Postmodern managers emphasise subjectivity, intuition, relationships, inspiration, commitment, empathy and happiness. Originating in 1960’s literary criticism, postmodernism was embraced by Australian academics in the 1980s. Since they view education as a form of indoctrination, postmodernists teach ignorance.
Accordingly, professors have been replaced by ‘facilitators’ who are exceptionally modest in their disinclination to argue. Theirs is a classroom in which feelings are shared in a spirit of relativistic modesty.
They eagerly embrace the view that everything is relative, except the proposition that everything is relative. Australian philosopher David Stove noted how postmodernists have learned to lisp in the language of congenial relativism.
Their intellectual temper is modest and they are quick to acknowledge that their own opinion is only their opinion. This form of thinking has led to a general collapse of intellectual standards. How can one rationally respond to someone who believes that rational thinking is irrelevant?
To those who think rationally, postmodern pronouncements prove that something has gone grievously wrong with our thinking. When postmodernists claim that there are no facts they are asserting a fact and so contradicting themselves, or they are merely expressing their feelings.
Why should rational folk take seriously another person’s feelings about such important notions as ‘truth’ and ‘facts’? But that is the postmodern point. Feelings are what count. I feel, therefore, I am. It is unsurprising that postmodernists delight in attacking authority figures, including managers and teachers, and thereby fail to distinguish between authoritative and authoritarian individuals.
Australian psychologists John Martin and John Ray showed that less intelligent, emotionally unstable people were more likely to agree with authoritarian statements than more intelligent, emotional stable individuals who agree with authoritative statements.
Rejecting the right kind and accepting the wrong kind of authority appear to be equally indicative of social and personal inadequacy. In rejecting all authority figures, or at least regarding them suspiciously, postmodernists reveal their own personal inadequacies.
For example, they reject the idea that they are free and responsible beings. Postmodernists believe in themselves but make no truth claims for what they make up as they ‘float’. In The Undoing of Thought Alain Finkielkraut observed that the raging nihilism of postmodernism gives rise to an equal admiration for Shakespeare and the Simpsons.
The opera of everyday life is just as worthwhile as Wagner. Celebrities are granted high cultural status and the intellectual life is absorbed into the banality of ‘kitchen-sink’ existence. Cartoons have overwhelmed conversations, new age psychology has replaced philosophy, and a cult of feeling dominates social intercourse. By the 1990s postmodernism had infected management. Those who were disenchanted with traditional management eagerly embraced postmodernism.
This was accompanied by political correctness, which is an insidious form of censorship based, in part, on the idea that we should not express feelings (let alone ‘facts’) that might upset or offend others. The key question for ‘ethically sensitive’ managers became: ‘Will we get along with each other?’ And we should be quick to apologise for the stress we cause others; that government bureaucrats now refer to occupational stress as ‘psychological injury’ says it all.
Accordingly, cognitive intelligence has yielded to emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence and moral intelligence. Indeed, there are now so many intelligences that one wonders if there is, for example, coffee-making intelligence? Postmodernism is also associated with the feminisation of human resource management.
The rise to prominence of this once marginal activity began in the 1980s when personnel management, a predominantly male enclave for retired army officers and elderly line managers, was rebadged. Today the Australian Human Resource Institute has over 14,000 members.
HRM has been a success story for women who have increasingly secured important positions in training and development and in HRM generally. HR academics claim that the difference between personnel management and HRM is reflected in the shift from: practice to values; monitoring to nurturing, negotiation to facilitation.
This new ‘feminine’ trend becomes even clearer with the debate between the practitioners of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ HRM: ‘hard’ HRM emphasises managerial prerogatives, bottom-line results and the preparedness of managers to take tough decisions; ‘soft’ HRM emphasises the commitment, personality and motivation of employees.
Each approach has developed its own language: ‘hard’ means objective, rational, analytic, tough-minded, impersonal, argumentative – masculine. ‘Soft’ means subjective, intuitive, synthetic, tender-minded, personal, empathic – feminine. Clearly, there is a tension in Australian management between ‘hard’, modern managers who manage by objective performance, and ‘soft’ postmodern psychomanagers who manage by performance and personality.
Traditional managers assumed that the ultimate test of management is performance – the achievement of actual results. If people performed, they earned the right to argue with their colleagues. Today, people who argue with their colleagues are likely to be accused of lacking soft-skills.
In some cases, they are judged to be suffering from a personality disorder. The popularity of soft-skill management in Australia has led to the widespread use of personality tests in the mistaken belief that certain personalities make good managers.
Yet more than 60 years of research has shown convincingly that personality test scores do not predict managerial performance. Using personality tests to manage others has great attraction because it offers managers means by which they can manipulate their colleagues.
But this means that psychomanagers yield their authority to counsellors, consultants or coaches since they do not have relevant psychological knowledge. Ultimately, they undermine their authority because they cannot be managers and psychologists: the roles are mutually exclusive.
Managers are not, and should not be, in the business of delving into the inner lives of their colleagues. The role of psychology is not to manipulate and control others. Rather, it is to understand and master oneself.
Robert Spillane is Professor of Management at Macquarie Graduate School of Management and author of The Rise of Psychomanagement in Australia, (Michelle Anderson Publishing: Melbourne, 2011).
