Page 141 - Culture Society and the Media

CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA 131
influenced ATTC policy is open to dispute, but clearly the social and economic
ties between them and the corporation’s senior management provided convenient
channels along which influence and control might potentially flow. By sticking
so closely to what we might call the ‘capitalism in one company’ approach,
however, Berle and Means gloss over the existence and extent of these indirect
sources of influence, and present a truncated account of the relations between
property ownership and allocative control.
This failure to examine the contextural constraints on corporate behaviour
provides the starting point for the critiques of managerialism mounted by neo-
Marxist political economists. As De Vroey has emphasized:

While Managerialists just ask the question ‘who rules the corporations?’,
Marxists’ main question is: ‘For which class interests are the corporations
ruled?’ Here, one questions the logic of the actions, and this logic goes
beyond motivations, being inherent to the mode of production and the
place of the individuals within it. (De Vroey, 1975, p. 6–7)

As we saw earlier, supporters of the ‘managerial revolution’ thesis stress the fact
that managers do not share the traditional capitalists’ concern with profit
maximization. Since most of them have few shares in the companies they run,
the argument goes, their motivations tend to revolve around career and
promotion rather than profit. Their main concerns are with building up the
autonomy and influence of their departments, gaining prestige and status, and
advancing the ideas they favour. However, by emphasizing personal motivations
this analysis conveniently neglects the ways in which managers’ actions are
constrained by the economic context in which they are obliged to operate. No
matter who controls the corporations, opponents argue, profit maximization
remains the basic structural imperative around which the capitalist economy
revolves; hence,

Professional managers have to worry about profits, just as much as the
traditional tycoon…. Even if they are subjectively interested not in profits
but in the growth of the firm and the power and prestige which this brings
them, profits are still essential to secure this growth. Profits provide
directly much of the finance for growth; they are also necessary for raising
extra funds from outside. (Glyn and Sutcliffe, 1972, p. 52)

This structuralist argument also casts doubt on the idea of the ‘soulful’
corporation. This is not to say that corporations are only interested in making
profits or that their support for cultural and community activities is not informed
by a genuine philanthropy. However, these activities also bolster the effective
pursuit of profit by enhancing the corporation’s general image and deflecting
criticism of its operations. Atlantic Richfield, the American oil company that
owned The Observer, provides a good illustration of this mixture of motives. The