What Is Managerialism?

Introduction: Approaching Managerialism’s Ideology

‘What is Managerialism?’ is designed to be a clarifying contribution to current discussions on managerialism (Chauvière and Mick, 2013; Glover, 2013; Hyde et al., 2013). To achieve this, the article will deliver an overview of recent attempts to describe and define managerialism from general (wikipedia.org) to specific definitions (Locke and Spender, 2011). This will lead to a single satisfactory working definition. From the start, managerialism originated in for-profit enterprises but today covers public and private organizations (Baines et al., 2011; Baldry and Barnes, 2012: 228; Gale, 2012: 822; Meyer et al., 2013; Mick, 2011: 3; Teelken, 2013; Thursfield, 2012). Like anything, managerialism can be defined positively (what something is) and negatively (what something is not). Since this article is about ‘what managerialism is’, let us start with the negative, i.e. what it is not. Managerialism is not simply a ‘modern management method’ and it is not an ‘institutional model’ (Chauvière and Mick, 2013: 136; Mueller and Carter, 2007: 182). On the positive side, managerialism is an ideology with modern business schools being its most fertile breeding ground (Klikauer, 2013; Locke, 2011).

Such management schools furnish managers with technical skills but more importantly they also breed the ideology of managerialism (Chauvière and Mick, 2013: 139). Together with organizational management, they remain the institutional centers of managerialism providing it with the ideological means to establish its own ends: the ideological managerialization of society (Eagleton, 1994). ‘Managerialism, like any ideology, is defined by its ends and by the means used to achieve those ends’ (Scott and Hart, 1991: 40). Today, managerialism’s primary means of the managerial ideology has reached its end, namely society. But the rise of managerialism during the last two and a half decades has not been paralleled by a satisfying development of theory. Today, there are rafts of management textbooks, collections, books, academic and non-academic journal and magazine articles and a large number of academics employed by management schools. Despite all this there are very few theoretical elaborations on managerialism. Nonetheless, there are some noteworthy exceptions (Enteman, 1993; Locke and Spender, 2011; Lynch et al., 2012; Melman, 2001; Pena, 2001; Rees and Rodley, 1995; Saunders, 2006; Willmott, 2002). They all discuss managerialism but none delivers a comprehensive theory or even a satisfying definition.

A first and general attempt to answer ‘what is managerialism?’ is: ‘a belief that organizations have more similarities than differences and thus the performance of all organizations can be optimized by the application of generic management skills and theory’ (wikipedia.org). To managerialist practitioners, there is little difference in the skills required to run an advertising agency, an oil rig, or a university. Experience and skills pertinent to an organization’s core business are considered secondary. Nevertheless, the term ‘managerialism’ has been used disparagingly to describe organizations perceived to have a preponderance or excess of managerial techniques, solutions, rules and personnel. The MBA-degree, for example, is intended to provide generic skills to a new class of managers not wedded to a particular industry or professional sector. Managerialism extends this to society in general. Proponents of managerialism like Harvard Business Review’s former editor Magretta (2012: 3) claim, ‘We all learn to think like managers, even if that’s not what we’re called.’ Set against that, Grey (1999: 561) highlights the oppressive character of managerialism’s project. But managerialism’s false universalization not only remains oppressive, it also seeks to eliminate managerial capitalism’s class character. Following from that, the term ‘managerialism’ has been used pejoratively to define a managerialist class that converts society in its totality.

American management expert Locke (2011; Locke and Spender, 2011), for example, sees managerialism as an expression of a special group – management – that entrenches itself ruthlessly and systemically in an organization. It deprives owners of decision-making power and workers of their ability to resist managerialism. In fact the rise of managerialism may in itself be a response to people’s resistance in society and more specific workers’ opposition against managerial regimes (Chomsky, 1967; Ford and Ford, 2009; HBR, 2005; Karlsson, 2012). In other words, in a Hegelian dialectic of managerialism vs resistance, two key aspects emerge: in managerial regimes as well as externally, there is managerialism’s inability to completely annihilate workers’ resistance against it; but there is also the historic tradition of resistance against managerialism’s global project finding its more recent expression in the anti-globalization movement (Reitan, 2012).

In managerial regimes meanwhile, managerialism justifies its takeover on the grounds of a managing group’s superior education and exclusive possession of ‘people in positions of institutional power’ (Magretta, 2012: 4). Managerialists pretend to have advanced knowledge and know-how deemed necessary to the efficient running of organizations. Today, such definitions have to be enhanced because managerialism has extended itself from the limits of business organizations deep into public institutions and society. Hence, a more appropriate approximation to a definition might be:

Managerialism combines management’s generic tools and knowledge with ideology to establish itself systemically in organizations, public institutions, and society while depriving business owners (property), workers (organizational-economic) and civil society (social-political) of all decision-making powers. Managerialism justifies the application of its one-dimensional managerial techniques to all areas of work, society, and capitalism on the grounds of superior ideology, expert training, and the exclusiveness of managerial knowledge necessary to run public institutions and society as corporations.

To achieve this, management had to mutate into managerialism transforming neo-liberal capitalism into ‘managerial capitalism’ (Glover, 2013: 363; see also Chandler, 1984). The transition from management to managerialism has historic origins. After running the ‘Satanic mills’ of the 18th and 19th centuries, factory administration’s simplicity of managing small workshops by overseers (symbolized by the whip) became management as workplaces grew larger. Management installed itself as the sole institution with specialized managerial knowledge to administer the rising factory system (Fayol, 1930 [1916]; Hobsbawm, 1984). Perhaps, the symbolic turning point between simple factory administration and scientific management was Taylor’s (un)scientific management giving a quasi-scientific legitimacy to management’s degradation of labor as animals, e.g. Taylor’s ‘ox, gorilla … workers are kept stupid’ (Klikauer, 2007: 153, 2012: 23).

During the 20th century factory management expanded its operations. By inventing legitimizing ideologies such as competition, efficiency, free markets, greed is good, etc., management mutated into an ideological operation that has infected virtually all sections of human society (Mueller and Carter, 2007: 181). Managerialism’s chronological trajectory could only ever be linear: management→managerialism. Historically, management and managerialism were not parallel movements, nor was managerialism an ideology that formed the practical expression of management. In short, management entered the scene before managerialism.

In terms of a historical-geographical chronology, managerialism is genuinely American because the USA has been at the forefront of management techniques and their accompanying ideology (Taylor, Ford, Drucker, Porter, etc.) with the possible exceptions of French writer Henri Fayol (1916) and perhaps Max Weber (1864–1920; cf. Marcuse, 1968). 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 prosperity of the Eisenhower 1950s’ (Scott and Hart, 1991: 40). In short, management is an early 20th-century term (Taylor, Fayol, and Ford) while managerialism is a late-20th and 21st-century term. Managerialism merges ideology with management, thus assisting an expansion of something rather simplistic, trivial, mundane, and, to be honest, rather dull: administering a company. ‘Management, to put it plainly, is boring’ (Scott and Hart, 1991: 39). But this boredom quickly expanded to become something that transcended management. Management mutated into a full-fledged ideology under the following formula:

Management + Ideology + Expansion = Managerialism

This formula signifies managerialism’s origins (management) to which ideology is added as the second ingredient. Its third ingredient is its drive to expand managerial techniques far beyond the realms of managerial organizations, spreading managerialism into the wider economic, social, cultural, and political sphere (Chauvière and Mick, 2013: 139). While managerialism claims that technology is value neutral and just a tool, technology remains deeply ideological (Klikauer, 2007: 151). In other words, the combining of technology with ‘various processes’ in Karl Marx’s (1890: 556) original concept that ‘capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the labourer’ can be extended to a combination of ‘technology and various processes’ (Marx) and ideology (managerialism). Under this ideology, Marx’s ‘technology and various processes’ affect the ‘social whole’ (Marx) more severely than Marx could ever have imagined in the 19th century. This manifests the ideological power of technology when appropriated by managerialism.

When management mutated into an ‘ism’, it joined a family of ‘isms’ that 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. The hidden companion of management – managerialism – represents such an ‘ism’ that is implicitly accepted as authoritative by the managerial class, in management schools, and by the general public. In short, any ‘ism’ like managerialism represents a doctrine consisting of a shared set of common ideological beliefs and practices. To turn management into an ‘ism’, management needed to come up with a proper ideology. It has become common to see ideology as a set of ideas that constitute goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a rather one-dimensional way of looking at things. It provides a worldview phrased as a set of ideas proposed by a dominant class or group. Virtually all members of the managerial domain and even society receive the managerialist ideology that creates an alienated ‘false consciousness’. The ideology as false consciousness equation originates in Marx’s ‘they have false consciousness as pure ideology alienating people from themselves’ [Insofern sei sie ein falsches Bewusstsein, also reine Ideologie von sich selbst entfremdeten Menschen] and in the Frankfurt School’s critical theory – ‘the distinction between true and false consciousness, real and immediate interest still is meaningful’ (Marcuse, 1966: xlv; cf. Eyerman, 1981).

Ideologies are used to engineer complacency and compliance so that the victims of ideological socialization do not rebel but support the given ideology (Scott and Hart, 1991: 41). But ideology always seeks to masquerade as uniformity and an overall goal based on a set of easy to digest principles such as competition, deregulation, efficiency, free markets, and privatization to name a few. These are presented as unquestioned truths, as neutral and natural. Nevertheless, managerialist ideologies have to support capitalism and competition (Nowak and Highfield, 2011; Porter, 1985). However, they remain systems of abstract thought applied to public matters making ideology central to politics, economics, and society. Implicitly, a catch-all umbrella ideology such as managerialism’s ‘competitive advantage’ seeks to redirect thinking away from truth and into a specific direction that is invented by a hegemonic power group (Chauvière and Mick, 2013: 139; Mumby, 1997).

As with most ‘isms’, managerialism is more often used pejoratively than favorably. Where managerialism is dominant, its ideology is made to appear as common sense requiring no further explanation, e.g. competitive advantage. These assumptions are backed up through an ideological legitimacy delivered by universities housing management schools that generate thousands of MBAs and other management graduates. The university association seeks to elevate management to the realm of science in an attempt to equalize management with science on a par with physics or at least with economics. University generated management ‘science’ as a whole serves primarily as a PR-exercise serving to legitimate management (Baritz, 1960). Where managerialism needs a name (free enterprise, business community, etc.) the preferred PR-choice is usually one that conceals the profit interests. What ‘new public management’ is in the public sector, is shareholder value in the private sector.

But shareholder value comes along with synonyms like organizational goals, organizations’ outcomes, performance, organizations’ objectives, adding value, ‘triple bottom line’ (PPP = people, planet, profit), ‘the real bottom line’, and so on. All of them conceal the profit motive. As an ideological cloaking device, shareholder value is of particular interest. It presents managers simply as mere agents of shareholders while simultaneously pretending that they are best suited to run society. Managerialism is dangerous because of its ability to spread its ideological doctrine (Grey, 1996: 601). Hence, managerialism’s perilous central doctrine is that differences between a university and a car company are less important than their similarities and that the performance of all organizations can be optimized by the application of generic management skills and knowledge. It follows that the crucial element of ‘institutional reform’ and ‘organizational restructuring’ –managerialism’s most favorite buzzwords – is the removal of obstacles to ‘the right to manage’ in managerial regimes while neo-liberalism seeks to achieve this in society.

Early Signposts for a Future Critical Theory of Managerialism

Managerialist society distinguishes itself by conquering centrifugal social forces through technology, consumerism, and ideology – rather than terror and surveillance – and through a duality of overwhelming efficiency and promise of ever increasing living standards. To investigate the roots of these developments and their historical alternatives is the aim of a ‘critical theory of managerialism’ (Bronner, 2011; Horkheimer, 1972 [1937]; King, 2010). A ‘critical theory of managerialism’ does not re-develop critical theory as such as this has been done elsewhere, but it applies to managerialism theoretical themes from critical theory such as those of Horkheimer (1937), Adorno (2005 [1944], 2005), Marcuse (1966, 1968), Fromm (1960), Habermas (1997), Bernstein (2001), Klikauer (2007), Von den Brink (2010), Tarr (2011), and Outhwaite (2012), and Schecter (2013).

It analyzes managerialism in the light of its used, unused, and abused capabilities for improving the human condition (Azmanova, 2012). In short, 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 historical objectivity. This is a problem that arises with an analysis that makes value judgments such as: ‘Can there be right living in the false’? (Adorno, 2005 [1944]; Bernstein, 2001; Von den Brink, 2010) and judgment also means that in managerialist societies, specific possibilities exist for an ethical and environmentally sustainable advancement of human life. And there are specific ways of realizing these possibilities. The proposed theory needs to reflect on these emancipatory elements.

Managerialism needs to be examined from the standpoint of realizing emancipatory potentials and from the perspective of a theory that remains a historical theory. History is always a realm of viable alternatives. Therefore, among the various possible and actual modes of organizing and utilizing the available resources, the question remains: which ones offer the best way for human, ethical, and environmentally sustainable development? In order to identify possibilities for an optimal development, a critical theory of managerialism must abstract from the ‘actual’ organization and utilization of resources found in management – often presented as ‘the given’. It must advance to more abstract and general levels, namely managerialism’s ideology.

A critical theory of managerialism refuses to accept ‘the given’ that has been part of the managerially engineered realm of manufactured facts claiming ‘to speak for themselves’ (Morrow, 1994; Thorpe et al., 2012). A critical theory of managerialism is concerned with those historical alternatives that haunt managerialism with their subversive tendencies and forces set against TINA. But managerialism confronts such a critique with a situation that deprives society of its very basis. Managerialist progress extends into the entire system of domination, control, coordination, and infinite competition creating forms of existence and of powers 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 managerialist society and managerialism seem to be capable of containing social change by converting every social problem into a technical problem that can be managed (Marcuse, 1966: 108ff.). Managerialism has rendered obsolete any qualitative change which would establish different institutions supporting a new direction of post-managerial environmentally sustainable living.

This containment of social change is one of the most important achievements of managerialism (Lubin and Esty, 2010). The general acceptance of managerialism has been combined with the decline of pluralism and the creation of what philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1966) called one-dimensionality. Managerialism’s one-dimensionality was, for example, shown in the initial collusion of big business and weakened labor with the subsequent exclusion of organized labor eliminating one of managerialism’s most dangerous opponents (Donado and Walde, 2012). With this, it eliminated an alternative voice in economic and managerial affairs leaving one-dimensionality behind. This has occurred within deregulated state authorities testifying to the integration of opposites that has been the result of managerialism’s achievement. This historical intervention occurred in managerialism’s awareness of the two great classes which faced each other in society: bourgeoisie and proletariat (Dahrendorf, 1959).

Since then, capitalist developments have altered the structure and function of these two classes in such a way that they no longer appear to be agents of historical transformation (Smith and Deranty, 2012). As far as still relevant, an overriding interest in preserving the institutional status quo still unites former antagonists. To the degree to which managerial progress assures the consumptive growth and ideological cohesion of managerialist 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 practices and actions meet. Even the most empirical analysis of historical alternatives is made to appear to be no more than an unrealistic speculation and utopia (Alvesson and Willmott, 1996: 18; Klikauer, 2002, 2011). Any commitment to them has been made to look like being a matter of personal preference and youthful foolishness.

A critical theory of managerialism continues to insist that the need for qualitative change is as pressing as ever before. It is needed for managerialist societies, humanity as a whole, and for every human being. The union of growing productivity and growing environmental destruction, managerialism’s brinkmanship of environmental annihilation, and the surrender of thoughts to managerialist commands links global human survival to much needed decision-making ‘outside’ the empire of managerialism (Lovins et al., 2007). The managerialist empire remains linked to the Greek ‘emporos’ – the merchant. Managerialism’s merchants have been able to sustain the preservation of misery in the face of unprecedented wealth. This constitutes the most impartial indictment of managerialism.

The fact that the vast majority of the population has been made to accept managerialism does not render it less irrational and less reprehensible. 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 consciousness, from managerially induced to real interest. But they will only do so once they live in need of changing the present destructive way of life and of denying the counterfeit positives offered by managerialism (Ehrenreich, 2009). 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 crypto-scholarly management academics have been able to use the scientific conquest of nature for the scientific conquest of human beings. The mantra of management studies is not critical thinking but the control of nature, markets, corporations, and humans degraded to human resources (Bolton and Houlihan, 2008). Confronted with the totalitarian character of the achievements of managerialism, a critical theory of managerialism is left with a rationale for transcending managerialism. This vacuum fills the theoretical structure of critical theory because it was developed during a period in which the need for refusal and subversion was embodied in the action of effective social forces (Bronner, 2011).

Genealogically, the categories of critical theory were oppositional concepts. They defined the actual contradictions of European societies. The categories managerialism expresses are the acute conflicts between ethics and managerialism remaining deeply antagonistic to society and ethics (Klikauer, 2010, 2012). Similarly, individual, class, private, community, and family denote spheres and forces not yet fully integrated into the managerialist orbit (Mueller and Carter, 2007: 182). Perhaps ‘orbit’ best describes managerialism’s asphyxiation of individuals that signifies planetary movements guided by invisible forces confined to an externally engineered perpetual treadmill of orbiting between managerial and consumptive regimes. However, managerialism’s ideological asphyxiation of people – like planetary movements – inside an eternal hallucination of competition leaves them – unmentioned by managerialism – spheres of tensions and contradictions (Davis and McAdam, 2000). With managerialism’s growing ‘system-integrative’ powers, these contradictory categories are exposed to the real danger of losing their critical connotations (Lockwood, 1964). They tend to become descriptive, deceptive, and ideological. To recapture the critical-reflective intent of these categories and to understand how this intent has been cancelled by managerialism marks a fight against managerialism’s regressive character. Positioned against that, a critical theory of managerialism joins the historical practice of critical thinking, moving from a simple critique of managerialism to a critical theory of managerialism – from highlighting its pathologies to highlighting resistance and the emancipatory strength of such a theory (Grey, 1996: 593).

Such a critique results from the fact that its analysis is forced to proceed from a position ‘outside’ the orbit of managerialism. In managerialism, it is ‘the whole’ that is in question. Just as German philosopher Hegel (2003 [1807]) once said, ‘The truth is the whole.’ At the same time, the position of a critical theory of managerialism must have a historical position in the sense that it must be grounded on ethical, societal, and economical capabilities. But the puzzlingly moving target of managerialism still involves one more ambiguity. The chimera of managerialism will fluctuate between contradictory premises:

Yet the hegemonic ideological domination of managerialism has also made it next to impossible to give a clear answer on these two options (Mumby, 1997; Schroyer, 1973). Both tendencies are there, side by side, but with the first tendency remaining dominant. Whatever preconditions for a reversal may exist, they are being used by managerialism to prevent it. Perhaps total environmental destruction, a sudden awareness of the seriousness of natural resources depletion, a rapidly deteriorating environmental and human condition, a more severe global financial crisis, conceivably a global weather or harvest catastrophe may end managerialism’s domineering position (OECD, 2012). But unless the recognition of what is being done and what is being prevented no longer cloaks present day consciousness and the behavior of individuals, even an environmental catastrophe might not lead to a qualitative change towards post-managerial living.

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. But managerialism is more than just the sum total of ideological instruments invented by management, perfected by management schools, and broadcast by corporate mass media. It can never be isolated from its environmental, social, economic, and political effects. Instead, managerialism has successfully built a system which determines the production, consumption, reproduction, and rejuvenation of its ideological apparatus and its own ideological operations that service management and corporations while sustaining managerial capitalism. But managerialism is expanding (Locke, 1996). In this, it has tended to carry totalitarian features by virtually colonizing all socially needed occupations, professions, skills, and attitudes (Edwards, 2007). But it also shapes individual needs and aspirations while simultaneously sidelining democracy, degrading it to the occasional ritual and media spectacle of ‘competition for leadership’ reduced to ticking a box under the annihilation of deliberative democracy.

Managerialism has even obliterated the classical liberal opposition between private and public existence and between real and managerially invented needs. Managerialism lends its services to new, more effective and less democratic institutions for the achievement of ever more pleasant forms of social control and cohesion (Fleming and Sturdy, 2009). Managerialism’s prime objective goes beyond reproducing itself. It seeks to achieve total control not only of workers inside managerial regimes but in society as such. Managerialism represents a more totalitarian form of control (Baldry and Barnes, 2012). The totalitarian tendency of managerial control seems to assert itself in still another sense. Managerialism has infected less developed and pre-managerial regions, communities, and societies. It spreads an image of a world created for the global assimilation to worldwide managerial capitalism under the banner of globalization.

In the face of these totalitarian features, the traditional notion of the ‘neutrality’ of theory can no longer be maintained. It sounds simply obscene. The way in which managerialism converts people into consumers and human resources involves managerial technologies and ideologies often presented as a prefabricated choice between managerialism and non-development. It anticipates specific modes of utilizing human beings while simultaneously rejecting alternative modes and cultures. Once the managerialist project has become operative in society’s basic institutions and relations, it tends to become exclusive. It has the ideological capability to determine the development of society as a whole. The latest stage in the realization of managerialism’s specific historical project is the ideological system-integration of human existence and the natural environment as elements of domination.

As managerialism unfolds, it shapes the entire universe of discourse and action, intellectual and social culture. The media of technology, ideology, culture, politics, and the economy are merged into an omnipresent system under managerialism swallowing and repulsing all alternatives. Productivity and growth potential are being used to stabilize the managerialist society and contain progress within the framework of ideological domination (Kochan, 2012). The ideological orbit of managerialism includes all significant areas that have come under its sphere of influence. This is what Habermas has described as a ‘colonization of the lifeworld’ (Habermas, 1997; Jackson, 2012). What is significant here is the critical assessment of an ideology, not a discussion of the institutional layouts of managerial and societal organizations that are governed, influenced, organized, and dominated by the ideology of managerialism. But there are still institutions that have only been partially infiltrated and there are those that have completely been colonized by managerialism. As a consequence, the term ‘managerialism’ can never be reduced to an institutional meaning but as a unifying and yet dictating ideology (Mueller and Carter, 2007: 182). Recent advances of managerialism make it nearly impossible to select societal organizations that have not come under the influence of or are not outright governed by managerialism. A critical examination of managerialism has to focus on key institutions such as those infected by managerialism; those that exist because of managerialism; those that pre-date but have become important for managerialism; and finally, institutions in the general vicinity of managerialism.

Managerialism remains the key ideology that provides the glue to link all areas of influences and spheres that are organized under its principles. It 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 colonized. Hence, managerialism remains missionary in its two main expressions of ‘Old vs New Managerialism’ (Beder, 2006; Chauvière and Mick, 2013: 142; Cuntliffe, 2009: 18). Whether new or old, managerialism has no central planning authority. There is no smoke-filled dark back room in which evil capitalists meet, there is no grand master-plan, and there is no headquarters of managerialism.

But without all that the process of ‘managerialization’ still moves on. Managerial techniques have aided this process by moving from management into society in a process that can be described as ‘managerialization’. Managerialization explains how changes in management and at work have engineered changes in society. At the gateway between management and society, it makes clear how the human mind has been trapped by managerialism showing how ideological enslavement and asphyxiation have affected society. Hence, the ideological character of managerialism needs to be contrasted to pre-managerial cultures. Early factory regimes and managerialism remain deeply authoritarian because not only managerial regimes but also managerialism itself has an inherent need for authoritarian ideologies (Fromm, 1960). At this point managerialism falls on fruitful grounds because its authoritarianism links to an already authoritarian society. But managerialism’s authoritarianism also creates distance inside management and in the management-employee relationship and thereby increases the potential for corporate immorality. Managerialism transports this model of immorality, misery, and unhappiness into society and onto the global stage.

Human unhappiness found in managerial regimes spreads its ‘unhappiness consciousness’ (Hegel, 2003 [1807]) into society and simultaneously compensates this through its relentless promotion of positive thinking and its fun-culture (Ehrenreich, 2009). Managerialism achieves this through linguistic methods when managerial language fixes and arrests meaning at work while managerialism establishes the same in society (Klikauer, 2008). It moves two-dimensional thinking of positives and negatives into the one-dimensional mindset of managerialism often generated in management schools.

Managerialism not only has the ability to reshape universities and management schools, destroy philosophy, critical sociology, labor studies, and industrial relations. It also places management studies at the very heart of universities, displacing philosophy. In management studies, managerialism’s one-dimensionality often means ‘thinking inside the box’. This has been beneficial to management studies, conformist academics, and research output rather than to quality and career prospects. Simultaneously, it has led to intellectual and scientific limitations. These limitations mirror corporate limitations when the focus on numbers and mathematical equations eliminates dialectical thinking in favor of one-dimensional thinking. Managerialism’s appropriation of social science has enhanced its own affairs for quite some time (Baritz, 1960; Jobrack, 2011).

The three key ideologies that drive the so-called scientific method in management schools remain positivism, objectivism, and empiricism. To make them appear value neutral, managerialism has cut off any elaborating on its own historical origins while never explaining their limitations in academic research. Managerialism’s newest vogue of critical management studies (CMS), for example, is designed not to alter that (Abrahamson, 1996). CMS provides an interpretive framework for management studies remaining locked inside the hegemonic paradigm of management studies (Klikauer, 2011). While remaining strangely silent on managerialism, CMS provides system correctives in support of managerialism. CMS’s system-integrative programme continues to be a management supportive critique from ‘within’ the managerialist paradigm avoiding questions ‘about’ management and managerialism, never seeking to end domination, and never enhancing the cause of emancipation. In sharp contrast to that, a critical theory of managerialism represents a subversive critique on managerialism from ‘without’.

Conclusion: Beyond Managerialism – A Different World Is Possible

The goal of a critical theory of managerialism is to move beyond the current domination of managerialism establishing post-managerial living based on emancipation from managerialism. But such a post-managerial society needs to draw out the role of environmental sustainability. It also needs to chart out how not only resistance against but also the removal of managerialism create space to think, experience, and develop a critical self-consciousness. Human imagination can be freed from managerialist ideologies and this can lead to images of post-managerial living. Corporate exploitation can be resisted and brought to an end in favor of an environmentally sustainable use of natural resources. There can be a planned use of earthly resources. This incurs a move from corporate to democratic control of uses of environmental resources. This change might need to elaborate on current popular protests and methods of social change. It explains the ‘Ethics of Resistance’ (Adorno, 2005; Finlayson, 2002).

Despite managerialism’s apparent triumph, the specter 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 barbarism, 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 breakdown. The following scenario could occur: if a transition towards post-managerial living is not actualized first; and if the inevitable effects of global warming render Freud’s warning 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 inaction against managerialism becomes 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 increasing intensity. This represents the most advanced consciousness of humanity and environmental awareness set against its most exploitative force manifested in the ideology of managerialism. Overcoming managerialism in order to pave the way towards post-managerial environmentally sustainable living constitutes nothing less than the survival of humanity (Jensen et al., 2011). 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-actualization 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.