Machiavelli & modern business: Realist thought in contemporary corporate leadership manuals

Journal of Business Ethics

Volumn 65, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 235-250

  Galie, Peter J ^a,b   Bopst, Christopher ^c,d  

^a Department of Political Science ^*  (United States)

^b CANISIUS COLLEGE   (United States)

^c Law Firm   (United States)

^d Adorno and Yoss LLP   (United States)

Author keywords

Corruption; Ethics; Leadership; Machiavelli; Management

Indexed keywords

EID: 33744951366     PISSN: 01674544     EISSN: 15730697     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10551-005-5352-1     Document Type: Article

References (142)

1. Although a fictional character, the character of Gekko was undoubtedly inspired by numerous real persons of the lucrative 1980s, many of whom paid for their misdeeds through fines and imprisonment.
2. See, e.g., Lawrence Mitchell, Corporate Irresponsibility (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001).
3. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001), xi-xii; see also
4. Jonathan Haslam, No Virtue Like Necessity: Realist Thought in International Relations Since Machiavelli (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002);
5. Dick Morris, The New Prince: Machiavelli Updated for the Twenty-First Century (Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 1999). In the latter work, Morris, a former key advisor to President Clinton, attempts to demonstrate Machiavelli's relevance to contemporary American domestic politics.
6. See Robert K. Faulkner, introduction to Clizia, by Niccolo Machiavelli, trans. Daniel T. Gallagher (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1996), xii-xv;
7. Niccolo Machiavelli, Mandragola, trans. Mera J. Flaumenhaft (Prospect Park, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1981), passim.
8. Simon Ramo, Tennis by Machiavelli (New York: Rawson Associates, 1984).
9. Rawson Associates, newspaper advertisement, New York Times, July 15, 1984, sec. 7, p. 22.
10. From Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life (New York: Harper Collins, 2000), 256.
11. Certainly, Machiavelli is not unique in this regard. Consistent with the notion that ideas and lessons from one arena can be easily transferred to another area or profession, writers have attempted to apply the teachings and experiences of various historical figures to modern business. Consequently, numerous political, military, literary, and even biblical leaders have been transformed into management gurus. See, e.g., Blaine McCormack, Ben Franklin's 12 Rules of Management (Irvine, CA: Entrepreneur Press, 2000);
12. Donald T. Phillips, Lincoln on Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times (New York: Warner Books, 1992);
13. Al Kaltman, Cigars, Whiskey, and Winning: Leadership Lessons from General Ulysses S. Grant (Paramus, NJ: Prentice Hall Press, 1998);
14. H.W. Crocker, III, Robert E. Lee on Leadership: Executive Lessons in Character, Courage & Vision (Rocklin, CA: Forum, 1999);
15. Paul Corrigan, Shakespeare on Management: Leadership Lessons for Today's Managers (London: Kagan, Page, 1999);
16. Lorin Woolfe, The Bible on Leadership: From Moses to Matthew: Management Lessons for Contemporary Leaders (New York: American Management Association, 2002);
17. Laurie Beth Jones, Jesus, CEO: Using Ancient Wisdom for Visionary Leadership (New York: Hyperion, 1995). The scavenger hunt for the Rosetta Stone to successful management has led writers to travel from Moses to Colin Powell.
18. See, e.g., Rabbi David Baron and Lynette Padwa, Moses on Management: 50 Leadership Lessons From the Greatest Manager of All Time (New York: Pocket Books, 1999);
19. Oren Harari, The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002).
20. Stanley Bing, What Would Machiavelli Do: The Ends Justify the Meanness (New York: Harper Business, 2000);
21. Henry Borger, The Corporate Prince: Machiavelli's Timeless Wisdom Adapted for the Modern CEO (Bloomington, IN: First Books Library, 2002);
22. Richard H. Buskirk, Modern Management and Machiavelli (Boston: Cahners Books, 1974);
23. Gerald R. Griffin, Machiavelli on Management: Playing and Winning the Corporate Power Game (New York: Praeger, 1991);
24. L.F. Gunlicks, The Machiavellian Manager's Handbook for Success (Washington, DC: Libey Publishing, 2000);
25. John Paul Harmon, The Executive (1995), http://www.proax-is.com/~phannon/theexec.htm (accessed June 21, 2004);
26. Phil Harris, Andrew Lock and Patricia Rees, eds., Machiavelli, Marketing and Management (London: Routledge, 2000),
27. Richard W. Hill, The Boss: Machiavelli on Managerial Leadership (Geneva: Pyramid Media Group, 2000);
28. Antony Jay, Management and Machiavelli (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967);
29. Michael A. Ledeen, Machaivelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules are as Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999);
30. Alistair McAlpine, The New Machiavelli: The Art of Politics in Business (New York: John Wiley, 1998);
31. V. [pseudo], The Mafia Manager: A Guide to the Corporate Machiavelli (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991).
32. The applications have not been confined to monographs: John K. Clemens and Douglas F. Mayer, "History's First Takeover Expert," New York Times, March 2, 1986, F3;
33. Michael J. Thomas, "Princely Thoughts on Machiavelli, Marketing and Management," European Journal of Marketing 34 (2000): 524-537;
34. Shelby D. Hunt and Lawrence B. Chanko, "Marketing and Machiavellianism," Journal of Marketing, 48, no. 3 (Summer 1984): 30-42.
35. Not included in the works analyzed, but which adopt essentially a Machiavellian perspective, at least as he is popularly understood, are: Phil Porter, Eat or Be Eaten: Jungle Warfare for the Master Corporate Politician (Paramus, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000);
36. Andrew J. DuBrin, Winning Office Politics: DuBrin's Guide for the 90s (Paramus, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990);
37. Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power (New York: Viking, 1998).
38. The latter book draws on a wide range of writers, quoting extensively from, among others, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Gracian, and Castiglione. Greene also makes use of spiritual texts such as The Mahabharata,
39. Rene R. Khawam, The Subtle Ruse: The Book of Arabic Wisdom and Guile
40. and Miyamoto Mushashi, A Book of Five Rings.
41. Harriet Rubin's The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women (New York: Doubleday, 1997) adopts the metaphor of war -"the wars of intimacy."
42. Id. at 4. Rubin attempts to answer the question "why fight like Machiavelli when [you] can fight like Machiavella?"
43. Id. at 22. The list is not exhaustive, there being what appears to be an insatiable demand for the genre.
44. Jay, supra note 9, at 4.
45. Isaiah Berlin, Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy (New York: Viking Press," 1980), 25-79.
46. Id. at 54, 58-59, 68-69.
47. Id. at 39.
48. J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975);
49. Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli (New York: Hill & Wang, 1981);
50. Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics II: Renaissance Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
51. Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius, ed. Bernard Crick, trans. Leslie J. Walker, (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1970), at Book III, Chapter 41, 515.
52. See Skinner, supra note 14, at 163.
53. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Luigi Ricci, "The Prince and the Discourses," (New York: The Modern Library, 1950)
54. [hereinafter The Prince], Chapter 21, 82.
55. Complicating things is the apparent conflict between Machiavelli's Prince, in which he recommends bold, decisive action and the Discourses, in which he counsels temporizing in the face of evil that has sprung up within the state. Many different explanations have been given to resolve these seemingly contradictory teachings. Professor Hans Baron has argued that Machiavelli's Prince was an isolated composition, written well before the Discourses, which represented Machiavelli's true republican thinking. Hans Baron, "Machiavelli, the Republican Citizen and the Author of The Prince," English Historical Review 76 (1961), 217-252. Professor Garrett Mattingly argued that The Prince was a satire, and did not contradict the views expressed in the Discourses.
56. Garrett Mattingly, "Machiavelli's Prince: Political Science or Political Satire," American Scholar 27 (1958), 482-491. Still another interpretation is that no contradiction between the writings exists. The Prince was written for a certain type of heroic figure, who, possessed of virtu, was able to found states or civic institutions. Since Machiavelli believed, however, that people in a republican form of government are best suited to protect such institutions after they are created, Machiavelli's prince plays the limited role of creating the institutions of which he himself will cede control to the people.
57. Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius, trans. and intro. by Julia Conaway Bondarella and Peter Bondarella (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), xv-xvi. By analyzing Machiavelli solely in light of the earlier Prince, as some authors have done, one cannot fully comprehend the true nature of his teachings.
58. Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius, trans. Christian E. Detmold, "The Prince and the Discourses," supra note 17 [hereinafter Discourses], at Book I, Chapter 10, 141.
59. Id. at Book I, Chapter 11, 148.
60. Id. at Book I, Chapter 9, 139.
61. Id. at Book I, Chapter 18, 167-171; Chapter 55, 252-257;
62. see also Skinner, supra note 14, at 167-176.
63. See Discourses, supra note 19, at Book III, Chapter 1, 399-400.
64. Mimi Swartz and Sherron Watkins, Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron (New York: Currency Doubleday, 2004), 171-173.
65. Special Investigative Committee of the Board of Directors of Enron Corp., Report of Investigation (n.p., 2002), 19-20.
66. In re WorldCom, Inc., Case No. 02-15533 BKR-AJG (S.D.N.Y.), First Interim Report of Dick Thornburgh, Bankruptcy Court Examiner, Nov. 4, 2002, 71-72.
67. Id. at 117.
68. Id. at 117-118.
69. Ex-WorldCom Execs Face Criminal Charges," Accountacy Age.com, Aug. 28, 2003, available at http://www.accountancyage.com/News/1134620 (accessed March 30, 2004).
70. The full citations for all the manuals selected, as well as the three that were reviewed and not chosen, can be found in footnote 9, supra.
71. Borger, supra note 9, at 5.
72. Buskirk, supra note 9, at xi.
73. Hill, supra note 9, at 7.
74. Jay, supra note 9, at 4.
75. Id. at 10.
76. Ledeen, supra note 9, at xix.
77. McAlpine, supra note 9, at xii-xiii.
78. Id. at 101.
79. Jay, supra note 9, at 25.
80. Id. at 25.
81. Buskirk, supra note 9, at xii.
82. Borger, supra note 9, at 5.
83. The Prince, supra note 17, Chapter 8, 34-35.
84. Borger, supra note 9, at 70.
85. See especially The Prince, supra note 17, Chapter 6.
86. McAlpine, supra note 9, at 101.
87. Borger, supra note 9, at 4.
88. The division of humans into leaders and masses is not limited to those works analyzed by this essay, and has even been utilized in cartoon strips. Scott Adams, the creator of the cartoon strip "Dilbert," has made a success of exposing the foibles of corporate life by both leaders and followers. In The Dilbert. Principle: A Cubicle's Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions, Adams, on the basis of thousands of stories about absurd happenings in corporate settings, writes that he has "developed a sophisticated theory to explain the existence of bizarre workplace behavior: People are idiots."
89. Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle's Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions (New York: Harper Business, 1996), 2. He speaks of "nearly six billion ninnies living in a civilization that was designed by a few thousand amazingly smart deviants. " Id. at 9. In his chapter entitled "Machiavellian Methods," Adams writes: "The earth is populated by shallow and ignorant people. That's why form will always be more important than substance. You can waste your time complaining about how that should not be the case in a perfect world, or you can snap out of it and follow my advice." Id. at 75;
90. compare The Prince, supra note 17, Chapter 15.
91. In Dogbert's 'Top Secret Management Handbook,' another of Adams's works, Dogbert is presented as a large brained expert at making "the exploited masses" serve his interests. "Leadership isn't only about selfish actions; it also requires mastery of the kind of 'empty meaningless expressions' such as, 'It's a new paradigm' that will dupe your unwitting co-workers into accepting your manipulative design."
92. Scott Adams, Dogbert's 'Top Secret Management Handbook' (New York: Harper Business, 1996), 1.14.
93. Borger, supra note 9, at 4.
94. Hill, supra note 9, at 7.
95. Adams, The Dilbert Principle, supra note 48, at 69.
96. Id. at 76.
97. McAlpine, supra note 9, at xiii.
98. See The. Prince, supra note 17, Chapter 14.
99. See, e.g., Alan Axelrod, Patton on Leadership: Strategic Lessons for Corporate Warfare (Paramus, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999);
100. Harari, supra note 8.
101. Jay, supra note 9, at 12.
102. Hill, supra note 9, at 75.
103. Borger, supra note 9, at 109.
104. Buskirk, supra note 9, at 17.
105. Ledeen, supra note 9, at 16.
106. Jay, supra note 9, at 3.
107. Id. at 25.
108. McAlpine, supra note 9, at xiii.
109. Borger, supra note 9, at 3-4.
110. Hill, supra note 9, at 6.
111. McAlpine, supra note 9, at 108.
112. Hill, supra note 9, at 8.
113. Id. at 20.
114. Jay, supra note 9, at 2.
115. Buskirk, supra note 9, at 217.
116. Id. at 66.
117. See Borger, supra note 9, at 70-79.
118. Id. at 127.
119. Id. at 136-137.
120. One could argue that this example is similar to that of Samuel Waksal, the founder of ImClone who tried to sell his stock after finding out that thecompany's cancer drug would not be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
121. The Prince, supra note 17, Chapter 18.
122. McAlpine, supra note 9, at 129.
123. Id. at 130.
124. Id. at 127.
125. Id. at 131.
126. Id. at 161.
127. Id. at 205.
128. The Prince, supra note 17, Chapter 15.
129. McAlpine, supra note 9, at 168.
130. Buskirk, supra note 9, at 91.
131. Id.
132. Borger, supra note 9, at 205.
133. Id. at 206.
134. Hill, supra note 9, at 75.
135. The Prince, supra note 17, Chapter 19, 72-73.
136. Id. at Chapter 19, 74.
137. Id. at Chapter 8, 32-34.
138. Id. at Chapter 12, 44-45.
139. Id. at Chapter 12, 47.
140. Often, the corporation will have multiple sets of goals, competing with each other. One need only to look at the case of Aaron Feuerstein, the CEO of Malden Mills, a family-owned business in the economically depressed city of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Maiden Mills manufactures Polartec fleece used in outdoor apparel by high-end companies such as L.L. Bean, Eddie Bauer, and Land's End. After a massive fire destroyed the factory in 1995, Feuerstein rebuilt the factory in the same location, and paid all the company's employees during the rebuilding period. However, fortune, which Machiavelli presupposes to be the arbiter of half our actions, see The Prince, supra note 17, at Chapter 25, intervened. The company lost customers during the rebuilding process, and three warm winters in a row hurt the sales of Polartec, eventuating a Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
141. "The Mensch of Maiden Mills," CBS News.com, July 6, 2003, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/03/60minutes/main561656.shtml (accessed Sept. 11, 2004). Although praised by his employees for his sense of obligation, Feuerstein was criticized by some who believed his strategy of saving every job as opposed to eliminating some jobs for the good of the entire company, unnecessarily jeopardized the company. Complicating the competing interests of the corporation and the role of the corporate leader in recognizing and achieving those interests, modern corporations are not expected solely to turn a profit for their shareholders. Corporations are also expected to be good corporate citizens, and to make decisions based not only on the best interests of the shareholders, but also on the interests of other non-shareholder "stakeholders," such as employees, suppliers, and the community. Corporations that lie about layoffs, for example, face heavy criticism from both remaining employees and the media, although such decisions are praised in many of the Machiavellian manuals.
142. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. Quentin Skinner, trans. Luigi Ricci (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), Chapter 18, 63.