Re[2]: New Paradigm Thinking

mdarling@warren.med.harvard.edu
Thu, 17 Nov 94 10:58:59 EST

I also have a problem with management models that label themselves 'new' vs.
another model as 'old'" Harking back to my favorite Biblical passage, "for
everything there is a season," and soon what was new will be old and what was
old will be new.

There is a fundamental assumption that what was 'old' was ill-concieved, which
creates all sorts of problems for people who's job used to be managing the
'old.' Whenever I have worked with an organization attempting to truly
integrate TQM principles, I hear complaints from line managers that people in
the executive suite seem to think we weren't producing anything that could be
called "quality" before.

In the film, _Mindwalk_, Liv Ulman (on behalf of Fritjoff Capra) corrects the
politician and the poet by reminding them that there was nothing wrong with the
Cartesian view. It helped propel science forward in the way it needed to move
forward at the time. Only much later did its season pass and time come for a
different model.

mdarling

New Thinking in the New Management*

* Old management thinking may be called scientific,
bureaucratic, and corporatist because its main tenets
were formulated by Frederick Winslow Taylor, Max
Weber, and Elton Mayo.

* New management thinking maybe called holistic,
evolutionary, or systemic, but none of these
adjectives characterizes it completely.

* Based on a similar scheme presented by Fritjof Capra,
David Steindl-Rast, and Thomas Matus in: "Belonging to
the Universe."