Management’s problem
I was troubled this morning by the following word usage (free registration required):
All journalists say they know who their readers are. Managements do not believe them. All journalists say they know what their readers want. Managements want them to prove it.
A quick search of the GU archive shows other uses of the word managements, and of the first few I’ve checked I’m comfortable with only one. Those that don’t seem right I’ve marked with a *, like a proper linguist:
* They believe they are essential tools for energising slothful managements. (Ref.)
* When managements recognise the need for basic skills training at work and institute a learning scheme, the end result is invariably beneficial for all. (Ref.)
* [...] irrepressible internet and phone companies are forcing newspaper managements to ask the question they hoped to leave for the next generation: what are newspapers for? (Ref.)
The possible management buyout at Peacock follows announcements by the chocolate company Thorntons and the bookstore Ottakar’s that their managements were also looking at ways of taking the businesses off the stock market. (Ref.)
* [...] let us remember that there is, in fact, another way to protest against shoddy moronic global managements beside nose-rings and woad and Coldplay. (Ref.)
Given its wide use I think this may be my problem, but I’m not sure. I’d like these to be grammatical errors, or at least grammatically questionable. I can’t make a linguistic analysis of this, so I can only go by gut instinct. And my instinct is that because management is a nebulous group of people then it cannot usually be pluralised. In most of the cases above I find myself thinking “but what is a management”?
It seems that the Peacock sentence if fine because the management teams being discussed are individually identified, and because it is important that the two teams are different, doing different things.
By contrast, the singular management could be substituted in most of the “wrong” ones above. Only newspaper managements does not work for this, and here the phrase newspaper management teams or newspaper managers would probably suffice.
I suspect management is not a word that should be tossed around without some supporting words. Managers, management team, management of X, board, decision-makers, companies all seem much more appropriate when we need to talk about single and multiple entities.
