Moral Mazes

Sociologist Robert Jackall spent several years of fieldwork in the early 1980s interviewing managers at large American corporations to learn how bureaucracy shapes moral consciousness. The book first sets out the history, showing how the Industrial Revolution produced big corporations and a professional management class that judged decisions by profit and loss. It then turns to the interviews, conducted at unnamed large and medium-sized companies over roughly four years. Its main finding is that successful managers are skilled manipulators of symbols, and that many managers see politics, luck, connections and self-promotion, rather than talent, as what decides who rises. The Association of American Publishers gave it its 1988 award for the most outstanding book in business and management.

Patrick Collison lists it on his Bookshelf page.