Reimagining management is essential for genuine economic development, as it encompasses strategic decision-making across individual, organizational, and national levels.
Historically dominated by an elite class and driven by shareholder profit, management has often neglected societal well-being, environmental sustainability, and ethical accountability.
This narrow focus has contributed to ecological degradation, social fragmentation, and moral decline. Concepts like the Value Pyramid of Management (VPM) advocate for a more balanced, inclusive, and responsible approach that respects the needs of all stakeholders.
Additionally, modern management’s overreliance on educational credentials over actual competence has undermined innovation, deepened social inequality, and misaligned education with real-world needs.
As institutions prioritize appearances and economic gain over civic responsibility and human development, the resulting “skills mismatch” hampers productivity and cohesion. Without a fundamental shift toward values-based leadership and participatory governance, both corporate and national systems will continue to fail the very people they are meant to serve.
The Universality of Management
Management is indeed a fundamental human activity, reflecting the universal need to make deliberate choices regarding what, how, when, whom, and why—all decisions central to both our personal lives and broader organizational or national well-being.
In economics, particularly at the macro level, management encompasses the strategic governance of available resources—both human and material—to achieve collective goals.
At the corporate level, management involves rigorous decision-making around the effective allocation of resources. As described in management theory, this includes planning, organizing, coordinating, and controlling—often articulated through Henri Fayol’s managerial functions: “to manage is to forecast and plan, to organize, to command, to coordinate and to control”. Management scholars emphasize that these decisions are made not in isolation but through organizational “coalitions” where leaders must balance competing preferences in shaping strategies, as reflected in how firms distribute resources across activities.
On the national front, economic management—or macroeconomic management—focuses on how governments allocate resources for public goods, undertake redistribution, and stabilize economies. Fiscal policy, for instance, involves managing government spending and taxation to achieve stable growth, price stability, and sustainable external balances.
In both domains—corporate and national—effective resource management is key. It involves aligning resources with goals, avoiding waste, and enabling flexibility, all while accounting for constraints and uncertainty.
Thus, management as a discipline bridges economics and decision-making psychology—assertively shaping outcomes by orchestrating the limited resources at individual, organizational, and national levels. Understanding this relationship is essential for achieving sustainable and meaningful progress.
Why the need to overhaul Management
Management has long been concentrated in the hands of an elite class—those endowed with education, wealth, and influence. Historically viewed as the strategists equipped with superior knowledge, managers have often been elevated to almost god-like status, detached from the everyday realities and struggles of workers, communities, and ecosystems. This detachment creates what C. Wright Mills termed a “power elite,” whose decisions steer corporations and nations with minimal accountability to those affected by their actions.
For much of modern corporate history, the primary mandate of management has been to prioritize shareholder profit above all else—a principle famously articulated in Milton Friedman’s doctrine that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits”. This shareholder primacy framework has had dire consequences: unchecked natural resource extraction has accelerated deforestation, pollution, and ecosystem collapse, while corporate interference has degraded social bonds, undermined family cohesion, and corroded ethical governance. The relentless pursuit of investor gain, devoid of social and environmental safeguards, has so often led to societal harm and moral erosion.
In response, Value Pyramid of Management (VPM) was propounded, designed for a shift towards a governance model that seeks to balance the interests of all affected parties including workers, communities, and ecosystems. The VPM, a concept advanced by this author calls for sustainable and socially responsible decision-making that transcends shareholder value maximization.
Also, the overemphasis on educational qualifications over job competence represents a systemic flaw in modern managerial culture that is having ripple effects across education, employment, and broader society. At its core, this practice shifts the purpose of education from a means of fostering critical, responsible citizens to a tool for status acquisition and economic advantage.
As Sir Ken Robinson (2006) argued in his landmark TED Talk, education systems across the world have become “engines of conformity” rather than innovation, conditioning students to prioritize grades and degrees over the actual development of problem-solving skills, empathy, and civic responsibility. This distortion is further exacerbated by management systems that reward credentials rather than demonstrated capability, often valuing appearances and connections over substance.
This emphasis has fed into what scholars such as David Labaree call “credentialism,” where “the primary purpose of education becomes the acquisition of credentials for upward mobility rather than the pursuit of knowledge or the cultivation of character” (How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning, 1997).
In such systems, educational institutions become complicit in promoting self-interest and material ambition, producing graduates who are focused more on personal gain than collective well-being.
Universities and colleges, under pressure from market-oriented governance models, increasingly prioritize revenue-generating programs and student satisfaction scores over rigorous training or ethical development, as noted by Martha Nussbaum in Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010).
The consequence of this shift is not just a fall in educational standards, but a decline in societal cohesion and economic productivity. Employers worldwide report growing gaps between what graduates know and what industries actually need—a phenomenon dubbed the “skills mismatch” by the World Economic Forum.
According to its Future of Jobs Report (2023), over 50% of companies surveyed indicated that skill gaps remain a major barrier to effective productivity and innovation. When graduates leave school unprepared for real-world problem-solving but well-versed in networking for prestige and promotions, workplaces become less efficient, innovation stalls, and economic inequality widens.
This dysfunction at the micro-level reflects broader failures in national management strategies, where GDP figures and investor confidence are prioritized over human development and societal resilience.
The corporate focus on shareholder value is mirrored in national policies that treat citizens as units of economic output rather than human beings with needs for dignity, community, and purpose. As philosopher Ivan Illich warned decades ago, “we are increasingly educated into becoming consumers rather than creators, users rather than citizens” (Deschooling Society, 1971).
This detachment from civic purpose and moral accountability contributes to what Lucky Dube lamented in his song Celebrate Life: “We’re living in the world with a lot of crazy people. We’re living in the world with psychopaths. Every one of them wants to rule the world. Some people have the front row seat at the top of the world.
Some people have nothing but just a life. Problems are there left and right. Liars, cheaters, politicians and backstabbers making life a little bit more unbearable. It is a give or take world. So you got to take what you can when you can. Make the best of it.” (From the album Respect).
Indeed, when both corporate and national management prioritize numbers over people, competence is replaced by credentials, and community disintegrates in the face of individual ambition. The net effect is a society that is more unstable, unequal, and cynical—one in which many, particularly the young, feel increasingly alienated.
In such a world, “taking what you can when you can” becomes not just a lyric, but a survival ethos—a tragic reflection of the failures of modern management to anchor itself in values that transcend mere profit.
Please let’s interact: +1 (914) 259-0242
The author is a dynamic entrepreneur and the Founder and Group CEO of Groupe Soleil Vision, made up of Soleil Consults (US), LLC, NubianBiz.com and Soleil Publications. He has an extensive background In Strategy, Management, Entrepreneurship, Premium Audit Advisory, And Web Consulting. With professional experiences spanning both Ghana and the United States, Jules has developed a reputation as a thought leader in fields such as corporate governance, leadership, e-commerce, and customer service. His publications explore a variety of topics, including economics, information technology, marketing and branding, making him a prominent voice in discussions on development and business innovation across Africa. Through NubianBiz.com, he actively champions intra-African trade and technology-driven growth to empower SMEs across the continent.
Discover more from The Business & Financial Times
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
