Robert Jackall

Examines the influence of corporate managers in major business scandals and discusses the shaping of personal ethics in bureaucratic systems.

The World of Corporate Managers

Moral Mazes

Gavin

A vindication of ethnography. You can't get this kind of information any other way. The corporation (it varies surprisingly little across countries and industries, these days) has its own class system, moral system, taboos, verbal and nonverbal language, and weird system of distinction. It's from 1988 but most of it applies fine to my 2018 stint, apart from there being women around now.

Something I rarely see political brains notice is: corporate life is extremely inefficient and intuitive. It privileges hierarchy and political stability over truth and effect while pretending to be ultra-rational. Reading this book would have made me substantially less miserable in my corporate job, because I just didn't understand why so much effort was wasted and so many decisions made against the evidence.


  "What is right in the corporation is not what is right in a man’s home or in his church. What is right in the corporation is what the guy above you wants from you. That’s what morality is in the corporation..."

A subordinate must also not circumvent his boss nor ever give the appearance of doing so. He must never contradict his boss’s judgment in public.

Mastering the subtle but necessary arts of deference without seeming to be deferential, of “brown nosing” without fawning, of simultaneous self-promotion and self-effacement, and occasionally of the outright self-abasement that such relationships require is a taxing endeavor that demands continual compromises with conventional and popular notions of integrity. 

“the essence of managerial work is cronyism, covering your ass, [and] pyramiding to protect your buddies.”





...and yet they move. Large firms have a 100% - 600% edge over SMEs. Small businesses suffer some mazes, not least the need to please one tyrant, but the information flows should be much healthier. Division of labour and economies of scale are so powerful that even floridly corrupt institutions can thrive. Or - worse - something about this gross primate stuff is actually productive...

He probably pushes too hard on the "luck and cronyism" theory of success for this to be a blanket recommendation for all young graduates though. Too likely to discourage real work, or to inspire early defection in the crony game.

Moral Mazes The World of Corporate Managers

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