The decline of authority and the rise of managerialism

Managerialism, as an ideology and management practice, is grounded on a theory of authority. Such grounding has been neglected in the relevant literature since scholars have generally treated authority as a form of power and have ignored the view that authority is also a source of power. Following a review of the construct of authority as it appears in the works of noted social psychologists and critical management authors, this essay argues that Carl Friedrich’s theory of authority as reasoned elaboration reveals two manifestations: authoritativeness and authoritarianism. It is argued here that managerialism draws on authoritarian ideas and practices, whereas management, as traditionally conceived, draws on authoritativeness. To promote authoritative management, therefore, is to resist (authoritarian) managerialism since authority redirects power to technical experts and professional colleagues and thereby limits managerial power.

Ideologías del management y perspectiva de género: la contribución de “Mujeres y discursos gerenciales” a unos estudios críticos de la gestión

Resumen: El objetivo de esta contribución es el de realizar una valoración del trabajo de Maria Medina-Vicent Mujeres y discursos gerenciales: hacia la autogestión feminista. En el texto se describirá la importancia que tienen las ideologías gerenciales como articuladoras del discurso pro-empresarial contemporáneo para, a continuación, señalar las principales contribuciones del libro de Medina-Vicent, que son la de no solo criticar el peculiar tipo de feminismo presente en los libros de literatura empresarial dirigidos a mujeres, sino proponer una reversión de los discursos neoliberales sostenida en las aportaciones de la teoría feminista. Abstract: This contribution aims at making an assessment of the work of Maria Medina-Vicent Mujeres y discursos gerenciales: hacia la autogestión feminista. The text will describe the importance of managerial ideologies as articulators of contemporary pro-business discourses. Besides, the main contributions of Medina-Vicent’s book will be highlighted. Those are not only the critique of the peculiar type of feminism underpinning in management books addressed to women, but also the proposal of a feminist theory-based rejection of neoliberal discourses. Palabras clave: ideologías gerenciales, feminismo, estudios críticos de gestión, mujeres líderes. Keywords: managerial ideologies, feminism, critical management studies, female leaders.

Improving Implementation of 10 STSB (Steps to Successful Breastfeeding) through BENEFIT (Breastfeeding Exclusively in Health Facility) Intervention in East Java, Indonesia

ABSTRAKLatar Belakang: Peningkatan cakupan ASI eksklusif dapat dilakukan dengan menerapkan 10 LMKM di fasilitas kesehatan. Berdasarkan hasil penilaian program 10 LMKM tahap 1 menunjukkan perlunya penguatan 10 LMKM terutama langkah 1 dan 2 sebagai prosedur pengelolaan kritis (Critical Management Procedural). Untuk menindaklanjuti temuan tersebut maka dijalankan Project BENEFIT untuk meningkatkan penerapan dari langkah-langkah tersebut. Proyek tersebut dilaksanakan pada tahun 2019 hingga 2020 di 5 kabupaten/kota di Jawa Timur yaitu Bondowoso, Jember, Probolinggo, Trenggalek dan Surabaya.Tujuan: Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengevaluasi implementasi penguatan 10 LMKM yang dilakukan melalui proyek BENEFITyang berfokus pada penguatan langkah 1 dan 2 di fasilitas kesehatan di Provinsi Jawa Timur dan bagaimana pengaruhnya terhadap penerapan langkah lainnya serta pencapaian dalam indikator menyusui. Metode: Studi crossectional dilakukan pada 720 responden yang terdiri dari 143 pimpinan fasilitas kesehatan dan 577 ibu nifas (untuk validasi data). Pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan menggunakan kuesioner yang diadaptasi dari BFHI Unicef/WHO yang mengevaluasi penerapan keseluruhan langkah dalam 10 LMKM menggunakan aplikasi KoBo ToolBox pada periode Juli-September 2020. Hasil: Terdapat peningkatan dalam penerapan 10 LMKM terutama langkah 1 dan 2. Langkah 1 yaitu tersedianya kebijakan tertulis pemberian ASI eksklusif menunjukkan peningkatan kepatuhan yang signifikan (66,4 menjadi 72,82; α= 0,015). Sedangkan untuk tahap 2 (pelatihan dukungan menyusui bagi petugas kesehatan dan non-kesehatan) menunjukkan peningkatan yang signifikan dalam pelaksanaannya (69,5 menjadi 77; α = 0,015). Prosedur manajemen kritis berperan sebagai landasan yang mempengaruhi praktik dukungan menyusui di fasilitas kesehatan. Berdasarkan hasil monitoring dan evaluasi menunjukkan adanya perbaikan pada praktik dukungan menyusui selama perawatan ibu di fasilitas kesehatan seperti cakupan IMD (71,2%) baik pada persalinan normal maupun seksio sesarea, rawat gabung (69,1%) dan praktik menyusui bayi baru lahir. (73,5%). Kesimpulan: Intervensi BENEFIT yang berfokus pada penguatan langkah 1 dan 2 dalam 10 LMKM sebagai prosedur manajemen kritis mampu meningkatkan kepatuhan implementasi keseluruhan langkah 10 LMKM. Sebagai landasan untuk melaksanakan langkah-langkah lainnya, penguatan 10 LMKM terutama langkah 1 dan 2 terbukti dapat meningkatkan praktik dukungan menyusui di fasilitas kesehatan oleh seluruh staf.Kata Kunci: Menyusui, 10 LMKM, BENEFIT ABSTRACTBackground: 10 Steps to Successful Breastfeeding (STSB) was implemented as an attempt to improve the coverage of exclusive breastfeeding in healthcare facilities. Results of the phase 1 Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) assessment necessitated further strengthening for steps 1 which is the availability of an exclusive breastfeeding policy and step 2 which entails training provision for maternal and child health officer. These two steps are regarded as critical management procedures which act as a foundation for the implementation of subsequent steps. To follow up on these findings, Project BENEFIT was implemented to improve steps 1 and 2. The project was carried out between 2019 and 2020 in 5 districts in East Java, namely Bondowoso, Jember, Probolinggo, Trenggalek and Surabaya. Objectives: This objective of this study is to evaluate the implementation of the BENEFIT project and how it affects the implementation of other steps as well as how it impacts breastfeeding indicators.Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 720 respondents consisting of 143 health facility leaders and 577 post-partum mothers to validate response. Data was collected using a questionnaire adapted from Baby Friendly Hospital Initiation (BFHI) guidelines by World Health organization (WHO) and United Nations Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF) using the KoBo ToolBox application between July and October 2020. Results: There was an improvement in the implementation of steps 1 and 2. A significant increase in compliance was found for Step 1 (66.4 to 72.82 α = 0.015) and step 2 (69.5 to 77.9, α = 0.15). Subsequent monitoring and evaluation also showed moderate improvement on breastfeeding support practice in health facilities such as coverage of skin-to-skin contact (71.2%) both on normal and section-caesarean delivery, rooming-in (69.1%) and the practice of breastfeeding newborn (73.5 %). Conclusion: The BENEFIT project assisted in the increased compliance for steps 1 and 2 STSB, which further improved breastfeeding support practices by all healthcare facility staff members for other steps. Keywords: Breastfeeding, 10 STSB, BENEFIT

Thinking Critically in Management Education

Most would argue that critical thinking is core to higher education; that a fundamental purpose is to cultivate students’ capacity to critique arguments, to scrutinize evidence, and to reason logically. However, in management education, a different take on thinking critically emerged in the 1980s, provoked by dissatisfaction with a mainstream management education which appeared happy to teach managers how to reason, analyze, and critique, without asking fundamental questions about ends, means, values, and consequences for employees, consumers, the environment, or society. In this vein, critical management education (CME) promotes a critical engagement with the world through a combination of questioning the legitimacy of knowledge, critical reflection, and critical being or action. The purpose of thinking critically in management education is seen as moving in the direction of greater social justice and a world in which neither people, nor the environment, are oppressed. CME can encompass both critical content and critical pedagogy. Frameworks for thinking critically in CME have broadened from the original neo-Marxist and hegemony theory employed in critical management studies (CMS) to draw from postmodernist, post-structuralist, psychodynamic, feminist, ecological, critical-realist, postcolonial theory, critical race theory, and queer theory. Critical pedagogy in management education has drawn from the longer traditions of community and radical adult education, with their practices of participative methods and dialogue. In addition, reflexivity plays a central part. Teaching and learning methods used by critical management educators as ways to explore the messiness, contradictions, and paradoxes of organizations are wide and varied, and include film, drama, and literature as well as bodywork such as yoga and meditation. Criticisms of CME include the right of academics to unsettle students’ sense of themselves, potentially disruptive effects of critical reflection, educators’ presumed moral superiority, neglect of issues of race and gender, as well as the challenge that critical management is an oxymoron. To provoke critical thinking challenges educators to redefine their role and their assumptions about learning. Attempting to be a CME educator has been likened to working on the margins, as a tempered radical, with attendant stresses and risks of student, peer, and institutional disapproval. Experienced educators advocate finding “uncontested niches” to develop CME modules and materials such as an optional module or new course; exploiting spaces which speak to the priorities of institutions (such as esteem and rankings) as well as appeal to students. Research on CME has been largely restricted to single reflective accounts and evaluations of educator practice. Rich though these are, it means the field has many unanswered questions that invite further research. These include: • What are the implications of hyper-diversity in the classroom for critical pedagogies? • What are junior faculty’s experiences of trying to introduce criticality into management education? • How can CME respond to changing societal challenges? • What might be the implications of post-human socio-materiality? • What can CME offer to undergraduate and post-experience constituencies? • How can CME make a difference to management practice?

Concept to recognize crisis of organizational and institutional separation by Artificial Intelligence System

The sphere of anti-crisis management is highlighted in relation to the open variety of organizational and institutional separations that are typical for the higher forms of industrial and post-industrial economies. This article shows the typicity and relevance of critical management situations associated with the emergence of crises. Furthermore, it justifies the objective orientation to a dense (not sparse) stream of crisis situations requiring identification, ranking, and classification. A strict management interpretation of the separation crisis is given through an assessment of the nature of the dynamics of the separation state indexes. Also, the document presents a generalized typological classification of crises. This article shows the necessity of using a high-level Artificial Intelligence System for this purpose, an indispensable component of which is the classification component.

Critical positions: Situating critical perspectives in work and organizational psychology

This paper argues that critical perspectives have constituted a marginal yet continued presence in work and organizational (W-O) psychology and calls for a reflexive taking stock of these perspectives to ground a critical research agenda. We argue that critical W-O psychology has been positioned between a psychology literature with limited development of critical perspectives, and an emergent critical management literature that has allowed their selective development. This in-between position has allowed critical W-O psychology to persist, albeit in a fragmented form, while limiting its potential for theoretical and applied impact. We use this diagnosis to reflect on how critical perspectives can best develop from within W-O psychology. We end with a call for developing a critical movement unique to the current historical moment, drawing upon without repeating the experiences of its home disciplines, in a future oriented and reflexive psychology research agenda.

Towards emancipation through organizational (re)design? Exploring integral organizational renewal from a critical management perspective

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a more pragmatic critical management studies (CMS), by exploring the emancipatory intent of organizational (re)design concepts and ideas from the modern sociotechnical approach integral organizational renewal (IOR). Design/methodology/approach This paper is of a conceptual nature in that it engages with relevant literature from the fields of CMS and IOR, guided by a focused conceptualization of emancipation from CMS literature. Findings It is found that although IOR can to a large extent be considered as an emancipatory project, it contains a number of dangers which jeopardize its emancipatory potential. Complemented with other sociotechnical approaches and ideas, however, it appears that IOR could make some valuable contributions to a pragmatic CMS. Originality/value This paper is unique in engaging in an exchange of ideas between CMS and IOR. By doing so, it contributes, first, to the debate on a more pragmatic CMS; second, to the dialogue between CMS and “mainstream” organization science; third, to the field of organizational (re)design.

Steering as Path Creation: Leadership and the Art of Managing Dependencies and Reality Effects

We develop a perspective on steering in governance which understands steering as intended path creation. Inspired by evolutionary governance theory, critical management studies and social systems theory, we argue that steering is shaped and limited by co-evolutions, disallowing for any formulaic approach. In order to illuminate the space for steering in governance, we analyze the interplay between different dependencies. Those dependencies are not just obstacles to path creation, they can also be pointers and assets. The steering discussion is further complicated by always unique sets of couplings between a governance system and its environment. After introducing the ideas of reality effects and governance strategy, we further develop our concept of steering and present it as the management of dependencies (in governance) and reality effects (outside governance) towards path creation. This management is ideally strategic in nature and requires leadership in a new role.