Abstract

This collection presents a critical dialogue on managerialist forms of government between philosophy, political thought, organisational and management theory. The volume brings together essays that are concerned with technologies of government that are articulated as different iterations of managerialism.

The hallmark of managerialist discourse is value, considered as a quantifiable abstraction, where the intention is to always ‘add value’. The central question addressed here by a team of international expert authors from across a range of disciplines is this: in what ways has this abstraction of value impacted on the substantive work and ethical integrity of government and the public sector, and, more broadly, of the professions (including that of management itself)? Has it displaced this work, or simply recast it? The volume addresses audiences in social sciences, philosophy, management, business, and organisational studies.
Bogdan Costea is Reader in Management and Philosophy at Lancaster University. He is co-translator (with Laurence Paul Hemming) of Junger's The Worker (forthcoming).

Anna Yeatman is a professorial research fellow in the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University’s public policy program. Her many publications include Postmodern Revisionings of the Political (2014), Individualiztion and the Delivery of Welfare Services (2009) and Bureaucrats, Technocrats, Femocrats (1990).
The Triumph of Managerialism is a most important and timely collection that addresses the complexities of managerialism considered as the ‘mode of governance of the entire system of relationships that is constituted by the synthesis of neoliberalism, capitalism, and technologism’. Wide-ranging historical and analytical perspectives provide a demanding, indeed indispensable decipherment and critique of this totalising system of world control.
Richard Roberts, Visiting Emeritus Professor, University of Stirling