Managing the executive process

This paper was given as a keynote address to the first conference of the British Academy of Management. The principal concern of the paper is with what Barnard termed the executive process: the means by which senior members of an organization seek to 'facilitate the synthesis in concrete action of contradictory forces, reconcile conflicting forces, instincts, interests, conditions, positions and ideals'. To advance understanding of this important, indeed crucial, area of organizational behaviour, the author proposes the notion of scripts and follows this up by developing some further ideas around the concept of improvisation. In particular, following the seminal work of Sennett, it is proposed that much of what occurs at the executive level may be understood by paying close attention to matters of authority and fraternity. Nearly all action is informed by these twin referents which are, in turn, the source of a great amount of emotion. Knowing which of these issues constitute the grounds for a particular interaction, knowing which an executive group is locked into at any one time, may be of use to the leader of an executive team. The paper concludes that if the cause of management education is to be advanced, it is to be done not by colluding in some expansion of numbers, but rather in demanding an enhancement of management research.