Myths and Narratives for Management

Ulrich Gehmann

International Business Research, 2016, vol. 9, issue 1, 123-135

Abstract: Having in mind the social, human, cultural and systemic problems management is confronted with today, but also the intricate relationships between art and technique, the recent predominant understanding of what ‘management’ is settles upon its technical, that is, essentially functional character. The thesis is that this basic character has not changed, despite all attempts to redefine, modify, or even re-think management as a cultural practice. Related to this basic character, some elements of the mind set underlying such an understanding of ‘management’ shall be examined, elements which may be called mythic. For such a mind set, management is primarily conceived as a function, and as in case of every process that is technical in its essence, it finally aims at an objectification and optimization of the entities it has to deal with. That functional character, and out of it, the desire for dominating the respective entities by formatting them rests on certain assumptions about a ‘relevant’ world, assumptions to be examined in this contribution.

Keywords: management understanding; mythology; functionalism; history of ideas (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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