Abstract
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 little reciprocated and why it needs to be. Then we suggest the scope of this new branch of philosophy and how 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.
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A report in The Economist in the 1970s. We have been unable to locate the precise issue.
Under the aegis of the European Philosophical Inquiry Centre at the Department of Education, University of Glasgow.
The London Business School offers MBA students an option in Modern Business Ethics covering issues arising within companies and between companies and their human and natural environments. Harvard Business School provides a Leadership, Ethics and Corporate Responsibility programme and its Press has published titles like Good Intentions Aside: A Manager’s Guide to Resolving Ethical Problems and Can Ethics Be Taught? Perspectives, Challenges and Approaches at Harvard Business School. According to one writer over 500 business ethics courses are taught on American campuses and 16 business ethics research centres operate in the USA. (See: Andrew Stark, ‘What’s the Matter with Business Ethics?’ Harvard Business Review May–June 1993, pp 38–48.) An established textbook in the field is Business Ethics by Richard T De George, first published in 1982 by Macmillan. It covers moral reasoning, the morality of economic systems, moral issues within business (eg environmental protection, privacy, workers’ rights), and the obligations of various groups (eg nations to other nations, one generation to later ones).
Published by Sir Isaac Pitman, London 1924 and reprinted in 1965. The (British) Institute of Management’s library copy was last borrowed in 1992 but back in 1966 intending borrowers had to join a waiting list.
See eg Charles Hampden-Turner Charting the Corporate Mind: From Dilemma to Strategy Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1990.
See, eg, J Micklethwait & A Wooldridge The Witch Doctors page 71 Heinemann, London 1996.
Charles Handy. See, eg, the Financial Times 24 May 1996, p 15. We owe to him a variant on the Liar Paradox which we would christen the Guru Paradox: ‘We are entering...a time when the only prediction that will hold true is that no predictions will hold true’. (C Handy, The Age of Unreason p 4 London1989) The US Business Week and Fortune magazines named the book one of the best business books of the year. Another apercu in the text is ‘The future is not inevitable’, inspired perhaps by Zeno.
Reprinted in adapted form as ‘Good business’ in Prospect Issue 28, March 1998 pp 25–29.
Thomas V. Morris If Aristotle Ran General Motors:The New Soul of Business Henry Holt and Company, 1997. The author, a philosophy professor for 15 years, urges business to follow the teachings of the classical philosophers and not Aristotle alone.
Members of the growing philosophical practice movement are philosophers who practise philosophy with individuals, groups and, increasingly, organisations. They conduct socratic dialogues with groups of adults, philosophical enquiries (typically with schoolchildren) and offer philosophical counselling to individuals. See, eg Jos Kessels Socrates Comes to Market in this issue, Wim van der Vlist (ed) Perspectives in Philosophical Practice Voor Filllosofische Praktijk, Groningen 1997 and Ran Lahav & Maria Tillmanns (ed) Essays on Philosophical Counselling University of America Press, Lanham-New York-London 1995, third edition 1997. Professional societies include the Society of Consultant Philosophers (Britain), the Society for the Advancement of Philosophical Enquiry and Reflection in Education (SAPERE, Britain), Vereniging voor Filosofie Praktijk (the Netherlands) and the American Society for Philosophy, Counselling and Psychotherapy. There is a Centre of Philsophy for Children within the Australian Council for Educational Research and in America an Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children at Montclair State University, New Jersey.
Harvester Press, Sussex 1977. The extract quoted is from Chapter 2 The Politics of Production pp 42–44. Perhaps it is significant that a second edition was called for in 1993.
For a recent account of the origins and scope of critical management studies (CMS) see: Valérie Fournier and Chris Grey ‘At the critical moment: Conditions and prospects for critical management studies’ Human Relations Vol 53(1) pp 7–32. The authors discuss the differing relationships CMS thinkers have to managerial practice. For a recent account of a new course for management students and an attempt to define what counts as a critical approach see: John Mingers ‘What is it to be critical? Teaching a critical approach to management undergraduates’ Warwick Business School Research Papers No 284.
Cf. This exchange from the 1970’s: Politician: And what are your politics, if I may ask? Journalist: I’m not interested in politics. Politician: I should take an interest in politics before politics begins to take an interest in you. The politician was Denis Healey, one time British Defence Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Managerialism is, of course, nothing new at the BBC. McKinsey & Co management consultants were first called into the BBC in the 1960’s. ‘It showed publicly that the BBC was in earnest in its endeavours for selfimprovement, to the point of using a popular managerial detergent...’ Tom Burns The BBC. Public Institution and Private World p 230 Macmillan, London 1977.
‘Plato thought with increasing sternness as he got older, that philosophy could not help anyone unless it was true to itself. Its truthfulness meant, too, that it could not tell in advance what would help; and since that was so, it could not hope to find things that would help if it thought that it knew in advance what kinds of things they would be...the philosophy that is concerned to be helpful cannot be separated from the philosophy that aims to help us understand. ‘There is an illustration of this in...the question of the value of free speech...one of the most practical questions of political value, (it) leads, if one takes it seriously, to basic issues in the philosophy of science and metaphysics. Those issues simply are hard, technical, and not immediately helpful. Those who work at them may well not have a hand free to stretch out to the ordinary person, to help him confront the moral morass. In philosophy, at least, a truthful style is not likely to make it immediately obvious what the work has to do with our most urgent concerns, because its interest is in the less obvious roots and consequences of our concerns.’ Bernard Williams ‘On Hating and Despising Philosophy’ London Review of Books Vol 18 No 8 (18 April 1996) pp 17–18. While in sympathy with the thrust of Williams’ argument, we think there is scope to build bridges between exploration of the basic issues and illumination of managerial life.
See: R T Pascale and A G Athos The Art of Japanese Management pp 121–123 Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1983. Also: Sheelagh O’Reilly ‘Reason as Performance’ in this issue.
Galen Strawson ‘The Sense of the Self’ London Review of Books Vol 18 No 8 (18 April 1996) pp 21–22.
Mary Parker Follett ‘The Giving of Orders’ in Elliot M Fox and L Urwick (ed) Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett p 21 Pitman, London 1973. (The paper was presented in 1925.)
Chester I Barnard The Functions of the Executive Chapter 1 Harvard University Press, London 1938.
Peter F Drucker The Practice of Management p 11 William Heinemann, London 1955.
Thomas J Peters and Robert H Waterman In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best Run Companies p 3 Harper and Row, New York 1982.
Peter Senge The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization p 3 Century Business, London 1992.
Charles Handy Understanding Organisations (Fourth Edition) pp 40–43 Penguin Books, London 1993.
See: C R Evans An Automated Medical History-Taking Project — A Study in Man-Computer Interaction National Physical Laboratory, Division of Computer Science 1972.
Of course much more remains to be said about rationality and management. We have, for instance, ignored differing conceptions of rationality and the relationship between rationality and power. On the former see, for instance, a recent discussion: Susan Khin Zaw ‘Is Reason Gendered? — Ideology and Deliberation’ Res Publica Vol IV No 2 (1998) pp 167–197. For the latter, a recent and very suggestive study is Brent Flyvberg’s Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice University of Chicago Press, London 1998. Our thanks to Alasdair MacIntyre for drawing this book to our notice.
Our grateful thanks to John Mallinson for most helpful comments on an earlier draft.
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Laurie, N., Cherry, C. Wanted: Philosophy of Management. Philos. of Manag. 1, 3–12 (2001). https://doi.org/10.5840/pom20011122
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/pom20011122