The Philosophical Foundations of Management Thought

by Jean-Etienne Joullié, Robert Spillane

Overview

The book's premise is that the theories taught in management schools are based on unacknowledged philosophical perspectives that are significant not so much for what they explain, but for what they assume. Rarely made explicit, these perspectives cannot be reconciled, with the result that the study of management has been dominated by contradictions and internecine intellectual warfare. However, the ability critically to analyze these diverse perspectives is essential to practicing and aspiring managers if they are to evaluate expert opinion. Moreover, since management is primarily an exercise in communication, managing is impossible in the darkness of an imprecise language, in the absence of moral references, or in the senseless outline of a world without intellectual foundations. Managing is a prime example of applied philosophy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781793630162
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	10/06/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Jean-Etienne Joullié is associate professor at Gulf University for Science and Technology.

Robert Spillane is professor of management at the Macquarie Business School.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Ancient Heroism: Managing Heroically
2. Greek Rationalism: Managing Argumentatively
3. Italian Renaissance: Managing by and for Power
4. French Rationalism: Managing Rationally
5. British Empiricism: Managing Without Nonsense
6. Positivism: Managing Scientifically
7. Critical Rationalism: Managing by Trial and Error
8. German Romanticism: Managing Artistically
9. Heroic Individualism: Managing Aristocratically
10. Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry: Managing Mind
11.French Existentialism: Managing for Freedom and Responsibility
12. American Pragmatism: Making Management Work
13. Postmodernism: Managing Without Foundations
Epilogue: Philosophy as Remedy
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

Jean-Etienne Joullié and Robert Spillane provide a much needed underpinning for management theory and thought. By uncovering the philosophical roots of management, assumptions about human nature and work can be examined more closely and measured against the social values that they represent. This volume is a must-read for graduate students and researchers in public and business management.

William L. Waugh Jr.

The Philosophical Foundations of Management Thought is an important resource for anyone in management, teaching management, or who wants to understand the relationship between philosophy and business.

Mark Griffith

At a time when science is seen—wrongly—as a universal panacea, the lingua franca of both management studies and evidence-based managerial action, this book makes a tremendous contribution. Basing its analysis largely in European philosophy in a very accessible narrative, the book explores management thought in terms of the historical development of philosophical ideas. As such it makes a perfect reader for those interested in appreciating how philosophical ideas have influenced management, and just exactly what that means.

Mark R. Dibben

The Philosophical Foundations of Management Thought is a unique book….. [T]his is a treatise that achieves much for its reader and for the practice of management. It is a heavyhitter. When enough people get to know it exists (and this is a shout-out to make it compulsory reading for graduate management courses), it will be on its way to greatness. The authors of this work not only do their (tough) job well, but they accomplish a lot that I am not sure even they are aware of. The first, and perhaps most obvious, thing that the book does is provide a comprehensive and critical primer on key influential philosophies of Western civilisation. The authors reveal themselves to be expert communicators about this material…. When I finished the last page I was convinced that we as teachers and theoreticians must drag our students (and ourselves) kicking and screaming back to the classics. These are some of the messages I got out of this book—alongside a wonderful, albeit at times challenging, revision of the basics…. Colleagues, read it! Make your students read it! If you do, you will reinvent our discipline— and make it better.

Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations