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21. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 4 > Issue: 2
Bob Brecher Against Professional Ethics
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I argue that the current popularity of 'ethics' in general, and the extension of 'professional ethics in particular, masks an increasingly unethical culture. Furthermore, attempts to codify ethics encourage a rule-governed approach, thus misunderstanding the nature of ethical practice and - whether or not inadvertently - serving to protect the professions from ethical considerations rather than the opposite.
22. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 4 > Issue: 3
Maree V. Boyle, Amanda Roan From Working Man’s Paradise to Women in Business: The Contribution of Australian Feminism to the Understanding of Women’s Economic Position within Australian Society
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In this paper we discuss how Australian feminism has contributed to a better understanding of women’s economic position within Australian society. Through this analysis we seek to shed some light on the current implementation of the ‘women in business’ policy in Australia. We trace the development of this position from the early beginnings of unionism and wage centralisation through to the social change movements of the 1960s and 1970s. We then examine how the neo-liberal turn of the 1990s manifested itself in a move from a focus on numerical representation of women, through Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action policies and initiatives, to one that concentrated on an individualist approach to women in business. We conclude that feminism has had its most significant impact at the level of public policy. However, recent epistemological turns in Australian feminism appear to have resulted in less attention being paid to materialist concerns, and furthermore have not been able to resolve the sameness/difference divide that continues to haunt feminist philosophy.
23. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 4 > Issue: 3
Ashly Pinnington Guest Editor Introduction: Fakes, Copies and Originals
24. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 4 > Issue: 3
André Spicer The Philosophy of the Copy and the Art of Colonial Organisation
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In this paper I work through an Antipodean phenomenon; the prevalence of copying or mimesis in processes of organising. Rejecting claims for a more authentically Antipodean way of organising, I argue that we need to properly understand the weight of the copy through philosophical inquiry into mimesis. I begin this inquiry with neo-institutional theoretical insights into mimesis. I then sketch out a short history of the emergence of the original and the copy. This Platonic distinction is then elaborated upon to open up the copy with reference to Nietzsche’s concept of the eternal return, Benjamin’s analysis of the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, and Taussig’s analysis of mimesis. I draw these together to argue that processes of copying are singular and in fact central to the continual coming into being of organisation
25. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 4 > Issue: 3
Adrian Carr Management as a Moral Art: Emerging from the Paradigm Debate
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In recent years organisational and management discourse has been akin to a battle-ground. Open challenges to the foundations of these fields and competing truth claims have arisen from the plurality of interpretation that is possible from the variety of new paradigms that has emerged. This proliferation of paradigms seems to undermine the possibility of a single unambiguous voice to guide management practice. The variety of competing voices that has produced this discordant chorus is described. The work of Thomas Barr Greenfield offers a useful circuit breaker. What emerges is a discourse not anchored in rationality, as it has in the past, but anchored in values and a morally concerned scepticism.
26. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 4 > Issue: 3
Ashly Pinnington, George Lafferty The Bush Myth: Internationalisation, Tradition and Community in the Australian Context
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The Australian bush has many meanings. Notably, the bush is an environment of both nostalgic loss and regeneration, and is a contradictory place capable of signifying homeliness and otherness. This article examines the durability of the myth of the Australian bush as a locale for the internationalisation of capital, employment and environmental management and as a resource for traditional concepts of Australian identity.
27. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 4 > Issue: 3
Jeremy Aitken Interdependency Within the Business Corporation: The Three Musketeers or a Prisoner’s Dilemma?
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What are the opportunities for the maximum happiness, greatest satisfaction, and fulfilment of all in the business organisation? What quality of life can we have at work?
28. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 4 > Issue: 3
Elizabeth Prior Jonson, Chris Nyland Paternalism and the Governance of Managers: The Australian Stock Exchange Approach to Improving Corporate Governance
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Good corporate governance requires that managers promote shareholder interests but it cannot be assumed they will act in this manner. Though this is an observation most managers would acknowledge, many argue they should be free of external regulatory intervention because regulations designed to protectshareholders are necessarily a form of paternalism that take from shareholders decisions that are rightly theirs to make. We question this perspective by showing that regulations founded on paternalist principles are compatible with a liberal economy and social relations. We identify when a paternal approach to decision making is justified and add substance to our argument by responding to claims that the Principles of Good Governance promulgated by the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) are an unacceptable infringement on managers’ right to govern their enterprises because they are supposedly paternalist. We reject this argument and suggest that while the current ASX principles are not paternalistic there is a case for ensuring shareholder protection is informed by paternalist principles.
29. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 4 > Issue: 3
Lucas Skoufa Industry Reform in Australia: Privatisation/Corporatisation of the Electricity Supply Industry
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The neo-classical economics paradigm postulates a hypothetical model of perfect competition as the ideal environment for business success. Yet the model has great difficulty in apprehending the day-to-day operations of actual business organisations. This paper explores some of the apparent inadequacies of theneo-classical paradigm, drawing on business strategy theory to suggest a potentially more fruitful mode of analysis. It is argued that conventional business strategy theory not only can provide a better framework than neo-classical economics for explaining and informing public policy on utilities, but that it also canprovide an additional dimension to critical management theory. The process of public sector ‘reform’ that gained momentum in the late 1970s was driven largely by neo-classical economic assumptions. While there has been a plethora of literature published on the need to ‘reform’ various public enterprises, there has been little analysis of the strategic behaviour of enterprises and industries that have been privatised or targeted for this change. Whereas neo-classical economics has been chiefly concerned with the performance of markets in the allocation and coordination of resources, business strategy is primarily about coordination and resource allocation within the firm. In contrast to neo-classical economics, business strategy theory is inherently interdisciplinary, integrating the social sciences: it is not applied microeconomics.
30. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Erik de Haan Free Space - Philosophy in Organisations by Jos Kessels
31. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Brian Brewer, Anthony B. L. Cheung, Julia Tao Whose Reason? Which Rationality? Understanding the ‘Real Worlds’ of Hong Kong’s Public Managers
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Based on empirical data from a qualitative study, this paper explores the complexity of ‘real world’ management in Hong Kong’s public sector, as contrasted with various paradigmatic claims under ‘new public management’ (NPM). A plurality of sub-worlds within the broad public sector is identified, which makes the management roles and responsibilities much less ‘homogenised’ than depicted in NPM exhortations. The instrumental rationality underpinning NPM is identified as too restrictive in understanding the way in which public managers reach decisions. When the daily challenges of reconciling values and practices arising from the complexities of politics, policies and service delivery are considered it is necessary to incorporate ideas related to procedural and expressive rationality to fully appreciate the nature of management in public organisations.
32. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Doris Schroeder The Truth about Markets. Their Genius, their Limits, their Follies by John Kay
33. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Colin McArthur ‘Organisational Writing and the Lust for Combination’: One Reader’s Reception
34. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Robert McLaren Rewards for Results? Equity in a Society of Capitalists
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Managers and others have long debated the merits of different reward systems, such as piecework, hourly rates, bonuses, stock options, and the like. They have usually focused on the efficiency of these systems, but they have also had to consider their side effects on relationships, trust, and calls for fair treatment. Such debates local to every organisation play out the issues of rewards and equity in market-based societies as a whole.This paper examines the concept of equity in the distribution of resources in a society of capitalists. It begins with a discussion of the nature of individual capitalism in modern societies. Then, using production and consumption as the two basic functions of a society, it presents a schema for analysing equity. It concludes with a suggestion for overcoming income inequity.
35. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Arthur Krentz, David Cruise Malloy Opening People to Possibilities: A Heideggerian Approach to Leadership
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In the realm of corporate leadership and organisational theory, the work of the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, has received little if any attention from scholars and practitioners alike. We argue in this paper that Heidegger’s work has an important message to convey with regard to the ability and perhaps the obligation of leaders to enable the ‘releasement’ and ‘opening up’ of the members of an organisational community to their ‘authentic possibilities’ within the realm of the work environment. We apply the Heideggerian concepts of calculative and reflective thinking, as well as his philosophy of ‘being’ to the role of authentic leaders and their leadership possibilities. And we distinguish this approach to leadership from that which we identify as ‘inauthentic’ in which both leaders and members of organisations are alienated from their possibilities.
36. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Anders Örtenblad Vague and Attractive: Five Explanations of the Use of Ambiguous Management Ideas
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This paper reviews the literature on the diffusion and popularity of vague management ideas. Is it the vagueness in itself that makes them so popular, or are there other explanations? Five possible explanations for the attraction of ambiguous management ideas are suggested: (i) concretising; (ii) symbolic legitimisation; (iii) seduction; (iv) unknown use; and (v) challenge. Some of the explanations are explicitly suggested in the literature, whereas others are explanations offered by the present author on the basis of a review of the literature. The five explanations are categorised according to the level of consciousness of the use of vague ideas among the users, and according to whether the ideas are implemented in actual practice or used only in talk. The present paper also discusses what management researchers could do to help those who use vague management ideas.
37. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Miriam Green Are Management Texts Produced by Authors or by Readers? Representations of a Contingency Theory
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This paper addresses representations of Burns and Stalker’s theory that arose soon after its publication in The Management of Innovation in 1961. Different conceptions of Burns and Stalker’s contingency theory as portrayed in organisation and management texts are discussed. It will be argued that what has been represented as their theory stems in the main from ideas based on different positions within the spectrum of the positivistic, functionalist ‘paradigm’.
38. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Özlem Öz Fuzzy Logic and Strategic Management: An Application of Ragin’s Fuzzy-Set Methods
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The main purpose of this article is to bring Ragin’s recent methodological contributions, which build on ideas borrowed from fuzzy logic, to the attention of management scholars. To demonstrate the possible use of the techniques developed by Ragin in management research, three specific examples for their likely applications are presented: the replications of Porter’s diamond framework for Turkey, Greece and Canada. The article concludes that Ragin’s systematic techniques prove helpful in making explicit the process of comparing qualitative evidence derived from case study research, and thus they deserve greater attention in the management literature.
39. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Stephen Sheard White Mythology: From Linear to Virtual Value Chains in E-Business
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This article examines the development of the concept of the value chain from the linear to the virtual conception of the chain, through the evolution of the literature from Michael Porter’s writings of the mid 1990s to the theorists of e-business and e-commerce in the later 1990s I argue that Porter’s account employs white metaphors and that writings on the virtual value chain both extend the white metaphors of Porter’s linear chain, and suggest a pronouncedly metaphysical system of thought – one which has correlates in areas of thought, including Renaissance Neo-Platonism, cybernetics and the discourse of cyberspace. I suggest that this offers a model of the advance of metaphor - of its usure, as described by Derrida in his White Mythology - and that this model can be synthesised with theviews of Ricoeur about the evolution of metaphor towards symbolism. When we apply these ideas of Derrida and Ricoeur to the development of the White Metaphor of the linear chain towards a progressive symbolism, we can see a correlation between the complex causality inferred as a feature of the virtual chain and the cosmological affinities of Renaissance notions of causation.
40. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Editorial: Real Worlds