Public talk given on February 21 2017 on behalf of The Management and Organization Department of the Ramon V. del Rosario College of Business, De La Salle University Philippines.

1. February 21 2017 De La Salle University
Practical Management Knowledge
for Human Flourishing
Dr Tim Rogers, Teaching Innovation Unit, University of South Australia

2. Outline
✤ Synopsis of critical realism as an underlying
philosophy of science for practical theory
✤ Some anthropological and ethological observations
✤ Description of Action Science as an action research
methodology
✤ An organisational case study

3. De La Salle’s guiding principles
Liberating action is mutually empowering, enabling the
individuals and institutions engaged in such action to
increasingly realize their own worth as individuals and
as a collective…
(http://www.dlsu.edu.ph/inside/lasallian-guiding-principles/social-development.asp)

4. Critical realism
✤ The best explanation of the progress of the natural sciences
suggests that the underlying essences and causal powers of
things is central, not the observable relationships between
variables
✤ The social sciences should be concerned with the causal roles of
structure and agency. Social structure always precedes agency
so…
✤ …actions may involve unacknowledged conditions, unconscious
motivations, tacit skills, and have unintended consequences

5. A language user may not know the role of socialisation in
language acquisition (unacknowledged condition), may not
be aware of reasons for concealing her thoughts (unconscious
motivation), may not be able to describe the grammatical
rules she evidently knows in practice (tacit skills) and may be
incorrect in her belief about the effect of her utterances
(unintended consequences).
A manager may not know the role of his historical
experiences as an employee (unacknowledged conditions),
may not be aware of the reasons for being angry at his boss
(unconscious motivation), may not be able to describe the
rules underlying his competence in a specific task (tacit
skills), and may be incorrect in his belief about the effect of
his interventions (unintended consequences).

6. Emancipation
✤ Definition: the transformation of “sources of
determination from unwanted to wanted ones”*
✤ Two roles for social sciences:
✤ criticism - identifying false beliefs
✤ explanatory critique - identifying causes of ‘false
consciousness’
* Bhaskar, R. (1982) Emergence, explanation and emancipation, p. 295. In P. Secord (Ed.), Explaining Human
Behaviour (pp. 275-310). Beverly Hills: Sage.

7. Semi-formally this looks like…
✤ M → (s → p; sp → O) → S1 (based on Bhaskar, 1982,
p. 301)
✤ M–unconscious repression and projection → (s–
transference of father to boss → p–belief that boss is
being oppressive; sp → O–aggressive reaction to boss)
→ M1–unconscious repression and projection

8. What 90sTV can
tell us about social
conditioning
Doogie Howser and the internalisation of
norms, rules, and feelings

9. Some hope: what if Doogie was a
Masai?
Ryan, Christopher, and Cacilda Jetha. Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern
Relationships. Reprint edition. New York; Enfield: Harper Perennial, 2011.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/kenya/1477968/Aids-threatens-
impoverished-Masai.html
http://whatisanthropology.blogspot.com/2012/12/marriage-customs-among-maasai-and-ngoni.html

10. More hope. Even baboons can
revolutionise their culture
Sapolsky RM, Share LJ (2004) A Pacific Culture among Wild Baboons: Its Emergence and Transmission. PLoS
Biol 2(4): e106. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020106

11. How does this play out in
organisations?
✤ The social defenses of British nurses*
✤ Horns of a dilemma: compassion versus anxiety
✤ Clearly a lack of ‘flourishing’
✤ Rules are ‘open horizoned’ and contain etc clauses
(Garfinkel) - but how to get to them when they are
behind social defenses?
*Menzies, Isabel EP. “A Case-Study in the Functioning of Social Systems as a Defence against Anxiety A Report on
a Study of the Nursing Service of a General Hospital.” Human Relations 13, no. 2 (1960): 95–121.

12. Chris Argyris and Donald Schön’s
Action Science
✤ Communities of inquiry in communities of practice
✤ Theories of practice
✤ - can we tease out unacknowledged conditions, unconscious
motivations, tacit skills, and unintended consequences?
✤ Creating possible social worlds to criticise ‘what is from what
could be’ (Habermas) where people can be ‘origins, not pawns’
✤ Possible worlds also help explain phenomena

13. Components of the theory
✤ A meta-theory of human action: human action is (often) goal
driven and involves tacit theories for achieving these aims
✤ In situation X (conditions), 2) do Z (strategy), 3) achieve Y (goal)
✤ Two theories at work: espoused theories and theories-in-use
✤ We are often unaware of the gaps between these two theories
✤ Under conditions of threat or embarrassment, Model 1 theory-
in-use predominates: unilaterally control, win and not lose,
reduce negative affect

14. Empowerment and anxiety in a
large public sector organisation
✤ ‘Greenfields’ re-organisation of PS org with a $1B
budget
✤ 3 day retreat with the executive, including CE
✤ Aim of re-organisation was to empower the frontline
staff
✤ Executive felt pinned down by blame from above and
below

15. But what was really happening…
✤ Empowerment meant winners and losers
✤ Empower meant taking leadership
✤ But led to a game of ‘Pass the parcel’ with
organisational anxiety

16. High level ‘map’ of personal and
organisational theories-in-use
GOVERNING
CONDITIONS
CHANGES IN ORG
FOCUS OR
STRUCTURE;
CHANGES IN
NORMS,
ASSUMPTIONS
AND
EXPECTATIONS
INTERACT
WITH MODEL 1
THEORIES-IN-
USE
GROUP
CONSEQUENCES:
POLARISATION;
SCAPEGOATING;
LOWERED TRUST
ORGANISATIONAL
CONSEQUENCES:
CULTURE OF
BLAME;
PASSIVITY;
‘SCLEROSIS’
INDIVIDUAL
CONSEQUENCES:
CONFIRMATION
BIAS; LACK OF
SELF-
AWARENESS;
PROBLEMS SEEN
AS TOO DIFFICULT
EASY
PROBLEMS
PROBLEMS
THAT
CONTAIN
THREAT

17. Dilemmas of empowerment

18. Revisiting
✤ M–Model I theory-in-use → (s–tacit unilateral design and control
of encounter → p–belief that other is irrational and blaming by
nature; sp → O–low learning, organisational politics) → S1–Model
I theory-in-use
✤ And so: Unacknowledged conditions, unconscious motivations,
tacit skills, and unintended consequences
✤ “Liberating action is mutually empowering, enabling the
individuals and institutions engaged in such action to increasingly
realize their own worth as individuals and as a collective…”

19. Scientific action for liberation
✤ This is not to say that we should act scientifically and
we should change the world
✤ It is to say that to attempt to change the world is to act
scientifically…
✤ …and we must act scientifically if we are to change
the world

20. The end.
Questions?