ABSTRACT

What isn’t management and why doesn’t it matter? This compelling book leads the reader away from the stories told by managers and management theories to show the secret history of the field.

In characterizing the progress of management as a war on workers, this book offers a controversial and revealing alternative intellectual history of this overwhelming discipline. The author employs a unique range of theories and sources, including the founding fathers of management, US labour and social history, and earlier intellectual figures such as Marx and Weber alongside the contemporary insights of Foucault and European and American workerist and post-workerist thought, to shed light on the world of management.

This book is key reading for researchers and students across the social sciences. With a controversial and stimulating approach, it also engages readers with a general interest in business and management issues.

part |52 pages

Introducing the violence of management

part |50 pages

Introduction

chapter |30 pages

Management's authoritarian heart

Managing the free gifts of the general intellect and the division of labour

part |105 pages

The dark nature of management knowledge

chapter |34 pages

‘Class struggle without class?' 1

Attempting to manufacture incompetence

chapter |36 pages

‘An almost equal division of the work and the responsibility' 1

Driving towards the mass industrial subject

chapter |34 pages

‘Spontaneous cooperation' 1

Excavating the soul

part |43 pages

Management, neo-liberalism and a history of violence

chapter |22 pages

‘Confiscate the soul' 1

Taylor, Mayo and the fundamentals of management

chapter |20 pages

Management

The first neo-liberal ‘science'