Management History in Other Places

Purpose – The purpose of this Design/methodology/approach – The article analyzes the role of the fiction known as the some of its conspicuous exemplars, and how its adaptation might affect attitudes and even prejudices about how to view life. Findings – Present and future are not always what one thought they could become. ‘‘What if?’’ also gives rise to endeavours in ‘‘science’’ fiction and structured projections today dealing with circumstances of tomorrow and after. Originality/value – Besides providing diversion, the approach serves to illustrate foresight’s conception of ‘‘retrostrategy’’. Cummings’ (2007) paper takes a different approach, exploring the limitations of military approaches to strategy as foundations for the field of strategic management. Cummings (2007:41) Strategic management’s founding texts often proudly acknowledge the field’s military foundations. Chester Barnard’s (1938) Functions of the Executive begins with a quotation from Aristotle outlining the paramount importance of a general’s leadership. Pioneering British management authority Colonel Lyndall Urwick takes many of his cues from military precedents (Urwick, 1947). Igor Ansoff’s (1965, p. 104) Corporate Strategy explains that strategy’s “historical origins lie in the military art, where it is a ‘grand’ concept of a military campaign for application of large scale forces against an enemy”. Furthermore, many of today’s leading textbooks highlight corporate strategy’s “military roots” (Coulter, 2002, p. 14; Mintzberg et al., 2003). Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the limitations of what the field of strategic management sees as its military foundations. Design/methodology/approach – Categorizes and synthesizes the critical historical approach of Michel Foucault and uses this to interrogate assumptions made about military approaches to strategy in the strategic management literature.Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the limitations of what the field of strategic management sees as its military foundations. Design/methodology/approach – Categorizes and synthesizes the critical historical approach of Michel Foucault and uses this to interrogate assumptions made about military approaches to strategy in the strategic management literature. Findings – Suggests that there is a much broader range of military approaches to strategy than that which has been seen as a foundation stone of strategic management, and that drawing on this broader range of perspectives can encourage new thinking about strategic management. Research implications/limitations – While the historical survey upon which this hypothesis is developed is by no means exhaustive, it should encourage further investigation of different approaches to military strategy and how these might be applied to think differently in business settings. Practical implications – This paper should encourage practitioners to question their often overly simplistic views of military strategy and to see this arena as a potentially rich seam of ideas that could be applied in business. Originality/value – This is the first journal article to develop a clear method that draws on the many strands of Foucault’s historical approach and apply this to fruitfully deconstruct a particular aspect of the field of management’s assumed heritage. Bishop and Phillips (2007:37-38) Concluding remarks Auden and Adorno each read the landscape of postwar Germany with a haunted recognition, for each has seen this landscape already while exiled in the USA during the war. Read together they bear witness to the extent to which postwar Germany repeats and intensifies processes they experienced in wartime USA. This kind of militarization, in its disavowal of the capacity for strategy and cunning, becomes merely the outspending of personnel and materiel in a massive potlatch of attrition. This postwar militarization takes its emergent form as the Americanization of Europe in the experiment of postwar Germany. Auden and Adorno in different ways help reveal the similarities between Fascism and the Democracy imported to replace it. That which has emerged as victorious, they seem to be saying, might not be all that different from that which has been vanquished. The continuation of a repressed Nazi past found in the reconstituted human sciences [Geisteswissenschaften ] that Adorno reads in the “depoliticized” and positivistic university of postwar Germany mirrors the repetition of total war in total peace. The wholesale swallowing of speculative and critical thinking by disciplines bent to results and instrumentality is yet another avatar of the militarization of thought seen in Auden’s barbed wire. The disavowal of the political in Geisteswissenschaften is the marginalization of historicity by the university in postwar Germany. The human sciences constitute the ground upon which the University of Berlin was founded: the very turf of institutional and state change at the dawn of the 19th century. Thus, the demise of a politicized Geisteswissenschaften holds deep resonance for Adorno and his interpretation of the fate of critical thought after Fascism. In the institution, then, Adorno finds a clear and extreme example of larger processes at work in postwar Germany: the human sciences become a synecdoche for the combination of technologizing and militarization reproduced in the Americanization of Europe in the aftermath of the war. Purpose – This conceptual paper is offered in place of a systematic analysis of militarization in organizations and the wider world. It proceeds on the understanding that militarization implies deep historical tendencies that are not easy to simply avoid, especially where one wishes to observe or to analyse phenomena systematically. Design/methodology/approach – This paper seeks out alternative means of engagement with references to the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud, the critical theory of Theodor Adorno and the poetry of W.H. Auden. The departure, however, is taken in response to a brief and questionable statement by Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) about world history and the position of reason since the end of the Second World War. Findings – Historical analysis, it is argued, is essential for any understanding of processes of militarization but not adequate on its own. Originality/value – Militarization means, at least in the first instance, the adoption of military modes of organization and engagement in supposedly non-military environments. But at a deeper level, which is nonetheless manifest in both a developing technology and an increasingly technological attitude, it implies the repetition of basic attitudes to others and to life. Furthermore the very meaning of militarization is likely to undergo metamorphoses as a result of these trends. Readers who remember the Kent and Brown (2006) JMH article on erotic retailing, which told the story of a journey from backstreet to online, the change in attitude towards both shops and products, and the development of shops selling their products to women, should not take consideration of the following article as evidence of kind of trend. Rather, given the preceding and proceeding discussions, one might well be moved to take one’s copy of JMH and repair to a pub/bar for further reflection over a glass or two of one’s favourite tipple. In the same vein as Kent and Brown (2006), Pratten (2007) presents an outline of the main physical characteristics of the British public house (pub), its products and facilities, its clientele and licensee in the mid 20th century, as a basis for a subsequent illustration of the extent of change that has taken place in the products and facilities, clientele and licensees since then. Pratten (2007:340) The twentieth century had witnessed a regular series of brewery mergers and amalgamations. This may have reduced choice for some drinkers, but it had affected little real impact in most outlets. This was especially true as most brewers tended to be regional and family owned, and took decisions that were not always financially driven, such as keeping open an uneconomic local pub, for the sake of the community. By the end of the 1950s, the pub had changed very little. Few had been modernised, and so most remained shabby and unattractive. Nevertheless, they remained the centre of drinking, and the customers still tended to be male and working class. More women were starting to use the pubs, but the lack of physical comfort deterred many. Abstract Purpose – This article aims to outline the main physical characteristics of the British pub, its products and facilities, clientele and licensee at around the end of the Second World War.Purpose – This article aims to outline the main physical characteristics of the British pub, its products and facilities, clientele and licensee at around the end of the Second World War. Design/methodology/approach – There has been a heavy use of secondary sources drawn from the whole of the period studied. This has been augmented by discussions with licensees, retired licensees and older pub customers, to collect their reflections on the industry. Findings – The public house of 60 years ago had a largely male, working class beer-drinking clientele. Women were becoming more frequent visitors, but their custom was restricted by traditional attitudes and poor facilities. Research limitations/implications – The paper examines the state of the industry. Further work could examine this more carefully, and could include regional studies for comparison purposes. Practical implications – The paper sets the scene for an illustration of the extent of change that has taken place since then. Originality/value – There have been other attempts to examine the history of the public house. This is the most detailed, and as such could be of interest to the general reader as well as practitioners and students of the hospitality industry.