Abstract
In this chapter, we explore Xenophon’s philosophy of management and identify nine dimensions of business management, as well as the competencies (the knowledge, skills, and virtues) that good management requires. The scientific contribution of this chapter does not only consist in the fact that this is the first publications in which Xenophon’s philosophy of management is systematically analyzed. Historical analysis can also help to question the self-evidence of our contemporary conceptualization of management. Xenophon’s philosophy of management enables us to criticize the contemporary focus on profit maximization and to articulate an intrinsic relation between business and society; to criticize the contemporary disconnectedness of business management and to develop a broader set of individual competencies and know-how that is required for business managers; to criticize the contemporary focus on management and control; and to rehabilitate the role of business management as ability and capacity that involves know-how, actual engagement, and virtuous competencies. Finally, this concept of management challenges contemporary conceptualizations of the differences between private and public management in political philosophical debates.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
At first sight, it seems to be strange to consult Socrates’ vision on business management, as he is normally seen as very negative about profit making and business (Plato 2013). Because the historical comparison between the Socrates of Plato and Xenophon is beyond the scope of this chapter, we purely focus on Socrates contribution to the question what is (business) management as it appears in Xenophon’s Oeconomicus in this chapter.
- 3.
Although Xenophon himself explicitly talks about slaves, we conceive the term in more neutral terms as subordinates. On the one hand, Xenophon’s description of the role and treatment of slaves resonates with modern ways of treating employees as we will see. On the other, both slaves and employees can be formally seen as subordinates of the business manager who is the owner of the assets.
- 4.
Throughout this chapter, he or his can be replaced by she or her.
- 5.
While historically, direct labour is primarily associated with pain and suffering, Xenophon associates it with joy and pleasure. This may be explained by the fact that he, as business manager, is free to engage in direct labour while his employees are necessitated to engage in direct labour in order to survive. This may also explain why Karl Marx criticized Xenophon’s “characteristic, bourgeois instinct” (cited in Strauss 1989: 203). At the same time, we could argue that Xenophon’s appreciation of direct labour helps us to criticize the disconnection between the workforce and the management level that can often be observed in contemporary bureaucratic organizations (see §3).
- 6.
According to Aristotle, females are naturally subordinate because of their limited rationality (Aristotle 1944: 1260a9-15).
- 7.
In this, Xenophon deviates from the classical idea that in economic affairs, “the rule by many is not good; one should be master, one be king”, which can be found in Homer’s Illias and is cited and confirmed by Aristotle Metaphysics (Aristotle, 1933: 1076a3ff).
- 8.
Xenophon wrote another book on leadership, based on his experience of a military campaign in which the Greeks fled for the Persians by fighting their way back to Greece (Xenophon 1989). Although there are several overlaps between Xenophon’s Oeconomicus and Anabalis, a further comparison between the two works is beyond the scope of this chapter, which focusses on business management in general and not on leadership only. See for an analysis of Xenophon’s concept of leadership, Humphreys (2002).
- 9.
Xenophon is against profit maximization as such and his notion of the limitation of the economic sphere by the political sphere resembles Aristotle’s conceptualization in this respect (Aristotle 1944). The further comparison between Aristotle and Xenophon is beyond the scope of this chapter.
- 10.
Framing the particular episteme involved in business management in terms of individual competency solves an interpretation problem (Bragues 2007), as Xenophon calls management an episteme and a technè in this book, and is actually consulting a good practitioner in management in the second half of the book, and is not only looking for universals or ideas that can be applied in different cases of business management. Although Agamben is right in his observation that management is less epistemic and more a way of being (Agamben 2007: 17), he misses this threefold notion of competency as a combination of episteme, arête and technè.
- 11.
The question whether political and economic management can be reduced to each other in a general concept of management that holds for both domains, or whether the two remain separate aspects of steering is beyond the scope of this chapter (see Blok 2019).
- 12.
In this respect, Xenophon can be seen as predecessor of Fiedler’s contingency management theory, especially its acknowledgment that there is no absolute best way to manage the business, and the situational character of the management style of the manager (cf. Fiedler and Garcia 1987).
- 13.
I would like to thank Cristina Neesham and Marian Eabrasu for their valuable comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
References
Agamben G (2007) The kingdom and the glory. Stanford University Press, Stanford
Aristotle (1933) Metaphysics. In: Loeb classical library. Harvard University Press, Harvard
Aristotle (1944) Politics. In: Loeb classical library. Harvard University Press, Harvard
Blok V (2018) Information asymmetries and the paradox of sustainable business models: toward an integrated theory of sustainable entrepreneurship. In: Idowu SO et al (eds) Sustainable business models: principles, promise, and practice. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 203–225
Blok V (2019) Sovereignty versus economics: philosophical reflections on the nature of corporate governance in the age of global warming. Working Paper
Blok V, Gremmen B, Wesselink R (2016) Dealing with the wicked problem of sustainable development: the role of individual virtuous competence. Bus Prof Ethics J 23(3):297–328
Bordum A (2007) Managing innovation potential: revisiting Plato and reading John Dewey as a philosopher of innovation management. Phil Manag 6(1):63–79
Bowden H (2012) The ethics of management: a stoic perspective. Phil Manag 11(2):29–48
Bragues G (2007) Socrates on management: an analysis of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus. Working paper. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=997057. Accessed 11 Mar 2019
Bray A (2001) Why is it that management seems to have no history? Phil Manag 1(1):21–25
Deleuze G (1992) Postscript on the societies of control. October 59:3–7
Deleuze G (1997) Negotiations. Columbia University Press, Columbia
Deslandes G (2018) Weak theology and organization studies. Organ Stud:1–18
Fayol H (1949) General and industrial management. Pitman & Sons, London
Fiedler FE, Garcia JE (1987) New approaches to leadership, cognitive resources and organizational performance. Wiley, New York
Fontrodona J, Melé D (2002) Philosophy as a base for management: an Aristotelian integrative proposal. Phil Manag 2(2):3–9
Garst J, Blok V, Jansen L, Omta O (2017) Responsibility versus profit: the motives of food firms for healthy product innovation. Sustainability 9(12):2286
Gimbel S (2005) Can corporations be morally responsible? Aristotle, stakeholders and the non-sale of Hershey. Phil Manag 5(3):23–30
Hartman EM (2015) Rationality in management theory and practice: an Aristotelian perspective. Phil Manag 14(1):5–16
Humphreys JH (2002) The Anabasis and lessons in leadership: Xenophon as a prototypical transformational leader. J Manag Res 2(3):136–146
Krentz AA, Malloy DC (2005) Opening people to possibilities: a Heideggerian approach to leadership. Phil Manag 5(1):25–44
Law E (2009) Oxford dictionary of business and management. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Loumansky A, Lewis D (2013) A Levinasian approach to whistleblowing. Phil Manag 12(3):27–48
Lowry ST (1979) Recent literature on Ancient Greek economic thought. J Econ Lit 17(1):65–86
Mayo GE (2003) The human problems of an industrial civilization. Routledge, London
Mondzain MJ (2005) Image, icon, economy: the Byzantine origins of the contemporary imaginary. Stanford University Press, Stanford
Plato (2013) Republic, Loeb classical library. Harvard University Press, Harvard
Statt DA (2004) The Routledge dictionary of business management. Routledge, London/New York
Strauss L (1989) Xenophon’s Socratic discourse. An interpretation of the Oeconomicus. St. Augustine Press, Sound Bend
Taylor FW (1911) The principles of scientific management. Harper & Brothers, New York
Tempels T, Verweij M, Blok V (2017) Big food’s ambivalence: seeking profit and responsibility for health. Am J Public Health 107(3):402–406
Xenophon (1989) Anabasis. Loeb classical library. Harvard University Press, Harvard
Xenophon (2013) Memorabilia, Oeconomicus, symposium, apology. Loeb classical library. Harvard University Press, Harvard
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Blok, V. (2019). Xenophon’s Philosophy of Management. In: Neesham, C., Segal, S. (eds) Handbook of Philosophy of Management. Handbooks in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48352-8_27-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48352-8_27-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-48352-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-48352-8
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities