“Yes, Prince.

” Machiavelli’s Echo in Management

by

Dr Michael Jackson, Professor Emeritus

and
Dr. Damian Grace, Honourary Associate

Department of Government and International Relations

University of Sydney

Presented at the
Australian Political Studies Association
Annual Conference

Canberra
2011
2

“Yes, Prince.” Machiavelli’s Echo in Management

Long before “Yes, Prime Minister” there was “Yes, Prince!" Before Antony
Jay gave television viewers “Yes, Minister” and its successor “Yes, Prime
Minister” he published a ground breaking and vastly successful book called
Management and Machiavelli (1967). Though Niccolò Machiavelli never
managed anything, and said nary a word about business or commerce, he
has become a frequently invoked spirit in management study. His DNA now
marks a good deal of both the popular and professional literature in
management following Jay’s book. A steady stream of other works have
since appropriated Machiavelli to management, commerce, and business.
By means of parallels, analogies, metaphors, long bows, sleights of hand,
and other literary tropes, including even some downright lies, he has been
resurrected in the corporate world's book trade. Whatever the means,
Machiavelli now occupies a place in the pantheon of management thinkers.
There he sits somewhere between Peter Drucker and Alfred Sloan.
Comprehensive encyclopaedias and crisp dictionaries of management
feature an entry on the Florentine, and a surprising number of trade books
feature his name, as do articles in business research journals. Despite the
number and variety of references to Machiavelli in the management
literature, this conscription of Machiavelli passes unnoticed by students of
Machiavelli in political science and history. This paper surveys what is said
about Machiavelli and management. It notes that the two most important
steps in the induction of Niccolò is to equate Sixteenth Century Florence with
contemporary life and then to assert that business is analogous to war and
diplomacy as experienced by Machiavelli. While documenting the ways
Machiavelli is used and abused in the management literature, this paper will
concentrate on these two master narratives as a nested equation: F = M,
where “F” is Florence of the 16th Century and “M” is contemporary life, and
then P = B, where “P” is politics as Machiavelli witnessed it and “B”
represents business, commerce, and management today. We show that
these equivalences are hallow, self-serving at best and deceptive at worst.
Yet the questions remains: Why does Machiavelli continue to exercise such
an allure over the imagination? One simple answer is that his popularity in
the management literature arises less from his penetrating insights into his
own world, though these were many, than with his salacious reputation,
which is largely undeserved.
3
A middling Italian civil
servant died on 27 May 1527.
Having served on a number of
foreign missions, his only
published book was on the
organization of a civil militia, where
he had no success himself. Within
less than a generation his name
became and remained an adjective
for evil, but that is another story.
Apart from that infamy, Niccolò di
Bernardo dei Machiavelli’s
subsequent place in Western
consciousness has been confined
to those few dedicated to the study
of the history of political thought,
Renaissance history, and Italian
literature, and mainly it has been
based on his unpublished works,
particularly The Prince and The
Discourses. Successive
generations of students required to
do History of Political Thought
(HPT) for a political science major
have provided a sufficient market,
together with students of
Renaissance and Italian history
and literature, and some Great
Book readers to keep Machiavelli’s
books in print. No doubt some
other readers are titillated by that
reputation for evil.
There has always been a
black market for Machiavelli’s
Prince, which ignores the
exchange rate and other
regulations of the specialist
markets in history and political
theory. This dark readership, it has
been alleged, includes Joseph
Stalin, Idi Amin, and Benito
Mussolini. And if they did, so too
perhaps did other politicians of
lesser infamy. Even so, all in all, it
is a small slice of the reading
public.
However, Machiavelli has
developed a whole new second life
in other fields, largely neglected by
the gravitas of political theory and
kindred specialities. Machiavelli
has been conscripted in
management. That he had no
management experience, or any
interest in business has not barred
him from a place of increasing
prominence in this field.
It all began with a
thunderclap. Antony Jay, he of
“Yes, Minister” fame (so uncritically
favoured in political science
departments) published
Management and Machiavelli
(1967). With that book Machiavelli
was reborn an avatar, and since
then Niccolò’s shade has known
no rest. For a start Management
and Machiavelli has remained in
print since then, and that is now
more than forty years to date, and
gone through an array of editions
to astound we who publish
academic monographs in runs of
five hundred, usually less, in these
days of on-demand publication
(with no numbers given). If Jay
had published his books the other
way around, with Yes, Minister
first, he might have capitalized on
the success of that title by at least
subtitling Management and
Machiavelli with Yes, Prince. Who
knows, perhaps a future edition will
be so titled!
Once Machiavelli was thus
re-born others followed Jay
integrating him still further into the
service of management. As we
shall demonstrate presently,
Machiavelli enjoys a considerable
following among management
writers, scholars, and readers, but
this fact is all but invisible among
political theorists. But when
university research managers
demand evidence for the impact of
4
political theory might one point to
Machiavelli and management?
Is Machiavelli’s fame among
managers really unknown to the
specialists? Here is some
evidence. An examination of
twelve translations and editions of
The Prince at hand (called an
opportunity sample in some
scientific fields) reveals no
reference and though each of them
has some editorial and scholarly
paraphernalia, there is in none of
them a word in the introduction,
forward, afterword, notes, or
essays to indicate that Machiavelli
has a following among managers.
(These editions are: Gauss 1952,
Bull 1961, Richardson 1979,
Donno 1981, Atkinson 1985,
Mansfield 1985, Skinner 1988,
Alvarez 1989, Nederman 2007,
McMahon 2008, Constantine 2009,
and Marriott 2010). In addition, we
consulted an array of textbooks on
the History of Political Thought,
since most students learn the
political thought that they learn
from such tomes, and found not
one single reference to
management and Machiavelli. (The
texts are: Bluhm 1978, Strauss and
Cropsey 1987, Plamenatz 1992,
Sabine and Thorson 1993,
McClelland 1998, Ebenstein and
Ebenstein 1999, Wolin 2006, and
Haddock 2008). Finally we turned
to the gold standards of the
Cambridge History of Political
Thought, 1450-1700 (1991), the
Oxford Handbook of Political
Theory (2006), the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2009), and the Oxford Handbook
of the History of Political
Philosophy (2011). They are
likewise mute on Machiavelli’s
second life on the shelves of
management. (Indeed the only
source we have found in the
specialist literature on Machiavelli
that refers to his second life is The
Cambridge Companion to
Machiavelli (2010), whose editor
John Najemy has a paragraph
about it (p. 6). That said, this
paper brings to light in political
theory some of Machiavelli’s
second, double life.
This paper (1) catalogues
the extent of Machiavelli’s
moonlighting in management with
an emphasis on Jay's book, (2)
identifies the main themes in this
appropriation which are the
equation of his times to our own
and business to politics, of
F=M/B=P, (3) it evaluates these
appropriations, and (4) it closes
with a few comments on the
integrity of Machiavelli’s very
distinct and limited political
thought, and a note on some of the
most egregious factual errors
made in this management
literature.
Along the way, we try to
steer clear of the Charybdis and
Scylla, those absolute poles of
contextualism and textualism. We
neither wish to confine Machiavelli
to 15th Century Florence, nor to
license his aphorisms for eternity.
But we do advocate moderation,
caution, and qualification in the
embrace of his ideas, arguments,
and examples. Machiavelli himself
was neither a contextualist nor a
textualist. He took maxims from
ancient Rome with enthusiasm and
occasionally revised them for his
own purposes. As we read the
works of the Williams Shakespeare
and Faulkner to reflect on the
human condition and our own
experiences of it, so we can read
Machiavelli.
5
The thunderclap.
Management and
Machiavelli fused.
First came the thunderclap,
then the rain, and finally the flood.
Make no mistake that it has
become a flood, with our
admittedly broad definition of the
management literature we have
added eight-five (85) items to a
bibliography of management and
Machiavelli. There is only one
isolated title that associates
Machiavelli with business,
commerce, or management before
1967: as we noted, it is the
publication of Antony Jay’s
Management and Machiavelli that
announced his entry into the field
of management. That makes it the
thunderclap.
It is safe to say that Jay’s
book had no precedent; it is
equally safe to say that it was itself
a precedent quickly followed. We
have found only two previous
references to Machiavelli by those
examining management (the
ecumenical term used in these
pages to incorporate business,
career, and commerce as well as
management), though to be sure
there were some and these will be
noted. It is a credit to Jay’s
ingenuity and wit, and no doubt to
his salesmanship, that he
connected Machiavelli to
management in the first place and
convinced a major British publisher
to market the book.
Our efforts to compile the
metadata of his book yielded six
editions. The first edition had no
subtitle and neither does the
current Kindle edition. Between
those bookends, four subtitles
have been used. They:
An inquiry into the politics of
corporate life (1976),
Power and authority in
business life (1987),
Discovering a new science of
management in the timeless
principles of statecraft
(1994), and
A Prescription for success in
your business (2000).
Subtitles both attract the interest of
prospective buyers and readers,
and indicate the intentions of the
author and publisher. Subtitles
usually sharpen the focus of a
work. In this case the focus is
management, though ‘politics’ and
‘statecraft’ are mentioned, they are
in a lesser key. We found no
changes in the substance of the
book through these editions.
Short, new forewords are inserted
and pagination has changed over
the years from one publisher to
another but not the content. The
subtitles and other metadata came
from searches of online catalogues
of the Library of Congress, the
Canadian National Library, the
Australian National Library, and the
British Library.
Amazon’s web page claims,
as does the cover the 1994
paperback edition that 250,000
hardcover copies have been sold,
parroting the claim made on the
cover of the 1994 paperback
edition. We may safely assume
many more copies have been sold
since then. Moreover, that total
refers to hardcover only and the
book has been available in
paperback for many years.
Subsequent hardcover sales along
with paperbacks must add
considerably to that figure. In
addition, the cover also claims it
has been translated into twelve
languages, though they are not
listed. We can confirm that
translations of the book appear in
6
the online catalogues for the
Bibliothèque Nationale de France
in Paris, Biblioteca Italiana in
Rome, and Deutsche National
Bibliotek in Leipzig. Perhaps that
is enough to make the point that
though the rebirth of Machiavelli in
management begin in English it
has echoed in other major
languages. Management and
Machiavelli has indeed been a very
successful book in this respect,
too. Few, if any, of the learned
works on Machiavelli’s political
thought like Leo Strauss Thoughts
on Machiavelli can have equaled
these sales. These sales figures
and the dissemination they imply
stand partly as a surrogate
measure of readership and impact
more generally. Many of the
hardcover copies are no doubt in
libraries. We found Management
and Machiavelli in many university
library online catalogues, too many
to list, starting with our very own
University of Sydney library and
others in the city of Sydney.
The book has also been
successful in another sense. It has
made a major impact on the
literature and study of
management. This claim is four-
legged: (1) citations in social
science literature, (2) references in
Author Title
Niccoló Machiavelli The Prince (1532)
Leo Strauss Thoughts on Machiavelli (1959)
Antony Jay Management and Machiavelli (1967)
TOTAL
the popular press, (3) mentions of
Jay's book in standard reference
works in business and
management, and (4) the flood of
subsequent titles that press
Machiavelli into the service of
management, though not all of the
subsequent works cite Jay, and
some claim to themselves to have
discovered the pertinence of
Machiavelli to management! Such
is on fate for prophets, as Niccolò
Machiavelli said.
First, we did a Cited
Reference Search on the Web of
Science. Of course, the Thomson
databases that underlie the Web of
Science have limitations yet they
are used as a measure of
everything, as those engaged in
the research evaluation exercise,
under its changing names, well
know. The Web of Science is but
one tool but it suffices to indicate
the impact of Management and
Machiavelli. To provide context we
compared it to The Prince by
Machiavelli and Leo Strauss’s
Thoughts on Machiavelli, as one of
the seminal studies of Machiavelli
in political theory, only counting
citations for each book after the
publication of Management and
Machiavelli in 1967.
Hits
July 2011
425
244
118
787
7
(Notes. Any edition of Jay’s Management and Machiavelli was included. This
process is cumbersome, and so the counts are subject to a slight error. We
noticed increases in citations for Machiavelli in years when new translations
appeared.)
Jay’s Management and
Machiavelli has about a quarter
citations of the citations of
Machiavelli’s The Prince itself.
This would seem to be noteworthy.
Likewise, it has nearly half the hits
of Strauss’s landmark work on
Machiavelli. The serious students
of Machiavelli can take comfort in
the fact that the book itself and one
of the most serious studies of it
have more citations in the
publications included in Web of
Science. But we would do well to
remember, as many researchers
claimed throughout the recent
Excellence in Research Australia
exercise, that there is much
outside the Thomson world.
Second are references to
Jay in popular press and media.
For one example, Ken Roman in
the Wall Street Journal in 2007
names Jay’s Management and
Machiavelli as one of the best five
business books listing it second.
This seems to mean best, period,
of all times and places: Platonic.
At the least, Jay was at the head of
this trend, if not the sole creator of
it. While an on-line magazine
published by the University of
Chicago says it offers a digest of
the book.
(http://magazine.uchicago.edu/102/
features/read2.html). The book is
also recognized in the academic
world. An online course
description at Indiana University
refers to Management and
Machiavelli as a classic
(http://www.indiana.edu/~deanfac/
blspr03/hon/hon_h20_9199.html9).
The third leg is this, there
are a number of important
reference works in the study and
practice of management and
business. Invariably these mention
Machiavelli and in so doing they
also mention Jay. Since nearly all
of these reference works have
appeared since the publication of
Jay’s book, we conclude that Jay
brought Machiavelli into the world,
of management. Of course,
reasoning from a hypothetical
counterfactual is risky but our
reasoning is nonetheless that had
Jay not published his book,
Machiavelli would not have been
deemed important enough to be
included in most the management
reference works in which he is now
included. The reference works that
include Machiavelli with a
reference to Jay are: Price (1996),
Witzel (2003), and Harris (2009).
Other surveys of management
thinkers also include Machiavelli
without explicit mention of Jay’s
Management and Machiavelli, like
George (1968), Swain (1998), and
Crainer (1998). We suspect the
latter would not have included
Machiavelli if it had not been for
the impact of Jay’s book. George’s
inclusion seems to be independent
of Jay’s influence both by timing
and by content.
Fourth, is the flood of
subsequent works enfolding
Machiavelli into the embrace of
business, commerce, and
management taken broadly and in
combination. Included are:
Calhoon (1969), Buskirk (1974),
8
Brahmsedt (1986), Funk (1986),
Legge (1991), Griffin (1991),
Johnson (1996), McAlpine (1997),
Wren (1998), Bing (2000),
Gunlicks (2000), Hill (2000),
Borger (2002), Demack (2002),
DiVanna (2003), Galie (2006),
Diehl (2007), Harris (2007),
Demack (2008), and Marsh (2009).
These works are mostly trade
books, though some are journal
articles. Some mention Jay and
some do not. Calhoon (1969) in
the pages of the authoritative
Academy of Management does,
but Funk (1986) says “nothing has
been written I have read restating,
in current terms, the concepts
expressed by Machiavelli” (vii), this
twenty years after the first
publication of Jay’s book. This list
includes the more substantial
works available but it is by no
means comprehensive.
We have then established
that Jay’s Management and
Machiavelli proved to be the first of
a rapidly increasing number of
works that claimed to apply
Machiavelli to management. The
impact of Jay’s book was in no way
impaired by the very critical review
Chris Argyris gave of it in
Administrative Science Quarterly
(1968). Argyris acknowledged the
creativity, wit, and engaging style
of the author, and so do we, but
noted that it relied on a few
anecdotes and hearsay. Its
prescriptions were inconsistent
where they were not too vague to
understand. Reviews in popular
business publications were and still
are far more positive and the book
has indeed been a success. It is
now routinely accorded the status
of classic.
Prior to Jay’s book,
Machiavelli was seldom if ever
mentioned in the study and
practice of management. There
are two exceptions. During World
War II Aimee Buchanan published
The Lady means business: How to
reach the top in the business world
– the career woman’s own
Machiavelli in 1942. The reference
to Machiavelli appears on the title
page and the dust jacket.
Machiavelli is discussed nowhere
in the text but each chapter ends
with an epigram from his works.
The book is a very sensible work of
advice to girls and young women
of the time who wish to pursue a
career in business. It offers no
shortcuts and promises no
effortless remedies in contrast to
so many self help books and
morning television shows today. It
boasts of no special insights and
frequently recommends industry,
hard work, and thoroughness
together with a clarity of purpose
as the best way to succeed. This
advice is so patently sound it takes
no Machiavelli to second it. Yet
there is his name. It is altogether
much more sane and modest than
many titles in the flood of books
since Antony Jay disinterred
Machiavelli. Despite the merits of
the book, why Machiavelli is
mentioned remains a mystery to
these readers.
Claude George’s study The
history of management thought
(1968, pp. 42-45) includes about
five pages on Machiavelli’s
analysis of leadership, with
comments on how that relates to
organizations. No effort is made to
press Machiavelli into service as a
guide to contemporary practice,
but he is treated as a sometimes
systematic and always insightful
observer of the working of
individuals, organizations and
9
institutions. Given its publication
date, a year after of the first edition
of Management and Machiavelli,
its sober tone, and the absence of
any reference to Jay, we infer that
George’s inclusion of Machiavelli
was not influenced by Jay.i
Having found few
authoritative works about
management, Antony Jay says that
when reading Machiavelli’s The
Prince he saw the relevance of
much of what Machiavelli
discussed to the contemporary
business world. That led him to
reflect on the nature of research
and writing about business and
management, which he found to be
unrealistic and, at times,
impractical, “fact-free,” he says. In
Machiavelli he found an antidote to
this. He puts it this way, ‘I have
called this book Management and
Machiavelli not because it is based
on Machiavelli’s arguments but
because it is based on his
method, the method of taking a
current problem and then
examining it in a practical way in
the light of experiences of others
who have faced a similar problem
in the past’ (Jay 1994, 28,
emphasis added). Many who
followed Jay have also taken the
Machiavellian method, but some
have also based their books on
Machiavelli’s arguments, as shall
see.
Like many others, Jay
supposes that Machiavelli called
“his book The Prince because he
saw the success or failure of states
to stem directly the from the
qualities of the leader” (Jay 1994,
29). Since Machiavelli did not
publish The Prince and there is no
evidence that he tried to do, we
can never know his intentions, but
his manuscript was not originally
styled Il Principe but rather De
Principatibus, “Of Principalities,” a
title that better captures the
overview of types of principalities
in the book (see Richardson 1979).
Jay is just one of many writers who
makes a point about the title, which
Machiavelli did not choose. After
this discussion of Machiavelli’s
method, he is not mentioned again
in the remaining 200+ pages of
Management and Machiavelli.
2. What do management writers
take from Machiavelli?
Two major themes underwrite
Machiavelli’s service to the
management and allied literature.
(1) That the world of Machiavelli is
like our world and vice versa: F =
M. Conclusions drawn in one
world apply to the other with little
or no qualification. (2) The politics
of Machiavelli’s world is just like
business today, or enough like it to
make him a guide.
(1) If Machiavelli’s world is
ours, then advice given in his world
of 15th -16th Century Italian cities
applies equally to our world. (This
is, by the way, an assumption
Machiavelli himself made explicitly.
In his hand it goes something like
this. Men make history and the
nature of man is invariant.
Lessons derived from examples of
the Roman republic are then
relevant in his Renaissance world.
However, few contributors to the
management literature cite
Machiavelli to justify the equation
of his world to ours.) At times this
equation of the 15th and 16th
Centuries with the 20th and 21st
Centuries is simply assumed (Bing
p. 1 and Diehl p 20). No
explanation or justification is
offered, but Machiavelli’s is
evoked, and the only plausible
10
assumption is that is because it is
regarded as relevant, and also as
authoritative, the one wrapped
inside the other.
In 1969 Richard Calhoon said
that the pressures differ in a
corporation from a Renaissance
city state but only in severity, not in
kind (p. 210). (Calhoon cites Jay
extensively though Management
and Machiavelli had appeared only
two years before.) Richard H.
Buskirk in his book Modern
Management & Machiavelli (1974),
‘I suggest that Machiavelli’s basic
advice is not only applicable to the
ruling of a state but is also
germane to the problems of
managing any organization’ (p.
xxi). This book is noteworthy for
two reasons. One, it makes no
mention of Antony Jay’s
Management and Machiavelli and,
two, it cites not only The Prince but
also the Discourses. Most of the
mediums who channel Machiavelli
into management see only the
Prince in his resumé.
Richard D. Funk in his book
The Corporate Prince: Machiavelli
Reviewed for Today (1986) writes
that “Machiavelli’s Prince needed
to be reexamined in order to
establish a better understanding of
his modes and orders for the
corporate executive’. He goes on
to say in the preface that “Nothing
has been written I have read
restating in current terms, the
concepts expressed by Niccolò
Machiavelli, 1469-1527” (p vii).
This remark came nearly twenty
years after Antony Jay’s
Management and Machiavelli.
Either Funk did not read Jay or
found that by 1986 his work was
no longer current. Or perhaps it is
that he concentrates on
Machiavelli's arguments rather
than his method, as did Jay. In
any case the publisher apparently
agreed with Funk.
Stuart Crainer in his
compendium The Ultimate
Business Guru Book: 50 thinkers
who made Management (1998),
says that Machiavelli advises that
a prince think only about war and
then that ‘corporate life is about
power,’ citing Peter Drucker (p.
136). Thus does one guru affirm
the merits of another, in this case
Drucker confirms Machiavelli’s
relevance. Gerald R. Griffin
continues the emphasis on power,
titling his book Machiavelli on
Management: Playing and Winning
the Corporate Power Game
(1991). He says that Machiavelli is
as applicable today as his work
was in his own day (p. ix).
Alistair McAlpine’s book The
New Machiavelli: Renaissance
realpolitik for Modern Managers
(1997) claims to translate
Machiavelli into contemporary
business (p 8). This is the same
McAlpine who had a very
successful business career, and
who served as the Treasurer and
Deputy Chairman of the British
Conservative Party before
ascending to the House of Lords.
The book shows a real sense of
Machiavelli’s distinctiveness and is
quite reflective, but it nonetheless
presses Machiavelli into the
service of contemporary business.
The book is to some extent a
companion piece to McAlpine’s
earlier The Servant (1992)which
emphasizes loyalty to a visionary
leader, in his case that was
Margaret Thatcher.
The theme of power is
continued in Ian Demack’s book
The Modern Machiavelli: The
Seven Principles of Power in
11
Business (2002) and in his related
article in Forbes magazine (2008).
In the book Demack says at the
outset that “Machiavelli understood
power” and that is what business is
about (p. x).
Ernest Buttery and Ewa
Richter (2003) note the growing
spate of references to Machiavelli
and write that “Machiavelli’s
principles are deemed to be
applicable to our modern
enterprises and have been said to
offer critical advice to, and decisive
discourse on, management
thought and education” (p. 1).
They give no reason for doubting
that such deeming is sensible and
then go on to add to it by applying
Machiavelli’s so-called principles to
assorted business matters.
In Thinking beyond
Technology: Creating New Value
in Business (2003), Joseph
Divanna writes that “Machiavelli
talks about a prince and
principalities, as we, in modern
terms, talk about CEOs and
corporation…. Machiavelli’s
observations of how a principality
is formed, governed, and ruled can
be applied to modern merger and
acquisition strategies’ (p. 113). In
other books Machiavelli is in the
title but is hardly in the text (Mervil
1980).
With reference to career
management, B. Jill Carroll (2004),
writes that “Machiavelli’s famous
book The Prince is one of the most
provocative strategy manuals ever
written” (p 1). This is an oft
repeated point and perhaps it is
time to say that the book known as
The Prince has much in it aside
from strategy and has an
intelligence seldom seen in
manuals.
David McGuire and Kate
Hutchings write in the Journal of
Organizational Change
Management (2006)that
“Machiavelli’s … world has much in
common with the modern …
business world that is also beset
by change, turmoil and challenges
to the status quo” (p. 192). When
probed, we suggest this similarity
loses air quickly.
Stanley Bing’s What Would
Machiavelli do? The End justifies
the Meanness (2000) is a
benchmark in this literature. Bing,
nom de plume for a Fortune
journalist, is a much-published
author. The book is so simple-
minded and exaggerated one
might even think it a parody except
there is no evidence of humour or
modesty in the author’s voice.
Throughout this short book Bing
distorts Machiavelli in the way
some have done to Karl Marx. The
result is a vulgar Machiavellianism.
Bing freely dots factual errors
along the way. He answers the
title question by saying Machiavelli
would lie, cheat, murder, steal,
assassinate, kidnap, thieve and so
on, and on, and on. This from a
book that describes Saddam
Hussein of Iraq as a successful
Machiavellian (p. 64). The cover
design of his book is a shark’s fin,
calling on our primal fears of the
vasty deep. In his rush to assert
that Machiavelli recommended
every sort of crime, calumny,
misdeed, felony, transgression,
and sin, Bing seldom pauses to
refer specifically to any of
Machiavelli’s words. One of the
theses Bing dwells on is
Machiavelli’s alleged
recommendation to be amoral.
Bing does not mean amoral in the
sense of being detached, neutral,
and impartial but rather he means
12
immoral (p 29 and 177). Others
have recommended what they
term Machiavellian amorality,
though not always with the
enthusiasm and carelessness of
What would Machiavelli do?
(Error is no bar to success and this
book is now available in audio form
from Audible.) Two examples
suffice, Borger (2002, p. 1) and
Gunlicks (2002, p. 22).
As the subtitle of his book
says, Bing sees in Machiavelli an
open-ended justification of all
actions as means to ends. In the
case of What would Machiavelli
do? the end is personal
aggrandizement which Bing calls
power (p. 29, 30, 77, 117, and
more). This in a book that cites
Pol Pot as an example of a
Machiavellian ruler (p. 32). If this
be jest, it is so offensive as to defy
words of reproach. Others have
also seen in Machiavelli a recipe
for power of some kind, though
none as crudely as in Bing’s book
(Michael Korada 1975, p. 197;
Michael Shea 1988, p. 8; Bartlett
1998, p v, Griffin 1991, p. viii, V
[Curtis Johnson] 1996, p. xiii,
Sheila Marsh 2009, p. 65, and
Greene 2000, p. xvii ff, Pfeffer 201,
p. 87).
(2) Business is Politics by another
name, or B = P.
Antony Jay said it first and
best, when he said that
‘Management is the great new
preoccupation of the Western
world. General Motors has a
greater revenue than any state in
the union … The giant corporations
have far bigger revenues than the
governments of most countries’ (p
2). He then opines that in the face
of the vast number of books on
management, ‘The new science of
management is in fact only a
continuation of the old art of
government, and when you study
management theory side by side
with political theory, and
management case histories side
by side with political history, you
realize that you are only studying
two very similar branches of the
same subject. Each illuminates
the other…’ (p 3). Continuing he
said that reading Machiavelli
brought this truth home to him, yet
Machiavelli is not at the moment
[1967] required reading in business
colleges or for management
training courses’ (p. 4). (That has
certainly changed, for web
searching in business programs
reveals many references to
Machiavelli, though it may be they
are all to such sources as those
discussed here and not
Machiavelli’s own works. Jay’s
book does appear on the syllabi for
some MBA courses that we have
seen.) Jay also claims that ‘In all
important ways, states and
corporations are the same….
States and corporations can be
defined in almost exactly the same
way” institutions for the effective
employment of resources and
power… The competition of
commercial and industrial rivals
strikes, the problem of getting the
most advantageous trading
situation with least possible
sacrifice of independence - all
these problems are in their
essence the same as enemy
invasion, civil rebellion, or alliances
with other states that have
common interest or a common
enemy’ (p. 13). Politics is business
is politics.
George writes in his The
history of management thought
(1968) that “the principles of
13
leadership and power that
occupied Machiavelli are
applicable to almost every
endeavor which is organized and
purposeful. Were he writing today
he would probably be analyzing
the power structure of our large
corporations …” (p. 43). But
George does not do so, but his text
invite others to do so, and they did.
Richard Calhoon's article in
the Academy of Management
Journal (1969), a very important
research journal in management, a
year later however cites Jay
extensively and concludes that
“Machiavelli would applaud the
widespread application of his
precepts to leadership in today’s
organizations” (p. 205).
Machiavelli’s applause indicates
his imputed satisfaction in seeing
his advice heeded.
One of the most common
tropes among those Machiavelli
avatars in the business literature is
to rewrite The Prince, following his
chapters and changing or adding
to the content to focus on
commerce. Alistair McAlpine’s The
New Machiavelli: Renaissance
realpolitik for Modern Managers is
one instance of this approach.
Others are Richard Hill, The Boss;
W. T. Brahmstedt, Memo to the
Boss, Richard Funks, The
Corporate Prince, Ian Demack,
The Modern Machiavelli: The
Seven Principles of Power in
Business, and Alan Bartlett, Profile
of the Entrepreneur, or
Machiavellian Management. Some
are even more subtle and put the
word ‘prince’ in the title but do not
mention Machiavelli when
discussing business, e.g.,
Aquarius, The corporate prince: A
handbook of administrative tactics
(1971) in little more than one
hundred pages of elegant and
snappy text. These books
invariably apply Machiavelli’s
comments on the acquisition of
lands to corporate mergers and
acquisitions. Others who make
this comparison include Crainer
(1998, p. 136) and DiVanna
(2003, p. 144).
Richard Griffin’s Machiavelli
on Management: Playing and
Winning the Corporate Power
Game (1991) parallels the
manager to prince in an
organization (p. 20), while John
Legge’s The Modern Machiavelli :
the nature of modern business
strategy (1991) recommends the
methods described by Machiavelli
as somewhat appropriate to the
way to run most types of business
( p. 1). This note of caution is a
rarity in the rush to make
Machiavelli a manager.
Lynn Gunlicks justifies the
title The Machiavellian Manager's
Handbook for Success (2000) by
saying that Machiavelli wrote for
princes and while capitalist robber
barons are not princes, this book is
about them (p. xv). In The Boss:
Machiavelli on managerial
leadership (2000) Richard Hill
writes that ‘The little book the
Prince has a lot about leadership in
it, especially for business
leadership (pp. 6-7). Michael
Thomas in the European journal of
marketing (2000) compares
Machiavelli’s advice and marketing
(p. 524).
The Corporate prince:
Machiavelli's timeless advice
adapted for the modern CEO
(2002) by Henry Borger we read
that the prince is equivalent to any
autocratic ruler like a CEO (p. 2)
and like the princes of old, CEOs
live and work in a highly
14
competitive world (p. 4). Writing in
the Journal of Management History
Neil Hartley (2006) concludes that
“Machiavelli was one of the earliest
to conceptualize
management/human nature in his
most well known work The Prince”
and so is a foundation of
management study (p. 281). In
Niccolo Machiavelli's The prince : a
52 brilliant ideas interpretation
(2008) Tim Phillips has it that ‘the
prince is closer in nature to a
modern CEO than a prime
minister’ (p. 3). For his part Midas
Jones says Machiavelli’s advice
should be heeded by all who work
in organizations in his The Modern
Prince: Better Living Through
Machiavellianism (2008).
In short there are many
students of management,
commerce, and business who
have embraced Machiavelli and
commend him and his works.
They do so on two grounds. First
that his reality is our reality, or at
least it does not differ in significant
ways, though some of the more
careful authors like Alistair
McAlpine do recognize important
differences in the constraints on
arbitrary power when he writes that
‘clearly, it is not possible at the turn
of the twentieth century to behead
a managing director’ (1997 p 28);
he leaves aside whether it would
be desirable.
Jay notes that ‘of course,
there are certain superficial
differences’ between corporations
and states’ (p. 14, emphasis
added). Most who have followed
him on Machiavelli road have not
even paused to make that
qualification, but rather have
concluded that any similarity, e.g.,
a competitive environment,
legitimates complete assimilation.
It would follow, for example, that
since athletes are competitive,
they, too, should look to the pages
of Machiavelli. But wait, that leap
has already been made by Simon
Ramo in Tennis by Machiavelli
(1984).
3. Are Machiavelli’s time ours?
Is business but politics by
another name?
Against both these
propositions we suggest a more
restrained approach is best. While
Machiavelli’s insights are many
and conveyed in diamond-bright
prose, unencumbered by
qualification, they do presume a
context. That context in gross is
that constant conflict among
European powers in Italy. France,
Spain, Venice, and Germany (in
the form of the Holy Roman
Empire) fought their dynastic and
border wars almost constantly in
Italy. The politics that Machiavelli
experienced was nothing at all like
business, modern or otherwise. It
was cutthroat, it was capricious, it
was blood red in fact not in
metaphor. Only people who have
never see it, can speak lightly of
blood on the floor of a meeting
room. To find similar environments
today one would be well advised to
look to failed and failing states like
Pakistan, Iraq, or Afghanistan
(McGrane 2011). Anyone who
thinks corporate competition is like
war has never experienced war.
How the acquisition of Disney
Studios by Sony Japan is like
Cesare Borgia’s march through
Romagna is beyond us, perhaps
because so little do we understand
the world of big business. But we
do know what Borgia did, and little
of it would be legal in any country
15
today.
Nor was Machiavelli’s reality
continuous with ours. To say that
it is obliterates hundreds of years
of European history in which
concepts and practices of rights
and justice, unknown to
Machiavelli or any of his
contemporaries, have developed,
transmuted, and embedded
themselves in our practices, our
institutions, our conventions, and
our minds. Ours is much more a
government and politics of laws
than of princes than anything
Machiavelli could have foreseen.
Indeed one suspects that the life of
a CEO in business is bounded,
limited, and constrained, too, and
perhaps the fantasy that one can
rise above that is part of the appeal
of these books that bring
Machiavelli and the shadow of his
reputation into the world of
business.
We suggest that the value of
Machiavelli is as a sounding board
for one’s own reflections. He might
be read in the same way one reads
Plutarch’s Lives or the Homer’s
Iliad, for examples to react to,
rather than models to follow or to
codify into a manual. Human
nature may be a constant, as
Machiavelli himself supposed, but
if it remains the same, it also
changes. Dropped down in a
jungle, perhaps a person off the
street today might well soon
behave as a 15th or 16th Century
Florentine in the same situation
would, but, outside reality
television, we do not live in jungles,
but in civilizations that shape and
constrain us.
As some of the books that
Glendower-like summon
Machiavelli from the vasty deep in
their titles, do not thereafter
mention him, others make the
barest mention, and then proceed
to offer their own accounts cloaked
by Machiavelli’s imagined
authority. Yet some of these works
do explicitly borrow from
Machiavelli and apply specific
tenets from his works, almost
invariably, but not quite
exclusively, The Prince.
Antony Jay himself, whom we
credit with creating Machiavelli
'The sage of management,' refers
to Machiavelli only in the first thirty
pages of his book. There his
argument, largely anecdotal, is that
the management books he read
idealized management and
counselled high-minded, hyper
rational approaches, which
seemed far from the reality of
business as he knew it. He asked
a few people he met, including
some by chance in elevators, if we
are to believe what we read, and
they agreed with him (1967, p. 4).
(We almost always agree with
people who accost us in elevators!
We then exit at the next floor.) In
contrast to this rational, sanitized,
vision of business, Jay saw a
confused, conflicted, inconsistent
reality that reminded him of what
he had read in Machiavelli. The
page he then decided to take from
Machiavelli’s book was the method
page: namely, an accurate
description of the reality is the
foundation for any conclusions or
recommendations. Jay says it in
this way: ‘I have called this book
Management and Machiavelli not
because it is based on
Machiavelli’s arguments but
because it is based on his method,
the method of taking a current
problem and then examining it in a
practical way in the light of
experiences of others who have
16
faced a similar problem in the past’
(p. 28). It is not just any method,
then but the method of realism.
Others have credited Machiavelli
with this title, Realist, too. They
include James Burnham (1943)
and any number of international
relations theorists seeking
patrimony for the doctrine of that
name in that field. Others have
followed Jay in claiming that
Machiavelli’s method of realism is
what they recommend (Wren 1998,
p. 192; Carter 2002, p. 7; Buttery
2003, p. 432; Carroll 2004, p. 6;
and Diehl 2007, p. 29). Few have
ever recommended unrealism.
While there is much reality in
all of Machiavelli’s works, there is
also much else. We wonder if
those who so readily grant him the
title Realist really agree with him
that Roman Republican history
holds answers for his time and
place and all others. We wonder if
they would see realism in
Machiavelli’s rejection of artillery
and fortifications in favour of citizen
militias. At times in his overheated
pages of the Art of War the serried
ranks of citizens, bare-chested
before an enemy’s cannon seems
to be the real test of the moral fiber
of a community. We wonder if
those who find in Machiavelli the
realist’s eye would agree with his
closing paean in The Prince for
Lady Italy? Or do we conclude
that proclaimed realists are but
disappointed romantics? Finally,
how would those who urge
Machiavelli’s example, especially
in managing one’s own career,
square the praise they heap on
him with Machiavelli’s dismal
failure in his career. His curriculum
vitae is far from impressive for one
so credited with a mastery of
tradecraft. He did a great deal of
work (the hardest, the most
gruelling, and the riskiest
assignments that no one else
wanted), it is true, but he failed
ever to get promotion,
commensurate pay raises, or a
transfer to a more secure post.
When the regime changed he was
caught by surprise and had no
escape plan for himself. He was
one of only two in the chancellery
terminated immediately when the
regime changed. He made only
half-hearted efforts to re-start his
career, preferring to wait for his call
to greatness in Florence; it did not
come. When offered a sinecure in
Rome, he rejected it to wait for that
call among bumpkins in the hills.
As to this latter point, most of the
authors who cite him, we suspect,
would have advised him to relocate
and restart his career, the better to
return at a later time to Florence, if
that is what he wished. One can
only image the advice a self-help
guru like Depak Chopta would
have given him!
4. To conclude
One of the most amusing
features of the purveyors of
Machiavelli’s reliquary maxims is
the fervor which these authors tell
us Machiavelli speaks directly to us
but that to hear his voice we need
to read their books not his. This is
the perfectly squared circle. On
the one hand, Machiavelli’s books,
usually but not always just The
Prince, offers us clear and
penetrating insights into the
contemporary world of business.
On the other hand, his message is
garbled enough to need translation
by the author. Vanity, thy name is
on the dust jacket.
Richard Buskirk (1974, p. xxi)
says he presents Machiavelli's
17
‘actual words in context’ through
extensive quotations’ and omits
'from the Prince and Discourses
material not relevant to the
management of men.’ We are left
with a cut-down version The Prince
embellished by Buskirk’s own
offerings.
A decade later Funk (1986. p.
vii) wrote that 'Machiavelli's The
Prince needed to be reexamined in
order to establish a better
understanding of his modes and
orders for the corporate executive
(or Prince). Here we see some
acknowledgement that Machiavelli
and The Prince stand at some
remove of the contemporary word,
but that seems only a matter of
accent, as when Spanish and
Portuguese speakers
communicate. Griffin (1991, p. xv)
says simply that we cannot just
read Machiavelli because his
books were written in a 16th
Century context.’ No indeed, we
have to think.
But none of these writers of
this self-promoting bunk can top
Stanley Bing (2000, p. xviii) who
says, ‘Nobody can really
understand Machiavelli’s actual
writing today, however, because it
is too literate, too grounded in
meaningless social, political,
military anecdote, to remain
interesting to anyone with normal
intelligence, attention span, and
patience.’ With these quick
keystrokes he dismisses most of
what Machiavelli thought was
important. He goes on to add
‘lacking an ability to read
Machiavelli, people … need books
like this one to explain how his
teaching can help…to become
powerful and rich.’
Chronology leaves the last
word to Ian Demack (2002, p. x)
who says: ‘The Prince remains as
relevant and provocative today as
it was in 1513. But many find it
difficult to read.’ We are willing to
concede that possibility if Demack
is willing to concede that the
empirical assertion needs
evidence. For ourselves there are
few writers more trenchant than
Machiavelli which is why he is so
often quoted, out of context.
Above we referred to factual
errors. Chief among this is the
misrepresentation of Machiavelli’s
working life. On this point, too,
Bing’s What would Machiavelli do?
is the outstanding example.
Consider this unqualified assertion,
Machiavelli ‘was a mid-level
bureaucrat who for the best part of
his career worked’ and reported ‘to
the Prince of Florence’ (p. xx).
Machiavelli’s political career was in
service to the republican
government led by Piero Sorderini.
Machiavelli never worked for a
prince. Period. It follows that it is
equally mistaken to refer to his
alleged efforts to gain
reinstatement at court and still
more silly to say that ‘Medici liked
what he read, exercised a full
measure of executive amnesia,
and Machiavelli … was welcomed
back to a nice corner office will full
honors. His fame has only grown
in the years since’ (ibid.). Those
familiar with the broad outlines of
Machiavelli’s life and his exile from
Florence will know how erroneous
these remarks are, but this is no
the place to correct those errors,
though noting them does indicate
how carelessly Machiavelli is
treated by those who take his
name in vain.
In conclusion it must be said
that a very few others have noted
the need for caution in integrating
18

Machiavelli into the management survey is much more

pantheon. Michael Macaulay and comprehensive and our critique of
Alan Lawton (2003) apply a speed the spectre of Machiavelli in
camera to slow down the rush to management is likewise more
make Machiavelli into something thoroughgoing.
he was not, as does John Swain
(2002) and Buttery and Ewa
(2003). We differ in that our

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iThat remarkable scholar James Burnham published two books that are
sometimes conflated. In 1941 he published The Managerial Revolution or
What is Happening in the World Now and in 1943 The Machiavellians:
Defenders of Freedom. The former argues that the post-war world will be
dominated by those that manage large organizations, be they government,
military, business, or labour, rather than by those that own them. It is a
sociological study of the origins of such a management class. The latter title
is a study of realism in political analysis wherein Burnham gives Machiavelli
pride of place, for his self-professed and largely realized aspiration in The
Prince to examine what is done, how and why it is done, rather than to dwell
on what should be done. Machiavelli is not mentioned in the text of The
Managerial Revolution and managers are not mentioned in The
Machiavellians. Though sometimes it is assumed otherwise.