Human Systems Management

The article gives an introduction to the subject of this special issue of HSM on management and philosophy.

Before commenting on the contributions by the different authors and raising questions for further discussion, the subject is introduced by commenting on two concepts, i.e., culture and knowledge. Culture, a hot issue in management and organization theory, is of old also on the philosophical agenda. The same obtains for the idea of knowledge. It is argued that in the case of issues such as culture and knowledge, philosophical analysis can sharpen our look and in its own way may contribute to more responsible action.

This article contains a brief application of the author's epistemology to the problems of management. It is argued that fallibilism has shown its superiority to authoritarianism even from the point of view of efficiency.

Philosophizing is not what many politicians and managers think it is: to express some personal ideas on the state of matters. It is, on the contrary: starting to see unquestioned matters in a new, problematic way. Management needs philosophy in its search for hidden presuppositions. But philosophy needs the realistic input of management to see to it that its own rationality becomes less closed and more concrete.

Examples of such a fruitful interaction are discussed: the role of inventiveness; the integration of cultural challenges within an extended policy; the discovery of the new multiform cultural context of today.

One of the intellectual legacies of the 50s and 60s was the approach to tackling real-world problems embodied in such methodologies as Systems Engineering and RAND Corporation Systems Analysis. Such methodology entails a search for the best means to achieve an end defined as desirable.

In a programme of collaborative research undertaken in real problem situations, such an approach was found inadequate when faced with obscure objectives and multiple legitimate viewpoints. The alternative which emerged, Soft Systems Methodology, SSM, uses models of purposeful activity systems to set up a debate about change and learns its way to changes which would be both (systematically) desirable and (culturally) feasible.

The shift from a paradigm of optimizing to one of learning marks the new systems thinking of the 70s and 80s the emergence and nature of SSM as described.

A few philosophical notions are explored that may be of some use to improve our understanding of the nature of identity and change of organizations in their environment. This may improve our grasp of some of the paradoxes that emerge from the present management literature. The philosophical notions are drawn from ancient (pre-socratic) philosophy, from post-modern philosophy (in particular the underlying philosophy of language of Ferdinand de Saussure) and from the “genetic (developmental) epistemology” of Jean Piaget. What these notions have in common is an attempt to understand the relation between order and chaos in change. How do qualitative, structural change and learning come about, and can one identify stages of transition? Understanding is seen as internalized action, whereby interaction with the environment is essential. Interaction is not a process arising from prior, fixed, independent identities, but identity is formed by interaction. Differentiation in actions of participants (people in organizations, firms in the market), and hence a looseness of control, is necessary to achieve novelty in the form of new combinations; a new synthesis. But when such novelty is achieved it is indeterminate, at first, and a tighter control is required to make the synthesis more determinate and to press for its utilisation. These differences between stages of renewal are related to different strengths and weaknesses of small and large firms. They also imply that there is not one single organizational form of control that is fit for all circumstances: different stages require different forms of control. This may explain some of the paradoxes in advice from the management literature.

The article concerns the neglect of philosophical issues within management theory. It argues that the rise of ‘Heathrow Organization Theory’, whatever its country of origin, has been characterized by a philosophical vacuuity. There is rarely any discussion of Modernism let alone Postmodernism within the literature which relies upon a very crude pragmatism. The paper includes, not that Postmodernism should be embraced but that the philosophical issues filling management theory should be directly confronted.