Zygmunt Bauman - Management in a Liquid Modern World

Zygmunt Bauman Irena Bauman Jerzy Kociatkiewicz Monika Kostera

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Copyright Zygmunt Bauman, Irena Bauman, Jerzy Kociatkiewicz, and Monika Kostera 2015

The right of Zygmunt Bauman, Irena Bauman, Jerzy Kociatkiewicz, and Monika Kostera to be identified as Authors of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2015 by Polity Press

Polity Press
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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press
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Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-0225-7

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bauman, Zygmunt, 1925

Management in a liquid modern world / Zygmunt Bauman, Irena Bauman, Jerzy Kociatkiewicz, Monika Kostera.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-5095-0221-9 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-5095-0222-6 (pbk.)

1. Postmodernism--Social aspects. 2. Organizational sociology. 3. Social history--21st century. I. Title.

HM449.B394 2015

302.35--dc23

2015005697

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Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

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Management has been most often applied to formal organizations such as businesses, governments, hospitals and so on. In these settings, management unsurprisingly carries connotations of control and organization (Anna is responsible for managing 10,000 employees). But management can also refer to coping or muddling through (Carl managed to provide for his family in spite of losing his job). Sometimes we manage others, sometimes ourselves; sometimes we manage to change things, sometimes to adjust to what we cannot change. Since most of life involves influence and adjustment, controlling and coping, changing and accepting what does not change, organization theory and management practice may be more broadly applicable than is generally recognized. The authors of Management in a Liquid Modern World will focus your attention on problems that characterize the biggest challenges we face in the world today climate change, unsustainable levels of resource depletion, poverty, joblessness, and the natural, economic, political and social disasters to which these conditions contribute and they will ask you to join them in imagining what sort of management will help us to address and resolve these problems.

You will find many interesting ideas discussed here, not least of which comes from structuring the book as a series of conversations. The points of agreement and disagreement that appear as Jerzy Kociatkiewicz, Zygmunt Bauman, Irena Bauman and Monika Kostera converse are both instructive and demonstrative. That is, at the same time participants present their varied views about the worlds problems and options for solving them, they enact many of the ideas and suggestions presented. Consider heterotopia as one example. The participants discuss this idea as an alternative to both utopia and dystopia, which have both been used to seduce or shock people into changing how they live to conform to an ethic that is represented in either positive (utopian) or negative (dystopian) terms. Unlike both utopia and dystopia, a heterotopia embraces not one but many moralities and visions for the future and thereby encourages acceptance of paradox, irony and contradiction, making them into common ground on which to rebuild society in a pluralistic world. Intriguingly the wide-ranging conversations this book presents offer an example of heterotopia in action, showing how, when effectively managed, different visions for the world and the ethical and aesthetic values they imply can lead to solidarity (i.e., a form of cooperation based on accepting equality among humans rather than attempting to normalize their behaviour, which suppresses or denies the differences by which they make their unique valuable contributions to the whole).

The conversations begin with Zygmunt framing his approach to the worlds problems with the idea of interregnum, a time-span of yet unknown length, stretching between a social setting which has run its course and another, as yet under-defined and most certainly under-determined, which we expect or suspect will replace it. Interregnum offers a chance to stop and consider possible futures, which might be the most desirable, and how to realize them. It also suggests one way of reading this book, that is as a momentary stopping point that will give you the opportunity to listen in on a conversation that can deepen your understanding of the worlds problems and give you a change to act according to the ethics this book will also encourage you to craft out of concern for yourself and others.

Another powerful idea you will meet in this book is the growing need worldwide to trust the level of social organization that lies between constructing a massive global authority to control everything and everyone (often operating under the rubric of systems theory, which assumes that some small group is either smart enough or powerful enough to maintain this authority) and a conflict-generating individuality formed from self-serving choice. This in-between level is arising, our authors suggest, in organizations like cities though cities, Zygmunt notes, are not conflict-trouble-and-worry-free zones only they are the sites providing relatively better more realistic and promising chances of confronting and tackling conflicts, troubles and worries pestering the present-day human condition at all levels of social integration. Cities may not be the solutions, he argues, but [they offer] the best toolboxes available to produce them they are means, not goals not the prospective destinations of the voyage, but the agencies capable of servicing the travellers. Each participant in the conversation, in his or her own terms, pins hopes on this meso level, where management knowledge is most readily applicable, though managing management knowledge itself requires management. Lying between global institutions and self-serving individuals, in cities and small to medium-sized organizations, humans are better able to care for one another and thereby discover ways to cooperate to mutual advantage.

Pragmatism is discussed as one explanation for why cooperation at the meso level of the city can work where international-level efforts often fail. At the city level, one can experiment to discover what works and then adopt that solution because it works. By contrast, at the national or international level such pragmatic action is often frustrated by the inability to act and then learn from the outcomes of taking action. On such a large scale, mistakes are too costly, so learning based on experimentation is avoided, whereas cities and other meso-level organizations could be used as laboratories for experimentation. What this sensible position leaves out, however, is a view of how to manage the competitiveness that arises between meso-level assemblages of humanity. Returning us to the contradiction heterotopia embraces, Irena points out: It is likely that, as we discover the benefits of the city state, we will also come to remember why these did not survive as distinct units of management.