In 1950 only 4.8% of students were enrolled in management courses at Australian universities. This was the second lowest percentage among nine different fields of study measured. The lowest percentage was in agriculture (2.5%) and the highest was in arts (36.9%). By 2010 this had changed significantly. 21.8% of students were enrolled in business/management courses. Management education was the highest percentage across ten different fields of study – the creative arts represented only 3.7% of students registered.
It’s interesting to ask the why there was such a change in the courses students chose. The answer, of course, is that it was students were being told increasingly that in order to get a job and to succeed in work they needed to study, not the elements of the job they were doing, but management and, most importantly, managing people. They should train to be managers. In other words, emphasis was being placed not on doing things or analysing things, but on being leaders and specifically being leaders in a business environment.
This change came about because of the increasing emphasis placed by business on increasing profits by managing the workforce. There are enough stories being told about how Amazon manages it’s workers with close monitoring, constant assessment and appraisal and a rigid discipline. It’s not just Amazon who have such tight methods of control. Workers are encouraged to be part of a team with a common focus. (How often do you hear workers in supermarkets referred to as team members and their managers as team leaders.)
This is a change which has come about over the past few decades, and it is a change which has largely been caused by the fact that increasing numbers of companies are looking, not for people with an advanced education or even an education focussed on the business in which they are engaged (though with multi-national companies it is now difficult to know what business they are engaged in), but an education in management. The emphasis is not on how to develop a business in a particular area, but how to manage people – and these methods can apply in any business.
Of course, this approach to management is not new and what is interesting about Free to Obey by Johann Chapoutot is the way in which it locates a significant development in this kind of business management to the methods used by the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. In particular, Chapoutot focusses on Reinhard Hohn who became a general in the SS and had a leading role in developing the management of German industry and management to face the requirements of the Third Reich.
Following the war Hohn managed to avoid an serious repercussions from his role in the governance of the Third Reich and went on to become a teacher of management and a person who developed a philosophy of management practice which was most significantly taught at the management school of Bad Harzburg. Following on from the style of the Harvard Business School, the school at Bad Harzburg taught management techniques to students from the largest and most important companies from Germany and abroad. It is, perhaps, not too difficult to credit the education taught with being at least in part responsible for the German economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s.
What was taught was a particular view of managing a workforce which has had a significant impact on the way in which companies are run across the developed world. Being part of a team, focussing on the role of leaders, setting targets for workers to achieve and being ruthless in dealing with ‘team members’ who do not achieve their goals. The elimination of trade union representation is central to this. When you are part of the team at work you cannot be a part of a team in the union. If you want to win or even survive at work the union must go and, a sign of the success of this approach, is that the unions have gone. These were all significant in the way in which Nazi Germany operated and rather than being defeated by the war, they became central to the way in which capitalism sought to dominate workers and maximise profits.
It seems management philosophy lost the war but won the peace!
This view of the world is one which extends to all areas and – I will write about this at another time – you can see its effects in the delivery of popular news, advertising and sport. In fact, it is based on a view of the world and the view of our role in it which is not too far aware from how one of the most brutal regimes in history operated. It seems to me that many of the problems of the world are caused looking at the world through this management focus. Of being part of a team and excluding those who are not. Seeing those outside your area as being insignificant or even worthless (these are Nazi standpoints) and wanting success at any expense – including that of the well-being of the planet.
