What would anarchist management look like. How would it fulfill the organizations goal of becoming a 'professional learning community', which is the latest in vogue paradigm for the post-TQM age.
In this paper I explore the neglected use of utopias and utopian thinking
by the critical management community. I argue that utopianism provides
a number of stimuli to both critical thinking and practice when
considering the ‘good’ organisation. In particular I draw attention to the
distinctive features of anarchist utopianism as being worthy of further
attention.
Managerialist Utopias
Having outlined some general contextual discussion of utopian thinking, it might be
interesting to explore one of the possibilities raised the analysis of the claims made by
official management theory. Certainly, the argument that utopian longing is a
constant feature of all societies would seem to be borne out by the strong appeal to
such longings within management literature. However, in this case it is the business
organisation which becomes the utopian community within which the individual
achieves their full potential.
I shall examine the claims of one particular expression of this strongly managerial
utopian current, found in ‘The Fifth Discipline’ (Senge 1999). Senge recounts
something of a conversion from seeing the public sector as the agent for the
development of a progressive society to seeing the business organisation as the
driving force, and in particular the emergence of the ‘learning organisation’, where
“people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where
new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspirations is
set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together”. (1999: 3)
The emergence of the learning organisation is seen as part of a natural historical
process in the developed world where affluence for the ‘majority’ has brought about a
rejection of an instrumental attitude to work. Instead we are all seeking to build
organizations “that are more consistent with man’s higher aspirations” (1999: 5).
Such aspirations appear to include righting social injustice (through the development
of a broader sense of corporate responsibility).
The new focus in management studies and in management paradigms in the work place is leadership. Which a Canadian critic of MBA programs disses.
Business school scourge slams MBA leadership trend
Professor Henry Mintzberg, scourge of the business school world, has launched his latest attack on his own profession of management scholars by denouncing the teaching of leadership, the latest business school trend.
In Monday’s Financial Times, Prof Mintzberg writes: “We have this obsession with ‘leadership’. It’s intention may be to empower people, but its effect is often to disempower them.” By focusing on the single person, he writes, “leadership becomes part of the syndrome of individuality” that is “undermining organisations”.
In his latest article Prof Mintzberg, a strategy professor at McGill University in his native Montreal, decries “managers who sit on ‘top’, pronouncing their great visions, grand strategies and abstract performance standards”.
Good management and leadership, he argues, cannot be separated. “Does anyone want to work for a manager who lacks the qualities of leadership?...Well, how about a leader that doesn’t practise management?”
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