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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.
List 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 th
About the author
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).Bogdan Costea is Reader in Management and Philosophy at Lancaster University.
Summary
This book brings management and organisational theory into dialogue with political thought and philosophy. It explains the allure of managerialism in relation to contemporary ethical and political perplexities and shows how managerialism displaces the question of authority and its relationship to politics, government and the professions.
