The Virtual Rambler

Number two: 17^th March 2010

Managerialism

During a prolonged spell of voluntary unemployment in the 1980s , I was dragooned onto a Training Opportunities Program ; after a crash course in commercial computer programming , a compulsory job came my way at an outfit called SYSTIME in South Leeds. It soon became apparent that everyone in the company had been hired after doing TOPS courses and that few , if any , of them had any real expertise in either the hardware or software this firm ostensibly dealt in. All of that , I was told , was being outsourced. What they did here was to move quickly and look busy at all times , preferably carrying a clipboard or sheaf of computer output with you on all occasions , even when going to the toilet. Any inquiries were met by the explanation that we were here to shake things up , cascade a positive attitude , help the company to go forward. “Like the light brigade ? ” I suggested. The whole enterprise reminded me of a Sherlock Holmes short story , The Red-Headed League ⁽¹⁾ . There the ruse covered an attempted bank robbery ; in this case , it was a front for the modernising practice of massaging statistics such as the unemployment figures.

That primitive illustration of Managerialism was an early guide to future trends , whereby a manager required no expertise in the process being managed but might move from one lucrative position of power to another in a completely different sector. Their brief in every case was to reduce or eliminate unproductive traditions such as holidays , sick pay or compassionate leaves of absence while imposing heavier workloads on their individual employees. In a book review of 1946 ⁽²⁾ Orwell likened the lot of such employees as “always to be led or driven , as one gets a pig back to the sty by kicking it on the bottom or rattling a stick inside a swill bucket , according to the needs of the moment”. When they paused from setting ever more punitive targets , innovative management was introducing wellbeing initiatives for their inferiors. Now the job market sought employees who would be “very driven , highly adaptable and passionate about their work ” , even if this entailed stacking shelves or packing biscuits all day long. Every employer across the land was “pursuing excellence” , when they weren’t busy “putting the customer first”. The language in use doesn’t set out to represent any version of reality. Its purpose is mere self-endorsement.

By the time I was nearing retirement I had worked for many years in that sector of commerce once known as Education and had witnessed great strides away from promoting an elitist concept of scholarship. For every hapless teacher now standing in front of a room full of texting students , a hundred managers had risen up in the background , as self-perpetuating as fungi spoors on a muck-heap. These were the prescient men and women who realised this new service ethos had created a niche that enabled half-wits to proffer advice and guidance to people who had previously required neither. For decades they had taught subjects on the basis of their own knowledge of them and how it was best disseminated , before successive governments imposed a targeting mentality even where , as in the provision of Public Services , Health and Education , it was inappropriate. The end result was a top-heavy layer of people whose work was spurious but handsomely rewarded and an increasingly harassed body of lecturers.

Knowledge gained via systematic study (the original goal of the putative scholar) had been rendered suspect by the populist rhetoric of the day. X marked the spot where the plummeting graph of academic standards was crossed by the rising gradient of New Labour’s Learning and Teaching Quality Validations. The introduction of league tables in which positions were measured by final degree grades encouraged widespread grade inflation via the continuous subtraction of content the students found difficult and a regular manipulation of modes (even results) of assessment. The so-called knowledge economy was soon shaking things up , cascading positive attitudes and helping the nation as a whole to go forward , as it devoted itself to the propagation of ignorance.


Wig.

⁽¹⁾ From The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) by Arthur Conan Doyle.

⁽²⁾ James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution.

Archive

Virtual rambler #1 – Posturing, 9^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #2 – Managerialism, 17^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #3 – Nostalgia, 27^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #4 – The Alpha Male, 13^th April 2010
Virtual rambler #5 – General Elections, 3^rd May 2010
Virtual rambler #6 – The Leisure Industry, 15^th May 2010
Virtual rambler #7 – Guide to The World Cup, 15^th June 2010
Virtual rambler #8 – Human Nature, 12^th July 2010
Virtual rambler #9 – Communities, 13^th August 2010
Virtual rambler #10 – Worlds Apart, 6^th October 2010
Virtual rambler #11 – Dawdling, 22^nd November 2010
Virtual rambler #12 – ELVIS, 24^th December 2010
Virtual rambler #13 – Transience, 4^th February 2011
Virtual rambler #14 – Regional Accents, 15^th April 2011
Virtual rambler #15 – The Afterlife, 21^st July 2011
Virtual rambler #16 – Bizspeak, 27^th August 2011
Virtual rambler #17 – Night Walks, 3^rd October 2011
Virtual rambler #18 – Bob Dylan and Charles Dickens, 8^th November 2011
Virtual rambler #19 – Another Nutty Professor, 16^th December 2011
Virtual rambler #20 – Customer Choice, 16^th January 2012
Virtual rambler #21 – Wearing Shorts, 18^th February 2012
Virtual rambler #22 – A Brief History of Progress, 17^th March 2012
Virtual rambler #23 – The Myth of Sisyphus, 16^th April 2012
Virtual rambler #24 – Natural History, 20^th May 2012
Virtual rambler #25 – European Self Importance, 26^th June 2012
Virtual rambler #26 – Sweet Dreams, 25^th July 2012
Virtual rambler #27 – Excess, 17^th August 2012
Virtual rambler #28 – In Denial, 20^th September 2012
Virtual rambler #29 – The Way, 21^st October 2012
Virtual rambler #30 – On Rambling, 14^th November 2012
Virtual rambler #31 – Gazing Into The Abyss, 18^th December 2012
Virtual rambler #32 – Intellectual Gloom, 25^th January 2013
Virtual rambler #33 – Great Human Achievements, 20^th February 2013
Virtual rambler #34 – Autobiography, 20^th March 2013
Virtual rambler #35 – Your Good Health, 21^st April 2013
Virtual rambler #36 – Deconstruction, 20^th May 2013
Virtual rambler #37 – My Home Town, 19^th June 2013
Virtual rambler #38 – Ancient History, 21^st July 2013
Virtual rambler #39 – Possessions, 20^th August 2013
Virtual rambler #40 – Sporting Stoics, 20^th September 2013
Virtual rambler #41 – Free Time, 20^th October 2013
Virtual rambler #42 – Ewan Don't Allow, 20^th November 2013
Virtual rambler #43 – A Literary Nexus, 20^th December 2013
Virtual rambler #44 – Taking Liberties, 16^th January 2014
Virtual rambler #45 – More or Less, 20^th February 2014
Virtual rambler #46 – Under Control, 20^th March 2014
Virtual rambler #47 – Waiting, 20^th April 2014
Virtual rambler #48 – They Rose Without Trace, 20^th May 2014
Virtual rambler #49 – Bigger Impression , Smaller Footprint, 20^th June 2014
Virtual rambler #50 – Terpsichorean Instrumentations, 18^th July 2014
Virtual rambler #51 – Socially Mediated, 19^th August 2014
Virtual rambler #52 – Rambling Into The Sunset, 20^th September 2014