Corporate structure deadens and subsumes hopeful individual managers
Evidence
How that phrase resonates just now – after the deaths of Jean Charles De Menezes and Ian Tomlinson and after the banking fiasco. And what Jameson is describing here is the mortifying cocoon of corporate structure – which deadens as it protects, which hollows out, absents, the manager, ensures that their attention is always displaced, ensures that they cannot listen. The delusion that many who enter into management with high hopes is precisely that they, the individual, can change things, that they will not repeat what their managers had done, that things will be different this time; but watch someone step up into management and it’s usually not very long before the grey petrification of power starts to subsume them. It is here that structure is palpable – you can practically see it taking people over, hear its deadened/ deadening judgements speaking through them. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 144
Categorization
- XREF: Directly parallels the book’s broader theses about impersonality/structural power and bureaucratic morality. — connects to: Corporate vices are engendered by structure, not by individuals — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 142; Corporate structures insulate top executives while scapegoating compliant middle managers. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1402; Corporate structure shields executives by diffusing responsibility (+6 more)
- SEED: Essay angle: the recurring delusion of the ‘good manager’ who will be different this time — structure as a predatory institution that consumes reformers.
Related
- Corporate vices are engendered by structure, not by individuals (similarity 0.88)
- Corporate structures insulate top executives while scapegoating compliant middle managers. (similarity 0.81)
- Corporations resist ethical chastisement because they are not human individuals (similarity 0.80)
- Capital as cause-that-is-not-a-subject escapes all accountability structures (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Corporate structure shields executives by diffusing responsibility
#corroborates(0.88) - Corporate structures insulate top executives while scapegoating compliant middle managers.
#corroborates(0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1402 - Corporate wrongdoing stems from diffused responsibility rather than individual guilt
#corroborates(0.82) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 377 - Structural diffusion of responsibility in corporations shields executives and strips morality from harm
#corroborates(0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1605 - Organizationally structured deniability keeps executives from knowing wrongdoing
#corroborates(0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1579 - Corporate culture serves as an ideological cover for risk-shifting management strategies
#expands(0.78) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 290 - Corporate performance pressure causes labor violations that companies then externalize as managerial fault
#complicates(0.78) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 291 - Influencer culture promises fulfillment that corporate existence structurally blocks
#expands(0.75) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 355