Who manages the managers?

Abstract

Juvenal's question, 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?' or "Who guards the guardians?', has resonated through the ages and is still relevant today as more aspects of our working lives are subject to measurement, evaluation, and performance management. Nowhere is this trend more obvious than manager's intrusions into activities that were previously considered to be the exclusive domain of autonomous and self-policing professionals. I'm thinking here clinicians, teachers, academics and all those other occupational groups who have been caught up in the rise of the 'New Public Management' and other trends towards intensified rationalisation and control. If managers are inherently unmanageable then ..