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Philosophy of Management

Volume 13, Issue 3, 2014
Loyal Talents, Distorted Knowledge?

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Displaying: 1-9 of 9 documents


1. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Paul Griseri Loyal Talents, Distorted Knowledge?
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2. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Billy Adamsen Do We Really Know What the Term “Talent” in Talent Management Means? – And What Could Be the Consequences of Not Knowing?
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Over the centuries the term “talent” has changed semantically and slowly transformed itself into a floating signifier or become an accidental designator. The term “talent” no longer has one single meaning and a “referent” in real life, but instead a multiplicity of meaning and references to something beyond real life, something indefinite and indefinable. In other words, today we do not know specifically what the term “talent” in talent management really means or refers to. Indeed, this is problematical, because in late modernity the term “talent” has become a popular and frequently used key term among business consultants and, within the science of human resource management, a cornerstone in the discipline of “talent management”, and not knowing what the term really means will turn any talent discussion, talent identification and talent recruitment into a question of subjectivity and belief in talent rather than objectivity and knowledge of talent.
3. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Kemi Ogunyemi Employer Loyalty: The Need for Reciprocity
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Responsibilities towards employees constitute a recognised general subject area in the field of business ethics. Thus, research has been done regarding respecting employees’ rights to fairness in dismissal procedures, to their privacy, to a fair wage, etc. Employee loyalty has also been shown to be very important both in management literature and in legal debate but much less attention has been given to employer loyalty which could be one of the responsibilities of an employer to his or her employee. Rather, some confusion regarding the nature of loyalty has at times led to suggestions that loyalty should be replaced by self-interest. However, scholars who favour this view usually do so in reaction to the one-sidedness of loyalty expectations. This paper proposes that loyalty is a duty that employers also owe their employees, based on the reciprocal nature of certain rights and duties within human relationships and an understanding of psychological contracts. Thus the paper argues that loyalty should be a mutual expectation between the parties rather than unidirectional. In fact, employer loyalty enriches the employers themselves in terms of their human fulfilment, since it is a human virtue, and leads to employee loyalty response, which then impacts the bottom-line.The paper’s content is also important insofar as it could contribute to building ethical duty foundations for employers in developing countries where weak regulatory environments combine with the harshness of the economy to make it an employers’ world and make instances of unfairness towards employees common.
4. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Lars Frølund, Morten Ziethen The Hermeneutics of Knowledge Creation in Organisations
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This paper argues that it is possible (and recommendable) to develop a new conceptual framework based on the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics to address what one could call “the human factor” within knowledge creation in organisations. This is done firstly through a review of the epistemological roots of three main theories of knowledge creation in organisations (systemic theory, complexity theory, and social constructionism). We examine these theories along two axes: a) their understanding of the relation between person and language, and b) the controllability of knowledge creation. Secondly, we restate the question of knowledge creation in organisations from the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics, arguing that knowledge creation takes place as an event in language, that is as an uncontrollable process which nonetheless requires courage, trust, and persistence and thereby requires that certain “ethical actions” should happen. This, finally, leads us to develop a model for knowledge creation called LUGS, which insists on the intrinsic relation between epistemology and practice, i.e. between what people come to know and how they decide to be – and it is this intrinsic relation between knowledge and being that we take as the “message” of this article.
5. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Damian Grace, Michael Jackson Reflections on the Misrepresentation of Machiavelli in Management: The Mysterious case of the MACH IV Personality Construct
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Niccolò Machiavelli is credited with inspiring the MACH IV personality assessment instrument, which has been adopted widely in management, both public and private. The personality this instrument maps is manipulative, deceitful, immoral, and self-centred. The instrument emerged in 1970 and created a minor industry. There are at least eighty empirical studies in management that involved more than 14,000 subjects. Richard Christie, who created the scale, has said that it is derived from the works of Machiavelli. In a standard debriefing after completing this scale, respondents would be told it concerns the Machiavellian personality. We argue that the Machiavellian personality in MACH IV has little, if anything, to do with Machiavelli, either the man or his works. If Machiavelli is alleged to be relevant to management, we argue that this personality assessment instrument does not demonstrate such relevance. To advance this case we first describe the development of the instrument, identifying some of the assumptions upon which it rests; then we assess each of its twenty items against Machiavelli’s texts. Wefind fewer than half of the items have even a tenuous connection with Machiavelli’s works, yet the instrument bears his name. Against this spurious Machiavelli we juxtapose another twenty passages from The Prince, showing a much more complex and subtle thinker than the one-dimensional cipher in the MACH IV scale. Machiavelli studies have done much to dispel the cloud of mythology around the man and his reputation, and we hope to do the same to MACHIV. In the name of intellectual honesty and sound scholarship, we urge management scholars to take note of this distortion of Machiavelli, and where possible address it, and that users of the MACH IV scale distinguish the man, Machiavelli, and his works from this instrument.
book reviews
6. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Anouschka Klestadt, Suzan Langenberg Coaching for Change by John L. Bennett & Mary Wayne Bush; Creating a Coaching Culture for Managers in Your Organisation, Dawn Forman, Mary Joyce and Gladeana McMahon (eds.); Coaching as a Leadership Style by Robert F. Hicks
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7. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Miriam Green Frontiers of Management: Research and Practice, Roger Mansfield (ed.)
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8. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Willard F. Enteman An Introduction to the Philosophy of Management by Paul Griseri
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9. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Thomas Lennefors Managerialism: A Critique of an Ideology by Thomas Klikauer
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