Management Online REview

6 January 2009 | Home

ISSN 1996-3300

Organisation

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Politics and Worthy Management Agendas

David Butcher

Martin Clarke

The rational model of organising and managing is widely recognised to have significant limitations and equally, organisations of all types are understood to be characterised by internally competing goals and managerial agendas. However, this political dimension, despite its prevalence and inevitability has yet to gain acceptability as the key to managing the plurality of internal organisational interests. This article sets out to explain why this situation continues to exist, describe the necessary political mindset required of an effective manager, and offers some starting points for developing political capabilities.

Aesthetics and the Topology of Risk

Matt Statler

Robert Richardson

Recent strategic management research suggests that organizations operating in volatile environments can become more strategically prepared to deal with unexpected change by cultivating practical wisdom among their leaders and decision-makers (Statler & Roos, 2007, Statler, Roos & Victor, 2006, Statler & Roos, 2006). In this paper, we argue that arts-based, ‘aesthetic’ process techniques can be used to help enterprise risk managers become more strategically prepared to deal with unexpected changes of all kinds. We support this argument by 1) reviewing the recent organizational research that clarifies the relevance of arts and aesthetics for organizations; 2) introducing a distinction between the algebraic calculation of probabilities and the topological imagination of potentialities; and 3) reflecting on how aesthetic methods might be used to enhance risk identification and assessment practices, with particular reference to the collapse of global credit markets in 2007 and 2008. Our goal is to show that the insights generated through aesthetic approaches to risk-oriented decision-making are not just generically different from more traditional approaches, but supportive of practically-wise responses to emergent change.

Mission-driven Leadership

Pablo Cardona

Carlos Rey

Throughout history, there have been managers who are considered examples of what we define as transcendental leadership - leadership that generates leadership. Many have been studied, admired and lauded as models to emulate. They are leaders whose deeply rooted values and principles have enabled them to achieve what so many firms pursue today: their employees’ commitment to a mission rich in content, credibility and a sense of urgency. But what is the key to their success? How can one become a transcendental leader? This paper examines one course of action that we have found to work: mission-driven leadership (MDL). For MDL, managing means driving commitment to a mission and developing subordinates so that they in turn can undertake the mission as true leaders. MDL is directly related to a mission and a series of values that transcend the leader as an individual, and is comprised of three basic tenets: Commitment, Cooperation and Change.

Organizations, Art and Gender

Paivi Eriksson

Elina Henttonen

Susan Merilainen

In their search for alternative images and vocabularies organization theorists are using art as a source of inspiration to understand what organizations and organizing are all about. We join the researchers who claim that there is potential in art-inspired organizational research to produce new knowledge and social change. However, we also argue that uncritical use of art brings about little social change, and instead, reproduces non-equalizing practices both in organization and art research. To illustrate our point we reread one piece of research, which uses constructivist art as an analogy for social networks to initiate discussion about organizations, art and gender.

Against the Tyranny of PowerPoint: Making the Technology Work for Us

Yiannis Gabriel

PowerPoint is a powerful piece of communication technology that has had profound consequences on presentations (business and educational), classroom communication and, possibly, on the nature of learning itself. An analysis of the ways in which PowerPoint is used offers considerable insights into, first, the nature of educational technologies and their organizational implementations, second, the effect of these technologies on the construction and dissemination of organizational knowledge, and, third, on the qualities and skills of a society of spectacle, where a great deal of organizational knowledge assumes the form of visual representations. Potential short-comings of PowerPoint include the parcelling of knowledge into bullet-points, reliance on visual aids to support weak analysis and the forced linearity of argumentation that limits improvisation, digression and inventivesness. The author, however, argues that PowerPoint can be used more creatively, to build on our culture’s emphasis on spectacle and image and related multi-tasking skills that lecturers and students develop. In this manner, PowerPoint can redefine the nature of a lecture, from the authoritative presentation of a text into a multi-media performance that elicits a critical, creative and active response from its audience.

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