Management: Helping vs. Controlling

I submit that subordinates typically view managers as having control issues—by which I mean that managers tend to be obsessed with maintaining control. The pathology because really bad when the manager would rather have a project fail than give up control. Lest it be thought that management as control is intrinsic to managerial capitalism, an alternative approach proffers a way out.

The full essay has been incorporated into, On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

A Nietzschean Critique of the Modern Manager

The functional managerial role in modern business is weak by Nietzsche’s standard. That is to say, a manager is of the vulgar rather than of noble strength. After highlighting Nietzsche's project more generally, I discuss his notions of strength and weakness. I then delineate Nietzsche’s attitudes toward wealth, trade and modern industrial culture—the immediate context for his concept of the modern business manager. I argue that Nietzsche views this context as decadent. Within this framework, Nietzsche’s rendering of the primordial commercial relationship can be taken as his genealogy of the modern business manager. Finally, I describe the modern business manager as akin to the ascetic priest in being a herd animal desperately seeking to dominate the herd and, presumptuously, even the strong.   

The full essay is at "A Nietzschean Critique of the Modern Manager."