Technical Domination and Engineering Ideology

Abstract

In its quest for legitimacy management establishes a link to the term strategic. It lifts management from being a rather simple activity into a strategic activity worthy of academic attention. Managerialism is also legitimised through the acknowledgement by academics and universities. As a result, the issue of strategic management receives high popularity in fashionable and academic management literature such as the Harvard Business Review, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science, Quarterly, and other management journals as well as numerous books.³⁷⁸ The concept behind all that literature is to show how to win a war conducted on the battlefield of markets by operating strategically. Most importantly, the glorious promises to win the market-share war is issued to all and believed by all, even though not all can win or have ever won these battles. But they carry on believing it — almost by some form of inner logic. Strategy entered the literature of management with Chandler (1962:13). He defined strategy as the determination of the basic long-term goals and objectives of an enterprise, and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals. All strategic action is guided towards a goal under conditions of rational planning. This is not something terribly new. Aristotle had discussed such teleological action. At its core remains the following assumption (Habermas 1997:85):