How Things Go Wrong

Denial of Pragmatism

Academics are in love with rationality. As a result, many textbooks deny the pragmatic dimension of management and the implications for accountability. Bloggers now popularize use of evidence and information for decision, so it seems that rationality has become conventional wisdom.

By contrast, the Tree emphasizes that pragmatic thinking and choices are not only inevitable but desirable in organizations—so long as managers are accountable and the balance is correct.

Fortunately, over the past few decades, there has been a growing understanding of the significance of intuition, systems thinking, and a respect for the creativity and autonomy of people at work. These are the sources of high quality pragmatic judgements.

Overuse of Pragmatism

Managers vary in their preferences, but all organizations are founded on pragmatic action and yet demand rational control. These conflicting demands are handled by developing a suitable management culture. Where the management culture is neglected, management and accountability become systematically mishandled.

Government agencies, in particular, have a tendency to become over-identified with pragmatic management. Under intense political pressure, they may use the accountability framework more or less as shown below.

Failure to Address Values

Many managers deny the significance of Channels that bypass the line-manager, just as they lack awareness that values must be installed and cannot be implemented.

So policies are imposed and management is activated, but policy intervention and policy maintenance are given little attention. As a result, nothing much changes.

In a similar way, programs are developed and steered, but program intervention and program imposition are ignored or viewed as too burdensome. So genuine issues are missed, operational managers are left floundering and their useful inputs and innovative solutions are lost.

Now: 

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Following recognition of the fundamental nature of responsibility and accountability in an organization, management itself can be organised. What is involved here can be determined be developing another framework based on this one. Its handling generates emotional states, positive and negative, that impact intensely on life at work.

Originally posted: 28-Feb-2014