Managerial Capitalism and White-Collar Professions: Social Mobility in Australia’s Corporate Elite

This article considers the interdependence of managerial capitalism with the historical constitution of professional work in Australia. Using data on the composition of the boards of Australia’s largest companies between 1910 and 2018, we show a deep connection between the managerial class and the top layers of professional hierarchies. Professionals in Australia forged a managerial-capitalist elite within large corporations, relying on a combination of professional expertise and signals of legitimacy that were enabled through higher education and accreditation structures. Relatively low levels of professional enclosure in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries created opportunities for Australians from middle- and working-class backgrounds to move into the capitalist elite. These opportunities were reduced significantly from the 1980s onwards as pathways to managerial roles themselves enclosed and as managerialism - as a mode of production - increasingly dominated global capitalism. The result was that by the end of the twentieth century, Australia’s corporate elite more closely resembled the rest of the world’s in its homogeneity and inaccessibility. This demonstrates the central role of professions in the reproduction of Australian capitalism over time, and the influence of professional enclosure on social mobility and inequality.

After Managerial Capitalism

Corporations maximize shareholder returns—or so goes the conventional wisdom. It was not always so. In the middle decades of the last century, lawmakers, business leaders, and journalists agreed that the nation's largest and most powerful corporations had obligations to a raft of stakeholders that included (in addition to shareholders) employees, customers, and the localities in which they had set up shop. Some historians have labeled this consensus “corporate liberalism”; contemporaries called it “social responsibility.” Still others, including, most notably, Alfred D. Chandler Jr., regarded these corporate obligations as emblematic of a new stage in economic development—“managerial capitalism”—whose origins could be traced back to the railroad, the country's first “big business.” This consensus had durable consequences, as Kenneth J. Lipartito and others demonstrated in Corporate Responsibility: The American Experience (2012), a multiauthor survey of shifting assumptions regarding corporate governance in the United States from the colonial era to the present.

9. Entrepreneurs and the global economy, 1980–2020

“Entrepreneurs and the global economy, 1980–2020” charts important shifts in corporate culture from managerial capitalism to shareholder capitalism. Other upheavals were brought about by deregulation, free-market economics, and increasing financial complexity. Silicon Valley was emblematic of the changing business landscape, creating small, nimble companies and cult figures such as Steve Jobs. The personal computer, eventually taking the form of the smartphone, was one of the most disruptive inventions of the time. The early 2000s were characterized by financial innovation and scandal, culminating in a recession that lasted through 2010. Recently, business leaders have been criticized for political lobbying, environmental recklessness, monopolistic behavior, and creating wealth inequality.

Gérard Duménil e Dominique Lévy. Managerial capitalism: Ownership, management and the coming new mode of production

Resenha do livro de Gérard Duménil e Dominique Lévy. Managerial Capitalism. Ownership, management and the coming new mode of production. London, Pluto Press, 2018.

Emergence of the Isolated Household

We here explore the gradual emasculation of the household as the basic unit of provisioning during the four evolutionary phases of capitalism. This economic history reveals a gradual redefinition of the purpose of the household from the center of entrepreneurial initiative to a besieged and insecure provider of inconvenient and unwanted labor to managerial capitalism whose central imperative is to reduce labor costs in the service of greater net returns to owners of capital. This evolutionary pathway will reveal the household to be an increasingly precarious and politically vexing participant in global capitalism.

Possessive Individualism

The emergence of authoritarian governments in much of Europe, the British vote to leave the European Union, and widespread political anger in the United States suggest that anxiety and uncertainty now threaten to undermine stable democracies. Decades of stagnant household incomes and growing inequality are casting doubt on the benefits of capitalism. Meanwhile, millions of desperate migrants streaming north out of Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa further jeopardize political stability in the wealthy metropole. We have here an explanation for why the world finds itself in widespread dysfunction. First, there is a dominant culture of possessive individualism. This attitude has fostered political opposition to taxes, to higher wages for vast numbers of workers, and to various programs that would ease the economic burden on beleaguered households. Meanwhile, a culture of managerial capitalism suppresses wages and salaries, embraces automation, and moves jobs overseas. Voters have taken the measure of contemporary capitalism and are unimpressed. Many of the disillusioned have turned to authoritarian braggarts to rescue them from their misery. Xenophobia stalks the land. Escape from this crisis requires that the isolated acquisitive individual rediscover a sense of loyalty to others—as neighbors, as colleagues, and as participants in a shared social process of living rather than merely consuming. Escape also requires that the private firm be reimagined as a public trust in which the economic well-being of employees becomes a central part of its purpose. In the absence of these dual transformations, capitalism as we know it cannot endure.