A genealogic and critical approach to rethink managing

Abstract

The historic-genealogical method is used by the authors to determine the leading power originating management. The positivism, the technological rationality, the modern capitalism, the pressures of the worker’s movement and the neoclassical economy were key elements of the historical context from which this new discipline emerges. This research about the context in which the scientific Management came up is made on the basis of Marx’s, Weber’s, Polanyi’s, Marcuse’s and Aktouf’s works. We see the administration as a narrative in which the company is conceived as an entity that should maximize the profits and, prevailingly, the creation of an economic value to the shareholders, even above the dignity of the human being, since this is considered the means but not the end in itself. The authors provide some examples in which this logic of instrumentation of the human being operates. Later on, they review the research and the existing teaching ways in the business schools. Finally, the search of a contextualized and permeatedby-solidarity administration is proposed, in which the main objective is the integral development of people in the companies.