Management Theory. A Critical and Reflexive Reading

Abstract

NANETTE MONIN 2004 Management Theory. A Critical and Reflexive Reading In the Management, Organisations and Society Series Edited by Barbara Czarniawska & Martha Feldman Routledge London & New York One way to read Monin's text is as a 'methods' book, but one that is refreshingly out of the ordinary for the management discipline. In it the author describes the eclectic 'scriptive' method of text analysis that she developed for her PhD research project and is able to use in her current work in the Department of Management and Business at Massey University in New Zealand. Based on literary criticism, deconstruction, reader-response and rhetoric theories, the scriptive method involves a tripartite process of reading a text. Firstly, a 'dominant' reading focuses on the author, to provide a summary of (what the reader understands is) their argument(s). Monin chose this Derridean label in an effort to escape a realist mode of analysis-also calling it 'paraphrasis', defined as 'a rewording of the original text' (p.77). secondly, an in-depth 'critical' reading focuses on the text. The backbone of her method, this phase examines three more 'P's that are borrowed from rhetoric theory and practice-'performance', 'perspective' and 'persuasion'. Thirdly, a 'reflexive' reading focuses on the reader, exploring how they have constructed their individual interpretation. This final phase Monin calls 'perpension'-the fifth 1P'-which she defines as 'a process of apprehending, considering and evaluating and "weighing up" the outcomes of my reading to this point' (p. 80). Monin then applies her scriptive method to analyse selected parts of five classic management texts: Frederick Taylor's The Principles of Scientific Management, Mary Follett's Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett, Peter Drucker's The Practice of Management, Henry Mintzberg's The Nature of Managerial Work, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter's The Change Masters: Corporate Entrepreneurs at Work. Monin concludes that four of the texts contain a long-held and institutionalized Utopian metanarrative and root metaphor that provides ten 'precepts', or rules of moral conduct for guiding the practice of management and its theories over much of the 20th century. This is a heroic story of progress in the form of a journey that instructs managers to discard old incorrect theories and practices in favour of the map that is offered, which will ensure that the hero discovers the right question and its answer. When he (the hero is strongly gendered as male) reaches this Utopian future place, the manager will enjoy many powerful roles that will enable him to control his employees, with whom to fight others different from them, but who are, nevertheless, resources for meeting the primary financial needs of both himself and his organisation (pp. 189-191). Follett's is the exception-and noticeably so, as her text contradicts nine of the ten precepts (her only similarity is in her criticisms of the past and suggestions for management in the future) (p. 193). Monin proposes that her evidence of Follett's different perspective can explain the discipline's long neglect of her ideas, and that a recent disciplinary interest in Follett's texts promises new narratives and worldviews to guide future theory and practice of management (pp. 196-197). Taking up Monin's invitation to use her scriptive method, I follow up my 'dominant' reading outlined above with a 'critical' reading of her text that identifies a number of ways the author performs her text. Firstly, Monin adopts a role of poet and literary scholar, which she signals from the beginning, when she introduces a poem by Robert Graves and a Shakespearian quotation in blank verse before even exercising her own voice. In her arresting opening paragraph she then constructs herself as a hybrid poet/management theorist: I read poetry and I read management theory. Sometimes I read poetry in search of a good theory and sometimes I read management theory as if it were a poem (p. …