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Think tank—From the liberated to a liberating company: The cruciality of managerial transformation
Author(s) -
Lacan Arnaud
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
global business and organizational excellence
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.227
H-Index - 16
eISSN - 1932-2062
pISSN - 1932-2054
DOI - 10.1002/joe.22069
Subject(s) - reading (process) , postmodernism , work (physics) , business , ask price , public relations , marketing , sociology , epistemology , political science , law , engineering , mechanical engineering , philosophy , finance
The liberated company—a company where employees are fully autonomous and accountable for the decisions they take—is a concept about which much has been said and written. Some observers portray it as a major managerial innovation and even as a fully‐fledged organizational model for the future. Yet, despite constituting an interesting attempt to address issues related to the changing values and expectations of employees at work, the concept seems more cosmetic than something that will have a significant managerial effect. A clearly better approach is to ask what role managers should adopt, rather than fomenting the idea that the need for management is on the cusp of disappearing altogether. Adopting a more anthropological vision of the company, we suggest instead that a conceptual revision informed by a postmodern reading of this issue, suggests a new way of rethinking managerial attitudes. The main idea here being to no longer try and liberate companies, but instead to lay the foundations so that they themselves become liberating.