Watson - In search of management : culture, chaos and control in managerial work

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In Search of Management

Copyright 1994 John J. Watson

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The seriousness of humour: musical chairs, banana gannets, the

In the course of this search for management I worked alongside managers in ZTC Ryland and I spent a great deal of time talking to them both informally and in formal interviews. I dedicate the book to all of these men and women, with immense gratitude for their help, support and, indeed, inspiration. I cannot thank anybody by name, because of my promises of confidentiality. Much of what was said to me and much of what I observed was of a confidential nature. This means that a lot of effort has gone into writing in such a way that individuals will not be embarrassed. False trails have been laid so that personal confidences will not be broken. All names of companies and individuals have been changed throughout to preserve anonymity. There are one or two cases where it has been impossible to disguise completely the identities of the people concerned. In each of these cases the individual concerned was not interviewed by me under conditions of confidentiality. As a result of similar pressures to protect people, there are occasions in the study where I have been more vague about details of events than I might have preferred. This has again been to protect the feelings and interests of individuals.

So who do you think is going to read your book then?

Oh, lots and lots of people.

Go on - who for example?

'My father will, I am sure. He reads lot. And my mother...

Seriously though. Youve told us that you are writing a book about managers, about us lot. So who is it for? Is it for people like us? I mean, you know, will thick people like us understand it?

What do you mean thick, thats not...

What I am saying is - I mean what I am asking is: are you writing it for your academics or for managers and other ordinary people?

Well, my Dads an ordinary person ...

Cant I ever get straight answer from you, Tony?

ACADEMICS, MANAGERS AND ORDINARY PEOPLE

This piece of banter was one of the thousands of dialogues which I had with the managers I worked with and studied for this book. It is the first of many pieces of dialogue I shall be using as part of my exploration of what managerial work is and how people in managerial jobs are managing being managers in the changing circumstances of the 1990s work organisation. And, like much of the dialogue used in the book, these words are taken to be more significant than they might at first appear. The above conversation is at first sight just a piece of light-hearted chatter between the researcher and one of the people being researched. I am being asked a serious question. But I dont answer it. I joke. As I will argue later, there is no such thing as just a joke. Human beings typically joke about that which, deeper down, bothers them. We treat things lightly precisely because they might otherwise be too heavy. And the question for me about whom my book could be written for and who would read it, was one which weighed heavily on me. I could not answer the question when it was asked by my management friend because I could not easily answer it when I asked it for myself.

Why should there be an issue here? Why is there a problem for any academic wanting to write about management in a way which will be alued by both fellow academics and practising managers? Did I have to write exclusively for one group or the other? Couldnt I have it both ways? It would be a challenge to try It often seems to me, as someone who regularly moves back and forth between industrial organisations and academic institutions, that managers and academics sometimes seem to live in two different worlds, and speak two different languages. There is prejudice on both sides (Watson 1994a) and I can sympathise with the concerns of people on both sides of this unfortunate fence. But it is a fence which needs to be broken down; it is a foolish and dangerous error to maintain barriers between thinkers and doers in any kind of human activity.