Management is becoming the new ideology of our global world, particularly the kind of management taught in business schools and conveyed by large global consulting firms.
by Luigino Bruni
published in Il Messaggero di S. Antonio on 06/04/2023
Management is becoming the new ideology of our global world, particularly the kind of management taught in business schools and conveyed by large global consulting firms. In the 20th century, social criticism had turned towards liberal economic theory, identifying theoretical economists as the great enemy to be fought in order to build a finally just and egalitarian society.
While intellectuals, whether Catholics or socialists, were fighting this war, in the engineering faculties and business schools the techniques and tools of management were evolving, and in recent decades have progressively transformed into the “ideology of management” built around the three dogmas of incentive, leadership and merit. This ideology is spreading everywhere, including Christian communities and churches, where leadership courses for pastors and movement leaders are now multiplying, where you can no longer hold a conference or general chapter without professional coaches or facilitators from the business world, as if we had suddenly forgotten that ancient wisdom of how to conduct community meetings and assemblies.
Even the European world and countries with a Catholic culture like Italy are undergoing a rapid evolution and cultural change. We Catholics were so convinced that the laws of life did not follow those of merit that we had relegated it to heaven, where it was the criterion for “deserving” hell or heaven. The Protestant world, on the other hand, in the name of salvation by sola gratia (Luther) or by predestination (Calvin) had expelled merit from heaven and hell, and a few centuries later invented meritocracy on earth (which originated in the United States). Business is exporting this Protestant humanism from the US (and Northern Europe) all over the world, and today it is doing so above all with the ideology of management, which has penetrated so far into Italy that the name of the Ministry of Education has been changed to “Education and Merit”.
Thus, instead of the ancient ethics of virtues on which we had founded our civilisation, the ideology of management and of global and total consultancy offers a set of principles, good practices, elements of psychology, quotations from the classics of philosophy, sociology and economics, a few anecdotes of game theory, many flow charts and some wonderful power points. And finally, consultants of all kinds and names are converting management principles into operational management and governance tools. Big business has thus become the paradigm that everyone should follow if they want to do good and serious things. In the 20th century it was democracy, hence participation, that offered the model to be extended to all civil life. But while the first democratic transformation since the ancien régime took place amidst conflict and great social struggles, the great ethical and cultural transformation that business is bringing about in the world is taking place amidst (almost) general indifference. We are not talking about denying the importance of economic values and virtues, that would be foolish and wrong. The problem is a different one, and it concerns neither business nor the necessary management, let alone the entrepreneurs who are the first victims of this new chapter. The problems concern the ideology of management, which arrives everywhere because, by way of cheating, it presents itself secularly as a technique, and therefore as something necessary and non-ideological. Perhaps it is time to become aware of it and talk about it more.
Photo credits: © Giuliano Dinon / Archivio MSA
