The single player mode of decision: Management as strategic unobservation of organization

A response to Thomas Hirschmann’s shout out 

Abstract: Management appears whenever we aim to observe organization as guide for or outcome of individual behavior. Organizations are systems of decision. Organizations appear if we observe chains of decision rather than chains of individual behaviors, with the point being that decision is not what happens in our minds or is formed by our bodies. Rather, decisions represent a form of communication and therefore not subject to the control of the involved parties anymore. If management is nonetheless to instruct either individual or collective behavior, then the circumstance that decisions are not (subject to) behavior has to be disguised. Management therefore acts as if behaviors determined decisions; as if decisions were subject to individual or collective preferences and values; as if decisions were made by anything else but the decision game itself. The cultivation of these – as illusive as indispensible – ideas is the core function of management.

Full web log post available online on roughbeehive.com or as PDF on SSRN.com.