Gerard Hanlon | Queen Mary, University of London (original) (raw)
Papers by Gerard Hanlon
Oragnization , 2024
This paper argues the military are a central force in creating industrial-capitalist organisation... more This paper argues the military are a central force in creating industrial-capitalist organisational order. It suggests that in the interests of preparedness for organised violence, the military come to see work organisation as a problem and so develop an 'organising logic' built on surveillance, control, and hierarchy. Using Foucault on discipline, security and population, and Marxist understandings of modes of production, it demonstrates how the military ensured productive workforces. In so doing, it developed a production network-a security apparatus-located in the real subsumption of labour, technical and bureaucratic controls, deskilling, and separating strategy and operations to ensure control, productivity, and state security. These processes and organisational forms were then diffused to the private sphere to reshape organisational order.
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 1999
It almost goes without saying that the political and socio-economic landscape of Britain has unde... more It almost goes without saying that the political and socio-economic landscape of Britain has undergone a major upheaval in the past twenty years. One element of this has been the ongoing ideological struggle within the professions over what exactly professionalism means. This struggle has come about because for the first time in fifty years or more a real battle is being fought to determine who controls professions and professionals, how they are assessed, what their function is, how their services are to be delivered and paid for, and so on. I refer to this struggle as a crisis of professionalism. This contest is ongoing in the legal system, the National Health Service (NHS), education, accountancy, social work and other areas. It is important because it is part of a wider struggle over whether or not vast areas of social activity should be regulated by the market and/or by quasi-markets or by some form of welfarist-social-democratic structure. In short, the crisis of professionalism (and professionals) is at the centre of the attempt by the New Right to destroy the social-democratic consensus that dominated Western capitalism for a significant part of this century.
The Dark Side of Management, 2015
Part I: Introducing the Violence of Management Introduction: Managing the Free Gifts of the Gener... more Part I: Introducing the Violence of Management Introduction: Managing the Free Gifts of the General Intellect and the Division of Labour Chapter 1: Management's Authoritarian Heart Part II: The Dark Nature of Management Knowledge Chapter 2: 'Class Struggle without Class?' - Attempting to manufacture incompetence Chapter 3: 'An Almost Equal Division of the Work and the Responsibility' - Driving towards the mass industrial subject Chapter 4: 'Spontaneous Co-Operation' - Excavating the soul Part III: Conclusion - Management, neoliberalism and a history of violence Chapter 5: 'Confiscate the Soul' - Taylor, Mayo and the fundamentals of management Chapter 6: Management: The first neoliberal 'Science' Appendix: Management, Durkheim and Discipline
Just over three decades ago Zola (1973) published a paper with the title ‘Pathways to the Doctor:... more Just over three decades ago Zola (1973) published a paper with the title ‘Pathways to the Doctor: from person to patient’. This seminal work became one of the most influential and cited articles in medical sociology. Based on an empirical analysis of patients’ accounts of their reasons for attending a hospital outpatients in the USA Zola identified his five now famous ‘triggers’ (see below), which prompt consultation with formal health care providers. But of course there have been substantial socio-economic, political and technological transformations since Zola carried out his fieldwork. The late 1960s and early 1970s was a period that is characterised as being an era of Fordism, modernism, professionalism, industrialism and so on. This is in contrast to the post-Fordist, late modern, consumerist, information age which is presumed to more accurately capture the features of contemporary life. The aim of this chapter is to reconsider the work of the likes of Zola and his contemporari...
Academy of Management Proceedings, 2014
This paper argues that Kirzner’s rendition of the entrepreneurial function is the most appropriat... more This paper argues that Kirzner’s rendition of the entrepreneurial function is the most appropriate for understanding what Marazzi (2011) calls the ‘Google Model of Production’ (Marazzi, 2011). It argues that rather than imagining or creating, the entrepreneurial function located in value capture best describes the contemporary economy. Within this economy, the dispersed knowledge of individuals who act as free or subsidized labourers/consumers/users, is captured and its use concentrated by corporations through the use of property rights and other forms of ‘lock-in’ in order to take quasi-monopoly rents. Furthermore, because this entrepreneurial function restricts the use of dispersed knowledge the potential for innovation and productivity is limited by making non-rival, non-excludable goods both rival and excludable.
This extended review of David Graeber's The utopia of rules: On technology, stupidity, an... more This extended review of David Graeber's The utopia of rules: On technology, stupidity, and the secret joys of bureaucracy supports his argument that neo-liberalism needs to develop ever more bureaucratic rules in its bid to reshape the economy. As such, the bureaucracy/post-bureaucracy debate is a red herring and rather what is occurring is an elite led intervention in the economy to use bureaucratic rules to embed competition on large swathes of the society whilst avoiding it for themselves.
Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 2020
Abstract In their paper On the Centrality of Peripheral Research and the Dangers of Tight Boundar... more Abstract In their paper On the Centrality of Peripheral Research and the Dangers of Tight Boundary Objects, the authors call for a more ambitious accounting research programme. However, their call whilst is difficult is also perhaps hard to pin down. The article needs to be disseminated and debated, because it crystalizes for accounting research a fundamental moral position in knowledge production within a liberal capitalist society. As such. Different perspectives and indeed voices should be included and a certain egalitarianism sponsored. In a liberal capitalist society this is a good in itself (Rawls, 2009; Appiah, 2017). Surely many would argue this is the role indeed the essence of the University? We readily take up the paper’s invitation and are gratified by the professionalism and commitment of the authors. Accounting scholarship, like all parts of liberal capitalist society, requires constant vigilance and reform to approximate these liberal ideas of voice, inclusion, and equal participation. However, the paper is not merely for a liberal position ought to be. Rather the authors also insist that including voices from the periphery will lead to better scholarship. In other words, they argue that peripheral research possesses an intrinsic characteristic that can alter and improve accounting research. In this reply, we will set aside what makes it hard to resist – its appeal to a level playing field, fairness, inclusion, voice – and try to isolate this stronger claim if not for the superiority of peripheral scholarship, then at least for its salutary effects on central scholarship.
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2021
We examine corporate rentiership in the contemporary economy and suggest that the idea we are in ... more We examine corporate rentiership in the contemporary economy and suggest that the idea we are in a moment of step-change within capitalism may be premature. Implicit in arguments for a step-change is the claim that the present-day economy emphasises unproductive or rentier forms rather than the more productive and entrepreneurial forms of the past. In contrast, we argue that to understand our current situation we need to focus on the division of labour and most especially on processes of standardisation and the rise of intangible assets. Moving from Marx’s understanding of rent as a class relation, we re-embed rent within the circuit of capital and the realm of value distribution to investigate the class dynamics (among labour, capital and the state) through which giant firms seem to generate value out of rentierism. We argue that these class dynamics include the crucial and unexplored relation between standardisation and intangibles. We suggest standardisation within the division o...
What isn't management and why doesn't it matter? This compelling book leads the reader away from ... more What isn't management and why doesn't it matter? This compelling book leads the reader away from the stories told by managers and management theories to show the secret history of the field. In characterizing the progress of management as a war on workers, this book offers a controversial and revealing alternative intellectual history of this overwhelming discipline. The author employs a unique range of theories and sources, including the founding fathers of management, US labour and social history, and earlier intellectual figures such as Marx and Weber alongside the contemporary insights of Foucault and European and American workerist and post-workerist thought, to shed light on the world of management. This book is key reading for researchers and students across the social sciences. With a controversial and stimulating approach, it also engages readers with a general interest in business and management issues.
Oragnization , 2024
This paper argues the military are a central force in creating industrial-capitalist organisation... more This paper argues the military are a central force in creating industrial-capitalist organisational order. It suggests that in the interests of preparedness for organised violence, the military come to see work organisation as a problem and so develop an 'organising logic' built on surveillance, control, and hierarchy. Using Foucault on discipline, security and population, and Marxist understandings of modes of production, it demonstrates how the military ensured productive workforces. In so doing, it developed a production network-a security apparatus-located in the real subsumption of labour, technical and bureaucratic controls, deskilling, and separating strategy and operations to ensure control, productivity, and state security. These processes and organisational forms were then diffused to the private sphere to reshape organisational order.
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 1999
It almost goes without saying that the political and socio-economic landscape of Britain has unde... more It almost goes without saying that the political and socio-economic landscape of Britain has undergone a major upheaval in the past twenty years. One element of this has been the ongoing ideological struggle within the professions over what exactly professionalism means. This struggle has come about because for the first time in fifty years or more a real battle is being fought to determine who controls professions and professionals, how they are assessed, what their function is, how their services are to be delivered and paid for, and so on. I refer to this struggle as a crisis of professionalism. This contest is ongoing in the legal system, the National Health Service (NHS), education, accountancy, social work and other areas. It is important because it is part of a wider struggle over whether or not vast areas of social activity should be regulated by the market and/or by quasi-markets or by some form of welfarist-social-democratic structure. In short, the crisis of professionalism (and professionals) is at the centre of the attempt by the New Right to destroy the social-democratic consensus that dominated Western capitalism for a significant part of this century.
The Dark Side of Management, 2015
Part I: Introducing the Violence of Management Introduction: Managing the Free Gifts of the Gener... more Part I: Introducing the Violence of Management Introduction: Managing the Free Gifts of the General Intellect and the Division of Labour Chapter 1: Management's Authoritarian Heart Part II: The Dark Nature of Management Knowledge Chapter 2: 'Class Struggle without Class?' - Attempting to manufacture incompetence Chapter 3: 'An Almost Equal Division of the Work and the Responsibility' - Driving towards the mass industrial subject Chapter 4: 'Spontaneous Co-Operation' - Excavating the soul Part III: Conclusion - Management, neoliberalism and a history of violence Chapter 5: 'Confiscate the Soul' - Taylor, Mayo and the fundamentals of management Chapter 6: Management: The first neoliberal 'Science' Appendix: Management, Durkheim and Discipline
Just over three decades ago Zola (1973) published a paper with the title ‘Pathways to the Doctor:... more Just over three decades ago Zola (1973) published a paper with the title ‘Pathways to the Doctor: from person to patient’. This seminal work became one of the most influential and cited articles in medical sociology. Based on an empirical analysis of patients’ accounts of their reasons for attending a hospital outpatients in the USA Zola identified his five now famous ‘triggers’ (see below), which prompt consultation with formal health care providers. But of course there have been substantial socio-economic, political and technological transformations since Zola carried out his fieldwork. The late 1960s and early 1970s was a period that is characterised as being an era of Fordism, modernism, professionalism, industrialism and so on. This is in contrast to the post-Fordist, late modern, consumerist, information age which is presumed to more accurately capture the features of contemporary life. The aim of this chapter is to reconsider the work of the likes of Zola and his contemporari...
Academy of Management Proceedings, 2014
This paper argues that Kirzner’s rendition of the entrepreneurial function is the most appropriat... more This paper argues that Kirzner’s rendition of the entrepreneurial function is the most appropriate for understanding what Marazzi (2011) calls the ‘Google Model of Production’ (Marazzi, 2011). It argues that rather than imagining or creating, the entrepreneurial function located in value capture best describes the contemporary economy. Within this economy, the dispersed knowledge of individuals who act as free or subsidized labourers/consumers/users, is captured and its use concentrated by corporations through the use of property rights and other forms of ‘lock-in’ in order to take quasi-monopoly rents. Furthermore, because this entrepreneurial function restricts the use of dispersed knowledge the potential for innovation and productivity is limited by making non-rival, non-excludable goods both rival and excludable.
This extended review of David Graeber's The utopia of rules: On technology, stupidity, an... more This extended review of David Graeber's The utopia of rules: On technology, stupidity, and the secret joys of bureaucracy supports his argument that neo-liberalism needs to develop ever more bureaucratic rules in its bid to reshape the economy. As such, the bureaucracy/post-bureaucracy debate is a red herring and rather what is occurring is an elite led intervention in the economy to use bureaucratic rules to embed competition on large swathes of the society whilst avoiding it for themselves.
Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 2020
Abstract In their paper On the Centrality of Peripheral Research and the Dangers of Tight Boundar... more Abstract In their paper On the Centrality of Peripheral Research and the Dangers of Tight Boundary Objects, the authors call for a more ambitious accounting research programme. However, their call whilst is difficult is also perhaps hard to pin down. The article needs to be disseminated and debated, because it crystalizes for accounting research a fundamental moral position in knowledge production within a liberal capitalist society. As such. Different perspectives and indeed voices should be included and a certain egalitarianism sponsored. In a liberal capitalist society this is a good in itself (Rawls, 2009; Appiah, 2017). Surely many would argue this is the role indeed the essence of the University? We readily take up the paper’s invitation and are gratified by the professionalism and commitment of the authors. Accounting scholarship, like all parts of liberal capitalist society, requires constant vigilance and reform to approximate these liberal ideas of voice, inclusion, and equal participation. However, the paper is not merely for a liberal position ought to be. Rather the authors also insist that including voices from the periphery will lead to better scholarship. In other words, they argue that peripheral research possesses an intrinsic characteristic that can alter and improve accounting research. In this reply, we will set aside what makes it hard to resist – its appeal to a level playing field, fairness, inclusion, voice – and try to isolate this stronger claim if not for the superiority of peripheral scholarship, then at least for its salutary effects on central scholarship.
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2021
We examine corporate rentiership in the contemporary economy and suggest that the idea we are in ... more We examine corporate rentiership in the contemporary economy and suggest that the idea we are in a moment of step-change within capitalism may be premature. Implicit in arguments for a step-change is the claim that the present-day economy emphasises unproductive or rentier forms rather than the more productive and entrepreneurial forms of the past. In contrast, we argue that to understand our current situation we need to focus on the division of labour and most especially on processes of standardisation and the rise of intangible assets. Moving from Marx’s understanding of rent as a class relation, we re-embed rent within the circuit of capital and the realm of value distribution to investigate the class dynamics (among labour, capital and the state) through which giant firms seem to generate value out of rentierism. We argue that these class dynamics include the crucial and unexplored relation between standardisation and intangibles. We suggest standardisation within the division o...
What isn't management and why doesn't it matter? This compelling book leads the reader away from ... more What isn't management and why doesn't it matter? This compelling book leads the reader away from the stories told by managers and management theories to show the secret history of the field. In characterizing the progress of management as a war on workers, this book offers a controversial and revealing alternative intellectual history of this overwhelming discipline. The author employs a unique range of theories and sources, including the founding fathers of management, US labour and social history, and earlier intellectual figures such as Marx and Weber alongside the contemporary insights of Foucault and European and American workerist and post-workerist thought, to shed light on the world of management. This book is key reading for researchers and students across the social sciences. With a controversial and stimulating approach, it also engages readers with a general interest in business and management issues.