Enterprise, Management and Politics

This paper explores how enterprise and management are related in contemporary political discourse. Enterprise is seen as a guiding thread linking the New Right to New Labour, because it provides an economic and moral rationale that can be mobilized flexibly to support a range of policy initiatives and ideological positions. Management has also been increasingly valued as a strategy for presenting politics as no more than a technical exercise. However, whilst enterprise and management are favoured political tropes, the promotion of both leads to a paradox in which enterprise is the solution to the problems of management and management is a solution to the problems of enterprise. This paradox helps to explain ongoing problems in the reform of the public sector.