Are U.S. Corporations Top-Heavy? Managerial Ratios in Advanced Capitalist Countries

Abstract

I assess here the evidence for Gordon's thesis in Fat and Mean that a bureaucratic burden of managers and supervisors has grown in response to the breakdown of the postwar labor-capital accord. My results suggest that increases in managerial ratios are explained only partly by the switch to a more conflictual regime. Much of the postwar increase in managerial intensity coincided with the increased power of labor during the accord period. Management aggressiveness in the subsequent period weakened labor, but did not necessarily involve increased managerial ratios. Increases in firm size and in the importance of professional and other specialized knowledge workers in Taylorist workplace systems explain much of the increase in managerial ratios.

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