ABSTRACT
This chapter offers the reader an overview of the evolution of managerial ideologies. It analyzes these ideologies in a comparative historical framework. The chapter discusses how the two theoretical perspectives dealing with this subject, the theory of the subtilization of control and S. R. Barley and Gideon Kunda’s pendulum thesis, stand in the light of the historical reconstruction. It reviews the key findings obtained by relating stages of capitalism’s development to managerial ideologies. The chapter argues that a tendency of increasing fictional content can be observed in the discourse of management thought. The idea that there is a certain degree of association between managerial ideologies and phases of capitalism suggests that certain aspects of the evolution of the former are a result of changes in the latter. As capitalism evolved from the stage of free competition towards organized capitalism, the organizational landscape also altered, and with it, the managerial ideologies.
