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Colliding Worlds in an Age of Unreason
Covid-19 pandemic is a vital emergent event in human history. Despite its dramatic blows upon the economy, we've also seen some positive changes that were reversely forced by the pandemic—many industries and sectors began to become“testing fields”of new technologies,“training grounds”for new models, and“breed farms”of new types of business. On the one hand, the pandemic prompted firms to carry out digital transformation; on the other hand, it's changed our ways of living and working. It popularizes mobile office, and exacerbates the uncertainty in the VUCA age. Corporate strategies and visions have to directly face the challenges that are brought by external environment changes. Being intrinsically changeable and complex, organizations are continuously confronted with governance problems. This leads to profound changes in organizational relationships.
George Bernard Shaw once indicated that“……all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”His argument was that reasonable man will change himself to fit in with the world, while unreasonable man will try to let the world fit it with himself.“In that sense, we are entering an Age of Unreason, when the future, in so many areas, is there to be shaped, by us and for us; a time when the only prediction that will hold true is that no predictions will hold true; a time, therefore, for bold imaginings in private life as well as public, for thinking the unlikely and doing the unreasonable.”（Handy, 2012）. When mankind faces a world that is full of uncertainty, the academics must make contributions to the knowledge, in order to help mankind survive and prosper—to live and prosper with dignity, equality, freedom, empathy, and beauty that reflect human aspirations（March, 2019）.
IoT-Enabled Organizational Transformation
Internet of Things（IoT）started with ARPANET, which allowed one user to control over 300 Coke vending machines. It has experienced explosive, exponential growth. Based on edge computing technology, IoT lets billions of individual objects, which were unspectacularly embedded into their surroundings, own routine computer programs. Connecting with the Internet, these objects become nerve fiber of mechanical world（Tvede, 2022）. As data become factors of production, digital economy brought about massive changes in labor-force market. Boundaries between personal life and work, home and workplace, and between work time and fun time become increasingly indistinct. Work and pastime are actually converging. The rise of Gig Economy spawned a large number of new occupations. It consequently satisfied younger generations' need for demonstrating their personality and talent, and for their pursuits of own hobbies and dreams. As a result, it's time for people to say farewell to the age of single occupations.
Mankind is going into the age of Internet of Everything（IoE）. It forces a series of reconstructions as following: ① organizations and organizational relationships: from hierarchical relationship to value creation; ② relationship between customers and organizations: from market relationship to co-creation and symbiosis; ③relationship between organizations and environments: from impact to interaction; ④ organizational internal form and subjects: from unitary to multiple. Organizational changes call for the transformation of corporate management paradigm. This world is an ever-evolving, ever-changing system. Within it, all complex constructures are results of continuous evolution and growth that started with simple forms. An increasingly orderly and complex evolution trend is therefore realized. The view of complementarity, the idea of causality, and the view of dynamics, help drive the revolution of management thoughts. They push us to re-examine a series of significant changes that emerged from researches of social science, and even natural science. These changes brought major changes into managerial concepts and paradigm.
Evolution of Management Thoughts
As one of the greatest human inventions, management was born back in the days when the organizing and activities of human groups ever existed. And it has never stopped evolving ever since. Conventional management system puts emphasis on efficiency improvement, cost reduction, and quality upgrade. As a matter of fact, they provided strong support to the development of organizations, and created legends like Ford and Walmart, etc. Nevertheless, as employees' level of knowledge elevates, knowledge workers, while getting paid, started to put more emphasis to their needs for respect, expostulation, democratic participation, and career development. Conventional management system, however, keenly stresses the importance of“control,”giving too much efforts in internal coordination and controlling, but too little attention to the important roles of stake-holders and value network in the development of organizations. Consequently, conventional management system, with an operational efficiency that is approaching to its threshold, can hardly maintain its remarkable competition edges. In essence, the system of development for management science has not realized the effective evolution from old, Newtonian physics system of atoms, to the biological evolutionary theory and ecological system theory.
Thanks to the development of society and the progress of science and technology, knowledge and innovation will become the core and focus of organizations. Creating new knowledge, realizing new innovation and breakthroughs—these will be managers' primary missions. In order to cope with this type of change, we need, on the one hand, to deal with the transformation of management paradigm under the circumstances of IoE（Internet of Everything）; and, on the other hand, to explore the relationship between management and human civilization—it means that management is to shape new civilization, while civilization is to generate new management. Management paradigm shall realize the transformation, moving from operation-focused to innovation-focused, from closeness to openness, from control-centric to empowerment-centric, from resource-intensive to knowledge-intensive, and from economics-oriented to care/love-oriented. Iteration of management paradigm will be ultimately accomplished.
Humanity hypothesis is“based on some kind of value judgement. It's an assumption for the state and qualification of most people in given areas.”As the humanity hypothesis evolves from“Homo economicus”,“Homo sociologicus”to“Homo scientia”and“Homo ethica,”the focus of management paradigm has also realized its change from normative rationality, motivation needs, and knowledge innovation to meaningful happiness. The practice of corporate management should put more emphasis on the core value of“human,”changing from instrumental reason to value rationality. Human dignity and happiness should be stressed more. Employees'sense of meaningfulness should be continuously stimulated. Firms should be encouraged to transfer their attention from economic value to social value and human well-being, thus from agricultural civilization, industrial civilization, and information civilization to the overall development of humans and the gains of the entire human civilization.
Under these circumstances, managers should lessen the idea of“control,”and express more“care”and“respect”within and without the organizations. The starting point of organizational management should be the pursuit of“vision.”What organizations try to realize is ethical existence and development. It means further opening of organization boundaries based on the principle of“trust and collaboration;”obtaining resources in ways that are more harmonious, more economic, and more environmental-friendly; synergetic development on the basis of“heart of benevolence”and empathy that link employees with organizations. Generous work environment and opportunities will be created to generate sense of meaningfulness and happiness among employees, to inspire people's courage to tackle challenges, and to develop employees' potentials and creative power.
Rethinking the meaning of labor and work
In Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time , James Suzman introduced primitive tribes in Namibia and Botswana. As of the 20 th century, people in the tribes still lived hunting-and-gathering life under the doctrine of absolute equalitarianism. What they revere is nature, rather than fortune or status. They work only to meet short-term material needs. In most days, they just spend leisure time in what we deem meaningless—walking, chatting, singing and dancing, and telling stories. Primitive ways of life and work didn't put them on the brink of starvation and fear though. Rather, they are well-nourished and living a longer life than most of the people who live in the industrial societies. That's why they were called the“Tribes of Abundance.”We can't help but rethink the meaning of work and labor for humans. When the world goes from“Material Age”into“Mind Age,”how should we define the relationship between human and work? Are we simply exploiting energy from work, or gaining energy from work? During the course of great technological leap-forward, we just left traditional culture, and value concepts that hide in it, far behind us. Although our intelligence has lessened labor, improved human health, and extended our life span, for many of us, meaning of life and meaning of work still remain life-long pursuit.
In The Working Methods （働き方）, Kazuo Inamori clearly pointed out that“You just can't live a happy life before finally understanding the meaning of work and devoting yourself into work whole-heartedly.”“Great strength hides in your work. It can help you conquer hardship in your destiny, and bring brightness and hope into your life.”So, supreme good motivation, selfless heart, daily introspection, facing your heart; putting your back into your work, and developing your body and mind—this is the meaning of work.“People work to upgrade their will. This is where the meaning of work lies in.”Hard work, day after day, can hone our mind, improve our humanity, and shape our soul.“The meaning of work is not only pursuit of performance, but also the fulfillment of heart.”The highest achievement and value manifest is to toil and bustle for the society, for employees, and for the well-being of others. More importantly, the meaning of life can be realized to the full extent in this way.
Philosopher Hilary W. Putnam believed that fact and value are deeply tangled with each other. But people tend to separate facts and values, regarding management practice as the reflection of certain type of regularity. From the age of industrial economy, when the first-generation management—Scientific Management that was featured with efficiency-oriented reason and norms—was born, to the second-generation management—Behavioral Management that stresses human motives and needs, till the third-generation management—Knowledge Management, which emphases knowledge and innovation in the era of knowledge economy, humanity, theory, and practice have been circularly confirmed and enhanced by one another. Consequence? A management world without warmth, meaning, or ideals. It's time for us to think: what management theory do managers need? What does a perfect management realm look like? To answer this question, along with warmth, meaning, purposes, and pursuit of happiness, here comes the fourth-generation management—Meaningful Management.
Journey of the study
As one of the most common and most important human activities, management has gone through over 100 years of evolution and development, and formed a increasingly clear development sequence and research paradigm. About business management, my early theory and thinking came from years of mentorship and academic guidance of my doctoral advisor, Prof. Xu Qingrui. In late 1990s, we carried out a series of“Deep Dive”studies in outstanding Chinese companies. The experiences of investigation and survey, I lived where the middle-level and frontline employees lived, and ate what they ate, gives me not only macroscopic theoretical understanding in Chinese companies' development in over 30 years, but also microscopic, fine-particle, practical thinking.
Along with the growth of excellent Chinese companies, such as Haier, CRRC, CASC, and CREG, etc., I had an opportunity to further understand the problems and bottlenecks of corporate management practice. Based on my longtime observation of the management practice from which the light of humanity shines in world's first-class companies, such as Microsoft, P&G and Netflix I tried to integrate remarkable management practices of excellent Chinese companies. For example, on the principle of“ Integrating Chinese and western elements; methods shall be harnessed by principles ,”Fotile instills Chinese traditional culture into its company culture. It established an ecosystem of happiness by building the“ five of one: the law of happiness ”; Haier's“EMC Contract”, an intrapreneurship mechanism that is human-centric, digitally-empowered, and dynamically-optimized, can empower its employees. It's“ lively but not chaotic, and highly synergetic ,”and it's good for the maximization of human values; CREG's quality management model, which is known as“ Three Transformations ”and“ Concentric Circles ,”realized a model of management with warmth by a pillar company in a big country; CRRC is mission driven. This people-centric company strives for independent innovation based on hard technologies, and pursues harmonious coexistence between human and engineering projects. And COMAC. It created an aviation industrial cluster driven by the mission of aviation dream. These management practices are significantly different from Scientific Management that emphases reason and norms, from Behavioral Management that focuses on human motive and needs, and from Knowledge Management that concentrates on innovation and knowledge. Inspired by the new exploration in terms of innovation by these outstanding Chinese companies, especially by the fact that they pay more attention to the comeback of humans, perception of meanings, and pursuit of happiness, Prof. Wei Wei and I determined to name the management with these characteristics“Meaningful Management.”
For over a year, after multiple discussion, collision（of ideas）, modification, and refinement, and extensive supports by experts, we have completed multiple iterations. I deeply appreciated that Prof. Ikujiro Nonaka, the prominent management thinker from Hitotsubashi University（in Japan）, Mr. Zhu Hongren, the Standing Vice Chairman of China Enterprise Confederation, and Mr. Zhang Ruimin, Honorary Chairman of the board of Haier Group, all have given precious attention and pertinent suggestions to this theory. We also have the great privilege to have recommendations written by them for this book. In essence,“Meaningful Management”is an innovative transformation of management theory that, standing on the basis of absorbing western management system and paradigm, effectively refers to the essence of knowledge management from Japanese scholars, and takes in the holistic view and coordination view within Chinese philosophy and view of benevolence in Chinese culture.
Framework of this book
This book consists of 7 chapters. Chapter One: the Development and Iteration of Management Science System. It includes: the first-generation management—Scientific Management, which pursues reason and standard under the hypothesis of“Homo economicus”; the second-generation management—Behavioral Management, which concentrates on“Homo sociologicus,”and human motives and needs; the third-generation management—Knowledge Management, which stresses“Homo scientia”, and the innovation and development of knowledge; and the fourth-generation management—Meaning Management, which uses meaning and happiness to interpret the connotation of“Homo ethica.”From the perspective of traditional management system, human desire is depicted as purely material. It cares about people's consumption（including public goods）and leisure. It ignores elements of“experience”and“meaning,”which play central roles in modern economy. In the future, managers of digital age will be facilitated by high precision, strong connection, high efficiency, and low cost that are brought by digitalization. At the same time, in scenarios like human-machine interaction and human-machine symbiosis, they should treat“meaning”as the core and“emotion”as motives. And they should never stop exploring and pursuing employees' happiness experience and the improvement of social welfare. All these are parts of a brand-new management paradigm with Chinese characteristics. Thus, it can provide a higher-value guidance for the transformation and development of global management paradigm.
Chapter Two:Theoretical Core of“Meaningful Management.” It combines multiple dimensions, such as the meaning of work on the basis of western meaning theory, the meaning of life, and humanized business theory（BOH）, etc., integrating meaning theories from Chinese traditional culture, such as“manifest destiny”and“human nature and heaven's doctrine,”etc., and extracting essence from CPC People-centric Theory and Confucian“virtue of benevolence”etc.
Chapter Three:Welfare and Flourish. From“Well-being”to“Flourish,”it's an ever-lasting seeking and pursuit of meaningful happiness. Typically,“happiness”stresses sensory aspect;“well-being”stresses a contented state of having welfare, abundance, and prosperous development; while“flourish”tends to refer to life that is in full bloom, complete, and prosperous.“IKIGAI”in Japanese is quite similar to“Flourish.”It implies an idea of marching into the future, with expectations, self-drive, and dreams. Organizations are going to let employees fell the body-and-mind balance and work-and-life balance during their work, to let them experience te meaning of work and the power of the“flow,”and to let them know that the purport of“meaningful management”is innovation, dreams, happiness and prosperous life.
Chapter Four: Belief and Vision. Under the guidance of vision and mission, empowering individuals means effectively empowering the entire organization. Belief is the premise of sense of meaningfulness generation. Belief management means to manage the beliefs of the management team in the context of company objectives and organizational background. At the same time, it collides and exchanges with employees' beliefs in their own work and career. Through this type of“creative dialogues,”business objectives that are meaningful for both the company and the employees are found. Vision is company's direction. It is the crystallization of organizational strategy and culture. And it is the sublime soul of the organization. In the practice of business management,“meaningful management”is to empower individuals while effectively empowering the whole organization, under the guidance of vision and missions.
Chapter Five:Innovation and Creation. To create atmosphere for innovation, to stimulate employees, and to pursue meaningful innovation. In the era of knowledge economy, enterprises are important places for knowledge creation and knowledge conversion.“ Ba, ”an essential place for knowledge transmission, is an organic structuring field where dialectical dialogues and practice happen. Within the paradigm of meaningful innovation, key meaning of business management innovation lies in the construction of meaning-based corporate decision-making framework, in the systematic discussion about the features and meanings of all spatial“ Ba ”and fields within the framework, and in the exploration of the cognitive foundation for value-rationality-centric meaning management.
Chapter Six: Human Dignity. To provide employees with sufficient respect and support, and to build sense of psychological security within the organizations. Empathetic leadership can help employees find sense of meaningfulness in life. Once perceiving responsibilities and building strong confidence, they will be empowered to pursue happiness. By building a cooperative, shared, and open organizational environment, company can make employees feel empowered by the organization, and life empowered by work. Empathy shall be integrated in the course of business management. Silos are going to be removed from within the organization. The organization shall provide sufficient respect and support to its employees, and build the sense of psychological security, and inspire the spirit of continuous self-challenge and being bold against all odds.
Chapter Seven: Social Welfare. In the principle of altruism, people will establish positive enterprises and altruistic economy. Thus, a positive society will be shaped; sense of happiness and social welfare of the whole society will be improved; a harmonious welfare society will be created.“Meaningful Management”cares about employees'sense of happiness, sense of achievement, and sense of gain, and gives them meaningful work and life. On top of that, it reshapes companies' sense of meaningfulness by means of vision and strategy, guides companies to pay more attentions to social responsibilities and business ethics. Moreover, through innovation and creation, it increases social welfare—to let everyone enjoy a safe, fair, and carefree life.
Future-Oriented Management Paradigm
In the practice of business management, implementation of meaningful management can drive with care/love, provide employees with sufficient respect and freedom, and give encouragement, capabilities, commitment and support. Managers instill warmth and empathy into everyday management, build sense of psychological security in the organization, inspire cordial leadership behavior, enhance organizational members'sense of happiness and sense of meaningfulness, advocate the return of humanity, and construct a better organizational environment that is balanced, growing and prosperous—what organizations give employees is not only economic value, but also resilience that can improve their viability, and passion and drive that aims to pursue fairness and justice, and to make this world a better place. This should also be the focus of business management during new stage of development.
Everyone in the organization should embrace change. Everyone should accelerate the development of organization through altruistic behavior, while realizing their own personal growth. Enterprises should construct meaning-based corporate decision-making framework, and systematically specify the characteristics and meanings of every spatial“ Ba ”and field within the framework. They should also explore the value-rationality-centric, cognitive foundation of meaningful management, and realize the spiral upward flow of personal and organizational explicit and tacit knowledge within the organization. In the principle of altruism, people will establish positive enterprises and altruistic economy. Thus, a positive society will be shaped; sense of happiness and social welfare of the whole society will be improved; a harmonious welfare society will be created. In this sense, during the course of the country's great march towards China-style modernization, it's a mission and opportunity for Chinese management scientists to construct a brand-new management paradigm with Chinese characteristics. This paradigm treats“meaning”as a core, and is driven by“care.”And it never stops pursuing and exploring employees' experience of happiness and social welfare. In addition, this paradigm can therefore provide more valuable guidance for the transformation and development of global management paradigm.