Description
Think about the Future Bringing Philosophy to Management
Why Not to Think about the Future Bringing Philosophy to Management?
What does academic philosophy have to do with management? This, it seems to me, is a question for you to answer when I have stopped speaking, rather than for me to answer before I start. But in thinking that a philosophical approach to management might be worth exploring I am not alone. Three or four years ago a book was published in the United States with the compelling title If Aristotle Ran General Motors. It met with general acclaim, sold well, and has since been produced in a best-selling abridged edition. Its author, Tom Morris, was previously an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. But the success with which he brought his philosophical expertise to management thinking (not to mention the far bigger salaries it met with there!) led him to move full time to work on a conceptual and motivational level with key people in business and the professions. Now whether anything I have to say is as interesting to you as what Morris has to say to his audiences, is for you to judge. For my part I am not going to explain or defend in the abstract the relevance of academic philosophy to management, but to do some philosophy, here and now, by way of uncovering its potential, or maybe its pretensions, in this new sphere. We shall see.
I
Is management a transferable skill? Generally, I think, it is assumed that it is – that successful management is neutral as far as what is managed is concerned, and that to manage one type of enterprise well is the same as
managing another. A number of facts about the contemporary world confirm this. Consider, for instance, the fact that the language of industry is applied more and more to areas that are not strictly industrial; for example nowadays people in the financial sector speak about „products? whereas formerly they would have used terms like „policies? and „types of account?; educationalists talk about „delivering? courses rather than teaching people, just as hospitals and clinics talk about „delivering health care? rather than healing people. Indeed so widespread are the contexts in which the term „delivery? is now used, that when recently I saw an advert with the slogan „a new way to deliver?, the last thing to come to mind was that it was the slogan of a commercial van company, which it was! Now it might seem that this is only a facon de parler, a way of talking, a mere matter of words. Even if it is, ways of speaking can be important. For one thing there is the matter of style; there are some who object to this sort of language on the grounds that it is part and parcel of a „management speak? that is ugly and ponderous. Maybe so. More important than its ugliness, however, is the tendency of jargon, in any sphere, to obscure meaning, and hence hamper communication. If this is true, then there is a real cost to it, even if it is only a way of talking. But this is not the line of thought I want to pursue. Rather, and this is where philosophy proper comes in, I want to explore the assumptions that might underlie it. Before proceeding to do so let me note a second fact about contemporary society that underscores the first, and is a product of it I am inclined to say. This is the increasing movement of managers between activities and institutions of quite different sorts. Nowadays it is not uncommon for Chief Executives to move from government departments to commercial companies, from commercial companies to the health service, and from the health service to higher education. The „head hunters? who are now as regularly employed by the public as by the private sector, seem to assume
that there is nothing problematic about such moves. In other words, it is no longer thought necessary, as previously it was, to „know the business? in hand. Rather, the crucial aptitude is the ability to „manage? and this, so contemporary thinking goes, is an ability that transcends the particularity of any particular enterprise. My purpose, I want to emphasize, is not to condemn or deplore this trend, but only to think about it, and to do so in the way that academic philosophy typically thinks. It is important for my purposes to note, however, that these ways of talking and thinking are relatively new. While the manufacturing sector has made „products? and „delivered? them since goodness knows when, it is only recently that insurance brokers, bankers, teachers and doctors have spoken of themselves, or at any rate been described as, delivering products. And while there has always been some movement between different social sectors, it is only relatively recently that extensive experience of one particular sector has not been regarded as an essential qualification for its management. These changes, then, signal a real shift in the way we do things, and not merely a change in the way we talk about them. My question is what this shift assumes, and whether the assumptions that underlie it can be investigated to real and profitable purpose.
II
What does the transferability of management assume? It assumes, if nothing else, a certain sort of relationship between managers and the affairs they manage. This might be described as „facilitation?. Take a particular example. Health service managers are not physicians or surgeons. They have neither the skill nor the training to heal anybody. Yet the principal purpose of the organizations they manage is nonetheless the securing of health. In terms
of this purpose, what is their role? The answer, presumably, is that their activities facilitate this purpose, which is to say, ensure that those who do have the requisite skills and training – the doctors and nurses – can exercise these skills more effectively and efficiently. I am not concerned with whether this is true or not. There are plenty of people – Jeremiahs some would say -who doubt it, of course, but this is not my interest here. I want to probe a little more deeply, as philosophers always do, into the structure of the relationship between the two that this implies. Curiously, it is rather an ambiguous one. On the one hand, managers are in charge. On the other hand, they have nothing of their own to contribute directly to the purpose, that is to say, the purpose of health care. (Other contexts than health could just as easily be used to make the same point.) One resolution of this ambiguity lies in the suggestion that the core concern of managers is with resources – securing and distributing resources most effectively so that they maximize the fulfillment of the purpose in hand, human and physical as well as financial. In the light of this supposition, I want to put down a marker, to draw a distinction (drawing distinctions is another thing philosophers typically do), and observe that if that is indeed their role, then though they may have an important role in administration, they don?t have any role in leadership. Modern conceptions of management tend to conflate this distinction between administration and leadership, and my principal purpose is to show the importance of holding them apart. My own experience, of course, lies entirely within the public sector, and only a small part of it, namely higher education. But I think that what I have been saying can be applied to the private sector also, to commerce and industry no less than government, the health service and education. So let me turn to these. The belief in management as a transferable skill has much the same implication here. To suppose that a manager can move from finance to industry, say, is to suppose that he or she need have no special expertise in
one or the other. The expertise must, accordingly, lie elsewhere. By implication, the test of this expertise must also lie elsewhere. That is to say, the mark of a good manager, if management truly is a transferable skill, must show itself in something that transcends the particular goals of specific industries and services. If a good manager is a good manager whether the business in hand is bricks or bonds, and a bad one a bad one, then the „bottom line? of good and bad management cannot be either of these. What might it be? Though the phrase „the bottom line? is often used metaphorically, business and industry might be thought to be contexts where we can still usefully employ its literal meaning. However, if it is management more broadly we are concerned with then „the bottom line? has to be defined in such a way that it can include the public as well as the private sector. As far as the private sector is concerned, profitability as the mark of successful management seems extremely plausible (though it is point to which I will return), but when it comes to government departments, the health service, education and the legal system, to name only the most obvious constituents of the public sector, the „the bottom line? is more plausibly thought of as „value for money?. In both cases, the idea at work in „the bottom line? is a matter of a positive cost/benefit analysis expressible in a monetary figure. What such a bottom line conception of the ultimate mark of management does not show, however, is the means by which that healthy balance has been obtained.
III
The point that „means? matter as well as „outcome?s is easily made; there are good profits to be earned through drug running as well as in the pharmaceutical industry, and those who use brothels are, presumably, as interested in value for money as those who use bistros. Both these examples
invoke an important distinction between the ethical and the unethical. The fact is that a healthy bank balance can be arrived at by foul means as well as fair. It is a possibility that those who always speak in a positive tone about „profitability? and „value for money? tend to overlook and, need to be reminded of. Equally, though, the distinction between ethical and unethical ways of making profits it is a salutary counter to the rhetoric of those to whom „profit? is just another name for rapacious exploitation. In other words, the pursuit of profit in and of itself cannot be construed either positively or negatively. It may be either. More interestingly yet, even when they are interpreted neutrally, the terms „profitability? and „value for money?, are importantly silent about the quality of the activity that generated them. To illustrate the point I want to make, let me refer to a notorious example of relatively recent times. I mean the case of Gerald Ratner, the jeweler. This is an especially instructive instance. Ratner the younger, as is well known, turned a relatively modest family business into a national chain, and a highly successful one. His undoing was to say in public that the low prices he was able to offer were a result of his products being „crap?. Once this was made public, the sales and the share price fell below sustainable levels. Why so? After all, the quality and the price of what he was offering did not change. He was supplying a proven demand at a profit. Why could he not go on supplying the same demand? The answer of course is that demand fell away because of an altered perception on the part of Ratner?s customers. Some, of course, may have felt that they had been conned. But importantly, this is not strictly true; the jewelry was sold in good faith with no false or inflated claims. No, the truth is his remark brought them to believe that his goods were not worth buying, not, notice, that they were poor value for money, but that they were of no value per se. What this example shows, I think, is that profitability depends not just on a neutral conception of „value for money?, but a substantial conception of value –„worth having?.
What is the relevance of this to my earlier discussion of management. Let me offer a brief resumé. If management is a transferable skill, something that can be carried from enterprise to enterprise right across the private and public sectors, then the mark and measure of good management must also be a transferable and abstract „bottom line?. Is there any usable abstraction of this kind? Two plausible suggestions regularly present themselves – profitability with respect to the private sector, and value for money with respect to the public. Against this background, the observation that „profitability? and „value for money? are indifferent to the way in which they are obtained, not only to unethical means (the brothel example), but (as the Ratner case shows) indifferent to worthless goods as well. If this is correct, the implication must that management which successfully meets the criteria of „profitability? and „value for money?, may nevertheless be indifferent to real wealth creation.
IV
What is the alternative? How should we think of the conduct of businesses, industries and public services at higher levels if not in terms of transferable management skills? The answer, I suggest, lies in what, for want of a better word, I shall call „leadership?, and crucial to this concept of leadership, I shall argue, are conceptual imagination and the education of both clients and personnel. I now want to consider these ideas in turn, and it is at this point that the relevance of my title – How Not to Think About the Future – should become clear. There is an old joke that says „Prediction is always difficult, especially if it involves the future?. It is a curious fact about human beings that they are forever trying to predict the future while proving again and again how spectacularly bad they are at it. Take the Wall Street Crash. Many of those on both sides of the
Atlantic who had spent all their lives in the financial sector failed to predict it. Indeed, many financial and industrial commentators predicted just the opposite – that the future would be one of greater growth. Nor is the inability to predict much altered by extensive research. The people who failed to predict the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union included a positive army of „Sovietologists? who had studied the politics of eastern Europe for almost 40 years. Yet despite an indefinitely long list of failures, the attempt to predict the future goes on, and copious resources are put into it. Mostly, of course, it goes on at less ambitious levels, like trying to predict the demand for goods and services over the next year or two, with the accompanying armies of market researchers that this gives work to. But even the modesty of these ambitions does not guarantee them much success. All the market research in the world could not have predicted the collapse in the market for beef that followed the outbreak of BSE, and anyone who had accurately predicted the gigantic demand for mobile phones would not have been believed. So why do people continue with these futile endeavours? One factor is human nature; it simply is the case that human beings have always exhibited a fascination with knowing the future, and astrologers and necromancers have never been short of customers. But another important factor is the simple and widespread belief that there is no alternative. How are we to plan for the future except by predicting, however unreliable our predictions may turn out to be? Now one of the principal points I want to make is that there is an alternative – conceptual imagination – and it is conceptual imagination not prediction based upon market research that makes for genuine wealth creation. What do I mean by conceptual imagination? I mean the ability to anticipate demand, not by predicting it, but by seeing both connections and gaps in existing circumstances. In short, conceptual imagination is a kind of inventiveness, and the point about innovative products, solutions and strategies is that demand for
them cannot be anticipated in advance of their being invented. If they truly are inventive, however, then they carry their own commendation with them, and in virtue of that fact generate new demand. Advertizing and promotion of one sort or another is also important, of course. It serves both to inform and to persuade and both of these are valuable elements in the stimulation and maintenance of demand. But no amount of advertizing, except in the short term, can conjure wealth out of the worthless. Ratner?s business collapsed not because of a careless remark, but because the careless remark was true. The idea I am here concerned with – the relation between imagination, wealth creation and demand -- is well illustrated in the modern supermarket, an institution of which I am a great admirer. It is natural to think that the supermarket is just a modern version of the ancient street market – better stocked, more hygienic and with good lighting and heating -- but quintessentially the same sort of place, where supply simply meets demand. This is not so. There is a constant flow of wholly new products in the modern supermarket, and not merely newly packaged ones. And many of these have the sort of inventiveness I have been alluding to – they are things I could not or would not have thought of for myself, but which I can see immediately to be a good idea. In this way, the modern supermarket is not just a supplier of preexistent demand; it also has a generative and educative role in the formation of that demand. I go not just to buy, but to discover what new thing is worth buying. And I change what I buy when the supermarket comes up with something better. The same phenomenon is to be found much more widely. In particular, the world of information technology is replete with techniques and devices that are conceptually imaginative in this sense, and which, as a result, generate and sustain their own demand. No one has needed to advertize e-mail. The most they have needed to advertize is the price of using it.
V
So far I have spoken largely of conceptual imagination in product development, whereas my topic is supposed to be management. The two are not unconnected, however. Indeed I would say that what has marked the information technology business is the very close links between management and innovation, a link personified of course in Bill Gates. What are we to say of Gates, the world?s most successful businessman? Is he a manager, or a technical innovator? The dichotomy is simply not applicable here, but the fact that it is not applicable has interesting implications for the theme with which I began – the transferability of management skills. The idea of transferability implies that there is a special set of skills that are independent of the details of any particular enterprise or organization and can be put to good effect in a host of radically different contexts. If so, I argued, the measure of their success must also be something indifferent to context, and both profitability and value for money are often thought of in this way. But the truth is that in so far as these are genuinely neutral concepts they cannot be regarded as unquestionable measures of a real increase in benefit. Real increases in benefit arise from innovative goods, services, techniques and processes. Such things are, so to speak, much closer to the real world than statements of profit and loss, and accordingly their more effective provision must therefore be closely involved in the details of that world. This is why, in my view, it is simply a mistake to think that management can move from one sphere to another without significant loss. Of course, „these spheres? are not always to be sharply demarcated , and what may also be true (to recall the distinction I drew at the start) is that administration is largely indifferent to context – the office procedures, and the financial accounting systems of a manufacturing company, a hotel chain, a university, a hospital, a prison, or a local government office, may
well be broadly similar. But it does not follow that the leadership role of managers can equally well be transferred. This is because, if I am right, innovation and inventiveness, -- the sorts of things that take really people and organizations places – require a conceptual imagination that operates upon a particular subject matter, whether that subject matter is hospital organization or the manufacture of computer games. Set within a specific context, what I have called conceptual imagination is a powerful generator of real benefit. Abstracted from any particular context it becomes essentially idle.
What, if anything, follows from all this? A number of things. First, it shows that there is indeed some scope for philosophy in management – if we understand by this the reflective examination of some contemporary ideas and assumptions using the methods typical of philosophy – analysis, structured argument and the careful drawing of distinctions. Second, if the line of thought I have been pursuing is correct, the modern conception of management has a built-in ambiguity. Are managers to be innovators and leaders within the industry? Or are they rather the facilitators of those who are the innovators and leaders? These are distinct aims which are easily and damagingly conflated. Third, how we answer this second question will decide what management education (including continuing professional development) should look like. Can conceptual imagination be taught, and if so how? This too is a question in which philosophy has had an interest, since the time of the ancient Greeks in fact. Appropriately enough, it is also the topic of our afternoon session “Educating the Philosopher/Manager”.
Gordon Graham King?s College, Aberdeen
doc_650704234.docx
Think about the Future Bringing Philosophy to Management
Why Not to Think about the Future Bringing Philosophy to Management?
What does academic philosophy have to do with management? This, it seems to me, is a question for you to answer when I have stopped speaking, rather than for me to answer before I start. But in thinking that a philosophical approach to management might be worth exploring I am not alone. Three or four years ago a book was published in the United States with the compelling title If Aristotle Ran General Motors. It met with general acclaim, sold well, and has since been produced in a best-selling abridged edition. Its author, Tom Morris, was previously an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. But the success with which he brought his philosophical expertise to management thinking (not to mention the far bigger salaries it met with there!) led him to move full time to work on a conceptual and motivational level with key people in business and the professions. Now whether anything I have to say is as interesting to you as what Morris has to say to his audiences, is for you to judge. For my part I am not going to explain or defend in the abstract the relevance of academic philosophy to management, but to do some philosophy, here and now, by way of uncovering its potential, or maybe its pretensions, in this new sphere. We shall see.
I
Is management a transferable skill? Generally, I think, it is assumed that it is – that successful management is neutral as far as what is managed is concerned, and that to manage one type of enterprise well is the same as
managing another. A number of facts about the contemporary world confirm this. Consider, for instance, the fact that the language of industry is applied more and more to areas that are not strictly industrial; for example nowadays people in the financial sector speak about „products? whereas formerly they would have used terms like „policies? and „types of account?; educationalists talk about „delivering? courses rather than teaching people, just as hospitals and clinics talk about „delivering health care? rather than healing people. Indeed so widespread are the contexts in which the term „delivery? is now used, that when recently I saw an advert with the slogan „a new way to deliver?, the last thing to come to mind was that it was the slogan of a commercial van company, which it was! Now it might seem that this is only a facon de parler, a way of talking, a mere matter of words. Even if it is, ways of speaking can be important. For one thing there is the matter of style; there are some who object to this sort of language on the grounds that it is part and parcel of a „management speak? that is ugly and ponderous. Maybe so. More important than its ugliness, however, is the tendency of jargon, in any sphere, to obscure meaning, and hence hamper communication. If this is true, then there is a real cost to it, even if it is only a way of talking. But this is not the line of thought I want to pursue. Rather, and this is where philosophy proper comes in, I want to explore the assumptions that might underlie it. Before proceeding to do so let me note a second fact about contemporary society that underscores the first, and is a product of it I am inclined to say. This is the increasing movement of managers between activities and institutions of quite different sorts. Nowadays it is not uncommon for Chief Executives to move from government departments to commercial companies, from commercial companies to the health service, and from the health service to higher education. The „head hunters? who are now as regularly employed by the public as by the private sector, seem to assume
that there is nothing problematic about such moves. In other words, it is no longer thought necessary, as previously it was, to „know the business? in hand. Rather, the crucial aptitude is the ability to „manage? and this, so contemporary thinking goes, is an ability that transcends the particularity of any particular enterprise. My purpose, I want to emphasize, is not to condemn or deplore this trend, but only to think about it, and to do so in the way that academic philosophy typically thinks. It is important for my purposes to note, however, that these ways of talking and thinking are relatively new. While the manufacturing sector has made „products? and „delivered? them since goodness knows when, it is only recently that insurance brokers, bankers, teachers and doctors have spoken of themselves, or at any rate been described as, delivering products. And while there has always been some movement between different social sectors, it is only relatively recently that extensive experience of one particular sector has not been regarded as an essential qualification for its management. These changes, then, signal a real shift in the way we do things, and not merely a change in the way we talk about them. My question is what this shift assumes, and whether the assumptions that underlie it can be investigated to real and profitable purpose.
II
What does the transferability of management assume? It assumes, if nothing else, a certain sort of relationship between managers and the affairs they manage. This might be described as „facilitation?. Take a particular example. Health service managers are not physicians or surgeons. They have neither the skill nor the training to heal anybody. Yet the principal purpose of the organizations they manage is nonetheless the securing of health. In terms
of this purpose, what is their role? The answer, presumably, is that their activities facilitate this purpose, which is to say, ensure that those who do have the requisite skills and training – the doctors and nurses – can exercise these skills more effectively and efficiently. I am not concerned with whether this is true or not. There are plenty of people – Jeremiahs some would say -who doubt it, of course, but this is not my interest here. I want to probe a little more deeply, as philosophers always do, into the structure of the relationship between the two that this implies. Curiously, it is rather an ambiguous one. On the one hand, managers are in charge. On the other hand, they have nothing of their own to contribute directly to the purpose, that is to say, the purpose of health care. (Other contexts than health could just as easily be used to make the same point.) One resolution of this ambiguity lies in the suggestion that the core concern of managers is with resources – securing and distributing resources most effectively so that they maximize the fulfillment of the purpose in hand, human and physical as well as financial. In the light of this supposition, I want to put down a marker, to draw a distinction (drawing distinctions is another thing philosophers typically do), and observe that if that is indeed their role, then though they may have an important role in administration, they don?t have any role in leadership. Modern conceptions of management tend to conflate this distinction between administration and leadership, and my principal purpose is to show the importance of holding them apart. My own experience, of course, lies entirely within the public sector, and only a small part of it, namely higher education. But I think that what I have been saying can be applied to the private sector also, to commerce and industry no less than government, the health service and education. So let me turn to these. The belief in management as a transferable skill has much the same implication here. To suppose that a manager can move from finance to industry, say, is to suppose that he or she need have no special expertise in
one or the other. The expertise must, accordingly, lie elsewhere. By implication, the test of this expertise must also lie elsewhere. That is to say, the mark of a good manager, if management truly is a transferable skill, must show itself in something that transcends the particular goals of specific industries and services. If a good manager is a good manager whether the business in hand is bricks or bonds, and a bad one a bad one, then the „bottom line? of good and bad management cannot be either of these. What might it be? Though the phrase „the bottom line? is often used metaphorically, business and industry might be thought to be contexts where we can still usefully employ its literal meaning. However, if it is management more broadly we are concerned with then „the bottom line? has to be defined in such a way that it can include the public as well as the private sector. As far as the private sector is concerned, profitability as the mark of successful management seems extremely plausible (though it is point to which I will return), but when it comes to government departments, the health service, education and the legal system, to name only the most obvious constituents of the public sector, the „the bottom line? is more plausibly thought of as „value for money?. In both cases, the idea at work in „the bottom line? is a matter of a positive cost/benefit analysis expressible in a monetary figure. What such a bottom line conception of the ultimate mark of management does not show, however, is the means by which that healthy balance has been obtained.
III
The point that „means? matter as well as „outcome?s is easily made; there are good profits to be earned through drug running as well as in the pharmaceutical industry, and those who use brothels are, presumably, as interested in value for money as those who use bistros. Both these examples
invoke an important distinction between the ethical and the unethical. The fact is that a healthy bank balance can be arrived at by foul means as well as fair. It is a possibility that those who always speak in a positive tone about „profitability? and „value for money? tend to overlook and, need to be reminded of. Equally, though, the distinction between ethical and unethical ways of making profits it is a salutary counter to the rhetoric of those to whom „profit? is just another name for rapacious exploitation. In other words, the pursuit of profit in and of itself cannot be construed either positively or negatively. It may be either. More interestingly yet, even when they are interpreted neutrally, the terms „profitability? and „value for money?, are importantly silent about the quality of the activity that generated them. To illustrate the point I want to make, let me refer to a notorious example of relatively recent times. I mean the case of Gerald Ratner, the jeweler. This is an especially instructive instance. Ratner the younger, as is well known, turned a relatively modest family business into a national chain, and a highly successful one. His undoing was to say in public that the low prices he was able to offer were a result of his products being „crap?. Once this was made public, the sales and the share price fell below sustainable levels. Why so? After all, the quality and the price of what he was offering did not change. He was supplying a proven demand at a profit. Why could he not go on supplying the same demand? The answer of course is that demand fell away because of an altered perception on the part of Ratner?s customers. Some, of course, may have felt that they had been conned. But importantly, this is not strictly true; the jewelry was sold in good faith with no false or inflated claims. No, the truth is his remark brought them to believe that his goods were not worth buying, not, notice, that they were poor value for money, but that they were of no value per se. What this example shows, I think, is that profitability depends not just on a neutral conception of „value for money?, but a substantial conception of value –„worth having?.
What is the relevance of this to my earlier discussion of management. Let me offer a brief resumé. If management is a transferable skill, something that can be carried from enterprise to enterprise right across the private and public sectors, then the mark and measure of good management must also be a transferable and abstract „bottom line?. Is there any usable abstraction of this kind? Two plausible suggestions regularly present themselves – profitability with respect to the private sector, and value for money with respect to the public. Against this background, the observation that „profitability? and „value for money? are indifferent to the way in which they are obtained, not only to unethical means (the brothel example), but (as the Ratner case shows) indifferent to worthless goods as well. If this is correct, the implication must that management which successfully meets the criteria of „profitability? and „value for money?, may nevertheless be indifferent to real wealth creation.
IV
What is the alternative? How should we think of the conduct of businesses, industries and public services at higher levels if not in terms of transferable management skills? The answer, I suggest, lies in what, for want of a better word, I shall call „leadership?, and crucial to this concept of leadership, I shall argue, are conceptual imagination and the education of both clients and personnel. I now want to consider these ideas in turn, and it is at this point that the relevance of my title – How Not to Think About the Future – should become clear. There is an old joke that says „Prediction is always difficult, especially if it involves the future?. It is a curious fact about human beings that they are forever trying to predict the future while proving again and again how spectacularly bad they are at it. Take the Wall Street Crash. Many of those on both sides of the
Atlantic who had spent all their lives in the financial sector failed to predict it. Indeed, many financial and industrial commentators predicted just the opposite – that the future would be one of greater growth. Nor is the inability to predict much altered by extensive research. The people who failed to predict the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union included a positive army of „Sovietologists? who had studied the politics of eastern Europe for almost 40 years. Yet despite an indefinitely long list of failures, the attempt to predict the future goes on, and copious resources are put into it. Mostly, of course, it goes on at less ambitious levels, like trying to predict the demand for goods and services over the next year or two, with the accompanying armies of market researchers that this gives work to. But even the modesty of these ambitions does not guarantee them much success. All the market research in the world could not have predicted the collapse in the market for beef that followed the outbreak of BSE, and anyone who had accurately predicted the gigantic demand for mobile phones would not have been believed. So why do people continue with these futile endeavours? One factor is human nature; it simply is the case that human beings have always exhibited a fascination with knowing the future, and astrologers and necromancers have never been short of customers. But another important factor is the simple and widespread belief that there is no alternative. How are we to plan for the future except by predicting, however unreliable our predictions may turn out to be? Now one of the principal points I want to make is that there is an alternative – conceptual imagination – and it is conceptual imagination not prediction based upon market research that makes for genuine wealth creation. What do I mean by conceptual imagination? I mean the ability to anticipate demand, not by predicting it, but by seeing both connections and gaps in existing circumstances. In short, conceptual imagination is a kind of inventiveness, and the point about innovative products, solutions and strategies is that demand for
them cannot be anticipated in advance of their being invented. If they truly are inventive, however, then they carry their own commendation with them, and in virtue of that fact generate new demand. Advertizing and promotion of one sort or another is also important, of course. It serves both to inform and to persuade and both of these are valuable elements in the stimulation and maintenance of demand. But no amount of advertizing, except in the short term, can conjure wealth out of the worthless. Ratner?s business collapsed not because of a careless remark, but because the careless remark was true. The idea I am here concerned with – the relation between imagination, wealth creation and demand -- is well illustrated in the modern supermarket, an institution of which I am a great admirer. It is natural to think that the supermarket is just a modern version of the ancient street market – better stocked, more hygienic and with good lighting and heating -- but quintessentially the same sort of place, where supply simply meets demand. This is not so. There is a constant flow of wholly new products in the modern supermarket, and not merely newly packaged ones. And many of these have the sort of inventiveness I have been alluding to – they are things I could not or would not have thought of for myself, but which I can see immediately to be a good idea. In this way, the modern supermarket is not just a supplier of preexistent demand; it also has a generative and educative role in the formation of that demand. I go not just to buy, but to discover what new thing is worth buying. And I change what I buy when the supermarket comes up with something better. The same phenomenon is to be found much more widely. In particular, the world of information technology is replete with techniques and devices that are conceptually imaginative in this sense, and which, as a result, generate and sustain their own demand. No one has needed to advertize e-mail. The most they have needed to advertize is the price of using it.
V
So far I have spoken largely of conceptual imagination in product development, whereas my topic is supposed to be management. The two are not unconnected, however. Indeed I would say that what has marked the information technology business is the very close links between management and innovation, a link personified of course in Bill Gates. What are we to say of Gates, the world?s most successful businessman? Is he a manager, or a technical innovator? The dichotomy is simply not applicable here, but the fact that it is not applicable has interesting implications for the theme with which I began – the transferability of management skills. The idea of transferability implies that there is a special set of skills that are independent of the details of any particular enterprise or organization and can be put to good effect in a host of radically different contexts. If so, I argued, the measure of their success must also be something indifferent to context, and both profitability and value for money are often thought of in this way. But the truth is that in so far as these are genuinely neutral concepts they cannot be regarded as unquestionable measures of a real increase in benefit. Real increases in benefit arise from innovative goods, services, techniques and processes. Such things are, so to speak, much closer to the real world than statements of profit and loss, and accordingly their more effective provision must therefore be closely involved in the details of that world. This is why, in my view, it is simply a mistake to think that management can move from one sphere to another without significant loss. Of course, „these spheres? are not always to be sharply demarcated , and what may also be true (to recall the distinction I drew at the start) is that administration is largely indifferent to context – the office procedures, and the financial accounting systems of a manufacturing company, a hotel chain, a university, a hospital, a prison, or a local government office, may
well be broadly similar. But it does not follow that the leadership role of managers can equally well be transferred. This is because, if I am right, innovation and inventiveness, -- the sorts of things that take really people and organizations places – require a conceptual imagination that operates upon a particular subject matter, whether that subject matter is hospital organization or the manufacture of computer games. Set within a specific context, what I have called conceptual imagination is a powerful generator of real benefit. Abstracted from any particular context it becomes essentially idle.
What, if anything, follows from all this? A number of things. First, it shows that there is indeed some scope for philosophy in management – if we understand by this the reflective examination of some contemporary ideas and assumptions using the methods typical of philosophy – analysis, structured argument and the careful drawing of distinctions. Second, if the line of thought I have been pursuing is correct, the modern conception of management has a built-in ambiguity. Are managers to be innovators and leaders within the industry? Or are they rather the facilitators of those who are the innovators and leaders? These are distinct aims which are easily and damagingly conflated. Third, how we answer this second question will decide what management education (including continuing professional development) should look like. Can conceptual imagination be taught, and if so how? This too is a question in which philosophy has had an interest, since the time of the ancient Greeks in fact. Appropriately enough, it is also the topic of our afternoon session “Educating the Philosopher/Manager”.
Gordon Graham King?s College, Aberdeen
doc_650704234.docx