From Kevin Carson's review of Chris Dillow's The End of Politics: New Labour and the Folly of Managerialism:
The hierarchical, authoritarian corporation is especially ill-suited to knowledge work, and other forms of production in which human capital is the most important factor.
It might make sense to give the order "be here by nine o'clock." But it's just gibberish to say, "be creative."
In an authoritarian environment, workers prefer (in the words of Kenneth Cloke and Joan Goldsmith) to "suppress their innate capacity to solve problems and wait instead for commands from above." [p. 279]
You would be surprised how small the corporation can be while still expressing this absurdity (although the small ones tend to be worlds better than the bigger competitiors). As a software developer who wants to stay in this business, I'm finding out more and more that I'm probably going to need to go freelance at some point to gain any sort of satisfaction from the work I do. And more than that, I'm interested in experimenting with organizational models that could sustain individual motivation and creativity without weighing it down with false managerial priorities. I'd like to put my money where my mouth is and tie my radical ideas with entrepreneurialism.
Ultimately, I want to work with others - but the corporate form makes this cooperation so grating. It's never organic - it can never be organic by definition - because I'm being ordered to cooperate. What is that?
Read this article
