Top heavy?

Th GMB reports that there are now 4.1 million managers in the UK. That's an increase of 1.4 million since 1981. There are now more managers than there are either skilled tradesmen or professionals in the workforce.
Why is management expanding? Partly, it's merely grade inflation. These figures show that administrative occupations have declined as management has grown recently - which might reflect a mere renaming rather than fundamental workplace reorganization.  Also, it might be a symptom of an otherwise healthy development - the growth of small businesses. A firm employing five people will have a boss-worker ratio of one-to-five. Also, since 1997 the public sector has expanded, creating jobs for bureaucrats.
But I suspect a lot has to do with our ruling ideology - managerialism. People - not just bosses - think all social and economic problems can be solved if only they are managed correctly. "Hire another manager" is always thought of as a good idea.
However, there's little evidence for this. These figures (pdf) show that non-oil profit rates in the UK have been roughly flat over the long-term, even though the number of bosses has steadily risen. Common sense tells us that if more and more people are needed to achieve the same out-turn, productivity must be falling. Maybe, then, the GMB is right to say:

It cannot be right that one in seven workers is now a senior manager. There is plenty of scope for cutting out several tiers of top heavy management.

But then, managerialism isn't interested in empirical evidence, is it?

Comments

[Angry_Economist]

After many years reading management textbooks and studying economics, and having my wife recently do an MBA I can attest that evidence is surely lacking from many MBA and business course curriculums.

Why Charles Handy can write one half-decent theoretical book "Organisational Theory" and then go absolutely bonkers writing all sorts of crap for the next 25 years still amazes me.

Management Gurus are the new (old) Snake Oil salesmen. Maybe they are the old snake oil salesmen and its now the pundits of the 'New Economy' or 'Knowledge Economy', eh?! Leading thinktank can't find knowledge economy - http://econdevuk.blogspot.com/2005/04/bland-unfounded-unhelpful-concepts-1.html

Having said that there are some half decent management books e.g. Schein's study of the Singapore Economic Development Board, Mintzberg's book on organisational structure, but then these authors also wrote bonkers rubbish too as well as the more sensible stuff.

You have to try real hard to get some decent stuff out of management professors - but there are some more interesting things out there by Porter, Kotler, Schein and Mintzberg.

Management 'science' takes a lot of case study evidence and spins it out into stereotypical generalisations in my experience.

[Phil Hunt]

I used to work on a project where there were more managers than workers.

Unsurprisingly, the project was a failure ans was cancelled uncompleted.