Philosophy: The Managers - Philosophie Management

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In the meantime, we should not disregard the fact that the potential contributions to management of serious philosophical practices are probably bigger than ever. Failures of management today affect many people: the employees and their families, the shareholders or owners, the local communities of the firms in question and the general public; management is everyone’s business. Part of the failures of management we witness today lie in the modernist thinking that underpins it. Modernist thinking and the systems and structures it generated have been incredibly successful, and this is manifested in every aspect of our material life today. Without the modernist mindset we would not be enjoying all the benefits of electronic technology and myriad other inventions that surround us. There is a downside, however, and it is dramatic – the assumption that people in organizations should be managed in the same way as inanimate material objects. For many years, thinking of people in an organization as an “economic entity” worked, but society has changed, most people are now educated (and those who are not, are nevertheless well informed) so this is just no longer acceptable. There is however another way of managing than this mechanistic, modernist way. As Whitely and Whitely (…) argue, this other way is one in which employees “know why” they work and are “able to grow” 27 . However, very few organizations are able to put this sort of mission into practice. Why? Because the mindset of most managers is brainwashed by the mental sets of modernism within which they were brought up, and continue to work in. 28 Once again, philosophy can play a role in helping to change these mental sets. Luc de Brabandere (…) notes along the same lines that “philosophy is all the more necessary because there is a need for rigorous thinking in domains in which there are no numbers”, that is domains in which competitive advantages (related to collective intelligence, creativity, innovation,…) cannot be quantified as easily or managed in a mechanistic way. 29 27 The two values almost universally supported across both management and employee groups are “knowing why” and “being able to grow”. Many issues and problems we have witnessed or encountered are perceptual and emotional. In many cases people become distressed not because of the facts of a situation, but because of the way in which the facts have been presented to them. Within this environment we have human beings who are a complex mix of both rational/logical thinking and emotions/human values. Abilities too can range from the technical and scientific to those of discernment, judgment, decisiveness and adaptability. We can’t take for granted that the production of rules and regulations, organizational charts, roles and responsibilities, held together by chains of command and lines of authority allow human values and judgment to flourish. In other words, organizations are communities of people striving for personal and organizational goals. They help each other along the way and are able, through wise management, to learn and grow as human beings. 28 As we look at our inherited organizational designs and language we can understand why people used to, and still may, think of themselves as a cog in someone else’s machine. (Terms such as chains of command, control methods, lines of authority, topdown communication and back on track thinking come to mind.) Of course, the machines nowadays are more sophisticated and the language is more politically correct, but have things really changed? Pursuing our belief that organizations are “meaningmaking” places, we need to ask “What sort of meaning?" Traditionally, senior managers and managers were encouraged to think that the meaning they intended could be imposed by enacting such organizational values as command and control. […] The 21st century is set to pose problems of a greater variety than ever encountered, as life becomes more technologically colonized and complex. We need a new language, or at least an addendum to our everyday language, in order to express concepts of change and establish new meanings. Curiously the new language we have embraced originated in science. You see, cutting edge scientists themselves began to realize from the 1970s that their own thinking was in a straightjacket. This straightjacket was the belief at that time that it was possible, through applying “objective” scientific method to arrive at universal laws and truths about the universe. Enlightenment thinking was a powerful way of theorizing about industrial organization in the industrial era that followed. In essence a scientifically oriented, objective way of looking at life, including social and organizational life, was developed. It became, as we discuss later, a blueprint or “grand narrative” that was so powerful that it slipped from consciousness and became “the way things should be done”. We describe the need for managers to investigate personally what employees value most from them as well as the need for employees to find out what managers actually value from them. We argue that very often in our change workshops, managers told us what they assumed employees valued. We went on in all cases to find out what employees themselves said they valued and very rarely, if ever, were the assumptions (both ways) correct. 29 See also Gilles Prod’homme (…): “Comme le souligne avec force Gilles Prod’homme dans son intervention, la crise à laquelle le monde est aujourd’hui confronté n’est sans doute pas sans rapport avec ce manque de pratique réflexive d’une partie de l’élite économique et politique qui a confondu un peu trop vite la fin des idéologies avec la fin de la pensée, et oublié que le pragmatisme était aussi une théorie philosophique. Le monde du travail avait tout autant besoin de ces forums de création philosophique, comme forme d’intelligence collective, non pas virtuelle, mais bien réelle, comme facteur d’humanisation de “l’animal laborans” et comme médiation.” ledoux.laurent@gmail.com 28
On top of that, the new dynamic of interactions between enterprises and their stakeholders (see the co-regulation concept of Benoît Frydman mentioned in chapter 1.2.) and the related rise of the public space and reclaiming of democracy outside and within enterprises also require a radically new mindset from managers. 30 Now, for this to happen, philosophers cannot stay on the margin as they have probably done for too long. As Sanbu (…) notes: “it does not occure to most people that moral philosophy should have a contribution to make to our understanding of business. This is partly the fault of Aristotle’s modern heirs. By staying silent throughout a financial crisis featuring a considerable amount of questionable conduct, moral philosophers have granted impunity to lazy thinking. And the result is a debate soaked in such inanities as “giving back to society” or putting “people before profit”. Fine phrases but they mean little and in practice will achieve even less.” Similarly, philosophy has too often sat on the margins of management education and practice. All too often ‘business ethics’ has appeared in a modular ghetto while the management curriculum remains unaffected by the contribution of philosophy - to its design or implementation. It was not always so however. For example, in 1632, the precursor to the University of Amsterdam - the Athenaeum Illustre - was founded to educate students in Trade and Philosophy. Luckily, today, fresh approaches are evident 31 . Needless to say, some philosophers will fear an instrumentalization of their discipline. But they should not. There is a real need for them to be confronted with the realities of enterprises, especially if they want to say something meaningful about our relation to the world today. And, one can take comfort in the following thought: if philosophy is instrumentalized, then it is not philosophy anymore. And it will grow somewhere else again, where it can pursue, unhindered, the truth and liberty it endlessly seeks. 30 See the report “Megacommunities” by Booz, Allen & Hamilton (…). 31 Fresh approaches mentioned by the Free University of Amsterdam. - One leading business school is under student pressure to raise the profile of corporate responsibility in the curriculum. - At the University of British Columbia the award winning MBA Core programme is staffed by five faculty - including a philosopher, Wayne Norman, alongside experts in accounting, marketing, organisational behaviour, information technology and operations - working together “in the same room, five days a week, for four months”. (http://www.ethics.ubc.ca/people/norman/index.htm). - Copenhagen Business School has offered a BSc in Business Administration and Philosophy since 1996. “The philosophical dimension trains students in argumentation, in recognising general contexts, incorporating values, and in understanding our time in a historical perspective - all qualities greatly demanded in the knowledge-based society of the future.” (http://www.cbs.dk/stud_pro/hafiluk.shtml) - More recently an MSc in Business Administration and Philosophy has been launched at the Copenhagen Business School. It builds on the skills, concepts and themes taught on the above programme, “specifically: - the phenomenon of knowledge (truth, validity and applicability) - the basis for actions in attitudes and values - the rhetoric dimension of language (management language and aesthetic communication) - In addition, it emphasises the importance of the above dimensions within and in relation to business economics. The dynamics between the economic and philosophical dimension are maintained, and the two perspectives simultaneously integrated.” (http://www.cbs.dk/stud_pro/cmfiluk.shtml) - At the Free University of Amsterdam an MA in Philosophy of Organisation is in plan, the latest in a series of initiatives bringing philosophical thinking to management through the Prato Centre (http://www.ph.vu.nl/prato/eng/) - Alongside the journal Philosophy of Management (formerly Reason in Practice) a philosophy of management textbook is now in preparation. Senior executives at BP have been exposed to philosophical ideas as part of their development. And outside the academy, philosophical practitioners have for many years employed philosophical methods with their clients, especially in Australia, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and the United States. In Belgium, the three business schools, together with the association Philosophy & Management are currently launching a new master in philosophy for management. In Switzerland, the University of Freiburg has also a program. ledoux.laurent@gmail.com 29
Page 1 and 2: Philosophy: The Managers’ Best Fr
Page 3 and 4: Although Margretta’s straightforw
Page 5 and 6: Interestingly, such a partitioning
Page 7 and 8: 1.1.3. Managers share through ratio
Page 9 and 10: what holds are the questions. The q
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Page 13 and 14: Perhaps due to the things which man
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Page 17 and 18: Such (re)discoveries have not only
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Page 21 and 22: truly have a strong and positive im
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Page 27: Now let us translate Ulanowicz’s
Page 31 and 32: persons or groups concerned. In pra
Page 33 and 34: what the “truth” is. He or she
Page 35: 3.2. The Do’s & Don’ts list for

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