I was thinking about professionalization and want to explore the concept that the genre of the contemporary American worker with any “management” rule actually rewards administrating, not managing. Distinguishing the two as i mean them:
- administrating :: rooted in bureaucratic theory and public adminstration, involves standardizing and proceduralizing, measuring and quantifying, focused on compliance, documentation
- managing :: rooted in industrialism and scientific management, involves directing persons and processes toward producing, focused on interpersonal authority and responsibility
Sociology of labor has looked at how professions move through cycles of rationalization, and this occured with the managerial role in the U.S. labor economy, schooles of business and MBA programs teach business frameworks, business analysis, for administrating metrics across contexts: generating, interpreting, and translating records in some way I’m having difficulty describing, but which serves to allow the managerial layer of a business to serve as a administrative relay of commands coming from above or without.[fn:: Are managers the slime of many heads?]
Managers aren’t rewarded for managing the systems they’re a part of, but administrating the workflow assigned by higher systems, using the tools provided, into those systems.
Weirdly this process, while part of professionalization of management, has also been part of deskilling the role. Rather than having any sort of craft knowledge of managing people