Archive for the ‘Management’ Category
Towards a critical practice of management – a book review
Introduction
Management, as it is practiced, is largely about “getting things done.” Consequently management education and research tends to focus on improving the means by which specified ends are achieved. The ends themselves are not questioned as rigorously as they ought to be. The truth of this is reflected in the high profile corporate scandals that have come to light over the last decade or so, not to mention the global financial crisis.
Today, more than ever, there is a need for a new kind of management practice, one in which managers critically reflect on the goals they pursue and the means by which they aim to achieve them. In their book entitled, Making Sense of Management: A Critical Introduction, management academics Mats Alvesson and Hugh Willmott describe what such an approach to management entails. This post is a summary of the central ideas described in the book.
Critical theory and its relevance to management
The body of work that Alvesson and Willmott draw from is Critical Theory, a discipline that is based on the belief that knowledge ought to be based on dialectical reasoning – i.e. reasoning through dialogue – rather than scientific rationality alone. The main reason for this being that science (as it is commonly practiced) is value free and is therefore incapable of addressing problems that have a social or ethical dimension. This idea is not new, even scientists such as Einstein have commented on the limits of scientific reasoning.
Although Critical Theory has its roots in the Renaissance and Enlightenment, its modern avatar is largely due to a group of German social philosophers who were associated with the Frankfurt-based Institute of Social Research which was established in the 1920s. Among other things, these philosophers argued that knowledge in the social sciences (such as management) can never be truly value-free or objective. Our knowledge of social matters is invariably coloured by our background, culture, education and sensibilities. This ought to be obvious, but it isn’t: economists continue to proclaim objective truths about the right way to deal with economic issues, and management gurus remain ready to show us the one true path to management excellence.
The present day standard bearer of the Frankfurt School is the German social philosopher, Juergen Habermas who is best known for his theory of communicative rationality – the idea that open dialogue, free from any constraints is the most rational way to decide on matters of importance. For a super-quick introduction to the basic ideas of communicative rationality and its relevance in organisational settings, see my post entitled, More than just talk: rational dialogue in project environments. For a more detailed (and dare I say, entertaining) introduction to communicative rationality with examples drawn from The Borg and much more, have a look at Chapter 7 of my book, The Heretic’s Guide to Best Practices, co-written with Paul Culmsee.
The demise of command and control?
Many professional managers see their jobs in purely technical terms, involving things such as administration, planning, monitoring etc. They tend to overlook the fact that these technical functions are carried out within a particular social and cultural context. More to the point, and this is crucial, managers work under constraints of power and domination: they are not free to do what they think is right but have to do whatever their bosses order them to, and, so in turn behave with their subordinates in exactly the same way.
As Alvesson and Willmott put it:
Managers are intermediaries between those who hire them and those whom they manage. Managers are employed to coordinate, motivate, appease and control the productive efforts of others. These ‘others’ do not necessarily share managerial agendas…
Despite the talk of autonomy and empowerment, modern day management is still very much about control. However, modern day employees are unlikely to accept a command and control approach to being managed, so organisations have taken recourse to subtler means of achieving the same result. For example, organisational culture initiatives aimed at getting employees to “internalise”the values of the organisation are attempts to “control sans command.”
The point is, despite the softening of the rhetoric of management its principal focus remains much the same as it was in the days of Taylor and Ford.
A critical look at the status quo
A good place to start with a critical view of management is in the area of decision-making. Certain decisions, particularly those made at executive levels, can have a long term impact on an organisation and its employees. Business schools and decision theory texts tells us that decision-making is a rational process. Unfortunately, reality belies that claim: decisions in organisations are more often made on the basis of politics and ideology rather than objective criteria. This being the case, it is important that decisions be subject to critical scrutiny. Indeed it is possible that many of the crises of the last decade could have been avoided if the decisions that lead to them had been subjected a to critical review.
Many of the initiatives that are launched in organisation-land have their origins in executive-level decisions that are made on flimsy grounds such as “best practice” recommendations from Big 4 consulting companies. Mid-level managers who are required to see these through to completion are then faced with the problem of justifying these initiatives to the rank and file. Change management in modern organisation-land is largely about justifying the unjustifiable or defending the indefensible.
The critique, however, goes beyond just the practice of management. For example, Alvesson and Willmott also draw attention to things such as the objectives of the organisation. They point out that short-sighted objectives such as “maximising shareholder value” is what lead to the downfall of companies such as Enron. Moreover, they also remind us of an issue that is becoming increasingly important in today’s world: that natural resources are not unlimited and should be exploited in a judicious, sustainable manner.
As interesting and important as these “big picture” issues are, in the remainder of this post I’ll focus attention on management practices that impact mid and lower level employees.
A critical look at management specialisations
Alvesson and Willmott analyse organisational functions such as Human Resource Management (HRM), Marketing and Information Systems (IS) from a critical perspective. It would take far too many pages to do justice to their discussion so I’ll just present a brief summary of two areas: HR and IS.
The rhetoric of HRM in organisations stands in stark contradiction to its actions. Despite platitudinous sloganeering about empowerment etc., the actions of most HR departments are aimed at getting people to act and behave in organisationally acceptable ways. Seen in a critical light, seemingly benign HR initiatives such as organizational culture events or self-management initiatives are exposed as being but subtle means of managerial control over employees. (see this paper for an example of the former and this one for an example of the latter).
Since the practice of IS focuses largely on technology, much of the IS research and practice tends to focus on technology trends and “best practices.” As might be expected, the focus is on “fad of the month” and thus turns stale rather quickly. As examples: the 1990s saw an explosion of papers and projects in business process re-engineering; the flavour of the decade in the 2000s was service-oriented architecture; more recently, we’ve seen a great deal of hot air about the cloud. Underlying a lot of technology related decision-making is the tacit assumption that choices pertaining to technology are value-free and can be decided on the basis of technical and financial criteria alone. The profession as a whole tends to take an overly scientific/rational approach to design and implementation, often ignoring issues such as power and politics. It can be argued that many failures of large-scale IS projects are due to the hyper-rational approach taken by many practitioners.
In a similar vein, most management specialisations can benefit from the insights that come from taking a critical perspective. Alvesson and Willmott discuss marketing, accounting and other functions. However, since my main interest is in solutions rather than listing the (rather well-known) problems, I’ll leave it here, directing the interested reader to the book for more.
Towards an enlightened practice of management
In the modern workplace it is common for employees to feel disconnected from their work, at least from time to time if not always. In a prior post, I discussed how this sense of alienation is a consequence of our work and personal lives being played out in two distinct spheres – the system and the lifeworld. In brief, the system refers to the professional and administrative sphere in which we work and/or interact with institutional authority and the lifeworld is is the everyday world that we share with others. Actions in the lifeworld are based on a shared understanding of the issue at hand whereas those in the system are not.
From the critical analysis of management specialisations presented in the book, it is evident that the profession, being mired in a paradigm consisting of prescriptive, top-down practices, serves to perpetuate the system by encroaching on the lifeworld values of employees. There are those who will say that this is exactly how it should be. However, as Alvesson and Wilmott have stated in their book, this kind of thinking is perverse because it is ultimately self-defeating:
The devaluation of lifeworld properties is perverse because …At the very least, the system depends upon human beings who are capable of communicating effectively and who are not manipulated and demoralized to the point of being incapable of cooperation and productivity.
Alvesson and Willmott use the term emancipation, to describe any process whereby employees are freed from shackles of system-oriented thinking even if only partially (Note: here I’m using the term system in the sense defined above – not to be confused with systems thinking, which is another beast altogether). Acknowledging that it is impossible to do this at the level of an entire organisation or even a department, they coin the term micro-emancipation to describe any process whereby sub-groups of organisations are empowered to think through issues and devise appropriate actions by themselves, free (to the extent possible) from management constraints or directives.
Although this might sound much too idealistic to some readers, be assured that it is eminently possible to implement micro-emancipatory practices in real world organisations. See this paper for one possible framework that can be used within a multi-organisation project along with a detailed case study that shows how the framework can be applied in a complex project environment.
Alvesson and Willmott warn that emancipatory practices are not without costs, both for employers and employees. For example, employees who have gained autonomy may end up being less productive which will in turn affect their job security. In my opinion, view, this issue can be addressed through an incrementalist approach wherein both employers and employees work together to come up with micro-emancipatory projects at the grassroots level, as in the case study described in the paper mentioned in the previous paragraph.
…and so to conclude
Despite the rhetoric of autonomy and empowerment, much of present-day management is stuck in a Taylorist/Fordist paradigm. In modern day organisations command and control may not be obvious, but they often sneak in through the backdoor in not-so-obvious ways. For example, employees almost always know that certain things are simply “out of bounds” for discussion and of the consequences of breaching those unstated boundaries can be severe.
In its purest avatar, a critical approach to management seeks to remove those boundaries altogether. This is unrealistic because nothing will ever get done in an organisation in which everything is open for discussion; as is the case in all social systems, compromise is necessary. The concept of micro-emancipation offers just this. To be sure, one has to go beyond the rhetoric of empowerment to actually creating an environment that enables people to speak their minds and debate issues openly. Though it is impossible to do this at the level of an entire organisation, it is definitely possible to achieve it (albeit approximately) in small workgroups.
To conclude: the book is worth a read, not just by management researchers but also by practicing managers. Unfortunately the overly-academic style may be a turn off for practitioners, the very people who need to read it the most.
The paradox of the learning organisation
Introduction
The term learning organisation refers to an organisation that continually modifies itself in response to changes in its environment. Ever since Peter Senge coined the term in his book, The Fifth Discipline, assorted consultants and academics have been telling us that a learning organisation is an ideal worth striving for. The reality, however, is that most organisations that undertake the journey actually end up in a place far removed from this ideal. Among other things, the journey may expose managerial hypocrisies that contradict the very notion of a learning organisation. In this post, I elaborate on the paradoxes of learning organisations, drawing on an excellent and very readable paper by Paul Tosey entitled, The Hunting of the Learning Organisation: A Paradoxical Journey.
(Note: I should point out that the term learning organisation should be distinguished from organisational learning: the latter refers to processes of learning whereas the former is about an ideal type of organisation. See this paper for more on the distinction.)
The journey metaphor
Consultants and other experts are quick to point out that the path to a learning organisation is a journey towards an ideal that can never be reached. Quoting from this paper, Tosey writes, “we would talk about the fact that, in some ways, the learning organization represented all of our collective best wishes for Utopia in the workplace.” As another example, Peter Senge writes of it being, “a journey in search of the experience of being a member of `a great team.” Elsewhere, Senge suggests that the learning organisation is a vision that is essentially unattainable.
The metaphor of a journey seems an apt one at first, but there are a couple of problems with it. Firstly, the causal connection between initiatives that purport to get one to the goal and actual improvements in an organisation’s capacity to learn is tenuous and impossible to establish. This suggests the journey is one without a map. Secondly, the process of learning about learning within the organisation – how it occurs, and how it is perceived by different stakeholders – can expose organisational hypocrisies and double-speak that may otherwise have remained hidden. Thus instead of progressing towards the the ideal one may end up moving away from it. Tosey explores these paradoxes by comparing the journey of a learning organisation to the one described in Lewis Carroll’s poem, The Hunting of The Snark.
Hunting the Snark (and the learning organisation)
Carroll’s poem tells the story of ten characters who set of in search of a fabulous creature called a Snark. After many trials and tribulations, they end up finding out that the Snark is something else: a not-so-pleasant creature called a Boojum. Tosey comments that the quest described in the poem is a superb metaphor for the journey towards a learning organisation. As he states:
Initially, when reflecting on personal experience of organizational events… I was struck by the potential of the dream-like voyage of fancy on which Carroll’s characters embarked as an allegory of the quest for the learning organization. Pure allegory has limitations. Through writing and developing the article I came to view the poem more as a paradigm of the consequences of human desire for, and efforts at, progress through the striving for ideals. In other words the poem expresses something about our `hunting’. In this respect it may represent a mythological theme,a profound metaphor more than a mere cautionary moral tale.
There are many interesting parallels between the hunt for the Snark and the journey towards a learning organisation. Here are a few:
The expedition to find the Snark is led by a character called the Bellman who asserts: “What I tell you three times is true.” This is akin to the assurances (pleas?) from experts who tell us (several times over) that it is possible to transform our organisations into ones that continually learn.
The journey itself is directionless because the Bellman’s map is useless. In Carroll’s words:
Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank:
(So the crew would protest) “that he’s bought us the best—
A perfect and absolute blank!
Finally, the Snark is never found. In its stead, the crew find a scary creature called a Boojum that has the power to make one disappear. Quoting from the poem:
In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away—
For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.
The journey towards a learning organisation often reveals the Boojum-like dark side of organisations. One common example of this is when the process of learning surfaces questions that are uncomfortable for those in power. Tosey relates the following tale which may be familiar to some readers,
…a multinational company intending to develop itself as a learning organization ran programmes to encourage managers to challenge received wisdom and to take an inquiring approach. Later, one participant attended an awayday, where the managing director of his division circulated among staff over dinner. The participant raised a question about the approach the MD had taken on a particular project; with hindsight, had that been the best strategy? `That was the way I did it’, said the MD. `But do you think there was a better way?’, asked the participant. `I don’t think you heard me’, replied the MD. `That was the way I did it’. `That I heard’, continued the participant, `but might there have been a better way?’. The MD fixed his gaze on the participants’ lapel badge, then looked him in the eye, saying coldly, `I will remember your name’, before walking away.
One could argue that a certain kind of learning – that of how the organisation learns – occurred here: the employee learnt that certain questions were out of bounds. I think it is safe to say, though, that this was not the kind of learning that was intended by those who initiated the program.
In the preface to the poem, Carroll notes that the Bellman there is a rule – Rule 42 – which states, “No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm,” to which the Bellman (the leader) added, “and the Man at the Helm shall speak to no one.” This rendered communication between the helmsman and the crew impossible. In such periods the ship was not steered. The parallels between this and organisational life are clear: there is rarely open communication between the those steering the organisational ship and rank and file employees. Indeed, Tosey reformulates Rule 42 in organisational terms as, “the organization shall not speak to the supervision, and the supervision shall not speak to the organization.” This, he tells us, interrupts the feedback loop between individual experience and the organisations which renders learning impossible.
(Note: I can’t help but wonder if Douglas Adams’ famous answer to the life universe and everything was inspired by Carroll’s rule 42…)
In the poem, the ship sometimes sailed backwards when Rule 42 was in operation. Tosey draws a parallel between “sailing backwards” and unexpected or unintended consequence of organisational rules. He argues that organisational actions can result in learning even if those actions were originally intended to achieve something else. The employee in the story above learnt something about the organisational hierarchy and how it worked.
Finally, it is a feature of Rule-42-like rules that they cannot be named. The employee in the story above could not have pointed out that the manager was acting in a manner that was inconsistent with the intent of the programme – at least not without putting his own position at risk. Perhaps that in itself is a kind of learning, though of a rather sad kind.
Conclusion
Experts and consultants have told us many times over that the journey towards a learning organisation is one worth making….and as the as the Bellman in Carroll’s poem says: “What I tell you three times is true.” Nevertheless, the reality is that instances in which learning actually occurs tend to be more a consequence of accident than plan, and tend to be transient than lasting. Finally, and perhaps most important, the Snark may turn out to Boojum: people may end up learning truths that the organisation would rather remained hidden. And therein lies the paradox of the learning organisation.
“Dad’s driving” – a tale about meaning and context in communication
This post is inspired by a comment made by my elder son some years ago:
“Dad’s driving” he said.
A simple statement, one would think, with not much scope for ambiguity or misunderstanding. Yet, as I’ll discuss below, the two words had deeper implications than suggested by their mere dictionary meanings.
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The story begins in mid 2010, when I was driving my son Rohan back from a birthday party.
I’m not much a driver – I get behind the wheel only when I absolutely have to, and then too with some reluctance. The reason I was driving was that my dear wife (who does most of the driving in our household) was pregnant with our second child and just a few weeks away from the big day. She therefore thought it would be a good idea for me to get some driving practice as I would soon need to do a fair bit.
Back to the story: as we started the trip home, my son (all of seven and half at the time) said, “Dad, you should go by North Road, there’s a traffic light there, it will be easier for you to turn right.”
“Nah, I’ll go the shorter way.”
“Dad, the shorter way has no traffic light. It has a roundabout, you might have trouble making a right turn.” He sounded worried.
“Don’t worry, I can handle a simple right turn at a roundabout on a Sunday evening. You worry too much!”
As it happened I had an accident at the roundabout…and it was my fault.
I checked that he was OK then got out of the car to speak with the unfortunate whose car door I had dented. Rohan sat patiently in the car while I exchanged details with the other party.
I got back in and asked again if he was OK. He nodded. We set off and made it home without further incident.
My wife was horrified to hear about the whole thing of course. Being pretty philosophical about my ineptness at some of the taken-for-granted elements of modern existence, she calmed down very quickly. In her usual practical way she asked me if I had reported the accident to the police, which I hadn’t. I reported the accident and made an appointment with the a smash repairer to fix up the damage to the bumper.
A week later my wife summoned me from work saying it was time. I duly drove her to the hospital without incident. A few hours later, our second son, Vikram, was born.
I pick up the story again a few days later, after we had just got used to having an infant in the house again. Sleep deficit was the order of the day, but life had to go on: Rohan had to get to school, regardless of how well or badly Vik had slept the previous night; and I had to get to work.
Soon Rohan and I had our morning routine worked out: we would walk to school together, then I would catch a bus from outside his school after dropping him there.
On the day Rohan uttered the words I started this post with, it was raining heavily – one of those torrential downpours that are a Sydney characteristic. It was clear that walking to school would be impossible, I would have to drive him there.
My wife gave him the bad news.
“Dad’s driving,” he said, in what appeared to be his usual matter of fact way.
However, if one listened carefully, there was a hint of a question, even alarm, in his words.
Given the back-story one can well understand why.
—-
According to the most commonly accepted theory of truth, the validity of a statement depends on whether or not it is factually correct – i.e. a statement is true if it corresponds to some of aspect of reality. Philosophers refer to this as the correspondence theory of truth . There are a few other well known theories of truth but it would take me too far afield to discuss them here. See my post on data, information and truth if you are interested in finding out more.
Of course, it is true that Rohan’s statement would in retrospect either be true (if I did drive him to school) or false (if I didn’t). But that was hardly the point: there was a lot more implied in his words than just an observation that I would be driving him to school that day. In other words, his meaning had little do with any objective truth. Consider the following possibilities:
There was a hint of a question:
“Dad’s driving?” (…”You do remember what happened a couple of weeks ago, don’t you?…”)
or even alarm:
“Dad’s driving!” (I could almost hear the, “ I’m not getting in the car with him”)
Whatever the thoughts running through his head, it is clear that Rohan saw the situation quite differently from the way my wife or I did.
—
Indeed, the main problem with correspondence theories of truth is that they require the existence of an objective reality that we can all agree on – i.e. that we all perceive in the same way. This assumption is questionable, especially for issues that cannot be settled on logical grounds alone. Typical examples of such issues are those that are a matter of opinion – such as which political party is best or whether a certain book is worth reading…or even whether certain folks should be allowed to get behind the wheel. These are issues that are perceived differently by different people; there is no clear cut right/wrong, true/false or black/white.
There are other problems with correspondence theories too. For one, it isn’t clear how they would apply to statements that are not assertions about something. For example, it makes no sense to ask whether questions such as, “how much is this?” or “how are you?” are true or false. Nevertheless, these statements are perfectly meaningful when uttered in the right situations.
This brings us to the crux of the matter: in most social interactions, the meaning of a statement (or action, for that matter) depends very much on the context in which it is made. Indeed, context rather than language determines meaning in our everyday interactions. For example, my statement, “It is sunny outside,” could be:
- An observation about the weather conditions (which could be true or false, as per the correspondence theory)
- A statement of anticipation – it is sunny so I can play with my kids in the park.
- A statement of regret – it’s going to be a scorching hot day and we’ll have to stay indoors.
To find out which one of the above (or many other possibilities) I mean, you would need to know the context in which the statement is made. This includes things such as the background, the setting, the people present, the prior conversation, my mood, others’ moods …the list is almost endless.
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Context is king when it comes to language and meaning in social situations. Paraphrasing the polymath Gregory Bateson , the phenomenon of context and the closely related phenomenon of meaning are the key difference between the natural and social sciences. It is possible in physics to formulate laws (of say, gravity) that are relatively independent of context (the law applies on Jupiter just the same as it does on earth). However, in the social sciences, general laws of this kind are difficult because context is important.
Indeed, this is why management models or best practices abstracted from context rarely work, if ever at all. They are not reality, but abstractions of reality. To paraphrase Bateson, all such approaches confuse the map with the territory.
—
I started this post almost three years ago, around the time the events related occurred. All I had written then were the lines I began this post with:
“Dad’s driving” he said. A simple statement, one would think, with not much scope for ambiguity or misunderstanding. ..
The lines lay untouched in a forgotten file on my computer until last weekend, when I came across them while cleaning up some old folders. At the time I had been reading Bateson’s classic, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, and had been mulling over his ideas about meaning and context. With that as background, the story came back to me with all its original force. The way forward was clear and the words started to flow.
Bateson was right, you know – context illuminates meaning.
Acknowledgement
My thanks go out to Arati Apte for comments and suggestions while this piece was in progress.
Eight to Late 