Last Updated on February 4, 2026 by Karl Thompson
Managerialism is the belief that all forms of work and human activity can be improved through the same techniques of management: targets, metrics, efficiency, and performance indicators. Skills, judgement, and meaning are treated as secondary to data, growth, and outcomes that can be measured.
This way of thinking has its roots in neoliberalism and has spread far beyond business. Today, managerialism shapes schools, hospitals, public services, and increasingly, the creative industries. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Silicon Valley approach to media production.
The key question is not whether this model is efficient — it clearly is — but whether it is hollowing out culture in the process.
Silicon Valley Managerialism: Efficiency Above All Else
The Silicon Valley model of management starts from a simple assumption: every human activity can be optimised.
Culture, from this perspective, is not something to nurture or protect. It is a system to be scaled, streamlined, and monetised. Artistic judgement, risk, and creativity are seen as inefficient compared to analytics, algorithms, and predictive data.
Companies like Netflix embody this approach. While many viewers still enjoy binge-watching, much of Netflix’s output now feels strikingly formulaic: familiar plot arcs, predictable pacing, and safe genres designed to maximise completion rates rather than artistic ambition.
This is not accidental. It is managerialism applied to culture.
From the Culture Industry to Algorithmic Media
This critique echoes Theodor Adorno’s theory of the Culture Industry. Adorno argued that under capitalism, culture becomes standardised, mass-produced, and stripped of critical depth. Cultural products appear diverse, but are fundamentally the same.
What Silicon Valley adds is data-driven refinement. Rather than relying on studio executives’ instincts, algorithms now decide:
- Which scripts get commissioned
- How stories are structured
- When cliff-hangers appear
- Which characters are emphasised
The goal is not meaning or aesthetic quality, but retention.
This aligns closely with the Marxist instrumentalist theory of the media, which argues that media organisations primarily serve the interests of capitalist elites by prioritising profit and ideological stability. Managerialism intensifies this by removing even cultural judgement from the process, replacing it with predictive analytics.
Culture becomes content. Art becomes engagement.
Managerialism vs Craftsmanship
The philosopher Matthew Crawford draws a sharp distinction between two ways of understanding work:
- Craftsmanship – skill, care, judgement, and deep engagement with a specific practice
- Managerialism – transferable management techniques focused on targets, metrics, and outcomes
Silicon Valley overwhelmingly favours the second.
In creative industries, this means decisions are no longer driven by artistic vision, but by dashboards. Scripts are adjusted based on viewer drop-off points. A project’s value lies not in its depth or originality, but in whether it performs well against platform metrics.
The result is media that often feels emotionally shallow. Not because creators lack talent, but because the system does not reward seriousness or risk.
Netflix is not hostile to culture out of malice. It is simply doing what managerialism tells it to do.
Weber, Rationalisation, and the Iron Cage of Culture
This process closely mirrors Max Weber’s idea of rationalisation. Weber warned that modern societies increasingly organise life around efficiency, calculation, and control, trapping individuals in an “iron cage” of bureaucracy.
In media, managerialism functions as a cultural iron cage. Creative decisions are rationalised, quantified, and standardised. What cannot be measured — emotional resonance, artistic risk, moral seriousness — is quietly sidelined.
This is rationalisation without meaning.
Neoliberalism and the Spread of Managerial Capitalism
Crucially, this mindset does not stop with Netflix.
Managerialism has spread across society under neoliberalism:
- In education, teaching is reduced to results, targets, and league tables
- In healthcare, care becomes performance indicators and waiting-time metrics
- In public services, value is measured through spreadsheets rather than social outcomes
The same logic that turns films into “content” turns students into data points and teachers into deliverers of measurable outcomes. This is why neoliberalism in education often produces formulaic teaching: safe, predictable, and geared towards assessment performance rather than intellectual development.
This is covered here in the neolberal perspective on education.
Across all these fields, managerialism is indifferent to meaning. It prioritises control over judgement, efficiency over expertise.
Why Managerialism Feels Empty
The deeper problem with managerialism is not just standardisation, but alienation.
Workers lose ownership of their skills. Good judgement is overridden by metrics. Pride in work is replaced by compliance with targets. The system may be efficient, but it feels cold — like a pillow pressed over culture, muffling anything that cannot be easily counted.
Crawford’s argument is not nostalgic or elitist. He is calling for seriousness: the recognition that some activities have intrinsic value, not just instrumental worth.
When culture is managed by people who do not care about what they are managing, it becomes safer, weaker, and easier to forget.
Is Silicon Valley Doing More Harm Than Good?
The real tragedy is that this model now feels normal.
Algorithmic feeds, predictable narratives, and data-driven creativity have become so familiar that we barely notice what has been lost. But if culture becomes nothing more than screen time and engagement metrics, we should not be surprised when it starts to feel empty.
The issue is not Netflix itself.
It is managerialism — the mindset that treats everything human as just another system to optimise.
And once culture is reduced to numbers, it becomes very difficult to remember why it mattered in the first place.