“Tony Soprano on Management”

When the Mafia is compared with a business organization, it is often with a certain amount of hesitancy. The commentator makes the ‘analogy’ but then withdraws into moralizing, leaving ‘real’ business and the evil Mafia clearly separated. Of course, if the analogical status of a statement becomes forgotten, it might mistakenly be taken to be a fact, and then where would we be? Such confusions will clearly stand in the way of serious analysis. Because when the serious analysis is done, we might find that the Mafi a is actually rather a conventional business organization. The article claims that the Mafia is a business organization, and that it is an organization that articulates a version of labour that appears to be widely admired.