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Against Management: Organization in the Age of Managerialism, by Martin Parker. Cambridge, UK; Maiden, MA: Polity Press, 2002. 256 pp. $59.95 cloth. ISBN: 0-7456-2925-3. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 0-7456-2926-1.
This frankly polemical book ("I am not going to spend a lot of space carefully sifting evidence in order to reach balanced conclusions . . ." [p. 9], Martin Parker announces in his Introduction.) attacks the contemporary practice of management in public and private organizations, as well as management theory and efforts to reform or humanize contemporary management. The study of organization, and concomitantly of management, has been a staple topic in sociology since, at least, Max Weber offered the powerful metaphor of the "iron cage," enabling the collective while simultaneously constraining the individual. The topic is also ubiquitous in business schools around the world, indeed, establishing a discipline of management studies.
Parker has read a great deal of the scholarship produced in the past near-century, including empirical studies and theoretical musings, and this book offers the reader a chance to watch him think about what he has read. It is a fascinating, provocative, and ultimately, frustrating book.
Modern management, Parker contends, controls,...