Management and the Dominance of Managers

This book investigates the portrait of management as value-free 'technicality' and challenges the image of managers as the selfless pursuer of an organization's survival and development. It explains that individual interests and careers of managers are only part of a wider picture with managers as the new ruling class using and misusing organizations for their own personal and group interests.

Since 2007 Dr Thomas Diefenbach is a Lecturer in Management at Strathclyde Business School, Glasgow, Scotland. Before this, he had been working as a Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, UK, and for more than five years as a Research Fellow at Open University Business School, UK, and at Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. Before joining academia Thomas had been working for 14 years in industry and service organisations, as a self-employed consultant and freelance lecturer. His main areas of expertise are: general management and organisation studies, international business, strategy, change management, intangible assets, Critical Management Studies - all as socio-philosophical interrogations of the relations between the individual, organisations, and society with the focus on power, interests, and ideology.

List of Tables and Figures. Acknowledgments. 1. Introduction. 2. Managers and Managerialism. 3. Power and Control within Organisations. 4. Managers' Interests in Dominance. 5. The Ideology of Management. 6. A Theory of the Dominance of Managers. 7. How Managers Create, Justify, and Conduct Strategic Change in their Organisation - A Case Study. 8. Critique of Management and Orthodox Organisations. Notes. Bibliography. Index.