What is it about?
The book draws upon the work of ancient Greek philosophers, from the end of the 6th to the end of the 4th century BC, to examine fundamental philosophical questions about management consulting. These include ontological questions about the nature of organisations and management consultancy interventions in them, epistemological questions about the nature of the knowledge that management consultants need in order to do their work and are able to possess, and ethical questions about how management consultants ought to behave. The book illustrates the ways in which the depth of thought that the ancient Greek philosophers applied to these types of questions, and their distinct perspectives on them that flowed from their particular intellectual tradition and the particular social and economic conditions to which they were responding, makes their work an invaluable resource for novel thinking about the philosophical problems of management consulting.
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Why is it important?
In his Foreword to the book, Andrew Pettigrew - Emeritus Professor of Strategy and Organisation, Said Business School, University of Oxford – speaks of "its capacity to shape the theory and practice of management consulting and the development of the scholarly field of management itself".
Perspectives
Most management consultants do not think of the assumptions and principles that underlie their practice as being philosophical. This book points out that they are, and that thinking clearly about these philosophical issues makes a difference to management consultancy practice, and to the effectiveness of management consultants' work. The work of the ancient Greek philosophers has particular value in stimulating new thinking about management consulting not simply because their philosophical thought is of very high quality, but because they approach their work from an intellectual tradition that is very different from our own. In consequence their work can be an invaluable stimulus to useful novelty in our understanding of management consulting.
Dr David Shaw
Independent Researcher
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: An Ancient Greek Philosophy of Management Consulting, January 2022, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-90959-8.
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