In principle the advanced, market-driven world in which we now live is
fuelled by knowledge, information and transparency, but in practice the
processes that produce this world systematically corrupt and denigrate
knowledge: this is the powerful and provocative argument advanced by
Colin Crouch in his latest exploration of societies on the road to
post-democracy.
Crouch shows that executives in profit-maximizing corporations have
incentives to ignore or distort knowledge, especially firms in the
information business of the mass media themselves, as financial
knowledge increasingly trumps the other kinds of knowledge that business
needs. Firms also seek to take control of public knowledge and use it
for their own ends, often at the cost of other stakeholders in society.
Meanwhile the transfer of similar practices to professional public
services undermines professional skills and ethics - especially when
these services are out-sourced to the private sector. Attempts to
extricate ourselves from these problems involve reshaping the complex
and often conflicting relationships among citizens, professionals,
managers and financiers.
This new book by one of the most incisive critics of contemporary
Western societies will be of interest to a wide range of readers, from
students to policy-makers and those who work in the public and private
sectors.
