Beschreibung
Preface to the 1st German Edition The present book, of which the original manuscripts for Chapters 1-3 were completed in August 1977 and accepted as a habilitation thesis by the University of St. Gallen in 1978, is committed to a long-standing tradition honored in St. Gallen. Since as early as the mid-1960s, a group of varying composition mentored by Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Hans Ulrich had been trying to establish a management theory that focused on the design and management of complex socio-technical systems. Their intention was to reform business administration studies and the pertinent, very economics-centered way of thinking. At the same time, however, the group moved away from business administration, since, from today's perspective, it is highly questionable whether business administration and management theory have anything in common at all. The way I see it, management theory attempts to solve a problem quite different from that which business administration deals with. Whereas Wöhe in his Einführung in die allgemeine Betriebswirtschaftslehre "Introduction to general business administration" points out that business administration deals with "the sum of all economic decisions taken in the context of a business organization," to then explain that its focal point is "not the business as such" but rather "the economic side of a business and of business processes," management theory aims to gain control over the entire system made up of the organization and its environment. As such, management theory, just like management practice, cannot limit itself to a particular aspect. The system has to be under control in all relevant dimensions. The strive for multidimensionality is not the only element typical of this understanding of management theory: An even more significant aspect is the element of "getting something under control." Decisions like those analyzed in business economics studies can be one means to achieve this control, but they surely are not the only one. As I hope to demonstrate in this book, management and management theory have strong foundations in systems science, and most specifically in a certain type of cybernetics. Note that I am not referring to the kind usually referred to as control theory or control engineering. What I am talking about is the cybernetics of truly complex systems, of organismic, self-organizing, and evolving systems. You might ask yourself whether a mundane activity such as managing really needs and justifies using such a complicated approach to provide a foundation. I think it does. Even by human standards, our world has become a very organized world in rather short time periods, a network of institutions so complex it can no longer be captured by human dimensions. This world is the result of human action, and the explosive growth in the number of managers at all hierarchical levels plays an increasingly important role. Much of our present world is a result of managerial action. But is it also a result of managerial intention? I am not sure which answer-yes or no-would imply greater problems. An essential part of this work is dedicated to finding out which of the answers is more accurate and what the consequences are. Today there are more people handling management tasks than ever before, and more people than ever are affected by and dependent on what managers do. As a result, it is becoming increasingly important to be able to tell what good or bad management means, who is a good and who is a bad manager, and what theory is best suited to solve present and future management issues. As mentioned before, after having completed the first three chapters of this book I focused on application-related issues. In 1977 I took on the leadership of Management Zentrum St. Gallen, an organization specializing in management training, development, and consulting. I was driven to find out whether the thoughts and concepts described here could be applied in practice, whether the goings-on in organizations, the way people act, and so on, would be easier to understand if viewed from this perspective. Based on my personal experience-which, of course, I do not claim to have evidentiary value-I am convinced that business enterprises, just like most other social institutions, are truly complex, self-organizing, and evolving systems and that only very specific ways of influencing, controlling, and shaping them will have a chance at being effective. Much of what happens in organizations is nothing but rituals that do not really have an impact or change anything. Many social institutions are not managed at all, even though it may appear otherwise, because they are simply not manageable. Quite often, decisions are not made-they make themselves. In many organizations, sensible things happen not because but in spite of management; and in many instances the past years have shown that it takes but a few changes for entire industries to get out of control. In many areas of society, the only way to conceal the fact that systems have never been under control is by resorting to semantics. Many problems can only be regarded as being under control because our expectations concerning their solution have been adjusted downward to reflect the status quo. My efforts at practical testing and the dynamics these things tend to have-especially with regard to clients' specific needs and the associated time pressure-caused a greater delay in finalizing the print manuscript than originally expected. The experiences gathered during that time called for substantial changes and amendments. Chapters 0 and 4 were added; Chapter 3 was expanded and some essential aspects included. Chapter 1 remained unchanged for reasons I will explain later, while Chapter 2 was modified only marginally. I would like to express my thanks to all the people that contributed to this book: those who influenced my thinking and my views about management, most notably Professor Dr. Hans Ulrich and my colleague Dr. Walter Krieg; the management practitioners with whom I had countless conversations at numerous seminars and consulting projects, and who taught me to see the world with their eyes; the client organizations which, apart from the immediate issues to be solved, were always objects of my research; my colleagues and staff at both Management Zentrum St. Gallen and St. Gallen University's Institute of Business Economics, who presented me with numerous management problems and helped me solve some of them; the Swiss National Fund for sponsoring my work; my publishers at Verlag Paul Haupt, who had almost given up hope of ever receiving my manuscript; Ruth Blumer, Felicitas Kurth, and my mother for producing and supervising the manuscript; Jochen Overlack for reading the proofs. Last but not least, special thanks go to my family. Anyone who has ever written a book knows how much time and effort it takes, how everything else has to take a backseat. Every time my three-year-old daughter asked me, "Daddy, when are you going to play with me?" I would answer: "As soon as I'm finished here." "But when will you be finished?" she would ask. Over time, the children seemed to understand the nature and objective of evolution, for one day my five-year-old son, thoughtfully gazing at my crowded desk and the stacks of books, papers, and files on the floor, said to me, "Daddy, I think your book will never be finished." St. Gallen, April 1984 Prof. Dr. Fredmund Malik Preface to the 2nd German Edition In many fields, systemic thinking seems to have arrived at a point close to critical mass. There are more and more areas of human thinking and action where, by all accounts, people have begun to seriously consider the systemic nature of things. However, as encouraging as this may be, one must not underestimate the time required to implement an innovation like this. Fundamental innovations, whether they happe...
Autorenporträt
Fredmund Malik ist ein vielfach ausgezeichneter Autor von Bestsellern, darunter der Klassiker "Führen Leisten Leben", der zu den 100 besten Managementbüchern aller Zeiten gehört. Zu seinen Auszeichnungen zählen das Ehrenkreuz der Republik Österreich für Wissenschaft und Kunst (2009), der Heinz-von-Foerster-Preis für Organisationskybernetik der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Kybernetik (2010) und jüngst der Life Achievement Award der Weiterbildung (2018) für seine Verdienste in der Management-Lehre.
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