Free Literature Review On Functional And Critical Perspectives Of Management

The mainstream, functional perspective of management refers to the perspectives that managers are to use their specialized knowledge to ensure organization work predictably, with the proper application of power resulting lives that are both healthier and richer. Management comprises a set of functions, with managers playing the role of neutral technology bereft of implicit moral consequences or commitments. Rationality refers to the efficiency and rationality, with human beings being means to attaining functionality. It is expected that employees exercise power in disciplined and acceptable ways, including the fact that managers apply prescribed procedures and techniques by which their performance is measured. Effectively, the functional perspective of management is reductive and fails to appreciate the intricate nature of the whole as more than just a sum of component parts. It conceives an organization as a technical unit geared at achieving certain set goals, using the varied components or means that managers can leverage through the exercise of their technical, managerial expertise.
On the other hand, critical theory provides a fundamentally different perspective on organizations and management, with a deep commitment to the management’s emancipatory potential as well as how such potential may be nurtured or hindered. The theory has four broad themes i.e. power relations, ideology, totality and praxis, and social construction. Social construction provides that the world is subjective and dynamic, not least because societal members continually change and revise reality by way of social negotiation, collective assignment and re-assignment of meanings. Further, this theory asserts that social constructions are heavily shaped by the power relations that obtain in a given culture, which renders it important to understand the role of the elite and possible resistance by the masses to the elite’s influence. Ideology helps to shape the collective perceptions of the world as well as expectations, geared towards preserving the status quo. With regard to the totality, critical theory seeks to understand the collective organizational phenomenon as against the functional insistence on the component parts (King & Learmonth, 2014; Pushkala & Caproni, 1997).
Managerial policies and practices may only be understood within the context of the organization and its culture, and thus management is a social and cultural practice, shaped by intra-organizational forces, material conditions and ideologies. Finally, critical theory is founded on praxis or the continuing construction of social arrangements that are supportive of the success of the human condition. This inspires and fosters action by challenging the existent systems of domination and ideological difficulties. These engagements in turn lead to the transformation of the organizational culture, power relations, ideologies and other aspects. For instance, the influence on organizational decision-making through legislation (e.g. enactment of laws against workplace discrimination and harassment) as well as activism by environmentalists, feminists, and other stakeholders uniquely influence the nature of the organization (King & Learmonth, 2014; Fleming & Spicer, 2003; Oxford Brookes University, n.d.).
The functionalist perspective of human resources management is founded on the premise that the discipline and practice involve the application of technical expertise to ensure that the organization has the people and processes necessary to achieve its ends. Human resources management attains this purpose through the recruitment, training and development, professional career development, determination of compensation and benefits based on set criteria or procedures, and making certain of the organization’s legal compliance with regard to the applicable laws and regulations. Effectively, human resources management plays a component role to the function of the organization, by fulfilling its sub-functions. The role of HRM is the application of technical expertise and knowledge (including psychology, sociology and statistics) to ensure there are people and rules that in turn lead to the smooth operation of the organization. To this end, overt bureaucracies, technological domination and state judicial repression are used to exert control and ensure that the organization is functional. Others sources of control include disciplinary power and cultural controls (Fleming & Spicer, 2003; King & Learmonth, 2014).
On the other hand, the critical perspective of HRM is founded on the subjective leveraging of power and corporate culture to create unique contexts that in turn foster the efficient operation of the organization. It is driven by the need to create and leverage bio-power (creativity, originality, alternatives, loyalty and shared values or ideologies, etc.) to transform the organization as against using the bureaucracies, disciplinary power and cultural controls. The critical perspective of HRM recognizes the importance of subjective interpretation and application of power to create unique environments and the inherent contradictions between theory and practice (Pushkala & Caproni, 1997; King & Learmonth, 2014). This perspective proposes that human resources management has only been implemented rhetorical, which has ensured that it is largely ineffective, but asserts that it is possible to manipulate employees and use soft power/rhetoric to gain the employee commitment to hard realities characterized by job security and work intensification. Effectively, this perspective differs from the functional perspective in the manner in which it creates and disguises manipulative power over employees, and how it leverages such power to attain functional organizations.

References

Fleming, P. & Spicer, A., 2003. Working at a Cynical Distance: Implications for Power, Subjectivity, and Resistance. Organization Vol 10(1), pp. 157-179.
King, D. & Learmonth, M., 2014. Can critical management studies ever be 'practical'? A case study in engaged scholarship. Sage Publications, p. http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/06/02/0018726714528254.
Oxford Brookes University, n.d. U58079/1 Perspectives in Business. Classroom Resources.
Pushkala, P. & Caproni, P., 1997. Critical Theory in the Management Classroom: Engaging Power, Ideology and Praxis. Journal of Management Education , 21(3), pp. 284-91.