This book proposes a review of important Western philosophies and their significance for managers, management academics, and management consultants. Management theories taught in management schools that managers and consultants are supposed to apply are built upon different perspectives of the world, man, and society that are important not so much for what they lead to, but for what they assume. Although rarely made explicit, these assumptions cannot be reconciled and are at the source of many incompatibilities that management academia has been busy ignoring or obfuscating. The ability to evaluate critically these perspectives is essential to managers if they are to make sense of what experts profess, however. 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 bases. Managing is an applied philosophical activity; any attempt at repairing management academia and the practices it has produced must accept this conclusion as its premise.

The Philosophical Foundations of Management Thought

Business & Money

Joullié, Jean-Etienne

Spillane, Robert

Management & Leadership

Lexington Books

Places school superintendents within the ongoing dialogue about the future of public education, from which they have been largely absent. Includes practical and theoretical assessments of how superintendents and administrators can move into the future. Topics include research and innovation, budgeti

The Superintendent of the Future: Strategy and Action for Achieving Academic Excellence

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

Jones& Bartlett Learning

A critique of the popular view that if managers can understand their colleagues’ personalities, they can manage them more effectively. The authors offer an alternative view—that the purpose of psychology is to enable working people to gain insight into and mastery of themselves. To achieve this requires new foundations for managerial psychology based on purpose, choice and responsibility.

Personality and Performance: Foundations for Managerial Psychology

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

University of New South Wales Press

Philosophy of Leadership has been written to arouse curiosity, not to satisfy it. The authors point out ideas about leadership which draw upon both ancient and modern wisdom. This book develops a philosophy of leadership by tracing the evolution of Western ideas from philosophical perspectives, ancient and modern.

Philosophy of Leadership: The Power of Authority

Science & Math

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

How can we gain insight into and mastery of ourselves? Entering the world of the great philosophers and engaging with them, we become aware of what we are capable of becoming. They speak to us of themselves and the good life and thereby offer the possibility for self-development. While this sounds like psychology, it is what the ancient Greeks called moral philosophy and its main precept is 'know oneself'. To know oneself is to embrace one's personal power. From Socrates to Sartre, from Plato to postmodernism, philosophers have important things to say about the personal power that underpins human existence. This book discusses ten philosophical perspectives, or worldviews, which present original ideas capable of evoking in us values that are guidelines for personal conduct. Harmonising knowledge, values and conduct maximises our personal power and thereby enables us to solve the practical and psychological problems of human existence, or overcome those that cannot be solved. The philosophers discussed in this book embody ideas of considerable fascination and force which can change our lives by penetrating the illusions of appearance and the delusions of common sense. As philosophy is thinking critically about thinking, it is a liberating activity because philosophers confront us with our prejudices and arouse our curiosity without satisfying it. They show us what they were and how philosophy inspired them to live productive lives. They did not seek disciples but encouraged others to philosophise with them. We cannot escape from philosophy because we philosophise when we reflect critically on how well we are living. Philosophy is, therefore, a meditation on who we are and what we can become: it is an eye for an I.

An Eye for An I: Philosophies of Personal Power

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

GOKO Publishing

The ultimate test of management is performance - the achievement of actual results. Why, then, do Australian managers concern themselves with their colleagues' personalities and motives? Why have they become infatuated with emotional intelligence and, in bizarre cases, with spiritual intelligence? Traditionally, managers who performed earned the right to argue with their colleagues. Nowadays, individuals who argue are said to lack 'soft skills' while a sad few are thought to be suffering from a personality disorder. The popularity of soft-skill management has created psychomanagers: managers who have entered into a Faustian bargain with psychologists. Some managers work with psychologists to master themselves; others work with psychologists to master other people. As psychomanagement requires specialised knowledge, many Australian managers have yielded their authority to counsellors, coaches and consultants, many of whom believe that human behaviour is determined by internal and external forces over which individuals have little or no control. Accordingly, psychologists have laboured to absorb the idea of the free and responsible individual into a pseudo-scientific framework that denies moral agency. The result is that ideas of 'right' and 'wrong' have been replaced with 'healthy' and 'sick'. In their pursuit of a 'therapeutic state', psychologists have medicalised morality and managers have embraced powerful myths about minds, motive-forces, personality traits, social conditioning, leadership, occupational stress and mental illness. Consequently, the twin ideas of personal freedom and responsibility have been sabotaged. Freud, Maslow, Eysenck, Skinner and other influential psychologists have denied, or minimised the importance of, personal responsibility. And insofar as managers have entered into an unholy alliance with them, they too have minimised personal responsibility at the workplace.
This book is about Australian managers and their long-standing love affair with psychologists. For fifty years the author has studied, taught and consulted with managers and 'waltzed' with several famous psychologists and an infamous psychiatrist. Fortunately, they represented both sides of the debate about personal responsibility and human freedom. This book is, therefore, a personal and selective account of a professional life spent studying the problematic relationship between managers and psychologists.

Psychomanagement: An Australian Affair

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.

Overcoming Managerialism: Power, Authority and Rhetoric at Work

Managerialism has often been defined as an ideology, according to which the effective and efficient running of commercial firms, not-for-profit organizations and public administrations is delivered by individuals who possess superior formal knowledge and expertise in management. Arguing to their exclusive education, managers deprive employers and employees of decision-making power and ensconce themselves systematically in the power structure of workplaces to advance their own interests and agenda. The central thesis of Overcoming Managerialism is that resisting and overcoming managerialism necessitates the re-establishing of the conceptual distinction between power and authority. Second, it requires the rehabilitating of authoritative management as a protection against authoritarian practices. Authority, properly conceived, redirects power to technical experts and professionals and thereby limits managerial power. The authors discuss ten contentions which, taken together, represent a theory of the foundation of management in which authority, power and rhetoric are central concepts. This book combines academic scholarship with a readable critique of managerialism. It will be of interest to both management scholars and students.

de Gruyter

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Spillane, Robert. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Spillane, Robert

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Spillane, Robert. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Philosophical Foundations of Management Thought

The Superintendent of the Future: Strategy and Action for Achieving Academic Excellence

Personality and Performance: Foundations for Managerial Psychology

Philosophy of Leadership: The Power of Authority

The Philosophical Foundations of Management Thought

An Eye for An I: Philosophies of Personal Power

Psychomanagement: An Australian Affair

The Philosophical Foundations of Management Thought

Overcoming Managerialism: Power, Authority and Rhetoric at Work

Overcoming Managerialism: Power, Authority and Rhetoric at Work