This work examines the rise of postmodernism in management scholarship and argues that the prevalence of postmodernist thought reflects a lack of understanding by management researchers of the core principles upon which Western business endeavour is based. The author highlights postmodernism's methodological and conceptual failings, such as disbelief in material progress and economic advancement, and its denial of generalizable laws to direct management research. In its place, the author proposes a return to traditional modernist principles in management research, based on scientific evidence. This ground breaking, timely work will spark debate and challenge previously accepted claims of postmodernism, a nice retort to the anti-business/anti-capitalist literature now prevalent in academia.
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Yes, you can access Work, Wealth, and Postmodernism by Bradley Bowden in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Commerce & Management. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Bradley BowdenWork, Wealth, and Postmodernismhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76180-0_1
Begin Abstract
1. Introduction
Bradley Bowden1
(1)
Griffith University, Brisbane City, QLD, Australia
End Abstract
The Roots and Nature of Modernity
The modern industrial world, which owes its existence to the intellectual revolution of the European Enlightenment and the economic transformation of the Industrial Revolution, has attracted many critics over the last quarter millennium: Rousseau, Nietzsche, the English Romantic poets, postmodernists. Its economic achievements, nevertheless, represent a fundamental alteration in the nature of human existence. Exponential increases in both population and wealth, whether measured in economy-wide or per-capita terms, were the most obvious signs of this transformation. After almost a millennium and a half of near stagnation, the per-capita wealth generated in the West grew by 20 per cent in the eighteenth century, 200 per cent in the nineteenth century, and 740 per cent in the twentieth century.1
Mere statistics tend to disguise the liberating effect that industrial advance had on the lived experience of the great bulk of humanity. As Thomas Hobbes famously observed in 1651, the lives of people where there was āno place for industryā were āpoor, nasty, brutish, and shortā.2 Before the advent of the railways, most people lived and died within a short walk of where they were born. Given the high expense of animal-drawn forms of land transport, most production was geared for local needs. When crops failed, people starved. In a world where candles and fire from the hearth were the only forms of night-time illumination, most peopleās activities were dictated by the rising and setting of the sun. The absence of running water and effective sewerage meant that most people lived their lives in filth. As the British economic historian, J.H. Clapham, noted, in the seventeenth century, even kings did not wash, with Henry of Navarre confessing that they tended to āsmell of their armpitsā.3 In reflecting on the consequence of this, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the first and, in many ways, the greatest critic of the process of modernisation and industrialisation, acknowledged the toll that this caused in terms of death and suffering. Writing in Emile, his treatise on education which he completed in 1762, Rousseau remarked of the human experience: āAlmost all of the first age is sickness and danger. Half the children born perish before the first year.ā4 Unlike subsequent critics of modernity, however, Rousseau was too close to a ānaturalā existence to allow illusions as to what such a life entailed. Sickness and premature death, by winnowing out the weak and infirm, Rousseau argued, were contributors to social well-being. āA frail bodyā, he observed, āweakens the soulā.5 āMedicineā, by offering succour to the weak, merely revealed itself āan art more pernicious to men than all the ills it can cureā.6 It was, moreover, a crime against society to provide an education to āa sickly and ill-considered childā, as money spent on such an individual would merely result in ādoubling societyās lossā.7
Modernisation through what we think of as the Industrial Revolution was due to the combination of four factors: the advance of reason and science through the European Enlightenment, the embrace of new principles of work and managerial organisation, the advance of social institutions that not only underpinned new workforce skills but which also acted as protectors of individual rights, and, finally, the adoption of new technologies. Of the four, the lastāthe adoption of new technologiesāwas in many ways the one of least importance. As late as 1830 the horse power of Britainās stock of steam-powered engines remained minuscule. In Britainās textile industry, the first to experience large-scale mechanisation, initial technological advance was confined to spinning. Even in 1835, Pollard noted, steam-powered weaving looms were ārelatively rareā, leaving ālarge weaving sheds full of hand loomsā.8 In the railways the victory of steam-powered locomotives over other forms of motive power was also slow and hesitant. Not until the opening of the Manchester to Liverpool railway in 1830 was the commercial viability of the new technology demonstrated. Even at this point the ventureās promoters initially considered fixed cables in lieu of locomotives.9
If technological determinism (i.e. the idea that the adoption of new machines inevitably led to new economic forms) cannot explain the sudden eruption of the Industrial Revolution , our understanding is also hindered by simple reference to terms such as āentrepreneurshipā, ācapitalismā, or āmanagementā. Murphy, Liao, and Welsch, for example, ascribe the explosion of per-capita wealth that occurred in āthe Westā to āthe advent of entrepreneurship ā. Having made this claim, however, they then backtrack, pointing to the āsuccess of entrepreneurship in ancient and medieval timesā.10 This leaves us none the wiser as to what it was that made the effects of entrepreneurship so transformative in āthe Westā after 1760. Similar confusions are evident in both Morgen Witzelās A History of Management Thought and Niall FergusonāsCivilization: The West and the Rest. In the former, Witzel concedes that modern management did āemergeā as a ādisciplineā in the nineteenth century, only to then argue that most preindustrial societies also boasted successful examples of āmanagementā.11 Ferguson, by contrast, readily advances the case for Western economic superiority, butāby referencing as explanation the political fragmentation āwhich propelled Europeans to seek opportunities ā¦ in distant landsāāfails to explain why the Industrial Revolution happened when it did.12 A similar failing is evident in Karl Marxās attribution of industrialisation to ācapitalismā.13 As Fernand Braudel demonstrated in The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, by the sixteenth century, ācommercial capitalismāācharacterised by sophisticated finance and banking systems, domination of long-distance trade routes, and control of luxury goodsā marketsāclearly existed in an āalready modern and indisputably effective formā.14 What was it that made ācapitalismā shift from such indubitably profitable commercial activities to a more prosaic but ultimately more revolutionary existence as a factory owner and industrialist?
To understand both the nature of modernity and the factors that led to its initiation, it is useful to turn to a work written at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and which, perhaps more than any other, continues to shape our perceptions of wealth creation: Adamās SmithThe Wealth of Nations. In popular lore, Smithās study is associated with the view that modern economies are primarily driven by the āinvisible handā of market competition. However, while Smith was an obvious fan of market competition, he never actually spokeācontrary to popular mythologyāof āthe invisible hand of the marketā. Smith also identified āthe division of labourā as the key driver of greater production and material wealth. It was on this latter point that, in 1776, Smith began his analysis in The Wealth of Nations, stating: āThe greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.ā15 As individuals, firms, and nations specialise in those areas in which they haveāthrough the application of intellectual and physical capitalāa ācomparative advantageā, so it is that markets grow in both their size and competitive extent.
Evidently, Smith, in his discussions of the division of labour had something ...