Samenvatting M&O
Chapter 1: Managing and organizations
Managing & Managerialism:
Managing is sense-making. You see sense-making in many other aspects of the world.
Making sense of managing as a coherent set of assumptions, concepts, values, and
practices that constitute a way of viewing reality.
Managing entails sensemaking and framing.
Managerialism justifies the application of its one-dimensional managerial techniques to all
areas of work, society, and capitalism on the grounds of superior ideology, expert training,
and the exclusiveness of managerial knowledge necessary to run public institutions and
society as corporations.
Making sense of managing:
Managing is trying to accomplish goals in an organizational context. We can differentiate
managing as a practice, as something that we do, from organizations as goal-oriented
collectives, entities in which we are organized.
Management is the process of communicating, coordinating and accomplishing action in the
pursuit of organizational objectives.
Managing collaborative relationships with stakeholders, technologies and other artefacts,
both within as well as between organizations and managing more or less considerate
relationships with those employed as well as with those encountered as suppliers,
customers, communities, and so on.
Management is not a neutral activity!
Management cannot simply be considered in terms of its capacity to deliver objective gains
in productivity/efficiency.
It is also a socio-political activity, which implies the need to adhere to societal, political and
ethical responsibilities.
This is called sensemaking:
Sense-making is important. This concept become more and more important in managerial
studies. You need to understand how you sell en manage your information. You need
someone who knows what the goals are and what’s going to happen. Critically reflecting the
frame. You try to get the meaning of what is going on.
For the past 40 years, the predominant sense of what an organization should be has been
modelled on lean and efficient private sector organizations that are profit oriented.
In such organizations, top management teams strive to set a common frame so that
organizational members, customers, suppliers, investors, and so on, can make common
sense of the organization – what it is and what it does.
,Sense-making:
On the one hand it’s to make money and on the other hand it’s about the story and bonds
with stakeholders and giving something back to the world etc.
Sensemaking is the process through which individuals and groups give meaning to
something, especially to explain novel, unexpected or confusing events.
We are constantly making sense, revising past rationalizations in the light of new information,
knowledge and events not previously available.
Meaning is constructed in an ongoing process in which past experience informs the present
(Maitlis and Christianson, 2014).
Sense-making in a capitalist system:
Are we here to make money or to give something back to the world?
Making sense of profit orientation?
Does it make sense to you?
The art of making sense of your work (proud to working for Apple, Google or another ‘hip’
company.
Dare to challenge the narrative of selling company! (Projection of an image that may not be
reality).
Dare to challenge the narrative of your manager!
Managing in a complex world:
A ‘one size fits all’ management approach will not work.
Contemporary managers can no longer rely on hierarchy and nominal roles to manage
people.
Managing has become an increasingly difficult, political, and challenging endeavor.
People work in complex organizations that are embedded in contexts inscribed by complex
networks.
Managers should have an understanding of (human) complexity.
Sensemaking and framing:
Managers manage through processes of:
- Sense making
- Sense giving
- Sense breaking
A key part of the managers’ role is to ‘frame’ the sense that others have of the roles that they
play in the organization.
As social realities of business and organizations change, the different sense and framing is
required.
Much of managing is discursive: issuing orders, making suggestions, framing actions in order
to accomplish objectives.
Managing & Framing:
While the sense you make is always your sense it is never made in isolation. Not only is
sense made through the language and concepts you use but also through the many cues
that prompt you to make sense: experience, what others say they think is happening, likely
stories that you are familiar with that seem to fit the pattern that appears to be forming.
People will not use these cues in a uniform way, because they are individuals and, as a
result, people can make wildly different sense of the same set of cues.
, Framing:
Framing is a term that comes from film making: a director frames a shot by including some
detail and omitting other elements.
A frame defines what is relevant. All managing involves framing: separating that which
deserves focus from that which does not. One thing that managers do all the time is to
differentiate between the relevant and the irrelevant.
Framing involves the creation of devices that assign meaning to organizational situations
(Fairhurst, 1993).
Framing entails the ideational use of metaphors, the repetition of stories, the citing of
traditions, the articulation of slogans and the material creation of artefacts to highlight or
contrast a particular organizational issue (Deetz et al., 2000).
Framing – sense-breaking & sense-giving:
Framing is what leaders do, especially when they are seeking to reframe in the case of
organizational change (Fairhurst and Sarr, 1996).
Framing mobilizes followers through the judicious use of images, symbols, and language.
Framing occurs not only through sensemaking but also through sense-breaking and
sensegiving.
Managerialism:
Managerialism, portrays management as a universal solution to all problems.
Managerialism combines management’s generic tools and knowledge with ideology to
establish itself systemically in organizations, public institutions, and society while depriving
business owners (property), workers (organizational-economic) and civil society (social-
political) of all decision-making powers.
Managerialism justifies the application of its one-dimensional managerial techniques to all
areas of work, society, and capitalism on the grounds of superior ideology, expert training,
and the exclusiveness of managerial knowledge necessary to run public institutions and
society as corporations.
Managerial Rationality:
Some managers argue that they can make decisions based on management on their
managerial competence, it’s called managerialism.
But is this possible?
Management as in ideology?
No because within an organization management goes beyond managing financial capital.
What about symbolic capital (reputation), social capital (set of relations).
Organizations have professionalized workflows YET organizations are full of stories (rumour,
gossip, official statements, business plans, etc).
Managerialism as an ideology.
Economic rationalism and its metaphors.
Organization stories.
Rationality is always contextually and cognitively limited: bounded rationality.
Managing and organizations are constantly changing.
Resistance to change is to be expected.
Rational managers never have perfect knowledge of the situation.
A belief in rationality – a myth?
You cannot define everything.
Chapter 1: Managing and organizations
Managing & Managerialism:
Managing is sense-making. You see sense-making in many other aspects of the world.
Making sense of managing as a coherent set of assumptions, concepts, values, and
practices that constitute a way of viewing reality.
Managing entails sensemaking and framing.
Managerialism justifies the application of its one-dimensional managerial techniques to all
areas of work, society, and capitalism on the grounds of superior ideology, expert training,
and the exclusiveness of managerial knowledge necessary to run public institutions and
society as corporations.
Making sense of managing:
Managing is trying to accomplish goals in an organizational context. We can differentiate
managing as a practice, as something that we do, from organizations as goal-oriented
collectives, entities in which we are organized.
Management is the process of communicating, coordinating and accomplishing action in the
pursuit of organizational objectives.
Managing collaborative relationships with stakeholders, technologies and other artefacts,
both within as well as between organizations and managing more or less considerate
relationships with those employed as well as with those encountered as suppliers,
customers, communities, and so on.
Management is not a neutral activity!
Management cannot simply be considered in terms of its capacity to deliver objective gains
in productivity/efficiency.
It is also a socio-political activity, which implies the need to adhere to societal, political and
ethical responsibilities.
This is called sensemaking:
Sense-making is important. This concept become more and more important in managerial
studies. You need to understand how you sell en manage your information. You need
someone who knows what the goals are and what’s going to happen. Critically reflecting the
frame. You try to get the meaning of what is going on.
For the past 40 years, the predominant sense of what an organization should be has been
modelled on lean and efficient private sector organizations that are profit oriented.
In such organizations, top management teams strive to set a common frame so that
organizational members, customers, suppliers, investors, and so on, can make common
sense of the organization – what it is and what it does.
,Sense-making:
On the one hand it’s to make money and on the other hand it’s about the story and bonds
with stakeholders and giving something back to the world etc.
Sensemaking is the process through which individuals and groups give meaning to
something, especially to explain novel, unexpected or confusing events.
We are constantly making sense, revising past rationalizations in the light of new information,
knowledge and events not previously available.
Meaning is constructed in an ongoing process in which past experience informs the present
(Maitlis and Christianson, 2014).
Sense-making in a capitalist system:
Are we here to make money or to give something back to the world?
Making sense of profit orientation?
Does it make sense to you?
The art of making sense of your work (proud to working for Apple, Google or another ‘hip’
company.
Dare to challenge the narrative of selling company! (Projection of an image that may not be
reality).
Dare to challenge the narrative of your manager!
Managing in a complex world:
A ‘one size fits all’ management approach will not work.
Contemporary managers can no longer rely on hierarchy and nominal roles to manage
people.
Managing has become an increasingly difficult, political, and challenging endeavor.
People work in complex organizations that are embedded in contexts inscribed by complex
networks.
Managers should have an understanding of (human) complexity.
Sensemaking and framing:
Managers manage through processes of:
- Sense making
- Sense giving
- Sense breaking
A key part of the managers’ role is to ‘frame’ the sense that others have of the roles that they
play in the organization.
As social realities of business and organizations change, the different sense and framing is
required.
Much of managing is discursive: issuing orders, making suggestions, framing actions in order
to accomplish objectives.
Managing & Framing:
While the sense you make is always your sense it is never made in isolation. Not only is
sense made through the language and concepts you use but also through the many cues
that prompt you to make sense: experience, what others say they think is happening, likely
stories that you are familiar with that seem to fit the pattern that appears to be forming.
People will not use these cues in a uniform way, because they are individuals and, as a
result, people can make wildly different sense of the same set of cues.
, Framing:
Framing is a term that comes from film making: a director frames a shot by including some
detail and omitting other elements.
A frame defines what is relevant. All managing involves framing: separating that which
deserves focus from that which does not. One thing that managers do all the time is to
differentiate between the relevant and the irrelevant.
Framing involves the creation of devices that assign meaning to organizational situations
(Fairhurst, 1993).
Framing entails the ideational use of metaphors, the repetition of stories, the citing of
traditions, the articulation of slogans and the material creation of artefacts to highlight or
contrast a particular organizational issue (Deetz et al., 2000).
Framing – sense-breaking & sense-giving:
Framing is what leaders do, especially when they are seeking to reframe in the case of
organizational change (Fairhurst and Sarr, 1996).
Framing mobilizes followers through the judicious use of images, symbols, and language.
Framing occurs not only through sensemaking but also through sense-breaking and
sensegiving.
Managerialism:
Managerialism, portrays management as a universal solution to all problems.
Managerialism combines management’s generic tools and knowledge with ideology to
establish itself systemically in organizations, public institutions, and society while depriving
business owners (property), workers (organizational-economic) and civil society (social-
political) of all decision-making powers.
Managerialism justifies the application of its one-dimensional managerial techniques to all
areas of work, society, and capitalism on the grounds of superior ideology, expert training,
and the exclusiveness of managerial knowledge necessary to run public institutions and
society as corporations.
Managerial Rationality:
Some managers argue that they can make decisions based on management on their
managerial competence, it’s called managerialism.
But is this possible?
Management as in ideology?
No because within an organization management goes beyond managing financial capital.
What about symbolic capital (reputation), social capital (set of relations).
Organizations have professionalized workflows YET organizations are full of stories (rumour,
gossip, official statements, business plans, etc).
Managerialism as an ideology.
Economic rationalism and its metaphors.
Organization stories.
Rationality is always contextually and cognitively limited: bounded rationality.
Managing and organizations are constantly changing.
Resistance to change is to be expected.
Rational managers never have perfect knowledge of the situation.
A belief in rationality – a myth?
You cannot define everything.
