ABSTRACT
The fall of management resulted from a combination of causes. The development of ‘strategic’ thinking, which paradoxically resulted in a shorter-term, dealmaking orientation, was a necessary pre-condition. The automation of much middle management, and therefore the elimination of management training grounds, greatly assisted the divorce of top management from the practicalities of running a business. So, isolated from their organizations and their people, management became vulnerable to the rampant progress of Friedmanite ideas and were seduced from their previously autonomous role by the possibility of unimagined riches, into becoming the agents of shareholders and the puppets of neo-classical, amoral self-interest. The immediate but unsustainable result was measurable in terms of generally higher living standards, an explosion in the inequalities of wealth and income, massive pollution and the depletion of the earth’s resources.
