'Taking Everything in Hand': Managerialism and Technology

Managerialism and modern technology are closely connected. This is not merely because managerialism arises in conjunction with the development of accounting, actuarial and audit practices in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, nor even because of its frequent deployment of modern systems of surveillance, measurement and control (though both are important points of connection). Rather, managerialism has to be understood as itself a part of modern technological ordering, as belonging essentially to it and as unthinkable without it. Indeed, one might even go so far as to say that not only is managerialism a part of modern technology, part of a technological system, but that in its modern form, technology, or perhaps we should say, technologism, is itself managerial. Understanding how this might be so, however, requires understanding something of the distinctive character of both managerialism and modern technology.