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The whole management endeavour is thus
cast by the prevailing ‘technicists’ as a neutral
instrumental technology of control. The possibility
of a social (political) process is unrecognized
or ignored. A managerialistic 1 view is
universally discussed, whilst a wide range of
alternative schools of thought lie undiscovered
or discarded (even denounced). The
challenging books remain unread – the questions
remain unasked or unanswered.
The unseen menace in this unreflective
pursuit lies in the location of managerialism
within the process of constituting a particular
kind of society. Specifically, humans are
treated as things (to be observed and manipulated),
personal identity is reduced to
ownership of commodities (brand), social
relations are conceived in marketing terms
(buyer–seller), and the question of the contribution
of management work to the social
good is unasked by most.
In the field of ‘managing relationships’,
thinking is almost universally stranded in very
particular entitative taken-for-granteds. Personal
characteristics of the individual person
and context are treated as entities that exist
separately and independently of each other.
Relationships are understood as between
discrete entities, viewed as either subject or
object. The subject is understood to act by
gathering ‘knowledge that’ the other has
certain characteristics and to achieve ‘influence
over’ the other (as object) (Hosking,
1995). A relational approach to organization,
on the other hand, takes the unit of analysis
to be relational processes as the vehicle by
which person and culture are produced and
reproduced. Subsequent talk of person and
context then cannot treat them as independent
entities but as outcomes of participation
in conversations that construct identities,
meanings, and knowledge (Deetz, 1992).
Thus, a relational perspective assumes multiple,
socially constructed realities – constructed
in the social processes of discourse. Meanings,
local knowledge and ongoing meaningmaking
processes are explained. This alternative
constructive participatory explanation of
human interaction is not generally found
in the managerialistic (control-oriented)
literature.
The technology of manipulation that we
call management incorporates a particular
way of seeing relationships and of relating
to people (agents), objects (products) and
events (exchanges in ‘consumption situations’).
Thus, ‘organizations’ are not understood
as social systems, but as technologies
of governance. This way of thinking favours
those who manage by neglecting structures of
domination and exploitation. Social relations
are then ignored or objectified as variables
to be managed.
This leaves us to ask, among other questions,
what mental model prevails in management
education, scholarship, research and
practice In an email discussion with David
Ballantyne, he commented ‘I do see dialogue
as a “creating value” term, whereas communication
is a “circulating value” term.’ Dialogue
is proposed as ‘reasoning together’ (drawing
on Bohm, 1996 2 ) – a special kind of communication,
which is itself a special kind of
interaction. Communication operated as a
participatory social action is constructive of
identity, meaning and knowledge (Deetz,
1992, 1995), whereas the ‘conduit metaphor’
conception of communication that is a foundation
of managerialism, places it as no more
than an informing technology. Then, there is
no free exchange in a value-creating interaction.
Rather, this possibility is precluded, to
result in reciprocal manipulation. It is time
that both the dominating management discourse
and underlying ideology were more
widely challenged.
© 2004 Sandra Oliver for editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters, the contributors