Engaged agency and practical reason

German philosopher Martin Heidegger lectured to business people after the Second World War, when it was reported he doubted the adaptability of the art of interpretation to everyday affairs. One of the contentions of this chapter is that Heidegger probably under-estimated the role that interpretation and understanding can play. A good manager thinks broadly, has empathy, and learns from the mistakes of their predecessors, it is contended. One of the issues implicit in this is emotional intelligence versus intellectual intelligence, and this requires careful analysis and understanding. Emotional intelligence is not a matter of education, but more a matter of empathy, interpretation, and common sense. The problem, as Voltaire (1764) observed, is that ‘common sense is not so common’, that is, the problem for accountability is that procedure submerges the vitality of human endeavour. Accountability by procedure cuts interpretation off precisely at the time when it is most needed.

People’s lives consist of vastly more than artificial structures of governance and corporate procedure - they include customs, habits and traditions, local values, and ways of living that usually stretch back vastly further than the companies operating in their midst. Ironically, the non-traditional business managers can be the vastly better managers if they understand the genuine impact of their corporate actions on the community and conduct themselves in a fashion that is seen to be empathetic, authentic, and productive socially as well as financially.

As an analogy, Singer (1983) suggests taking a perspective from above a streetscape where the view might look merely aesthetically pleasing - could this interpretation be regarded as window dressing? The initial answer is equivocal and requires further interpretation and investigation. But if we travel through it at street level and find it functional as well as pleasing to the people who interact with it, then it is likely that the interpreter will find that it works. A too-narrow definition of civil society and the corporate role within it misses so many intrinsic factors that make a company and community work. To understand these, we must understand communities at a broader level which involves the art of interpretation and understanding, that is, in Singer’s example the judgement occurs at the metaphorical street level.

The problem with definitions of civil society that are too narrow is that they inevitably reach what seems like an impenetrable impasse in their progress - this is the point at which interpreters, managers, and people might ask ‘is this as far as we can go?’. The question reduces to one concerning whether this the authentic and correct interpretation? If the answer is in the negative, the analysis cannot proceed even though the means by which to do so may not be readily apparent, may not seem easy, and in fact may not lie totally within the realm of control of the corporation at all.²

This is where the third definition of civil society, as defined by Taylor, enters the picture. Let us quickly recap the intent of the first two definitions of a civil society, to give the third context:

1 Involves minimal government involvement, and free association determines the strength and Nature of the bonds of a society.

• 2 Society as a whole structures itself and co-ordinates its own actions, again largely free and independent of the State.
• 3 In the third definition of civil society, an ensemble of associations directs the State and determines State policy. In other words, communities and corporations operate in a more co-operative fashion to direct governments towards results that are more authentically beneficial for all concerned.

Is this a fanciful vision of a non-existent society? The fact that these authentic communal bonds don’t yet widely exist as standard business practice is not in itself evidence that they cannot exist and will not exist. It is in this space of uncertainty - but also possibility - that the enlightened manager can step in to make their contribution. The positivist viewpoint is that there is no contribution to make until the measure of its success is empirically obvious. The enlightened manager believes that something not yet revealed may be discovered and then revealed. The mere failure to find a better way does not negate the possibilities implicit in a better way.

Philosopher Peter Singer offers a useful Hegelian inspired parable that can be adapted to consider dilemmas between employers and employees that result from accountability practices. This parable that may illustrate why modern accountability and technical procedure have been a glorious failure, and what he would have us learn from it:

When people first began to live in towns, no one thought of town planning. They just put up their houses, shops, and factories wherever seemed most convenient, and the cities grew higgledy-piggledy. Then along came someone who said: ‘This is no good! We are ruled by chance! We need someone to plan our towns, to make them conform to our ideals of beauty and good living’. So along came the town-planners who bulldozed the old neighbourhoods and erected streamlined high-rise apartment buildings, surrounded by swathes of green lawns. Road were widened and straightened, shopping centres were put up in the midst of generous parking areas, and factories were carefully isolated from residential zones.

(Singer, 1983, pp. 50-51)

At some point, order had entered the system - although order itself eventually gave way to high-rise buildings and traffic jams. In Singer’s example, we can see that a society swapped one set of problems for another. As the new planned cities, emerged based on rational design, many people complained that now no one was walking, and the streets had become unsafe. As new managers and planners were employed, they learned from the mistakes of their predecessors - and the first thing they did was to put a stop to the demolition of old neighbourhoods. Instead, they began to notice the positive features of the old, unplanned towns and supported the varied

‘vistas of the narrow, crooked streets, and noticed how convenient it was to have shops and residences and even small factories mixed up together’ (Singer, 1983, p. 51). They remarked on how these kept traffic to a minimum, encouraged people to walk, and made the town centre both lively and safe. ⁵ Singer continues that the new town planners discovered that the old cities worked - that there were some things which could never be reduced to rational principles, or procedure. This was, of course, despite the fact that fine-tuning was deemed to be desirable, because when towns were first built there was no notion of town planning - structures were located in a haphazard and undirected way.