Kingdom of Bureaucracy. A governmental-political interpretation of modern management

Abstract

In this article I place management theory in conversation with Giorgio Agamben’s political theology with the dual scope of offering (1) an Agambenian interpretation of management, and (2) a framework that may be useful to illuminate and eventually explain the nature of some decisive and persistent weaknesses of the discipline. The main argument is that Agamben's theological genealogy of economy transforms the discourse on management from a matter of value to one of control. In the first section, I introduce Agamben’s political theological project and I discuss how his project can change the way scholars look at management. In the second, I list three fundamental weaknesses of management as a discipline that an Agambenian interpretation of management can make intelligible.