Managerial Capitalism

Managerial capitalism represents a form of capital accumulation and organizational control in which managers are the central agents of power. Labor, technology, resources, and administrative structures are coordinated by a cadre of legal-rational managers who do not necessarily own the means of production under their governance (although this is changing with the increasing use of stock-option incentive systems). With the advent of managerial capitalism as a dominant social structure of accumulation, critical scholarship has concentrated on managers as the agents of exploitation rather than simply the owners of capital. The inimical effects associated with the administered society and the spread of managerialism (e.g., enterprise, commercialization, subcontracting, etc.) have also received much attention. Some writers argue that managerial capitalism is on the decline as flexibility, networks, and participation supplant centralized command and control structures. Others maintain that managerialism has simply reconfigured itself by instigating everyday regimes of selfmanagement without necessarily changing the uneven distribution of resources underpinning the modern corporation.