This article starts from the neither new, nor original idea that the activity of organising, rather than the content, goals or effects of organisations, is the cornerstone of power and rule in modern society. The aim is to explain why management reforms as such are problematic to implement, but a further aim is also to show that the most important thing about management reforms is maybe not their practical implementation but rather their discursive influence upon the definition of organisations and organising activities (what I call the politics of organisational power). Another important feature of the article is that it employs a bottom up-perspective according to which management reforms are negotiated within organisational constructions of the world, rather than being something imposed from the outside. Through two case studies, the article concludes that efforts at strengthening organisational control through neutralised management techniques lead to oligarchic tendencies. This quite traditional conclusion is supplemented with a conclusion derived from the governmentality perspective: very generalised strategies of steering are effectuated on localised levels without the traditional “implementation” work, but rather through points of discursive definition on the organisational level.