''Philosophies of Management" in Philosophical Perspective

Although any view of the social role of manage ment can be shown to have assumptions about the nature of man and society, it is necessary to create such views with philosophical criteria in mind from the beginning. This last has not been done, and the consequences are that the decision- making manager is isolated from general theories about social values. Social responsibility is defined in terms of conformity to the mores of the society in which the businessman—manager —is operating. This truncates his thinking just below the level where philosophical decisions must be made, because it eschews the role of management in guiding social change and totally ignores the classical content of social philosophy and the methods of ethical analysis. There is an analogous fallacy of reducing ethics to psychology, which is a common con ceptual failing of management as well as of managerial "philos ophers" such as Mayo and Drucker. These failings, combined with a reluctance to face a reassessment of the ethics of profes sionalism, decrease the ability of management to cope with basic disagreements among systems of values. The foregoing can be illustrated by reference to three problems: social respon sibility, the destructive reduction of ethics to psychology, and the conflict between the ego and the ethics of professionalism.