Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers [Paperback]

Robert Jackall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 21, 1989 | ISBN-10: 0195060806 | ISBN-13: 978-0195060805

Robert Jackall's Moral Mazes offers an eye-opening account of how corporate managers think the world works, and how big organizations shape moral consciousness.
Based on extensive interviews with managers at every level of two industrial firms and of a large public relations agency, Moral Mazes takes the reader inside the intricate world of the corporation. Jackall reveals a world where hard work does not necessarily lead to success, but where sharp talk, self-promotion, powerful patrons, and sheer luck might. Cheerfully-bland public faces mask intense competition in this world where people hide their intentions, and accountability often depends on the ability to outrun mistakes.
In this topsy-turvy world, managers must bring often unforgiving technology and always difficult people together to make money, an uncompromising task demanding continual compromises with conventional truths. Moral questions become merely practical concerns and issues of public relations. Sooner or later, managers find themselves wondering how to act in such a world and still maintain a sense of personal integrity.
This brilliant, sometimes disturbing, often wildly funny study of corporate thinking, decision-making, and morality presents compelling real life stories of the men and women charged with running the businesses of America. It will interest anyone concerned with how big organizations actually function, or with the current moral malaise in our public life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The real value of Moral Mazes is in its lucid, literate description of the world in which managers' live....Every business student and budding manager would be well advised to read this account....very interesting and important work, well worth the investment of time required to absorb and understand it."--Leonard J. Brooks, Journal of Business Ethics

"This book presents realistic accounts of corporate subculture and is an exemplary text for students."--Dr. Clifford Dorne, Texas A&M International

"Jackall has penetrated the recesses of the corporate world and returned with the finest account of the moral structure of that world that we are likely to get. This work is surely to become the definitive account of the labyrinth of ethics traversed by today's managerial elite."--Stanford M. Lyman, Florida Atlantic University

"A valuable addition to existing works because it discusses practical applications of solutions to ethical problems."--Library Journal

"Scandals over 'insider trading,' as practiced by Oliver North as well as by Ivan Boesky, have helped turn business ethics books into a booming business. Moral Mazes is the best of the recent releases."--Los Angeles Times

"Reformers who want to change the corporation, first must understand it. Robert Jackall's carefully researched analysis of the 'bureaucratic ethos' is one place to begin."--Ethikos

"A finely honed tour of an odyssey of moral transformation, in which the actors themselves remain largely unaware of the nature of their journey. It is a brilliant work."--Troy Duster, University of California, Berkeley

"Is managerial success in American corporate business mainly the result of hard work? Robert Jackall's book is indispensable reading for anyone seeking an answer to this question."--Hans Speier, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

"An interesting, unorthodox, and provocative book....Better than any other I have seen, [Jackall's] study reveals the normative reality of the manager's world."--Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., Yale Journal on Regulation

"A disturbing book....It evokes, cautions, and speaks of the secrets to be found in organizational worlds, and few readers will be unmoved by the author's careful, culturally informed critique of managerial practice....Jackall disturbs the calm and reassuring fronts displayed by corporate managers and their spokesmen in ways that instruct and challenge the reader."--John Van Maanen, Administrative Science Quarterly

About the Author

Robert Jackall is Professor of Sociology and Chairman of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Williams College. He is the author of Workers in a Labyrinth: Jobs and Survival in a Bank Bureaucracy, and of many essays and reviews in publications such as Harvard Business Review, America, Commonweal, Science, and Contemporary Sociology. He also co-edited Worker Cooperatives in America with Henry M. Levin.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (September 21, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195060806
• ISBN-13: 978-0195060805
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,123,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Throughly depressing but an absolute must read, October 6, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers (Paperback)

This book ought to be required reading for all MBA candidates and would be corporate middle managers as an intro into the sad and dysfunctional but real corporate world. In numerous scenes that will be instantly familiar to anyone who has worked at a Fortune 200 firm the book recounts numerous instances of failed and misdirected management. Depressing because it reveals the underbelly of corporate America and capitalism but readable in its accurate portrayal. Occasionally at times slow (particularly towards the end when he presumably is tired of writing) it does a clinical autopsy on management. Like watching a train wreck you are compelled to keep reading even as you realize the denouement. If you think that ignorance is bliss - give this a miss - on the other hand, if you are a frustrated idealist and need proof that in order for evil to overcome good, good only has to do nothing, it is worth the investment. An excellent primer on why we need ethics courses but more importantly ethical actions.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Objective, sad, but true, May 5, 2002

By 

Amateur Philosopher (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers (Paperback)

"Moral Mazes" is an extensive, award-winning and highly accurate sociological portrait of life in the modern corporation, an academic precursor, so to speak, of the "Dilbert" cartoon strip. Unlike many other writers on this topic, Jackall doesn't resort to Marxist rants, but rather, compares modern corporate culture to the "Protestant" work ethic most Americans are raised into.

Jackall's inquiry, based on in-depth interviews with managers themselves, is broad in scope, and it is hard to generalize. Within about 200 pages, he covers the social circles of the corporation, cronyism, bad decisionmaking and public relations, to name a few. He discovers that corporations, at the upper levels at least, resemble a king's court more than a meritocratic organization. The essential work of a manager is not "management" or "leadership," but constantly making the right friends and adopting the correct posture. Anyone who has worked in such a setting, or knows people in such a field, will be able to relate instantly, although it can be argued that Jackall did not need to spend years of ethnographic research to reach this conclusion.

This book is not for everyone, as Jackall must conclude that "ethics" as practiced by managers is nothing more than "survival" and ambition for one's own "advantage." While such a diagnosis may seem harsh, it is difficult to rationally explain recent events in the marketplace, such as the Enron scandal, without concluding that corporate executives have a moral compass that differs from that of the everyday person.

Contrary to what a layman may think, Jackall makes no moral judgments of his own, although readers most certainly will. The title itself can be misinterpreted by people not familiar with sociology. The "morals" Jackall discusses are not ethics (which he attacks in his intro), but Durkheim's "occupational morality." While he does study corporations, he calls the focus of this study the "bureaucratic ethos" (not "corporate ethos"). Anyone who's read history (or the local newspaper) already knows bureacracy can create its own rules, from governments (i.e., the Nazis and the Holocaust) to religions (i.e., Catholicism and child molesters).

Surprisingly, by portraying executives' lives as frought with anxiety, guilt, "senseless" work and no reliable means to measure their self worth, Jackall may cause an intelligent reader to actually feel sorry for them. Reading though his interviews with executives, there's little question that many executives began to regard him as a "Father Confessor" to admit their deeds.

At the same time, Jackall offers an alternative theory for why the American work ethic has all but vanished: if people are promoted based soley on their manipulative social skills, why would anyone want to subscribe to the old work ethic?

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Timely book, July 5, 2010

By 

Virginia Rivard "realreader" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers (Paperback)

How often does a twenty-year-old academic book get reprinted? Seldom does one stand the test of time as this book has. The new edition has a chapter connecting his thesis to the Great Recession--though really, if you have read the book, you can connect the dots yourself. (The book is that clearly written.)