Management and society

To discuss social and management issues, that is the purpose of this blog, at a time when business-oriented thinking dominates, when the power of technology permeates the entire administrative mindset, and when the quest for a form of management that is not the result of a purely domineering logic remains alive.

This management journal is divided into three parts. First, it addresses some of the shortcomings of contemporary administrative thought, including the emphasis on the ethics of emotional well-being, benevolence as a management style, and the overvaluation of professional competence at the expense of other human qualities. Next, certain classics of 18th- and 19th-century philosophy and the social sciences demonstrate the historical roots of contemporary administrative thought. Based on a justification of commerce as a vehicle for social harmony and societal wealth, management was already taking on the air, as Tocqueville would say, of an “aristocracy of the present age.” Finally, by exploring literary fiction, we see the excesses of management in action, whether in the industrial world with Dickens, in the financial world with Balzac, or in the service sector with Malot.

This notebook, like the collection to which it belongs, seeks to define the cognitive landscape of management and to explore the possibility of a humanistic approach to management.