6.6 Buurtzorg: close to people
6.7 Support from initiatives for businesses
7 The hope of political support for fair management
Acknowledgements
Index of keywords
Index of persons
Bibliography
Annotations
List of figures
Fig. 1: The implicit values of business
Fig. 2: Graph of maximum profit calculation
Fig. 3: Values of fair management
Fig. 4: Frame of reference for dark management
Fig. 5: Aspects of good staff management
Fig. 6: Hierarchical relations between economic goals
Fig. 7: Example for formulating minutes
Fig. 8: Excerpt from an example task analysis for a team leader
Fig. 9: Example of a detailed task description as part of a task analysis (excerpt)
Fig. 10: The Johari Window
Fig. 11: Johari Window after feedback
Fig. 12: Three-step process of organisational change according to Kurt Lewin
Fig. 13: Comparison of concepts of change based closely on Georg Schreyögg
Fig. 14: Comparison of management concepts
Preface
Economics has been the subject of criticism for some time, although this criticism is primarily directed at economics theory. Walter Otto Ötsch (Mythos Markt [The Myth of the Market]), Thomas Piketty (Capital in the Twenty-First Century), Peter and Andrew Schiff (How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes), Joseph Stiglitz (People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent) and others trace back global and national economic problems to an inadequate theoretical structure. Regarding the 2008 financial crisis, David Orrell even concludes: ‘I criticise the mathematical models that the economists use, not because they didn’t predict the crisis… I criticise them for having made the crisis possible in the first place. They created a false sense of security, like putting on a seat belt that isn’t anchored to anything.’1
This book is not primarily about calling into question the foundations of economic theory and the theory of business, which is closely related to it. Rather, it aims to draw attention to the hazardous yet mostly unheeded side effects of the theory of business. The extremely questionable conceptions of value which the theory of business is implicitly founded on are the starting point of these considerations.
In my opinion, alongside the proper amount of theory, business studies also conveys values which must have a considerable influence on current and future managers, even if (or maybe because) this occurs subliminally. Conveying these dubious yet rarely questioned values encourages the conditions within the economy that the public quite rightly lament. The results are exploited resources, greedy executives, avaricious consumers, demotivated workers, burnout and even death!
The questionable values of business studies contribute to reducing the people within a company to a factor of production to be controlled just like the machines. From this derives the widespread paradigm of the manager who has to have everything under control and keep it that way. This book contrasts this approach of ruling with a model of management that puts the focus on the initiative of the employees. In this sense, leading means creating a framework in which employees have the desire to be successful by themselves and will do whatever it takes to remain successful. This ‘Guide to fair management’ serves as a basis for this, which I present to you as an alternative framework for management.
***
Why should you read this book?
1 This book discusses serious weak points in the traditional teaching of business studies. In particular, its implicit basic assumptions are systematically exposed and taken as an opportunity to counter the subliminal brutalisation of business and society.
2 This book is conceived as a structured guide for current and future managers. In this book you will find a theoretical structure that you can use to develop your own ethically based style of management.
3 The advice and case studies in the book show you how to strengthen your managing on an ethical basis.
4 The book will help you to reclassify common management concepts such as quality management, knowledge management and agility according to an ethical basis.
Drensteinfurt, October 2020 Heinz Siebenbrock
1 Dedicated employees?
‘A book must be the axe
for the frozen sea within us.’
Franz Kafka2
For more than 20 years now, the legendary Gallup report has been indicating that almost 90% of all employees worldwide (in Germany, more than 80%) display an alarmingly low level of dedication to their jobs. Dissatisfaction with supervisors is cited as the main cause.3 This finding has been confirmed time and again, such as in the noteworthy study by Diana Krause and Juliane Simon of the University of Klagenfurt.4 kununu.com, a portal which allows employees to rate their workplace, also found in a large-scale study of 300,000 employees: ‘In general, behaviour of supervisors is one of the factors that employees rate the lowest.’5
A vicious circle
The vicious cycle is easy to describe: suppressing employees leads them to have a low level of dedication to their job; this low level of dedication then leads to more suppression from managers. Why is it that only a few managers manage to break out of this vicious cycle? Apparently economic success (still) justifies this fundamentally inhumane system.
But it’s beginning to crumble: the corona crisis has shown that the rapidly expanding model of working from home only works once this vicious circle has been broken. When the workplace is moved from the office to the home, managers have to trust their employees, whether they like it or not. In this scenario, traditional supervising has had its day! Especially younger employees, the ‘digital natives’, are increasingly demanding more contemporary management. Youth-based movements such as Fridays for Future are a breeding ground for further demands: companies and managers are increasingly expected to ensure that their actions are in harmony with the environment and meet the requirement of sustainability. Moreover, for young people, money and status are not the focus as they typically were for previous generations. Rather, ‘It’s companies with meaning and appreciation that score points with Generation Z’ says 25-year-old management consultant Philipp Riederle, who helps companies better understand employees from generations Y and Z.6
In fact, the prevailing doctrine of business administration, which most managers take as a guideline, implicitly calls for suppressing employees, exploitation and ripping off customers, and even for practising avarice and greed! It is time to expose the negative values that traditionally underlie this subject.7
Against this background, it is not surprising that a large proportion of employees in Germany ‘work to rule’, as the Internet portal personalwirtschaft.de puts it: ‘Currently, only 15 percent of employees in Germany have any emotional