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By “a society of managerialism,” I mean a society characterized by overtly or tacitly manipulating other people.  Advertising is a notable example; it is so ubiquitous in modern society that I would not be surprised if its inherent manipulativeness has seeped into our psyches as well as human relationships.  In virtually any conversation an ordinary person might have with a person working in an organization (i.e., “on the job”), the employee makes use of his or her organization’s carrots and sticks.  It is so engrained in “organization speak” that we hardly recognize it.

In fact, some private individuals try to appropriate for themselves organizational “perks.”  That is to say, they make demands as though they were representing organizations, and they act like those demands are beyond their ability to alter.  For example, there are individual home-owners who in renting out a room, floor or the house itself  insist that an “application form” be filled out as though it were required.  Such forms typically indicate that a person’s social security number is required (even though it is against federal law for a private citizen or business to require it).  If proof of identity is desired, one could simply show his or her passport or driver’s licence.  That most property owners presume nonetheless that they are somehow owed another citizen’s government numbers is presumptuous; it is particularly rude if the person making the “demand” does not offer his or her own numbers in exchange.  The asymetry evinces a sordid and self-serving attitude that has strangely been swallowed by American society as valid.  Particularly with so many foreclosures, potential renters would be more than justified in requiring prospective lessors to fill out a property assessment form.  Potential lessees could presume their own organizational requirements too!  Information enabling the renter to assess the lessor’s mortgage payments and ability to continue paying would be relevant. Such information would include access to information on the relevant bank account and mortgage, as well as the lessor’s employment (to verify the income amount cited on the form).  If the owner can insist on an application form, a renter would be more than justified in insisting on a property assessment form.  That a given house owner would no doubt be offended by being presented with such a form, even as he or she insists on an “application form,” indicates to me that the typical property owner’s presumption is without foundation and that a double-standard is tacitly assumed.  That such presumption could be assumed as normal, even as “required,” in a society suggests to me that perhaps a managerial society is not as neutral, or “objective,” as it might seem.  In other words, its playing field is skewed—caused by the weight of managerialism and its propensity to overextend itself without any boundary.

In the film, The Matrix, Neo is eventually able to see the matrix for what it is: series of green numbers scrolling up or down.  It is only then that he has power through it.  Likewise, it is only when a person sees the allurements and arrows in an employee’s end of a discourse that the person/customer can fully resist them.  Seeing the attempted manipulation is apt to quickly lead to resentment, for it is presumptuous to assume that so much of one’s communication with another person must involve threats.  In other words, organizational employees tacitly view “outsiders” (and perhaps even their colleagues) as objects to be controlled.  It is as if these objects were feared as potential threats (so manipulations and threats are assumed necessary from the get-go).  There is also an element of unfairness in the mix.  A customer brings only the power of his or her money and word of mouth, whereas an employee representing an organization typically presumes that the potential customer is already under the organization’s policies and procedures.  Besides being presumptuous, the employee’s use of threats (as in, “you have to…”) is not fair play, given that the other person has no such weapons.  It is hardly imaginable that a potential customer would use phrases such as “you have to…”, even after one has become a customer.  It is the lack of symetry that ought to be obvious to us all, yet we tacitly accept it as “normal.”

There is evidence that the carrots and sticks have a rather narrow application with human beings, so much of the effort to induce or threaten may be in vain.  According to CNN, “In laboratory experiments and field studies, a band of psychologists, sociologists and economists have found that many carrot-and-stick motivators — the elements around which we build most of our businesses and many of our schools — can be effective, but that they work in only a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. For enduring motivation, the science shows, a different approach is more effective. This approach draws not on our biological drive or our reward-and-punishment drive, but on what we might think of as our third drive: Our innate need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world. In particular, high performance — especially for the complex, conceptual tasks we’re increasingly doing on the job— depends far more on intrinsic motivators than on extrinsic ones.”

So organizational employees and their task-masters may well be selling their fellow human beings short in presuming that they must be buffeted with inducements and threats from the get-go.  Perhaps these organizational creatures are of the lower sort that function only by being manipulated and threatened.  Perhaps they project their own self-centeredness out onto ordinary, free, human beings.
In any event, we, the free-spirits, should call the presumptuous and insulting employees on their modus operendi.  Interruptions such as, “I am not in your organization so I am not subject to it as you are” or even more directly, “I do not appreciate being threatened” or “I feel insulted being sold to even as I am at the counter ordering” indicate to the employee that his or her antics have been made transparent.  Typically, the employee will feign ignorance of what he or she has been doing, or simply ignore the statements.  However, such responses will only confirm the rudeness—which is really passive aggression.  We are bombarded with organizational passive aggression every day and yet we are so used to it in the organizational society that we take it in without knowing it.  If I am correct here, much that passes for normal in managerialism is really sordid behavior that naturally causes irritation and frustration.

CNN source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/02/pink.motivation.bonuses/index.html?dsq=38857033#comment-38857033