Managerialism

Libertarian blogger ‘Stumbling and Mumbling’ points out that there is an important distinction between technocratic management and managerialism.

Managerialism is an ideology that claims management is a profession in its own right that has generic methods and rules that can be applied to all types of organizations (managerial thinking is primarily spread via MBA programmes, a point alluded to by Canadian writer John Ralston Saul in his 1992 best seller 'Voltaire's Bastards').

The reality of course, is that good managers need to have prior experience in the particular field that they are managing. For example, you can’t really manage a manufacturing firm if you don’t know anything about making things. I have been told that managerialism has been one of the reasons for the dramatic decline of British and American manufacturing.

Managerialism is more rampant in English-speaking countries than in East Asia or Continental Europe. This is partly because English-speaking countries have very unstable job markets, so professionals try to make their careers more secure by marketing themselves as adaptable generalists. If organizations believe in generic management then managers can hop from job to job and muddle through without specialist knowledge.

By contrast, East Asian countries lie Japan and Korea emphasis job loyalty rather than professional loyalty so their managers have more specialist knowledge. This is one reason why the Japanese excel at planning complex projects and manufacturing high quality goods.

Admittedly, technocratic management can lead to rigid thinking and this is one of the reasons why narrowly focused economists should be taught history and politics as well as abstract economic theory. This might encourage them to take a longer-term view of economic problems.

In the English-speaking world ideological managers are often positive thinking extroverts who frequently clash with critical thinking introverts. George Bush provides a pretty good example of a positive thinking extrovert.

Ideological managers tend to have shallow educational backgrounds and an aversion to reading. This leaves them vulnerable to fashionable, up beat ideas based on simplified readings of works by established intellectuals. The Landmark Forum is a popular positive thinking course that fleeces managerial extroverts using watered down ideas from existential philosophers.

John Maynard Keynes points to the weakness of managerial thinking in his often quoted remark: "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slave of some defunct economist".