Against Managerialist Research

Mats Persson is Associate Professor at the Inland School of Business and Social Sciences, University of Inland Norway. He has published on organisation and management in national and international journals and now focuses on managerialist research and practice. Before moving into academia, he worked for many years in the private sector. Jan Ch. Karlsson is Emeritus Professor of Sociology in the Department of Working Life Science at Karlstad University, Sweden. He is the author of Organizational Misbehaviour in the Workplace (2012), Collective Mobilization in Changing Conditions (2019), Explaining Society (2019), and The Politics of Working Life and Meaningful Waged Work (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

• Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Managerialism's anathema: rational workers and workplace democracy; 2. Classics of managerialist research; 3. Perspectives on resistance; 4. Resistance to change and the inevitability of death; 5. Chaotic concepts, derogatory terms, unreliable operationalisations; 6. Procrastination and the indeterminacy of wage labour; 7. The dark side of trust-based leadership; 8. Algorithmic managerialism; 9. Conclusion: rational workers and workplace democracy; References; Index.

'This is a new type of book on an important subject which probes deeply into the ways historical and contemporary research has been affected by managerialism – exposing the way in which research efforts have been formed and shaped by this way of thinking. The outcome is a triumph of rigorous academic thinking over the slipshod, cut price and wishful thinking that is contemporary managerialist research.' Stephen Ackroyd, Emeritus Professor, Lancaster University Management School