The Rise of Digital Management by de Vaujany, François-Xavier;

Short description:

This book explores the reconfiguration of management as ‘digital management’ in the context of World War 2 and its aftermath, from the US industrial mobilization to the end of the cold war period.

Long description:

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.

“Francois-Xavier de Vaujany 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                    

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Informing a Depthless World, the Great Consequence of Our Digital Management; 1 James Burnham, the Walker of Washington Square: In Search of Managerial Oligarchy; 2 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Exiled in New York: From the Empire of Citadelle to the Empire State Building; 3 Norbert Wiener, Visiting the Beekman Hotel: The Cybernetic Moment in Manhattan; 4 Last Dinner in New York before the Big Flight: Saint-Exupéry, Burnham, Mead and Wiener Meet; 5 The United States as the "Arsenal of Democracy": The Flight of World War II; 6 Back on New York Soil: Wandering from the Navy Yard in Brooklyn to the Great Management Networks in Manhattan; 7 Crisis of the Great Common Narrative and the Inhabitation of the World: Macy’s Presents; 8 Genealogy of Managerial Apocalypses: In the Footsteps of the American Event; Conclusion: From "Management" to "Gestio", from New York to Rome