Controversies in Management

Issues, Debates, Answers

Alan B Thomas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780415269018
• eBook ISBN: 9781134491780
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

As managerial roles diversify, the phenomenon of management becomes increasingly puzzling. Demand for formal management training, theories and qualifications has increased, yet our ability to think critically about management has diminished. At a time of organizational and environmental turbulence, the question of effective management is more complex than ever.

Unpicking the puzzles faced by both the manager and the student of management, this introductory guide explores the major issues of management, organization and knowledge, asking questions of our 'guru' culture and raising debates on so-called expert thinking. Written from the viewpoint that the most effective managers are those that can think for themselves and put aside the advice of the management 'guru', it is a topical, challenging and thought-provoking study.

Thoroughly revised and reorganized, this second edition features two completely new chapters that cover gender issues in management, debates on globalization, post-modernity and the future of management. Designed to bring readers into the debate, rather than simply providing a framework of answers, this new edition also includes an orientation questionnaire, discussion questions for each area covered and further reading suggestions.

1 Controversies in management

A writer may try his best to draw a map of how things are, that will be equally valid for all; but all he can really do is to paint a picture of what he sees from the unique and transient viewpoint which is his alone.

Vickers (1970)

Our task is to look at the world and see it whole.

Schumacher (1995)

It’s not easy being a manager today. There’s a lot to do, a lot to understand, a lot to learn. And it doesn’t seem to be getting any easier.

Once upon a time things were different. Management hardly existed, there were no management theories, no management books, no management gurus and no management qualifications to be earned through study. Life was a lot simpler – but also a lot shorter. Today, of course, all that has changed.

Modern management emerged as a decidedly indistinct occupation in nineteenth-century Britain. It grew remarkably in the twentieth century as industrialism spread around the world. In a relatively brief span of time, management was transformed from a barely acknowledged sideline in a world of rumbustious entrepreneurship (Pollard, 1965) into an occupation of vital importance. The greater diversity and technical sophistication of production processes and products stemming from developments in science and technology, and the emergence of very large, complex organizations have played an important part in increasing the demand for managers and the status of management. Yet the quest has not been simply for more managers but for better quality managers and the more effective management of people and organizations. Both experienced managers and those who aspire to become managers have been urged to bring more professionalism to their work, to rely less on gut feelings, intuition and experience and to pay more attention to the contribution which the management sciences can make to the practice of management. Thus as the scale and stature of management has grown so too has the volume of research and writing on management and management processes and the provisions for the transmission of this knowledge to managers.

Each year thousands of new books and articles are published on management and there can be few aspects of the field lacking their own substantial literature and even their own specialized journals. Within this growing literature of management it is not difficult to find considerable differences of view on its nature and purposes, its meaning and significance, on how it is done and how it should be done. Modern managers thus have to cope not only with a complex and rapidly changing world but also with increasingly diverse ways of thinking about that world, of understanding it and of managing it. Coping with diversity has thus become a central challenge for the modern manager, for in many ways, management, both as a practical activity and as a subject for study, is puzzling.

This book sets out to explore some of these puzzles. It deals with a number of key topics in the broadly defined field of management and organization that have been a focus of considerable debate and dispute over the years and which look likely to continue to be so in the foreseeable future. It aims to treat each of these topics as a controversial issue, laying out the main arguments and points of contention and then drawing some conclusions about the current state of each dispute.

When well-informed people disagree about important matters, we are faced with a number of ways of reacting. We can wait until the ‘experts’ have reached a consensus, we can ignore expert opinion altogether in favour of whatever variety of commonsense appeals to us, or we can attempt to invest our energies in coming to grips with the disputed issues in order to develop our own, well-considered conclusions. Partly because the world in which managers work has become more complex and less stable the first option, of waiting until the experts come up with the answers, is today less viable than it once might have been. There are too many ‘experts’ busily constructing widely differing maps of management for it to be reasonable to expect to find one that is ‘equally valid for all’. Yet to rely solely on our own, personal maps, without regard for the efforts of the professional map-makers, means placing needless reliance on the inevitable narrowness of our unique experience. A more realistic if more difficult and demanding alternative is thus to recognize controversy where it exists and to engage with it fruitfully. Why this needs to be done and how this can be done will be explained in the rest of this chapter.

The messy world of management

Perhaps the most obvious question we can ask about managers is ‘what do they do?’ In the next two chapters we will be looking at some of the answers to this question in detail, but for the moment we can say that at the very least managers have to know what to do and how to do it and they then have to get it done. However they would like to see themselves, managers are not simply ‘action men’ (or women); like any normal human being they think as well as act using knowledge, in the broadest sense, as a basis for their actions. Getting to grips with management therefore involves, and has always involved, the acquisition of knowledge and skill together with the ability to apply them in situ. Current conditions have, however, made these processes much less straightforward than they once were. At this point I think it may be helpful to tell a little story.

Once upon a time, management was a simple affair. A manager’s job was to get things done through people. Managers’ goals were clear and were derived from the organization’s goals which were few in number, explicitly stated and not in conflict with each other. Managers knew what had to be done to achieve these goals on the basis of their own and the organization’s accumulated experience, and used the authority that was given to them by their position in the organization in order to get subordinates to do it. Subordinates were committed to the organization and respectful of managerial authority. There was plenty of time to think and plan and tasks were pursued within an explicit and consistent set of rules and procedures that were well understood and widely accepted by everyone. Conflicts were few and could readily be resolved by resort to higher authority. There was a fundamental consensus among employees that work organizations were dedicated to the betterment of themselves and society as a whole by means of the production and distribution of wealth. The organization and the wider world in which it operated were stable and well understood and the organization grew steadily, helping to advance the progress of society. At the heart of the organization were the managerial problem-solvers, smoothing the way to success and receiving due recognition for their efforts. The possibilities for personal and organizational growth seemed unlimited. And they all lived happily ever after.

Those were the days! At least they might have been but for the fact that they probably never existed. Yet the managerial world depicted in this story still holds a certain fascination for managers and particularly for those who are coming to management for the first time (Lawrence, 1986; Sayles, 1989). The trouble with it is that it represents an attractive but idealized view of the realities of management, one that drastically oversimplifies the complex world in which managers actually operate. That world is probably better described by such words as ambiguity, change, uncertainty, recalcitrance, improvisation, conflict and mess rather than stability, order, consensus, clarity and certainty. Indeed Ackoff (1979) has argued that managers do not so much solve problems in a well-ordered world as manage messes; and all the signs are that the world is getting messier by the minute.

Understandably, the prospect of being a manager of messes is not one that is easily accepted by aspiring managers and particularly not by those whose previous education and inclinations have led them to adopt an ‘engineering’ view of the nature of management. Such a view portrays management as a process of control in which the application of reliable techniques leads to the achievement of indisputably desirable ends, such as profit, lower unit costs, and economic growth, and so on. Managing an organization is seen as rather like piloting a flying-machine, albeit an unusually complicated one, whereby the manager sits at the control deck surrounded by an array of levers, switches and buttons which are manipulated according to sound engineering principles in order to navigate the craft to an agreed destination. Learning to be a manager, on this view, is to do with acquiring knowledge of the map which depicts the links between the control devices and the behaviour of the machine. The map itself portrays the findings of ‘management science’. Time, I think, for another little story.

Once upon a time there were no managerial sciences. Managers managed according to commonsense based on their day-to-day experience. A few of these managers chose to set down the lessons of their experience on paper in the form of codes, principles and laws of management. They intended these to serve as guidelines or even mandatory instructions for future managers to follow. Then one day social scientists started to investigate managerial behaviour and organizations. As a result of their researches they concluded that the codes and principles were inadequate because they did not seem to hold up when subjected to rigorous logical and empirical scrutiny. The processes of effective management and organization looked to be much more complex and much more difficult to capture in the form of scientific laws and generalizations than the early management writers had thought. Some managers were dismayed and decided to ignore the social sciences for ever more. Some social scientists decided to press on with their research in the hope that better ‘engineering’ principles might be produced one day, but this tended to create even more complexity. Some management teachers decided that the best way to keep the social science baby in the managerial bath was by throwing out a good deal of the uncertainty surrounding managerial science. Result – no one lived happily ever after (except for a few management ‘gurus’ – some of whom we will be meeting later in this book).

Of course this story should not be taken too literally. It is only a story. But the point to emphasize is that the machine view of organizations and its associated engineering conception of management which is implicit in current conceptions of managerial science is not wholly invalid, but rather, that it is limited and incomplete. In fact, I would suggest that there are some aspects of management which are machine-like and which involve the implementation of predictable routines. But much of management and perhaps the most significant parts of managerial practice come much closer to the messiness referred to by Ackoff. As it was once put to me, managing an organization is like dealing with a very jellyish jellyfish – and one that is usually capable of stinging!

One implication of the idea that management is about coping with a messy world is that management in inherently controversial. A messy world is one in which the connections between means and ends are poorly understood so that there is ample room for significant disagreement over what to do and how to do it. Moreover, a messy world is one in which there is no consensus on values; even if we know how to achieve particular ends, we may still disagree about whether those ends are worth pursuing or about the priority that should be given to one end as against another. What it comes down to saying is that management is less like the process of controlling a machine than it is like seeking to influence events and processes under conditions of uncertainty and value conflict. It also means that when learning to manage, whether at the workplace or in the lecture theatre, managers are faced with controversy.

Critical thinking in management

There have been a number of attempts to specify the skills and competencies needed by managers if they are to be effective (Boyatzis, 1982; Burgoyne and Stuart, 1976; Jacobs, 1989; Kotter, 1982a) but critical thinking is one skill that is seldom given much prominence. No doubt this is partly because research on the identification of managerial skills has usually been based upon observations of managers at work, and while the products of thinking may be observed, thinking itself cannot be (Carroll and Gillen, 1987). The lack of attention given to critical thinking probably also reflects the values of a management culture in which thinking, pure and simple, is perhaps not quite proper and certainly not something that should be allowed to get in the way of the ‘man of action’. Punch (1981) caught the flavour of this view when he referred to management as one of the ‘non-thinking professions’.

There are some writers, however, who have drawn attention to the importance of critical thinking for effective management. Brookfield (1987) has summarized a number of these contributions and also provides a helpful analysis of the nature and uses of critical thought. He identifies four components of the critical thinking process.

1. Identifying and challenging assumptions: much of our thinking and behaviour is based on unexamined assumptions which we take for granted and of which we may hardly be aware. One aim of critical thinking is to unearth these hidden assumptions, to check their validity or plausibility, and to modify them if they are found wanting.
2. Creating contextual awareness: this involves becoming aware of how the social, political and historical circumstances of the times in which we live conditions our ideas and assumptions. The way we think and act is not simply a natural and inevitable given but is a product of historical and social circumstances.
3. Identifying alternatives: contextual awareness opens up the possibility of identifying or imagining different contexts in which things are done differently. Alternatives are examined to see if they can be adopted.
4. Developing reflective scepticism: awareness of alternatives encourages a sceptical attitude towards fixed and final beliefs, ultimate explanations and universal truths. Accepted ideas and practices are not regarded as inevitable, necessary or above questioning. Critical thinkers are unwilling to accept that authoritative pronouncements are automatically beyond rational justification and challenge. They believe, as Carr and Kemmis (1986) have put it, that someone who claims to know ‘must convince us that their ideas survive critical examination: that they can be justified, that they can survive attempts to show them to be false, and that they are not incredible.’

When applied to management a critical approach might yield the sorts of inquiries shown in Box 1.1. In addition, Brookfield (1987) suggests that critical thinking is a key skill that needs to be brought to the management of such tasks as: strategic planning, which involves devising and evaluating alternative business scenarios and strategies; effective decisionmaking, which often requires critical questioning of assumptions and the ability to deal with fuzzy, non-quantifiable issues; creative problemsolving, in which conventional ways of thinking must be challenged; situational leadership, in which managers must be able to think out the links between alternative styles of leading and local circumstances; entrepreneurial risk-taking, which involves sceptical scrutiny of accepted ways of doing business; research and development activities, which depend for their success on unconventional ways of thinking; and organizational teambuilding, in which team members must be able to develop ways of coming to terms with views and outlooks which may be very different from their own. Brookfield concludes that critical thinking can in fact be seen ‘as the central element in improving organizational performance’.

Critical thinking can be contrasted with its opposite, uncritical thinking. Uncritical thinking is the kind in which we accept commonsense assumptions at face value without systematically checking their validity, deny or ignore the significance of context for influencing beliefs and practices, fail to seek out and evaluate alternatives, and cling rigidly and unquestioningly to dogmas and authoritative pronouncements. Critical thinking is, then, not so much a step-by-step process as an attitude of mind, one which places emphasis on the need to ask ‘why?’.

The value of critical thinking lies ultimately in its ability to enhance our freedom, even to increase our chances of survival. So long as our assumptions and habits of thought and action ‘work’ we can, if we choose, live out our lives in a mechanical, unreflective way. But in an unstable, fastchanging world, if our assumptions fail to keep up with reality we may find ourselves drawn into ever more destructive and self-defeating circles. By failing to recognize that the context of our lives is changing, by following ‘tried-and-trusted’ ways of thinking and acting as if what worked today has always worked and will always work, we may end up living in an unmanageable world of our own making.

Box 1.1 Critical thinking in management

1. Identifying and challenging assumptions about:
   • the nature of management, its tasks, skills and purposes
   • the nature of people and why they behave as they do
   • the nature of organizations
   • learning, knowing and acting
   • values, goals and ends.
2. Creating contextual awareness by understanding:
   • how management has developed historically
   • how management is conceived of in other societies
   • the implications of different industrial, organizational, economic, political and cultural contexts for management
   • the interrelation between organizations and society.
3. Identifying alternatives by:
   • becoming aware of the variety of ways in which managing and organizing can be undertaken
   • inventing and imagining new ways of managing and organizing
   • specifying new goals and priorities.
4. Developing reflective scepticism by:
   • adopting a questioning, quizzical attitude
   • recognizing the limitations of much that passes for knowledge in the management field
   • knowing how to evaluate knowledge claims
   • developing a resistance to dogma and propaganda
   • being able to distinguish systematic argument and reasoned judgement from sloppy thinking, simplistic formulae and sophistry.

To think critically is not, however, to adopt a posture of total scepticism, treating everything and everyone with suspicion and doubt. Nor should a critical attitude be equated with a negative one; positive commitment is a desirable outcome of critical thinking. As Brookfield (1987) says, ‘We can commit ourselves wholeheartedly to an idea, social structure, or cause and still be critically aware. The point is that this commitment is informed; we have arrived at our convictions after a period of questioning, analysis, and reflection.’ The kind of know-nothing scepticism which leads to amoral, relativistic nihilism in which anything goes and nothing really matters represents a critical approach taken to an absurd extreme and that is certainly not what is advocated here.

No one, of course, can think critically about everything. Life would become impossible if we had to scrutinize every assumption we make about the world so there is much that we have to take on trust. But when it comes to the most important aspects of our lives critical thinking comes into its own. This is particularly the case in our working lives when we face key decisions which are surrounded by considerable uncertainty. Under these conditions, which have become more prevalent in an era of rapid change, we are very likely to face complex issues whose resolution is open to dispute – that is to say we encounter controversies. And adequate handling of controversies, I suggest, demands critical thinking.

What are ‘controversies’?

Since this book deals with controversies, it is important to examine what we mean by the term and why we think they are worthy of attention. We begin by considering the tricky matt...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1 Controversies in management
• 2 What is management?: A term in search of a meaning
• 3 What is management? Exploitation, politics and magic
• 4 The social sciences: Can they help managers?
• 5 Principles of management: Valid or vacuous?
• 6 Getting ahead in management: Meritocracy or myth?
• 7 Gender in management: Must men manage?
• 8 Organizational leadership: Does it make a difference?
• 9 Managing all over the world: One way or many?
• 10 The future of management: Business as unusual?
• Bibliography