The Triumph of Managerialism?

New Technologies of Government and their Implications for Value

Edited by Anna Yeatman and Bogdan Costea

This collection presents a critical dialogue on managerialist forms of government between philosophy, political thought, organisational and management theory. The volume brings together essays that are concerned with technologies of government that are articulated as different iterations of managerialism.

The hallmark of managerialist discourse is value, considered as a quantifiable abstraction, where the intention is to always ‘add value’. The central question addressed here by a team of international expert authors from across a range of disciplines is this: in what ways has this abstraction of value impacted on the substantive work and ethical integrity of government and the public sector, and, more broadly, of the professions (including that of management itself)? Has it displaced this work, or simply recast it? The volume addresses audiences in social sciences, philosophy, management, business, and organisational studies.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International

Pages: 282 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅛

978-1-78660-488-0 • Hardback • October 2018 • $158.00 • (£123.00)

978-1-5381-5830-2 • Paperback • October 2021 • $42.00 • (£35.00)

978-1-78660-489-7 • eBook • October 2018 • $39.50 • (£30.00)

Subjects: Philosophy / Ethics & Moral Philosophy, Business & Economics / Business Ethics, Philosophy / Political, Philosophy / Ethics / Professional Ethics

The Triumph of Managerialism?

New Technologies of Government and their Implications for Value

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

This collection presents a critical dialogue on managerialist forms of government between philosophy, political thought, organisational and management theory. The volume brings together essays that are concerned with technologies of government that are articulated as different iterations of managerialism.

The hallmark of managerialist discourse is value, considered as a quantifiable abstraction, where the intention is to always ‘add value’. The central question addressed here by a team of international expert authors from across a range of disciplines is this: in what ways has this abstraction of value impacted on the substantive work and ethical integrity of government and the public sector, and, more broadly, of the professions (including that of management itself)? Has it displaced this work, or simply recast it? The volume addresses audiences in social sciences, philosophy, management, business, and organisational studies.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International

Pages: 282 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅛

978-1-78660-488-0 • Hardback • October 2018 • $158.00 • (£123.00)

978-1-5381-5830-2 • Paperback • October 2021 • $42.00 • (£35.00)

978-1-78660-489-7 • eBook • October 2018 • $39.50 • (£30.00)

Subjects: Philosophy / Ethics & Moral Philosophy, Business & Economics / Business Ethics, Philosophy / Political, Philosophy / Ethics / Professional Ethics

Author

Bogdan Costea is Reader in Management and Philosophy at Lancaster University. He is co-translator (with Laurence Paul Hemming) of Junger's The Worker (forthcoming).

Anna Yeatman is a professorial research fellow in the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University’s public policy program. Her many publications include Postmodern Revisionings of the Political (2014), Individualiztion and the Delivery of Welfare Services (2009) and Bureaucrats, Technocrats, Femocrats (1990).

Table of Contents

1. Introduction, Anna Yeatman / 2. Taking Everything in Hand: Managerialism and Technology, Jeff Malpas / 3. Managerialism as Will to Power: Technologies of Capital, Laurence Paul Hemming / 4. Where is Value Today: Managerialism in the Age of Self-Assertion, Bogdan Costea / 5. The Birth of the Think Tank: RAND and the Development of a Technocratic Worldview, Ihab Shalbak / 6. Competition Policy and Destruction of the Welfare State, Anna Yeatman / 7. NAPLAN and the Role of Edu-Business: New Governance, New Privatisations and New Partnerships in Australian Education Policy, Anna Hogan / 8. Compassionate Care: The Managerialisation of Virtue, Kirstine Zinck Pedersen and Anne Roelsgaard Obling / 9. Neoliberalism for the Common Good? Public Value Governance and the Downsizing of Democracy, Adam Dahl and Joe Soss / 10. Public Value and the Reframing of Citizenship, Justine Gronbæk Pors / 11. Reclaiming Professionalism in the Face of Productivism, Anna Yeatman / 12. Afterword, Bogdan Costea / Bibliography / About the Contributors / Index

Reviews

The Triumph of Managerialism is a most important and timely collection that addresses the complexities of managerialism considered as the ‘mode of governance of the entire system of relationships that is constituted by the synthesis of neoliberalism, capitalism, and technologism’. Wide-ranging historical and analytical perspectives provide a demanding, indeed indispensable decipherment and critique of this totalising system of world control.
— Richard Roberts, Visiting Emeritus Professor, University of Stirling