I would be more inclined to believe this if the pro-manager view didn't come from the managers the vast majority of the time. It seems too convenient and self-s

I would be more inclined to believe this if the pro-manager view didn't come from the managers the vast majority of the time. It seems too convenient and self-service. Of course managers want to think they make a massive difference. Certainly some aspects can: keeping politics away from your group so that they can work, focusing work tasks by eliminating extraneous ones, advocating for people in the company. However, once you start getting into things like values and metrics it starts becoming a lot more grey. On the one hand metrics are a great idea, a tiny step towards making management more science driven. But on the other, the metrics so often used are such a poor and overly simple representation of a very complex system that it's often hard to see how they provide an accurate view of any given work place. Goals and values are often completely lame. We value hard work! Your goal is to do your job! Somehow managers must know that they are ridiculed for this. After all entire movies are made doing so. Yet they still seem to want to believe this rhetoric works.