The Management Contradiction & the Inefficiency of Capitalist Management
The Institute for International Management and Entrepreneurship hosts a monthly speaker series, featuring experts from leading institutions across the UK and around the world. Each session explores a diverse range of timely and critical topics exploring how global economic, social, and institutional forces shape entrepreneurial practices and organisational dynamics across different cultural and structural contexts.
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Dr Vidal will present his recently published book Management Divided: Contradictions of Labour Management (Oxford University Press). Based on an in-depth study of U.S. manufacturing, the book draws on interviews with 109 individuals from 31 firms and 169 hours of direct observation across 59 occasions. It develops a theory of organisational political economy, integrating concepts from organisation theory—such as institutional logics, organisational fields, managerial satisficing, and operational routines—within a classical Marxist framework.
Departing from traditional Marxist views of management as solely focused on labour control to maximise exploitation, the book instead highlights the contradictory pressures and competing logics of labour management that divide managers. Some adopt best practices, empowering their workforce, while others settle for "good enough." This managerial division reveals how capitalist management itself can become a source of organisational inefficiency.
The talk will overview key findings, including evidence of managerial satisficing—where managers adopt suboptimal routines in work organisation (e.g., implementing only basic elements of lean production) and workforce empowerment (e.g., failing to cross-train workers or involve them in problem-solving and decision-making). These choices persist despite the clear benefits of leaner routines and worker empowerment. Satisficing arises from conflicting managerial pressures and workers' contradictory experiences, often marked by resistance to upskilling and empowerment initiatives. This argument extends beyond manufacturing and lean production to a variety of sectors, including social services, education, healthcare, office administration, and software development.
Speaker
Dr Vidal is Reader in Sociology and Political Economy at the Institute for International Management and Entrepreneurship at Loughborough University in London. His research focuses on work, organisations, employment relations, labour markets, capitalist growth regimes, and crises. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
For more information, please get in touch with the faculty coordinator, Melike Arslan.
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