本土管理研究的哲学基础思考——对李平、李鑫的一些观点的讨论

针对近来不少学者围绕本土管理研究与中国传统哲学的关系进行的讨论,对一些学者的观点提出了商榷意见:认为李平没有充分考虑西方哲学20世纪后的后现代转向及其对管理学研究带来的重大影响;同时也不赞同李平提出的中国传统文化根基在道家、而非儒家的观点;传统的道家、儒家各有所长,对于本土管理研究来说更重要的是对二者加以融合,而非区分.此外,李鑫关于“中庸”的讨论也值得商榷,中庸的本质应该在于“诚”,而非像李鑫所描述的那样.     

中国本土管理研究与中国传统哲学

中国本土管理研究必须深深地扎根于中国传统哲学之中。中国传统哲学最为本源的基础在于道家,而不在于儒家。以"道"、"阴阳"、"悟"为核心内容,中国传统哲学是关于智慧的哲学,提倡科学与艺术的互动与整合;西方哲学是关于知识的哲学,主张科学与艺术的分离,因此东西方哲学有着根本的差异。但是,正是由于东西方哲学两者之间本质上的差异,双方又可互补,由此可见,中国传统哲学与西方哲学(包括西方科学哲学)是相生相克的阴阳关系。中国传统哲学必需向西方学习,但是中国传统哲学不能放弃自身的特色和优势,绝不能将其所谓"西方科学化"。中国传统哲学与西方哲学对中国本土管理研究都必要,但两者的重要性是非对称的,中国本土管理研究应以中国传统哲学为主,以西方哲学为辅。     

哲学何以在场:中国本土管理研究的视角

《管理学报》曾相继发表过4篇讨论"中国本土管理研究与中国传统哲学(文化)"的论文。在简要评述上述4位学者在"问题意识"、"立场/主张"、"研究取向"上的异同后,进一步讨论了"哲学在场"与中国本土管理研究的关系。然后,结合自身哲学观形成的简要历程,认为"西方哲学在场"足以支持中国本土管理研究。中国本土管理研究当下的挑战不在于是否要创建基于"中国文化-中国传统哲学"的新范式",而是如何改善研究者的态度、接近事实以及提升研究者的智慧。     

管理学的元问题与管理哲学——也谈《出路与展望:直面中国管理实践》的逻辑瑕疵

韩巍指出了<出路与展望:直面中国管理实践>的逻辑瑕疵.这些逻辑瑕疵体现了中国管理学界深层次的痛苦,它本质上来源于对中国管理实践中传统与现实、工具价值与本体价值之间联系的割裂.不从工具价值与本体价值融合的角度来考察中国管理实践的内涵,将永远不会找到中国本土管理学登堂入室的门径;同样,不从传统与现实融合的角度考察中国管理实践的内涵,"中国传统管理思想究竟有用没用"也将永远只会停留在"中体西用"和"西体中用"的陷阱中无法自拔.管理哲学通过对管理学主流研究范式的理性批判,会为中国本土管理学提供一个反思与探索的向导.不重视思辫的方法,一概排斤哲学对管理学的渗入,将极有可能使得若干"管理学在中国"的讨论变成原地转圈.     

两部企业宪法蕴含的中国本土管理元素探析——基于鞍钢宪法和华为基本法的研究

鞍山钢铁公司和华为公司的发展和成功模式凝练而成的2部企业宪法分别成为计划经济时代和市场经济时代的经典企业管理纲领,它们根植于中国经济的土壤和中国的管理情境,其成功经验和管理模式具有可参照性、可移植性。结合2个公司的成长轨迹,深入分析企业宪法内容,可以发现其蕴含的3个主要的中国本土管理元素:整体平衡的管理哲学、"集体主义"的组织行为和英雄领袖的魅力型领导,每个本土管理元素又包含着更多具体的中国式管理理念和方法。     

中国本土管理研究的回顾与展望

针对中国本土管理研究是应注重"本土意义"还是"普世价值",是"构建理论"还是"指导实践"进行讨论,提出"实践本土化,理论全球化"。以此为基础,对比解释是在多文化下中国本土管理研究框定问题的有效选择,中国本土管理研究的研究方法应采用规范方法、全球语言。最后,寻找一般规律、全球思维与管理实践的融合、本土与国际的多元互动应是中国本土管理研究未来发展方向。     

中国本土管理研究路径探索——基于实践理论的视角

在经历了30多年的发展并从西方引入大量的管理理论之后,中国本土管理研究应该如何进一步发展成为学界探讨和争论的热点。回应学界最近的讨论,本文认为,以研究本土管理实践为重心是中国管理研究能够取得突破性进展的关键。针对学界在实现路径上的疑惑并推动对本土管理实践的深入研究,本文介绍了实践理论(practice theory)的视角及其对中国本土管理研究的重要启示。透过这一视角,本文构建了基于中国管理实践研究的实现路径,探讨了中国管理实践的特殊性及亟须研究的相关问题,并对基于中国管理实践研究的理论贡献和现实指导价值进行了展望和探讨。     

中国管理学派本土研究的路径探索

随着中国经济的迅速发展,本土管理研究的重要性日趋突显.然而,目前中国管理学界仍然缺乏相应的本土管理研究,如何探索和创建基于中国管理实践的管理理论是海内外华人学者共同面临的重要研究课题.在分析当前中国管理理论研究现状的基础上,认为本土管理研究可以围绕3个路径进行探索,以期对实现“中国现代管理学”的目标有所裨益.     

中国本土管理学何以可能——对“独特性”的追问、确证与范式革命

将中国本土管理存在的基础建立在中国管理情境的特殊性之上是不可靠的,国内管理学术界当前主流的情境化研究不一定能产生中国本土管理学。这是因为,由于辅助假设的存在,情境独特性既无法被确证,也无法被否证,因此,中国本土管理学必须立基于视角的独特性。视角的独特性而非情境的独特性才是中国本土管理学可靠的基础;从而也是本土研究与非本土研究的真正分水岭,并且,仅有视角的独特性还不够,按照拉卡托斯的观点,这种视角的独特性必须强大到突破原有理论的硬核,才有可能成为新的理论体系。这种对原来理论体系硬核的突破无疑就是库恩所说的范式革命。     

中国本土管理研究的理论与实践问题:对徐淑英的访谈

如何处理好“管理研究的学术严谨性与实践相关性”问题,是管理学者最大的挑战之一.中国大陆管理学研究应从仅仅追求严谨性转变为既严谨又有着现实或潜在的社会影响.中国管理学者需要真正地进行探索性研究来发展中国管理的新构念和理论,依赖于现有文献的模仿和构建不会带来根本的创新.用中国的文化来理解当代中国的管理实践是构建本土理论的尚佳方法.本土研究既可以促进本地管理知识的发展,又可以通过展示中国的管理,区分与西方管理可能的相似或不同,以提升全球管理知识.没有本土的理论,就不能进行真正的比较研究.     

Power,authority and legitimacy

Management, human resources, organization, control, leadership, etc., all seem to be just so many euphemisms for power, and this suggests a discourse of management and organization that calls things by their proper name. This paper on the contrary stresses the need to resolve the concept of ‘power’ itself into more differentiated notions, and proposes that clarification may be derived from distinctions once explicit in the vocabulary of Classical antiquity, but lost in modern European languages. It argues that nothing but confusion in thinking about organizations, management and legitimation can result from the failure to recognize that the phenomena this vocabulary identifies and distinguishes are irreducibly different.     

A new lease for life? The return of vitalism in management and organization studies

This paper starts from a growing interest in the concept of concern, lived experience or “inhabiting” as part of the so-called “affective turn”. My main argument is that the notion of concern cannot be thought or understood without the concept of life. The concept of life, however, is somewhat of a taboo topic in the social sciences. I hold, nevertheless, that in order to reflect on their assumptions and to define concern for their own studies, scholars need to think about life and make a choice regarding the various approaches that can be taken. I therefore present and compare four vitalist approaches: romanticism and Lebensphilosophie, vitalism as ethos and pathos, neuroecosociality as well as vitalism as becoming.     

Effects of the implementation of information technology on employees' strain and job satisfaction: a context-dependent approach

The effects on staff of the implementation of new office information technology were investigated in ten companies in Vienna using a longitudinal design. Strain and satisfaction of 331 employees (implementation sample: n = 212; control sample: n = 119) were measured at five points in time over a period of 22 months. The study is based on a context-dependent approach. Personal factors (individual differences, external load) were assessed by questionnaires, and situational factors (job design, implementation content and implementation context) by objective measures. The impact of these factors on employees' strain responses was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM). While the implementation of new technology as such made no significant contribution to the explanation of strain variables, a reasonable model fit was achieved when implementation characteristics were taken into account. The data suggest that negative effects of implementations must be expected if (1) adaptational demands do not include the enhancement of employee qualifications, (2) character-based user interfaces are not replaced, and (3) employees have few or no opportunities to participate in the implementation process.     

Consequences of work-family conflict on employee well-being over time

The effects of work-family conflict on the well-being of a diverse sample of 342 non-professional employees from the greater Los Angeles area were examined. Data were collected at two points in time, and a rigorous research design was employed. The effects of self-report bias were considered by controlling for social desirability bias, and by collecting two sources of data (i.e. self-reports and co-workers reports). The results revealed that work-family conflict predicted employee well-being over and above social desirability bias. In addition, analyses were consistent when both self-reports and co-workers reports were utilized. Finally, work-family conflict was a longitudinal predictor of employee's positive well-being. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses were consistent across self-reports and co-worker reports.     

Policy Goals for Health and Safety

Health management and safety regulation are separate disciplines but share the aim to extend expectancy of life in good health. The need to improve cost-effectiveness calls for their co-ordinated management according to a unified rationale. Three guiding principles of accountability, demonstrable net benefit and a uniform measure of performance, have been laid out in Canada by the Joint Committee on Health and Safety. They call for open accounting in terms of (health-related quality-adjusted) life expectancy. The principles are utilitarian in format but, it is argued, inequity is naturally diminished in the process of optimizing cost-effectiveness through maximum marginal returns. Comments are made on practical implementation. The need for public consent in practice calls for two additional principles reflecting fair procedure and sovereignty of the citizens. It is concluded that public health and safety measures should be surveyed, documented for cost-effectiveness and prioritized for improvement.     

Ethical Mindsets of Christianity and Confucianism: A Comparative Study

This study investigates the application of an organizational mindset instrument to compare the ethical mindsets between Italy and Taiwan. Results suggest that there are not significant differences, but Italian business is perceived to practice some Machiavellianism that puts results ahead of ethical concerns.     

Defining Spirituality of Work

There is a current surge of writings on spirituality and related topics. For instance, Woodward (1997) has pointed out that since Thomas Moore's publication of Care of the Soul in 1994 there have been nearly 800books published with the word soul in the title. These run all the way from Chicken Soup for theWoman's Soul (Canfield et al., 1996) to A Guide to Liberating YourSoul (Barrett, 1995). Spirituality of work is a big part of this surge. Definitionsof spirituality of work seem to vary widely. Bowman (1998, p. 8) in his `reviewof the phenomenon of spirituality of work' found `Definitions of the term spirituality in the context of the Spirituality of Work troublesome and particularly subjective. Many writers do not even attempt definitions.' The purpose of this article is to review the concept of spirituality of work in its historical and current use and to propose a comprehensive definition.     

WebStress: a web interface to explore a multidatabase bibliographic corpus on occupational stress

A bibliographic study on a multidisciplinary subject, such as occupational stress, requires a multidatabase query facility. Given this, we searched eight databases belonging to different fields (medicine, psychology, etc.) and from different countries. Thus, more than 26000 references on occupational stress were gathered. A bibliographic corpus of this sort is unusable because of the heterogeneous format of the records and the number of duplicate entries. Considering the limitations of commercial programs, we have developed a system, called WebStress, for reformatting the data and removing duplicates. The huge number of references and the research needs of updating and searching have necessitated the addition of several other functions to WebStress. Therefore WebStress comprises a web interface that makes it possible to search the corpus with advanced features (using clustering, a specialized thesaurus on stress and Boolean queries). In addition to the usual bibliographic queries on a specific database such as Medline, WebStress provides bibliometric analysis of the corpus, which might contribute to a detailed analysis on occupational stress in order to highlight the networks of researchers and to find the main topics studied in this area. WebStress is not yet available to researchers in general. It is being further developed, and also permission needs to be obtained from the eight commercial bibliographic databases that it consults.     

The myth of change management: A reflection on personal change and its lessons for leadership development

Abstract

In this article I reflect upon my own personal learning when faced with significant individual change, leaving a corporate role to start my own business and returning to serious study after twenty-five years of neglect. I look at the relationship between individual and organizational change, trying to reconcile the mechanistic models of change ingrained by years of practice with new insights gleaned from my own personal transition. Implications for change agents include taking a more adaptive and multi-dimensional approach to change, rather than vainly trying to manage it. For people developers it may question the way we develop leaders and managers to cope with change. And all of us may decide we can be better at learning how to embrace perpetual change and perpetual learning as part of the same unpredictable process.