Principals and practice: Rhetoric and themoral character of managers
Robin Holt
Introduction
The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre describes how for mwithin western business organizations the prevailing moremotive, if in fact it can be called a code at all. Codes typic
ought to be done in specific circumstances. What MacIntyre identifiesamongst western cultures is an increasingly empty set of moral stipulationsin which, short of prohibitions against harm, pretty much anything goes. Hetraces the roots of this emptiness to the Enlightenment insistence thatimprovements in the human condition will come not from idle speculationbut practical and material endeavour. History has shown humans as adeptsat improving the functionality and reach of tools, and yet incapable of resolv-ing moral questions; so it is best to concentrate on the former, and leave thelatter to the exercise of private conscience where ‘the good’ is secured by thecontinued free expression of personal standpoints. Here it becomes very diffi-cult to readily analyse what it means to be moral. On MacIntyre’s reading,the Enlightenment perspective doesn’t resolve moral questions, but dissolvesthem by insisting morality is not an issue of content, but the ability of eachprivate individual to articulate their own views. The problem with this is weget to the point where every claim for something’s being good is emptied ofits localized resonance and public particularity; each personal expression ofthe good becomes ‘a universalist stance of everyone towards everything’merely because it is an individual’s expression (Kundera, 1991: 153). ForMacIntyre (1985) this results in a moribund morality because it is unable tograpple with and inform our everyday experiences.
According to MacIntyre, we are still very much in the grip of thisemotive morality, meaning that within everyday activities – such as manage-ment – one’s moral responsibilities remain unattached to the specifics of thatactivity. We are morally connected only weakly insofar as we are individualswho make statements about good and bad. When we occupy public roles –whether as managers, miners or mothers – we have practical, technical andformal relationships with our fellow practitioners, but not moral ones. Somanagers qua managers have no moral responsibilities. Indeed so pre-eminent and distinct are the manager’s practical, technical and formalconcerns that MacIntyre identifies the manager as a modern archetype. The‘character’ of the manager exemplifies the Enlightenment project of under-standing the most effective and efficient ways of material control. This theydo through an explicit and exclusive concern with the technical means ofasset control in the furtherance of outside interests (those of the owners, orprincipals). The nature of these interests is of no concern (it is not theirexpressed interests they are pursuing) and so, as managers, they have noconcern for wider questions of impact or substantive questions of the good(MacIntyre, 1985: 30).
Whilst MacIntyre berates the moral vacuity of this position, MiltonFriedman extols its clarity and precision. Instead of being troubled withcostly reflection on wider, long-term and inherently contested questions of
moral development, managers qua managers are free to act solely in accordwith the desires of principals with whom they have contracted to act asagents. Management is a particular activity with its own practical meanswhich in and of themselves remain amoral insofar as they are concerned witheffective and efficient ordering of material and knowledge resources withinspecific organizational offices (Friedman, 1970: 166). Managers can do good,but, argues Friedman (1970: 165) only when they are acting as their ownprincipals; as private individuals incurring their own expense in makingchoices.
Given this stark distinction between management activity and the moralcondition (a distinction coloured by Friedman’s enthusiasm or MacIntyre’sdisdain), what I investigate is how and why it is neither a necessary(MacIntyre) nor desirable (Friedman) one. I begin by following MacIntyre’sAristotlean critique of emotivism. Whereas for the emotivist morality isconfined to protecting private expression, for the Aristotelian what matters isthe experience of living and flourishing in private and public. MacIntyreargues that confining ethical questions to the former creates a bankruptmorality devoid of the very communal sensitivity of which ethics speaks. Inrejoining to the latter, however, MacIntyre argues that managers cannotcontribute because of their preoccupation with technical means of controloriented to the furtherance of specific, materially configured interests. Thecharacter of the manager is incapable of identifying and sympathizing withinterests and goals outside of the amoral quantifications of utilitarian calculus.
I argue that whilst MacIntyre’s rationalized ‘character’ of the managercan mask the often immoral effects of resource manipulation, such acharacter is an individualized abstraction. Managers have to be aware of theconditions to which epithets of good and bad apply and to have such under-standing they cannot avoid judging both the content and effects of the inter-ests they pursue. By linking conditions and experiences of judgement withmoral understanding I link the development of this moral character with thedevelopment of virtue. I show that not only are managers capable of develop-ing a moral character, but that such development cannot be considered a‘bolt-on’ convenience.
To begin I configure the background to the emergence of this moralcharacter using the term phronesis, variously translated as practical wisdomor sagacity. By describing in some detail what is meant by phronesis I outlinewhat might be meant by the term ‘moral condition’. This discussion centreson how morality itself can be understood as an integral aspect of any practiceand on how management itself can be understood as a practice. After arguingthat managers can and should develop a moral character, I investigate thepossibility of its being realized through the adoption of rhetoric. This
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contrasts with those management studies using the term rhetoric to describea propagandist function of masking or seeking to manipulate experience. Iconclude by alluding to studies which throw some light on this conceptualargument.
The moral character
Phronesis
For Aristotle, one’s moral being was inseparable from one’s acting as such.A good life is informed by the actions of one’s personal history, not by theindependent status of one’s ahistorical identity. By thrusting morality into thehurly-burly of our everyday activities, Aristotle configured its realization verymuch as a project in progress involving three states of affairs: our existingand often errant condition, our potential as human beings, and anexperiential awareness of how we might move from one to the other. So beinggood is both specific rather than universal, and historical rather than law-like; it is about becoming someone (a character recognized by others) ratherthan being something (a characteristic possessed by oneself). The woop andwarf of this becoming is such that there is no final resolution or end point.We are moral insofar as we consider questions of the good as we are living(Barker, 2002). These considerations will never have a final resolution fortwo reasons. First, when considering the good we always experience acts thatinfringe upon the good. For example, the clash of loyalties when decidingwhether to support a colleague in an ‘unfair’ dismissal case and thereby riskour own position and so jeopardize the welfare of one’s family. Second, weexperience acts that interfere with the full acknowledgement of the good. Forexample, a weakness of will or persisting habits of addiction. This inter-ference occurs even when abiding by those considerations of the good thathave become so orthodox as to occupy the status of a moral rule, or duty.For example, persistent generosity towards someone who owes you moneycan induce opportunism, or serial truth-telling can undermine trust and fulland frank exchange if intimate details are always being revealed.
So for Aristotle we do not act morally by following rules blindly, orabsolutely. We have to accept the ‘polluting’ effects of mystery, fluidity, habit,tradition and the other atmospheric annoyances of everyday life (Oakeshott,1962: 3, 1975: 81; MacIntyre, 1985: 5). In doing so we recognize that themeaning of moral rules and considerations is not carried in definitions butarises from a practical awareness of the conditions in which they might beuseful (Williams, 1981: 10–19). Here moral judgement cannot stop short of,or extend beyond, action itself (Wittgenstein, 1953: §611–15) and acting
morally involves developing a homeopathic sensitivity both to the appropri-ateness of a moral rule being considered and to the conversational conditionsby which we are able to consider entities like moral rules in the first place.
From an Aristotlean perspective this ability is akin to phronesis.Phronesis is the imagination and perception that comes from, first, havinglived and matured sufficiently to understand how people act, and second, theability to discern which moral features of any given state of affairs countmore than others. Here it is accepted that the good life is neither a universalvalue nor an overarching unity; it is not an end point or steady state at all.Rather it is a persistent awareness of balance epitomized by the occupationof a middle way: neither too hot (experiencing the agitation of excess), norcold (experiencing inert states of sterility and indifference) but just right(mannered, critical and reasonable). MacIntyre (1985) interprets this middleway less as a quietist aim of avoidance than as a reflexive ability to see thingsanew from within a specific setting; to recognize that our voice is one amidstothers and that what can be said and done by us as individuals can be saidand done differently by others. The resultant ‘good life’ is one that is ledthrough active and public engagement in local contexts. It is active becauseit is in action and not contemplation that we experience the consequences ofbelief and judgement and so accrue the prejudice and tradition necessary tophronesis. It is public because it is only by submitting ourselves to the gazeof others that we can enjoin the moral condition to the wider conversationalsettings by which we make sense of one another. It is local because thepresence of others is as much a physical as a metaphorical condition, andthe consequences of action are spatially and temporally limited.
Phronesis within practices, communities and traditions
So the good life and our potential for realizing it insist in the development ofour phronetic ability from within active, public and local settings. MacIntyrerefers to these settings as a blend of practices, communities and traditions.Practices are coherent, complex, communally established activities by whichgoods internal to these activities are realized in the pursuit of agreed uponstandards (MacIntyre, 1985: 188). So law, for example, is a practice by whosestandards (say of coherence or consistency of treatment) the activities (suchas drafting, arguing or printing case materials) are judged, and whose goods(such as justice, rectitude or security) inform and extend the standards. Herethe goods and standards possess an authority to which the subjective judge-ment of the practitioners is beholden. To enter into such a practice as a traineeis to agree to abide by what has previously been achieved and aimed at. Thetrainee accepts the paucity of their own subjective awareness in relation to
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accumulated understanding so as to prepare to acquire phronesis. In suchacquisition MacIntyre (1985: 190) emphasizes the distinction between thegoods internal to practice – such as security – and external goods – such asstatus or material reward. The latter constitute possessions, and in beingowned are not only exclusive but can be acquired from other practices,whereas internal goods define the nature of the practice itself, and in so doingbenefit everyone within the practice. They are enhanced rather than exhaustedby use. In learning of the law (as opposed to any other practice), practitionerscome to appreciate how to exhibit and enhance the standards associated withthat practice, an appreciation that comes from the reproduction of the internalgoods by which worldly life is experienced. Without this reproduction thepractice becomes exhausted, with it, it is re-generated (Arendt, 1958: 118–20).
It is to the awareness and encouragement of internal goods that MacIn-tyre argues virtue is directed. Virtues are acquired human qualities that allowus to achieve internal goods. To realize a virtuous life external goods arenecessary (practices are themselves composed of sayings, doings and materialobjects [Schatzki, 2005]), but only as a means by which a sense ofappropriate activity can be orchestrated. To appreciate an instance of legalinsight, for example, trainees have to be willing to subordinate themselvesto the practice – to immerse themselves within an historically configuredcommunity configured by combinations of activity, rules and materialarrangements. Within this community people have acquired awareness ofwhat constitutes skilled activity; an awareness diffused through familiarityand professional instruction. By learning within this community trainees willbecome competent and so able to train future generations – thus perpetuat-ing a non-reciprocal debt of knowledge across the generations. To learn toparticipate well in such a community requires specific virtues. From withina legal community these might include an honest self-appraisal of one’s limitsand those of others (Socratic self-examination); a willingness to trust others’judgement, and the imagination to recognize the legitimacy and sense ofalternate points of view (see Nussbaum, 2003). It also requires a prepared-ness to argue with those who aim to repress such qualities. Without suchvirtues, internal goods are barred, and lawyers left with the empty pursuitof material objects; they have money, status and bound law reports lined upon the shelf, nicely classified, but without the ability to read and use them.
Because they are defined by practices, MacIntyre (1985: 163) recog-nizes that communities are never at rest, nor are they always at ease; beinghistorically embedded entails divergent conceptions of the good life as peopleengage in practices differently, and in different practices – meaning they canbe members of many different communities at the same time. This creates acomplex and open-ended intersection of communities that sometimes begins
to break down. These tensions are especially prevalent between traditions,which MacIntyre (1985: 167) defines as amalgams of practice mouldedacross generations and focused on a specific aspect of concern, be it religious,economic or political. Traditions provide the texture and grounding by whichour lives can be led; they provide the resources by which we’re able to makesense of ourselves as practitioners and members of communities. As theydiffer people’s sense of phronesis differs – the good life is split amidsttraditions, and when they come into conflict there is no apparent principleby which the competing conceptions of the good can be reconciled. Yet forMacIntyre such traditions can be distinguished by their encouragement ofphronetic disposition. When a tradition or practice reaches a point of steril-ity in which the arguments have ‘run out’, a tradition or practice character-ized by phronesis is one able to produce new concepts that allowpractitioners to solve their problems, to show how these problems arose, andto do so in ways that make the passage from old to new an intelligible one.It is these traditions that are able to eschew a reliance on potentially brittleand outmoded rules and instead focus on developing the conversationalrelationships necessary to the identification and realization of invigoratingalternatives (Oakeshott, 1975: 65). It is the insistence on the ongoing pursuitand protection of internal goods through action that gives substance to thevirtues. Following Aristotle, MacIntyre and Oakeshott, these virtues mightbe summarized as: the personal, adverbial quality of integrity and intro-spection, the pragmatic quality of avoiding extremes, and the public qualityof seeing things anew by appreciating the existence of others’ viewpoints.The question then becomes whether these virtues (ones that McCloskey[1998] summarizes as temperance, prudence and justice respectively) can besensibly and usefully applied to managers.
The moral character of managers
The argument for why managers cannot be moral
The dominant tradition informing management practice is that of economics(Ferraro et al., 2005); specifically the emotive distinction between privateexpressions of ‘the good’ and the public production of goods and services bywhich the material needs of self-interested individuals are met. As bothMcCloskey (1998) and Barker (2002) recognize, this split results in atendency to collapse motivation and happiness into a catch-all concern withutility. In MacIntyre’s terms, it is all about the production of external goodsstripped of any internal resonance. The associated ethic embodies theassumption that individualism and competition if left to flourish in markets
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will realize socially optimal outcomes (more property and more owners)through the repression of incompetence, profligacy, indolence and oligopoly(Ferraro et al., 2005).
It is by appealing to the logic of such ‘effects’ that managers rational-ize their actions and look to enlist the support of others. Here the algorith-mic, means–end decision-making of managers is elevated as an exemplar ofenlightened activity with ‘the laws of the market’ and ‘preference functions’set as arbiters of standards (MacIntyre, 1985: 254). Yet on MacIntyre’s termsthis activity can never reach the status of being a proper practice becausethere is nothing for which the manager is intrinsically responsible as amanager; there are no internal goods. The responsibility is with the deliveryof returns and status (defined by the external goals) rather than the develop-ment of a moral character. So instead of the narrative of a potentially goodlife we have the exercise of power expressed through the control ofpotentially productive motion. It is this shift in attention away from con-siderations of what constitutes a flourishing life and towards the accrual ofexternal goods that vexes MacIntyre. The split between public and privateundermines the Aristotelian insight that the good life is nothing if it is not alife that is led; viz. in the company of others from whom one comes toappreciate the appropriateness of limits of one’s own activities and withinwhose communities and traditions one is able to strive for and realize one’spotential.
Within the economic tradition, the prevailing management communityis the organization (Moran & Ghoshal, 1999), and organizationally theemotive public–private split is enforced through institutional designs, socialnorms and language. So, for example, ‘performance improvement’ routinestend to be oriented around competition (benchmarking; continual improve-ment) and embellished with metaphors such as ‘survival’, ‘gain’ and ‘win’;duty tends to be linked to the legal and regulatory conditions attached tooffices or roles (treasurers and directors, or principals and agents) rather thanto virtuous actions; and the link between motivation and material gain is soentrenched that avowedly altruistic or communally orientated motives aretreated with suspicion (Chia, 2000; Cunliffe, 2003; Ferraro et al., 2005). Themanager qua manager is engaged in a purely technical pursuit of externalgoods defined by individual winners and losers, scarce resources, consumedproducts and competitive rivals.
Within such a milieu, managers do not necessarily ignore morallanguage, but use it in the furtherance of their task. As such managers cannotbe bearers of virtue (because the prevailing idea of a moral self withineconomics is of an individual separated from their practices), but exploitersof its potential effects. Stevens et al. (2005), for example, found that senior
finance managers allowed ethics codes to influence their strategic choicesonly insofar as they were under pressure to do so from market stakeholders(customers, suppliers and shareholders) or if by doing so benefit wouldaccrue in terms of an improved corporate image. The overt instrumentalityto such reasoning is indicative of a calculative decisional structure in whichall activities are informed by the pursuit of goals external to the activitiesthemselves. So to the extent that concern for the good life is expressed bymanagers, it is most often as a material consideration informed by means–end reasoning.
One way researchers have configured how managers exercise thismaterially driven concern with morals is using the term rhetoric: the consciousdevelopment of an inventory of phrases and argumentative devices coupledto a nurtured understanding of human personality and motivation so as tobetter align an audience towards a specific set of interests without recourse tothreat or compulsion. By persuading people of the necessity of a specificstrategy managers can enlist resources through the identification of mutualsatisfaction, typically expressed as a blend of power and external benefits. Theadvantage of rhetoric is that whilst articulating underlying schemes allied tospecific agendas its exponents remain aware of situational contexts andopposing views; the resulting arguments tend to be ‘rounded’, allowing forthe potential inclusion of different ‘factions’ (Mueller et al., 2003).
The attendant risk of using such tactics is that rhetoric can becomean end in itself, exposing the managerial exponents to accusations of super-ficiality, fabrication and a preoccupation with self-serving gratification(Höpfl, 2000). Both Zbaracki (1998) and Carter and Mueller (2002), forexample, show how a zealousness for business improvement processesamongst managers heightened their rhetorical self-confidence to such adegree that they failed to recognize significant levels of opposition from theirprospective audiences. The upshot was cynicism, anxiety and uncertainty asexperiences inevitably fell short of hoped-for outcomes. Similar experienceswere also identified by Giroux and Taylor (2002), Hewlin (2003) andTownley et al. (2003), the result being a persistent lack of connectionbetween managers and those they seek to ‘manage’. Indeed Pelzer (2005)has argued that using rhetorical skills of manipulation tends to convey littlemore than a mutual contempt between the managers and the managed.Those being managed regard managers as purveyors of fiction that bearslittle resemblance to lived experience; and those managing regard theiremployees as infants incapable of their own instruction and motivation. Theupshot is an objectification of both roles where responsibility and theauthorship of activity collapse into brittle logic of hierarchical instructionand resistance.
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These risks, however, presume the audience is capable of identifyingrhetorical rouses because of a breakdown between their experience and thearguments and instructions put forward by managers. Carter and Jackson(2004) argue that where these practices are actually constituted by rhetori-cal processes then this critical distance is not so readily identifiable and sothe attendant risks of using rhetoric dissolve. Here the authors are invokingan ideological turn whereby the distinction between rightful opinion and thepresentation of opinion is lost. From their critical paradigm, Carter andJackson assume a far more pervasive and ideological role for rhetoric thatsubsumes the production and consumption of meaning per se. Here what is‘good’ is nothing more than an instance of repetitious assertion sustained byinstitutionalized fiats within the media, academia and economic and politi-cal institutions. Rhetoric, argue Carter and Jackson (2004: 470), is not justa means of presentation, but ‘a total system of persuasion, reinforcement andreassurance’ by which interests are systematically manipulated without theneed for overt coercion. In a far more nuanced understanding of managerial‘character’ than that offered by MacIntyre, Carter and Jackson (2004)identify five aspects to this rhetorical style: informal and inclusive argumentthat absents itself from formal logic; a basic acceptance of capitalist valuesand the associated organizational objective of ‘increasing productivitythrough job design’; an emphasis on the value of practicality overabstraction, and efficiency and effectiveness over the dilatory and wayward;ambiguity hidden by a façade of apparently uncontested concepts such as‘value’ or ‘target’; and finally a preference for evidence, models andsummaries of ‘real world’ concerns. These aspects complicate and flesh outthe managerial ‘character’ through a recognition that managers don’t simplyignore moral language through a fixation on technical efficiency but exploitit to cover their blunders, their uncertainties and their vested interests (alongwith those of the principals). Yet they retain a strong sympathy withMacIntyre’s character in that essentially the manager is an instrument (moreor less unwitting) of power (more or less effective) whose actions arepervasive and have morally deleterious effects. So whilst ‘asymmetries’between managerial style and presentation and the wider interests of theiraudience can occur, these tend to be incidental and somewhat superficial. Thepreoccupation with rhetorical style submerges any self-reflective capacity andcriticality in a mutually re-confirming ‘soup’ of orthodox values and activitieswhich is ‘ladled’ over managers, the managed and the principals again andagain. So whilst researchers like Pelzer (2005) isolate the debilitatingdivisions that can result from an overweening use of specious language,Carter and Jackson argue that the process of rhetoric has ensured thesedivisions either rarely surface, or if they do they merely re-enforce the validity
of an orthodoxy that is healthy enough to embrace dissent. The developmentof managerial rhetoric is what has allowed Macintyre’s character to persist.
Aristotle’s account of rhetorical practice, however, is very distinct fromthat articulated by these studies. Indeed rather than contribute to thecontempt experienced in organizations (as is suggested by Pelzer [2005]) orallow for the ideological smothering of situations that perhaps deservecontempt (as suggested by Carter and Jackson [2004]) rhetoric as envisagedby Aristotle can contribute to the flourishing of the good life within organiz-ations. Indeed, I want to argue that it is through rhetoric that sense can bemade of the claim that managers can and should act morally; it is not thecase that we need less rhetoric, but more.
The argument for why managers can be moral
On MacIntyre’s (1985: 30) terms managers qua managers cannot be said toengage in practices. They are purely instrumental emissaries for materiallyconfigured and externally defined ends. There is no sense of the good; thecharacter is morally empty. This view of MacIntyre’s, however, rests on arestricted and outmoded view of management as a scientific, ‘value-free’ andalgorithmic activity. As Carter and Jackson’s (2004) five-fold breakdown ofmanagerial rhetoric makes clear, the pursuit of specific, instrumentallyconfigured interests is shrouded in informalities, ambiguities and value-ladenlanguage. In knowing how to act within such a rhetorical milieu managersare clearly not acting from what Nagel (1989) describes as a ‘view fromnowhere’. This is in fact implicit in MacIntyre’s (1985: 85–6) own critiqueof the character of the manager. He argues managers can only act as tech-nocratic experts insofar as they have knowledge of the form and content ofprincipals’ interests, and to have such knowledge requires a breach of theirpurported neutrality. Managers can only function if they are aware of widersocial concerns informing the particular hue and vector of the productivepurposes they are engaged in pursuing (see Moore & Beadle, 2006).
Where MacIntyre resists making this relationship anything more thanimplicit in a critique, the discussion of organizational communities byMichael Oakeshott and John Commons persists in making it explicit. ForOakeshott (1975: 117–19) organizations are modes of association definedby a common substantive purpose – something to be jointly procured or aninterest collectively pursued. Here managers subscribe to functionally andsometimes legally bound tasks by which specific activities are undertaken inorder that common goals (strategy) might be realized. In addition to this tightrelationship typically persisting over time, other people are more looselyenlisted (and choose to become so), either as shareholders, customers,
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suppliers and so on. Already Oakeshott is complicating MacIntyre’sabstracted character of the ‘manager’ by bringing into view other peopleagainst whom a manager might distinguish his or herself in action. ForOakeshott all of these people are bound within an ‘enterprise’, configuredby a set of chosen relationships that may be revoked by consent, dissent orindifference.
Here Oakeshott is echoing Commons (1931) who also pointed out thata business organization was not merely an amalgam of assets productivelyaligned to a commonly understood set of external interests. These interestscarried no meaning if they weren’t managed within a set of mutuallyacknowledged ‘working rules’ by which the transactions of titles took place.Whilst the organization might be defined in part by the interests beingpursued (in Friedman’s terms, the desires of the principals), the fact theseinterests require management means the definition remains contingent on thechoices, judgement and values prevailing amongst managers. There are twoaspects to this contingency (Oakeshott, 1975: 117). First, how managersrealize common interests is open. The use of specific components or rawmaterials, for example, are contingently related to resultant products (thereare alternatives), and the manufacture of certain products are contingentlyrelated to the purpose of making a profit (alternate products can be made).Second, in addition to the managerial decisions and agreements that consti-tute the pursuit of purposes, managers are also related through rules such asthe designation of offices, the prescription of processes, the adherence toregulations and so on. These two aspects of management unravel bothFriedman’s and MacIntyre’s claims that the sole responsibility of managers– described as the technical pursuit of others’ (principals) interests throughthe accrual and use of assets – obviates them from moral concerns. Thecalculative nature of such management means, even in its most abstract andalgorithmic, it is a practice in which entities and relations are distinguishedand manipulated within specific spaces to bring about results (Callon &Muniesa, 2005). It is a practice of choosing values and reaching compromise.
To revisit Commons (1931), what counts organizationally is how thecontrol of acts by one individual result in intended and unintended gains andlosses to others and the relations of rights and duties thereby established.These duties of avoidance and forbearance arising from the exchange oftitles, and the duties of performance and payment arising from the practiceof exchanging, are not necessarily related to the purposes being pursued, butonly contingently so, involving as they do public displays of managerialjudgement in specific settings (Kaufman, 2003). Hence the practice ofmanagement requires managers to be constantly aware of themselves notonly as rivals for scarce resources but conversationally related as subscribers
to a self-sustaining and self-authenticating practice of choices and rules. Thispractice organizes the contingent modes of understanding by which interestsare pursued. Moreover, as organizations are increasingly characterizedrelationally rather than structurally, the boundaries between interests beginto blur. This makes management a practice of collaborative dialogue with‘outsiders’ whose interests emerge from rather than being imposed upon therelationships being managed (Powell, 2001). As such, managerial dutiesdisplay the non-reciprocal elements earlier noted as being a definingcharacteristic of internal goods and their execution requires as phroneticawareness of how to engage with others in ways that extend well beyond theissuing of instruction and the stipulation of ends (Tsoukas & Cummings,1997). It is only from a sense of common engagement that the heterogeneousconcerns, discursive and tactical clashes and specific and sometimes suigeneris interests that characterize an organizational community can bebrought together with a sufficient semblance of coherence and continuanceto constitute its being a recognizable and enduring entity (Heracleous &Barrett, 2001; Solomon, 2004).
Here the organizational community is not being defined purely instru-mentally as a tool for the furtherance of specific interests but also as a defenceagainst the dominance of any singular set of such interests. Nehamas (1998)and Van Hooft (2001) describe this engagement as a dialogic willingness todispense with rationalized attempts to control experience coupled to anexploration of intuitive response. An overweening concern with control(what MacIntyre describes as the presumption of objective expertise) tendstowards abstraction. Here managers’ practical syllogisms – their reasoninginformed by social habit and nous (awareness of the reality of a state ofaffairs) – tend to take a structured form of the kind: innovation in productdevelopment can assist growth, growth is desirable, therefore I ought toinnovate. Even if such reasoning is restated as: the organization has a growthstrategy and here is source of growth (an opportunity to introduce newproducts, say) the logic can still become awash with unforeseen or undesir-able consequences (the creation of externalities that may attract unforeseenregulatory costs, for example, or involve the unwitting theft of aninnovation) (Clark, 2003). The problem associated with such reasoning isnot its sense but its logic – the overbearing and unreflective character itencourages in managers (Barley & Kunda, 1992). It is this logic that Carterand Jackson (2004) identify as the striving for a totalizing conscription ofmeaning through the use of rhetoric.
Hampshire (2002) also recognizes this tendency for managers to tryand restore this logic rather than acknowledge and embrace the ad hoc,partial and bounded scope of organizational life. All organizations are
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characterized by: bounding routines for detailing tasks and responsibilitiesand adjudicating disputes; offices responsible for strategic decision taking;the need to negotiate with other organizations in order to promote distinctsets of interests; and the capacity to inquire after failures, misfortunes oraccidents so as to learn for the future (Weick, 1990). Within these bounds,Hampshire (2002) recognizes that the tendency to restore the authority ofsyllogistic reasoning is damaging. In its stead he calls for ‘fair weighting’ inwhich as many different views and experiences as possible are aired and usedto inform judgement. The implication of this acceptance is that, as a practice,management is a public activity in which judgements and actions arediscerned, adjudicated and themselves acted upon according to locallyderived interests and concerns. Rather than reach any kind of overarchingresolution, Hampshire (2002) suggests a ‘smart compromise’ by whichtensions are held in abeyance through balance, or worked at through thedialogic argument. This suggestion is neither radical nor contentious, andone that Carter and Jackson (2004) themselves might subscribe to, providedthe dialogue was not orchestrated in the service of deeply entrenched anduncontested interests. What remains at issue, however, is in what mode thisdialogue takes place. Where for Carter and Jackson what is needed is anavoidance of rhetoric, on my reading of Aristotle, rhetoric needs to beembraced in order to reach such a condition of ‘smart compromise’.
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the ability to identify the available means of persuasion by which particular convictions can be argued for (Aristotle, 1995: 1355b 30).As with Hampshire’s condition of ‘smart compromise’, rhetoric is thepractice by which people can argue for their personal projects (enact anddisclose themselves) within conditions of uncertainty, where there is no possi-bility of appeal to final answers or steady states. In place of the syllogism,the practice of rhetoric involves people using enthymemes; claims of con-viction that acknowledge the truths resident within rival claims (Newman,2001). The function of rhetoric is not to find a way of persuading others inspite of their experience, nor is it to populate the world with a single set ofconvictions, but discerning the most apposite means by which one can enactand disclose oneself so as to realize one’s personal projects. It is a practiceof enactment because it requires of the exponent the use of sincere argumentto realize an awareness of her or his own conceptions of the good and howthey might practically evoke and embody these within the development oftheir character (ethos). It is a practice of disclosure not just because it requiresthe real presence of others by which particular states of affairs are made
apparent as being of interest, but that this presence is capable of inducingthe emotion of shame in those who fail to establish a character of reputeamidst their peers (Aristotle, 1995: 1384a 20–5). Together, these qualities ofenactment and disclosure mean that within any enthymeme, the reputationof its propositions lies in their being consistent with, and enhancing of, widerpublic concerns, or endoxa, such that a common good is promoted aboveacutely selfish interests on the one hand, and the stoical effacement ofpractical concerns on the other (Nieuwenburg, 2004).
The consequent reputation of the rhetor consists in being regarded, inthe opinions of others, to be of temperate character by which a middle-courseis steered between excesses of personal concern (narcissism) or its deficiency(timidity or indifference). Reputation is not inherent within an individual,but is realized in community agreement coupled to the phenomenologicalsense of shame accompanying those brought into disrepute (Nieuwenburg,2004). This fear of disrepute, or shame, argues Nieuwenburg (2004),explains how in acquiring the virtues of character the rhetor embodies themoral concerns consequent on living within communities. Disrepute,obscurantism or contempt reflects bad character (an inability to deliberate)and an ignorance of other experiences and perspectives within thecommunity. Here the ethos retains a public sense – the character is held tobe trustworthy by others, an endoxus or reputable person. So Aristotle isclear that rhetoric is not about the external manipulation of feelings andexpectations in the service of specific, exploitative interests. He believed thedeliberate warping and manipulation of others’ experiences erodes thedevelopment of appropriate conviction and likens it to bending a ruler beforeusing it, securing belief in the resultant measures despite their error(Newman, 2001). The high regard in which an endoxus is held is a functionof their deliberative character developed through attention to the conditionsof enactment and disclosure.
In addition to the personal expression of repute (which on McCloskey’s[1998] terms equates to the virtue of self-command or temperance), Aristotlealso considers the public expression of habituation (ethismos) – the repetitionand experience of an activity that enables one to delight in its performancecoupled to a capacity to judge what is germane to the ‘matter in hand’ (whichin McCloskey’s terms equates to the virtues of prudence and justice)(Nieuwenburg, 2004). To develop habit is to sense what is publiclyappropriate, or just, insofar as the emotional character (pathos) of others isaccounted for, along with the integrity of the arguments being advocated(logos) (Aristotle, 1995: 1356a 5–20). The upshot is an ability to promotegood arguments above bad ones – to be moral – without believing that oneis thereby in the possession of absolute truth (Nehamas, 1998). Here the
Holt Rhetoric and the moral character of managers 1 6 7 3
rhetor concerns her or his self with the internal body of claims and consider-ations that secure conviction in any specific milieu using the open-endedenthymeme rather than the definitive syllogism (Newman, 2001). It is a justconcern because understanding how others’ experience the world calls forthwhat Charles Taylor terms an ethic of practical benevolence. When weengage and become skilled in the habit of practical reasoning we realize thatwe make sense of our lives using stories connecting past experience andfuture projects. This means to understand others’ perspectives is to under-stand how they might tell their stories, which itself requires a phronetic sensi-bility to the dialogical, temporal and contextualized nature of their lives. Soa manager, for example, who forgets to concern his or her self with theperson being managed forgets how organizational procedures relate to thatperson’s life story and so the criteria of hope and despair by which any formof appeal or consideration (including the appeal to instrumental reason) isgiven its life blood in the first place (Taylor, 1991: 106). So in this example,to have any instrumental effect managers must first be habituated to thecriteria by which those they seek to manage configure their own stories.
In observing how repute and habit emerged from the rhetorical concernwith ethos (personal repute) and pathos and logos (public appropriateness),Aristotle was at pains to distinguish rhetoric from sophistry – the un-principled and manipulative appeal to emotions informed by sectional orvested interests. The concern with reputation cannot be feigned and remainrhetorical; for whilst a manager may pretend to avow an interest in reputablepropositions, he or she can only understand through actually being versedin sincere acts of deliberation (the necessary link between enaction anddisclosure). Those who feign to win praise are misguided because they arelies unto themselves; those who feign only to win wealth are worse, they areshameless – in some ways beyond the pale of the community. Equally thereis no habituation because there is no delight or awareness of others’ stories;the persuasive framing remains entirely technical, rather than a deliberativeconcern with becoming proficient in the internal and necessarily sharedstandards of a practice. So it is perhaps sophistry and not rhetoric that is theobject of Carter and Jackson’s (2004) concerns.
Managers and the practice of rhetoric
As I have argued for it, the rhetorical development of repute and habit withinmanagers involves the ability to recognize where the possibilities for ‘smartcompromise’ lie. Given this, then if rhetoric is used purely as a way ofmanipulating events so as to determine ‘useful’ outcomes for a specific set ofinterests, it is what Solomon (2004) in his discussion of organizationalcommunities terms inauthentic. The inauthenticity arises because relations
are configured for their utility alone, rather than for something that is bothuseful (the pursuit of goods) and both engaging (the creation and experienceof internal goods through enactment and disclosure) and socializing (a non-relative attitude of acceptance that others will behave in certain ways)(McCloskey, 1998; Solomon, 2004). On the above reading of Aristotle, thepractice of rhetoric (the practical combination of ethos, pathos, logos so asto realize experiences of repute and habituation) affords managers thepossibility of such ‘smart compromise’. Rhetoric offers managers a way ofrealizing the folly in presuming their organizational communities and thewider economic tradition are served by a preoccupation with a rationalizingcalculus of goal-setting and discovering solutions. Syllogisms, no matter howpractical, don’t make sense in open-ended, unprincipled social conditions.They are abstracting, and adherence commits the manager to a fixation witha solitary set of motivational goals (say, profit) which in experience can onlyever be understood from an dialogical, temporal and contextual grounding(Van Hooft, 2001). The skilled use of enthymemes, on the other hand,requires sensitivity to the prevailing modes and mores of communities andtraditions that can and do criss-cross within organizational communities andthe wider economic tradition.
This is hinted at, but not followed through, in studies of rhetoricalpractice in organizations by Putnam (2003) and Zanoni and Janssens (2003).Putnam (2003) identifies how rhetoric is not merely persuasive talk, but thepractice by which institutional reality is created. In this case Putnam showsorganizational formulae and routines emerging from ongoing conversationsbetween teachers and administrators engaged in pay bargaining. Both ‘sides’used metonyms (perceiving ‘salary’ on the one hand, and ‘control over policyand contract writing’ on the other, as commodities that could then bebargained against one another) and synecdoches (the use of ‘language’ as ashorthand for the bargaining process) in order to alleviate ambiguity in experience and to conceptualize and then ‘trade’ personal interests. Theconstituting influence of the conversation gives rise to the thought of howsuch conversations are sustained from within the actions of the teachers andadministrators. So what Putnam shows is how prevailing managerial logic isnot technical but arises from conversational structures without which neitherside would have been able to manage their way through the uncertainty. Eachside required the other to divulge their interests using an open-endedlanguage that allowed for compromise.
Zanoni and Janssens (2003) also emphasize this constituting role ofconversational dynamics (the way objects are defined within, and are definingof, prevailing social practices) in their study of human resource (HR)diversity policies. They identify two clusters of HR managers differentiatedby attitudes to diversity. The first cluster appealed to objective ‘facts’
Holt Rhetoric and the moral character of managers 1 6 7 5
(physical appearances; linguistic skills) which, when coupled to prevailing‘standards’ or grand discourses associated with ‘beauty’ or ‘competence’,resulted in arguments whereby recently ‘included’ workers such as migrantsand women were found wanting relative to the native, male incumbents. Thesecond cluster experienced these workers as flexible, willing and diligentrather than troublesome. These alternative ‘facts’ were blended with grandnarratives of ‘fairness’ and then matched to ‘models’ by which a new set ofrealities could be accepted in which women or migrant workers were valuedas productive and engaged members of a creative workforce. The authorsnote, however, that even here these images are positively constructed onlyinsofar as workers’ identities remain sympathetic to organizational aims. Theuse of disabled workers in a bottling factory, for example, being promptedby a concern to rid the organization of troublesome, temporary labour andrestore a docile and grateful workforce, thereby re-enforcing traditional classdistinctions of a beneficent patrician managerial class coupled to a hard-working labour class.
Here rhetoric is identified as a practice of using persuasive designs toconstitute or reconstitute organizational relations so as to align perceptionsof ‘common sense’ with specific organizational interests: ‘diversity discoursesboth reflect and re-affirm existing management practices because HRmanagers draw heavily from grand discourses of economic rationality interms of organizational needs (customer care, quality, competence, andteamwork) and compliance (availability, loyalty and work pace)’; in doingso they re-affirm the right-ness of their identity and that of their organization(Zanoni & Janssens, 2003: 71). Yet from amongst Zanoni and Janssens’ssecond cluster, the authors hint at a more Aristotelian reading of rhetoric,for example distinguishing how in one instance HR managers regarded thefurtherance of and respect for the interests of migrant workers as a concernwith the integrity of others rather than with their capacity to realizeorganizational aims. This distinction is critical – it is the point at whichrhetoric supplants the practice of sophistry. Moreover, it is also thedistinction by which managers are able to experience the development ofhabituation and repute: demonstrating the phronetic ability to enact anddisclose a course of action because of one’s sensitivity to the stories, andhopes and fears of others.
Conclusion
For Aristotle, a human life devoid of enactment and disclosure within public, local settings is a life devoid of self-understanding; without the
community-based experience of moral agency we are lost behind a veil. Ifthe good life is nothing more than protecting the capacity to competitivelypursue external objects it is a disappointing and alienating experience.Disappointing because what is produced is inevitably consumed – it is createdwith its destruction and re-purchasing in mind. Each achievement of anexternal good is blunted with its very realization; leaving hoped-for satis-factions in the ascendancy, like alluring constellations forever stuck on thehorizon. Alienating because whilst such instrumental practices may have asense of the good, they do so in the language of what Billig calls an ‘official’ideology; contrasted with a ‘living’ ideology which is characterized not onlyby the intensity with which values are adhered to, but by the dynamic andantithetical nature of these values (cited in Shotter, 1992: 16). A livingideology is versed in argument, and pits one voice in the midst of others toallow the voice that is found to be most insightful, or apposite, or provoca-tive, to emerge, before falling back under new argument. Lacking exposureto the internal goods that arise from a phronetic ability to discern legitimatefrom illegitimate argument, exponents of official ideology presume a positionoutside of the conversation. The dialogical expression of different claims andconvictions is supplanted by a solitary voice – a singular set of interests towhich others’ personal projects become secondary.
Macintyre, whilst extolling the need for a living ideology, argues thatmanagers were not capable of realizing one. Management could never be apractice because it could never concern itself with internal goods. Far frombeing a cause of grievance, Friedman argues such a condition is desirable,allowing managers to concentrate solely on the advancement of theirprincipals’ material interests. Contrary to these positions, I have argued thatmanagement is in fact a practice as without an awareness of internal goodsit is impossible to make sense of interests in the first place, be they those ofthe principals or those that are managed. So the disappointing and alienat-ing life of which Billig warned is not one to which managers are necessarilyconfined. To avoid such, and so pursue internal goods, involves managers in‘smart compromise’; the ability to persuade others of the apposite nature ofspecific purposes and interests, whilst maintaining regard for the interests ofothers and the conversational conditions by which others are able to expresstheir own interests. I have described this ability as phronesis; the sagacity torecognize that interests can only be understood as arising under one particu-lar aspect or another, and none of which are a-historical, universal andunchanging. I have suggested that a good way of developing this under-standing is to use rhetoric. Here I follow Aristotle’s definition where rhetoricis not only an awareness of the available means of persuasion withinorganizational communities; but a self-awareness of how the role of a
Holt Rhetoric and the moral character of managers 1 6 7 7
practitioner such as a manager is constitutively attached to the mutualdevelopment of others (Ricoeur, 1994; Quinn, 1996). To invoke rhetoric isto rebuff the emotivist view that managers can, with a degree of morallegitimation, desist from concerning themselves with the consequences oftheir actions. Having argued this, I am not assuming that the adoption ofrhetorical stances provides managers with a stable set of provisions by whichthey can be assured of their moral integrity. All that can be suggested is thatmanagers would do well in the practice of management (both publicly andpersonally) to consider the development of those virtues of temperance,prudence and justice by which they might be better able to converse withand so understand alternate stories and claims to their own. Practisingrhetoric is one way of developing these moral characteristics. As virtues theyremain attitudes rather than opinions. They don’t give out any answers, butthey may help by allowing managers to continually reframe the questions,and so avoid the hubris of presuming, first, that the goods of their practiceare limited to external, amoral outputs and, second, that the practical logicof their activities is determined solely by the pursuit of syllogistic solutions.
Human Relations 59(12)1 6 7 8
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Robin Holt is a Roberts University Fellow in Corporate Governance atLeeds University Business School. He received his PhD in Governmentfrom the London School of Economics, and has taught at Southampton,Bath and Manchester Metropolitan Universities. He has published a bookon Wittgenstein, and articles in Organization Studies, Organization and theJournal of Economic Issues. His research interests include: business ethics;governance; risk management; and firm capabilities and strategic activity.He also has an active interest in the practice of social science and iscurrently co-editing a dictionary of management research.[E-mail: [email protected]]
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