Abstract
This book provides a welcome antidote both to the drivel that is spouted by management gurus and to the recent proliferation of fluffy postmodern theories that tend to exhibit the watery consistency of a garlic-flavoured ‘conceptual soup’. The book is written in a clear and accessible style and the reader is left in no doubt as to the erudition of the author or the purpose of the book itself in re-invigorating the debate over the role of organizations in contributing to the common good of our society. This book provides an excellent account of a number of concepts (e.g. arête/virtue, phronesis/practical wisdom, koinon/common good, katharsis, amongst others) for a critical engagement with contemporary forms of management and organization. In particular, the author draws on Aristotle’s conception of the common good in order to re-interpret our understanding of organizational ethics, organizational governance and the politics of organization.
The book begins by aligning itself with critical thinkers within management and organization studies, observing that, ‘It is important to challenge … hegemonies because they reproduce inequality and bolster class dominance …’ (p. 2). The book develops a distinctive approach to this project because instead of following Marx, or the critical theory of the Frankfurt School or the later post-structuralists, Morrell looks to Aristotle for his conceptual inspiration. Given Aristotle’s apology for slavery and other forms of discrimination and domination, and his being the tutor of greatest hegemon of his time (Alexander), his theories might seem an unusual choice on which to found a critical theory of organization. Indeed, much of the ensuing argument of the book openly wrestles with such problems in Aristotle’s work, which shows a high degree of critical reflexivity on the part of the author but also has a tendency to indulge in apology rather than critical exegesis. Nevertheless, Morrell shows us that Aristotle’s work contains many critical concepts with which we can better understand contemporary organizational forms and further enrich organizational practice with important questions concerning our pursuit of the common good.
Morrell describes his epistemological position as ‘soft realism’ where he sees sufficient commonalities between organizational forms throughout history to side step issues raised by cultural relativism and post modernism. For instance, he draws a parallel between Aristotle’s concern for community and the more modern project of ‘only connect’ (following E. M. Forster). He also takes Aristotle’s assertion that man is a political animal as a trans-historical social fact. The book then takes a series of major works by Aristotle, including the Politics, the Nichomachean Ethics, the Rhetoric, and the Poetics, and attempts to apply the ideas of each work to contemporary issues in management.
The first major text dealt with in the book is Aristotle’s Politics. In this account, Morrell argues that we can learn from Aristotle’s conception of the city as the elementary unit of ancient Greek social life. The city is fundamental to human flourishing and the pursuit of the good life. He notes that Aristotle’s conception of the good life and the common good is at odds with contemporary capitalism in that it ‘rests ultimately on notions of justice in society rather than on profit in the firm.’ (p. 47). In this respect, Morrell is not far from Alasdair MacIntyre’s (1981) exemplary critique of liberal capitalism by developing a neo-Aristotelian approach to organization. Morrell’s discussion provides an insightful account of the intractable relationship between business politics and business ethics and follows Martin Parker (2003) in calling for more research into this complex relationship.
The next chapter analyses questions of good governance and the provision of public goods in terms of an Aristotelian framework. Much of the discussion rehearses economic discussions about the non-excludable and non-rivalrous nature of public goods and the shortcomings of markets in dealing with the externalities related to the provision of such goods, although it does not bring in much Aristotelian theory itself. Morrell does bring in Aristotle when arguing that the provision of public goods can be judged according to three criteria, ‘(i) how it controls power over time; (ii) how it itself exhibits virtue; and (iii) how it creates the conditions within which citizens can live the good life’ (p. 63). Morrell criticizes Conservative notions of ‘Big Society’ which completely neglect the ethical and economic issues pertaining to the provision of public goods, assuming that civil society will somehow come to the rescue when markets fail to work. This is an insightful addition to the theory of public goods that has much in common with Michael Sandel’s (2013) recent critique of the limits of markets in his ‘What Money Can’t Buy’. Essentially both books argue that even if we do not have a unified conception of the good life, we may still agree on basic goods and norms that are deemed to be essential to diverse conceptions of pursuing such a life.
Morrell then moves on to Aristotle’s Rhetoric in a distinctive approach to discourse analysis. He develops a typology of aphorisms in order to analyse organizational rhetoric, although this is not a strictly Aristotelian undertaking (the works of Nietzsche and other thinkers are also drawn upon here). The next of Aristotle’s work’s to be dealt with is the Nichomachean Ethics. This entails a detailed discussion of concepts such as virtue, practical wisdom (phronesis) and friendship. There is an interesting critique of the work of Bent Flyvbjerg here and his use of the idea of ‘phronesis’, which according to Morrell acts more an as ideological strut for the authority of outside experts than as a genuinely critical (and Aristotelian) concept for understanding organizational behaviour. He also develops a critique of Rational Choice Theory and CBA for their impoverished conception of ethics and their lack of contextual appreciation for understanding the process of decision-making.
Next Morrell turns to the Poetics. In this chapter Morrell proposes that processes of mimesis and catharsis play an important role in management education, and the circulation of the myths that are crucial to the cultural capital of the management profession. Here, Morrell appears quite ambiguous as to the critical intent of his work. He comments on the hegemonic role of business school education in the perpetuation of management elites, but it is not clear how the mechanisms of mimesis and cathersis that are discussed earlier in the chapter play a critical role in challenging this hegemony, indeed, quite the contrary. In the next chapter Morrell continues his discussion of management education by exploring the role that radical movies such as Eisenstein’s ‘Strike’, ‘Battleship Potemkin’ and more modern films such as ‘Billy Elliot’ play in raising student’s awareness of class antagonisms in the modern supply chain (e.g. Foxxcon) and their own agency and revolutionary potential within this system of production and circulation. He argues that such aesthetic engagement with students ‘suggests ways of overcoming the contract of cynicism’ (p. 160), in the educational system. Whilst I do not dispute the richness of the resources of popular culture in engaging the imagination of students, I am unconvinced that showing movies in class is enough to overcome the ‘contract of cynicism’.
The last chapters of the book are perhaps the most radical in ambition, looking at the redistribution of land and wealth under the Sandanista government in Nicaragua. Again Morrell refers to the idea of the public good as a governing concept in understanding the ethical issues at stake. The analysis set out in this chapter provides a fascinating account of the political and organizational issues involved in Nicaragua’s reform of property rights based on an empirical inquiry into the ‘property forum’ that was initiated to deal with these issues. Morrell frames this inquiry in terms of governance mechanisms which faced two intractable problems concerning who was considered to have been disenfranchised over time and who are the public? The chapter provides an insightful analysis of the differing definitions of the public interest that were presented by different interest groups and how these are related to the question of good governance.
The conclusion of the book—‘Where Do We Go From Here?’ returns to Aristotle and reasserts his profound influence on the development of Western thought. At this point in the book I would like to have read something about how it fits together as a whole and what are the major concepts and unanswered questions that could be taken forward from the work for further development. With respect to the work as a whole, I would liked to have seen a far greater engagement with other neo-Aristotelian thinkers, especially the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, which has dealt with many of the issues raised in this book. Certainly MacIntyre’s distinction between institutions and practices, as well as between internal goods and external goods, are closely related to issue of the common good that are raised in Morrell’s own book. Morrell’s position on the significance of common good could no doubt be enriched with reference to MacIntyre’s discussion of the cultivation of internal goods within modern organizations. In particular Morrell’s analysis could be enriched by MacIntyre’s account of the structural aspects of the cultivation of the virtues and the way this is undermined by the techniques and ideology of modern managerialism. Having said that, Morrell’s engagement with the original works of Aristotle provides us with a original conceptual framework for the analysis of organizations and reveals an enthusiasm for scholarly inquiry that is all too rare. The concerns that I set out here are fairly minor quibbles and Morrell’s book provides a conceptually rigorous contribution to management and organization studies, particularly with respect to his development of a range of conceptual tools for a richer understanding of organizational governance, ethics and politics and the links between these different domains of organizational analysis.1