David knights and Hugh Willmott: Management Lives. Power and Identity in Work Organizations. . - book review

Organization Studies, Sept-Oct, 2001 by Barbara fawcett

1999, London: Sage. 174 pages.

Management discourses, particularly those emanating from the public sector in the United Kingdom, have tended to be dominated by reductionist, performance-orientated criteria. These constructions of management emphasize the importance of controlling personnel units and setting procedures for the accomplishment of legitimated tasks. There is a focus on rationality, on objectivity and linear progression. Emphasis is also placed on the need to control and negate risk.

Fawcett and Featherstone (1998) argue that 'rationality', 'objectivity', 'quality assurance' and 'evaluation', all of which can be linked to perspectives relating to such management discourses, can be regarded as forming part of a modernist project applied to a postmodernist era. Here, the large certainties of modernism, which highlight progress, the possibility of discovering the truth of any situation and meta-narratives such as psychoanalysis and Marxism, have been translated into 'small certainties'. To elucidate further, 'management' has been broken down into a series of rationally organized tasks which are seen as non-problematic and straightforward. Objectivity is striven for and questions relating to how the knowledge and power frameworks are applied and understood, how tasks are both constituted and legitimated and what the implications are, and for whom, are obscured. Smart (1993) states: 'The idea of order as a task, as a practice, as a condition to be reflected upon, preserved and nurtured is intr insic to modernity'(Smart 1993: 41). In a postmodern era, which arguably we now inhabit, the overlapping modernist search for order continues, but the grand designs of modernism have been reduced to the search for, and the implementation of 'small certainties'. Management, in this context, can be seen to relate to making people and events fit, disregarding those aspects which present a messy or incomplete picture and emphasizing instead order, rationality and linear cohesion. Performativity, measurability, predetermined objectives and outcome criteria are accepted as the way to proceed, and alternative discourses and a critical appraisal of the legitimizing processes applied, tend not to feature.

The three E's -- economy, efficiency and effectiveness -- have been incorporated into management thinking and given a softer spin for the opening years of the 21st century by being absorbed into the notion of quality assurance. Quality assurance exercises, therefore, have become a key management task. However, questions relating to who or what determines what quality is, and how is it constituted, are rarely asked. The operation of hierarchical systems and imbalances associated with gender, ethnicity, sexuality and (dis)abilities are rarely critically appraised. The belief remains prevalent that if you inculcate managers with the right material, then the right product will emerge.

Knight and Willmott challenge such management discourses. They regard managers and MBA students, not as passive objects, but as critical creative individuals whose education is about more than merely memorizing techniques, models and key points. Using illustrations drawn from novels, the theoretical framework which they apply to management and organizations is underpinned by four key concepts. These are identity, insecurity, power and inequality. Identity is seen as a social phenomenon which cannot straightforwardly be controlled, and which, in itself, can generate anxiety and insecurity. Insecurity is linked to judgement, and judgement is regarded as an implicit and explicit aspect of all human relations, social practices and institutions. They state that people are orientated towards either dominating or ascribing subordinate status to themselves in order to escape from being adversely judged by others. They note the attraction of individuals personally investing in established legitimized institutions. Pow er, is viewed not as a thing which some people have and others do not, but as a social relation where its operation can have both positive and negative effects. With regard to the latter, inequality is related to an understanding of structured imbalances and divisions. In this context, the insidious power of patriarchal and postcolonial discourses, although refrained to take on board 21st century terminology, is still seen to hold sway.

In the book, clear connections are made between managing everyday life and managing work organizations. The influence of Weber and bureaucracy, Taylor and scientific management and more organically orientated post-bureaucratic forms of organization are reviewed from the perspective of the theoretical framework. In this context, three key points are emphasized. These are that, both within organizations and the personal sphere, instrumental rationality dominates personal morality; cultural prescriptions extend rather than reverse this displacement; and despite the influence of instrumental rationality, relations of power and inequality, expressed in personal agendas and values, serve to subvert the dominating influence of instrumental rationality.