Introduction to Management Techniques, Theories and Ideologies
Jean-Philippe DENIS
(SECOND EDITION)
Smashwords Edition
Copyright Jean-Philippe DENIS 2010
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I always put my life in my writings. I know of no written purely intellectual.
(F. Nietzsche)
General Introduction
THE EXERCISE OF MANAGEMENT AND "FACES OF SAND"
If there is one feature in the world in which we live is that it is a world of organizations. Consider a morning. Just one morning. One morning as almost like every morning. Same as what happens every day around the world, for many people. Wake up and stand up. Then a coffee and a shower. Washed, dried, we choose: a black suit who bought a few weeks ago with a white shirt, a skirt to get that to perfection with the blouse researched the weekend. And then a cigarette before going out. During the ride to get to work, a little news on the radio, some music ... Thank the iPod connected to the cigarette lighter, even more pleasant than the old CD, that the old tapes. In less than two hours one morning, everyone mobilizes without even thinking of the thousands of organizations in which millions of working people.
Manufacturers Alarm (Sony? Samsung?), The coffee maker (Krups? Philips?), Shower gels and other shampoo (L'Oreal?), Wardrobes (Ikea?), Clothing (Zara? H & M? Prada?), car (Renault? VW? Mercedes?) ... Manufacturers of products which do not those that were directly purchased such products since they were distributed by others, more or less specialized ( Carrefour? Auchan? Darty?). Manufacturers who, if they seem American, French, German and others, offer products first branded "Made in China" before being dressed in a more prestigious brand. And we are only morning! Not yet a meeting with law firms or doctors ... or launch of an Ariane! We therefore move our lives to meet with these organizations to exchange with them to work. In those organizations that will decide our lives today and our future is taking shape. It is therefore of public health to understand what is happening and where it takes us.
What basically an organization?
The traditional answer is: people who get together to do something. People who will then divide the tasks among them - it would be useless to all do the same thing - and who will have to coordinate these tasks, especially if their job depends on that done by another. Equally traditional, it is assumed that all organizations share common properties: a border that demarcates the inside - the identity - and outside - the environment. The tasks are divided, coordination processes operate, based on authority (hierarchy), without which no collective action is possible. ... If we can highlight common properties, organizations also seem at first very different approach: one word, the "business" can be described in such a different reality saitsfaisante an SME, The Oreal, Danone and Lagardère ... Similarly, an organization in the sense of an organized, clearly can not operate under the same principles by which we speak of a company, university or department . And yet ...
The first part of the book show that despite the diversity that characterize organizations - or perhaps precisely because of it - has gradually become a unique vision of what the organization, making it legitimate and how it should be (well) managed. In sum, a general theory of organizations and their management. This general theory is the calculation and prosperity of vice dear to the economic pillar of the exercise of managementde. The commodity exchange is indeed regarded as the optimal form of coordination and we can assume that the world organizations oiled and adjusted and cemented by a few assumptions and principles. These certainties now base our concept of management of organizations and, increasingly, of life in our society where everything is managed. It is his inspiration numbers of ongoing reforms in the enterprises as the highest level conducting state ... or in the organization of the French university system.
Given the dynamic homogenising brought by an exercise of management which we will call willingly legal and financial, the second part of the book focus on rehabilitating the fact that living in an organization is first to live in society . And our world is that organizations should manage things better, that is to say, ever more efficient, has left wrongly imprisoned in a general theory supposed to define and regulate the efficiency. A few choice pieces of great work from management researchers, and to which we can find economic reasons but also sociological can understand that the collective human actions have always been irreducibly different, both in how to organize things that (are) manage. Mimetic rivalry provides the explanatory principle of institutional diversity if this disturbing for the mono-maniacal ideologues performance and revenue managerial pre-packaged. If it is contained - in both senses - the prosperity of vice in the stoking and limiting, it is also what can be rehabilitated organizations irreducibly diverse and fragile, always in tension and compared at constant risk of an implosion. The ability of empathy, questioning, learning now appear to be determinants of success still less ephemeral than developing a capacity to learn simply to continue. Continue to try, together, do something. The best antidote to anxiety, at a time when the managerial techniques percolate all spheres of our world is to give coherence and rehabilitate the grounds of diversity of organizational forms and the very relative efficiency any speech or claiming to provide technical management.
The uniqueness of the first two parts, with respect to existing works lies in the path of two coherences. A third phase of work will seek it, to go further. She will defend that in matters of human action, individual and collective, meaning that employees have to contribute to work management is the willingness to struggle to invent, to (be) re-invent, to innovate constantly. He must then look elsewhere, but with the addition of two certainties about the respective value of defined calculation or mimetic constraints to understand the meaning of the organization and its management. This third party support, work support, that is the charm exerted by example that the capacity for invention are to study and work. With an obsession for the future is not a strict reproduction of past mistakes as lessons can be learned, new answers can be made by standing on the shoulders of the successes and mistakes of others.
Taken as a whole, the book then draw three "faces of sand" to found the performance of management. His basic thesis is that the only certainty which should govern the actions of those who are responsible for a collective future is as individual as the organization will spend time at a given time in a given space, attempting to respond to a problem of uncertainty. It is this uncertainty that always moves in risk if the worst declines or if you want to try to permanently lock in any certainties. Facing Uncertainty is always read to understand the past and went to face the future challenge. Facing the uncertainty is to seek to contain the self-destruction that are in themselves, in essence, the three "faces of sand" that govern our imagination when it comes to face the ... uncertainty.
Facing uncertainty is therefore regarded as unproductive as it would adhere indiscriminately to the certainties of the calculation and vice to deny the progress that they can do. Facing the uncertainty is that it would be equally unreasonable to deny the phenomena of mimetic rivalry, without which the group could not continue, that allow self-reference generalized transform chance into destiny without counterweight. Facing uncertainty, it would certainly argue that crumbling be fooled by example, believing that it is infinitely reproducible, and ignoring it will ever do that "for example" , ie across the singularity and contingency of a given context. Facing uncertainty is to accept that the actions of men do not leave unscathed locked into certainties, whatever they may be. Faced with uncertainty, there is therefore nothing more to hope that the concepts, reading tables and decoding, which can help to act more intelligible (a) nce the world and, perhaps be a little more energy as can be scary questions "what? And "how? .
The techniques of management are planning to help deal justly guarded uncertainty. This uncertainty inherent part of any exercise of power. As such, they are still theoretically and pragmatically situated. As such, they are the receptacle and the preferred vehicle of ideologies, including, if not especially, when they hide behind the guise of scientific certainty. Without ceasing to be so pointed their scope as their (in) fills. Constantly they must be analyzed in their motives, diagnosed in their effects, criticized in its pitfalls. That is, we believe the price for that practice is now a real democratic conversation about the future of our societies, populated by organizations which only a few naive believe dangerous, because they would increasingly globalized and dematerialized that one day they might not be the place for a clash of wills constantly renewed.
Part I
Value and price of calculation
"You think pence pence you get. You think dollars you get dollars".
(Ray, directed by Taylor Hackford, Universal Pictures, 2005.)
One day when I had to think seriously about earning a living, I was looking for a summer job. Lucky: a friend calls me because he saw an advertisement by an engineering culture that sought students to achieve a mission: to assess visitor satisfaction of an abbey and see how to improve it - other words, bring more people.
We offered our services and it has been selected. It must be said that they were cheap - 12000 F included - and we later learn that the study we would do would actually be charged much, much more. The mission went well: we had developed a questionnaire, interviewed on-site visitors, restated their responses to arrive at statistics that had allowed us to formulate recommendations. It took us a good two days of work and we were quite pleased with ourselves.
The following summer, my friend reminds me: the firm wanted to offer us another mission. He was doing the same thing, but this time for a nature park where visitors were contemplating multiple species of birds. When my friend told me: "we start? "I told him:" Yes, but twice. 25,000. He said: "It does not? They never accept! . Me told him that it was he who was naive. He did not know the theory of transaction costs and the agency, the forces of Porter and centers repsonabilités Anthony. He could trust me. After all, we did not have much to lose since it was a game once.
In fact, I doubt that even if we pay 25,000 francs, they continue to cope very well: in other words, to capture a significant share of the margin, so that their income would bring their own client. If we were to look again, because they knew they were away scot-free last time. But unlike last time, we knew they would charge loved what we produce: if we solicited again, they saw it necessarily be interested. And then there was conscious of having done a good job, they said we had enough. There was therefore very likely that we may be become active a little more specific for them. Change provider would therefore require moderate transaction costs: they would find another provider, explain the philosophy of their firm and take the risk that new providers do a worse job than us.
After a brief discussion, our contact in the company agreed. And it has won our life: 10,000 each for ten days of work. At the end, the boss told us that it was still a bit expensive. Me, I thought we played well. They had been good homo economicus. Or rather good homo-contractor. These revenues have funded some holidays and helped put a little butter in the spinach. Anybody had done so well that even a moment thought about starting our business. A market research company positioned on the sector of culture.