Teaching the concept of management: Perspectives from ‘six honest serving men’
Paul McDonald
Senior Lecturer, Victoria Management School, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington New Zealand
PP: 618 - 632
Abstract
Management as a body of knowledge is dynamic such that management educators face continual challenges to achieve realism and relevance in the classroom. The emerging knowledge economy, in parallel with accelerating changes in technology, globalization and societal values, make these challenges more acute than ever before. The purpose of this article is to provide personal insights using a framework for analyzing and teaching management that draws on Rudyard Kipling's 'six honest serving men' - what, why, when, how, where and who. These 'honest serving men' trigger discrete perspectives with which we can analyze, revise and recalibrate the teaching of management to ensure that it remains relevant to modern business. Teaching propositions are advanced as to management's definition (what?), rationale (why?), evolution (when?), function (how?), context (where?) and role (who?).
Keywords
Business education; knowledge economy; management development; realism; teaching
Article Text
Management - its principles, processes, and techniques - is central to the advance of human civilization. It is a ubiquitous concept, universal across cultures and relevant over time. Its centrality is such that a search on Google produces 830 million results; more salience by the millions than most other words, including: 'faith' (747), 'sex' (580) and 'leadership' (141). It is not surprising that the concept of management garners robust debate in academe, in particular as to its epistemology and pedagogy.
The organization of 'management' as a body of knowledge is eclectic, representing philosophical tension across a diversity of epistemological paradigms. The bipolar distinction between objective and subjective reality (positivism and constructivism) lies at the centre of the debate. Numerous scholars have proposed organizing frameworks, including Burrell and Morgan (1993) who developed a four-element matrix as follows: functionalist - focusing on utility / objectivity; interpretative - focusing on phenomenological / subjective attributes; radical humanist - focusing on ideal potential in terms of human fulfillment; and radical structuralism - focusing on change through the interplay of competing forces. French (2009) provides a comprehensive review of epistemology in relation to strategic management, including explanation of recent postmodern and critical theorist perspectives. It is not the purpose of this paper to reconcile competing epistemological positions; however, it is important to recognize the diversity and position the paper. The philosophical stance of this paper is within the 'realism' paradigm which defines reality as 'real', but only imperfectly and probabilistically apprehensible such that triangulation from many sources is required to know it (Guba & Lincoln 1994; Perry 2004). A contribution of this paper is an interrogative framework comprising six perspectives from which to triangulate and enhance our understanding of the concept of management.
Similar debate ensues in the literature as to how management should be taught. Seers (2007) provides a complete review of issues in management education and argues that management education needs to fit within the larger, evolving context of the emerging knowledge economy. A second contribution of this paper is to use personal experience to reflect on teaching the concept of management and offer pedagogical insights designed to maintain relevance and practicality within the emerging knowledge economy, while not disenfranchising management's historical foundations.
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