Abstract
Most managers experience paradoxes and contradictions as an inherent part of their daily practice. This has been recognised by various management theories for some time, although mainly with the aim to dissolve the paradoxes or at least balance contradictory issues in order to regain control over organizational realities. We argue for a different and more critical perspective. Paradoxes, contradictions and tensions are part of the everyday experience of working together, are impervious to being ‚managed’ and will certainly not disappear. This is particularly obvious in the social, education or health sectors where professionals work with and for vulnerable people, having to act sensibly and exercise practical judgment in unpredictable, uncertain and fast changing circumstances. However, managers and their staff can find ways to work together productively by looking at the enabling and constraining factors of their co-operation and competition. Confronting oneself with the paradoxes of management and being able to share and discuss these with others as peers is a key element of what has evolved as ‚reflective management practice’ in our executive trainings. We see a need to further rethink and reorient management education in general and non-profit management education in particular.
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Notes
- 1.
The classical core functions of management as proposed by Gulick and Urwick in the 1930s, based on Fayol (Steffensen 2015).
- 2.
The mathematician B. Mandelbrot called such self-similar patterns ‘fractals’. A typical example in nature is a branch of a tree that itself looks like a tree formed by several smaller branches (see also Mowles 2015, p. 18).
- 3.
We refer to the non-profit leadership courses at Zurich University of Applied Sciences, School of Social Work.
- 4.
Other than undergraduate and graduate studies further education programmes have to operate on a full cost-covering basis in Switzerland. Sharing costs of further education between employer and employee is common practice in many sectors and part of staff retention and staff development policies.
- 5.
We thank Silvia Frost, Santino Güntert and Jeremy Hellmann for their important contributions.
- 6.
These are also on offer. See for example Mintzberg’s coachingourselves.com.
- 7.
Sometimes also called intervision. The concepts are overlapping and used synonymously. For a suggested joint European terminology see Judy und Knopf (2015).
- 8.
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Herzka, M., Mowles, C. (2017). Managing Amid Paradoxes: Perspectives of Non-Profit Management Education. In: Grillitsch, W., Brandl, P., Schuller, S. (eds) Gegenwart und Zukunft des Sozialmanagements und der Sozialwirtschaft. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-15982-5_27
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