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1. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Editorial: Real Worlds
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2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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’.
9. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Colin McArthur ‘Organisational Writing and the Lust for Combination’: One Reader’s Reception
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reviews
10. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Doris Schroeder The Truth about Markets. Their Genius, their Limits, their Follies by John Kay
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11. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Erik de Haan Free Space - Philosophy in Organisations by Jos Kessels
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