Cultural underlay in management

Cultural underlay in management

By Ignas Kleden

JAKARTA (JP): Management has been the darling discipline at
higher education institutions for the urban middle class in
Indonesia for more than one decade.

One of Indonesia's top managers, Peter F. Gontha, says that
people see skill organization, scientific knowledge cast for
practical purposes and preparation for limited goals as being
able to make a lot of things happen. People have started to view
management as a miracle sent down from heaven.

Whereas mathematics is considered the peak achievement of
conceptual intelligence, and technology the peak of technical
intelligence, management seems to bring social intelligence to
its furthest possible limit. Logic is the quintessence of the
first, use and applicability are the aims of the second, and
organization is the main thrust of the third.

There is a relative parallel between the three disciplines,
since logic is the correlation of thoughts in their pure form,
technology is the correlation of thought as applied in technical
use and practice, and management is the correlation of thought as
reflected in a goal-oriented attitude, efficient behavior and
effective action.

Even the nature of logical correlation in connection with the
three is somewhat different. Formal logic is causal in nature and
technology is based on efficient logic, whereas management rests
on the final logic. The emphasis in the first is the relation
between cause and necessary effect, in the second it is between
the cause and the result it produces, whereas in the third the
correlation is between the cause, or the motive, and the goal,
which is the intended result.

These three correlations between cause and effect have
different characteristics. In the formal logic the correlation is
purely formal and quasi-mathematical. In technology the
correlation is mechanical, whereas in management it becomes
psychological or sociological.

In management, the principle of causality does not work
according to logical necessity owing to two basic reasons. In the
first place, the role of human will and the freedom to choose,
can make human beings behave not only in accord with the formal
logic which is to guide them but also against it. In the second
place, there is ample room for unintended results, whereby the
original intention can be diverted from its course by social
dynamics of human interaction.

Looking at it that way, management is a discipline of human
sciences, which undertakes to put under control various human
capacities in order to serve an established goal. However, this
is done not by means of the submission of one's will to that of
another as is the case in the military command, but rather by
means of organizing the motives of the people concerned in order
that they will treat the established goal as their own.

It is also geared so that they can see possible constraints as
something which might disadvantage them. In other words,
management aims not simply at producing physical responses, but
mainly at creating mental and emotional disposition, in which the
goal of an enterprise or an undertaking is treated as something
which concerns everybody involved.

In that sense, the principle of operation which holds in
technology applies fairly well to management. The English
philosopher, Francis Bacon, once epitomized the nature of
technology by saying: "In order to be commanded, nature must be
obeyed". Obedience to nature is the effort to recognize its laws
in order to make them serve mankind's interests.

In the same vein, the present managers would say, in order to
be commanded, people must be obeyed. Obedience to people consists
of the effort to recognize their interests and motives, and to
use them to attain a goal.

The key word in this discussion of management is goal. Goal
is a pragmatic conception of what is known in cultural studies as
meaning. By definition a goal is something which one wants to
achieve through his actions, whereas meaning implies that which
one intends while one is doing something.

The main difference lies in the fact that a goal is a
pragmatic conception of action, whereas meaning is a symbolic
conception of knowledge. We can only say that one's action is
goal-oriented if one means what one does. Otherwise behavior is
mechanical, without any meaning underpinning one's knowledge,
and without a goal which motivates one's action.

Management, to a large extent, is a cultural affair. This
becomes clear if one keeps in mind that management is the
organization of attitude, behavior and action; all things which
usually come about through cultural formation. In that sense, the
managerial subculture, which consists of correct attitude towards
time, efficient thinking, effective speaking and calculated
action, can only work if it is supported by the larger culture in
which it is applied.

One could say that management offers an opportunity to
initiate cultural change in a larger context. However, once one
starts to apply management principles, one cannot help but take
socio-cultural conditions into account for the simple reason that
the application of management means putting it into a particular
sociocultural context.

In that connection there is another similarity between
management and technology. The development of technology can be
assumed to be purely the concern of technologists, because it is
specific. In the same vein, the development of management can be
treated as purely a matter of management theorists.

However, once one starts to apply management principles, the
workings of those principles depend very much on whether or not
they correspond to the sociocultural conditions within which they
are applied. This means that one has to reckon with the way
people feel, think and behave in order to enable them to wrestle
with a managerial problem, before one starts to divert all those
cultural tendencies from their initial course.

In that sense management can be seen as a sort of human
technology, which has first to establish "the law of motion" of a
society, namely its cultural values and social norms, and then to
make them into an effective instrument which serves a goal at
hand.

At this juncture, we can compare management to science.
Science is progress from ignorance to knowledge, whereby every
new bit of knowledge tends to uncover hitherto latent ignorance.
Management is the progress from nothing to something or the
progress from a lot of things which have been there to a new
combination which is much more than all those things put
together.

The working principle of science is the hypothesis, which
involves the belief that just attained knowledge may contain
errors, which must be eliminated. The working principle of
management is a tentative attitude, based on the belief in just
achieved success, there might be still a lot of potential for
failure, which must be put aside, in order for success to become
sustainable.

In other words, there is a basic cultural attitude, on which
to build both science and management. The basic cultural attitude
of a scientist is his openness toward criticism, just as that of
a manager is his openness to correction and renewal. The risk
facing a scientist is that he or she might be wrong. The risk
facing a manager is that he or she might fail. In both cases the
general principle which underlies behavior is the tension between
aspirations and the haunting possibility of error and failure.

Expecting the best, while being prepared for the worst seems
to be the general cultural attitude required in both science and
management. One of the main shortcomings of management as applied
in Indonesia is that people are motivated to aspire after the
best without being prepared for the worst. The worst is not
incorporated into the managerial calculus, and if bad things
happen to occur, they are treated either as accidents of
circumstance, or as something originating in force majeure.

If one believes that success in life does not accrue from a
sort of deus ex machina, one has to be consistent enough to
consider one's failure as something not originating in diabolus
ex machina.

There are many examples which illustrate the asymmetric
cultural attitude described above. The clearest example is
discernible in our habit of viewing unwanted results of a program
as side-effects. Why on earth just side-effects?

This implies that the unwanted results are never envisaged
beforehand, as if everything one has in planning must be all
right. People build huge buildings without thinking of the
existing drainage systems or catchments. This leads to situations
in which whole towns are flooded when the rains come. To treat
such things as "just side-effects" is evidence that management is
oriented toward the best thing expected without any preparation
for the worst possibilities.

Likewise everybody with some power at his or her disposal
talks about the inevitable role of the modern press and
electronic media in enhancing industrialization, but very few are
aware of the possibility that the media might do something to the
disadvantage of those who expect so much.

Another example is the competition to build universities all
over the country. Nobody seems to realize that it does not make
much sense to produce as many as possible highly educated people
without creating adequate possibility of employment. Nor has
anyone seemed to consider the fact that increasing the public's
intelligence levels will bring about more criticism. Needless to
say, criticism is not something bad in itself, but it can become
a nuisance for those whose positions make them open to it.

The economists consistently remind us about cost and benefit.
It is time that people involved in management apply that concept
in the sense that failure or distortion should be part and parcel
of complete managerial planning. Without taking this principle
seriously, we get trapped in a cultural black hole by indulging
in the abstract ideal of good things, without the courage to deal
with a lot of bad things which, in fact, are very immediate and
concrete. In a nutshell, management is a cultural attitude which
comprises both enthusiasm for the best and courage to face up to
the worst.

The writer is a sociologist now working at the SPES Research
Foundation, Jakarta.