1. Moral probations, old and new

commercialization of leisure, the sanctification of consumption fueled (and the de- )

mass production facilities were integrated within the same firms, producing big business as we know it today and requiring the addition of new layers of management.

claims ... white-collar ... old middle class ... dependence ... lacks affinity ...individualistic ... patrmonial ... executive ... moral viewpoints ... envy ... loyalties ... conservative ... carriers ... how beurocracy shapes actual morality ... moral dilemmas ... denied ... gauge whether they feel "comfortable" ... comfort ... polycentric ... anxiety ... Getting into ... moral ... assessment

no tangible organizationalbenefits to be gained from a study of managerial ethics because the project lacked a specific practical focus, or that the timing ...

shortleash ... publicly defended with the vocabularies of justification normally at hand in the corporation,

rivalries,

recast it as a technical issue,

avoid any mention of ethics or values altogether and concentrate instead on the “decision-making process” where I could talk about “trade-offs” and focus on the “hard decisions between competing interests” that mark managerial work.

stance

. understood those rules

through fortuitous circumstances and for reasons independent of any intrinsic merit

contacts ... referred ... probity (integrity, uprightness) ... school ties ...

data that I have treated as preliminary .. reconstruct my own self-presentation ... indirect rather than pointed statement ...

demonstrated ... “flexible” ... appear ... tennis court ... cotton dust and toxic waste disposal ... internal crisis ...

I cannot claim strictly scientific procedures

organizational upheavals, political rivalries,linguistic ambiguity,the supremacy of chance and tangled personal connections over any notion of intrinsic merit, the central significance of pu'olic relations, and, perhaps especially, the ceaseless moral probations for inclusion in a managerial circle.

2 The Social Structure of ManagerIal Work

hierarchical ... I work for ... Power ... responsibility ... greige (colloquially grey) ... finishes ... purchasable items ... reporting ... makes his committment ... “topside” pressure ... “conspiracies” ... “management-by-objective” ... owes fealty ... overcommitt ... promises ... mistakes ... informed ... suspicion ... circumvent ... contradict ... ritual deferrence ... willing acceptance ...

that are in his boses gift

protection ... a sign of untrustworthiness or weakness

patron-client ... also ... more ambiguous, fealty relationships with his highest-ranking patron. ... advancement,

Superiors do not like to give detailed nstructions to subordinates. ... ous details... divestment .. protects the privilege of authority to declare that a mistake has been made.

.lf I tell you what to do, I can't bawl you out if things don't work.

just give a statement of objectives,

. guilty knowledge.

messy

messenger

particularly useful at the middle levels of the structure. Upwardly mobile men and women, especially those from working-class origins who find themselves in higher status milieux,seem to have the requisite level of anxiety, and perhaps tightly controlled anger and hostility, that fuels an obsession with detail.

I competition for ideas in the corporate world; authority provides a license to steal ideas,

good sport ... used ... good team player.... public perceptions of his fairness. ... , canot claim credit ... . Credit has to be given,and acceptance of the gift implicitlyinvolves a reaffirmation and strengthening of fealty,A superior may share some credit with subordinates in order to deepen fealty relationships and induce greater efforts on his behalf:

CEO's wishes and whims are taken as commands by close subordinates on the corporate staff,who turn them into policies and directives.

please the CEO.

keeping up appear-ances without recognition for one's efforts is pointless.

book fully describing

please the king today

CEO does and says.

conversation ... speculation

attaching younger people

discarded

determine the fate of whole business areas of a corporation,

borrow a president's prestige and power to xert great leverage.

Knowledge of more clearly established relationships, of course, always sways behavior.

to personalize

reporting relationships, patronage relationships, and alliances.

not a quantnative thing. It's a gut feeling that a guy can't be put in one spot, but he might be put in another spot.



The first action of most new CEOsis some form of organizational change. On the one hand, this prevents the inheritance of blame for past mistakesi on the other,it projects an image of bare-knuckled aggressiveness much appreciated on Wall Street.

those barons whose style and public image mesh

after a major management consulting firm had “exhaus-tively considered all the options,”

firing as many people as pos-sible.

systematically elevated many of his former colleagues, friends, clients, and allies.

. Fealty is the mortar

crucial coin (Games)

where viaory must follow victory.

. This CEO thinks that everybody associated with the company before him is a dummy. And so you have to prove yourself over and over again. You can't just win some and lose some. You have to keep your winning record at least at 75 percentif not better. You're expected to take risks. Atleast the CEo says that, but the reality is that people are afraid to make mistakes.

a deepening sense of gloom

lording ... sup-pression of impulses. ... well-targeted individuals.... joked that they were updat-ing their r&umes and responding

“corporate graveyard,” a place with decaying businesses that one buries by selling off.

,"henchmen"

By the time the courts get to cases generated by contemporary practices, typicallyin fifteen years,

whose will prevails, who can get things done their way

that is, on the widespread belief that one can act effectively. ... prevail regularly,

corporations are not presented nor are they seen simply as places to work for a living. Rather the men and women in them come to fashion an entire social ambiance that overlays the antagonisms created by company politics;

of open conflia simply puts a premium on the mastery of the socially accepted modes of waging cmbat.

Alliances

joining or,more exactly,being included

One becomes known,

coteries.

diffcult to refuse to

choose one's social colleagues with some care and,of course, know how to drop them

power clique

Once one has gained power, one can use one's influencein the organization to shape social ties.

map

trade off

formalrank always matters even though thereis ample scope for moreinfor-mal charismatic leadership.

must continually please

prove themselves again and again

probationary

3. The Main Chance

once certain crucial points in one's career are passed, success and failure seem to havelittle to do with one's accomplishments.

The demon-strated ability of a student toleap over successively higher hurdles in school

first severalyears

the more promise managers show, the more probations they must t undergo,

reach such a numbered grade

anagerial competence as such is taken for granted and assumed not to differ greatly from one manager to the next,

For some managers,...financial ...freedom ...power ...know the curiously exhilarating pleasure of controlling other people's fates....,hunger

family...long hours ...mismatch ...t stress ...

You always need a core of people who will do the work in an organiza-tion whether it's creative or not.You just can't have all superstars.

drones.

ential to an organization's survival.

threaten no one

..If you 1et them for one minute give you just the 10 percent cost of living increase,

Only rising stars validate the ethos of the corporation

you are at a certainlevel of experience, the difference between a vice-president, an executive vioe-president, and a general manager is ngligible.

What happens is that people perceive in others what they Iike-operating styles, lifestyles, personalities, ability to get along.

; manu-als with a whole variety of sample conversations

displaying cheerful cooperativeness

the need for smooth, harmonious work relationships in pressure-packed,highly routinized contexts,

not a reluaant donning of organizationally prescribed masks but rather a mastery of the social rules that

appropriate to

epitomize social normality,

expected to be alert to prevailing norms.

adaptation,

and intention behind bland, smiling, and agreeable public faces....gravity .... levity....agressiveness .

this may mean suppressing the natural desire to defend oneself. Moreover, one must always guard against betraying valuable secret knowledge

sexual

, The corporation stimulates the natural impulses ...vitality, power,and success.

The price of bureaucratic power is a relentlessly ethodical subjection of one's impulses,

by submitting to the temptation to show one's anger, is seen as irrational,un'oefitting men or women whose principal claim to social legitimacy is dispassionate rational calculation.

interchangeable ...discourage narrow specialization ...moral or political qualms....Strong convictions of any sort are suspect.

to fourteen hours

stamina,

social

professional intimacy

briliant .. is perceived as a threat to others....cannot get along with others-he is “too pushy,'thatis, he exhibits too much ”persistence in getting to the right answers,'is “always asking why,” and does not know “when to back off”

“outspoken.”..aloof,...too distant, “too professional.” A manager who has “ice water in his veins” or is thought to be a “cold fish”

looks to others in making decisions, recognizes that one must always think defensively to protect one's boss and one's asso-ciates, and knows that he must “keep his nose clean”

belief in and subordination to individuals who articulate organizational goals

appearance of unanimity of opinion among their clients and allies, especially during times of turmoil.

agrees to the consensus on a decision

for the sake of the unified effort It doesn't mean that you don't express your own views but your objective is not your own advancement,

going with the flow

.If l say to you, do this and you say that you don't really want to, but I insist, well, you've put the guy in an uncomfortable and yourself too. Butif you do it skillfully, the guy is not going to go away boxed. So, on one hand, you can't force them to do something, but you also can't manipulate them to do it; people resent this. What you do is to appeal to something like teamwork and they choose to do it because they know how important and valued it is in the organization. The boss has the extra vote but he has to cast it with some skill.

said to “have made a decision,” a phrase almost always used to describe a choice that will shorten a career*

t. It's the most effective way to tell people who have different perspectives to shut up. You say that you want a team effort... a troublemaker label and that's one that is truly hard to get rid of.The troublemakeris often a creative person but truly creative people don't get ahead; to get ahead you have to be dependable and a team player

generally want pliable and agreeable subordinates,espe-cially during periods of crisis,

when interpretive judgments or plain desires are involved,

ability to put others at ease is an important skill in a world where one must be continually on guard against the eruption of usually suppressed conflict

in ways that never call others' judgments into question.

the easy predictable familiarity that comes from sharing

to some extent, cultivate the virtues of team play. Otherwise he will never reach a position where subordinates come to think of him as aleader.

a firm gets very narrow after a certain point

talk ...o make a good case ...sell ...

the top guys see a guy and say: “Hey, he's great,” the myth about the guy is perpetuated. If they say to a plant manager that some guy is great, the plant manager is not going to say that he can't find his assin a rainstonu* And suddenly the guyis on the fast track.

your style cannot be in conflict with the style of the guys on top. If there is a conflict,you're not going to last very long.

-breadth,

a good impression of the company through them.

adopt their public faces quite consciously; they are,in fact, the masks behind which the real struggles and moralissues of the corporation can be found,

spontaneity

They like you to be well-organized, well-spoken. They like presentations, briefings.

slick presentations with slides, with overheads. Short, succinct.Tell them what they want to heat: ... They all send visibility memos. You know, get your name out,let people know you're managing.

g,You gain alot of respea both for saying something and for knowing when to sayit.You keep it humorous.

he begins to think, well, if l have anyproblemsin [his area of expertisel, I'llcall him.

one's personality becomes one's most valuable asset As one manager says: “Personality spells success or failure, not what you do on the field.”

a patron,...A patron provides his with opportunities to get “visibility,” to “showcase” his abilities,...onnections ...

managers see no necessary connec-tions 'oetween performance and reward.

no concept of loyalty anymore. You've got to position yourself continually

how to shape and keep shaping others' perceptions of oneself-that is, how to influence favor-ably or alterif necessary the cognitive maps of others in the central political networks of the organization-so that one becomes seen as “promotable.”

-what you can and can't do.

Rather, “failure is perception,” that is, a set of coinciding judgments that one “cannot cut the mustard” ... “not a self-starter” (meaning one has to pressure him to get anything done).

you really want to do somebody in, you just say, well, he can't get along with people.

. And the reason is that losing or changing jobs is a very high ress situation and mO8t people prefer to hang on to what they've got-to their routine. '

middle management, it's difficult to make friends because the normal requirement for friendship-that is, loyalty-doesn't fit in this context.

not to show your authority too much. You've got to get people to think an idea is theirs; you've got to get them to accept “hints”

he would have selected a team of managers that he trusted and with whom he felt comfortable, and then he would have gotten rid of any potentially opposing groups,

work hardest, that is, put in the most hours, when economic times are bad,

seen toiling

Things happen to people and being in the right time and place and knowing the right people is the key.

4. Looking Up and.Looking Around

. Two widely held ideals, for instance,are that of the “consensus manager” who brings his team together through adroit persuasion to achieve a communally defined goal and of the “take-guy” whose vision and dynamic leadership galvanizes others into concerted aaion.

avoid making any decision if at all possible; (2) if a decision has to be made,involve as many people as you can so that,

difficult situation ... he must actively involve them in his problems if he is to hope for their support later. Committees thus reduce the plausibility of “deniability” although, when things go wrong,instant amnesia always seems to become a widespread malady.

textile ... We are such a mature industry.

20 cents per unit instead of the going market price of $2.

He knows that he has to be able to point the finger at somebody when things go wrong.

“outrun their mistakes”

tif most people didn't come to work,it wouldn't matter.

.But the whole colony has significance; it's just the individual that doesn't count.

people who are in high positions have never beenin one placelong enough for their problems to catch up with them.

. milking

problem with the [return on assets] measure. ... ,if you don't have a built-in reward for a longer term performance-say five years-well, you're asking for that guy to maximize his own gain at the expense of the operation over the long run.

. At the very top of organizations, one does not so much continue to outrun mistakes as tough them out with sheer brazenness. In such ways,bureaucracies may be thought of,in C. Wright Mills's phrase, as vast systems of organized irresponsibility,

milk the plants; rape the businesses; use other people and discard them;

. lt's easy to make moneyin the short term; you just don't spend Imoney

5. Drawing Lines

A person first begins to lose his ability to perceive higher frequency speech sounds beginning with the fricative consonants; funher

, Hearing aids can only amplify sounds, not clarify indis-tinct sounds.

The director saw himself as a guardian of the textile industry's interests against increasingly vociferous and hostile critics.

marginal managers cannot further a network's interests.

He was unwantedin the circles where his would count,in some measure because he defined the hearingissue as a moral concern instead of approachingit practically.

has to give workers, instead of requiring them to buy, replacement earplugs.

, an tnwillingness, perhaps an actual inability, to see the hearing issue in more pragmatic terms.

in the organization right and wrong get decided by those with enough clout to make their views stick,

didn't like to be in a position where [the CEO] could crack the whip over them.

was in jeopardy of violating my profes-sional code. And I feel that you have to stick up for that.If your profession has has that standing bec because someone stood up for it.

a fear of being found out not to stand up to standards that I have claimed as my own.

he violated the fundamental rules of bureaucratic life. ... boss.,.. wants to hear,

“one man's bribe is another man's canmission.”... bribes are really the grease that makes the world work.

a moral code, his professional ethos, that had simply no relevance to his organizational situation..... own personal moral purity,... ., made them uncomfonable, and eroded the fundamental trust and understanding ihat make cooperative managerial work possible.

He threatened

in that situation, confrontation is inevitable.

The guy's an evangelist. Under the guise of honesty, he's going to get at the truth no matter what. And those guys are going to lose.... . And he w'ill go through life feeling that he was honest and wasn't as crooked as the guys above him.

that “truth” is socially defined, not absolute, and that therefore about anything and everything, is not moral defeat,

A moral judgment based on a profes-sional ethic makes little sense in a world where the etiquette of authority relationships and the necessity for protecting and covering for one's boss,one's network, and oneself supercede all other considerations and where nonaccountability for action is the norm.

on the social framework of their world and its requirements.

The exigencies that they confront both in the market and in their organizations have to be met, if they are to be met at all, through orga-nizational resources and in accordance with the institutional logic of their situations.

, Whether Wilson liked it or not,Bechtelhad won the power struggle and they had the right,thatis the power,to call the shots on the cleanup. One has to bend with prevailing winds. One can be beaten even when oneis “right”;

. Bad news either requires aaion,always open to multiple and perhaps pejorative interpretations, or it upsets pre-established plans of action,

one can only criticize something when one has the resources to solve it in a clear and decisive way. Otherwise, one should keep one's skepticisru to oneself and get “on board.”

But the solution to this was not to make others vulnerable.

He tried to fix responsibility for action, a tactic certain to shatter the trust required to maintain a kind of cooperative nonaccountability.

while establishing and maintaining the kinds of relationships that alone can protect oneself.

not help managers cut the sometimes unpleasant deals

comes to see : himself-:.., packaged, adver-tised, promoted, and sold.

deal sweeteners

Bribery is not countenanced because it “provides an unfair market advantage”; environmental spoilage is “bad for business” or “will ultimately affect us since we're consumers too.”

“We lie all the time, but if everyone knows that we're lying, is a 1ie really a lie?”

When one does draw lines in the corporate world, one never knows if, when, or how the lines will be honored or even acknowledged.

abstract rather than a concrete view of problems, an essential component of the nonaccountability

distance from the human consequences of one's actions enable the development of an austere, ununcluttered perspective.

knew that these specific fifty peopJe ... i. But suppose that you didn't know the fifty people and it wasn't at all clear that CFCs were at fault,

As long as those people can't be identified, as Iong as they are not specific people, it's OK. Isnt that strange?

what if it were a million bars?

tacit agreement about tacitumity.

One who exl?oses a col-league's errorsin such a context and makes him vulnerable to others evinces,of course, only a fundamental untrustworthiness,

Only those with a reputation for discretion are judged trustworthy.

.Yet no one ever told me thank you; no one ever said that I was a good employee,

One of the norms here is to keep quiet once you have done your job in reporting what you see....If you pursue something like this, no one w'ill like you. lt's that simple.

know that I am someone who can be trusted, I can keep my mouth shut..,,And that's the biggest thing that 1 have going for me-that people feel that I can be trusted. I can't overemphasize that enough.

decided not to tell the workers

Nothing the smoker did subsequently could alter the damage done while smoking,

After all, they had inherited the problem; why should they risk getting blamed for the unintended consequences of someone else's decision?...Moreover, there is a difference, he argues, between a case where people know somethingis wrong and keep on doing it anyway and the case in point where people stopped their actions as soon as they realized something was amiss.

The thing that makes...the corporation work at allis the support we give to each other no matter what happens....We have to support each other and we have to support the hierarchy. Otherwise you have no management system.

where relationships with trusted colleagues consti-tute one's only real means both of defense and opportunity,

indeed virtuous,

he learns that one man's misfortune is another man's opportunity. More generally, he comes to measure all relationships with others by a strict utilitarian calculus and, insofar as he dares, breaks friendships and alliances accordingly. He comes to see the secrecy at the core of managerial circles not as a suppression of dissent but an integral component of a compartmentalized world where one establishes faith with others precisely by proving that one can tolerate the ambigu-ities that expedient action and stone-faced silence impose. He comes to see also that the nonaccountability of the corporation is really a license to exert one's own will and to improve one's own fortunes by making the system work for oneself, as long as one does not overreach one's power or station, and as long as one maintains crucial alliances and does not get caught.

6. Dexteritv__with Symbols

of motive and accounts to exdain. or excuse and iustify, expedient action;

provide further rationales for what has tobe done;

euphemistic.

innuendo

oblique language

speak gingerly to one another since the person one criticizes or argues with today could be one's boss tomorrow.

a certain finesse in handling people, a “sensitivity to others,”as it is called. As one manager says: “You just can't push people around nymore.” Discreet suggestions, hints, and coded messages take the place of command; this, of course, places a premium on subordinates'abilities to read correctly their bosses' vaguely articulated or completely unstated wishes.

plausible-excuses

*Unusuallyloyal Wanted by no one else

‘talks in circles," that is, one masters the art of juxtaposing several sentences that implicit contradiaions but that one makes seem related by one’s forcefulness or style of presentation. One can thus stake out a position on every side of an issue. Or one buries what one wants done in a string of vaguely related descriptive sentences that demand textual exegesis. (critical explanation or analysis)

distinguish accurately suggestions from directives,inquiries from investigations, and bluffs from threats.

to camunicate certain meanings within specific contexts with the implicit understanding that should the context change, a new, more appropriate meaning can be attached to the language already used. In this sense, the corporation is a place where people are not held to what they say because it is generally understood thar their word is always provisional,

also allows managers themselves to grapple dispassionately with problems that can generate high emotions.

a polite, arms-length embrace.

seming fresh, dynamic, innovative, and up-to-date.

1 some social science insight, ... how to sharpen decision making, how to restructure organizations for greater efficiency, how to improve productivity, how to recogUize trouble spots in an organization, how to communicate effectively, how to humanize the workplace, and how to raise morale.

rules ... obvious ... diagrammed ... bright side

literally to repeat the requisite famulas

e your word ... Small community, Protestant, agrarian, smal1 business, merchant-type values. I

lt's characterizing the reality of a situation with any description that is necessary to make that situation more palatable to some group that matters.It means that you have to come up with a culturally accepted verbalization to explain why you are not doing what you are doing....[Or] you say that we had to do what we did because it was inevitable,

But if the guys on high do call a halt to some garne,it's not because they're bothered by the game itself but only by the direction a particular gameis taking which threatens someinterest of their own.

top executives go home with the ball when they think they are going to lose,

They must seem to be rational even, perhaps especially, when faced with irrationalities; consistent self-presentation is an important measure of such symbolic rationality.

the tensions between monopolued privilege and ideologies of public service.

ability to “throw people off the track”

Falkland Islands war; the next day, it's the bearish stock market; the next, it's the Fed's ;interest policy;... believing in fairy tales that might have no relationship to reality at all.

mellow statesmanship

titillating and outraging

Modern life as we know it-our medical technology, transportation systems,food production and distribution,information processing and communica-tions networks, to name only a few obvious examples-depends increasingly on the systematic commercial application of knowledge won by rational experimental inquiry.

More generally, modern science and technology epitomize the exaltation of the human intellect and the a'oility of rationally calculated action to sweep away the dark and tangled mysteries of the world.

This process of disenchantment ... thought to be wondrous or at least beneficial with malevolence, ... tampons

Neither science nor the promise of technological improvements can provide solace,significance, sympathy, or comfort to human beings who feel njured or bereaved.

public rage that has produced a proliferation of legal claims against corporations. The last point is particularly important since the growing demand on corporations for monetary restitution for perceived injuries suggests a more complicated relationship"oetween business and the public.

radical transformation of tort law

all the important issues surrounding cotton dust have become obscured by the rampant emotionalism generated by self-serving special-interest groups

7. The Magic_Lantern

In this view, “the massis always a magnified reflection of someindividual.”i

Take apan the average individual, dissea his mind, his manner, his attitudes and you will find that every idea, every major habit and trend in his makeup is a reflection of the fifty outstanding personalities of the day.

sophis-ticated techniques of the frank open statement toward one's enemies and the grand conciliatory gestures like benefices to the public, that preempt all discussion

[S]ince [a public] acts by aligning itself, it personalizes whatever it considers,and is interested only when events have been melodramatized as a conflict
The public will arrive in the middle of the third act and will leave before the last curtain, having stayed justlong enough perhaps to decide who is the hero and who is the villain of the piece

, advertising began to emphasize nonrational appeals to consumers. Many advertising men came to feel that their craft had to be based not so much on reasonable grounds but on suggestive appeals to the uncOnsciOus,

mechanisms and motives of the group mjnd.

“opinion leaders” or “trend setters”;...contests or displays-

indices.

staged media events ... press conferences, talk-show panel discussions, celebrations of achievement such as the Emmy presentations or the Academy Awards,the pregame, postgame, and even midgame interviews with players and coaches that have transformed sporting events, orinterviews of “spokesmen”or “spokeswomen” for books, companies, self-improvement courses, social causes, or even scientific theories;

the more artifice usedin constructing social reality, the more does that reality come for many 'to seem commonplace, natural, and taken for granted.

r, clients want to believe the best about themselves; .in this sense, they, rather than targeted publics, become the public relations practitioner's best customer.

time-billing rather than on product billing

insists on an indefensible or totally unbelievable version of reality or expects the public relations special-ist to tell outright lies.

move his account to an agenq whose leadeis he knows and with whom he feels comfortable.

public relations work, that is, the necessity to be continually attentive to clients' desires.

"Well, just because he's great today doesn't mean he'll be great tomorrow.

plausibility,

little stories

the sentimental that expresses itself in a preference for “human interest” rather than substance; and they arrange facts in a way that purports to convey “truth,” but is in fact simply another story.

.. Since any notion of truth is irrelevant or refers at best to what is perceived, persuasion of various sorts becomes everything.

callinto question the strengths or particularly the credibility of opponents.

this means finding and marketing the most salable organizational image while simultaneously undermining or at least calling into question theimage of one's chief adversaries.

'a glittering name, respected accomplishment, and the cultural authority that accompanies established professional or institutional position

Scientific fronts thus gather together under the rubric of science a host of arguments that try to discredit opponents' positions while establishing the reasonableness and plausibility of scientific interpretations favorable

carry pollution away

disputes and particularly questions ofinter-regional equity and liability. Put simply, the realissue is: Who pays for other people's troubles when responsibilityis blurred?

The rhetoric of the quest for scientific surety helps to postpone political choices until money already spentis well used and untilinvestment alternatives become clear.

impede .. assessments ... forum ... dismissed ... science is as science seems

welcome scientific ambiguity unless they themselves can claim certainty to their own benefit.Uncertainty provides the requisite space to maneuver, provided that one invokes the hallowed canons of science in a measured and respectable way and provided, of course, that one surrounds oneself with a group of experts,preferably with impeccable credentials, who will testify to the probity one's position.

biased.

experts disagreed about

figure out which articulate experts could be lined up to convince the public

events ... contests ... prizes ... behind-the-scenes look

f a distinguished advisory panel" of both men and women of affairs and particularly of the higher reaches of the academic world who help legitimate the entire enterprise,

studies are either ahistorical or use historical facts in a highly selec-tive way. They make only low-level empirical generalizations uninformed by any clear theoretical position. Public opinion itself becomes both the primary datum and the interpretive yardstick of material. The notion of historical structures or continuities has no significance nor, for that matter,do shifts in public opinion except for the assumption that today's poll results erase and invalidate yesterday's opinions.'

the client's assessment of what data mean

“gloomy”

Such solutions should not,it goes without saying, upset too many people.

some strictures or “parameters” on the interpretations

Inthe heady days of neoconservative triumph following President Reagan's

gripped by a pervasive “earth concern” that put economic growth in a distinctly secondary role.

much blander document emerged that stressed the public's desire for a finely poised balance

whole sections of data contrary to the thesis of balance had either been omitted or reported in an undecipherable way

pressures were on us to come to the kind of conclusions we finally reached.

“We tried to be honest but, believe me,it wasn't easy.”

In this context, the notion of honesty becomes ambiguous and elusive since it is unclear by what standards honesty is being measured.

a list of all the viewpoints of all our dients and somehow fit them together, then that would be truth.

Everyone out there is constructing reality.

1 don't know anyone in this business who talks about “truth.”

To some extent, these views simply reflea the particular habit of mind,the kind of marked relativism, already described, that undergirds public ions work and ( simply their role )

Here truth is also either an irrelevant concept or one that i wholly kaleidoscopic, It is pointless to seek for underlying struaural uni-ties or even determinate partial truths, because there are only differences.The objeaive world dissolves into subjective consciousness and is projeaed outwards. ... Law, for instance, becomes literature;morality becomes public convention; social life becomes a text subject to henueneutical exegesjs.

... “lt's called ‘interpretation.’” As long as a kind of plausibi\\tY is maintained, one perspective is as good as any other.

the systematic distancing of oneself both from the symbols that one manipulates and from the people that one serves

Youhave to be able to understand how people think. To really do this, you have to objectify people; you have to be able to press people and go deeperinto their motives than you normally would. You have to be able to recognize the diversity of perspeaives on things and you have to be able to say the opposite of view from what you might have yourself

Like the notion of truth,ideas as such areirrelevant or only become useful and important when they have an immediate praaical use.

casuistry,

itting personal feelings of moral puriry.

If the public will accept, say., this, what won't they accept?

legituating

Especially unsettling are the departures of clients who decide that, since they are as they have been portrayed, they have no future need to construct reality. The contin-ual circulation of client accounts in agencies diminishes the possibilities of comforting,long-held allegiances to organizations, products, or causes.

Seeing oneself as a hired gun extols technical virtuosity while affording the emotional distance that allows the thorough, rational application of that virtuosity to dients'interests. At the same time, it guards one against the wounded idealism that seems to make requisite cynicism emotionally corrosi,,e.

8. Invitations to Jeopardy

. The Protestant ethic was a social construaion of reality of a self-confident and independent propertied social class.It was an ideology that extolled the virtues of accumulating and rein-vesting wealth in a society organized around property and that accepted the stewardship responsibilities entailed by property. It was an ideology where a person's word was his bond and where the integrity of the handshake was crucial to the maintenance of good business relationships. Perhaps most important,it was connected to a predictable economy of salvation-that is,hard work willlead to success, which is a sign of election by God, a taken i for granted notion also containing its own theodicy to explain the misery of those who do not make it in this ; world.l

This conviction was also the bedrock of a profound guilt mechanism that impelled one to fulfill personal and social obligations;

Bureaucracy and the ethic it generates undercuts the crucial premises of this classic ideology and strips it of the powerful religious and symbolic meaning it once had. Bureaucracy breaks apart the ownership of prop-erty from its control, socialindependence from occupation, substance from appearances, action from responsibility, obligation from guilt,language from meaning, and notions of truth from reality

depends .. capriciousness of one's superiors and the market; and one achieves economic salvation to the extent that one pleases and submits

not his willingness to stand by his actions but his agility in avoiding blame; not his acuity in per-ceiving falsity or errors but his adeptness at protecting others, not his talent,his abilities, or his hard work, but how these are harnessed with the proper protocol to address the particular exigencies that face his organization; not what he believes or says but how well he has mastered the ideologies and rhetorics that serve his corporation;

In short, bureaucracy creates for managers a Calvinist world without a Calvinist God,

one person's hysteria and cause for moral outrage is another's familiar and somewhat dull routine,

if [Beach] felt that he could make some decision which would turn out well and would at the same time be against [SchultzJ, he would make it in a minute.

At another level, the struggle for dominance is an inevitable by-produa of the pyramidal construction of bureaucracies that fuels managers' driving A divisional vice-president at Weft comments:

sometimes requires the willingness to move decisively against others,

wlingness to battle for the prestige that comes from dominance and to make whatever moral accommodations such struggles demand.

; by the systematic collection of information damaging to others and particularly about deaLs struck and favors won in order to argue more effeaively the propriety and legitimacy of one's own claims;

Or is real social responsibility the willingness to get one's hands dirty, to make whatever compromises have to be made to produce a produa with some utility, to achieve therefore some soaal good, even though one knows that one's accomplishments and motives willinevitably be misinterpreted by others for their own ends, usually by those with the least reason to complain?

Thus a major corporation provides a gift of $10 nillion to establish new foundations that will materially aid South African blacks and is promptly accused by a black American leader of bolstering aparthejd. Weft managers create an elaborate recreational complex for Weft employees in the corporation's southern community and are charged with peflntuating traditional textile company paternalism* Some executives at Images Inc.donate their time to bring together severalinstitutional sectors of alocal town in which theylive for community betterment and are charged with trying to grab headlines and line up future business.

the respectability that money and status afford,

One leaves behind as well the technical knowledge or scientific expenise of one's younger years,lore now more suited for the narrower roles of technicians or junior managers* One must, in fact, put distance 'oetween oneself and technical details of every sort or risk the inevitable entrapment of the par-ticular.

One's best efforts at being fair, equitable, and generous with subordinates clash 'ooth with alogic that demands choices between people,inevitably producing hatred, envy and animosity, and with the plain fact that, despite protes-tations to the contrary, many people do not want to be treated fairly. In short, the increasingly abstract quality of managerial work as one advances

the main chance,

In its asceticism, self-rationalization

On the other hand, over a period of time, psychic asceticism creates a curious sense of guilt, heightened as it happens by narcissistic self-

Ch. Moral Mazes and the!Great Recession

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This book is totally done