Individual fears and instincts taken as the antecedents for the perception of natural and social risks are gathered in this chapter to illustrate the microfoundations of organizational management and the underlying rationale for the contemporaneity of the management function. Entering the realm of the philosophy of management, and following some of the most influential roots in Ancient China and Greece, one may revisit particularly the Xenophon´s contribution to the initial conception of business management, and to the consequent evolution of human thought until the neoclassicism of the scientific management. Along the way, seminal concepts (e.g. uncertainty or risk) are revisited in the context of strategic management domain which is discussed side-by-side with governance and leadership. Furthermore, the case of Haier Group (and Mr. Zhang Ruimin) is used to illustrate the successful intertwining of the three organizational dimensions (i.e. governance, leadership, and management) for the organizational success.
TopFear: Instincts And Survival
Functioning as a subliminal mechanism of self-protection, fear triggers a cognitive function towards the shielding of a threat (alias, the instinct). Instincts equip us with gut feelings, as a baseline sense of survival, that tell us which direction to act, whether one needs to respond (“fight”), or to adapt (“run”), or let it go (“relax”), and from there so exercise our instinctive reactions building the individual roadmap of (survival) responses acting in coordination to a set of experienced events. Such inventory of responses constitute our survival function.
Since the world keeps spinning and technology advancing, with the appearance of new gadgets, tools and apparatus molding new habits and ways of living, fear will keep mutating in our modern world accentuating the struggle of the “old Joe”. This character personifies the fear of the “digital illiterate”, the granddad forced to deal with e-mails, software programs, social media, online/contactless payment methods, e- banking systems or creeping digital tax statements. From an initial discomfort, fear escalates to the recognition of some sort of personal intimidation of physical or mental integrity.
In the beginning of the 21st century we experience an intersection of fear with social advancement, and our behaviours turned into a schizophrenic composite response to both. A new world with a strict vision of everything, where the watchword became ….”control” it! As the old proverb goes “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”. Over-analytical, and information-centered, the world is in the hands of data brokers, and data analytics´ systems-owners. Some hold private interests, allegedly known as profit-seeking organizations, as Facebook, Microsoft; or Google. Others, go beyond profit agendas (as the Bilderberg group; or the Freemasons). Roger Martin, a famous strategist of our times claims
“The world is on a zealously science-obsessed tangent by which is attempting to apply science to everything whether suitable for scientific analysis or not…”