Abstract
This chapter looks at management research in general and the contribution of two cybernetic management approaches in particular. It starts by proposing a new paradigmatic matrix structure for the field of business-related sciences that challenges Burrell and Morgan’s matrix of sociological paradigms. Two quadrants of the matrix are occupied by two variants of cybernetic management: the St. Gallen Approach to Management as espoused by Hans Ulrich, and the pure Cybernetic Management approach introduced by Stafford Beer and detailed by Raúl Espejo, Roger Harnden, and Markus Schwaninger. I will briefly explain the two dimensions of the matrix, then discuss the four paradigms, and end with an explanation of how the two cybernetic paradigms differ both from the two mainstream paradigms, which are called Management and Traditional Business Administration, and from each other. Lastly, I will analyze the two cybernetic management approaches with regards to their respective future.
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Notes
- 1.
The terms “paradigm” and “research program” are used interchangeably in this paper. While I prefer the Lakatosian (1978) term “research program,” I acknowledge that the term “paradigm” is more widely used and has become something like a household item, so that it has lost most of the original denotations and connotations intended by Kuhnians. It is interesting to note that Kuhn in the second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions suggested replacing the term “paradigm” with “disciplinary matrix” (1970: 182), which is actually rather close to the Lakatosian notion of a “research program.”
- 2.
The purpose of the book was to enable managers to make organizations more efficient and effective by allowing them to see an organization from different metaphorical angles. The successful executive edition is another indication that the book is written from within the functionalist paradigm.
- 3.
I would regard Sumantra Goshal’s 2005 Academy of Management Learning and Education article the most recent and most serious attempt to encourage high-level self-reflection. Apart from replies in the next edition of AML&E, this attempt proved to be futile.
- 4.
The grand old man of German banking simply renamed his standard work on banking. Bank Business Administration became Bank-Management, while the content stayed the same (Hühn 2000).
- 5.
Time constraints do not allow a more detailed discussion of this point, therefore I merely refer to the Duhem-Quine thesis in criticizing Popper’s Falsificationism: How can a theory be falsified by the very facts which Popper does not trust to verify the theory? Popper’s theory is fatally flawed because he refused to accept that facts are theories themselves or at least based on theories (Blaug 1992: 38).
- 6.
Goshal (2005: 83) takes the standard ultimatum game as an example. A proposer is asked to divide a gift between himself and a responder. If the responder rejects the offered gift, both players end up empty-handed. Since all players are rational, the proposer should offer one cent (or whatever is the smallest unit) and the responder will accept, because she is then one cent richer than before. In experiments, that outcome is virtually unheard of. Most frequently, a 50:50 split is offered, because lesser offers are considered insulting to the responder. A unified rationality is postulated by game theory, despite it being totally unrealistic.
- 7.
Mayo was not really a psychologist, but a social-science expert trained and self-educated in a number of relevant disciplines.
- 8.
Peter Drucker (1964: 5) stated that “effectiveness rather than efficiency is essential in business”. Stafford Beer defined cybernetics as the science of effective organization.
- 9.
Strategy managers now create fit between internal company-specific activities, whereas in his old approach strategy managers created a fit between the market and a company. That means the central concept of fit is radically different from what it had been earlier, and also that strategizing no longer analyzes the market and then adapts the company, but only manages internal activities.
- 10.
Stafford Beer never tired of stressing that the VSM and the human nervous system are more than just similar, they are isomorphic with respect to each other.
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Hühn, M. (2012). Cybernetic Management Paradigms. In: Grösser, S., Zeier, R. (eds) Systemic Management for Intelligent Organizations. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29244-6_1
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