Moral Mazes
(ISBN 0-19-506080-6), named the "Most Outstanding Business and Management Book" of 1988 by the Association of American Publishers, is a 1988 book from sociologist Robert Jackall that documents an investigation into the world of corporate managers in the United States. In the introduction, Jackall writes that he "went into these organizations to study how bureaucracy - the prevailing organizational form of our society - shapes moral consciousness" (
Moral Mazes, page 2). He finishes the introduction by writing that the book is "an interpretive sociological account of how managers think the world works."
Based on several years of fieldwork conducting interviews with managers in several large corporations in the early 1980s, Jackall describes the social construction of reality within large corporations in America. Jackall argues that bureaucracy as implemented in the large American corporations he investigated "regularizes people's experiences of time and indeed routinizes their lives by engaging them on a daily basis in rational, socially approved, purposive action; it brings them into daily proximity with and subordination to authority, creating in the process upward-looking stances that have decisive social and psychological consequences; it places a premium on a functionally rational, pragmatic habit of mind that seeks specific goals; and it creates subtle measures of prestige and an elaborate status hierarchy that, in addition to fostering an intense competition for status, also makes the rules, procedures, social contexts, and protocol of an organization paramount psychological and behavioral guides." (
Moral Mazes, page 4).
Jackall first starts with a history of American business specifically looking at changes in organizational structure during the creation of large corporations in the 19th century with the Industrial Revolution changing American industry. The changes in American industry indicated a need for a professional management class which in turn began to change the organizational culture of American business emphasizing rational decisions centered on money based measures such as profit and loss (see also rational choice theory).
Next Jackall describes the results of his interviews of managers at various levels of the organizations which allowed him to conduct his research. These organizations, not named, are large and medium sized companies. The qualitative data collected by the interviews covers approximately four years, beginning in 1980, documenting a number of changes in management within the corporations, a number of business decisions made, and the effect of those changes and decisions on the managers at various levels of the companies.
Perhaps the most important finding is that successful managers are dexterous symbol manipulators. Successful managers provide a public face and may be categorized as providing emotional labor as one of their major activities. They must be able to work well with others and to sublimate their emotional and psychological needs to the demands of others. The very ambiguity of their work and its assessment leads to the feeling on the part of the managers Jackall interviewed that "instead of ability, talent, and dedicated service to an organization, politics, adroit talk, luck, connections, and self-promotion are the real sorters of people into sheep and goats" (
Moral Mazes, page 1).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Mazes
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From Amazon.com about the 20
th Anniversary edition of Moral Mazes:
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Some books have the rare fortune to become ever more relevant, more useful, and more interesting twenty years after they were written. This books fortune involves a kind of misfortune, because the phenomena that Moral Mazes analyzes are deplorable, and we would wish that the book were no longer relevant. Originally published in 1989,
Moral Mazes has been supplemented for this second edition with a long analysis of how the 'organized irresponsibility' Jackall analyzed in the 1980s has become the key to understanding our current Great Recession. ... I can think of no single book that has more opened up my sense of how to do philosophy in the last year."--
Philosophical Practice
"An interesting, unorthodox, and provocative book.... Better than any other I have seen, [Jackall's] study reveals the normative reality of the manager's world."-Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr.,
Yale Journal on Regulation
"Reformers who want to change the corporation, first must understand it. Robert Jackall's carefully researched analysis of the 'bureaucratic ethos' is one place to
begin."--
Ethikos
"A finely honed tour of an odyssey of moral transformation, in which the actors themselves remain largely unaware of the nature of their journey. It is a brilliant work."--Troy Duster, New York University
About the Author
Robert Jackall is the Willmott Family Third Century Professor of Sociology & Public Affairs, Williams College; author of Image Makers: Advertising, Public Relations, and the Ethos of Advocacy (Chicago, 2000), Wild Cowboys: Urban Marauders & the Forces of Order (Harvard, 1997), and Street Stories: The World of Police Detectives (Harvard, 2005).
Two customer reviews:on Amazon.com:
34 of 35 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Objective, sad, but true
May 5, 2002 By D J
"Moral Mazes" is an extensive, award-winning and highly accurate sociological portrait of life in the modern corporation, an academic precursor, so to speak, of the "Dilbert" cartoon strip. Unlike many other writers on this topic, Jackall doesn't resort to Marxist rants, but rather, compares modern corporate culture to the "Protestant" work ethic most Americans are raised into.
Jackall's inquiry, based on in-depth interviews with managers themselves, is broad in scope, and it is hard to generalize. Within about 200 pages, he covers the social circles of the corporation, cronyism, bad decisionmaking and public relations, to name a few. He discovers that corporations, at the upper levels at least, resemble a king's court more than a meritocratic organization. The essential work of a manager is not "management" or "leadership," but constantly making the right friends and adopting the correct posture. Anyone who has worked in such a setting, or knows people in such a field, will be able to relate instantly, although it can be argued that Jackall did not need to spend years of ethnographic research to reach this conclusion.
This book is not for everyone, as Jackall must conclude that "ethics" as practiced by managers is nothing more than "survival" and ambition for one's own "advantage." While such a diagnosis may seem harsh, it is difficult to rationally explain recent events in the marketplace, such as the Enron scandal, without concluding that corporate executives have a moral compass that differs from that of the everyday person.
Contrary to what a layman may think, Jackall makes no moral judgments of his own, although readers most certainly will. The title itself can be misinterpreted by people not familiar with sociology. The "morals" Jackall discusses are not ethics (which he attacks in his intro), but Durkheim's "occupational morality." While he does study corporations, he calls the focus of this study the "bureaucratic ethos" (not "corporate ethos"). Anyone who's read history (or the local newspaper) already knows bureaucracy can create its own rules, from governments (i.e., the Nazis and the Holocaust) to religions (i.e., Catholicism and child molesters).
Surprisingly, by portraying executives' lives as frought with anxiety, guilt, "senseless" work and no reliable means to measure their self worth, Jackall may cause an intelligent reader to actually feel sorry for them. Reading though his interviews with executives, there's little question that many executives began to regard him as a "Father Confessor" to admit their deeds.
At the same time, Jackall offers an alternative theory for why the American work ethic has all but vanished: if people are promoted based soley on their manipulative social skills, why would anyone want to subscribe to the old work ethic?
28 of 28 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thoroughly depressing but an absolute must read
October 6, 1998 By A Customer
This book ought to be required reading for all MBA candidates and would be corporate middle managers as an intro into the sad and dysfunctional but real corporate world. In numerous scenes that will be instantly familiar to anyone who has worked at a Fortune 200 firm the book recounts numerous instances of failed and misdirected management. Depressing because it reveals the underbelly of corporate America and capitalism but readable in its accurate portrayal. Occasionally at times slow (particularly towards the end when he presumably is tired of writing) it does a clinical autopsy on management. Like watching a train wreck you are compelled to keep reading even as you realize the denouement. If you think that ignorance is bliss - give this a miss - on the other hand, if you are a frustrated idealist and need proof that in order for evil to overcome good, good only has to do nothing, it is worth the investment. An excellent primer on why we need ethics courses but more importantly ethical actions.
http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Mazes-World-Corporate-Managers/dp/0199729883/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393301099&sr=1-1&keywords=Moral+Mazes
