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Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers Updated Edition
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that engulfed the world economy in 2008.
- ISBN-100199729883
- ISBN-13978-0199729883
- EditionUpdated
- PublisherOxford University Press
- Publication dateDecember 8, 2009
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
- Print length294 pages
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"Some books have the rare fortune to become ever more relevant, more useful, and more interesting twenty years after they were written. This books fortune involves a kind of misfortune, because the phenomena that Moral Mazes analyzes are deplorable, and we would wish that the book were no longer relevant. Originally published in 1989, Moral Mazes has been supplemented for this second edition with a long analysis of how the 'organized irresponsibility' Jackall analyzed in the 1980s has become the key to understanding our current Great Recession. ... I can think of no single book that has more opened up my sense of how to do philosophy in the last year."--Philosophical Practice
"An interesting, unorthodox, and provocative book.... Better than any other I have seen, [Jackall's] study reveals the normative reality of the manager's world."-Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., Yale Journal on Regulation
"Reformers who want to change the corporation, first must understand it. Robert Jackall's carefully researched analysis of the 'bureaucratic ethos' is one place to
begin."--Ethikos
"A finely honed tour of an odyssey of moral transformation, in which the actors themselves remain largely unaware of the nature of their journey. It is a brilliant work."--Troy Duster, New York University
About the Author
Robert Jackall is the Willmott Family Third Century Professor of Sociology & Public Affairs, Williams College; author of Image Makers: Advertising, Public Relations, and the Ethos of Advocacy (Chicago, 2000), Wild Cowboys: Urban Marauders & the Forces of Order (Harvard, 1997), and Street Stories: The World of Police Detectives (Harvard, 2005).
Product details
- Publisher : Oxford University Press; Updated edition (December 8, 2009)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 294 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0199729883
- ISBN-13 : 978-0199729883
- Item Weight : 1.06 pounds
- Dimensions : 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #194,759 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #461 in Workplace Culture (Books)
- #573 in Philosophy of Ethics & Morality
- #1,864 in Business Management (Books)
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Memory lane: I was the manager of a chain bookstore for eight months after I graduated from college. Our CEO visited one day, not long after he had summarily fired 30 percent of the managers in the Los Angeles area in order to terrorize the survivors. While inspecting my store, he paid close attention to the magazine racks. We had a normal assortment of periodicals: news magazines, sports mags, skin rags (Playboy and Penthouse, but not Hustler), womens' journals, biker mags, etc. After a long and careful scrutiny of the mix, the CEO pronounced his verdict: "This store needs more porn." So we put out Hustlers. The CEO had an MBA from Harvard. The chain went bankrupt about 10 years later. That made me glad.
The main theme of the book is that the ethics and morals inside an organization often are not the same as society as a whole. The way organizations are set-up, they create their own norms and people within organizations often are in conflict with the norms expected of them in society and that within in organization. The longer a person spends in the organization the more likely it is they'll start following the organizational norms and ethics. In a way, organizations are set up to award the ones who do and punish the ones who don't.
The book explores relationships in organizations, the organizational ethics and the behavior that happens within these relationships. Different chapters have a slightly different focus. Relationships between subordinates and their superior. Peer relationships. And then relationships with society then the ethics of an organization is contradicting that of society (and people in the organization do something about that). Additionally the role of consultants and agencies within corporates.
The book consists of eight chapters. The first and the last are provide a bit of sociology-historical context of ethics and norms. The other chapters mostly focus on different perspectives of relationships, morality and politics. The chapters are not well structures, they are just loads of text. The text is mostly stories and interpretations of these stories. It contains some sections, but these are simple numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. If I could propose one improvement in the future, it would be a better structure that makes it easier to browse and find things in the book.
But even without the structure in the chapters, I would still rate this book as 5 stars. I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a book as much as I enjoyed this book. The stories were so vivid that I think I'll remember them forever. The conclusions scary yet insightful. I found it very useful and it changes the way I look at behavior in organizations. Very much recommended for people who try to make sense of organizations. If you are not one of these, then this book is probably not for you though. Still, for me, five stars.
The beginning of the book establishes that is that it is hard to penetrate that very self-protective world. But, the author has managed to acquire appropriate bona fides to have obtained behind-the-scenes access to the players there, and thence to be able to elicit from them whatever genuine analysis and thoughts they might have had about the nature of their (social) environment.
It is interesting reading, but a lot of work because the writing seems awfully heavy to get its points across. “In a world of collapsed theodicies, one denuded, therefore, of ultimate significance, the quest for inner-wordly salvation of a sort becomes intense. Such quests for salvation asume many different forms, often totally incongruous with the functionally rational, pragmatic positivism at the core of the bureaucratic ethos that dominates public life in our society.”
The author seems to have spent too long living in that world, and seems to have adopted its styles and mannerisms in his communications back to us of the outside world. The style of the book's writing certainly seems congruent with the corporate management form of exposition.
And in a world “where words are always provisonal, intentions always cloaked, and frankness simply one of many guises” was he told the “truth”? Or was he told what he wanted and needed to hear?
Which brings us to the goal of this book. Was the author trying to deliver his content using the language in which his subjects were used to receiving information, so that they might be willing to read it and hear it?
It is interesting reading, but I am not sure what to make of it overall: is it uncovering new ground, or retelling old stereotypes? I give it a 3-stars









