Managing Managerialism in Management

Managing managerialism in management

and management studies

Christian T. Lystbæk

Aarhus University

Birk Centerpark, 15

DK-7400 Herning

Keywords: Managerialism, rigor, relevance, non-reductionism, Ralph Stacey

Introduction

The paper addresses the dominance of an instrumental or “managerialist” conception of rationality within management. Many critics have made clear that this conception of rationality is reductionist, but the critique often dismisses rationality altogether as the failed project of the Enlightenment. My paper will argue that rationality should be seriously engaged with as a concept, but that such a serious engagement will illuminate rationality as a multi-faceted concept. This conception allows us to engage with rationality in a theoretical fruitful and ethically engaged manner that challenges us to see rationality as a form of activity or labor.

Painting waves with the broad brush

Management and managers are important in today´s world because what they do has impact on evereone´s lives. As Peter Drucker has famously stated:

“The emergence of management in this [the 20th] century may have been a pivotal event in history. It signaled a major transformation of society into a pluralist society of institutions, of which managements are the effective organs.” (Drucker, 1973:1)

Thus, according to Drucker, the 20th century witnessed a management boom that changed society permanently. Management has become a familiar and legitimate social practice, a position of status supported by institutional and social norms that gave managers the right to hire, fire, give orders, control and evaluate the efficiency and productivity of the performance of others in the interest of profit or providing service for the common good.

Along with the management boom came the professionalization of management and the growth of management and organization studies. The first MBA was offered by Harvard Business School in 1910. In 1923, the American Management Association was established, followed by the British Institute of Management in 1947. The second part of the 20th century saw the more widespread emergence of Business Schools offering courses leading to certificates, diplomas, masters and ph.D.s. Hence, today, studies of management are seen as vital to the development of “professional” managers.

But (and here comes the point), there is general consensus that an instrumental conception of rationality dominates management studies, that is, a conception that pinpoints rational planning, prediction and control in management. For example,Cassell Lee (2011) states, in their introduction to a recent anthology on Challenges and Controversies in Management Research, that “a seemingly enduring feature of contemporary management research is the dominance of an Anglo-American positivist tradition.” (Cassell & Lee, 2011:2). Similarly, Ann Cunliffe states that management studies (in research and study programs) have been dominated by rational models, which have defined the characteristics of managerial functions, activities, roles and competencies in rationalistic terms. Shedescribe this as the ideology of Managerialism, that is “a kind of systemic logic, […] a way of doing and being in organizations which has the ultimate goal of enhancing efficiency through control.” (Cunliffe, 2009:17)

This logic or ideology can be identified in the vast proportion of prescriptive models of managerial work and activities, according to which rational planning, prediction and control is the basis of managerial power and legitimacy. There is general agreement that it dominates management textbooks and curricula. Gill & Johnson (2010:4) states that this “orthodoxy within management research […] is maintained by very powerful institutional pressures.” These institutional pressures come from management academics, management consultants and management practitioners alike. They, or rather we, all want to be, or at least appear to be, rational and right: We want to bein the lead of things in the sense of having the right answers to management questions and the right solutions to management problems.

Throughout the history of management studies, though, and especially in the second part of the 20th century, a series of management studies have criticized the dominant view of management. Studies of what managers actually do – e.g. from Carlson´s (1951) study of Swedish executives, through Stewart´s (1967) study of UK managers, and to Mintzberg´s (1973) study of US CEOs – have contradicted the rationalistic view of management, suggesting instead that managerial work is subject to uncertainty, and that management activities are fragmented and involve making choices within constraints and conflicting values.

In the following, I will describe these two “movements”, managerialism and its critics, as two waves in management studies. I will describe managerialism as “the first wave” of management studies and the critique as “the second wave”, since it grew out and continues to grow out of a critique of managerialism and its instrumental conception of rationality. But it should be noticed that in this strange sea, the first wave continues to roll even as the second wave builds up.

I will go on to propose that the (managerialistic) first wave of management studies is good for addressing the Question of Rigor in management, that is, the question: How to do things right? But it seems to ignore the Question of Relevance in management, that is, the question: How to do the right things?Correspondingly, the second (critical) wave of management studies is good for addressing the Question of relevance that it inherited from the first wave, but it replaces the Question of Relevance with the Question of Rigor, thus leaving or neglecting this problem.

This distinction between doing things right and doing the right things, that is, between rigor and relevance, is made by Bennis and Nanus to distinguish between managers and leaders: "Managers are people who do things right, and leaders are people who do the right things." (Benni & Nanus, 1985:7) However, we should not find it appropriate to differentiate between two distinct activities in this way. It does not make sense to aspire to do things right with no regard to the content of whatever it is one is doing (whether it is the right things), nor does not make sense to aspire to do the right things right with no regard to the way one is doing this (whether one is doing things right). Doing things right and doing the right things are, rather, inter-related questions of mutual importance. It does not make sense to prefer one from the other, that is, to do the right things, but not doing them right, or to do things right, but not the right things. This dichotomy might be appealing (for polemic purposes), but it is false.

As such, this paper will point toward a Third Wave of management studies, addressing the question (or quest) whether the fundamental tension between Rigor and Relevance can ever be resolved? And if it cannot be resolved, how can it best be approached? The answers to these questions are central to management studies, both academic and practical.

But let me begin with a few more words on these “waves” in management studies.

The first wave in management studies: Managerialism – old and new (NPM)

The first wave of management studiesis dominated by managerialism, that is, the idea (or ideology) that management is about enhancing efficiency through control, thus privileging the logic of technical rationality and systematic rigor in terms of rational planning, prediction and control. Today, many people believe that this conception of management is a precondition for well-functioning and progress in organizations as well as in society in general. Management protects us from chaos and inefficiency by guaranteeing that organizations, people and machines do what should be doing.

This ideology of managerialism isin itself predicted on a very large story about organizational and social progress.Management studies (in their modern form – theancient and medieval “roots” is another story) began with the work of early organizational and administrative theories, both academic and practitioners, who were concerned about bringing the logic of technical rationality and systematic rigor in terms of rational planning, prediction and control into management. This concern has been carried on as the main trend within management studies throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, but with a steady expansion in the scope of what is to be managed, organized and controlled.

In the first part of the last century, management was thought to be essentially the function of controlling the performance of tasks in order to produce the goods and services of the organization. Thus, management was conceived as the efficient organization of the work tasks. But, in the following decades, a series of management studies showed (e.g. the famous Hawthorne Studies) that performance is dependent upon not only the organization of the work tasksbut also the roles and relationships, including the social and psychological work environment. Thus, business psychology was born as a management discipline stating that management is not only a technical function of controlling tasks, but a social and psychological function of controlling roles and relationships as well. Then, in the following decades, further management studies pinpointed the importance of continued learning and development for task performance, and business Human Resource Management (HRM) and Organizational Development (OD) were born as management functions and academic disciplines. Then, management studies pinpointed the importance of organizational culture, and culture management or “organizational anthropology” was born as a function and academic discipline. Then, management studies pinpointed the importance of organizational communication, and, the history repeats itself, this became a management function and academic discipline. In the 1990, management studies pinpointed the importance of organizational values, missions and visions, and this (according to the measurement of management tools and trends made by Bain & Company) has become a main management function and field of knowledge.

Insert figure 1.

The 20th century, then, witnessed a steady expansion in the scope of management issues, that is, of what is to be managed, organized and controlled in order to enhancing efficiency in organizations – from control of tasks and production processes through relationships and learning processes, and cultural and communication processes to, finally but probably not lastly, values andbasic beliefs.

Because this orthodoxy of management control is so dominant and strong, we often take it for granted as self-evidently right. When we talk about corporate communication, organizational learning, human capital, etc. we often take it for granted that communication, learning, knowledge, innovation, etc. can and should be managed in the sense of being object of rational planning, prediction and control. This assumption can be identified in the vast proportion of prescriptive models of managerial work and activities, according to which rational planning, prediction and control is the basis of managerial power and legitimacy.

Debate in the field, then, is predominantly debate within this meta-theoretical assumption, namely debate over the means suggested to achieve control. Following Hoyle & Wallace (2005:69f), we can identify two “ideal types” of this paradigm depending upon whether the control mechanism is suggested to be direct or indirect. They labelthe two ideal types “neo-Taylorism” and “culture management”,respectively.

Insert table 1.

Neo-Taylorism opts for channeling agency and delimiting its boundaries through overt, direct control. It is unsubtle, with a top-down orientation. Power is concentrated in the hands of policy-makers and organizational leaders. It operates through detailed specification of who is to do what to achieve specified outcomes. The aim is minimally to secure behavioral compliance.

Culture management is most subtle, opting for indirect control through a mix of overt and covert mechanisms. These are designed to align the beliefs and values of teachers with those of their leaders and managers and to bring them, in turn, into line with those of policy-makers. The aim here is the most ambitious. They will be motivated voluntarily to channel their agency among the required lines with full commitment to the spirit of the enterprise. When this is couched in a “humanistic” language stressing the creation and control of a learning organization, underpinned by a strong organizational culture which reflects shared values and is expressed through a clear vision, encapsulated in a distinctive mission, and internalized through a HRM staff development programthis sounds innocuous. But when one remembers that we are talking about human beings the flavor changes. To talk of controlling not only tasks and roles, but relationships, learning, development, communication, knowledge, innovation, etc. is to talk of corporations controlling the very identities and mental functioning of human beings. At this point, there is nothing left of the worker as a human being that falls outside the ambit of organizational control.

Thus, each ideal type reflects a different combination of forms and mechanisms of control: direct and indirect, centralized and decentralized, explicit and subliminal.

Underpinning the hyperactivity of managerialism, the constant creation of new tools for organizing work, is an ideology, which hold that not only can all aspects of organizational life be controlled, but that they should be controlled. This ideology of managerialism demands that a specific problem is dealt with by means of strategic planning and application of a distinct body of knowledge and techniques that has universal application.

According to several scholars, e.g. before mentioned Ann Cunliffe (2009), Hoyle & Wallace (2005), this managerialistic ideology seem to have taken on a life of its own in government services, education, health care, and other public sector organizations throughout Europe, Australia and North America. New managerialism, or New Public Management (NPM) as it is often called, is associated with importing practices commonplace in the private sector into the public sector, particularly the imposition of a powerful management body with a market orientation and business practice that overrides professional skills and knowledge as a means of maximizing organizational performance through direct and indirect control.

The current orthodoxy in leadership and management studies, particularly as expressed in texts on New Public Management can be condensed something like: Public service improvement is the outcome of the capacity of a transformational leader driven by moral purpose to harness distributed leadership in creating a learning organization, underpinned by a strong organizational culture which reflects shared values and is expressed through a clear vision, encapsulated in a distinctive mission, and internalized through a HRM staff development program by a collegial staff who contribute to a corporate development plan which gives unified direction to their synergisticand continuous improvement efforts.

This summary constitutes the touchstone of NPM, yielding key concepts such as transformational leadership, organizational culture, learning organization and clear vision.

There is a strong body of work within this tradition and I in no way deny its value. But many textbooks are over-simplifying the issues they address. And even when contributors are well aware of the complexities of improvement, some readers, including teachers of leadership and management, bring an oversimplification to their reading.

Today, alongside the gains of rational planning and control, there is plenty evidence of problems. Here is just one indicative example: Successive Danish Governments have generated an extensive series of policies aimed at transforming Danish public service (health care, school education) as part of a wider strategy to reform or to “modernize” all the public sector, but this have not led to anticipated levels of improvement and success. On the contrary, an unintended negative consequence and dysfunction of the managerialistic faith in management has been to overload chronically the managers and front-line practitioners charged with responsibility for implementing the multiplicity of innovations entailed in these policies.

In general, a series of management studies have criticized the widespread ideology of managerialismsuggesting, with a phrase of Henry Mintzberg and colleagues, that management is not what you, or we, often think (Mintzberg et al. eds. 2010). This critique states that managerialism put to much emphasis on the Question of Rigor, but seems to marginalize the Question of Relevance in the sense that it focuses on strategic planning and the monitoring and controlling of the plans whereas it does not give much notice to the ways the plans relates to what people in the organization are actually doing nor does it give notice to the conflicts and complexities that managers and experts often experience.

The second wave in management studies: Complexity

The First Wave began to roll into shallow academic waters in the 1960´s, with the studies of Sune Carlson, Henry Mintzberg and others. These studies have contradicted the rationalistic view of management, suggesting instead that managerial work is subject to uncertainty and ambiguity.

For example, already Carlson, in 1951, suggested that management should not be considered applied science, but rather a practical art:

“The work of managing directors in large firms is so varied and so hard to grasp. It isalso different from many other kinds of intellectual work in that it is more a practicalart than an applied science.”

(Carlson, 1951:109)

Despite 100 years of management theories and techniques, managing is still a difficult and fraught process. Why is managing so difficult? The quick and easy answer is, because managers are like the rest of us – human and fallible. The more complex and difficult answer is, because people are not the coherent and malleable cluster of well-defined characteristics, fixed intentions and predictable actions that conventional management theories assume.

To exemplify the point about the poor correspondence between management theory and practice, let me quote a frustrated manager from the book Real Managers:

“We all went through the B-schools when we were young and the professors had all the

answers on the blackboards, computer printouts, and reading assignments. Everything

was so clean and precise. The problems in the accounting and quantitative courses

always had logical answers. Even the principles of management and policy courses had

structure and form, citing the five functions a manager performs or the three steps of

strategic planning. The same is true of the management development programs I have

attended over the years. The trainer has all the answers to my problems – one, two,

three. But I’m here to tell you it really isn’t like that. My day consists of running from