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Philosophy of Management

Volume 1, Issue 1, 2001
One of the Greatest Discoveries

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1. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1

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2. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Nigel Laurie, Christopher Cherry

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We attempt in this paper to define a new field of study for philosophy: philosophy of management. We briefly speculate why the interest some managers and management writers take in philosophy has been so link reciprocated and why it needs to be. Then we suggest the scope of this new branch of philosophy andhow it relates to and overlaps with other branches. We summarise some key matters philosophers of management should concern themselves with and pursue one in some detail. We conclude with an invitation.

3. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Robin Downie, Jane Macnaughton

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Judgement is traditionally seen as applicable in two spheres of human endeavour: the theoretical (or the sphere in which we consider both what must be the case and what is likely to be the case) and the practical (or the sphere in which we consider what we ought to do, either because it is in our interests or becausemorality requires it). Now insofar as we are speaking of 'judgement' two conceptual assumptions are being made. Firstly, we are assuming that there are imponderables and complexity, and secondly, despite the imponderables and complexity, that there is still room for the exercise of reason. Granted this view ofjudgement we can state our two main theses. Firstly, we shall argue that, despite the pressures of market forces, employee needs, and shareholder interests, there is still room in business practice for judgements so understood. Secondly, we shall argue that these judgements need not inevitably be directed down thesingle track of the financial interests of the company and its shareholders. The second thesis can be understood as a moral thesis in either of two ways. Either it can be seen as the thesis that companies have broad social responsibilities extending well beyond the immediate interests of the company, or as the thesisthat companies share the social interests of the communities to which they belong; they are citizens writ large, to gloss Plato.

4. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Alan Bray

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The starting point for this paper is the question that forms its title. Why is it that management seems to have no history? In making this bold claim I am not of course suggesting that historians have not written about management, as of course they have. The question I am posing is rather one about the practice ofmanagement, its received status as an amalgam of technical insights and administrative expertise perceived to stand objectively, and necessarily so, a corpus of skills analogous to those an engineer or a chemist might have: management as a transferable technology unclouded by competing values. Nor am I suggesting that the practice of management has been perceived as unproblematic. Rather, I aim to probe the degree to which its nature as an objective 'know-how' renders it as in some way anterior to ethics. It is that proposition that I am attempting to investigate here, indirectly as it were, by posing this question - a question initially about history. This question it seems to me is underlined by the assumption that the history of management is necessarily circumscribed in a way that, say, political history or the history of religion is not. Is it the story of how this expertise was acquired, the intellectual equivalent of a Brunel or a Napier, building bridges or constructing log tables? Or is it something more? Religion and politics clearly have a more problematic history than this, while management appears not to do so; and it is that question I propose to probe in this essay.

5. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Gregg Elliott

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6. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Sheelagh O'Reilly

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This is the first in a series of 'diary reflections written, initially, from Vietnam where I work as an adviser to the Vietnam-Sweden Mountain Rural Development Programme (MRDP). This instalment will give the background to my work and highlight some of the areas I will cover in later entries. In doing so I will reflect on how my own philosophical work informs and is informed by my work on the practical management of natural resources and community development. The process will, I hope, take in issues around the practical application of philosophical thinking - mainly to the environment and development. This reflection takes place in the context of work that involves a high degree of exchange across cultures, mainly Vietnamese (Kinh and several ethnic minorities), Swedish and British.The questions and challenges raised in this instalment may (or may not) be resolved over the remaining phase of my work with MRDP during 200L In doing so I hope to provoke debate. Many of the issues raised within this programme are not unique but often occur within donor funded aid programmes in the natural resource and poverty alleviation arena. Later instalments will outline some practical matters and the theoretical issues raised by them.

7. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Robin Attfield

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This paper affirms the continuing importance of full employment, as the best prospect for most people of the goods of meaningful work and of self-respect, and welcomes the failure of new technology in Western societies to engender mass unemployment, despite predictions to the contrary. It also replies to criticismsfrom John White (in Education and the End of Work) of a previous paper of mine, 'Work and the Human Essence (1984). Employing a different sense of 'meaningful work related to agents major goals in life. White claims that little work is meaningful, or capable of becoming so, and that social policy shouldrecognise this and exonerate most people from expectations of employment. His argument embodies a distinctive understanding of human flourishing, and a critique of my earlier argument from the human essence. This paper defends that argument, plus a separate argument of my earlier paper from self-respect,which White apparently ignores, for meaningful work as crucial to human flourishing. Most employment, I maintain, is capable of being modified so as to become meaningful work, and since this is most peoples best prospect ofthat good, policies of full employment should not be discarded, either in the West or in the Third World.

8. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Jos Kessels

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Socrates op de markt, Filosofie in bedrijf was first published in the Netherlands in 1997 and reprinted in 1999. It was translated into German and published in Germany in late 2000. The book covers the need today for Socratic dialogue, its methods, its uses and related concepts. These include elenchus (the refutationof what one thought one knew); maieutics (Socratic midwifery making latent knowledge conscious); the relationship of knowledge to feeling, virtue and the formation of personality; and the distinction between three types of knowledge: scientific (episteme), professional (techne) and practical wisdom (phronesis). Ourextracts — the first in English - set out Kessels arguments for using Socratic dialogue today, his account of its unique role in organisational learning, and a case history: a dialogue with a top management team in which elenchus plays a signal part as they seek to define a policy for handling redundancies.

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9. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
John Charvet

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10. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Robin Attfield

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