Management as a moral art : emerging from the paradigm debate

In recent years organisational and management discourse has been akin to a battle-ground. Open challenges to the foundations of these fields and competing truth claims have arisen from the plurality of interpretation that is possible from the variety of new paradigms that has emerged. This proliferation of paradigms seems to undermine the possibility of a single unambiguous voice to guide management practice. The variety of competing voices that has produced this discordant chorus is described. The work of Thomas Barr Greenfield offers a useful circuit breaker. What emerges is a discourse not anchored in rationality, as it has in the past, but anchored in values and a morally concerned scepticism.