what Man in Man-agement? JC Spender Universitat Ramon Llull - ESADE (GRACO Research Group) Lund University (LUSEM)

managers, firms - markets too 3 concepts of ‘the firm’ ( Melé ) – legal (concession) – real entity (organic) – aggregate (collectivist) tensions ( Koslowski finis operis / finis operantis ) – absent from the legal & organic views – shareholders vs employees, customers, suppliers, regulators, etc. – stakeholders - with collective goals beyond self-interest – broader social aims - including non-participants/non-stakeholders – employees’ interests - special practice-grounded category resolutions – denial - greed and ‘anti-humanism’ ? – ‘humanism’ - align firm and individuals as independent ethical entities – political realism - exercise power to deny specific interests/utilities – extempore practice - local, context-specific, mixed strategy June IESE Humanizing the Firm

rationality logicality - rationality as an abstraction, universal, invariant – to humanize an already given self-interest? rationality, variable, contextually determined/constructed – social, feudal, ethical, moral, philosophical, institutional, etc. (rationalities A thru’ Z) – justification for P rather than Q ? – horror of relativism – reconciliation of pluralism/s (Osterloh & Frost) ? relevance of this debate, given our ‘bounded rationality’ – drift towards anti-rationalism ? – can rationalism be ameliorated, supported ? – uncertainty and the failure of all rationalities - judgment (agency) June IESE Humanizing the Firm3

human agency (dynamis - Crespo) ‘making a difference in the world’ determined vs under-determined worlds (Vico) constructivism as a philosophy of agency combination/synthesis of rationality & imagination ‘humanize’ = adopt Agentic Man in lieu of RM ? AM called forth by uncertainty - ethical entailments how to ‘manage’ AM? AM-based theory of organization - and markets? June IESE Humanizing the Firm4

managing Agentic Man harnessing both reason and agency – incentives - explicit or implicit (Frey) – internal ‘desire’ or essentialism ? – external social or ‘transcendental virtue’ ? – some other warrants ??? uncertainty problematizes world and individual – Simon’s BR world – AM does not know ‘who s/he is’ - or her/his agency ‘docility’ - denial of universal agency or ‘integrity’ – post-modern destabilization June IESE Humanizing the Firm5

Organization Man (1956) goal-situated re/construction of both self and context ‘docile’ man as led by others - Led Man organizational goal - logically prior - universal, or given by leaders? rhetoric, art of persuasion, leader’s toolkit – logos, ethos, pathos – trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) persuadable self becomes ‘of the organization’ – duty – indoctrinated – narrow social self ( engaged, contextualized, professionalized), integration of multiple ‘hats’ – employees as instrumentalized agents vs leader’s choices and ‘integrity’ June IESE Humanizing the Firm6

‘humanized’ organization leader-given goals - responsibilities AM’s abandonment of her/his prior self? – upside - committed agentic collaboration – downside - institutionalized evil Cicero and Quintilian (and Sen) human costs of reversing from RM into AM/leader ‘humanize’ = to contextualize in the human condition ? – leaders before ‘organizations’ – leadership as the essential practical search for ‘the good’ – BR as denial of any abstract universal or collective good June IESE Humanizing the Firm7

June IESE Humanizing the Firm8