The business manager is a ubiquitous
figure in today's economic context. The functional role is principally involved
in handling, manipulating or directing human and other resources toward a given
goal or telos.
The function’s sheer breadth of applicability through the modern economy brings
with it the semblance of legitimacy and even power. Within a given firm, the
business manager race occupies positions stretching from the factory-line
foreman or department supervisor to the executive suite; rank alone does not
promote an executive from being rightfully reckoned as one. At first glance,
the “power tie” may seem to exude Nietzsche’s depiction of strength. The
warriorlike nature
of competition for jobs and markets epitomized as “dog-eat-dog” in the “corporate
jungle” would seem to resonate with Nietzsche’s version of strength as the
courage of the noble warrior in shamelessly plucking, subduing, and
appropriating or exploiting the spoils of war. To Nietzsche, strength is
“a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a
thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs.” To the extent that
“growing a business” involves beating competitors
and climbing the corporate ladder involves toppling rivals,
Nietzsche’s desire to throw down so as to become master seems to be
substantiated in the modern world.
The
full essay has been incorporated into (or swallowed up by) On
the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics
and Management, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.
