The Critique of Management

1 Setting the Scene: Opening Up the Self-evident Concept of Management

DOI: 10.4324/9781003231875-1

One way to open up the concept of management for philosophical reflection is by tracing the different meanings it has in history. Historical analysis can help us to question the self-evidence of the current association of management as managerial power and mechanism of control, to deconstruct the presupposed concepts that always already structure our understanding of management, and to explore the sedimentary conceptual structures which show themselves in the words and notions we self-evidently use in our understanding of management practices.

Although most philosophers in the history of philosophy did not develop an explicit philosophy of management, ...