Recently I learned about a Austrian management guru called Fredmund Malik. He has his own management institute in an Austrian town and here you can find its web site. I have attended at the change management seminar managed by this institute. I was very impressed because the seminar was well defined, compact and effective. Especially the group discussion exercise was well organized by the instructor and the case studies were helpful to understand what is the change management.

I also read a book written by Fredmund Malik. The title of the book is Managing, Performing, Living. Exactly speaking, I read the book until page 205, i.e. about the first half. I was impressed by Mr. Malik's basic philosophy about management. His management philosophy can be summarized by the following phrase which appears in the postscript of this book; "From an Art to a Profession". He writes that the management can be learned. It is not a work of a genius, especially talented person with charismatic characters. Everybody can be trained to be a manager. Mr. Malik insists upon the professional training of management since he seriously worries that the modern society suffers from chronic shortage of well-trained managers. I think that his concept of "management as a profession" is really original. In Japane you can find flood of literature about ideal leaders which follows the model of various historical figures, such as Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Ieyasu, etc... I strongly agree with Mr. Malik's concept of "management as a profession".

Nevertheless I must finish reading this book Managing, Performing, Living halfway. I couldn't formulate the strange feeling which was getting stronger as I followed Mr. Malik's sentences when I was reading. But now I understand what it was exactly. His concept of "management as a profession" never works in Japanese environment. By the word "Japanese environment" I mean the organizations which is managed by Japanese management or the majority of whose members are Japanese people. This can explain why this book has never been translated into Japanese. It might be said that Mr. Malik's concept never works in the countries with strong Confucian background, such as Korea and China although I'm not sure of this as I have no experience of living in Korea or China. (By the way, it is a little bit strange for me that the Chinese translation of this book is available. But I'm sure it doesn't sell well.)

Why do Confucianism and Mr. Malik's management concept seriously conflict with each other? The reason should be self-explanatory for Japanese people when we read the description of Mr. Malik's management concept. That's because Mr. Malik not only intentionally ignore personal aspects of managers but also deny its positive value. By the word "personal aspects", I mean the emotional aspects of the actual working places where every management practices happen. Mr. Malik not only focuses on the impersonal aspects of management but also tries to negate the existence of emotional fluctuation inside of people's minds. It is natural for Mr. Malik because he is interested only in what can be learned and trained regarding management practices. To some extent, the mental movement hidden inside of people's minds can be controlled by well organized management practices. But his description of management actively denies the psychological effects of his management concept which puts extremely strong stress upon efficiency and effectiveness. This impersonal and unemotional character of Mr. Malik's management concept is incompatible with the Confucian sense of value regarding managing people.

For the people who have strong background of Confucianism, every leader and manager should be respectable as a total person. By the word "total" I mean both intellectual and emotional aspects. Japanese people never respect those who can't appropriately address the emotional aspects of other people. We tend to consider such impersonal and unemotional people as imperfect or not full-grown. And to be respected by his/her subordinates is absolutely essential for the manager who manages Japanese people. Of course, the maturity of intellectual aspects is also indispensable. But Japanese people, including those who live in the academic fields, consider the excellence only in the intellectual quality as extremely negative. Since we were children, we have been told by our parents not to become a "Atama-dekkachi" (=armchair theorist) person and that we should become the person who can understand the feelings of others. To understand the feelings of others, it is essential for Japanese ethics not only in private life but also in public life. If you don't make efforts to understand the feelings of others or not display sympathy for others, Japanese people definitely consider you as a defective human.

For example, let's think you have a Japanese subordinate who has difficulty in adapting himself/herself to a new working environment. A manager who considers management as a profession like Mr. Malik will try to eliminate the instability of his/her relatively fresh position by assigning the well-defined tasks and responsibilities and to respect his/her originarity and creativity as much as possible. Such a manager thinks the experience of even a small success and achievement can help him/her get self-confident in the new working environment. Such a manager thinks encouraging him/her is the best thing to do for those who get a little bit nervous in a new environment.

However, this kind of management practice is the worst example for a Japanese subordinate. If the manager were a Japanese, the first thing the manager would do is to sympathize with the subordinate mainly by taking care of his/her mental stress. The manager will imagine what might be an obstacle for his/her working comfortably by thinking about the changes he/she suffers from. This might be the first time for him/her to live separately from his/her parents. This might be the first time for him/her to be crushed in the crowded trains. How did he/she work with the former boss? Is there anything I should learn from his/her former boss, for example, his/her characteristics, how he/she can be motivated most effectively, etc...? How could he/she find a new room to live? Does he/she cook the dinner by him/herself every evening? And so on... In addition, Japanese managers take care of these things without explicitly speaking out. Basically all these things are personal matters. So it is naturally inappropriate to talk about these personal things openly in the working place. And regarding this kind of topics, you must not look for any solutions or conclusions. Only talking without objectives nor perposes can reduce the mental stress of such a subordinate.

I'm sure that the manager who considers the management as a profession will say, "Why should we think about these small things for their subordinates? It's their personal lives. We shouldn't step into their personal lives." But if you really consider the management as a profession, you must be able to formulate and learn those typical behavior of Japanese managers as I described above. On the contrary, if you admit that it is impossible to formulate and learn such typical Japanese management style, you should also admit that Mr. Malik's concept of "management as a profession" never works at least in Japanese working places and maybe in the working places which have Confucian background. I believe it is very difficult to formulate this kind of Japanese management practices that address the emotional aspects of subordinates. Of course, Japanese management also adresses the intellectual aspects of subordinates. For the intellectual aspects, the Western management concept and methodologies are very effective and efficient even for Japanese managers. But Japanese managers know instinctively that the emotional aspects can be managed only by taking advantage of the Confusian context shared by most Japanese people. And as you can easily imagine, this Confusian context is not explicit but implicit. That's why it is very difficult to formulate or describe it objectively just like the well-defined tools in Mr. Malik's book.

The reason of strange feeling which stopped me reading Mr. Malik's book came from Mr. Malik's complete disregard of cultural dependency of management concept. Any management concept can't be free from its own cultural context. But Mr. Malik writes his book as if the management concept should be free from any cultural context. In fact, it is simply impossble. We can't talk about any management concept which is completely free from the author's own cultural backgroud. From this point of view, Mr. Malik is still living in the modernism era. By the word "modernism" I mean the old good days when the Westerners could enjoy the exoticism about far eastern cultures while they colonize in Asian countries. The old good days when the Westerners could believe their way of thinking has universal adequacy regardless of cultural differences. The very fact that Mr. Malik thinks he can ignore the non-professional aspects of the management tells us he will never be able to address the problem of cultural difference in the management style. Why can he believe so naively the non-professinal aspects of the management can be ignored although the cultural difference of the management lies in the very non-professional aspects? Mr. Malik throws away various management literature in the beginning of his book. But it is in such management literatur that shows the importance of cultural difference in the management concept from country to country. I strongly recommend him to read a so-called post-colonial thinkers' writings, for example, Edward Said. If you take serious the cultural difference not only in the management problems but also in every aspect of our lives, the first thing you should do is to put the concept of "management as a profession" in parantheses.

In this essay I tried to show how dangerous and fatal Mr. Malik's concept of "management as a profession" in the cross-cultural environment. Since 17th century the Westerners tend to insist that their way of conceptualizing things is objective and adequat all over the world. Now that we are living in the post-colonial era, we should have already learned that nothing can be free from its own cultural background, which is implicit and usually very difficult to be described objectively. (By the way describing objectively has already a strong occidental flavor. So please don't ask me to describe objectively and explicitly what is the Confusian context!!) If you read Mr. Malik's management concept, you can observe the difficulty for the Westerners to get rid of their naive belief in objectivity and universality. Mr. Malik can't claim the universal adequacy of his management concept as long as he ignores the non-professinal aspect of management.