Do managers really produce less for the public than is commonly believed?
Managers are among us. And not only do they exist, they play an increasingly important role in society. Over the past 80 years, we have seen an explosion in the importance of professional managers at senior and mid-level, whose basic attribute is business and financial education, and whose hallmark is the huge bonuses, usually paid once a year based on the financial results achieved.
Decisions made by managers are sanctioned by an aura of professionalism and prudence; dominant narratives portray them as a technocratic transformation of the achievements of knowledge and science into the economically efficient functioning of large organizations. In this discourse, their skills, abilities and responsibilities provide a justification for enormous salaries, often higher than those of their subordinates.
In recent years, however, the contributions of managers to the global product have begun to be questioned. Anthropologist David Graeber has become famous for the worldview presented in his books – “Senseless Work”, “Debt”, “Utopia of Regulations” – in which, among others, the action of managers is not oriented towards the effectiveness of the organization, but towards the construction of an individual position, emphasizing status and justifying its indispensability. Sociologist and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu would call this the accumulation of symbolic capital. Cultural scholar Catherine Liu, in her book “Luminaries of Progress and Virtue. Against the Professional Managerial Class”, criticizes managers as the new ruling class, endowed with an almost dictatorial agency. She expresses concern about the consequences of this phenomenon for the egalitarianism of a democratic society.
