Philosophy And Psychological Foundations In Management

A Philosophical look at Life and Management topics

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.

Taylorism was criticised for its over-simplistic view of what motivated the worker. Oliver Sheldon's theme was that though Taylorism had helped the development of a science of management, such work should not detract from the predominantly human job of the manager to manage. His work prefigures the human relations approach to management theory of Elton Mayo and F. J. Roethlisberger in rejecting the notion that economic incentives largely explain employee behaviour.

This text offers trainers and student trainers a grounding in ideas and research findings most relevant to their work. It covers: the individual psychological processes of learning; the social psychological processes of group dynamics; and the psychology of the actual training experience.

This book examines the conceptual development of control in the literature of both management and accounting disciplines, from 1900 to 1980. In order to portray the development of control concepts over time, the chapters are organized into sections relating to the schools of thought from which they emanated and a model of control is constructed to represent each group of concepts and their hypothesised inter-relationships. Having traced the development of control models a comparative analysis of historical development in the two streams of management and accounting literature is undertaken. This analysis reveals a pronounced lag of accounting development behind that of management literature. The reasons for this are then discussed.

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.