Unfazed Managers

One of the defining characteristics of managers and managerialism is the ability of practitioners to appear unfazed when presented with evidence of their inconsistencies. It's as if they see an essential part of their role as being able to say contradictory things in different situations or to different people.  And those pointing out that this means we can't trust what they say are simply being unreasonable.

Thus the senior RSPB man for the Peak District just over a year ago was telling a meeting that they couldn't do without cattle grazing on the Eastern Moors because there were nowhere near enough deer. Now it is the RSPB representatives who are telling us that there are too many deer, not just a few too many either. They now say that 25% of them will need to be shot. Yet, and here's the main point, cattle will continue to be grazed.

So what you say has to be what suits your purpose at the time. The problem is of course that we never get access to the core judgements of these managers. The only scrutiny or challenge that can be made is about the way they do things - and only that if you're fortunate. Not whether they are on the right track from the start.

Here's a quote from a Scottish Natural Heritage Review of Protected Areas for Nature:

 "Managerialism is the tendency to view management as the most essential and desirable element of good administration and government. It emphasises how things are done rather than why. It solves problems through a rational assessment involving gathering and collating information, listing the options, calculating costs of each, evaluating consequences and choosing the best course of action. Unless the assumptions and value judgements that underpin these techniques are clearly stated then essentially subjective decisions made under a cloak of objectivity will result. Another feature of managerialism is performance management through targets which often leads to a single-minded pursuit of them regardless of the often perverse outcomes of doing so"