Heinz Siebenbrock - Fair Management

1.1 Management: a question of attitude

So much has already been written and said about successful management in books and at events that the reader rightly expects a justification for this book. Leadership has long been a subject of study in economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology and philosophy, without ever being exhausted. Each year, a wide range of disciplines bring forth fresh insights and new literature. What is the purpose of yet another contribution?

This book does not address a professional audience or specialists. Rather, this is a popular science book that aims to use simple language and does not require any prior knowledge. But I also do not promise the reader any recipes that lead to certain success.

The reason for this book

This book should inspire you to reflect. It calls you to do your own work and reconsider yourself, to change and develop your management style, and it shows the aspects that must be considered in doing so.

I fundamentally believe that management is a question of personal attitude. You need to reflect on yourself and establish your own positions so that you can develop an individual, effective management style.

What matters to me most is to support and encourage current and future managers in their positive basic attitude towards their employees. If they build on this, they will be able to lead their employees in a way that is situation-appropriate, successful and enjoyable.

Good or bad? In between!

As has been shown, management in practice looks bleak. Only one in ten managers is approved as demonstrating ‘good leadership’ in the sense of ethically unobjectionable, humane management. On the other hand, if we follow the notion of the ‘continuum of leadership’14, we come to the conclusion that only one in ten managers really deserves to be called unethical or even malicious. Between these two poles, we find a variety of positions, which, however, as the Gallup report confirms, seem to tend towards the inhumane pole. When asked about inhumane practices, managers such as these from the ‘middle of the field’ like to make out that they are natural and necessary. Examples include the commonly heard excuses:

• You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.

• A little pressure never hurt anyone, or:

• It takes pressure to make diamonds.

• You can’t always be considerate.

• It’s a dog-eat-dog world.

• Nice guys finish last.

• The others are no better.

• The end justifies the means.

I realise this book will hardly reach the true believers in ‘bad’ management. Worse still, we are always going to have to live with a bad element in management. Nonetheless, it should still be possible for proper recruiting that includes ‘ethical qualifications’ to make an important contribution to fair management.

Who do managers identify with?

The main question that remains to be asked, however, is why managers in the middle of the field, who would not describe themselves as either good or bad, tend to identify more strongly with those who are examples of inhumane leadership. Revealing the questionable implicit values of business administration gives a key answer to this. In this regard I hope that a significant majority of managers in the middle of the field will follow the good examples which certainly exist and, with the help of this guide to fair management, will develop a management style that is based on a humane attitude and that meets ethical standards.

1.2 Structure of the book

A management model based on decency

This book invites the reader to recognise and rethink the implicit values of business administration. I would like to set this orientation against a vision based on a people-orientated framework of values. At the centre are the concepts of appreciation, sustainability, fulfilment and trust. Not every reader will want to adopt this exact set of values; rather, it acts as a suggestion to develop one’s own positive, and above all, humane attitude towards doing business and the people involved in it (employees, customers, suppliers).

A framework of values

On the basis of this framework of values, a management model is then drawn up that can be used to successfully implement what Hans Küng calls ‘doing business with a sense of decency’15. In this management model, generally applicable guidelines, tasks and instruments of management are presented and discussed based on Fredmund Malik’s book Managing, Performing, Living against the background of the alternative framework of values.

The guidelines that will be presented are, like guardrails, designed to keep us within the boundaries of our own humane attitude. Over and over again, we find ourselves in situations in which our inner laziness counsels us to act contrary to humane leadership. The management guidelines make an important contribution to not falling back into conventional attitudes that rely on suppression.

Management tasks describe the actual responsibility of a manager. It is not a matter of taking on as many tasks as possible, but rather of recognising the small number of tasks that a manager should perform at a minimum. Finally, a detailed description of suitable management instruments shows how the management tasks can be implemented in terms of humane management in practice.

The presentation of the management model is followed by a chapter on the ‘cornerstones’ of good management: the ‘rules of decency’ given there not only round off the picture of fair management, but also provide information on how fair management can be measured.

Against the mainstream?

One objection stands out right from the beginning. If most managers today (most likely subconsciously) follow an inhumane, dubious guiding principle, is it particularly wise or likely to yield any success to swim against the mainstream by choosing an alternative approach and to practise business and management with a sense of decency? This question, which comes up repeatedly in conversation, will be addressed in the last two chapters.

Common management concepts and humane leadership

The classifying of well-known management concepts clearly demonstrates that models addressing important components of humane management already exist in practice. These include, for example, the concepts of ‘knowledge management’, ‘change management’ as well as the pursuit of ‘agility’ and a ‘positive error management culture’. On the other hand, it should also be pointed out that well-known and widely practised concepts such as ‘lean management’ and ‘quality management’ are more likely to hamper humane management.

In conclusion, case studies will be used to show how this alternative approach is at least equal, if not superior to the conventional management practice based on suppressing employees, even when it comes to economic success. In any case, this approach makes the lives of all involved more enjoyable.

2 Questionable values in business studies

What values characterise business studies? The view originating with Max Weber16 that the economy and the science of economics are value-free has had such a patent effect that such fundamental questions are rarely asked. Günter Wöhe, in his widely used foundational work, Einführung in die allgemeine Betriebswirtschaftslehre [General Introduction to Business Studies], nevertheless points out that in business studies, where values and problems of evaluation play an important role, critical consideration is particularly needed17. However, he undertakes no more than a brief comparison of the experts in the field who advocate ‘value-freedom’ and those who have an ‘evaluating conscience’, and does not go into any more detail on the content of the values and guidelines that underpin business studies.