1st Edition
The Rise of Digital Management From Industrial Mobilization to Platform Capitalism
This book analyzes the history of management, placing it in perspective with both American history and the genealogy of digital technology. Focusing on the years of industrial mobilization in the United States (from 1937 to 1945) and their extension into the Cold War, it shows particularly how "scientific management" was reconfigured and re-legitimized in favor of a new profoundly American geopolitics. In a context where the future was at a standstill, this research also explains what became of the managerial processes at the heart of capitalism from the 40s onwards: the shift from a managerial capitalism of calculation to a narrative capitalism made up of "desiring machines". This digital management no longer simply contributes, along with others, to unveiling and revealing the future. Aligned with the American obsession with novelty, it is the very process of revelation and unveiling, with managers and consumers alike becoming the intersecting subjects of desires borne of managerial apocalypses.
To explore this period of American history, the author has combined a triple narrative anchored in three types of archives: an intimate history of this reconfiguration from the presence in New York of Saint-Exupéry, Burnham and Wiener; a description of the great historical moment of industrial mobilization; and a philosophical speculation about reconfiguration and its links to American history.
Introduction: Informing a Depthless World, the Great Consequence of our Digital Management
Chapter I: James Burnham, the Walker of Washington Square. In Search of Managerial Oligarchy
Chapter II: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Exiled in New York. From the Empire of Citadelle to the Empire State Building
Chapter III: Norbert Wiener, Visiting the Beekman Hotel. The Cybernetic Moment in Manhattan
Chapter IV: Last Dinner in New York before the Big Flight. Saint-Exupéry, Burnham, Mead and Wiener Meet Again at La Vie Parisienne
Chapter V: The United States as the “Arsenal of Democracy”. The Flight of the Second World War
Chapter VI: Back on New York Soil. Wandering from the Navy Yard in Brooklyn to the Great Management Networks in Manhattan
Chapter VII: Crisis of the Great Common Narrative and the Inhabitation of the World. Macy's Presents
Chapter VIII: Genealogy of Managerial Apocalypses. In the Footsteps of the American Event
Conclusion: From 'Management' to 'Gestio', from New York to Rome
Biography
François-Xavier de Vaujany is full professor of Management and Organization Studies at Université Paris Dauphine-PSL and researcher at DRM since 2010. His research deals with the societal and political dimensions of (new) ways of working and their management. He is particularly interested in the time and space dimensions of (new) ways of organizing work in our digital societies. By means of historical approaches, ethnographies and qualitative experimentations, he has thus explored various organizational phenomena such as major industrial companies, universities, maker spaces, coworking spaces, digital nomadism, investment banks or old religious organizations.
“Francois-Xavier de Vaujanay has effectively re-written the history of management in our digital age, and possibly also pre-saged its future – this book should be read by anybody with hopes or fears about where our technology might lead us!” Matt Statler, Richman Family Director of Business Ethics and Social Impact Programming, Clinical Professor of Business and Society, NYU Stern School of Business
"A great book that shows once more how the history of management is profoundly linked to geopolitical and institutional orders. The analysis of the contemporary digital revolution adds a piece to the story of how management creates strudtures of wanting and desires, hope and beliefs." Paolo Quattrone, Professor of Accounting, Governance and Society, Alliance Manchester Business School
"This book offers an interesting and complex tapestry of the role of management in the continual production and expression of the ‘American Event’ by weaving together a number of threads including: stories of influential characters; social, scientific, economic and political events; and the institutionalizing values of what the author calls the ‘managerial apocalypse’." Ann L Cunliffe, Professor of Organization Studies, Fundação Getúlio Vargas-EAESP, Brazil
