Table Of ContentDavid Knights + Hugh Willmott
MANAGEMENT LIVES
Management Lives
Management Lives
Power and Identity
in
Work Organizations
David Knights
and
Hugh Willmott
SAGE Publications
London • Thousand Oaks • New Delhi
© Knights and Willmott, 1 999
First published 1 999
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or utilized
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in
writing from the Publishers.
SAGE Publications Ltd
6 Bonhill Street
London EC2A 4PU
SAGE Publications Inc.
2455 Teller Road
Thousand Oaks, California 9 1 320
SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd
32, M-B1ock Market
Greater Kailash - I
New Delhi 1 10 048
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 0 8039 8333 6
ISBN 0 8039 8334 4 ( pbk)
Library of Congress catalog card number available
Typeset by Mayhew Typesetting. Rhayader, Powys
Printed in Great Britain by Redwood Books,
Trowbridge, Wiltshire
Contents
Preface
1
2
Background
Approach
Usage
Acknowledgements viii
viii
ix
x
Managing Knowledge I
Against the text
Introducing the novel
From textbook to novel
Nice Work
Relevance of the novel
Managing knowledge
Information and understanding
Textbook syndrome
Guru syndrome
Managing as a lived experience
Vic the manager
Nice play?
The personal and the political
Interpreting everyday life
Interpreting the factory
Interpreting the lecture
The politics of teaching and the struggle to learn
An overview
Summary 2
4
5
6
8
9
10
11
12
14
14
15
16
18
18
20
21
24
26
Organizing Work 30
31
31
33
35
36
37
40
44
45
Conceptualizing (working) life
Power, inequality, identity and insecurity
Working lives
The historical meaning of work
Industrial work
The existential meaning of work
Orientations to work
What makes work meaningful?
Industry and society
Academia and society
Summary
50
vi Contents
3 Identity and Insecurity at Work
53
The burden of identity
54
The battle for human nature
57
The selfish gene?
58
Contextualizing human nature
59
Claims about human nature
60
Behaviourism: stimulus and response
62
The illusion of free will
64
Critical reflections on behaviourism
65
Symbolic interactionism: meaning and self
68
The process of self-formation
70
Critical reflections on symbolic interactionism
73
Beyond behaviourism and symbolic interactionism
75
The precariousness of identity in the context of work and society 76
The limits of rational control
76
Identity formation in conditions of uncertainty
The context of capitalism
79
Resistance and control
80
Identity and exploitation
8 1
Identity and consumption
82
Summary
84
4 Power and Inequality at Work
88
Devotion to a master
89
Devotion to success
9 1
Conceptualizing power
93
Lukes's three-dimensional model
95
The question of 'real interests'
Conceptualizing inequality
99
Rereading the novels through an understanding of inequality 1 0 1
Nice Work
1 0 1
The Remains of the Day
1 02
The Bonfire of the Vanities
1 03
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
1 05
Discussion
1 07
Dynamics of inequality
1 08
Stereotyping
1 08
Domination
1 1 0
Subordination
III
Indifference
1 12
Resistance
1 1 3
Summary
1 1 6
5
Managing to Manage
Everyday managing
Analysing mundane managing
1 2 1
1 22
1 24
Contents
Making the modern organization
Weber and bureaucracy
Taylor and scientific management
The denial of morality?
Refining the modern organization
Remembering Barnard
'Post-bureaucratic' organization
Reflections on post-bureaucracy
Managing to manage
Managerial manipulation
Issues of hierarchy and accountability
Identity and insecurity
Power and inequality
Summary and conclusion
Appendix A
1
2
3
4
Synopses of Novels
Nice Work
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The Remains of the Day
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Appendix B
The Conceptual Framework
Identity
Insecurity
Power
Inequality
An illustration
Index
vii
1 28
1 30
1 33
1 35
1 38
1 38
1 40
1 42
1 43
1 43
145
1 46
148
1 5 1
1 58
1 58
1 59
1 60
1 6 1
1 63
1 63
1 64
1 66
1 67
1 69
1 7 1
Preface
The mind is primarily concerned, not with measures and locations, but with
being and meaning. I
This book has been long in its genesis. The original idea to write such a text
occurred several years, and almost as many draft manuscripts, ago. It is the
product of a teaching collaboration on a course that we have developed over
many years.
Background
The idea for the book was prompted initially by our understanding of
managing as an everyday activity that involves interactions between people
- interactions that are not unrelated or entirely dissimilar to other spheres
of life, except perhaps in the rhetoric and hype that surround management.
Since most management textbooks do not make the connection between
managing and everyday life, and indeed envelop the activity of management within an academic and professional mystique, we have been drawn
to alternative sources (e.g. novels) that might enable students to relate
accounts of management to their own experience.
Approach
The title Management Lives! is intended to be ambiguous and a little
controversial. It is concerned to illuminate the lives of people who, in
different ways, are involved or affected by management. It includes those
expressly identified as managers, but it extends to others who are managed,
including the customers that are increasingly the targets of a competitive
preoccupation with customer 'care' and service programmes. We refrain
from treating management from the point of view of a set of theories and
or a series of techniques that examine what are assumed to be effective yet
diverse ways of managing (e.g. motivation, leadership, training, organizational structure). Instead, we seek to address managing as a vibrant, complex, challenging and even exciting human experience. Our approach is
designed to counter the image of management as a branch of science or
engineering, and to encourage an appreciation of managing as part and
parcel of life and how it is lived.
Preface ix
This approach accords with a more general recognition among teachers
that education is best facilitated where students identify with, and are
actively involved in, the learning process. In order to 'make management
live', we explore the lives of those who are touched by it, using the concepts
of power, inequality, identity and insecurity to guide and enrich our
analysis. In our view, these key concepts are central for understanding so
many facets of human life - from work to the family, from business to
leisure, from reproduction to sexuality and from the sacred to the profane.
Instead of organizing our course around established topics or focusing
on the writings of authorities in management - such as Maslow, Fiedler or
Mintzberg - we have encouraged our students to read more widely from a
literature that would not conventionally be on a management syllabus.
This has included the writings of Erich Fromm, Robert Pirsig and Harry
Braverman, for example. We have also encouraged them to read a number
of novels that offer a fictional exploration of central ideas in the course. A
majority of students found the ideas explored in these texts more relevant
to them personally and stimulating intellectually than the staple diet of
management textbooks and associated readings. At the same time, they
found a challenge in the invitation to read novels in a different, more
reflexive and analytical way - as illustrative of ideas rather than just a
good story. It could also be disturbing when, in contrast to management
texts, students made connections between the ideas explored in the novels
and their own lives and relationships. In sum, this book is less concerned
with the specific and detailed, 'technical' functions of management, as
described in most textbooks, than with the ways in which these technical
activities affect the lives of managers. On the other hand, we are not
concerned with the lives of management as a piece of voyeurism, as might
be a journalist, so much as how the lives of managers, in the broadest
sense, affect their work.
Students told us that the novels we recommended made what we were
seeking to communicate more accessible and meaningful. Otherwise rather
abstract ideas that previously had been perceived to have relevance only
for passing exams suddently came alive. The enthusiasm encouraged us to
move further in this direction. Instead of simply providing an extensive list
of novels that might be read by students as a supplement to more orthodox
literature, we began integrating a small selection of these novels into the
course. Gradually, they became primary rather than secondary reading and
this book is a reflection of that evolutionary development in the course.
Usage
Since we began to use novels in the mid- 1 980s, we have discovered that
their use in teaching management students is not as unique as we first
thought. Colleagues elsewhere have told us how they also use novels to
illuminate particular ideas or to leaven otherwise technical treatments of
