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The below thought was prompted from reading this, literally thought provoking article on the current "third sector" management capitalism that is evolving in Britain and other western economies in the wake of last years financial meltdown. Maybe saying "a key" would have been more appropriate, but it definitely crystallizes in my mind a structural trick that seems to have become quite prevalent in many different places these days. Particularly things like the financial "conduits" and "structured investment vehicles" that banks used as part of their wonderfully sinister-sounding "shadow banking system" in order to off-load the responsibility (and financial accounting) of their riskiest investments. Or the US government using defense contractors (aka mercenaries) to do much of their dirty work in places like Iraq, even when they have a perfectly good, and in fact, cheaper to operate, army all of their own. Extraordinary rendition too, the outsourcing of torture, would be another excellent example. And thus "we don't torture": well strictly speaking true, as long as the "we" doesn't include those we pay to do our unpleasant tasks for us.

I don't want to overstate this case too much, the contrary impulse can also be quite strong: the desire to control and decide. Within my own company I can certainly think of multiple examples of this type of person. But the interesting thing is that these two competing impulses can easily cohabit in a single person. Prime example being George "The Decider" Bush, he of the heartfelt conviction and the disavowed result. Iraq was a good idea that struggled due to "a few bad eggs" who were left outside in the hot sun to go bad by the very people later condemning them.

Either way, I keep wondering how these companies and institutions manage to not only keep functioning but grow in size and power when so many that run them are so manifestly not wizards of management and foresight, but in fact quite normal fallible humans.  I've always been struck by how, in all my experiences in both university and work, how rare it has been to run into people in management and administrative positions who on a personal level have the knowledge and foresight that their position would indicate as a necessity. Of course we have just witnessed, with the credit crunch and sub-prime mortgage fiasco, perhaps the greatest failure of management in living memory: the point where it became clear that, indeed, those wielding great power and influence are as clueless as the rest of us when it comes to what it is exactly that we are doing with ourselves here. As we build up an institution larger and larger, it begins to function in ways that are increasingly different from the way humans interact and related on an individual level: that is, the more it becomes inhuman in its behaviour. No one is in charge and no one is responsible.

The key to the functioning of the modern headless bureaucracy is that the ones making the decisions are not the ones deciding upon them.  A disconnect between the the decision and the decision maker: hence the role of the consultant (as well, the expert, the specialized team, outsourcing, diffuse and distant organizational arms). The consultant does not care about the overall end result of his decision, because he will not be there in the organization to witness the result. Furthermore, the manager who contracted the consultant can thus disavow and step away from the decision, stating his own ignorance and citing the superior knowledge of the consultant. In this way the decision can be cast as inevitable and unavoidable; it has to be this way, a higher authority has verified it, how can we, with our meager knowledge, contradict? Even if management knew full well of what the decision was likely to be, and even if *neither* side can truly conceive of what the eventual outcome of such a decision may be, the decision was always already inevitable. Thus do extremely stupid people make extremely stupid decisions and wield great power.