Degot’s Portrait of the Manager as an Artist

David M. Atkinson

Chapter 3 in Thinking the Art of Management, 2007, pp 60-81 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Although Degot’s Portrait of the Manager as an Artist is very much an antithesis of a profit-performance motivation, his contribution appears to have been largely overlooked for its potential to contribute to the post-rationalistic, postmodernistic management debate. As Degot (1987) observed: We live in a society where the yardsticks of performance, [both individual and corporate], are expressed in quantitative terms: earnings or profits. The “best” executive or manager is generally regarded as being the one who has the most successful career and earns the most money. (D:47)39 Reading this quote in 2007, one can intuitively relate to the fact that such quantitative sympathies — despite an acknowledgement of the appeal of other, socially based, phenomena — remain current for a great many managers and their observers. As a practicing manager myself, I can intuitively rationalize the quote as a valid, if not wholly exclusive, observation in today’s commercial environment. Therefore, in critically exposing a weakness in Degot’s work, it is my intention to rescue what I believe is the essential insight that Degot’s portrait of the manager-artist contains. This insight emerges within five key themes (Atkinson, 2006); these are: 1) historicity, 2) creative management, 3) the work of the manager-artist, 4) the need for a philosophical basis and 5) the need for “audience” clarification.

Keywords: Management Work; Management Talent; Management Philosophy; Contemporary Management; Creative Manager (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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DOI: 10.1057/9780230589988_4

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