Management’s First Responsibility

Abstract

What is the job of corporate managers? Management research has offered various perspectives on managerial work and on what the priority of managers should be, related to different views of the corporation and its objective. In this paper, I adopt a historically contextualized view of the institution of the corporation and argue that the first responsibility of corporate managers is to search for God. I draw upon the work of Michael Thomas Black to develop two strands to this argument: first, the priority of searching for God corresponds to the way corporations operate. Second, managers’ not searching for God results in their being directed by some form of ambition, which leads to corporate corruption. In corporate management, searching for God involves accounting for how the interests of the corporation as a distinct entity are embodied in what managers do. The paper offers a synthesis of Michael Black’s work that focuses on the first responsibility of corporate managers. It contributes to four issues of a managerial theory of the firm related to managerial orientation: the inescapable conundrums of managing, the role of stock- and stakeholders, ownership, and value creation. It draws implications for accounting and corporate regulation.