...Reading 1.3 Jackall, R. (1988) Chapter 4, ‘Looking Up and Looking Around’, in Moral Mazes, Oxford University Press, NY. Abstract In the early sections of “Looking Up and Looking Around” Jackall seeks to explain the reasons behind inadequate decision making processes and ability. The circumstances and environments that cultivate ‘decision-making paralysis’ and a lack of individual decision making ability are explained. Numerous examples and reasons are outlined to communicate a manager’s fear of failure, reluctance to make decisions and inability to make effective decisions when required at all hierarchical levels. If a decision must be made, particularly for an unexpected situation or problem, there is a tendency to look up, at superior’s intents and desires, and look around, at the general consensus of peers, before making any decisions. Jackall also explains managerial short term focus, the corporate culture of self interest and the reasons for each. In particular, he explains the manager’s interest in their progression and preference for short term, self promoting, often political, decisions over rational decisions that benefit the organisation in the long term. These passages show that personal ambition prevents good, rational decisions being made. Jackall also shows how this extends to the blaming of others and changing jobs in order to avoid being accountable for the consequences of previous decisions or strategies that enabled individual corporate progression. In...
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...Biblio Service Michaela Haase Jackall, R., The World of Corporate Managers – Twentieth Anniversary Edition, Oxford University Press, New York 2010 A Capsule Summary of the Book This is the second edition of a book whose first edition was published in 1988. There has been no revision of the book; however, Jackall has added a new chapter titled “Moral Mazes and the Great Recession” to it. His description of the financial crisis brings nothing really new to the fore: it shows that nothing has changed in the aftermath of the convulsions caused by several occurrences of crisis in the financial sector or the business world in the last decade. Managers (of banks, insurance enterprises, of Enron, etc.) play(ed) high-risk games at the cost of the organization; they plunder(ed) the assets of employees and shareholders as well. If they win, they take all the gain; if they lose, they call for the taxpayer’s money because their organizations are too big to fail. They never think about stinting with their bonuses even if the taxpayers have to save the organization they work for because otherwise these same managers would leave it and so dispossess it of their skills and competence which, so they think, are badly needed to set it afloat again. Objective and Targeted Audience Jackall’s detailed sociological study of the managerial world is not written for a particular target group. As Jackall has clarified throughout a recent interview,1 his study is “part of a larger project. This is...
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...Reading 1.3 Jackall, R. (1988), Chapter 4, “Looking up and looking around”, in Moral Mazes, Oxford University Press, NY Abstract The heart of managerial system is the skills in making decision. The routine decisions are the main areas of managerial decision making. In bureaucratic setting, which is functional rationality, the managers are expected to follow the policy rather than create a new way of solving problem. Many managerial decisions usually base on procedure; however, if unusual problem occurs, the managers are expected to find the solution that satisfies their bosses. Managers have to face “gut decisions” when those decisions involve big influences to organizations and looking up and looking around are necessary in these situations. There are two perspectives of looking up and looking around. First aspect is uncertainty of organization and second one is bureaucratic work structure. Example from coking plant is shown to prove that decision making has an impact on advancement of company. American managers prefer short term gain, focusing on financial techniques and ignoring production management can help them success in short time. Structure of work (need rapid decision on piece by piece) is another aspect of short run. Managers think that they can only cope with short run issues to reach the long run goal. The most feared time in every firm is “blame time”. Blame is the action that attacks the person by verbal and it can make person less creditable. The different...
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...Fourth Edition Reframing Organizations Artistry, Choice, and Leadership LEE G. BOLMAN TERRENCE E. DEAL B est- se l l i n g a u t h o rs of LEADING WITH SOUL FOURTH EDITION Reframing Organizations Artistry, Choice, and Leadership Lee G. Bolman • Terrence E. Deal Copyright © 2008 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. Published by Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741—www.josseybass.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-6468600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-7486011, fax 201-748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions. Credits are on page 528. Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer...
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.... Organization Theory Challenges and Perspectives John McAuley, Joanne Duberley and Phil Johnson . This book is, to my knowledge, the most comprehensive and reliable guide to organisational theory currently available. What is needed is a text that will give a good idea of the breadth and complexity of this important subject, and this is precisely what McAuley, Duberley and Johnson have provided. They have done some sterling service in bringing together the very diverse strands of work that today qualify as constituting the subject of organisational theory. Whilst their writing is accessible and engaging, their approach is scholarly and serious. It is so easy for students (and indeed others who should know better) to trivialize this very problematic and challenging subject. This is not the case with the present book. This is a book that deserves to achieve a wide readership. Professor Stephen Ackroyd, Lancaster University, UK This new textbook usefully situates organization theory within the scholarly debates on modernism and postmodernism, and provides an advanced introduction to the heterogeneous study of organizations, including chapters on phenomenology, critical theory and psychoanalysis. Like all good textbooks, the book is accessible, well researched and readers are encouraged to view chapters as a starting point for getting to grips with the field of organization theory. Dr Martin Brigham, Lancaster University, UK McAuley et al. provide a highly readable account...
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