New myths and old practices: postmodern management discourse and the decline of Fordist industrial relations

The aim of this article is to analyse some of the key issues in relation to new management discourses, and above all to consider their social impact in terms of their influence on overall social policy and practice. An overview will be provided of the different historical phases of management thinking, from the approaches that connect social modernisation with bureaucratic regulation, to the theories that link the postmodern world and complexity. It will also be shown how the current management guru literature, with its manipulation of the metaphors of excellence, networks and chaos, is threatening to impose a purely economic approach on how the workforce is employed. The ‘moral harassment’ and ‘corrosion of character’ resulting from a labour market that has been made excessively flexible cannot be avoided simply by relying on people's lost sense of trust, their emotions, or their individual competences. Finally, an analysis of labour market flexibility and the social role of work will be presented, with a view to identifying a new institutional framework for the management of work.