“Managerial Education: A Economics Perspective”

by R. Gibbons

Two provocative remarksPhilippe Askenazy

CNRS, Paris School of Economics

Management education: a French Problem?

• Organizational economics: various subfields (decision-making, boundary of the firm, HR…) that cover the complexity of organizations

• Necessary interactions with other economics fields … and other social sciences

• Similar for management science

• Implication for managerial education: prevent segmentation/too high specialization for building future managers…

• … as it is in France ! => mediocre French managers?

The virtualization of organizational concepts.

Caveats for “next steps” and managerial education

• Example: surveys on workplace organizations

• => organizational changes, more autonomy, clusters of practices eg. Autonomy+job rotation+quality norms etc.

• => consistent with management textbooks

• Is it the reality?

A simple exercise (work in progress with Julien Grenet)

• A large survey on organizations and industrial relations with face to face interviews of managers of French establishments

• The complete sample confirms the existence of clusters and development of autonomy

• Now, we exclude managers that give inconsistent information on workers’ representative of one of the main unions in France; ie. “bad” managers who do not know basic social relations in their firms, or anti-union managers.

A simple exercise Cont’d

• => all relations vanish : no cluster, no more autonomy etc.

• Interpretation: OE and management education may create “textbook managers” that valid textbook analysis…

• Now, surveys and case studies on work conditions suggest that:

New modern management is just more control (and not

more real autonomy), more piece-rate payment (and not very sophisticated schemes), more intensity… =

very basic methods.