Ontological Fundamentals For Ethical Management

The book develops a philosophical foundation to the field of management education using the work of Martin Heidegger as a guiding philosophy. It asks the questions ‘what is a corporation?’ and ‘what is corporate management?’ These two questions are foundational for management thought in general and management ethics in particular. Most other academic fields are in some way defined and guided by a philosophical discourse. This philosophical discourse is largely missing in the field of management thought and education. Without this foundation it can never be clear what actually belongs into a certain academic discipline and what does not. It also therefore lacks a sound and well articulated ontological foundation critical for developing approaches to ethical management. This book seeks to fill this gap and consequently represents an interdisciplinary effort between the academic field of management/business administration and philosophy, which is vital for business ethics. Intended as required reading for an elective on philosophy of management that is offered annually at the Wits Business School / University of the Witwatersrand / Johannesburg. The structure of the course will be largely based on the structure of the book.

Global corporations and the senior executives who oversee them have been subject to great criticism in recent times: not only do such corporations hold extreme concentrations of wealth, but they continue to sanction staggering pay inequalities between the haves and the have-nots. At the same time, university-based business schools are conducting programmes of executive education seemingly customised to sanction these same inequalities. Heidegger and Executive Education is a piece of critical philosophy that has been written from within the business school in order to examine how this sheltered process of educating in-role corporate executives operates. Thompson claims that executive education is based on a very simple premise: that an executive executes an order, and that executive education is an amelioration of that process. Thompson argues that the easiest way to conceive of executive education is to treat order and execution as cognates, as a single conceptual entity. Thus, he asks, if educating executives in line with the order-execution cognate involves swapping the boardroom for the classroom, and in keeping with the ‘critical’ tag, shouldn’t executive education be about questioning not only the execution, but also the dominant order? The author uses ‘time’ as the philosophical method by which one can undo the order-execution cognate, question the sanctity of the cognate and thereby halt the seemingly inexorable temporal sequence from order through to those orders becoming executed. This book uses Martin Heidegger’s exotic philosophy of time in order to mount a philosophical challenge to the temporal sequentiality of executive education. It will therefore be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduates who are interested in Heidegger, the philosophy of education and executive education. It should also be essential reading for those involved in training, developing, and educating corporate executives.

How do managers and leaders know what to do when they are caught off guard or taken by surprise? How do they create when they do not know what to do next? These are challenges of an organizational world of existential uncertainty; one where the future does not conform to but challenges our expectations and assumptions. Steven Segal demonstrates that creating in a world of existential uncertainty requires a new understanding of the relationship between management inquiry and the lived experience of organizing. Using existential philosophy he demonstrates how moods of concern serve as a framework to integrate management theory and practice, thereby providing a framework for managers, management educators, and consultants to share a common framework. In a globalized free market characterized by unexpected disruptions management inquiry is not a science conducted from an objective distance. The book advocates an existentially reflexive and participant observer perspective to management inquiry. By participating in managing, a felt sense of being a manager develops. Through existential observation new ways of organizing are made possible. It is inquiry from within rather than from an objective distance. Such inquiry opens new doors and opportunities. Existential hermeneutic phenomenology and the free market phenomenon of creative destruction are linked to each other. The former provides a framework to work through the breakdown in conventions of organizing that occur in creative destruction.

What is authentic leadership? Does it require a leader to express his or her true self even if that true self is less than •wonderfulê? How do followers know the difference between real and fake leaders anyway? What happens when cultural expectations o

Heidegger, Ethics and the Practice of Ontology presents an important new examination of ethics and ontology in Heidegger. There remains a basic conviction throughout Heidegger's thought that the event by which Being is given or disclosed is somehow 'prior' to our relation to the many beings we meet in our everyday lives. This priority makes it possible to talk about Being 'as such'. It also sanctions the relegation of ethics to a secondary position with respect to ontology. However, Heidegger's acknowledgement that ontology itself must remain intimately bound to concrete existence problematises the priority accorded to the ontological dimension. David Webb takes this bond as a key point of reference and goes on to develop critical perspectives that open up from within Heidegger's own thought, particularly in relation to Heidegger's debt to Aristotelian physics and ethics. Webb examines the theme of continuity and its role in the constitution of the 'as such' in Heidegger's ontology and argues that to address ontology is to engage in an ethical practice and vice versa.

The book - which was originally published by Kluwer in 2004 - is a collection of scholarly papers focusing on the role of spirituality and ethics in renewing the contemporary management praxis. The basic argument is that a more inclusive, holistic and peaceful approach to management is needed if business and political leaders are to uplift the environmentally degrading and socially disintegrating world of our age. The book uses diverse value-perspectives (Hindu, Catholic, Buddhist, and Humanist) and a variety of disciplines (philosophy, ethics, management studies, psychology, and organizational sciences) to extend traditional reflections on corporate purpose and focuses on a self-referential organizational-existential search for meaning, identity and success.

The signi? cance of “spirituality in management” is acquiring considerable international recognition. It is one of the “hottest” emerging ? elds in management. A number of recent events underscore this development. In February 2000 the Indian Institute of Management organized a “Corporate Reputation for Competitive Advantage” workshop in Calcutta, which focused on spirituality, ethics and leadership. The conference “Business, Religion and Spirituality” was held at the University of Notre Dame in April th 2000. In April 2001 the International Academy of Business Disciplines held its 13 annual meeting in Orlando, Florida and had a track on Spirituality in Organizations. In April 2002 a world conference was organized in New York entitled “Spirit in Business: Ethics, Mindfulness and the Bottom Line. ” These and other important scienti? c events clearly show that spirituality is no longer considered to be purely a matter of individual search, and is becoming more and more recognized in management and business ethics circles. Our “Spirituality in Management” workshop was held in July 1–3, 2001 in Szeged, Hungary. It was jointly organized by the Business Ethics Center of the Budapest University of Economic Sciences, the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration and the Department for the Study of Religion of the University of Szeged. Scholars and practitioners from 13 countries represented disciplines as diverse as economics, business, management studies, philosophy, theology, sociology, and medical anthropology. Participants included PETER PRUZAN, Copenhagen Business School (Denmark); S. K.