Discussion: View Thread

Keijo Rasanan wrote :

<<Students seem to be happy to experiment with new activities but
they are not willing the go into a more fundamental questioning of what is
happening in the working life. Have you experienced similar things? How are
you working with this dilemma? Do we have to abandon some of the best
values in critical academic work in favour of entertaining the students
with new classroom practices?>>

This a key dilemma of management education. How customer-centred are we to
be? What responsibility do we have for questioning students' preferences?
Clearly, shifts are happening in (the marketisation of) higher educationn
all over the world that make a producer-centred approach progressively less
viable.

Students often expect that we will equip them to be better managers but are
resistant to reflecting upon their acquisition of the frame of reference
that (i) defines for them what is `better management' and (ii) suggests to
them how `better management' might be practically realised.

It is no good assuming that students share, or can be made to acquire -
except perhaps temporarily and instrumentally, -academics' preoccupations
and values with respect to what `better management' is. But it is possible,
I think, to draw attention to the limits and internal contradictions in
their frame of reference re (i) and (ii) above.

At the heart of this process is an exploration of how theory inescapably
informs practice. It is not a matter of theory OR practice, but of what sort
of theory is to inform practice. Here there is potentially a degree of
overlap between students' frames of reference and those of us who are
committed to critical academic work. Arguably, we are in a position to
highlight limits and contradictions.

The way to make this connection is, I think, NOT to send them off to read
our boring academic papers (written primarily for our peers) without FIRST
exploring how and why these papers might be relevant for expanding their
worldviews and therefore enabling them to revise and enrich their current
worldviews, including the `fading away' of motivation when they are
encouraged to read more critical texts on BPR, TQM,etc

I accept that this is much easier said than done!

Does anyone else have any interest in this issue or suggestions about how to
address it?

Hugh


Hugh Willmott

Home Page : http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/hr22/hcwhome

Web site for Critical Management Studies Conference 1999:

http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/hr22/cmsconference

Web site for Association for Accountancy and Business Affairs:

http://visar.csustan.edu/aaba/aaba.htm

Hugh Willmott
Professor of Organizational Analysis
Manchester School of Management
UMIST
Manchester M60 1QD
United Kingdom

Tel : 0161 200 3412
Fax : 0161 200 3505
email : Hugh.Willmott@umist.ac.uk

My background is that of a practitioner in the UK. For a number of years I ran management development programmes in-house that tried hard to incorporate critical perspectives.

I found some low risk (and low profile) strategies for opening up space for critical discussion in management education and development. One thing I always tried to do was to give the theory or fad of the week an author and a time span. So the theoretical introduction would give a sentence or two about the background of the author and at what approximate time the theory began to be influential. Occasionally someone (bless them) would be interested enough to ask a question like - why is it that a lot of these things seem to start in US consultancy houses. Isn't the UK different? Or, if this has only been around since the 80s how did we judge managers before? Or, why is it that disability legislation has a longer history than race or sex discrimination?

Which is the kind of opening no facilitator of a critical persuasion fails to exploit.

Even if nobody comes up with a question it doesn't stop me qualifying things with statements like 'this is the theory', 'the current view is' and 'as a result of this context this happened'. I figure if they go out of the classroom with the idea that TQM or management competency frameworks were created on the sixth day and are going to be with them forever as managers they sure didn't get it from me. And a few qualified statements here and there don't get noticed by the people who are there to get the answer and get out again i.e. I don't come to official attention as having a political teaching style.

I've always been wary of the idea that as trainers and academics we give the gift of criticality to students/managers. I've been knocked out over the years with the number of thoughtful and questioning managers I've met. People who want to connect what they are doing to larger issues and to understand why they live in such a contradictory environment. Sometimes it is a coping mechanism and for them and sometimes it comes from their own stubborn nature. OK they haven't been the majority but then the thoughtful, reflective or reflexive, as far as I can see, aren't the majority in any work context.

Linda Perriton

Research Student
Department of Management Learning
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YX
United Kingdom

In my opinion, the primary job of education is to teach students "to
solve problems". All business management is essentially problem-solving,
so you must provide techniques, show examples, and use lectures & cases
to expose students to the science of problem-solving.

You cannot educate the students of 1999 to solve the problems of 2020.
You can only equip them with the necessary tools.

Hugh WILLMOTT wrote:
>
> Keijo Rasanan wrote :
>
> <<Students seem to be happy to experiment with new activities but
> they are not willing the go into a more fundamental questioning of what is
> happening in the working life. Have you experienced similar things? How are
> you working with this dilemma? Do we have to abandon some of the best
> values in critical academic work in favour of entertaining the students
> with new classroom practices?>>
>
> This a key dilemma of management education. How customer-centred are we to
> be? What responsibility do we have for questioning students' preferences?
> Clearly, shifts are happening in (the marketisation of) higher educationn
> all over the world that make a producer-centred approach progressively less
> viable.
>
> Students often expect that we will equip them to be better managers but are
> resistant to reflecting upon their acquisition of the frame of reference
> that (i) defines for them what is `better management' and (ii) suggests to
> them how `better management' might be practically realised.
>
> It is no good assuming that students share, or can be made to acquire -
> except perhaps temporarily and instrumentally, -academics' preoccupations
> and values with respect to what `better management' is. But it is possible,
> I think, to draw attention to the limits and internal contradictions in
> their frame of reference re (i) and (ii) above.
>
> At the heart of this process is an exploration of how theory inescapably
> informs practice. It is not a matter of theory OR practice, but of what sort
> of theory is to inform practice. Here there is potentially a degree of
> overlap between students' frames of reference and those of us who are
> committed to critical academic work. Arguably, we are in a position to
> highlight limits and contradictions.
>
> The way to make this connection is, I think, NOT to send them off to read
> our boring academic papers (written primarily for our peers) without FIRST
> exploring how and why these papers might be relevant for expanding their
> worldviews and therefore enabling them to revise and enrich their current
> worldviews, including the `fading away' of motivation when they are
> encouraged to read more critical texts on BPR, TQM,etc
>
> I accept that this is much easier said than done!
>
> Does anyone else have any interest in this issue or suggestions about how to
> address it?
>
> Hugh
>
> Hugh Willmott
>
> Home Page : http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/hr22/hcwhome
>
> Web site for Critical Management Studies Conference 1999:
>
> http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/hr22/cmsconference
>
> Web site for Association for Accountancy and Business Affairs:
>
> http://visar.csustan.edu/aaba/aaba.htm
>
> Hugh Willmott
> Professor of Organizational Analysis
> Manchester School of Management
> UMIST
> Manchester M60 1QD
> United Kingdom
>
> Tel : 0161 200 3412
> Fax : 0161 200 3505
> email : Hugh.Willmott@umist.ac.uk

--
Dick Montgomery, General Manager
21st Century Co-operative
Our Mission - "Help You Increase Sales"
http://www.chemmgrs.com

PROBLEM SOLVING : PEDAGOGY, SCIENCE AND MANAGEMENT

Richard Montgomery wrote:

1. <<In my opinion, the primary job of education is to teach students "to
solve problems".

RESPONSE : Should we not rather be enabling them to learn how to deconstruct
and diagnose problems before we can presume to tell them how to solve
problems?

2. <<All business management is essentially problem-solving,
so you must provide techniques, show examples, and use lectures & cases
to expose students to the science of problem-solving.>>

RESPONSE : Does anyone else have a difficulty with the idea of `THE science
of problem-solving'? Aren't there several value-based conceptions of science
which, ultimately, is a historically and culturally diverse institution -
much like management, perhaps. If so, isn't it a wee bit presumptuous to
assert that techniques, examples, etc. are relevant irrespective of the
model or theory of science to which one subscribes?

3. <<You cannot educate the students of 1999 to solve the problems of 2020.
You can only equip them with the necessary tools.>>

RESPONSE : Who is to decide which tools are "necessary"? Should we not also
seek to expose students to the problems involved in educating students about
the problematics of solving problems?


Is my understanding of science, management and pedagogy fundamentally
flawed?

Is the idea of `the science of problem solving' part of the solution or
part of the problem?

Some further food for thought:

`Defeated and battle-scarred managers retreat to management seminars and
universities for tools that may give them a better chance in the next
encounter. Often, they are mystified by what went wrong ... '

- Lee G. Bolman and Terence E. Deal, Modern Approaches to Understanding and
Managing Organizations, Jossey Bass, 1984, p.2

Hugh

Hugh Willmott

Home Page : http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/hr22/hcwhome

Web site for Critical Management Studies Conference 1999:

http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/hr22/cmsconference

Web site for Association for Accountancy and Business Affairs:

http://visar.csustan.edu/aaba/aaba.htm

Hugh Willmott
Professor of Organizational Analysis
Manchester School of Management
UMIST
Manchester M60 1QD
United Kingdom

Tel : 0161 200 3412
Fax : 0161 200 3505
email : Hugh.Willmott@umist.ac.uk

I'll add three more issues to Hugh's list. Teaching students how to
identify the real problems in complex, messy situations; how to
differentiate problems (solvable) from dilemmas (unsolvable except,
possibly, by changing the paradigm); and how to do all this within a
framework of uncertainty, ambiguity, and permanent white water
(perpetual change).

Ruth
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ruth H. Axelrod | For every complex
Organizational Behavior & Development | problem, there is a
The George Washington University | simple solution--
Home: | and it's wrong.
(301)593-4938 |
11372 Baroque Road, Silver Spring, MD 20901 | H. L. Mencken
Mailto: raxelrod@gwu.edu |

Again, in my opinion, "All business management is essentially
problem-solving."

John Meehan wrote:
>
> Richard,
>
> Isn't the idea of "problem" relative to context? For example, while pay rises might be problematic for shareholders they may be seen as solving problems for poorly paid workers, or managers beset by industrial relations problems.

Isn't this a problem? If so, how would you solve it.
>
> The idea that there is a "science of problem-solving" leaves me wondering what role this implies for intuition, politics, networking and all manner of equally valid but "unscientific" means for solving organisational problems.

Doesn't it take good science to mesh all those together in reaching a
sound conclusion?
>
> You raise an interesting point about the role of educators. How can we know the "tools" we offer today are in any way relevant to the problems of 2020? Surely better to seek to equip students with Critical faculties so that they can better understand the processes producing and maintaining their current social contexts so that they can appreciate the context specific problems "problems" which are produced by the tensions between different social influences - whatever these problems may be in 2020?

Obviously, you can't know what the problems of 2020 are today. So you
must teach a basic approach which they can adapt and expand on as they
grow.
>
> On a different note. I recently asked a group of thrid year undergraduates why they were studying for a degree. I was gratified that they saw it as offering lgitimacy in the "world of work". When I probed deeper it seems > this legitmacy was not about technical competency but simply about "speaking the right language".

And having the right attitude.
>
> John Meehan
> Liverpool Business School
> John Moores University
>
> >In my opinion, the primary job of education is to teach students "to
> >solve problems". All business management is essentially problem-solving,
> >so you must provide techniques, show examples, and use lectures & cases
> >to expose students to the science of problem-solving.
> >
> >You cannot educate the students of 1999 to solve the problems of 2020.
> >You can only equip them with the necessary tools.
> >
> >Hugh WILLMOTT wrote:
> >>
> >> Keijo Rasanan wrote :
> >>
> >> <<Students seem to be happy to experiment with new activities but
> >> they are not willing the go into a more fundamental questioning of what
> is
> >> happening in the working life. Have you experienced similar things? How
> are
> >> you working with this dilemma? Do we have to abandon some of the best
> >> values in critical academic work in favour of entertaining the students
> >> with new classroom practices?>>
> >>
> >> This a key dilemma of management education. How customer-centred are we
> to
> >> be? What responsibility do we have for questioning students' preferences?
> >> Clearly, shifts are happening in (the marketisation of) higher educationn
> >> all over the world that make a producer-centred approach progressively
> less
> >> viable.
> >>
> >> Students often expect that we will equip them to be better managers but
> are
> >> resistant to reflecting upon their acquisition of the frame of reference
> >> that (i) defines for them what is `better management' and (ii) suggests
> to
> >> them how `better management' might be practically realised.
> >>
> >> It is no good assuming that students share, or can be made to acquire -
> >> except perhaps temporarily and instrumentally, -academics'
> preoccupations
> >> and values with respect to what `better management' is. But it is
> possible,
> >> I think, to draw attention to the limits and internal contradictions in
> >> their frame of reference re (i) and (ii) above.
> >>
> >> At the heart of this process is an exploration of how theory inescapably
> >> informs practice. It is not a matter of theory OR practice, but of what
> sort
> >> of theory is to inform practice. Here there is potentially a degree of
> >> overlap between students' frames of reference and those of us who are
> >> committed to critical academic work. Arguably, we are in a position to
> >> highlight limits and contradictions.
> >>
> >> The way to make this connection is, I think, NOT to send them off to
> read
> >> our boring academic papers (written primarily for our peers) without
> FIRST
> >> exploring how and why these papers might be relevant for expanding their
> >> worldviews and therefore enabling them to revise and enrich their current
> >> worldviews, including the `fading away' of motivation when they are
> >> encouraged to read more critical texts on BPR, TQM,etc
> >>
> >> I accept that this is much easier said than done!
> >>
> >> Does anyone else have any interest in this issue or suggestions about how
> to
> >> address it?
> >>
> >> Hugh
> >>
> >> Hugh Willmott
> >>
> >> Home Page : http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/hr22/hcwhome
> >>
> >> Web site for Critical Management Studies Conference 1999:
> >>
> >> http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/hr22/cmsconference
> >>
> >> Web site for Association for Accountancy and Business Affairs:
> >>
> >> http://visar.csustan.edu/aaba/aaba.htm
> >>
> >> Hugh Willmott
> >> Professor of Organizational Analysis
> >> Manchester School of Management
> >> UMIST
> >> Manchester M60 1QD
> >> United Kingdom
> >>
> >> Tel : 0161 200 3412
> >> Fax : 0161 200 3505
> >> email : Hugh.Willmott@umist.ac.uk
> >
> >--
> >Dick Montgomery, General Manager
> >21st Century Co-operative
> >Our Mission - "Help You Increase Sales"
> >http://www.chemmgrs.com
> >

--
Dick Montgomery, General Manager
21st Century Co-operative
Our Mission - "Help You Increase Sales"
http://www.chemmgrs.com

>Richard Montgomery wrote: Again, in my opinion, "All business management is essentially
>problem-solving."

To be fair I don't think the original posts from Hugh and others were questioning the idea that management was largely about problem-solving. What it did (rightly) raise an eyebrow over was the characterisation of such activities, and the academic contribution to them, as 'scientific'.

I think it is important to ask questions about why management education appears to have such a vested interest in the portrayal of itself as 'scientific'. What consequences does it fear if it fashioned itself as an 'art' instead? Brian Appleyard wrote an interesting article in the U.K. Sunday Times 30/2/99 magazine section re science, technology and truth which touches on some of the areas that this debate covers.

What is science? Isn't science the building of theory around observed
experiments, and thus the reduction of chaos to order? What is technical
or technology. Can't technology be built for social, governmental
issues, as well as for electronics, chemistry etc? What are the
necessary steps required to understand and resolve a problem?

Problem-solving is very definitely a management science. In fact, most
all job descriptions and salary slots in industry include a section
indicating the types of problems the incumbent must be able to solve.



--
Dick Montgomery, General Manager
21st Century Co-operative
Our Mission - "Help You Increase Sales"
http://www.chemmgrs.com