The majority of those involved in researching or teaching business administration wrongly claim that the subject is not based on any system of values; it is supposedly a value-free discipline. Without wishing to adopt Alfred Nobel’s fundamental critique of the scientific nature of this subject, its supposed freedom from values can at least be questioned. The politically influential Czech economist Tomáš Sedláček comments in this regard, ‘It is paradoxical that a subject that is predominantly concerned with values wants to be free from values.’9
The implicit demands of business administration for profit maximisation, focusing on competition and growth are anything but free of value! As will be shown below, it is precisely these guiding principles that have an extremely unfavourable effect on the relationship between managers and employees.
The traditional picture is one of suppressing employees.
Instead of holding a serious discussion about values, the advocates of business management theory continue to sing the praises of profit maximisation, focusing on competition and growth. This has practical consequences since many companies follow these erroneous guiding principles and thus end up relying on confrontation, conflict and suppressing employees.
Fortunately, there is hope in the form of a counter-movement, which is also beginning to be taken seriously in economics circles too: I am referring to New Work. The term comes from the Austro-American social philosopher Frithjof Bergmann.10 It refers to a world of work in which people can realise and develop their potential. ‘The core values of the concept of New Work are autonomy, freedom and participation in the community.’11 New Work consists of five building blocks:
1 Employees are involved in company development (strategy).
2 Employees set their own performance and learning targets; this includes setting their own working hours in both the operational and creative phases.
3 Changing work locations, working hours and assignments (flexibility).
4 Making use of modern office concepts with creative workspaces and retreat rooms.
5 The aim is to create a low-hierarchy, democratic management culture with rapid decision-making processes.12
The management model presented in this book also aims at creating a working environment in which employees can realise themselves and develop their potential. While New Work describes the visible, technical and organisational side of this new working environment, the fair management model helps current and future managers make a decisive contribution to good, successful relationships. If this results in your company having an appearance that feels like New Work, then you have certainly done a lot of things correctly. But it is also conceivable that the outwardly visible results of working on your personal leadership may take on a completely different form. In his book Reinventing Organizations, Frederic Laloux has developed a model for the development stages of organisations. He calls the highest level of development an ‘integral, evolutionary organisation’. In his empirical study, Laloux found 12 companies that may not have fully reached this stage but are or were on the way to doing so. We can surmise from these examples that New Work is only one of several possible forms that this highest evolutionary stage (from today’s point of view) can take. According to Laloux, integral, evolutionary organisations are characterised by self-management, wholeness and evolutionary purpose.13
1.1 Management: a question of attitude
So much has already been written and said about successful management in books and at events that the reader rightly expects a justification for this book. Leadership has long been a subject of study in economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology and philosophy, without ever being exhausted. Each year, a wide range of disciplines bring forth fresh insights and new literature. What is the purpose of yet another contribution?
This book does not address a professional audience or specialists. Rather, this is a popular science book that aims to use simple language and does not require any prior knowledge. But I also do not promise the reader any recipes that lead to certain success.
The reason for this book
This book should inspire you to reflect. It calls you to do your own work and reconsider yourself, to change and develop your management style, and it shows the aspects that must be considered in doing so.
I fundamentally believe that management is a question of personal attitude. You need to reflect on yourself and establish your own positions so that you can develop an individual, effective management style.
What matters to me most is to support and encourage current and future managers in their positive basic attitude towards their employees. If they build on this, they will be able to lead their employees in a way that is situation-appropriate, successful and enjoyable.
Good or bad? In between!
As has been shown, management in practice looks bleak. Only one in ten managers is approved as demonstrating ‘good leadership’ in the sense of ethically unobjectionable, humane management. On the other hand, if we follow the notion of the ‘continuum of leadership’14, we come to the conclusion that only one in ten managers really deserves to be called unethical or even malicious. Between these two poles, we find a variety of positions, which, however, as the Gallup report confirms, seem to tend towards the inhumane pole. When asked about inhumane practices, managers such as these from the ‘middle of the field’ like to make out that they are natural and necessary. Examples include the commonly heard excuses:
• You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.
• A little pressure never hurt anyone, or:
• It takes pressure to make diamonds.
• You can’t always be considerate.
• It’s a dog-eat-dog world.
• Nice guys finish last.
• The others are no better.
• The end justifies the means.
I realise this book will hardly reach the true believers in ‘bad’ management. Worse still, we are always going to have to live with a bad element in management. Nonetheless, it should still be possible for proper recruiting that includes ‘ethical qualifications’ to make an important contribution to fair management.
Who do managers identify with?
The main question that remains to be asked, however, is why managers in the middle of the field, who would not describe themselves as either good or bad, tend to identify more strongly with those who are examples of inhumane leadership. Revealing the questionable implicit values of business administration gives a key answer to this. In this regard I hope that a significant majority of managers in the middle of the field will follow the good examples which certainly exist and, with the help of this guide to fair management, will develop a management style that is based on a humane attitude and that meets ethical standards.
1.2 Structure of the book
A management model based on decency
This book invites the reader to recognise and rethink the implicit values of business administration. I would like to set this orientation against a vision based on a people-orientated framework of values. At the centre are the concepts of appreciation, sustainability, fulfilment and trust. Not every reader will want to adopt this exact set of values; rather, it acts as a suggestion to develop one’s own positive, and above all, humane attitude towards doing business and the people involved in it (employees, customers, suppliers).
A framework of values
On the basis of this framework of values, a management model is then drawn up that can be used to successfully implement what Hans Küng calls ‘doing business with a sense of decency’15. In this management model, generally applicable guidelines, tasks and instruments of management are presented and discussed based on Fredmund Malik’s book Managing, Performing, Living against the background of the alternative framework of values.
The