form of self-actualisation. In negating Managerialism, all content is
reduced to the one abstract demand: the end of managerial domina-
tion. This is truly the only requirement that invalidates Manager-
ialism’s so-called ‘achievements’. In the face of efficient and effective
denial of the fundamental contradiction by the established system of
Managerialism, such a negation remains a potentiality. The absolute
refusal to support Managerialism is a refusal which becomes more and
more reasonable the more the managerial system develops its destruc-
tive potentials and continues to be incapable of alleviating
global misery, while simultaneously labelling all this as ‘the age of
globalisation’.927
The character of a refusal of Managerialism is the result of total
reification.928 The concrete ground for refusal exists as long as
reification remains. Simultaneously, Managerialism’s ideology of being
able to achieve a unification of opposites inside the medium of man-
agerial rationality remains an illusory unification. It neither eliminates
contradictions between growing productivity, resources exploitation,
and their unsustainable and repressive use, nor the growing inevitabil-
ity to solve these contradictions. Struggles for solutions have long out-
grown the traditional forms of managerial solutions presented by
Managerialism. But the totalitarian tendencies of Managerialism have
rendered traditional ways of public protest ineffective.929 Perhaps they
have even become dangerous because they preserve the illusion of
popular sovereignty.
276 Managerialism
Nevertheless, these illusions are dangerous as they may still contain

a single grain of truth: resistance by the people. Prior to the advent of
Managerialism, methods for social change had been able to elevate
themselves to become social cohesion moving from a ‘willingness to
complain’ to a ‘willingness to act’. Historically, social cohesion fought,
for example, for a redistribution of wealth and an equalisation of
classes that were set against the stratification characteristic of liberal-
and managerial capitalism.930 These forms of protest necessarily existed
outside the well-oiled machine of democratic process that is increas-
ingly guided, supervised, financed, and organised by Managerialism.931
It also has to exist outside the legal framework that is largely estab-
lished as a protective shield for Managerialism.932 Given this, resistance
under the conditions of Managerialism must reflect what Adorno calls
‘The Ethics of Resistance’.933 Resistance to Managerialism in favour of
human life and environmental sustainability is most immediate and
real when directed towards ending intolerable conditions and institu-
tions. It engages Managerialism from ‘without’ and is therefore not
smothered, shelved, incorporated, and used as a system-corrective by
the system. Resistance constitutes to be an elementary force violating
the established ‘rules of the game’ manipulated by Managerialism.
Thereby, only resistance from ‘without’ is able to reveal Manager-
ialism’s pre-calculated and fixed game.
When protesters against corporate globalisation, for example, get
together and go out into the streets, without arms, without protection,
in order to ask for the most primitive civil rights, they know that they
face police dogs, witch-hunts, batons, injuries, water-canons, teargas,
stones, beatings, bombs, fines, jail, concentration camps – reframed as
detention centres for so-called ‘protective custody’ – and even death.934
But their strength is behind every political demonstration for the
victims of law and order. The fact that they start refusing to play the
game may be an event that marks the beginning of the end of an
entire period of managerial mass-asphyxiation. Nothing indicates that
it will be a good end – neither for protesters nor for an end to
Managerialism. The capabilities of Managerialism are sufficient and
immeasurable to allow for tactical adjustments and for a faked con-
sciousness of the underdog. Managerialism’s ideological forces are suit-
ably trained and equipped to take care of emergency situations inside
the realm of officialdom.
Despite all this, the spectre of anti-establishment movements walks
once again. And it does so less inside but more outside of the confining
frontiers of Managerialism. The coming period of post-peak-oil bar-
barism, for example, may well indicate a choice between two radical
options: post-managerial living or a violent and barbaric end of the
empire of Managerialism followed by a societal and global break-
down.935 Sigmund Freud admitted in ‘Civilization and Its Discontents’
that ‘the veneer of civilization is very thin indeed, and it can be
removed quickly, very quickly and suddenly’.936 It creates the following
scenario:
• If a transition towards post-managerial living is not actualised prior

to that;
• if the inevitable effects of global warming render Freud’s warning to
become the unavoidable consequence of Managerialism’s refusal to
acknowledge what has been engineered; and
• if this process is the result of Managerialism’s ideological grip on
society that asphyxiates individuals,
then not only was Managerialism, at least partly, responsible for the
looming apocalypse – in hindsight, of course – but it also renders inac-
tions against Managerialism a crime against humanity.
There is a likely chance that, in our lifetime, the two extremes of
‘Managerialism versus post-managerial living’ will collide with increas-
ing intensity. This represents the most advanced consciousness of
humanity and environmental awareness set against its most exploita-
tive force manifested in the ideology of Managerialism. Overcoming
Managerialism in order to pave the way towards post-managerial envi-
ronmentally sustainable living constitutes nothing less than the sur-
vival of humanity. Managerialism possesses no concepts capable of
bridging the gap between the present and the future. This gap is to be
bridged by those anti-managerial forces seeking to unify self-actualisation
with ethical life and environmental sustainability. Post-managerial
living holds many environmental, ethical, and humanitarian promises.
In its own success, however, it remains highly negative towards
Managerialism. In this negation rests the hope for post-managerial
living. Critical theory remains loyal to those who – without hope –
have given, and continue to give, their life to the great refusal set
against Managerialism. This is no longer a hopeless enterprise because
…
it is only for the sake of those without hope

that hope is given to us.
Notes
1 Locke, R. R. 2011. Reform of Financial Education in US Business Schools:

An Historical View, Real-World Economics, issue no. 58, pp. 95–112;
Inglis, F. 2012. Confronting Managerialism, Times Higher Education,
31st January 2012.
2 Eagleton, T. 1994. Ideology, London: Longman Press; Mészáros, I. 2005.
The Power of Ideology, London: Zed Books; Enteman, W. F. 2007.
Managerialism and the Transformation of the Academy, Philosophy of
Management, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 5–16; Jaeggi, R. 2009. Rethinking Ideology,
in: De Bruin, B. & Zurn, C. F. (eds) New Waves in Political Philosophy,
Basingstoke: Palgrave.
3 If one looks at the ten most relevant publications on Managerialism in
the British Library in 2012, for example, these titles appear: Public Policy
and Citizenship: Battling Managerialism in India by Arvind
Sivaramakrishnan; Friend or Foe? New Managerialism and Technical,
Administrative and Clerical Support Staff in Australian Universities; Values in
Managerialism and Leadership; Policy Work: Street-Level Organizations Under
New Managerialism; From Adversarialism to Managerialism: Criminal Justice
in Transition; Gender, Power and Managerialism in Universities; Mana-
gerialism in Motion: Lessons from Oaxaca; Editorial: After Neo-liberalism,
New Managerialism and Postmodernism, What Next for Social Work?;
Governing the Self: A Foucauldian Critique of Managerialism in Education by
Patrick Fitzsimons; Managers, Managerialism and Social Work with Children
and Families: The Deformation of a Profession?. The US Congress Library
lists only eleven books on ‘Managerialism’. These carry titles like
Knowledge, higher education, and the new Managerialism; Enteman’s
Managerialism; The New Managerialism and Public Service Professions;
Confronting Managerialism; Managerialism and the Working Class in India;
The World Bank and Global Managerialism; Economic Barbarism and
Managerialism; Managerialism and the Public Services; Managerialism for
Economic Development: Essays on India; Managerialism and Nursing; and
New Managerialism: Administrative Reform in Whitehall and Canberra.
4 A quick keyword search at the US-Congress Library, for example, found
the following first 20 books on Managerialism (crime, risk, and insecur-
ity: law and order in everyday life and political discourse; economic bar-
barism and Managerialism; Human Costs of Managerialism: Advocating the
Recovery of Humanity; Managerialism and the Public Services: Cuts or Cultural
Change in the 1990s?; Public Health in a Retrenchment Era: An Alternative to
Managerialism; Ideologies, Politics in Action; Professionals and the New
Managerialism in the Public Sector; Managerialism and the Working Class in
India; British Politics and the Spirit of the Age: Political Concepts in Action;
Managerialism and Nursing: Beyond Oppression and Profession;
Managerialism: The Great Debate; Managerialism and the Public Services: The
Anglo-American Experience; New Managerialism: Administrative Reform in
278
Notes 279
Whitehall and Canberra; Managerialism: The Emergence of a New Ideology;

Managerialism for Economic Development: Essays on India; Feminist Critique
of Education: 15 Years of Gender Development; Ethics in Public Management;
New Managerialism and Public Service Professions: Change in Health, Social
Services, and Housing; Virtual University?: Knowledge, Markets, and
Management). Almost all are not a discussion of the fundamentals of
Managerialism but the application of Managerialism.
5 Enteman, W. F. 1993. Managerialism: The Emergence of a New Ideology,
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press; Locke, R. R. & Spender,
J. C. 2011. Confronting Managerialism: How the Business Elite and Their
Schools Threw Our Lives Out of Balance, London: Zed Books; Rees, S. &
Rodley, G. (eds) 1995. The High Cost of Managerialism, Sydney: Pluto
Press; Pena, D. 2001. Economic Barbarism and Managerialism, Westport:
Greenwood Press; Kasser, T. 2002. The High Price of Materialism,
Cambridge: Bradford Books/MIT Press; Saunders, M. 2006. The Madness
and Malady of Managerialism, Quadrant, 1st March, vol. 50, no. 2,
pp. 9–17; Samuel, Y. 2010. Organizational Pathology: Life and Death of
Organizations, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. On my question
[22nd November 2012] ‘why is it that among the 100s of business
schools, 1000s of academics, and so on, there are only two serious books
on Managerialism: Your book and Enteman’s book. Please explain?’
Robert Locke [26th November 2012] replied: I think it is because the idea
of Managerialism threatens the power brokers of corporate America. In
1977 Chandler wrote his book on The Visible Hand which celebrated the
new class of thinkers and doers in corporate America, which could justify
their control and possession of wealth not on proprietorship (the old dis-
pensation) but on the possession of the knowledge and expertise that
was essential to running an efficient wealth-producing economy for the
many. They assumed stewardship of society’s wealth on this basis. The
idea of Managerialism strikes at the heart of this contention and preten-
sion, and is, therefore, anathema to them and their minions in manage-
ment education. No kudos to be gained in economics or management
studies by attacking the new class; lots to be gained by developing the
management methods and instruments that this class can use to control
organisations – and to hope the critique of Managerialism will go away.
But it might not, since the shortcomings of Managerialism are becoming
more and more apparent in all public institutions (universities and hos-
pitals as well as commercial and industrial firms).
6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managerialism.
7 One of the key areas where Managerialism is prevalent is found in gov-
ernmental administrations and educational institutions. There are rafts
of publications that deal with the colonisation of such institutions by
Managerialism.
8 Wing, C. 1837. Evils of the Factory System Demonstrated by Parliamentary
Evidence, London: Frank Cass.
9 Fayol, H. 1916. Managerialism Industrielle et Generale (Industrial and
General Managerialism), London: Sir I. Pitman & Sons, ltd. (1930).
10 Scott, W. G. & Hart, D. K. 1991. The Exhaustion of Managerialism,
Society, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 39–48.
280 Notes
11 Larraín, J. 1979. The Concept of Ideology, London: Hutchinson;

Thompson, J. B. 1984. Studies in the Theory of Ideology, Berkeley:
University of California Press; Mueller, F. & Carter, C. 2007. ‘We are All
Managers Now’: Managerialism and Professional Engineering in UK
Electricity Utilities, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol. 32, no. 1–2,
pp. 181–195; Merkle, J. A. 1980. Management and Ideology – The Legacy of
the International Scientific Management Movement, Berkeley: University of
California Press.
12 For example, Stephen Chrisomalis’ 2007 website http://phrontistery.info/
isms.html lists 234-isms.
13 Mick, S. S. 2012. The French Sociological Critique of Managerialism:
Themes and Frameworks, Critical Sociology, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 1–9.
14 Jaeggi, R. 2009. Rethinking Ideology, in: De Bruin, B. & Zurn, C. F. (eds)
New Waves in Political Philosophy, Basingstoke: Palgrave (p. 64).
16 Axelrod, R. 1997. The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent-Based Models of
Competition and Collaboration, Princeton: Princeton University Press;
Axelrod, R. & Hamilton, W. D. 1981. The Evolution of Cooperation,
Science, vol. 211, pp. 1390–1396.
17 Gramsci, A. 1929–35. Prison Notebooks – Vol. 1–3 (edited with introduc-
tion by Joseph A. Buttigieg; translated by Joseph A. Buttigieg and
Antonio Callari), New York: Columbia University Press; Coutinho,
C. N. 2012. Gramsci’s Political Thought (translated from Portuguese by
Pedro Sette-Camara), Leiden: Brill.
18 Frank, T. 2000. One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market
Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy, New York: Doubleday;
Meyer, M., Buber, R. & Aghamanoukjan, A. 2012. In Search of
Legitimacy: Managerialism and Legitimation in Civil Society
Organizations, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit
Organizations, June 2012 (www.link.springer.com); Quiggin, J. 2003.
Managerialism (http://johnquiggin.com).
19 Useem, M. 1996. Investor Capitalism: How Money Managers are Changing
the Face of Corporate America, New York: Basic Books; Sheil, C. 1997. The
Heart of Darkness: New Managerialism and its Contradictions, in: Sheil,
C. (eds) Turning Point: The State of Australia, Sydney: Allen & Unwin;
Terry, L. D. 1998. Administrative Leadership, Neo-Managerialism, and
the Public Management Movement, Public Administrative Review, vol. 58,
no. 3, pp. 194–200.
20 Dahrendorf wrote in 1959, ‘never has the imputation of a profit motive
been further from the real motives of men than it is for modern bureau-
cratic managers’ (Dahrendorf, R. 1959. Class and Class Conflict in
Industrial Society (trans., rev. and expanded by the author), Stanford:
Stanford University Press).
21 Clarke, J. & Newman, J. 1993. The Right to Manage: A Second
Managerial Revolution? Cultural Studies, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 427–441.
22 Hayek, F. A. von 1944. The Road to Serfdom, London: G. Routledge &
Sons; Hayek, F. A. von 1948. Individualism and Economic Order, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press; Hayek, F. A. von 1960. The Constitution of
Notes 281
Liberty, Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Hayek, F. A. von 1976. The

Mirage of Social Justice, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
23 Neo-liberalism should be distinguished from Managerialism. The former
describes Herr von Hayek’s political programme as outlined in, for
example, his Road to Serfdom (1944) consisting of roughly seven ele-
ments: (i) deregulation of markets; (ii) creating new markets; (iii) deregu-
lation of labour and industrial relations; (iv) reduction and destruction of
social welfare; (v) privatisation of everything (Mandell, 2002); (vi) reduc-
tion of state regulation; and (vii) anti-unionism. Managerialism, on the
other hand, is the idea of extending managerial techniques, practices,
and ideologies beyond the confinements of companies and corporations.
Managerialism sees everything in society and economy as an issue that
can be managed. One only needs to apply the instruments of company
and corporate management to every eventuality of society and economy.
24 Boyes, W. 2012. Managerial Economics: Markets and the Firm (2nd ed.),
Mason: South-Western/Cengage Learning; Alhabeeb, M. J. & Moffitt,
L. J. 2013. Managerial Economics: A Mathematical Approach, Hoboken:
Wiley; Allen, W. B. 2013. Managerial Economics: Theory, Applications, and
Cases (8th ed.), New York: W. W. Norton & Company; Png, I. 2012.
Managerial Economics (4th ed.), London: Routledge.
25 Arestis, P. & Sawyer, M. 2004 (eds) The Rise of the Market: Critical Essays
on the Political Economy of Neo-Liberalism, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
26 Williamson, J. 1990. What Washington Means by Policy Reform, in:
Williamson, J. (eds) Latin American Adjustment: How Much Has Happened?
Washington DC: Institute for International Economics.
27 Porter, M. E. 1985. Competitive Advantage, New York: Free Press.
28 Rousseau, J. J. 1750. A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Science,
Dijon: Academy of Dijon; Rousseau, J. J. 1755. Discourse on the Origins of
Inequality, http://oll.libertyfund.org & www.libertarian-alliance.org.uk,
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books (1984); Rousseau, J. J. 1762. Emile or On
Education (introduction, translation and notes by Allan Bloom, 1979),
New York: Basic Books; Ferrara, A. 1993. Modernity and Authenticity:
A Study in the Social and Ethical Thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Albany:
State University of New York Press; Tett, G. 2012. Fixing Finance – Wall
Street and the Problem of Inequality, Foreign Affairs, vol. 91, no. 4,
pp. 119–125.
29 Cohen, P. 1973. The Gospel According to the Harvard Business School,
Garden City: Doubleday.
30 Braverman, H. 1974. Labor and Monopoly Capital – The Degradation of
Work in the Twentieth Century, New York: Monthly Review Press.
Society, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 39–48; Maclean, M., Harvey, C. & Press, J.
2007. Managerialism and the Post-War Evolution of the French National
Business System, Business History – Special Issue: Comparative Perspectives
on the ‘Managerial Revolution’, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 531–551; Person, H. S.
1941. Capitalism, Socialism and Managerialism Review: Capitalism,
Socialism and Managerialism – The Managerial Revolution: What is
Happening in the World by James Burnham, Southern Economic Journal,
vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 238–243.
282 Notes
32 Schapper, J. & Mayson, S. 2005. Managerialism, Internationalisation,

Taylorisation and the Deskilling of Academic Work: Evidence from an
Australian University, Internationalizing Higher Education – CERC Studies in
Comparative Education, vol. 16, pp. 181–197; Quiggin, J. 2003.
Managerialism (http://johnquiggin.com).
33 Chomsky, N. 1987. On Power and Ideology, Montréal: Rose Books; Jaeggi,
R. 2009. Rethinking Ideology, in: de Bruin, B. & Zurn, C. F. (eds) New
Waves in Political Philosophy, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
34 Klikauer, T. 2012. Hegel’s Philosophy – Ethics, Recognition and
Oppression, Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 38, no. 6, pp. 651–658.
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288 Managerialism is far more ideological and dangerous than
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Notes 301
manage … This forms the basis of Managerialism … [with] … managers

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302 Notes
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355 Kinicki, A. & Kreitner, R. 2008. Organizational Behavior – Key Concepts,
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379 Blass, T. 1991. Understanding Behavior in the Milgram Obedience

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380 Fitzsimons, P. 2011. Governing the Self: A Foucauldian Critique of
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383 For Max Weber (1924) there are three main types of authority: tradi-
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308 Notes
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391 Blass, T. 1999. The Milgram Paradigm After 35 Years: Some Things We
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393 Blass, T. 1992. The Social Psychology of Stanley Milgram, Advances in
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310 Notes
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Thousand Oaks: Sage.
533 Maor, M. 1999. The Paradox of Managerialism, Public Administration
Review, vol. 59, no. 1, pp. 5–18; Manne, R. 2012. A Dark Victory, The
Monthly, no. 81, August issue.
534 Pogge, T. & Cabrera, L. 2012. Outreach, Impact, Collaboration: Why
Academics Should Join to Stand Against Poverty, Ethics and International
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535 Bauman, Z. 1989. Modernity and Holocaust, Oxford: Blackwell.
536 Kant, I. 1784. An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/.
318 Notes
Adorno, T. W. 1959. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Stanford: Stanford
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538 There is no ‘relative failure of Managerialism to offer a reasonable and
consistent theory explaining the behaviour of the firm …’ (Aoki, M.
1983. Managerialism Revisited in the Light of Bargaining Game Theory,
International Journal of Industrial Organisations, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1–21)
because Managerialism is an ideological project. It is not theoretical and
its aim is to reach far beyond the firm – not explaining ‘the firm’.
539 Cameron, K. S., Ireland, R. D., Lussier, R. N., New, J. R. & Robbins, S. P.
Management Textbooks as Propaganda, Journal of Management Education,
vol. 27, no. 6, pp. 711–729; a simple Google search reveals for the term
‘management practice’: about 1,110,000,000 results and for ‘manage-
ment theory’: about 147,000,000, roughly an 8-to-1 ration in favour of
practice; e.g. Tengblad, S. 2012. The Work of Managers: Towards a ‘Practice
Theory’ (!) of Management, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
540 Harding, N. 2003. The Social Construction of Management – Texts and
Identities, London: Routledge.
541 Chalmers, A. F. 1994. What is This Thing Called Science? (2nd ed.), Milton
Keynes: Open University Press.
543 Luhmann, N. 1995. Social Systems, Stanford: Stanford University Press;
Hendry, J. & Seidel, D. 2002. The Structure and Significance of Strategic
Episodes: Social System Theory and the Routine Practice of Strategic
Change, Research Paper, Munich: Ludwig-Maximilian-University,
memo.
544 Klikauer, T. 2010. Critical Management Ethics, Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Organizations – Classic, Contemporary and Critical Readings, London: Sage).
546 Milgram, S. 1974. Obedience to Authority, New York: Harper and Row;
Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. 1976. Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational
Åslund, C. et al. 2009. Social Status and Shaming Experiences Related to
Adolescent Overt Aggression at School, Aggressive Behavior, vol. 35, no. 1,
pp. 1–13; Ramirez, F. & Boli, J. 1987. The Political Construction of Mass
Schooling: European Origins and Worldwide Institutionalisation,
Sociology of Education, vol. 60, no. 1.
547 Jones, M. L. 2006. The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution: Descartes,
Pascal, Leibniz, and the Cultivation of Virtue, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press; Cattell, V. 2011. Poverty, Community, and Health: Co-
operation and the Good Society, New York: Palgrave Macmillan; Martin,
M. W. 2012. Happiness and the Good Life, New York: Oxford University Press.
Media21 Publishing.
549 plato.stanford.edu/entries/socrates/.
Notes 319

London: Phoenix.
551 Baer, H. A. 2012. Global Capitalism and Climate Change: The Need for an
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2011. Waste and Consumption: Capitalism, the Environment, and the Life of
Things, New York: Routledge.
MinimaMoralia.html.
553 Schrijvers, J. 2004. The Way of the Rat – A Survival Guide to Office Politics,
London: Cyan Books; Gautrey, C. & Phipps, M. 2006. 21 Dirty Tricks at
Work, New York: MJF Books/Fine Communications.
554 Tuckman, A. 2005. Employment Struggles and the Commodification of
Time: Marx and the Analysis of Working Time Flexibility, Philosophy of
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Oxford: Polity Press.
555 Enzensberger, H. G. 1974. The Consciousness Industry – On Literature,
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556 Orwell, G. 1948. Nineteen Eighty-four, London: Secker & Warburg.
557 Adorno, T. W. 2006. The Cultural Industry (reprint), London: Routledge.
558 Scott, D. (eds) 2006. Plato’s Meno, Cambridge: Cambridge University
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559 Kleingeld, P. 2012. Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Ideal of
World Citizenship, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
560 Clarke, J. & Newman, J. 1997. The Managerial State: Power, Politics and
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562 Apel, K-O. 1980. Towards a Transformation of Philosophy, London:
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564 Brink, B. v. d. 2010. Damaged Life – Power and Recognition in Adorno’s
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565 Husserl, E. 1993. Cartesian Meditations – An Introduction to Phenomenology,
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566 Offe, C. & Wiesenthal, H. 1980. Two Logics of Collective Action:
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320 Notes

568 Brooks, T. (eds) 2012. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Essays on Ethics, Politics,
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569 Hall, K. D. 2005. Science, Globalisation, and Educational Governance:
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570 Habermas, J. 1990. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action,
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571 Hill, T. E. 2012. Virtue, Rules, and Justice: Kantian Aspirations, Oxford:
573 Fuller, S. 2003. Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle of the Soul of Science,
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574 Curzer, H. 2012. Aristotle and the Virtues, Oxford: Oxford University Press;
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576 Arena, R., Festre, A. & Lazaric, N. (eds) 2012. Handbook of Economics and
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577 Alvesson, M. et al. (eds) 2009. The Oxford Handbook of Critical
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Everyone’s Business, New York: Free Press; cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/
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579 Managerialism views this as ‘work together to develop “practical theory”
[as] “a vehicle for managerialist co-operation”’ (p. 1416, in: Burnes, B. &
Cooke, B. 2012. Review Article: The Past, Present and Future of
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580 Kojève, A. 1947. Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, Ithaca (1969), New
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581 Adorno, T. W. 2005. Critical Models – Interventions and Catchwords, New
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582 Anderson, S. S. C. 2009. Hegel’s Theory of Recognition – From Oppression to
Ethical Liberal Modernity, London: Continuum.
583 Gilabert, P. 2012. From Global Poverty to Global Equality: A Philosophical
Exploration, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Risse, M. 2012. On Global
Justice, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Notes 321

Knopf.
586 Aspromourgos, T. 2012. The Managerialist University: An Economic
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587 Shaw, W. H. & Barry, V. 2010. Moral Issues in Business, Belmont:
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588 http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html.
589 http://dieoff.org/page12.htm; http://www.jayhanson.us/page12.htm;
Mander, J. 2001. The Rules of Corporate Behaviour, in: Goldsmith, E. &
590 Kirkpatrick, I., Ackroyd, S. & Walker, R. 2005. The New Managerialism and
Public Service Professions: Change in Health, Social Services, and Housing,
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591 Schrijvers, J. 2004. The Way of the Rat – A Survival Guide to Office Politics,
London: Cyan Books.
592 Holzer, B. 2010. Moralizing the Corporation: Transnational Activism and
Corporate Accountability, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
593 http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=2670.
594 http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/safety.aspx.
595 Maslow, A. H. 1943. A Theory of Human Motivation, Psychological
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596 Semler, R. 1989. Managing Without Managers, Harvard Business Review,
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597 Weybrecht, G. 2010. The Sustainable MBA: The Manager’s Guide to Green
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598 Lever-Tracy, C. (eds) 2010. Routledge Handbook of Climate Change and
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599 McQueen, H. 2009. Framework of Flesh – Builders’ Labourers Battle for
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Assets, Strategy & Leadership, vol. 32, no. 5, pp. 10–17; Biazzo, S. &
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601 Eagleton, T. 2011. Why Marx was Right, New Haven: Yale University
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322 Notes
602 Marx, K. 1890. Das Kapital – Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Capital –
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603 Zimmerman, D. 1981. Coercive Wage Offers, Philosophy and Public
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604 Klein, N. 2000. No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, New York:
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605 Davis, H. & Silk, A. 1978. Behavioral and Management Science in Marketing,
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606 Comte, A. 1853. Essential Writings on Positivism (original translation by
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607 Foucault, M. 1970. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human
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608 www.unitedhumanrights.org/genocide/genocide_in_rwanda.htm;
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610 Wise, C. C. & Hauser, S. 2007. The Business School Buzz Book, New York:
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612 Comte, A. 1853. Essential Writings on Positivism (original translation by
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613 Kant, I. 1784. An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?
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Notes 323
614 Kast, F. E. & Rosenzweig, J. E. 1972. General Systems Theory:

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619 Spencer, H. 1880. The Principles of Biology, New York: Appleton & Co.
620 Fine, B. & Filho, A. S. (eds) 2012. The Elgar Companion to Marxist
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622 Porter, M. E. 1985. Competitive Advantage, New York: Free Press; Porter,
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624 Coser, L. A. 2012. The Idea of Social Structure: Papers in Honor of Robert
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625 Dietz, R. & O’Neill, D. 2013. Enough is Enough: Building a Sustainable
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626 Chomsky, N. 1989. Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic
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324 Notes
629 Alvesson, M. & Willmott, H. 1992. On the Idea of Emancipation in

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630 Orwell, G. 1948. Nineteen Eighty-four, London: Secker & Warburg;
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631 Arnold, D. G. & Harris, J. D. (eds) 2012. Kantian Business Ethics: Critical
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635 McQueen, H. 2009. Framework of Flesh – Builders’ Labourers Battle for
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636 wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster; www.motherjones.com; hbr.org/2011/.
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638 Lehman, G. 2007. A Common Pitch and the Management of Corporate
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639 Two exceptions are: Enteman, W. F. 1993. Managerialism: The Emergence
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642 De Cremer, D. & Tenbrunsel, A. E. 2012. Behavioral Business Ethics:
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643 Ford, J. D. & Ford, L. W. 2009. Decoding Resistance to Change, Harvard
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644 Luhmann, N. 1995. Social Systems, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
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645 plato.stanford.edu/entries/monism/.
646 Jaworski, W. 2011. Philosophy of Mind: A Comprehensive Introduction,
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656 The role of labour in this process has been made prominent by Karl Marx
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657 Child, J. 2007. Academic Freedom – The Threat from Managerialism
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658 Starbuck, W. H. 2010. What Makes a Paper Influential and Frequently
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659 Moore, M. & Helstein, R. 2009. Positioning: The Essence of Marketing
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326 Notes
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661 Enteman, W. F. 2007. Managerialism and the Transformation of the
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662 Duke, C. 2001. Networks and Managerialism: Field-testing Competing
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663 Apple, M. 2004. Ideology and the Curriculum (3rd ed.), New York:
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664 Hartmann, N. 2012. New Ways of Ontology, New Brunswick: Transaction
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666 Pippin, R. B. 2005. The Persistence of Subjectivity: On the Kantian Aftermath,
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668 Langford, J. J. 1966. Galileo, Science, and the Church, New York: Desclee
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669 Freeman, R. E. 1984. Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach,
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670 Husserl, E. 1936. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
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671 Hamilton, C. 2003. Growth Fetish, Sydney: Allen & Unwin; www.growth-
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672 Locke, R. R. 1996. The Collapse of the American Management Mystique, New
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679 Janis, I. L. 1985. Victims of Groupthinking, Boston: Houghton Mifflin
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681 Sokal, A. 2008. Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture, Oxford:
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682 Arthur, C. J. 1983. Hegel’s Master/Slave Dialectic and a Myth of
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328 Notes
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685 Haworth, R. H. (eds) 2012. Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions,
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688 Cooper, C. L., Johnson, S. & Holdsworth, L. 2012. Organisational
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689 Burris, V. 1988. Reification: A Marxist Perspective, California Sociologist,
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690 Honneth, A. 2008. Reification: A New Look, Oxford: Oxford University
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691 Shrivastava, P. 1986. Is Strategic Management Ideological? Journal of
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693 Honneth, A. 2007. The Work of Negativity: A Psychoanalytical Revision
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695 Brown, A. 2008. 7th European Conference on Research Methodology for
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752 Barthes, R. 1957. Mythologies, New York: The Noonday Press;
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764 Lippmann, W. 1922. Public Opinion, New York: Free Press.
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776 http://www.iep.utm.edu/adorno/; Rensmann, L. & Gandesha, S. (eds)
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777 Poole, S. 2006. Unspeak, London: Little Brown; Luntz, F. 2007. Words
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778 Mumby, D. 1997. The Problem of Hegemony: Reading Gramsci for
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779 Chomsky, N. 1966. Cartesian Linguistics – A Chapter in the History of
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781 Bennett, W. L. & Entman, R. 2001. Mediated Politics – Communication in
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782 Gadamer, H. G. 1974. Truth and Method, Evanston: Northwestern
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789 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/index.htm.
791 Kuhn, T. 1970. The Structure of the Scientific Revolution, Chicago:
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792 Karl Marx 1845: Theses On Feuerbach, written: by Marx in Brussels in the
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796 Barthes, R. 1957. Mythologies, New York: The Noonday Press; Barthes, R.
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797 Hochschild, A. R. 1983. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human
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798 Suskind, R. 2004. Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush,
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802 Samuel, Y. 2010. Organizational Pathology: Life and Death of Organizations,
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803 Exceptions are: Enteman, W. F. 1993. Managerialism: The Emergence of a
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805 Brownell, P. 2010. Gestalt Therapy: A Guide to Contemporary Practice,
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806 Tocqueville, A. 1835. Democracy in America, New York: Modern Library
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807 Painter-Morland, M. & ten Bos, R. (eds) 2011. Business Ethics and
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808 Gadamer, H-G. 1976. Hegel’s Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies (trans. by
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809 Apperception (1753), from French aperception (17th century), from
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sponding to French apercevoir as perceive, notice, become aware of.
810 Greenberg, R. 2001. Kant’s Theory of a priori Knowledge, University Park:
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811 Honneth, A. 2012. The I in We: Studies in the Theory of Recognition,
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812 Gabel, J. 1962. False Consciousness: An Essay on Reification (trans. by
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813 Harding, J. M. 1997. Adorno and ‘A Writing of the Ruins’: Essays on Modern
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814 Hegel, G. W. F. 1807. The Phenomenology of Mind/Spirit, Mineola: Dover

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342 Notes
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906 Burton, G. 2010. Media and Society: Critical Perspectives (2nd ed.),
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908 Morgan, G. 1993. Imaginization – The Art of Creative Management,

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909 Morris, T. & Goldsworthy, S. 2012. PR Today: The Authoritative Guide to
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911 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Kozlowski.
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920 Wagner, P. 2012. Modernity: Understanding the Present, Cambridge: Polity.
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930 Crompton, R. 2008. Class and Stratification, Cambridge: Polity Press.
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931 Jensen, D., Keith, L. & McBay, A. 2011. Deep Green Resistance – Strategy
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932 http://libcom.org/files/thecominsur_booklet[1].pdf.
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935 Abramsky, K. (eds) Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution: Social Struggles
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Index
11th thesis on Feuerbach, 229 Axelrod, 71

360–degree appraisals, 48
Bach, 88
abolition of labour, 260 Bad apple ideology, 54
absenteeism, 105 balance of payments, 5
Abu Ghraib, 112, 119 Balanced Scorecard, 51, 114
academic journals, 1 Balkan, 58
Academy of Management Review, Banality of Evil, 98
162, 214 Baritz, 51, 205
access-codes, 114 Bauman, 50, 93, 96, 101, 109–112,
Administrative Behavior, 37 139, 150, 200, 216, 242
Adorno, 11, 49, 60, 71, 96, 136, 147, behaviour modifications, 102
156–159, 200, 215, 224, 235, 239, behaviourism, 34, 36, 38, 93–97, 200,
246, 264, 276 205, 212, 265, 269
advertising agency, 1 behind the backs, 39, 270
advertising revenues, 92 bellum omnium contra omnes, 10,
Affluenza, 32, 81, 261 29, 261
Afghanistan, 58, 83 benchmarking, 8
Africa, 87 Bernie Madoff, 248
altruism, 115, 168 best sellers, 223
American army, 112 Bhopal, 54, 105, 184, 248
American Idol, 180 Big Brother, 33, 79, 264
American Insurance Group, 53 big business, 12, 43
American Management Association, Big Labour, 43
220 bird flu, 248
anarchism, 38, 79, 101 Blaise Pascal, 68
animal liberation, 77, 257 blame the victim, 83, 243
animal life, 244 blissful ignorance, 29, 230
Another World is Possible, 213 Bolchover, 70
anti-managerial policies, 58 Bollywood, 87
anti-unionism, 5 bossy privilege, 97
apocalypse, 277 Botox, 121
Arendt, 91, 95, 164, 192, 207 bourgeoisie, 12, 132, 133
Aristotle, 71, 96, 106, 111, 128, 156, BP, 54
159, 164, 273 brands, 32, 172
asbestos, 54, 106, 124 Buchenwald, 109
ASEAN, 83 Buenaventura Durruti, 180
Assault on Reason, 120 bullying, 52, 83, 98, 168
assembly line, 55, 113 Business Ethics, 114
Auschwitz, 109, 113 Business Park, 267
authoritarianism, 21, 64, 98, 102, business press, 54, 121, 133
235, 238 business strategy, 6
Avatar, 89 business-as-usual, 248
346
Index 347
business-to-business, 32 control of nature, 14

buzzwords, 5, 211, 228 controllable human, 200
corporate citizenship, 211
camera obscura, 67, 186 corporate colonisation, 75, 89
cancer, 55, 124, 266, 272 corporate crimes, 80, 248
capitalism as a system, 20 corporate exploitation, 23, 66
capitalists, 17 corporate growth, 8, 248
carbon footprint, 207 corporate interests, 9, 27, 84, 263, 271
Cartesian mind-body, 186 Corporate missionaries, 213
Case Study Method, 174 Corporate Psychopath, 119
categorical imperative, 162 Corporatewatch, 169
celebrity, 87, 92 corruption, 76, 109, 111, 158, 160
centre-left-vs.-centre-right, 43 Cosmopolitan, 19, 131
chain of command, 104, 108 cost-benefit, 41, 85, 108, 259
change management, 61, 214 crime, 54, 82, 87, 92, 119, 263, 277
Charles Dickens, 47 Critical Management Studies, 22, 163,
Charlie Sheen, 180 202, 205, 210, 212–216, 224, 227,
Che Guevara, 89 249
chemical plant, 124 critical philosophy, 14, 164, 166, 202,
Chomsky, 94 208, 216, 223, 228, 232, 237, 240
civil liberties, 92 Critique of Pure Reason, 148, 208
civilisation, 28, 33, 44, 56, 58, 62, 65, CSR, 127, 169, 238, 253, 258
81, 109, 155, 218, 243, 251, 259, Cuba, 167
263 Cultural Industry, 158
Civilization and Its Discontents, 277 cunning of reason, 39
Class struggles, 44
clichés, 43, 122 Dante-like inferno, 260
climate change, 9, 123 Dark Ages, 189
Club of Rome, 41 Darwin, 178
CMS, 22, 25, 127, 202, 205, 214–216 Davis, 10
code of discipline, 108 Davos, 8
coercion, 55, 98 death camps, 100, 112
Columbia University, 192 decision-making, 2, 13, 56, 67, 110,
Command and control, 103, 108, 113 167, 168, 170, 271
commercial literature, 90 dehumanised institutions, 56
common sense, 1, 4, 206, 242 democratic election, 145, 146
Communicative Action, 202 democratic unfreedom, 24, 67
communism, 38, 79 demotion, 80, 97, 101, 112
Community Values, 229 deregulation, 4, 8, 41, 76, 190
Competitive Advantage, 5, 54, 179 Descartes, 39, 186
computers, 45, 51 determinism, 95, 261
concentration camps, 111, 116, 276 Detroit, 109
Confederation of the Food and Drink dirt files, 117
Industries, 238 disciplinary action, 92, 94, 134
consumerism, 10, 20, 27, 34, 36, 41, discourse, 16, 120, 122–125, 128, 133,
48, 57, 62, 67–76, 101, 117, 180, 153, 159–194, 196, 202, 204, 207,
187, 211, 227, 251, 263 210–212, 230
consumerist comforts, 69 dismissal, 80, 106, 111
consumption patterns, 172 doctrine, 3, 4, 205, 215, 262
348 Index
downgrading, 7, 192 factum brutum, 7

downsizing, 7, 58, 111 false consciousness, 3, 13, 36, 147,
Drucker, 3, 53, 117, 206 180, 217, 235
false needs, 29–31, 58, 260
Eastern Europe, 74 farm resources, 171
Eastman, 132 fascism, 83, 116, 264
economic harmony, 124 Fayol, 3, 12, 114, 134, 148, 154
education industry, 190 Fear of Freedom, 101
Eichmann, 104, 113 fear of punishment, 94, 96, 111
Einstein, 167, 173 feudalism, 165, 260
Eisenhower, 3, 192 FIFO, 228
elected representatives, 5, 67, 78 flattening hierarchy, 107
elections, 32, 65, 67, 101, 124, 146, food labelling, 238
179 Ford, 3, 48, 54, 106, 109, 137, 154
electoral programme, 47 foreign direct investment, 42
electoral systems, 149 Foucault, 33, 173, 249
empiricism, 36, 139, 147, 177, 203, François-Anatole Thibault, 222
212, 244 Frankfurt School, 202
employer federations, 8 free choice, 32, 111, 221
emporium, 13 free markets, 2, 4, 6
End of Ideology, 35 freedom of speech, 239
English language, 212 Freedom of thought, 24
Enlightenment thinking, 180 freedom=choice, 55
Enlightenment’s critical rationality, free-market thinking, 6
85 Friedman, 113
Enron, 53, 131, 238 Fromm, 21, 101
environmental annihilation, 13, 40, full-fee paying students, 189
219, 261 functionalisation, 142
environmentalism, 69, 84, 123, 258
Ephemerality, 171 Galilean science, 197, 198
Erich Mühsam, 180 Galileo, 186, 194, 244
essence and appearance, 128, 172, Gas chambers, 100
176 gatekeepers, 175, 190, 214
ethical life, 23, 240, 252–258, 277 GATT, 8, 75
Ethics of Resistance, 23, 276 Geist, 55, 60, 63, 78, 192
EU, 83, 238 General Motors, 18
Europe, 87 general will, 6
exchange rates, 5 generic management skills, 1
exclusion zones, 1, 82, 145 George W. Bush, 231
Executive Dining Room, 206 German army, 8, 54
Existentialism, 95 Germanic race, 109
externalities, 170, 183, 193, 212, 220 Gestalt, 234
Exxon Valdez, 248 global birth rate, 58
global death, 45
Facebook, 264 Global Financial Crisis, 63, 82
factory administration, 2, 21, 217 global leadership, 43
factory regimes, 128–130, 184 global poverty, 81, 178, 263
facts speak for themselves, 176, 238 global production networks, 106, 272
facts-of-life, 95, 129, 247 global protest, 125
Index 349
global warming, 9, 21, 40, 44, 69, HR managers, 99, 143

123–125, 137, 210, 220, 225, 232, HR ideologies, 49
245, 272, 277 HRM, 4, 30, 36, 48–52, 62, 68, 96,
Golden Age of Managerialism, 218 101, 127, 134, 139, 140–144, 200,
good conscience, 90, 119, 185, 255, 217, 228
267 human free will, 157
Google, 1 Human intimacy, 263
gorilla, 51 human manipulations, 200
Gorz, 44 human race, 9, 83
Greek, 7, 13, 94, 153–155, 165, 252, humanisation of work, 180
258 Husserl, 159, 195, 197
Greenpeace, 64 hypotheses, 183, 253
Greenwashing, 238, 257
groupthink, 197 ID-Cards, 26
Guantanamo Bay, 112, 119 ideological apparatus, 16, 52, 196,
Gulf of Mexico, 54 259
ideological control, 55, 186
Habermas, 17, 124, 147, 161, 195, ID-numbers, 114
202, 212, 238 IMF, 8, 75, 83
Happy Consciousness, 117–119 Immanuel Kant, 10
harlequin, 230 Impression Management, 53
Harvard, 6, 39, 66, 79, 162, 174, 206, India, 105
214, 267 industrial accidents, 183
harvest, 15 industry workers, 48
Hawthorne, 22, 140, 143 infotainment, 149, 225, 264–266, 273
Hayek, 5, 17 in-house training, 126
Head counts, 30, 113, 181 intellectuals, 213, 222
healthcare, 64, 132 intelligenzia, 76
hearts and minds, 3 invisible market hand, 246
Hegel’s Sittlichkeit, 164, 240 iPhone & iPads, 33, 89
Hegel’s Dingwelt, 216 Iran, 167
Hegelian freedom, 245 Iraq Wars, 58
Hegelian philosophy, 7, 186 Iron Law of Commodities, 35
hegemony, 15, 37, 44, 85, 105 irrational behaviours, 219
Herbert Simon, 37 IT-experts, 48
hierarchy of control, 17
Hierarchy of Needs, 95 Jackall, 94
high living standard, 261 Jaeggi, 3, 14
high-class publications, 190 Jerusalem, 104
Highfield, 71 job prospects, 190
Historical processes, 31 job assignments, 144
Hobbes, 10, 29, 39, 79, 93, 243
Hollywood, 87 Kansas City, 112
Holocaust, 93, 109, 113, 139 Kant’s Three Critiques, 85
homogenisation, 167, 172, 227 Kant’s Zweckrationalität, 246
Honneth, 202 Key Performance Indicator,
Hoover, 3, 20 kindergarten, 8, 26
Horkheimer, 37, 116, 196 Kingdom of Ends, 209
hospitals, 64, 117 KISS, 38, 120, 206, 221, 225
350 Index
KPIs, 48, 62, 71, 112, 130, 161, 165, managerialisation, 19, 21, 24, 51, 65,
209, 255 72–74, 185, 252
Mander, 167, 172
labour power, 51, 62, 63, 193 maneggiare, 93
labour time, 21, 60 Marcuse, 12
labour unions, 63, 64 Market Missionaries, 54, 229
Lady Gaga, 180 market-freedom, 245
land ethics, 259 marketing industry, 126, 265
language about language, 224 market oriented reforms, 5
law and order, 199, 276 Marseillaise, 88
laziness, 61 Marx, 20, 48, 114, 170, 228, 246
Le Lys Rouge, 222 Mass surveillance, 34
legal-political system, 264 Master and Servant, 56, 165, 199
Leibniz, 234 MBA, 2, 4, 127
leisure time, 21, 272 McGregor, 93, 104
Lernaean Hydra, 189 McJobs, 72
liberalisation, 5 means-and-ends, 243
liberty, 25, 32, 55, 132, 239 medical bills, 141
life on earth, 82 Menschenmaterial, 30, 110
lifeworld, 19, 124, 147, 195, 197, mental illnesses, 83
204, 206, 208–212, 221–223, meta-language, 210, 224
229, 267 metaphors, 221
Limits to Growth, 41 metaphysics, 11, 204
Line management, 61, 107, 121 Mexico, 58
living standards, 10, 12, 25, 44, 58, micro-liberties, 47, 264
69, 72, 74–76, 81 Microsoft, 6, 66
lobbying, 8, 27, 43, 54, 149, 220, 274 middle-management, 18, 61, 107, 160
lobbyists, 38, 54, 78, 87, 120, 149, Milgram, 21, 93, 98, 102–115
211, 238 Mill, 130
Locke, 2 Millennium Goals, 81
Lockwood, 63 Mills and Boons, 87
Lumpenproletariat, 82 Minima Moralia, 11
Mission Accomplished, 104
Machiavelli, 93 monopoly, 6, 118
Macho Management, 93 moral dilemma, 99, 102
MacIntyre, 114 Moral Maze, 94
mad cow disease, 248 moral philosophy, 61, 93–95, 185,
MADD, 106, 119 212, 221, 274
Madness and Civilization, 249 movies, 32, 101, 223
Magretta, 6, 39, 66, 132, 163, 172, Mumford, 112
183, 187 mystifications, 255
making money, 19, 188 mythology, 217
Management by Fear, 97, 134
management education, 115 Nabisco Corporation, 30, 227
management leadership, 133 NAFTA, 83
managerial economics, 5 nature of things, 182
managerial elite, 76, 230 Nazi, 83, 93, 104, 109–119, 174
managerial prerogative, 53, 110 negative thinking, 35, 202, 213
managerial propaganda, 88 neo-liberalism, 5, 17, 21, 61
Index 351
Neo-Managerialism, 4 PhDs, 154, 225

Nestle, 54, 106 Phenomenology, 177, 202
new managerial society, 42 Piaget, 196
New Public Managerialism, 4 piece rates, 94, 141
New-Ageism, 38 Pinochet, 83
NGOs, 19 Planet of Slums, 10, 116
Nietzsche, 47, 49, 93, 147 planned economic, 75
nightwatch state, 137 Plato, 158, 165
Nobel Prize, 80, 221 Pluralism, 79
North Korea, 167 Poland, 8
Not for profit institution, 8 Police state, 34
Nowak, 71 political candidates, 43, 147
Political freedom, 28
obedience to authority, 93, 99–101, political parties, 27, 43, 67, 81, 124,
107, 109 146
Occam’s Razor, 225 political radicalisation, 63, 64
Occupy Wall Street, 63 Politics of Fear, 44, 80
OECD, 8, 75 Politics of Symbols, 44
off-shored, 50 Pope, 257
oil, 1, 9, 71, 81, 124, 135, 169, 276 Population Bomb, 41
old boys network, 163 Porter, 3, 77, 179, 190
operations management, 4, 62 positivism, 22, 37, 148, 152, 155, 166,
Opposition to Nature, 171 173, 177, 183, 203, 212–217, 228,
Organisation Men, 42, 60, 270 244, 248
organisational (mis-)behaviour, 37, positivist science, 188
217 post-WWII, 43
organisational pathologies, 273 PPP, 4
Organisational Psychology, 141, 269 PR agencies, 121
Orwell, 26, 33, 79, 107, 124, 157, 179, PR exercise, 4
264 PR experts, 126
Orwellian language, 123, 133 PR specialists, 211
Owl of Minerva, 159, 228 practitioner, 1
pre-managerial era, 19
panoptical super state, 26 Princeton University, 173
Panopticum, 33 prisoner dilemma, 21, 110
Paris Hilton, 87, 180 prison factories, 93
parliamentarian systems, 149 privatisation, 4, 5, 8, 59, 65, 82, 86,
pathological behaviour, 202 190
Paul Erlich, 41 Privatisation of Everything, 38, 76
Paul Goodman, 180 privatised schooling, 115
pay rates, 140 product choice, 172
Pepsi-vs.-Coke, 67 professional autonomy, 50
perception management, 115 profit interests, 4
performance measures, 94, 114 proletariat, 12, 20, 45, 132, 133, 246
performance plans, 190 promotion, 25, 52, 98, 101, 115, 120,
perpetual growth, 75 137, 249, 252, 261
personnel management, 48, 55, 217 propaganda, 38, 123, 127, 219, 271
PETA, 244, 257 pros & cons, 7
pharmaceutical corporations, 257 protective custody, 276
352 Index
psychopaths, 100, 105 scripted behaviour, 99

public opinion, 29, 34, 43, 220 Secretary of Commerce, 3
public servants, 78 self-denunciation, 205
Pyotr Kropotkin, 180 self-humiliation, 205
selling and buying, 137
raison d’être, 13, 46, 71 sense certainty, 185, 197, 236
Rand Corporation, 117 servitude, 31, 47, 56, 80, 123, 196,
rat in the box, 94, 200, 269 263
rationalisation, 63, 106, 181, 183, Sex Life, 24
194, 196, 219 Shareholder value, 4
rationality of irrationality, 21, 82, 85, shareholders, 18, 53, 70, 113, 216
109, 139, 184, 248 shopping malls, 62, 157
rat-race, 81, 157 short termism, 131
reason-vs.-unreason, 177 skilled workers, 7
rebellion, 262 Skinner, 94, 96, 200, 269
Red Cross, 64 slaves, 32, 56, 66, 68, 99, 153, 155,
religion, 88, 187 157, 178
research and development, 50 Sloan, 18
research proposals, 54 Slum life, 67
resistance, 27, 49, 63, 69, 73, 99, 104, Smith, 8, 14, 246
121, 125, 165, 185, 213, 262, 264, Soap opera, 87
267, 276 social control, 16
resource exploration, 168, 232, 238, social isolation, 172, 263
249, 257 Socrates, 155, 162
restructuring, 5, 7, 37, 52, 107, 165, soft drinks, 7
214, 274 solidarity, 47, 55, 61, 115, 261
rightsizing, 7, 58 Sophie’s Choice, 21, 110
Ritz crackers, 30, 227 Spencer, 178
Road rage, 98 SS, 109–114
ROI, 127, 218, 220, 223 Star Trek, 73, 208
Ronald Duchin, 169, 213 Stiglitz, 81
Roosevelt, 3 Stock options, 220
Rosa Luxemburg, 87, 180 strategic management, 56, 118, 271
Rousseau, 6, 27, 52, 67, 71, 81, 86 Stravinsky, 88
Rudolf Rocker, 180 Streicher, 112
Rules of Corporate Behaviour, 167 subversion, 14, 40, 161, 165, 175, 199
Rwanda, 174 superhuman, 93
superstition, 35, 187
Sacco and Vancetti, 180 supervisors, 48, 60, 99, 121
Saint Simon, 204 sustainable life, 9, 42, 241, 251, 267
Sales persons, 48 sweatshop labour, 78
Salle du Manège, 93 sweatshops, 117, 129
SARS, 248 swine flue, 248
Satanic Mills, 47, 128, 228 SWOT, 127
scholarship, 9, 43, 117, 193, 230, 244 syntax, 120, 124–127, 207, 225
Scientific management, 12, 51, 181 system theory, 175, 185, 193, 212
scientific thought, 39, 155, 173, 175, system thinking, 176
188, 195, 201 system-stabilising critique, 163, 167,
Scott & Hart, 1, 3 202, 275
Index 353
tabloid newspaper, 266 unhappiness, 21, 29, 142, 260

taxes, 171 Union Carbide, 105, 184
Taylor, 3, 12, 51, 73, 154, 216 United Nations, 117
Taylorism, 49 United States, 20, 112
Team leaders, 61, 107 universal concepts, 144, 213, 237
Team work, 49 US Army, 112
technical control, 55 US president, 231
technology, 10, 16, 42, 45, 57, 75, USA, 2, 3, 78, 83
126, 187, 192, 194–196, 201, utilitarianism, 94, 96, 209, 240
253–258, 267
television, 28, 32, 48, 137, 266, 268 value neutrality, 51, 54, 189
telos, 7, 164, 192, 201, 256 veil of ignorance, 152, 179, 215
terror, 10, 34, 83, 93, 267 Vietnam, 58, 83
terrorism, 44, 79, 136 violence, 10, 87, 92, 98, 116, 127,
Thalidomide, 54 155, 168, 234, 244, 256, 257
Thatcherism, 5 volonté générale, 6, 27, 46, 67, 81, 86
the Borg, 73
The Economist, 80 Wager, 68, 78
The Human Condition, 91, 95, 164, wage-reduction, 70
192 wage-slavery, 48
The Real Bottom Line, 40, 51, 75, 85, War on Drugs, 58
188 War on Terrorism, 58
Theory X & Y, 48, 93, 95, 101, 104 wasteful goods, 9
thesis & anti thesis, 7 water-canons, 276
think like managers, 187 Watson, 8, 54, 166
think tanks, 149 Weasel words, 189
Third World, 171 Weber, 3
Thomas Müntzer, 180 welfare cheats, 47, 76, 82
Time Magazine, 87 white-collar, 42, 49, 63
tobacco, 106, 116, 239 Whyte, 42, 60
Tobin, 41 wildlife, 124, 183
top-down settings, 96 Willing Executors, 105, 112
total mobilisation, 42, 80, 219 willingness to act, 63, 276
totalitarian features, 16 witch hunts, 276
trade unions, 21, 43, 44, 64, 79, 104, Wollstonecraft, 87
108, 225 worker-vs.-worker, 83
traffic light system, 238 workhouses, 93
transformation of nature, 155, 171 working class, 21, 44, 48, 53, 64
triple bottom line, 4, 8 working conditions, 7, 47, 64, 139
TV, 27, 33, 43, 47, 66, 73, 76, 86–88, working hours, 61
92, 113, 121, 132, 211, 222, 250, work intensification, 52
264, 273 work-to-rule, 105
two-dimensional thinking, 22, 62 World Bank, 8, 80, 83
World Economic Forum, 8
umbrella-ideology, 4 World War II, 239
UN, 81
unemployment benefits, 64, 222 Zeitgeist, 29, 61

Managerialism - A Critique of An Ideology

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List of Figures and Table viii

1 Introduction: Managerialism and Society 1

3 Annihilating Social Change 45

5 The Culture of Managerialism 85

6 Managerialism and Authoritarianism 99

7 Managerialism and Positive Thinking 116

8 Shaping Science – Shaping Democracy 136

9 Management Studies 151

10 The Age of Managerialism 178

11 Challenges to Managerial Thinking 202

12 Beyond Managerialism 230

13 Roadblocks to Post-Managerialism 248

14 Conclusion: A Post-Managerial World is Possible 267

10.1 The Development of Managerialist Universities 191

10.1 The Link between Managerial Science and 189

My deepest appreciation goes out to my wife Katja Klikauer for proof

observers. It is said that the MBA degree is intended to provide generic

Managerialism combines management knowledge and ideology to

This transition from management to Managerialism has historic

Management + Ideology + Expansion = Managerialism

When management mutated into an ‘-ism’, it joined a family of

socialisation and engineer compliance so that the victims of ideolo-

1. It adheres to a common set of ideas where conformity already exists.

‘Managerialism is about playing out … a cacophony of aberrations and

managerial ones. Managerialism is not about Rousseau’s volonté générale

Business executives are society’s leading champions of free

Managerialism’s ideology, rhetoric, and factual interests are worlds

Overall, Managerialism rejects any plea of a fundamental difference

In short, Managerialism is an ideology that does not serve truth but

Managerialism, a name for various doctrines of business

Finally, there is also a specific version of capitalism that has developed

duced a managerial system and a managerial society without any

Does the annihilation of any serious opposition to Managerialism

Managerialism’s effort to eclipse such a possible global catastrophe

universal needs and aspirations. Their satisfaction promotes business

German philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) asked in his mas-

An analysis of Managerialism in the spirit of critical theory has to

theory is concerned with those historical alternatives that haunt

use the scientific conquest of nature for the scientific conquest of

1. Critique of ideology always means a critique of domination;

6. it emphasises deformations in an individual’s self-understanding as

1. Managerialism’s ideological hegemony remains capable of contain-

The hegemonic ideological domination of Managerialism has made it

more than just the sum-total of ideological instruments invented by

ideology, culture, politics, and the economy are merged into an

1. Managerialism: remains the key ideology that provides the glue

Management in business and organisational studies is the act of

for truth is superseded by ‘the science of making money’ dedicated

was in dire need of a source of transmission. Corporate mass media

subdivided into 14 chapters. It begins with an introduction outlining

and shows the scope of infiltration of managerial language into society.

explains why post-Managerialism can never be achieved by purely

A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in

degree to which freedom from want remains the concrete substance of

people are not synonyms of possessions, belongings, and possessions.108

inside Managerialism that makes for this new form of totalitarianism

scientific, and mechanical productivity converting simple administra-

mean the abolition of ‘public opinion’ that has become a ‘published

are determined by external powers over which individuals have no

isfaction. This creates a self-contained ideology that contrasts ‘one’

binary thinking in favour of linear and one-dimensional thought