In today’s fast growing social, cultural and corporate world, the critical study of the management has become an integral part of the society. In this essay, It will be explained that it is important to study management and organisation critically from many different aspects of the business world. Effective management and comprising of effective managers, focus on both external and internal sides of the organisation. Organisations may be small or big, profit-oriented or non profit making each having different goals and objectives, offering various products and services. Organisations achieve their goal with the help of efficient managers. This paper focuses on relationships that build a business and why it is that these relationships are to be studied critically. The paper also discusses the corporate, social and cultural role of the management and managers. Section one is geared towards ethics as spoken about by Willmont, 1993 and how ethics play a role that should be observed in a critical sense so that employees can have a concrete stability within an organization. I lead into domination from how ethics are encountered from critical point of view as told by Morgan, 2006 . Section two focuses on the physical relationship between those we work with as explained in section one, through a metaphor by Morgan, 2006. I also examined Kline, 2001 in the outcome of these relationships that must be studied critically in order for a broad picture of an organisation to form. These two points, I suggest, make it imperative that we look critically at management and organisation. In the final section of this essay, I shall consider why it is that these subjects and relationships in an origination need to be studied critically.
Section One: Why ethics and domination in management are critically studied
Ethics are the matter of concern for every individual, business; every government and even for students. Therefore, I feel it is very important to define the term ethics first. It can be defined as the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation. At personal level ethics may be referred as the rules followed by the individual to spend his personal life. In corporate sector ethics are meant to be concerned with truth and justice. It may be as fair competition, public relations, corporate behavior etc.
When it comes to each individual company, ‘ the unique patterns with which they carry out their responsibilities distinguish their ‘ family’ from those of their competitors’. To perpetuate the culture, each employee passes valued traits along to succeeding generations’ (Parker, M., 2000). Because of this, companies have always been, and will continue to change things in order to remain different, or stand apart, in a positive way from their competition.
It is highly thought to believe that ‘ strengthening of corporate culture enhances organisational performance by securing greater commitment and flexibility from employees’ (Willmott, 1993). Hence, the importance of fair treatment towards employees is understood. In order to keep productive and dedicated employees, it is essential that employees know that they are not only valued, but as well, appreciated. Along with commendation for their hard and consistent efforts, there should be no doubt in their minds of their purpose in the organisation. Some managers feel that they need to win the ‘ hearts and minds’ of employees, so as to have some control in not only how they behave, but too, in how they think and feel (Willmott, 1993). So obviously, management to some can be looked at as a form of not only organisational control, but critically through the control of one’s minds concerning their place in a company or organisation.
Apart from above, a critical study of the management and organisation in particular shows that the other side of the picture is quite indifferent. It pinpoints the domination of the organisations and how they use their employees and exploit them, within an organisational setup.
History tells that organisation has been linked with the processes of dominion. In such practices, individuals or groups discover methods to impose their will on others. This fact is proved by the ancestry of a modern organisation with its roots in olden society, through the development of military enterprise as well as empire, to its function in the modern world. For example, “ the incredible feat of organisation, planning, and control required to build the Great Pyramid at Giza. It is estimated that its construction involved work by perhaps 10, 000 persons over a period of twenty years. The pyramid is built from over 2. 3 million blocks of stone, each weighing two and one-half tons. These had to be quarried, cut to size, and transported over many miles, usually by the Nile River, when it was in flood. When we admire this and other pyramids today it is the incredible ingenuity and skill of the early Egyptians that strikes us from both an aesthetic and an organisational standpoint. From another standpoint, however, the pyramid is a metaphor of exploitation, symbolizing how the live and hard labor of thousands of people was used to serve and glorify privileged elite” (Morgan, 2006, p 293).
The aforesaid combination of accomplishment and exploitations is a characteristic of an organisation during the ages. Whether someone talks about the construction of the pyramids or a multinational corporation, or a family business, he finds irregular power relations that outcome in the mass working in the interest of the few. Surely, significant disparities in practice can be detected, and over the ages a lot has changed. It’s important to study working principles in a critical manner because those points are making a business what it is in the present age.
Section Two: The relationship and outcome between corporate power and employees
Arthur Miller’s renowned play “ Death of a Salesman” very rightly signifies the truth about the utilization and exploitation of employees. The play explores the terrible life and death of Willy Lorman. He had been serving as a salesman in Wagner Company for thirty-four years and traveled through New England for the years as Wagner’s “ New England Man.” At the age of sixty, Willy realizes that he faces difficulty in coping with the requirements of a road life. Hence, he requests the company for his posing in New York City to perform duty at his home base. He is suggested that his wages may be reduced from sixty-five dollars per to fifty, despite his close association with Howard’s father as well as the promises that had been made to him. Finally, Howard tells Willy that there is no need of him in the company. Consequently, Willy feels like ‘ an empty orange peel’; thirty-four years of his life have been eaten by the company like a piece of fruit and now he is being thrown away. Thus, he commits suicide (Morgan, 2006, p 297).
This play is like a metaphor and talks about the way organisations mostly utilize and exploit their employees. How organisations take and use according to their needs whilst throw the rest away. No doubt, exceptions are there. However, most of workers and managers of organisation find that their health as well as personal life is being sacrificed on the altars formed by the modern organisations. In today’s world, persons and even entire communities feel that they are being thrown away just like an empty orange peel, when there are of no use for the organisations they serve (Morgan, 2006, p 297).
Organisations have certain social and cultural effect and outcomes. (Klein, 2001) explores these effects and outcomes of corporate power in different spheres such as school and universities. He states that the marketers and cool hunters have consumed the best time of the decade to hustle the brands back to high school and to pour them into the model of the teenage outlaw. Most of the successful brands had represented their corporate head offices in the shape of private schools to refer them as ‘ campuses’ and at Nike World Campus, it nicknamed one edifice as ‘ the student union building.’ So much so by the late nineties, the cool hunters were going intellectual, the rage in the industry was to recast oneself less as a trendy club-hopper than as a bookish grad student. Actually, some claim that they are not cool hunters in any case; however, they are “ urban anthropologists.” (1-2)
(Klein, 2001, pg 2 ) The author further describes, “ And yet despite their up-to-the-minute outfits and intellectual pretensions, the brands and their keepers still found themselves on the wrong side of the school gate, a truly intolerable state of affairs and one that would not last long. American marketing consultant Jack Myers described the insufferable slight like this: ‘ The choice we have in this country is for our educational system to join the electronic age and communicate to students in ways they can understand and to which they can relate. Or our schools can continue to use outmoded forms of communications and become the daytime prisons for millions of young people, as they have become in our inner cities.’ This reasoning, which badly equates corporate access to the schools with access to modern technology, and by extension to the future itself, is at the core of how the brands have managed, over the course of only one decade, to all but eliminate the barrier between ads and education. It was technology that lent a new urgency to nineties chronic under funding: at the same time as schools were facing ever-deeper budget cuts, the costs of delivering a modern education were rising steeply, forcing many educators to look to alternative funding sources for help. Swept up by info-tech hype, schools that could not afford up-to-date textbooks were suddenly expected to provide students with audiovisual equipment, video cameras, classroom computers, desktop publishing capacity, the latest educational software programs, internet access-even, at some schools, video conferencing.”
It becomes crystal that organisations and its management play a pivotal role in bringing a change in the society and institutions. However, while doing so, they apply all ways and means to make their brand successful, without caring about the consequences as well as effects. As regards the positive influence, it seems justified but there is a need to rationalize the things to extent of negative effects, in the interest of public, society and the culture.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, organisations and the management have uniform functions as well as ethics to run their affairs efficiently with the help of managers to offer diverse products and services to their consumers. They entrust different kinds of responsibilities not only to meet the organisational goals but also to contribute their participation towards the society and culture that leaves long lasting effects. Critical study of organisations and management helps to identify social responsibilities and responsiveness, organisation’s domination, how organisations use and exploit their employees and its associated effects as well as outcomes of corporate power, and overall shortcomings in the organisational setup and its management. This was explained by Morgan, 2006 metaphor of “ Death of a Salesmen.” Critical examination in this behalf does not mean that someone is against the management. Instead, rather it is aimed at better organisation and management for the fitness of things and in the greater interest of employees, public, society, and the culture. Conclusively, there will probably never be a perfect way to manage. As explained above through readings of Kline, 2001, management has a constant changing role in the . But it’s fair to conclude that as times and the economy continues to change, we’ll always study management and organizations critically as our thoughts change with time.
