1 Managing and organizations: opening, thinking &
contextualizing 1
1.1 Making Sense of Managing
Managing and managerialism:
- 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
- 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 = 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
Sensemaking:
- 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)
- Sensemaking = the process through which individuals and groups give meaning to
something, especially to explain novel, unexpected or confusing events
o We are trying to understand and explain what is happening around us, we
make sense of our surroundings
, - 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)
- Sensemaking in a capitalist system:
o Making sense of profit orientation? Does it make sense to you?
o The art of making sense of your work (proud to working for Apple, Google or
another ‘hip’ company)
o Dare to challenge the narrative of big selling companies! (Projection of an
image that may not be reality)
o Dare to challenge the narrative of your manager!
Does the narrative of the company makes sense for you?
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
Managing and framing (framing not so important, just know that framing is important if you
want to understand sensemaking):
- 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
o Framing means you put a certain perspective on something.
- 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)
o Explain framing in contrast together with sensemaking
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.
o We need to be critical to managerialism because it’s not that that you can take
well-educated decisions because you’re trained as a manager
FE: Trump: “As I am a great manager, I have a solution for the U-R war’.
This is not how it works
1.2 Managerial Rationality
Managerial rationality = the idea behind ‘because I can rationalise the way I manage in a
company, I can also rationalise everything else’:
- Some managers argue that they can make decisions based on management on their
managerial competence (= managerialism)
- But is this possible? Management as in ideology? – NO
o WHY? 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
o It’s based on economic rationalism but it’s no more than a metaphore
- 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
o So is rationality actually feasible or is it a myth?
Be critic: the perfect market situation like perfecte knowledge of all
information is not possible
, Managerial rationality vs managerialism!!
Managerial rationality (rational approach) Managerialism (framing)
- About making logical and efficient decisions - An ideology that management is the answer to
within a specific context, using reasoning and all organizational problems, often without
data to find the best solution considering the unique context of different
- Focuses on optimizing resources, processes, sectors or situations. It tends to universalize
and outcomes management practices even when they may
- Seeks to achieve efficiency, consistency, and not be appropriate
predictability - Overemphasizes management tools and
principles, sometimes to the exclusion of other
DEF: the conclusion that managerialism is not enough, perspectives
the manager is not able to (and should not) be a pure - Treats management as the one-size-fits-all
rationalist individual solution, applicable in any field (education,
healthcare, government, etc.)
DEF: the belief that all problems can be solved with
management techniques
1.3 Digital Organization
The digital age (a changing paradigms):
- Digital technologies and a growing international division of labour between
economies make the world economy increasingly globalized, although subject to
pressures to deglobalization from trade wars, pandemics and political responses to
them
- Contemporary competition is based less on traditional comparative advantage as a
result of what economists call ‘factor endowments’, such as being close to raw
materials, and more on competitive advantages that arise from innovation and
enterprise
- The fourth industrial revolution: algorithmic innovation, the gig economy, digital
nomads, working from home, etc.
Digital organization:
- Managing technological changes, what do this new technologies ask from a manager:
o Responsive organizations should have employees who are capable of
problem-solving rather than having to refer to a higher authority
o New technologies attach a premium to a flexible, timely approach to customer
requirements
o Different generations and digital capabilities
contextualizing 1
1.1 Making Sense of Managing
Managing and managerialism:
- 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
- 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 = 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
Sensemaking:
- 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)
- Sensemaking = the process through which individuals and groups give meaning to
something, especially to explain novel, unexpected or confusing events
o We are trying to understand and explain what is happening around us, we
make sense of our surroundings
, - 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)
- Sensemaking in a capitalist system:
o Making sense of profit orientation? Does it make sense to you?
o The art of making sense of your work (proud to working for Apple, Google or
another ‘hip’ company)
o Dare to challenge the narrative of big selling companies! (Projection of an
image that may not be reality)
o Dare to challenge the narrative of your manager!
Does the narrative of the company makes sense for you?
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
Managing and framing (framing not so important, just know that framing is important if you
want to understand sensemaking):
- 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
o Framing means you put a certain perspective on something.
- 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)
o Explain framing in contrast together with sensemaking
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.
o We need to be critical to managerialism because it’s not that that you can take
well-educated decisions because you’re trained as a manager
FE: Trump: “As I am a great manager, I have a solution for the U-R war’.
This is not how it works
1.2 Managerial Rationality
Managerial rationality = the idea behind ‘because I can rationalise the way I manage in a
company, I can also rationalise everything else’:
- Some managers argue that they can make decisions based on management on their
managerial competence (= managerialism)
- But is this possible? Management as in ideology? – NO
o WHY? 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
o It’s based on economic rationalism but it’s no more than a metaphore
- 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
o So is rationality actually feasible or is it a myth?
Be critic: the perfect market situation like perfecte knowledge of all
information is not possible
, Managerial rationality vs managerialism!!
Managerial rationality (rational approach) Managerialism (framing)
- About making logical and efficient decisions - An ideology that management is the answer to
within a specific context, using reasoning and all organizational problems, often without
data to find the best solution considering the unique context of different
- Focuses on optimizing resources, processes, sectors or situations. It tends to universalize
and outcomes management practices even when they may
- Seeks to achieve efficiency, consistency, and not be appropriate
predictability - Overemphasizes management tools and
principles, sometimes to the exclusion of other
DEF: the conclusion that managerialism is not enough, perspectives
the manager is not able to (and should not) be a pure - Treats management as the one-size-fits-all
rationalist individual solution, applicable in any field (education,
healthcare, government, etc.)
DEF: the belief that all problems can be solved with
management techniques
1.3 Digital Organization
The digital age (a changing paradigms):
- Digital technologies and a growing international division of labour between
economies make the world economy increasingly globalized, although subject to
pressures to deglobalization from trade wars, pandemics and political responses to
them
- Contemporary competition is based less on traditional comparative advantage as a
result of what economists call ‘factor endowments’, such as being close to raw
materials, and more on competitive advantages that arise from innovation and
enterprise
- The fourth industrial revolution: algorithmic innovation, the gig economy, digital
nomads, working from home, etc.
Digital organization:
- Managing technological changes, what do this new technologies ask from a manager:
o Responsive organizations should have employees who are capable of
problem-solving rather than having to refer to a higher authority
o New technologies attach a premium to a flexible, timely approach to customer
requirements
o Different generations and digital capabilities
