Management, Science and Reality: A Commentary on ‘Practically Useless? Why Management Theory Needs Popper’

Philosophy of Management

Volumn 4, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 35-44

  Loughlin, Michael ^a,b  

^a MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

^b QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Epistemological Foundation; Management Theory; Management Volume; Organisational Theory; Total Quality Management

Indexed keywords

EID: 33645235493     PISSN: 17403812     EISSN: 20529597     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/pom20044220     Document Type: Article

References (39)

1. Moss M ‘Practically Useless? Why Management Theory Needs Popper’ Philosophy of Management Vol 3 Number 3 2003 pp 31–42. For the most part the author uses the terms ‘management theory’ and ‘organisational theory’ interchangeably and I will follow him in this respect
2. For numerous examples see Loughlin M Ethics, Management and Mythology Radcliffe Medical Press, Oxon 2002 part 2
3. Loughlin M ‘Arguments at cross-purposes: moral epistemology and medical ethics’ Journal of Medical Ethics 28 (1) 2002 p 28
4. Bartlett A and Preston D S ‘Not Nice, Not in Control’ Philosophy of Management 3 (1) 2003 p 40
5. I use the term ‘objective’ here to indicate that there need be no single conception of success in organisational life to provide the basis for any general theory with substantial applications. For a discussion of the many abuses of the term in epistemology and the philosophy of science see Loughlin, AJ Alienation and Value-Neutrality, Ashgate, Aldershot 1998
6. Charlton B G ‘The New Management of Scientific Knowledge’ in Miles A, Hampton J R and Hurwitz B (eds) NICE, CHI and the NHS Reforms Aesculapius Medical Press 2000, p 21
7. Bartlett A and Preston D S ‘Not Nice, Not in Control’ Philosophy of Management 3 (1) 2003 p 39
8. Loughlin M Ethics, Management and Mythology Radcliffe Medical Press, Oxon 2002 pp 3–15
9. Which I have elsewhere characterised as the ‘repair manual’ approach: cf. Loughlin M op cit
10. This paragraph echoes points about the intellectual foundations of ‘biomedical ethics’ in Loughlin, M ‘Arguments at cross-purposes: moral epistemology and medical ethics’ Journal of Medical Ethics 28 (1) 2002 p 28. There are general problems about what it means to ‘apply’ academic theories to practice, and although this paper concerns management theories, similar problems confront attempts to develop applications for many social scientific and philosophical disciplines. Cf part 3 of my Ethics, Management and Mythology (op cit) for a fuller discussion
11. An account is deductivist if it insists that theories must logically imply observation statements in terms of which they may be verified or falsified
12. Loughlin A J Alienation and Value-Neutrality Ashgate, Aldershot 1998 p 1
13. Popper K The Logic of Scientific Discovery London, Hutchinson & Co. 1974 pp 34–9
14. Cf Popper’s own thoughts on the distinction in Popper, K Objective Knowledge, an evolutionary approach Clarendon Press, Oxford 1979 pp 162–5
15. I recently attended a short course on Eliot’s The Waste Land. It wasn’t a ‘scientific’ course — certainly not in the Popperian sense. Still, I now know more about Eliot than I did before, and I understand The Waste Land a lot better. If there were anything in Popperian philosophy to suggest that these claims were somehow logically improper then that, surely, would be the worse for Popper
16. Loughlin M Ethics, Management and Mythology pp 198–201. I argue that fallibilism is a credible alternative to simplistic forms of rationalism on the one hand, and the various forms of anti-rationalism associated with postmodernist, relativist and sceptical positions in contemporary philosophy
17. See, for instance, Popper K The Logic of Scientific Discovery London, Hutchinson & Co. 1974 pp 106–11; Objective Knowledge, an evolutionary approach Clarendon Press, Oxford 1979 pp 163–5 and Conjectures and Refutations London, Routledge & Kegan Paul 1969 pp 112 & 238
18. Lakatos I ‘Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes’ in Lakatos, I and Musgrave, A Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1970 pp 99–100. Popper was aware of this point (cf The Logic of Scientific Discovery p111) but this does not mean he could easily accommodate its implications
19. Sokal A and Bricmont J Intellectual Impostures Profile Books, London 1998 pp 63–4 note that in practice this may not be so easy. In physical science it is often the case that too many parts of the structure can be tested independently for arbitrary modifications to be a viable option
20. Cf Luther’s Works, Tischreden in the Walsch edition 1743 Vol 22 p 2260
21. Loughlin, M ‘On the buzzword approach to policy formation’ Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 8 (2) 2002 p 240–1. The failure of theories designed to motivate the workforce to produce the predicted outcome does not prove that the critics of these theories were right to be sceptical. For the very existence of the criticisms is used to explain the failure to motivate!
22. There is an interesting similarity here between conservative Popperians and supposedly radical postmodernists. Both know (apparently by an a priori method) that ‘totalising’ explanatory systems cannot work. It seems that intellectual ambition is the only sin condemned on all sides in the academic world today
23. Loughlin M Ethics, Management and Mythology chapter 4
24. Popper K ‘Epistemology without a Knowing Subject’ in: Objective Knowledge, an evolutionary approach Clarendon Press, Oxford 1979
25. Loughlin M Ethics, Management and Mythology pp 158–62
26. Herman E S and Chomsky N Manufacturing Consent, New York, Pantheon Books 1988 pp 304–6
27. Loughlin M Ethics, Management and Mythology pp 159–60
28. Alvesson M and Willmott H (eds) Critical Management Studies Sage, London 1992
29. Quine, WVO ‘Two dogmas of empiricism’ in: From a Logical Point of View Cambridge, Harvard University Press 1953 p 42
30. Feyerabend P Against Method, London, New Left Books 1975 pp 295–6, cited in Sokal A and Bricmont J Intellectual Impostures, Profile Books, London 1998 pp 74–5. As they note, it is hard to know when to read him ironically and when to take him at his word. Elsewhere he ticks people off for assuming ‘anything goes’ really means ‘anything goes’. A problem with using headline-grabbing slogans is that, while you may acquire followers, many of them may embarrass you
31. Sokal A and Bricmont J Intellectual Impostures p 75
32. Quine W V O ‘Two dogmas of empiricism’ in From a logical Point of View Cambridge, Harvard University Press 1953 p 41
33. Not a form necessarily espoused by Quine, even though some who have followed assumed Quine’s arguments establish this view
34. Hardcastle G ‘Parrots and positivists’ The Philosophers’ Magazine Summer 1999 p 18
35. ibid p 19
36. The shopkeeper is of course being irrational, and what this shows is that we need a richer theory of rationality than any form of deductivism, a point I argue in more detail in chapter 3 of Ethics, Management and Mythology
37. Popper K Objective Knowledge, an evolutionary approach Clarendon Press, Oxford 1979 p 30P
38. Loughlin M ‘On the buzzword approach to policy formation’ Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 8 (2) 2002 p 232
39. Parker M review of Management Knowledge — a critical view by Paul Griseri, Reason in Practice: The Journal of Philosophy of Management 2 (2) 2002 pp 68–9. Presumably Parker has not read Oakeshott?