British zyxwvutsrqpon Journal of Management, zyxwvutsr Vol. 5,289-301 (1994) zyxwv What is Management? An Outline of a Metatheory Haridimos Tsoukas Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, zyx UK SUMMARY Drawing on a realist ontology and epistemology, a metatheory of management is outlined in this paper zyxwvuts as a way of (a) redescribing the nature of management, and (b) delineating the scope of application of various perspectives on management. Four perspectives are briefly reviewed, and the claim is put forward that each one of them deals with issues arising at a different ontological layer of management. Management is shown to consist of four layers with each one exhibiting its own characteristics and dynamics. Deeper theoretical descriptions penetrate deeper into the nature of management and capture new layers. The metatheoretical outline proposed here moves beyond the ‘either/ or’ polarization that management literature has exhibited so far, namely conceiving management either as a collective institutional necessity or as a set of individual prac- tices. Indeed, it is argued that management is both of these things plus a few more, and that an appreciation of its nature is possible within a realist ontology and episte- mology. 1. Introduction The emergence of managerial hierarchies for the coordination and control of economic activities is one of the most distinguishing features of late capi- talism (Chandler, 1977; Williamson, 1975). The importance of managers, therefore, as a distinctive occupational category for organizational decision making has long been recognized (Taylor, 1911; Fayol, 1949; Barnard, 1966). However, despite the increasing centrality of managers in the coordina- tion of complex organizational activities, and the enhanced visibility of their tasks and functions, it has not been easy to answer the question ‘What is management?’ Part of the difficulty lies in the ambiguity inherent in the term ‘management’. For example, does ‘man- agement’ designate a collective institutional process or simply a set of individuals distinguished by the activities they carry out? If management is con- ceived as a collective process then management is an institutional necessity, abstract and anonymous, An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 9th Annual International Conference on Organisation and Control of the Labour Process, zyxwvuts 10-12 April 1991, University of Manchester. much like the concepts of ‘class’, ‘bureaucracy’ or ‘market’. From such a perspective, what manage- ment is cannot be decided by looking into the micro-actions of individuals, but into the logic of management (derived from its embedment into a particular socioeconomic system) which is empiri- cally manifested in its trajectory of development in particular societal contexts (see Heilbroner, 1985 for similar remarks on the logic of capitalism). Understood this way, management (and any other concept indicating an abstract collectivity) can be theorized via the construction of models seeking to explain, on a macro-scale, the context-depended rise and demise of particular forms of management. Neo-Marxists, for example, are particularly inclined to such a mode of analysis. Braverman (1974), Burawoy (1979) and Littler (1982), to men- tion only a few, have attempted to conceptualize management in terms of its efforts to control labour, along different periods in the development of particular market economies or industrial sec- tors (see also Friedman, 1977; Thompson, 1983). If, on the other hand, management is seen as a particular set of individuals then management is conceptualized in terms of what these individuals regularly do. Consequently, one tends to theorize, at a micro-level of analysis, on the circumstances CCC 1045-3 172/94/040289-13 zyxwvut 0 1994 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 8 October 1992 Revised 22 September 1993