Comments on: Is Management a General Skill?

By: Peter Klein

Peter Klein — Sun, 04 May 2008 02:36:05 +0000

Scott and Warren, fair points on all sides. But the key to Blackburn’s view is not the sentence quoted by Scott, but the one before, which shows that some people just don’t grasp the concept of gains from trade, of mutually beneficial exchange.It’s taught on the first day of Econ 101 but iis apparently beyond the ken of Cambridge philosophers. (You really have to read Davies’s commentary to get the gist of the silliness.)

By: Scott

Scott — Sat, 03 May 2008 22:48:01 +0000

Well, federal judges, for one.
But that’s an institutional/organizational feature, not a difference in human nature. As evidence that faculty are not a unique species I offer the existence of a popular cartoon series built in large part on the premise that employees are more sophisticated than pointy haired managers think.

By: Warren Miller

Warren Miller — Sat, 03 May 2008 00:04:52 +0000

With respect, Scott, I would strongly argue that faculty ARE “a different breed,” to use your phrase. Show me one other group in America where, once ‘tenured,’ performance is irrelevant to employment, and the job is permanent. If that doesn’t make them different, kindly explain to me why not.

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 02 May 2008 01:55:33 +0000

I don’t know, Peter. I shouldn’t comment on this without following and reading the links, but there is a reason we call university officers administrators rather than managers. We had a dean who referred to himself, his assistants, and department heads as managers, and they acted accordingly. And the reaction of (many) faculty could be accurately characterized as “irritable and subversive and quite quickly unmanageable.” One might argue that faculty are a different breed (I wouldn’t), but I think the quote, at least out of context, contains an element of truth.