Tell me about Organisational Management. Tell me about Organisational Management’s plans for philosophy. Tell what Organisational Management is, first of all. Give me a history.
Didn’t you look it up on the website? Didn’t you do some research?
It didn’t tell me anything. I want you to tell me. On our tour. Open up the subject area for me. The discipline. I want to be brought up to speed with the latest developments in Business Studies, or whatever this is.
Organisational Management used to be about maximising the extraction of profit. About making workers more productive. There was scientific management, right? Time and motion studies, and all that. Then you got the rise of service industries. So the task was to be able to use the entire human being, without remainder. Getting everyone to bring their entire selves to work.
But it’s all changing again. The paradigm’s changed. Most of the menial tasks are going to be taking over by AI. Management is going to become something else. It’s about ethics. About judgement. We approach management as an art, not just as a science. And we use the word management as in the phrases, managing to cope. How are you managing? Organisational Management’s gone artistic. It’s not all top down anymore, philosopher.
Organisational Management’s not solely about the maximisation of production or profits, philosopher. It’s not exclusively about capitalism. We want to expand the managerial imaginarium. Reconceive things from the ground up. That’s the latest thing.
What’s the latest thing in philosophy? The latest thing is the oldest thing: the void. Is that what interests you: the void? It doesn’t sound very interesting. What is it, you void? Where is it?
Everywhere.
Here?
Yes, here. Especially here.
On the Organisational Management campus? How come we haven’t seen it? How come it isn’t in my model?
The void. Is that Buddhist? Or Hindu. I should know that. I don’t know much about Hinduism, really. Everything I know was gleaned from those very dodgy comic books my dad would bring them back from India. Do you remember them?
Sure. Amar Chitra Katha. You could pick them up in Southall.
The void. I like the way it sounds. So you write about the void. Think about the void. Do research on the void. And what impact do your studies have?
None whatsoever. No one wants to read about the void.
Fitting, I guess.
Should I have studied the humanities? What did I miss out on?
Everything.
Can’t I catch up? Read a few books. Look at some art. Watch a few films. That will do, won’t it?
And what about Organisational Management? How could I catch up with that? You can learn it by doing. By watching it unfold.
There’s an Organisational Management book club, you know. We read literary things. To, like, broaden our horizons. I’m a member. Maybe we should read some philosophy. What should I suggest?
Work in Progress 