Managerial Ideologies: Do They Matter?

Ever since the rise of the joint-stock company in the early decades of this century and the separation of ownership and control (Berle and Means, 1932; Burnham, 1941), management has come to assume a position of critical importance in the capitalist world. While the management role is not confined to the supervision and control of labour, it is the major aspect of this role and most models give considerable prominence to managerial attitudes and ideologies as a determinant. Yet there has been little empirical research into these attitudes and ideologies. An important exception is the work of Canadian John Godard (Godard, 1996, 1997) who has attempted to determine their significance in relation to contextual variables to test Kochan, Katz and McKersie’s assertion about the role of ideology in shaping the all important "strategic " choices of management. Here in Australia, researchers from the IR&HRM Group at the University of Newcastle have surveyed over 120 organisations from both the public and private sector in an exploration of the relationships between organisational characteristics, workplace change and performance. As part of this survey, management attitudes were explored and testing of the responses has revealed links between managerial strategy and certain attitudes on the one hand and selected organisational characteristics on the other. Thus this research suggests that managerial ideology not only has some bearing on strategy but somewhat more than that found by Godard although further investigation is required to confirm this