Philosophical Foundations Of Management And Governance

The purpose of this book is to provide the reader a basic understanding of the philosophical thoughts on management and governance. This is accomplished through the ideas of over 50 historical figures. These individuals laid the foundations of thought and theory in many fields of endeavor. Over the years these ideas have been blended to form concepts and philosophies that have been used in organizational management and in governance throughout the world.

The book's premise is that the theories taught in management schools are based on unacknowledged philosophical perspectives that are significant not so much for what they explain, but for what they assume. Rarely made explicit, these perspectives cannot be reconciled, with the result that the study of management has been dominated by contradictions and internecine intellectual warfare. However, the ability critically to analyze these diverse perspectives is essential to practicing and aspiring managers if they are to evaluate expert opinion. Moreover, since management is primarily an exercise in communication, managing is impossible in the darkness of an imprecise language, in the absence of moral references, or in the senseless outline of a world without intellectual foundations. Managing is a prime example of applied philosophy.

This book proposes a review of important Western philosophies and their significance for managers, management academics, and management consultants. Management theories taught in management schools that managers and consultants are supposed to apply are built upon different perspectives of the world, man, and society that are important not so much for what they lead to, but for what they assume. Although rarely made explicit, these assumptions cannot be reconciled and are at the source of many incompatibilities that management academia has been busy ignoring or obfuscating. The ability to evaluate critically these perspectives is essential to managers if they are to make sense of what experts profess, however. Moreover, since management is primarily an exercise in communication, managing is impossible in the darkness of an imprecise language, in the absence of moral references or in the senseless outline of a world without intellectual bases. Managing is an applied philosophical activity; any attempt at repairing management academia and the practices it has produced must accept this conclusion as its premise.

Philosophy and Public Administration provides a systematic and comprehensive introduction to the philosophical foundations of the study and practice of public administration. In this revised second edition, Edoardo Ongaro offers an accessible guide for improving public administration, exploring connections between basic ontological and epistemological stances and public governance, while offering insights for researching and teaching philosophy for public administration in university programmes.

Structured to provide an introduction and overview of corporate governance from the classical theories to contemporary controversies, this reader functions either as stand-alone text, or as a companion to International Corporate Governance, a textbook also authored by Thomas Clarke. Providing a defining insight into the fast emerging, and highly controversial field, this is the definitive resource for all those seeking to understand the contemporary corporation.

This book outlines the important foundational insights for enterprise governance and enterprise engineering, which are obviously provided by the social and organization sciences, but also by other sciences such as philosophy and information technology. It presents an employee-centric theory of organization in order to secure enterprise performance and also to comply with moral considerations about society and human individuals. This is necessary as prescriptions based on ‘best practices’ or the ‘best managed companies’ are often merely anecdotal, faddish, or controversial, and based on unsubstantiated pseudo-theories. The book consists of four main chapters, the first of which summarizes the importance of foundational insights for enterprises and explains the mutual relationships between the basic elements of enterprise governance and enterprise engineering. Next, chapter 2 explains the necessary philosophical foundations concerning knowledge, truth, language, and human existence. Subsequently, chapter 3 describes the ontological foundation and the nature of society and enterprises, as understanding their characteristics is a prerequisite for understanding and designing enterprises. Finally, chapter 4 approaches ideological foundations as beliefs and convictions, as they create specific requirements for the design of enterprises. In this way, the book covers all the cornerstones of the employee-centric theory of organization, drawing on foundational insights. The book is mainly intended for students specializing in areas such as business administration, management and organization science, governance, and enterprise and information systems design. However, professionals working in these areas will also benefit from the book, as it allows them to gain a deeper understanding of the theoretical foundations of their work and will thus help them to avoid strategic failures due to a lack of coherence and consistency between the various parts of their organization.

The forces generated by an explosion in human knowledge and exponential increases in technology have brought about tectonic shifts in personal as well as corporate worldviews. And while globalisation has ushered in many benefits for companies and consumers alike, this book posits that it is the fierce competition of global market-places which drives the largely unopposed belief that firms exist solely to enhance shareholder value. The author in arguing for a wider definition of 'shareholder' is of the opinion that this is a potentially lethal fallout, because single-minded pursuit of profit for profits' sake, in yielding to the tyranny of the bottomline, has undermined traditional and long-enduring value systems, and placed ethics on the sacrificial altar of vested interests, as scams such as Enron, WorldCom and Computer Associates have amply demonstrated.To bolster his arguments, the author compels the reader to think, assess and analyse for himself as he whisks him through a whirlwind tour of western ethical and value systems beginning from the halcyon days of Plato and Aristotle, right down to modern times, running the gamut of Newton, Hobbes, Descartes, JS Mill followed by the Utilitarians, Kant, Hegel and even the Jack Welch model. He then guides the reader the labyrinth of eastern thought, including Vedic and Taoist disciplines, before citing three pragmatic Indian models with firm philosophical underpinnings, one of which he zeroes in as having the greatest potential for good governance. Written in a very lucid style, this book is sure to remain fresh in the reader's memory as long as questions of right and wrong confront him in his daily life. No book on the subject can hope to do more.

This volume explores corporate governance from three perspectives: a traditional economic, a philosophical, and an integrated business ethics perspective. Corporate governance has enjoyed a long tradition in the English-speaking world of management sciences. Following its traditional understanding it is defined as leadership and control of a firm with the aim of securing the long-term survival and viability of that firm. But recent business scandals and financial crises continue to provide ample cause for concern and have all fuelled interest in the ethical aspects. As a result, corporate governance has been criticized by many social groups. Economic sciences have failed to provide a clear definition of the corporate governance concept. Complexity increases if we embed the economic approach of corporate governance in a philosophical context. This book seeks to define the concept by examining its economic, philosophical and business ethics foundations.