Critical Management Study

Introduction

This essay will argue that it is important to study management and organisations in a critical, questioning way for two reasons. First, it is important to do so due to the influence and reach of management in large commercial organisations that covers a lot of aspects in the society, economy and culture. Second, by taking a critical approach to management, there is a possible gain of knowledge and understanding of management and what it is which leads to a better and more effective manager in order to be in a position to secure positive results and prevent undesirable outcomes occurring. In Section One, it will demonstrate the first point with reference to evidences and arguments from (Morgan 2006) and (Bakan 2004) to outline how these pieces of writing consider the significant risks that these organisations pose and warn us not to be subjective and limited to the dominance of the organisational practices and managerial. In Section Two, (Mintzberg's 1971) Managerial Work: Analysis from Observation will be used to argue that the unrelenting pace, great variety, fragmentation and brevity of managerial work described by Mintzberg, and the high levels of anxiety and confusion documented by (Linstead, Fulop and Lilley 2009), can easily show that managers are unable to find the means necessary such as time or space to be certain that the organisation they are representing is on its way to create benefits to the society instead of harming it. Throughout the essay, these points would imply that we should study management in a critical and questioning way. Touching upon (Watson 2006) and (Linstead, Fulop and Lilley 2009), in its final section of the essay, it will elaborate on what a critical and questioning approach really means and how studying management critically is not the same as being negative, it is instead a commitment to be a benefit to society and be an effective manager in an organisation (Clegg, Kornberger, Carter and Rhodes 2006) based on an effective practice of management.

Section 1

Large multinational corporations often dominate the Third World, putting their own interests before the interests of the local people (Morgan 2006). The people's way of life and land is taken away from them and instead they are turned into lesser beings that have to work only to be able to afford to live on. The amount of exploitation and dominance in these places proves the theory that these corporations are more concerned with raising profit than the well-being of their employees. This is known as the 'ugly face of organisational life' whether it has happened on intention or by mistake, these organisations create a large negative impact on our world (Morgan 2006). One of the problems with modern organisations is the normalisation of power in which as the leader of a company gains a high level of authority, they are looked at as having the right to make the decisions they like and have others to obey it. The most rational and democratic corporations are able to result in a form of domination when certain people acquire influence over others (Morgan 2006). More leaders tend to consume and exploit their employees when they gain an amount of power, taking what they desire and then discarding them. Among those, multinational corporations are most likely to initiate such actions due to their goals being achieving global domination through resources around the world. By allowing the corporations to exist as separate entities and as if they were live human beings, the corporation has risen to dominate our society rendering its shareholders and societies mostly helpless and powerless against the power that defines the modern corporation. Corporations now govern society, perhaps more than governments themselves do (Bakan 2004). With the influence of large multinational corporations, it was evident that they will have a large effect on governments in which it would result in a competition between the governments as to remain attractive to these corporations, often with a reckless disregard for the consequences of their actions. By leveraging their freedom from the bonds of location, corporations could now dictate the economic policies of governments (Bakan 2004). So far, the essay has argued that the rise of the corporations in modern days covers a lot of aspects within the society and it should not be treated lightly when it comes to their dominance and influence. In the next section the essay will illustrate that due to anxiousness and brevity of managerial work, it is rather hard, for managers, to focus on achieving the goals to benefit the society.

Section 2

As Linstead (2009) demonstrates, anxiety is thought of to be one of the factors in modern management's inability to make a proper decision that benefits the society in place of harming it and one of the reasons that lead to anxiety is the fact that modern management tends to be obsessed with success due to many organisations' failures that forget to learn from history and rather take the easy route rather than learn from our mistakes or that of others. According to Mintzberg (1971), one of the major problems a today's manager will face is, despite the growing size of modern organisations and the growing complexity of their problems, the manager can expect little help and must design his own information system and take full charge of his organisation's strategy-making system. Thus, the manager is usually forced to carry a great burden of responsibility in his organisation and as organisations become increasingly large and complex, this burden increases. The manager cannot increase his availability or significantly improve his abilities to manage. Therefore, in the large, complex bureaucracy the top