Kenneth Lipartito

2020 Charlotte, North Carolina

2022 Mexico City

2022 Mexico City

2025 Atlanta, Georgia

Abstract: This paper brings together the classic paradigm of managerial capitalism developed by Alfred Chandler and the cultural (for want of a better word) paradigm of knowledge and governmentality of Michel Foucault that became popular about the same period. Where Chandler and Foucault intersect is in the management of workers. If we drill down into the history of management practices as described in Chandler, we find that information, knowledge, and observation were central to managerial capitalism’s treatment of labor. Railroads first but then other large corporations developed sophisticated information systems and ways of knowing about and observing their increasingly large labor forces. While Foucault did note the connections between institutions such as prisons, workhouses and factories, he did not restrict himself to labor under capitalism. But he does offer an insight that can be applied to the Chandlerian model to fully develop our understanding of how managerial capitalism is also a system of labor surveillance, and with that surveillance control and governance. In particular Foucault's panopticon is a 360-degree observatory, where the inmates are watched by guards and in turn can be watched by others. So too in a Chandlerian corporation, management devised ways to watch and know workers, but it did so by means of organizational structures that watched the watchers, thereby magnifying the sources of information and the effectiveness of control. Such models of surveillance, whereby those who are responsible for watching and monitoring are themselves observed and thus incentivized to exert greater control over lower-level employees, is often overlooked today where it is assumed that advanced digital technology can directly bring under purview each and every worker. While such advanced technologies of surveillance are now common, the panopticon model that sweeps up both the watcher remains a crucial part of the surveillance and management of labor today.

2025 Atlanta, Georgia