Where governments have failed to restore previous world growth levels, could a management renaissance do the trick? Noting in a Harvard Business Review blog that a mere 13 per cent of employees worldwide are engaged in their work, with twice as many disengaged or hostile, Richard Straub and Julia Kirby call for a “Great Transformation” that would set the world on a new path to sustainable growth.

Can we manage our way to prosperity? Some would turn it around and say it is not an option – it is management’s fault that the economy is so limp in the first place. And it is less a case of sulky employees than of zombie managers in the grip of management ideas that refuse to die. Leave aside for the moment the poor management decisions that caused the crisis whose legacy still besets us. Clayton Christensen, holder of the unofficial title of the world’s most influential management thinker, blames managers’ short-termism for companies’ preference for innovation that cuts costs (usually jobs).

Another academic, William Lazonick, has shown how in recent years many large US corporates have been spending more than their total profits on dividends and share buybacks, leaving precious little for investment or employees. And in The Road to Recovery, City economist Andrew Smithers, hardly a rabid lefty, argues that the recession is not cyclical but structural, and it is caused by the misallocation of investment resources brought about by bonuses and incentives. For Smithers, dismantling the bonus culture that misdirects managers’ investment decisions is the single most important task for economic and social policy today.