Values and Purposes

Any analysis of the field of management learning, whether purely descriptive or from a critical perspective, will inevitably surface the different value systems which have influenced, sometimes implicitly, the development of theory and practice. But how do values and purposes become part of the management learning debate? Explicit concern with values and beliefs seems to sit more comfortably in the context of the church, home or community. Consideration of values in work seems more peripheral, and likely to be subjugated to preoccupations with ‘the goals of the enterprise’ unless it is thought possible to harness them to that end.

Examples of where questions of values become more central might be when consultants turn down invitations to work with industries they regard as damaging to the community or the environment, when course participants refuse to comply with a training method they see as encouraging an unreasonable intrusion into their personal lives or private thoughts, or when training managers resist a research programme they do not believe will either value or respect the ideas and experience of employees who are asked to take part.

More difficult to identify — as part of the shadow-world of taken-for-granteds discussed in the previous section — are misgivings about the social consequences of particular organizational designs or procedures — the emergence of the human relations movement in management is an example of this, as is its subsequent critique. In these areas of enquiry and debate, in the workplace or the training department and management programme, values and moral and ‘professional’ standards are entwined with definitions of ideology and ethics. Whether concerned with professional standards in working with students, participants, clients or paymasters, expectations of consistency between espoused values and those evidenced by practice, or with struggles for an emancipatory platform within work and education, we are in the realm of values and purposes which, until recently, have not played as central a part in management as they have within education, health, law or social work.

Within management learning, some themes seem perennial and reflect the differences between instrumental and emancipatory purposes, or more generally still, expressions of the tension between humanism and materialism. The choice of methods and structures within organized work or educational practice illustrate these dilemmas. The case for and against participative management, whether or not to base educational programmes on measurable objectives or competencies, the use of psychometrics, or the development of experiential methods, raises not just questions of efficacy of [Page 178]means but also questions of value. Are particular choices appropriate or in some sense ‘right’ in terms of their personal and social consequences? And questioning practice within management learning raises deeper questions still as to the perspective from which these issues should be considered. This is itself a matter of values and not only of logic.