Creating New Knowledge in Management: Appropriating the Field's Lost Foundations - Hardcover

O'Connor, Ellen S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804770751 ISBN 13: 9780804770750

Verlag: Stanford University Press, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Creating New Knowledge in Management rediscovers lost sources in the work of Mary Parker Follett and Chester Barnard, providing a foundation for management as a unique and coherent discipline.

This book begins by explaining that research universities, and the management field in particular, have splintered into smaller and less related parts. It then recovers a lost tradition of integrating management and the humanities, exploring ways of building on this convention to advance the unique art and science of business. By way of Follett and Barnard's work, author Ellen S. O'Connor demonstrates how the shared values, purposes, and customs of management and the humanities can be used to build an enterprise that will help to meet the challenges of business today.

Igniting approaches to management that build on humanistic traditions is the ultimate goal of this book. Therefore, the text ends with two experiments—one in the classroom and one with a business executive—that take up this call and offer a perspective on where management must go next.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ellen S. O'Connor has studied the relationship between management and the humanities and has lectured in business schools in the U.S. and Europe for the past 30 years.

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Creating New Knowledge in Management

Appropriating the Field's Lost FoundationsBy Ellen S. O'Connor

STANFORD BUSINESS BOOKS

Copyright © 2012 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-7075-0

Contents

List of Tables.......................................................................................................................................ixPreface..............................................................................................................................................xiAbbreviations Used in the Text.......................................................................................................................xvii1. Introduction and Problem: No Institution of Management Knowledge..................................................................................1PART I: INSTITUTIONAL FAULTLINES IN AND A ROUND THE BUSINESS SCHOOL..................................................................................132. The Institutionalizing Research University: Rise of the Scientific Tradition......................................................................153. The Nineteenth-Century Business School: Fall of the Classical and Rise of the Vocational and School of Opportunity Traditions.....................354. The Twentieth-Century Business School: Integrating the Vocational and Scientific Traditions.......................................................55PART II: RECOVERING THE LOST FOUNDATIONS OF A SCIENCE OF MANAGEMENT..................................................................................755. Mary Parker Follett's Science of Reciprocal Relating and Creative Experience......................................................................776. Chester Barnard's Science of Responsible Experience...............................................................................................1127. The Private Argument between Chester Barnard and Herbert Simon about the Boundaries of Management Science.........................................152PART III: BUILDING ON FOLLETT AND BARNARD............................................................................................................1718. Integrating Research and Responsibility: Collaborating with an Executive (with Max Périé)...............................................1739. Integrating Teaching, Research, and Responsibility: Experimenting with Master's-Level Teaching....................................................19110. Conclusion and Solution: Integrating the Knowledge Traditions and Building a Science of Management...............................................210Appendix: Tables.....................................................................................................................................217References...........................................................................................................................................221Index................................................................................................................................................239

Chapter One

Introduction and Problem

No Institution of Management Knowledge

* * *

Society needs institutions dedicated to developing the science and profession of management. But those charged with this task, the business school and the management academy, do not do so and have not organized themselves to do so. Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) and Chester I. Barnard (1886–1961) established foundations of a science of management in the early twentieth century. The institutions never integrated their work, however, and it remains largely unrecognized and unutilized. This book recaptures these lost foundations and explores how to build on them.

The project to develop a basic and applied science and an applied art of management has in fact gone deferred since the founding of collegiate schools of business (CSBs) in the mid-1800s. Facing intense demand for practical higher education and elevated business practice, educators did not pursue a new field. They did not even go so far as to reach a common understanding of management. Instead, they shrank new ideas to fit old institutions. Today, the so-called management curriculum and academy consist of many different disciplines whose sole tie is a bearing on "organizations" (Augier et al., 2005).

But management is not a smattering of many disciplines; nor does it resemble any existing discipline. It is not a specialist field because it pertains to many fields. Also, it differs from specialist fields because it entails responsibility that exceeds disciplinary boundaries. In fact, specialists flock to MBA programs precisely to transcend specialization and learn management. But once there, they find only more specialist training. Among the academic subjects encompassed by the management curriculum are economics, psychology, sociology, political science, statistics, and computer science. The technical subjects include accounting, finance, marketing, human resources, operations, and management information systems. These subjects presumably add up to the content of management.

This situation dates from the business school's earliest formation in the mid-1800s. The fledgling school did not find a home in mainstream higher education. Using a peripheral institution, University Extension, occupational specialists controlled business education through the mid-twentieth century. The vocational school of business (VSB) was organized to satisfy popular demand. It brought a new and large population of working adults into higher education. It also brought in a new revenue source, the corporation, which used the business school for training and recruiting. Academics deemed the school unscholarly and a threat to the entire university. In a mainstreaming arrangement, academic specialists in the behavioral and quantitative sciences took control of the "basic sciences" in the business school; and occupational specialists retained control of the technical disciplines as "applied sciences." This move won consensus in the academy and in industry. It also instituted the MBA degree and the elite MBA program in the elite research university. Finally, it set up a selective admissions standard for which a new candidate, aspiring to leadership of the highest status, cultivated himself. This candidate had already demonstrated success in responsible positions and entered business school as part of executing this responsibility and reaching this status. The management academy, following norms of professional science, did not see that this candidate brought vital new knowledge and knowledge-creating methods.

Follett and Barnard, like this candidate, took management seriously because they lived it. Follett led the transformation of "her" city, Boston, from a static to a dynamic society that integrated new populations and enterprises into what she called a functional whole. Barnard led the transformation of "his" organization, Bell Telephone, from a local to a statewide entity when local logics dominated the state. Studying these developments and their personal stakes in them, Follett proposed a science of "dynamic relating," and Barnard an "applied social science." They worked separately but had a common purpose: to develop self-government and knowledge of self-government at increasing levels of scale. Beginning in adolescence, they built this project systematically for the rest of their lives.

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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0804770751
• ISBN 13: 9780804770750
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 264
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar