Social Forces and Managerial Job Satisfaction

Managers are a very large and growing occupational group of substantial economic and social significance. Indeed, by 1978, Lindley estimated that there were as many as 2,146,000 managers in Britain, corresponding to no less than 8.7 per cent of all employed persons. Despite this, there has been surprisingly little systematic research on managers as an occupational group. However, this has not precluded a substantial amount of comment and speculation about managers and their roles in modern industrial Britain, particularly in the popular media. In a large number of cases, the tone of the argument suggests that managers are being increasingly constrained in their activities and that their “prerogative to manage” has been substantially undermined.