"(T)o say that the individual is culturally constituted has become a truism. . . . We assume, almost without question, that a self belongs to a specific cultural world much as it speaks a native language." James Clifford

A Nietzschean Critique of the Modern Manager

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.