Hancock & Tyler - 2004 - MOT Your Life

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'MOT Your Life': Critical Management Studies and the Management of

Everyday Life
Philip Hancock and Melissa Tyler
Human Relations 2004 57: 619
DOI: 10.1177/0018726704044312
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Human Relations
DOI: 10.1177/0018726704044312
Volume 57(5): 619–645
Copyright © 2004
The Tavistock Institute ®
SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks CA,
New Delhi
www.sagepublications.com
‘MOT your life’: Critical management

studies and the management of everyday
life
Philip Hancock and Melissa Tyler
A B S T R AC T This article attempts to reflect critically on the extent to which the

discourses, techniques and imperatives associated with the manage-
ment of work organizations are increasingly colonizing the everyday
sphere of human communication and sense-making. Drawing on
critical social theory and particularly Habermas’s account of ‘the
rational organization of everyday life’, as well as what has come to
be known as critical management studies (CMS), the article begins
by locating itself within contemporary debates on management and
everyday life. It then proceeds, drawing on recent research involving
a critical analysis of post-Excellence management books, to map out
the discourse commonly encountered in such texts before going on
to explore the presence of a notably similar discourse appearing
within contemporary cultural resources such as self-help manuals
and, more notably, lifestyle magazines. It is then argued that
such texts constitute a material signifier of what is an ongoing
managerialist colonization of the everyday life world. This argument
is substantiated with reference to a series of (group and individual)
semi-structured interviews focusing on the lived experience of
management, highlighting the encroachment of management
discourse, techniques and imperatives on life outside work organiz-
ations. The article concludes by reflecting critically on some of the
philosophical and political issues this potentially raises and, in doing
so, aims to contribute to a critical discussion of the diffusion of
management knowledge and ideology, particularly in relation to the
subjective impact of managerialism on human relations.
619

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620 Human Relations 57(5)
KEYWORDS colonization critical theory discourse everyday life
lifestyle magazines management
Introduction
It would seem fair to say that these are somewhat interesting times for
management – as a profession, a practice and as an academic discipline. On
the one hand, it would appear that management has never had it so good; has
never been so embedded in the very fabric of contemporary economic and
organizational life. On the other hand, however, there are clear stirrings of
discontent if not open rebellion against the apparent dominance of
professional management as a political and economic force. As Parker (2002)
notes, a range of forces now appear to be massing on the horizon, ready and
willing to challenge the taken for granted assumptions and institutional
prerogatives upon which management has founded its apparent hegemony.
Perhaps one of the most notable of these forces, in academia at least, is what
has come to be known as critical management studies (CMS). Although CMS,
as both an intellectual project and a quasi-political movement, has itself come
under criticism from some who would normally identify themselves with a
broadly anti-mangerialist tendency (see, for example, Parker, 2002;
Thompson, 2001), there can be no doubt that it has addressed an important
lacuna in intellectual activity left by the apparent disinterest in issues of work
and its management shown in recent years by the more traditionally critical
academic disciplines such as sociology and social psychology.
Eclectic by design, CMS has combined various schools of post-
Marxism, post-structuralism and also contemporary feminist theory to
provide something of a discernible approach to analysing management (see
Fournier & Grey, 2000); one that attempts systematically to interrogate its
philosophical assumptions, and the imperatives and techniques associated
with its practice (Alvesson & Willmott, 1992). In particular, such critical
analyses of work organizations and their management have raised broad
questions concerning the management of subjectivity and the scope of
organizational power relations to shape social identity and the lived experi-
ence of organizational life. The bulk of this work, however, has pursued these
themes largely in terms of the impact of managerialism on life within organiz-
ations. Garsten and Grey (1997: 211) for instance, have explored what they
refer to as ‘the “How To” phenomenon’, arguing that contemporary manage-
ment texts represent ‘a form of the secularized Protestant ethic’ guiding
managerial responses to widespread organizational changes heralded by
some as the demise of bureaucracy.

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Hancock & Tyler Management of everyday life 621
As such, with reference to the work of Giddens (1991) as well as Lash

and Urry (1994), they argue that such conditions are ‘fertile soil for an indi-
vidualistic form of self-help’ (Lash & Urry, 1994: 212) and are entirely
congruent with emerging forms of reflexivity and projects of the self (see also
Du Gay & Salaman, 1992). Focusing on the management of self-presentation
and the configuration of the managerial self as a site for purposeful impres-
sion management, ‘How To’ texts are thus deemed to encourage a form of
‘aesthetic reflexivity’ among managers, underpinned by the recognition that
‘we are not what we are, but what we appear to be to others’ (Garsten &
Grey, 1997: 219). However, despite acknowledging that notions of change
in the workplace – not least the increasing importance attributed to aesthetic
imperatives – pervade everyday discourse, Garsten and Grey’s (1997)
analysis provides, as noted earlier, a largely institutionally focused case,
concerned with the ‘How To’ phenomenon specifically as it relates to the
institutional management of contemporary work organizations.
Indeed, apart from in later work by Grey (1999) and Parker (2002),
both of whom have acknowledged the rise of management as an increasingly
universal framework for negotiating the myriad human experiences and
interactions, CMS has thus far paid relatively little attention to the impact
of management as an ideological force within the realm of non-formalized
activities external to the structured domain of work organizations.
Drawing on a range of resources, including our own empirical research
our aim here, therefore, is to explore what we consider to be a broader
cultural phenomenon. That is, the apparent seepage of management
discourse and practice into the extra-organizational sphere of the everyday.
In doing so, we seek to contribute both to the development of CMS as an
academic endeavour and to a more general critique of the potential impli-
cations for human relations of the managerialization of everyday life. Thus,
we offer both a critical analysis of how the management of everyday life is
produced and presented and also a broader discussion of managerial
encroachment on life beyond organizational boundaries, focusing on how
management and lifestyle texts impact upon everyday life and the lived
experience of life outside work.
Our methodological approach to the empirical research on which the
article is based was largely derived and sought from cultural studies (see
Kellner, 1995) to explore both the production and consumption of cultural
texts. Recent theoretical approaches to audience/readership reception in
media and cultural studies tend to locate meaning primarily within the
reader’s interaction with the text rather than in the text itself and hence
attribute particular methodological significance to everyday life. Fiske
(1989), for instance, has argued that although cultural texts may be

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reflective on the ideas of dominant groups, readers incorporate meanings into

their everyday lived experience of and engagement with such texts. With this
in mind, the research involved:
• an analysis of management discourse in contemporary management

texts (sampled from cross-referenced book sales, library lending and
citation lists);
• an examination of managerial discourse in lifestyle magazines (sampled
from National Readership Survey data to identify the most popular
magazines in terms of sales and readership. Ten magazines (five men’s
and five women’s) were subscribed to over a one-year period, and 10
back issues (where available) of each magazine were obtained, totalling
some 220 magazines;
• a series of semi-structured interviews: (i) one group of eight women,
(ii) one group of eight men, (iii) one group of eight men and women,
and (iv) ten men and ten women consisting of two batches of five with
interim analysis, based on a (piloted) interview schedule, using a selec-
tion of magazines as prompts.1
Lifestyle magazines were considered largely because self-help and life-

style management literature is clearly a well-established publishing genre
(Dale Carnegie’s How to win friends and influence people, for instance, has
sold over 15 million copies since its publication in 1937 and has been trans-
lated into several languages), one in which the fields of management and life-
style have long since coalesced. This coalescence has been developed and
substantiated considerably however, in the last decade or so with the increas-
ing proliferation and readership of lifestyle magazines (National Readership
Survey data in the UK, for example, suggests that at least one-third of the
adult population read lifestyle magazines on a regular basis). As commenta-
tors such as Weitman (1998: 73) have noted in this respect
Never before have so many been so intensively and extensively exposed

to the direct radiation of fictional materials . . . There is little doubt
that this lifelong immersion . . . has deep formative effects on virtually
all of us, and that older agencies of socialization (family, peer group,
church, school, workplace, profession, neighborhood) have corre-
spondingly lesser impacts.
Their content is also significant in so far as what are termed ‘lifestyle maga-
zines’ (see Nixon, 1996) tend not to focus on what might traditionally be
regarded as hobbies or ‘pastimes’ involving ‘doing’ things (gardening,

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interior design and so on) but specifically on broad issues of ‘being’ – style,
self-presentation, interpersonal relationships, consumer culture and so on; all
issues relating to the pursuit of the ‘project of the self’ (Giddens, 1991), and
which appear to resonate most closely with the discourse of managerialism
as it is articulated in the post-Excellence literature explored here. As Nixon
(1996) has noted, the concept of lifestyle in this respect is very much a
marketing one, grounded in the segmentation of the increasingly competitive
magazine market according to particular age, sex, regional and class
dynamics – most of the magazines considered here being aimed at young,
managerial or professional adults (see Savage et al., 1992 for a discussion of
managerial and professional lifestyle dynamics) with relatively high levels of
disposable income, living in urban or suburban environments and enjoying
relative workplace flexibility and autonomy (see Nixon, 1996). The ‘advice’
given is therefore highly commercial, investment orientated and focused on
the individual as a project of the self – a point we return to later in our
discussion. Of course, the degree to which people internalize and live by the
‘rules’ of conduct presented in etiquette books, self-help literature or lifestyle
magazines is not something that can be concluded simply from an analysis
of their content, hence the inclusion of a series of semi-structured interviews
in the research design. The aim of this latter part of the research was to
explore the ways in which we make sense of management in everyday life
and is a theme we return to later in our discussion.
The parameters of everyday life
MOT your life: Does your life have purpose and direction? Are you in
control of your ideas, feelings and actions? Do you have sufficient
personal dynamism? In short, how good are you at managing yourself?
These questions all affect your success, in work and in your personal
life.
(Men’s Health, April 2001: 6)
This extract, taken from a popular lifestyle magazine, encourages us to adopt

what Featherstone (1987) has referred to as an ‘investment orientation to
life’. In doing so, it seemingly draws upon the language and efficiency impera-
tives traditionally associated with organizational management as a cultural
resource, one that we can utilize in order to invest rationally in ourselves (by
being ‘in control of . . . ideas, feelings and actions’) and hence, maximize the
likelihood of capitalizing on the investments we make. And while it certainly
demands a degree of reflexivity, the reflexivity implied is performative rather

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than critical in that a strong normative claim seems to be made – namely,

not only that we can manage ourselves (or even that we have to in order to
survive socially, psychologically and economically, as social scientists of
various persuasions have long since noted), but more significantly that we
should and that we should strive to be successful in doing so. It is this
performance imperative that suggests, to us at least, that what we are dealing
with here is one possible example of what Habermas (1984), in particular,
has termed the colonization of the lifeworld. That is, the process through
which values associated with the technical coordination of complex systems
of interaction (what we broadly refer to as ‘organizations’), seep into what
he considers to be the communicatively ordered interpersonal relations of
everyday life, a theme we develop in greater depth later.
Certainly, both in terms of their content and context, lifestyle maga-
zines appear, to us at least, to represent what seems to be a pertinent site of
such a process – a process that clearly has a long history (see Habermas,
1987). Permeated as they are by a whole host of discursive references to
imperatives such as efficiency and effectiveness which, we would contend,
are traditionally associated not so much with everyday communicative prac-
tices, but rather with the management of work organizations concerned
primarily with ‘the production of maximum output for minimum input’
(Fournier & Grey, 2000), lifestyle magazines are both highly influential,
attracting large readerships even among ‘tweenage’ consumers (see Quart,
2003) and, as outlined earlier, focus specifically on the pursuit of the project
of the self. The emphasis lifestyle magazines and associated forms of litera-
ture seem to place on the pursuit of self-management appears, in this respect,
to find a striking parallel in contemporary management texts whose authors
have themselves shifted their focus in recent years away from a relatively
specific concern with management processes within organizations, to a more
general preoccupation with ‘personal mastery’ and the adoption of a mana-
gerial approach to life outside work (see Handy, 1985, 1989 for notable
examples of this shift). It is this apparent blurring of the boundaries between
the realm of the work organization and ‘the everyday’, manifest in the
example of the increasingly ubiquitous lifestyle magazine, and its resonance
(at least discursively – see later) with contemporary management texts, which
concerns us here, particularly as it relates to the management of everyday
life.
Now, although the concept of everyday life is undoubtedly a contested
one, as Crook (1998) has observed, it has in recent years once again begun
to occupy that somewhat precarious space reserved for ‘fashionable’ topics in
the social sciences. Traditionally, everyday life has existed, from the vantage
point of sociologists at least, as an analytical space that can be accessed

05 044312 (ds) 21/5/04 9:15 am Page 625
through the techniques and principles associated largely with broadly inter-
pretive approaches to understanding the social world (Garfinkel, 1967;
Goffman, 1959; Schutz, 1967). As such, the everyday has generally been
posited as the conceptual and experiential space of the mundane, common
place and largely informal actions and interactions of people which provides
the backdrop to, or set of resources for, their everyday sense-making activi-
ties. In large part, recent analyses of the everyday have tended to revive these
traditions and concerns, emphasizing in particular the spontaneity, playful-
ness, sensuality, informality, heterogeneity and relative freedom of everyday
existence (Bourdieu, 1984; De Certeau, 1984; Featherstone, 1991; Lefebvre,
1968; Maffesoli, 1989, 1996). As such, the everyday in such literature is cele-
brated as a conceptual space of spontaneity and popular resistance to the
formal rationality and administrative ethos of the modern world.
However, in contrast, more self-consciously critical accounts of
everyday life – Cohen and Taylor (1976), Ritzer (1992) and Rojek (1994),
for instance – have argued that such seemingly spontaneous and informal
everyday activities such as hobbies, holidays and even social relations have
become increasingly subject to the principles of rational organization, them-
selves underpinned by the profit imperative of contemporary capitalism.
Much of this critique clearly echoes Weber’s rationalization thesis and its
subsequent development in the work of the Frankfurt School – Adorno’s
writing on The culture industry (1991) and Marcuse’s (1964) ‘one-
dimensional man’ thesis, in particular. Bernstein (1991: 20–1) is among those
(see also Crook, 1994 and Tomlinson, 1990) who insist on the pertinence of
Adorno’s work to the study of a commodified culture of ‘lifestyle’ in which
a superficial ‘aestheticization of social reality’, and a ‘closing of the gap
between the culture industry and everyday life’ fail to accomplish any true
‘overcoming of the repressions of the work ethic’. Yet perhaps the most perti-
nent perspective on the managerial colonization of everyday life, and of the
circumstances within which we might turn to management as a source of
what Adorno (1994) terms ‘pseudo-rationality’ – the pursuit of a seemingly
rational response to an irrational configuration of human relations – can be
found in Habermas’s previously alluded to account of the colonization of the
lifeworld. His analysis, which stresses that everyday life has become increas-
ingly subject to bureaucratic administration, is based upon a bifurcated
conception of society as comprising what he terms the ‘system’ and the ‘life-
world’.2 Rather than a particular region of social space, the phenomeno-
logical concept of the ‘system’ in Habermas’s work refers to the domain of
formal or instrumental rationality in which performative strategies under-
pinned by the efficient coordination of complex socio-economic relations are
deployed, and in which the rational calculation of means takes precedence.

05 044312 (ds) 21/5/04 9:15 am Page 626
Similarly, the ‘lifeworld’ designates, for Habermas, a series of presupposi-

tions given form, repeatedly, in our ‘everyday acts of mutual understanding’
(Habermas, 1987); a social space in which as Seidman (1998: 197) puts it
social co-ordination or regulation occurs by means of shared beliefs

and values; in the lifeworld, individuals draw from custom and cultural
traditions to construct identities, negotiate situational definitions, co-
ordinate action and create social solidarity.
Emphasizing that the lifeworld has become increasingly colonized by

‘formally organized systems of action based on steering media’ (Habermas,
1992), Habermas argues that the pathologies of modern society flow largely
from this colonization process, as the lifeworld has become increasingly
driven by imperatives of money and power engendering a fragmentation of
‘everyday consciousness’ (Habermas, 1987) and a distortion of the depen-
dency of the system on the symbolic guidance of the lifeworld. This is due
to the ways in which the colonization process undermines and effectively
inverts the cultural and ethical foundations of everyday communicative prac-
tices and their critical (reflexive) potential, ‘in favour of media-steered inter-
actions’ (Habermas, 1987).3 Hence,
the subsystems of the economy and the state become more and more
complex as a consequence of capitalist growth and penetrate ever
deeper into the symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld.
(Habermas, 1987: 367)
The emancipatory task of critical theory for Habermas (1985) is therefore

to facilitate the lifeworld in regaining confidence in its own consensus-gener-
ating capacity in the face of colonization by systems such as the state, the
law and the economy and their subsystems in the form of bureaucratic
organizations. In his account of the processes whereby the logic of scien-
tific–technological rationality came to penetrate the sphere of everyday life,
Habermas also emphasizes what he deems to be the unrealized potential in
the project of modernity, particularly in terms of the pursuit of emancipa-
tory imperatives. Habermas’s (1985) defence of modernity assigns a particu-
larly critical role to the concept of ‘communicative action’ in the everyday
lifeworld. Grounding his theory of communicative action in an (early)
Hegelian philosophy of inter-subjectivity (see Benhabib, 1992; Hancock &
Tyler, 2001a, 2001b), Habermas argues that human subjectivity evolves
socially in the cultural environment of the lifeworld in which individuals
must, effectively, recognize themselves. In this sense, therefore, the lifeworld

05 044312 (ds) 21/5/04 9:15 am Page 627
is the basis of a ‘self’ formed dialogically (read ‘inter-subjectively’). In other

words, through engaging and coming to terms with others. Hence, the basis
of Habermas’s account is that becoming a subject is founded on ‘the intu-
ition that a telos of mutual understanding is built into linguistic communi-
cation’ (Habermas, 1987: 99).
Although the liberal assumptions upon which this ‘intuition’ is based are
clearly not unproblematic (see Passerin D’Entreves & Benhabib, 1996) and his
concept of the ‘everyday’ open to charges of homogenization and ‘romantic
nostalgia’ (see Crook, 1998),4 Habermas’s inter-subjective philosophy seems
particularly applicable to developing a critical framework for understanding
the management of everyday life. It is the ‘colonization’ of this inter-subjective
process that, we would argue, underpins this managerial assault on everyday
life such that communication, to employ Habermas’s terminology, is more
monological than dialogical; that is, externally imposed on an arrested subjec-
tivity and driven not by an ethic of mutuality but more so by the imperatives
of a rationalized ‘enterprise’ culture (Du Gay, 1994; Du Gay & Salaman,
1992). In sum, as Crook (1998: 539, emphasis added) puts it,
. . . in its heyday, ‘everyday life’ served as a rubric through which to

assert the sociological significance of the structures and practices of
micro-social settings . . . The recent revival of the everyday has also
done some good, focusing attention on the micro-politics of conformity
and resistance, re-asserting the connectedness of the micro- and macro-
social, and in problematizing the production and management of
experience.
It is to this ‘production and management of experience’ that we now turn,

focusing initially on contemporary management texts and then on manage-
ment discourse in a selection of ‘self-help’ literature and lifestyle magazines.
We then consider the impact of managerialism on everyday life and finally,
highlighting this process of managerial colonization, reflect on the impli-
cations of conceptualizing management as a mass mediated cultural tech-
nology that simultaneously demands and provides a form of
pseudo-rationality (Adorno, 1994).
Post-Excellence management discourse
The impact and pervasiveness of management, in contemporary western

societies at least, should not be underestimated. As Peter Drucker (1989: 3)
has noted, in a somewhat self-congratulatory vein,

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the emergence of management as an essential, a distinct and a leading

institution is a pivotal event in social history. Rarely, if ever, has a new
basic institution, a new leading group, emerged as fast as has manage-
ment since the turn of this [the 20th] century. Rarely in human history
has a new institution proven indispensable so quickly.
Yet despite its (self) proclaimed institutional status and a plethora of prof-
fered definitions from management writers and academics alike, the variety
of theoretical approaches to management has produced a seemingly infinite
number of versions rendering any attempt to provide a definitive assertion
of its nature somewhat meaningless. Nonetheless, if Fayol’s (1949) convic-
tion that ‘to manage is to forecast, to organize, to command, to coordinate
and to control’ (p. 1)5 is to be regarded as a something of a ‘classic’ (see Cole,
1996), then Tom Peters’ (1988: 4) proclamation that ‘five areas of manage-
ment constitute the essence of proactive performance in our chaotic world’6
can, broadly speaking, be regarded as the epitome of so-called ‘new style’
management (see Willmott, 1993). This formulation of the essence of
successful management is perhaps best summed up by what Peters (1992)
refers to as ‘the shift to soft’ in post-Excellence management discourse (but
not necessarily management techniques or imperatives) involving a concern
with being ‘loose but tough’. Yet despite their apparent differences, both
‘classic’ and ‘new style’ approaches appear to have in common a discernible
discourse – ‘a lexicon of concepts which are deployed within the different
styles of work’ (Fournier & Grey, 2000: 17) – represented by certain key
words and phrases that seemingly recur. Outlined below are the key words
and phrases that seem to characterize some of the most influential mana-
gerial texts of the post-Excellence era such as Cole (1996), Coleman and
Barrie (1990), Drucker (1989), Handy (1985, 1997), Pascale (1991), Peters
(1988, 1992, 1997), Peters and Austin (1985), Peters and Waterman (1982),
Senge (1990), and Senge et al. (1994). Most frequently used words/phrases
are in bold, those used in virtually all texts included in the research are in
bold underlined.
Key words include: achievement, action, activities, activity, agenda-

setting, autonomy, awareness, behaviour, beliefs, change, coaching,
command, commitment, communication, community, conflict, control,
coordination, culture, design, development, diagnosis, dialogue, direct,
diversification, dynamic, effective(ness), efficient, empowerment,
enhancement, enrichment, entrepreneurship, evaluation, evolution,
exercise, experimentation, flexibility, forecast, function, goals, identity,
implementation, information, infrastructure, innovation, interaction,

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knowledge, lead, leadership, learning, listening, markets, measure-

ment, measuring, model(s), motivation, networks, objectives, organize,
perception, performance, personality, plan(ning), power, practice,
prescriptions, principles, priorities, proactive, problems, process,
productivity, programme(s), project(s), quality, reflection, relation-
ships, self-determination, skills, solutions, strategic, strategies, strategy,
structure, style, systems, teams, technology, templates, thinking,
training, transformation, value(s), vision.
Key phrases include: building shared vision; choose life; creating a

sense of urgency; creating life as a learning lab; crisis and transform-
ation; developing competence and commitment; forming oneself; how
to; identify(ing) strategic priorities; intrapersonal mastery; knowing
yourself; lifetime goals statements; manage from the inside out;
managing yourself; mastering paradox; personal mastery; personal re-
framing; personal sovereignty; pursuing fast paced innovation; quan-
titative belief systems; quantitative innovation goals; redesigning life;
resolve goal conflicts; responsible individualism; strategy for effective-
ness; turning around performance problems; work smarter, not harder;
attaching formulation to implementation; being successful; building
‘mental models’; conflict management; connecting thinking to acting;
constant innovation; continual performance review; development of
the self; diagnosing development; entrepreneurialism in performance
control; establishing goals; learning about strengths and weaknesses;
maintaining control; management by objectives; managing change;
operating principles; performance appraisal; perpetual change;
personal action plan; personal objectives; personal productivity;
planning and commitment; project management; pursuit of clearly
defined goals; self-renewal; setting objectives; shared values; strategic
change; training needs analysis.
Another key theme is quantification: ‘525 ways to be a better manager’,

‘manage your time in eight steps’, ‘nine ways to change people’, ‘select
your three A-goals’, ‘six tips for effective time management’, ‘six ways
to make people like you’, ‘the five basic value-adding strategies’, ‘the
four capability building blocks’, ‘the seven keys to superefficiency’.
Much of this discourse, in our view at least, appears to be underpinned

by an equation of management with the pursuit of a performance impera-
tive, one that continues to position management, even (perhaps especially –
see Hancock and Tyler, 2001a) in the post-Excellence literature, as a rational
and largely instrumental project. Perhaps this is seemingly most evident in

05 044312 (ds) 21/5/04 9:15 am Page 630
the way in which such literature stresses, through a ‘discourse of mastery’

(Garsten & Grey, 1997), the principle that the most important project for
any manager is the systematic and rational management of him or herself.
Pascale’s (1991) Managing on the edge, for instance, outlines the techniques
required for ‘unlocking the mystery of self-renewal’ – the keys being
‘identifying the fit/split paradox’, ‘disturbing equilibrium’, and, crucially,
embracing ‘crisis and transformation’. This theme of strategic, or performa-
tive reflexivity also pervades Peter Senge’s (1990) The fifth discipline in which
he asks us to reflect on the question, are we ‘prisoners of the systems, or pris-
oners of our own thinking?’. He goes on to outline ‘the laws of the fifth disci-
pline’, requiring ‘a shift of mind’ and the need for ‘personal mastery’,
requiring the use of a range of ‘mental models’, themes subsequently devel-
oped in The fifth discipline handbook, in which Senge et al. (1994) specify
‘how to see the world systematically’, while attempting to ‘break down fron-
tiers’ and fostering ‘organizations as communities’, actions which are them-
selves identified as making organizations more like everyday life.
The work of Tom Peters has, in particular, been fundamental to the
development of post-Excellence managerialism. In Thriving on chaos (1988),
for instance, he specifies ‘the essentials of proactive management’ as creating
total customer responsiveness, pursuing fast-paced innovation (by support-
ing ‘committed champions’ and setting ‘quantitative innovation goals’),
achieving flexibility by empowering people (using ‘self-managing teams’),
learning to love change (by ‘mastering paradox’ as well as creating ‘a sense
of urgency’), and ‘building systems for a world turned upside down’. His The
circle of innovation (Peters, 1997) develops the theme of ‘customerizing’ with
particular reference to the enterprising self, emphasizing the importance of
reconceptualizing the self as an entrepreneurial project or what he terms
‘ME, INC’. Urging us to perform a ‘personal brand equity evaluation’, he
goes on to note that ‘branding is (far) more important than ever before. It is
. . . the age of the brand . . . anything can be branded . . . We are ALL RDA’s
. . . rapidly depreciating assets’ (Peters, 1997: xvii).
Performative reflexivity and an investment orientation to the self –
what Peters terms ‘personal reframing’ – are also advocated by Charles
Handy (1997) in his work, The hungry spirit. Evoking Bauman (1994),
Handy argues that what is needed is a new ‘get a life’ ethos characterized by
‘proper selfishness’ and ‘responsible individualism’. Life, for Handy, is a
‘journey of self-discovery’, one that should be driven by ‘the quest for a
purpose in our own lives’. The ‘age of personal sovereignty’ he argues is
marked by ‘the switch from a life that is largely organized for us, once we
have opted into it, to a world in which we are all forced to be in charge of
our own destiny’ (p. 67). In a similar vein, Coleman and Barrie (1990) in

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525 ways to be a better manager, highlight the significance of devising ‘a

personal action plan’. In their prescription for being a manager who is ‘both
creative and innovative’ they outline (with no discernible sense of self-irony)
‘how to plan’, ‘how to organize’ and ‘how to maintain control’, by under-
taking ‘continual performance review’, specifying ‘how to train and develop’,
‘how to solve people problems’, ‘how to make decisions’, ‘how to delegate’,
‘how to lead and motivate’, ‘how to communicate’ and finally, ‘how to
manage your career’ by ‘shaping your own destiny’.
At the heart of this managerial discourse and its underlying preoccu-
pation with performative reflexivity seemingly sits the proposition that the
key to successful organizational management is itself the rational and system-
atic management of all aspects of one’s own everyday, if ‘professional’ life.
What we would argue, however, drawing on Adorno (1994), is that this
discursively ordered managerialist intervention into the everyday lifeworld of
managers in fact represents a form of pseudo-rationality. That is, a seemingly
rational response to the demands of contemporary organizational impera-
tives, strategies and processes, but one that is directed at resolving the
implacable contradictions of what is, in effect, an irrational mode of subjec-
tive existence (mass mediated, time pressured, performative and so on). Yet,
what in our view is even more disturbing about this particular managerialist
attempt to mediate the contradictions of modern life are the inroads it is
making into our everyday cultural consciousness. Inroads made possible, we
would suggest, by the particular success of not only self-help texts whose very
raison d’être appears to be to propagate such managerialist ideology, but even
more notably through the medium of the seemingly ubiquitous lifestyle
magazine. Indeed, as we suggested earlier, lifestyle magazines appear to play
a particularly significant role in this process of managerial colonization, facili-
tated in large part by their (illusionary) technocratic neutrality. That is, they
play a prominent role in this process, one grounded in the prioritization of a
particular cultural logic that acts to legitimate a quantifiable performance
imperative which in effect serves to reduce lived experience to that of a calcu-
lable project; a project for which the language and purported practice of post-
Excellence management provides the necessary discursive framework.7
Management in lifestyle magazines
As Garsten and Grey (1997) have noted, drawing on the earlier work of Beck
(1992), Giddens (1991) and Lash and Urry (1987), western industrial
societies appear to be almost defined by an obsession with the need to seek
out experts and sources of life planning in order to make it through the

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complexity and uncertainty of contemporary existence. What is perhaps

most notable about today’s examples of such expert advice, however, is the
emphasis they place not so much on instructive imperatives, but rather on
the facilitation of self-improvement. That is, they appear to be more
concerned with providing the skills and resources to allow us to ‘manage’
our own lives more efficiently and effectively, than to provide expert
solutions per se. Such texts follow, therefore, the same pattern as so much
of the post-Excellence management literature, according to which the
responsibility for personal success or failure is placed firmly on the shoul-
ders of the individual who is thus charged with the task of managing his/her
own destiny. This theme appears to parallel the more general individualism
and corresponding emphasis on entrepreneurialism that characterizes
contemporary market societies, according to which individuals are imbued
with responsibility for their own destinies vis-à-vis everything from career
success to life expectancy.
Take for example Mulligan’s (1999) Life coaching: Change your life in
seven days, McGraw’s (1999) Life strategies: Doing what works, doing what
matters, or the neuro-lingusitc programming inspired Manage yourself,
manage your life by McDermott and Shircore (1999). All of these draw
heavily on the discourse and imperatives of organizational management and
represent them as resources vital to the pursuit of everyday success and
happiness. Mulligan (1999) for example, a British ‘life-coach’, urges her
readers to pursue a seven-day plan for self-improvement, commencing with
the design and production of a personal appraisal form and questionnaire
and continuing through to a range of formalized tasks, including for instance,
the production of a personal mission statement, the importance of which
cannot, or so it would seem, be overstated:
For some individuals, their mission statement becomes the single and
most significant aspect in their life. Mother Theresa dedicated her life to
God and caring for the poor. Many religious leaders have spent a lifetime
in prayer and meditation, their mission being enlightenment. There is one
thing for sure: having a mission in life gives you a sense of purpose.
(Mulligan, 1999: 30)
For McGraw (1999) the bottom line is a simple one, namely that we must
all manage our lives. However, this is not a reference to the normal, everyday
‘managing to get by’ management that Parker (2002) alludes to. Rather, it is
conceived of as a systematic, calculated and rigorously pursued objective –
a strategic approach to everyday life (see Dixit & Nalebuff, 1993) – one that
must be designed and frequently re-evaluated to ensure that the way in which
we mange our lives ‘generates high quality results’ and puts it on ‘project

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status’ (McGraw, 1999); a theme that our research suggests permeates

contemporary lifestyle magazines.
Although lifestyle magazines are often associated with an obsession
with semi-pornographic imagery and fashionable consumption (see Nixon,
1996), what becomes evident on closer inspection is their equal if not greater
fixation with the kind of language and imperatives of the post-Excellence
managerial literature explored earlier. Readers are encouraged to ensure that
their everyday lives are brought to order, reconceptualized and then recon-
structed as ‘well planned’, ‘controlled’, ‘efficient’ and ‘effective’, while
performance is regularly reviewed and any necessary modifications or inter-
ventions are undertaken accordingly. Headings and sub-headings such as
‘MOT Your Life: 25 point problem fixer’ (Men’s Health, April 2001: 6),
‘Calm the chaos, tame the tumult and nail down every second of your time
as FHM brings order to your life in 18 easy steps’ (FHM, November 2000:
5) and ‘Sort out your life by: Seeing the bigger picture, getting creative about
your future, uncovering the things that give you joy, getting in touch with
and satisfying your personal needs, understanding your strengths, getting in
touch with your personal values, enlisting support, taking control is the first
step’ (Elle, April 2001: 131) all reflect, in equally soundbite fashion, the need
to embrace the brand called ‘you’ as a managerial project to be subject to
constant performance appraisal – ‘spring clean your life – career wobbles?
Love traumas? Elle shows you how to go for the big clean up’ (Elle, April
2001: 7).
Underpinning the impact of management discourse and techniques on
the realm of everyday life, and its reconceptualization as a lifestyle project,
is the predominance of quantification across both genres. As the common
currency of rationalization, hard figures both emphasize the achievability of
lifestyle goals and underpin their regulative function, allowing little scope for
innovation or creative engagement with the material or processes on offer.
Thus we have ‘18 ways to organize your life’ (FHM, November 2000: cover),
‘25 two minute health fixes’ (Men’s Health, June 2001: cover); ‘Follow our
21-day get-gorgeous guide to a happier, healthier you’ (Cosmopolitan, May
2001: cover), ‘75 energy boosters for busy modern women’ (She, November
2000: cover) and ‘10 steps to perfect happiness’ (Woman’s Journal, May
2001: 128). Instructions are given in the ‘17 ways to save a relationship’
(FHM, February 2001: cover), in the ‘16 ways to get taken seriously’ and in
how to ‘earn the admiration and respect of your fellow men [sic] in 16
simple, work-shy steps’ (FHM, May 2001: 99).
Lifestyle magazines seem to reflect, then, both the performative
reflexivity and quantification that characterizes contemporary managerial
texts, representing, we would argue, a pseudo-rational response to the
complexities of modern living. Hence, they proffer advice on the ‘fast-track

05 044312 (ds) 21/5/04 9:15 am Page 634
to happiness: transform your life in just one hour’ (She, November 2000:
cover) and how to ‘boost your success potential in an hour – got a problem?
Whether you’re stressed out at work or can’t manage your finances, our
quick-fix solutions could sort out your life double-quick’ (Elle, March 2001:
50). The article in She (November, 2000: 51) goes on:
Our techniques are about doing rather than talking. They’re designed
to get quick solutions to specific problems . . . they focus on creating
the future you want rather than analyzing what went wrong in the past.
We believe you have the resources within you to change things, and fast.
Underpinning this pseudo-rationality, we would argue, is a clear perform-

ance principle reflective of management discourse and imperatives – ‘be so
much better than average: more sex, more money, more muscle – here’s how
to get them all and be better than the next man’ (Men’s Health, December
2000: 8), ‘from fat to flat – our new life plan works every time: Spark up
your sex life, wake up with more energy, be better at your job’ (Men’s Health,
January/February 2001: cover), ‘feel younger and trade up to a better job:
Swap your boring old job for a brilliant new career and a successful you –
effective strategies for feeling like a 16 year-old again’ (Men’s Health, April
2001: 7), ‘100 easy ways to be better at everything you do’ (FHM, June 2001:
cover), ‘survival of the fittest – if you want to be a winner in the game of
life, you need to ooze confidence. Here are 10 ways to boost your esteem
and get what you want’ (Cosmopolitan, April 2001: 143). But what of the
lived experience of management techniques and imperatives? In the follow-
ing part of our discussion, we consider the various ways in which ‘readers’
of management discourse make sense of texts such as lifestyle magazines, and
of the management of everyday life more generally.
Management and the lived experience of everyday life
In terms of the impact of management discourse and imperatives on the lived

experience of everyday life, our interview data indicate that most respon-
dents were conscious of the extent to which they managed their everyday
lives and, generally speaking, were able to reflect on the nature and meaning
of this process, as the following extracts from interview transcripts suggest:
I think it’s true we’re all managers, whether we do it successfully or

not or very efficiently, or even why we do it is less obvious.
(Mixed sex group interview, March 2001)

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. . . managing your life means organizing your time to fit things in, to
fit in everything that you need to do so you’ve got an agenda of things
you need to do, fitting that all in . . . meeting objectives and reviewing
your outcomes at the end of the day.
(Interview with Claire, March 2001)
Management in this context was defined largely as ‘structuring, time

management, control’ (mixed sex group interview, March 2001). Several
respondents, particularly women, described management in terms of
juggling – ‘to be a manager means to be a successful juggler’ (interview
with Ellen, March 2001), ‘I juggle that’s my management. I manage
myself, it’s juggling from one crisis to the next effectively’ (mixed sex
group interview, March 2001), ‘organizing, arranging, doing the best we
can, juggling, trying to do it efficiently’ (mixed sex group interview, March
2001). While it was not uncommon during the research process for
respondents to reflect in a somewhat despondent way about the pursuit
of management imperatives in their everyday lives, and their adoption of
managerial techniques, at the same time they often seemed to demonstrate
a discernible difficulty with articulating this outside of management
discourse:
I would hate to think I’m using language like ‘goal-orientated’, ‘struc-

tured’ you know, ‘time management’ and so on, but now I think about
it maybe I do and I don’t realize it . . . that kind of language tells me
that your private life is not spontaneous, not flexible, it isn’t like kind
of people-orientated . . . there I go again! It means that you do like ten
minutes for one thing, fifteen minutes for another and you’re in like
pigeonholes and that can’t be fun. I wouldn’t like it if I had to, if I had
to make my private life structured in that way. I would find that very,
very boring to me, that would be your working life slipping into your
personal life, or rather your personal life simply becoming an exten-
sion of your working life.
(Interview with Barbara, March 2001)
More positive engagements with the management of everyday life were

underpinned by the idea that management provided a potential resource, and
were often justified through the invocation of an ethical imperative to
manage the self effectively and efficiently. Those respondents who articulated
this perspective most clearly tended to position their sense of self largely in
terms of a project and conceptualized management as providing a framework
within which the self could ‘become’ according to a series of clearly defined

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objectives pursued primarily with reference to a performance imperative, as

the following examples suggest:
Effective self-management is very much about structuring your life . . .

it’s very much about compartmentalizing life, . . . trying to show how
you can be successful in these different areas of your life . . . it’s
constantly structuring our lives rather than just living our lives . . . it’s
planned out rather than just spontaneous. But there is something about
it that it’s not just about planning it out but more than that, about
succeeding in it, it’s about being successful . . . that’s where it becomes
more of a sort of internalized programme for living . . . it’s about being
seen to be successful.
(Interview with Richard, April 2001, emphasis added)
Good management is how you actually divide your day to get the best
out of yourself, how you split up your time between your work, home
and social life . . . it’s all about bettering yourself . . . it’s a kind of self-
control mechanism.
(Interview with Hugh, March 2001, emphasis in original)
Managing your lifestyle is all about planning so you can achieve the
very best you can.
(Mixed sex group interview, March 2001)
It was in this respect that many of our respondents considered lifestyle

magazines as ‘manuals for life’ (all female group interview, March 2001)
– as ‘a sort of trendy self-help guide’ (interview with Michael, April 2001),
providing the cultural resources upon which projects of self-management
could be based. As one particular respondent put it in this sense, ‘you
manage your lifestyle and as part of that process you are reading these
magazines’ (all male group interview, March 2001). Another respondent
put it similarly,
These magazines are lifestyle guides . . . they give you ideas about what
other people are doing and how to structure your life . . . they say
‘you’ve got so much to fit into your life that we can help you achieve
everything that you want to achieve outside work’. Like for example,
. . . the top one hundred places to go and the top one hundred things
you’ve got to have done by thirty.
(Interview with Frank, March 2001)

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Indeed, our analysis suggests that readership responses to lifestyle magazines

and the way in which they position themselves as management texts provid-
ing ‘direction in how to manage yourself’ (interview with Ellen, March 2001)
can broadly be understood as affirmative, ambivalent, critical or confes-
sional. Several respondents (both men and women) said that lifestyle maga-
zines do indeed constitute cultural authorities in their everyday lives: ‘if I get
an article I really like to rip it out and file it and then use it to refer back to
when I want to think about particular things like relationships and stuff’
(interview with Jane, March 2001); ‘I am certainly influenced by these maga-
zines, Men’s Health in particular. If you asked me are you influenced by it,
does it shape your lifestyle, yes it does for me’ (all male group interview,
March 2001); ‘I see myself as a project, you make yourself up as you go
along and these [articles in lifestyle magazines] are ways of doing it’ (inter-
view with Lawrence, March 2001). Others are more ambivalent: ‘they’re
really just a bit of mental chewing gum . . . you just kind of chew them over,
just something to chew over that I don’t have to concentrate on or think
about’ (interview with Keith, March 2001). Several respondents articulated
what, in our view at least, are more discernibly critical responses to lifestyle
magazines and their managerial prescriptions: ‘anybody that actually does
these “ten things” or believes in them is wasting their time, there’s other
things in life that are much more important’ (interview with Nireen, April
2001); ‘they’re just an oversimplification of everything’ (interview with
Michael, April 2001); ‘these kinds of magazines are just taking over and it’s
bewildering and sad as far as I’m concerned. It’s a sad reflection of our pres-
sured, “me, me me”, have it all culture’ (all male group interview, March
2001). Other respondents seemed to suggest something of a (self-defined)
con-fessional relationship with the magazines considered here: ‘admitting to
reading them is almost like a confession . . . I’m not particularly proud of it,
I’m not saying I’m ashamed of it either, but I’m certainly not proud’ (inter-
view with Hugh, March 2001); ‘. . . I’m almost ashamed to say it but I do
flick through them now and again’ (interview with Ellen, March 2001); ‘I
wouldn’t spend the money on them but I do find them strangely compelling’
(mixed sex group interview, March 2001).
In terms of the impact of management techniques and imperatives on
their everyday lives, several of those who took part in our research suggested,
to us at least, that they deeply resented the imposition of management
imperatives, and their articulation in cultural resources such as lifestyle
magazines, on their life outside of work. Most respondents framed this in
terms of a sense of performance pressure: ‘there’s always such pressure . . .
and it’s such a constraining pressure . . . and I see this as being sort of a
problem rather than a means of solving problems’ (interview with Lawrence,

05 044312 (ds) 21/5/04 9:15 am Page 638
March 2001); ‘there’s a lot of pressure to perform’ (all female group inter-
view, March 2001); ‘it’s almost as if there’s a campaign against you . . . you’re
bombarded . . . it’s everywhere, you just get totally bombarded with all these
images and ideas of what you should be aspiring to’ (all male group inter-
view, March 2001). Both men and women suggested that this pressure could
be attributed, at least in part, to a blurring of the boundaries between work
and home. As one particular respondent put it, ‘the two things [work and
everyday life] have become more and more intertwined, it’s part of the
pressure of society and it’s part of the way that people’s work has become
more of a dominant force within their life’ (interview with Greg, March
2001). He went on,
I’ve no doubt that the quality of people’s everyday lives is decreasing

all the time . . . I’ll give you an example. Five years ago I used to go
and watch a football match on a Saturday afternoon with my mates.
Now I’m more likely to be in my office working on a Saturday after-
noon, I rarely go to a football match. Now I bring the radio in with
me and listen to the match on the radio rather than attend it, and I
hardly ever see my mates.
Several of those who took part in the research were concerned about the
effects of this seepage on social relations: ‘many people are now very business
orientated . . . in terms of how they view relationships’ (interview with
Stephanie, April 2001). Other respondents seemed to express despondency
about the objectifying or reifying effects of management techniques on inter-
personal relationships: ‘I don’t like to think of my relationships or the things
that I do with my non-work life to be things that I’m managing but I suppose
they are . . . [it] kind of debases some of that somehow’ (interview with Jane,
March 2001); ‘relationship management . . . we all do it, you kind of experi-
ence and live your relationship but then you’re also well aware of it as this
task or project or this distinct thing’ (interview with Derek, March 2001).
Critical reflections
What we set out to argue in this article on the basis of our research findings
is that although critical management scholars such as Parker (2002) are quite
right to be critical of the hegemonic grip managerialism appears to have over
the formal domain of the workplace, concerns about the malaise this engen-
ders should not be allowed to end at the boundaries of organizations. Rather,
there is good reason to argue that our critical focus must extend beyond the

05 044312 (ds) 21/5/04 9:15 am Page 639
seemingly omnipresent nature of managerialism within organizations, and

start to consider its increasingly pervasive presence within our everyday lives.
As one of our respondents put it, ‘management is part of our lives’ (inter-
view with Keith, March 2001). At the very least this should provoke us to
challenge those who assert that the advent of an informalization of the
everyday should encourage us to conceptualize the lifeworld as offering a
‘cultural release’ from the constraints of the ethical imperatives traditionally
associated with work organizations and their various attempts to ‘govern the
soul’ (Rose, 1990). For to do so seems, to us as least, to seriously under-
estimate the extent to which a managerial colonization of everyday life
appears to be driven more by a proliferation of performance imperatives than
a genuinely critical reflexivity. In particular, such approaches to understand-
ing everyday life as those considered at the beginning of our discussion seem
to overlook the arresting affects of our ‘over-investment’ (Foucault, 1998) in
the project of the self which, to paraphrase Foucault, appears merely to
burden us with new expectations so that
. . . what you think of as your ideal self is really how you should try
to live your life. It’s a management thing and magazines help you
develop the sort of attitude that you need to get these skills – go to the
gym, get these things . . . it’s almost like managing your life.
(Interview with Lawrence, March 2001, emphasis added)
Indeed, as Marcuse (1964: 117, emphasis added) noted in this respect:
Progress beyond the performance principle is not promoted through

improving or supplementing the present existence by more contem-
plation, more leisure, through advertising and practising the ‘higher
values’, through elevating oneself and one’s life. Such ideas belong to
the cultural household of the performance principle itself.
In this context then, far from being the (relatively) dis-organized site of
pleasure and play, everyday life assumes responsibility for securing our sense
of self through performative (acquisitive and antagonistic) rather than critical
reflection, as a well-invested ‘self’ becomes an important marker of ‘distinc-
tion’ (Bourdieu, 1984). In this respect, as Savage et al. (1992) have outlined,
one of the defining features of the contemporary middles classes is ‘an invest-
ment in the storing of cultural assets as distinct from property assets or
reliance on organizational assets’. Hence, the entrepreneurial project of the
self becomes self-fulfilling; existing as both the subject and the object of
maintaining a relatively secure position in a competitive hierarchy of self and

05 044312 (ds) 21/5/04 9:15 am Page 640
others wherein the appearance of self-actualization rather than the genuine

pursuit of an inter-subjective self-consciousness is the ultimate goal: ‘if you’re
doing well for yourself, you want to be seen to be managing your life well
. . . to be in control of things’ (interview with Richard, April 2001). The
rhetorical function of management in this respect, and its colonization of
cultural resources such as lifestyle magazines, seems to be to provide both
normative and epistemological fortification, as well as mass-mediated
dissemination and socialization, of the performance principle, then. Manage-
ment texts and lifestyle magazines alike seem to achieve this by presenting
behaviour that ‘reinforces weakness, masochism and conformity as if it were
its opposite’ (Adorno, 1994: 57). Much like the advice columns considered
by Adorno (1994) in his critical reflections on the culture industry, post-
Excellence management texts and contemporary lifestyle magazines seem to
contain many spurious ‘pseudo-rational’ elements that appear to be, in
Adorno’s (1994: 41) terms, ‘expressive of a tension inherent in social reality
itself: “to be rational” means not questioning irrational conditions, but to
make the best of them from the viewpoint of one’s private interests’;
primarily by rendering ‘personal mastery’ and ‘success in work and personal
life’ (Men’s Health, April 2001: 6) dependent upon individual rather than
socio-economic circumstances. Hence, one of the major commonalities
between management texts and lifestyle magazines seems to be that reflec-
tion is permissible in both only in so far as it serves the entrepreneurial
project of the self; in other words, it is performative rather than critical in
both form and purpose.
Such a posited colonization of everyday life by managerial discourse,
and the proliferation of a performance imperative by which it is underpinned
means, therefore, that the freedom to pursue our sense of self through
genuinely inter-subjective social relations devoid of mass-mediated perform-
ance pressures and linear purposiveness, of ‘the creation – and maintenance
– of a BRAND CALLED YOU’ (Peters, 1997: 6), is largely denied as authen-
tic experiences of being are increasingly excluded from the ensuing pseudo-
individualizing hegemony. The aggregate effect of which, we would argue, is
entirely commensurate with both the atomization of the individual and the
individualization of systemic contradiction, leaving many people feeling
literally ‘beside themselves’ (see Benhabib, 1992). As Mestrovic (1997) has
argued in this respect, ways of escape seem to have been rationalized and
McDonaladized, leaving little room for an ‘authentic’, irrational or simply
‘unmanaged’ experience of everyday life in which we have the opportunity
to feel that we can just be, or rather become, ourselves. Within this frame-
work, the process of becoming a subject can therefore be understood to be
one in which the process is more reflective of organizationally prescribed and

05 044312 (ds) 21/5/04 9:15 am Page 641
externally imposed norms and values – those belonging to the ‘cultural

household of the performance principle’ – than self-reflexive. As one of our
respondents reflected in this respect,
In so far as we have to manage our relationships, our selves and our

lives in general, there is . . . a loss of intimacy and spontaneity . . . I
live every day thinking ‘how have I got into this?’ and I know I’m not
alone in this . . . My whole experience seems to be the work stuff and
you know, my life, my real me and everything else is sort of sandwiched
and narrowed, just squeezed in . . . actually no, what I mean is
squeezed out.
(Interview with Derek, March 2001)
Performative reflexivity seems to function, therefore, as the business partner

of pseudo-rationality (Adorno, 1994), producing what Garsten and Grey
(1997) refer to as ‘a commodified production of the self . . . packaged and
distributed according to market criteria . . . and the pursuit of winning tech-
niques’. As they go on (pp. 222–3),
. . . for all the humanist talk of recognizing the inner self and knowing
oneself the reality is to validate a particular version of the self which
is congruent with certain demands of organizational life.
Of course, the social relations that in part constitute everyday life, for
Habermas at least, are made up of a cluster of rules and role expectations
(as phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists have long since noted).
However, if we genuinely wish to pursue the possibility of a space within
which such social relations and expectations are the authentic outcome of
human interaction then it is vital that these are formulated and enacted
according to a negotiated communicative ethos, to borrow from Haber-
masian terminology, one which places an emphasis on dialogicality and self-
entrustment rather than heteronymous imposition. Hence, if we accept that
subjectivity is, ideally, a process of inter-subjective becoming, located within
a space ‘for invention, to meander and side-step the linear purposiveness of
those who seek to order social life’ (Featherstone, 1998: 15), the challenge
is to expose its external mediation by a managerialist discourse that,
although heralded as proffering greater freedom of choice simply amplifies
the hypotrophic condition of human experience through its individualized
performance imperatives and monological discursive structure.
Reflecting on the issues raised here, we would suggest then that the
critical study of everyday life might provide one possible avenue along which

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CMS and critical social theory more generally may wish to proceed. For it
is no longer sufficient if CMS is to engage meaningfully with the negative
experiences and consequences of an unchecked managerialism to simply
focus on what has traditionally been its self-constituted habitat. Rather, it
must also consider the threats posed by management as not only a socio-
culturally embedded phenomenon (Parker, 2002), but as a narrowly consti-
tuted and operationalized socio-cultural ideology, one that is increasingly
starting to impact on the everyday lived experience of the self. If not, this
may well yet become the scene of management’s greatest triumph.
Acknowledgement
The research was carried out with financial assistance from the British Academy
(grant number SG31030) and the Division of Sociology and Social Policy at
Glasgow Caledonian University. The ideas underpinning this work first emerged
in articles we presented at ‘The Management of Everyday Life’ stream of the 1st
International Critical Management Studies Conference, Manchester, UK, July
1999. In particular we would like to thank Martin Parker, Bill Hughes and our
former colleagues at Glasgow Caledonian University, as well as the three anony-
mous Human Relations reviewers, for the helpful comments they have all made
at different stages of the evolution of this article.
Notes
1 Respondents were aged between 18 and 58 (the mean age was 36) and were largely
self-selected, initially in response to requests for assistance posted around campus
at Glasgow Caledonian University, on electronic discussion lists and in local cafes
and bars in Glasgow and Central Scotland, and subsequently by means of
snowball sampling. This snowballing technique obviously raises issues in terms of
the (primarily middle) class composition of the sample, and also their relative
awareness of, and interest in, lifestyle media – further research will be necessary
in order to engage with a broader range of perspectives than has been possible
here. That said, the research findings do suggest some degree of diversity among
those who took part in the research, not least in terms of their lived experience
of management discourses, techniques and imperatives, as well as in terms of the
demographic composition of the sample. Those who took part described them-
selves variously as straight, gay/lesbian, bisexual and celibate. Some were married
or in long-term relationships, others were divorced or separated; some were single
and others described themselves as ‘going out with someone’. They belonged to a
range of occupational and ethnic groups. Their contribution to the research is
gratefully acknowledged here and to protect their anonymity, pseudonyms are
used throughout.
2 Feminist writers such as Fraser (1987) have been particularly critical of Habermas’s
analytical separation of the ‘system’ from the ‘lifeworld’, arguing that this distinction
serves to obscure continuities between these two realms, particularly in relation to

05 044312 (ds) 21/5/04 9:15 am Page 643
women’s lives, in a way that merely replicates the modernist bifurcation (and hier-
archical ordering) of the public and the private.
3 See Power and Laughlin (1992) for an insightful exploration of the potential contri-
bution of Habermas’s ideas on systems, the lifeworld and steering media to a critical
theory of accounting.
4 Crook (1998: 532) is also critical of Habermas for giving ‘remarkably little atten-
tion to technological change and other changes that affect day-to-day communi-
cations practices’. Hence, Crook argues, the paradigm of everyday life remains
physical (embodied) co-presence.
5 Planning is translated from the French prevoyer – to foresee, and is generally taken
to mean ‘forecasting’ – deciding what needs to be done and determining a plan of
action.
6 The five areas he refers to are: (i) an obsession with responsiveness to customers; (ii)
constant innovation in all areas; (iii) partnership – the wholesale participation of,
and sharing with, all people connected with [an] organization; (iv) leadership that
loves change . . .; and (v) control by means of simple support systems aimed at
measuring the ‘right stuff’ for today’s environment’.
7 Much like the occult in Adorno’s (1994: 36, emphasis added) analysis of astrology
columns, we could argue that in lifestyle magazines management is ‘institutional-
ized, objectified and, to a large extent, socialized’.
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body, culture and society (Oxford University Press, 2000).
[E-mail: M.J.Tyler@lboro.ac.uk]

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Human Relations http://hum.sagepub.

'MOT Your Life': Critical Management Studies and the Management of

The online version of this article can be found at:

The Tavistock Institute

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‘MOT your life’: Critical management

A B S T R AC T This article attempts to reflect critically on the extent to which the

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620 Human Relations 57(5)

KEYWORDS colonization critical theory discourse everyday life

lifestyle magazines management

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Hancock & Tyler Management of everyday life 621

As such, with reference to the work of Giddens (1991) as well as Lash

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622 Human Relations 57(5)

reflective on the ideas of dominant groups, readers incorporate meanings into

• an analysis of management discourse in contemporary management

Lifestyle magazines were considered largely because self-help and life-

Never before have so many been so intensively and extensively exposed

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Hancock & Tyler Management of everyday life 623

The parameters of everyday life

This extract, taken from a popular lifestyle magazine, encourages us to adopt

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624 Human Relations 57(5)

than critical in that a strong normative claim seems to be made – namely,

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Hancock & Tyler Management of everyday life 625

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626 Human Relations 57(5)

Similarly, the ‘lifeworld’ designates, for Habermas, a series of presupposi-

social co-ordination or regulation occurs by means of shared beliefs

Emphasizing that the lifeworld has become increasingly colonized by

The emancipatory task of critical theory for Habermas (1985) is therefore

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Hancock & Tyler Management of everyday life 627

is the basis of a ‘self’ formed dialogically (read ‘inter-subjectively’). In other

. . . in its heyday, ‘everyday life’ served as a rubric through which to

It is to this ‘production and management of experience’ that we now turn,

Post-Excellence management discourse

The impact and pervasiveness of management, in contemporary western

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628 Human Relations 57(5)

the emergence of management as an essential, a distinct and a leading

Key words include: achievement, action, activities, activity, agenda-

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Hancock & Tyler Management of everyday life 629

knowledge, lead, leadership, learning, listening, markets, measure-

Key phrases include: building shared vision; choose life; creating a

Another key theme is quantification: ‘525 ways to be a better manager’,

Much of this discourse, in our view at least, appears to be underpinned

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630 Human Relations 57(5)

the way in which such literature stresses, through a ‘discourse of mastery’

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Hancock & Tyler Management of everyday life 631