ABSTRACT
The sectional managerialism which prevails among economists holds that the separation of ownership from control engenders the uninhibited play of managerial self-interest. Corporate strategy, they argue, is centred on the pursuit of those goals which enhance managers’ prospects of career advancement through promotion and job transfer (Williamson 1964; Marris 1964). It has been argued in the preceding chapters that there is little evidence to support the conventional view of the divorce between ownership and control. Entrepreneurial capitalists remain an important element in all capitalist economies, but the dominant form of enterprise, most notably in the Anglo-American economies, is not management-controlled but controlled through a constellation of interests. It is, nevertheless, possible that sectional managerialists may have correctly identified important alterations in corporate goals, even though they have been mistaken in their understanding of the causes of these changes. If this is, indeed, the case, it is necessary to show the causal links which actually exist between mode of control, corporate strategy, and managerial motives.
