The soul of an organisation

Measuring Business Excellence

ISSN: 1368-3047

Article publication date: 1 December 2000

346

Citation

Peters, J. (2000), "The soul of an organisation", Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. 4 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/mbe.2000.26704daa.007

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2000, MCB UP Limited


The soul of an organisation

The soul of an organisation

Is there a philosophy of business? When we write the history books of the twentieth century, will we be able to point to organizational philosophers as the shapers of business thought like we can say that Plato, Descartes and Locke helped shape the way we think about ourselves and our societies over the years?

The thought came to me when reading the story of an entrepreneur (Chappell, 1996) who took time out to go in search of the "soul" of his business by attending divinity college at Harvard and started to introduce the thoughts of religious philosophers into some of his business practices.

Thinking about it, whenever I've introduced Robert Pirsig's concepts of "static" and "dynamic" quality[1], it has always prompted lots of discussion amongst quality professionals, as have discussions around John Stuart Mill's concept of utilitarianism, the greatest good for the greatest number.

So what is all this about? Have a few hard-headed business people gone soft in the head?

I don't think so. We learn about business and organizations in a linear, logical fashion, although we know that rational approaches fail us in many situations. We learn that success comes from analysis, although we know that entrepreneurs succeed by following their gut instinct more than their analytical skills. We learn to think of our organization and our department as the centre of the universe, but we know that we are part of a series of nested systems rippling out into our societies and our environment at large. We learn to manage and control, but we know that we need to be leaders and visionaries.

Such incongruities aren't easy for a thoughtful person to swallow forever. To reduce our world of work to profit and to error prevention is like saying that the purpose of our lives is to breathe air and to not get run over by a truck. Sure, if we don't have air and we do fall under a truck we won't be alive any more; and if we don't have profits and we make too many mistakes, we won't be in business any more. But in both cases, profits and air, truck- and error-avoidance are means to a further end.

What end? The question brings us back to a philosophical big issue. Whether or not we quite know what the answers are, thinking about these big issues involves expanding, not reductionist thoughts; thoughts and discussions which are more likely to create breakthrough ideas than poring over a profit and loss statement or arguing about a control chart.

...Quality management and quality improvement, total quality and quality control are by their nature philosophical issues...

Quality management and quality improvement, total quality and quality control are by their nature philosophical issues. Sure, you can follow a series of instructions for variance control easily enough without wondering about the nature of variance control. But sometime, somewhere, someone has to wonder – why? For who? Linear thinking alone will allow people to do the work machines can do. We need controls, analysis and logic to keep the ship afloat. But larger thinking allows us to check whether we are on the right ship at all, whether we want to be on the ship, and where we should be steering it to – philosophical thoughts – and if you're in this business, you shouldn't be avoiding them.

John PetersEditor of The TQM Magazine

Note

1 Static quality refers to the rules which hold together a society or organization; dynamic quality is situation-dependent. Static and dynamic quality are fundamentally opposed to each other, i.e. a dynamic action based on a human response to a situation is by nature non-programmable; and static systems do not permit deviation from rules based on responses to situations arising. Once dynamic quality becomes programmable and programmed, it loses its dynamism and becomes static. Static is about preserving; dynamic about creating. Although Pirsig originally conceived his discussion around quality as a philosophical issue, the taxonomy fits around, in particular, service quality issues.

Reference

Chappell, T. (1996), The Soul of a Business, Bantam Doubleday Dell, New York, NY.

Action points

Quality management acknowledges the bigger picture.

There is more than:

  • profit;

  • output;

  • control.

Quality management must be flexible enough to deal with the contradictions.

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