Le pouvoir magique. Les techniques du chamanisme managérial⁽¹⁾ by Jean-Michel Théron (Pearson, 2008, 176 pp.)

Today’s great armies of the world—probably including that of France—are increasingly subject to the demands of management in all its forms. Increasingly, they are being inspired, in good faith, by the conventions and practices of the private sector. But is this trend risk-free? Are the miracle solutions of the business world and its managerial rationality as relevant as all that?

The modern West sees itself as rational, guided in all things by a scientific approach. But could this avowed rationalism, in the conduct of both public and private life, be no more than a delusion, a façade, yet another ruse of reason? Might not ‘magical thinking’⁽²⁾ inhabit our ideas and behaviour that are supposedly better shaped by positivism? Structuralists are convinced of this. But do examples of this exist in the real world, that of the worker or consumer? Take the markets: their life is structured around myths and undreamt-of magical beliefs. Since Adam Smith in the eighteenth century, no one still believes in a providential ‘invisible hand’ that ensures spontaneous equilibrium for markets. The ‘invisible hand’ very much resembles a hidden and benevolent god. No one has ever seen him or been able to prove his scientific relevance, yet this belief, entirely magical, still holds sway. And in a peculiarly animistic excess, we assign to markets their own personality, moods and opinions: ‘the market thinks that . . .’