ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces and examines corporate managerialism. The business of corporate managerialism centers on three principles: centralizing power, minimizing labor costs, and increasing accountability. Outsourcing typically involves a university or department contracting with an external corporation, with the aim of cutting costs and improving services. Centralizing power, minimizing labor costs, and increasing accountability have a debilitating influence on custodians by excluding them from key policy and decision making and inhibiting them from gaining a voice. It concludes with a discussion of six aspects of corporate managerialism in the context of custodial life at Harrison University and Compton University. The treatment of low-wage workers on campus is an issue that flies below the public radar, is ignored by public-policy officials and college trustees, and is dismissed by college administrators as little more than a nuisance. Over the past two decades, students have used living wage protests to pressure university administrators to temper corporatization efforts.
