The Management Contradictionary.

The Management Contradictionary by Benjamin Marks, Rodney Marks and Robert Spillane, 2006, (South Yarra, Vic.: Michelle Anderson Publishing), paperback, 125 pages. ISBN 0 85572 373 4 www.contradicta.com

To quote the words of its own authors, (1) The Management Contradictionary is 'a very funny dictionary of well over 1,000 management definitions, which debunks the world of work and business cliches' (blurb). It is also a worthy Antipodean successor to Ambrose Bierce's famous, slim volume, The Devil's Dictionary. This, appearing in 1906, was originally subtitled The Cynic's Word Book, in order to accommodate the religious scruples of the publishers (who deprecated mention of the devil). But the subtitle applies with equal force to the current volume, which sets out to reveal the cynical truth hiding beneath language and euphemism in the fields of management education and practice.

Starting in 1881, Bierce's work was written in serial form for a weekly paper (with lengthy gaps in between entries). His wit proved so popular that many of the best entries had been well and truly pirated into the wider community before his full collection appeared some 20 years later. The Author's Preface to the 1906 edition vividly described the situation in which he found himself:

   Meantime, too, some of the enterprising humorists of the country
   had helped themselves to such parts of the work as served their
   needs, and many of its definitions, anecdotes, phrases and so
   forth, had become more or less current in popular speech. This
   explanation is made, not with any pride of priority in trifles, but
   in simple denial of possible charges of plagiarism, which is no
   trifle. (2)

It may be significant that among the three co-authors of the present book, Rodney Marks has now been practising professionally for over twenty years as a celebrated Hoaxer and Jokester, delivering corporate impersonations as well as stand-up performances across Australia and overseas. Perhaps it was time for some of his best lines to be given the copyright protection associated with publication. Here they are joined with others from the witty pen of his son, Benjamin Marks, as well as with gems from the inimitable lectures of Robert Spillane, who teaches, famously, without notes ad libitum (thus terrifying his students, while imparting memorable quips). As a reader of the book and its review, you are hereby warned against plagiarism (since the contents of the Contradictionary are highly memorable, this is no trifling warning indeed!).

Despite their funniness, both the 19th century book and the present one do far more than entertain. Under the cloak of humour, their purpose and function is determinedly levelling. In the case of the Contradictionary, the theme lying at its heart is about power, its questionable bases and its use and misuse. Entries such as those provided for empowering, for buying-in, decision-making and allocation, all expand an essential truth which is defined under the rubric of the word itself:

   Power

   The central concept in management, as the disinclination to talk
   about it suggests. (p. 87)

We laugh, but we acknowledge the hit. While the Contradictionary successfully debunks, it also makes the reader sit up and think. Writers on comedy and humour down the ages have often made the point that comedy and insight may be yoked together in this way. Writing about the iconic Renaissance figure, Francois Rabelais, Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin, (3) reminds that '[l]aughter has a deep philosophical meaning, it is one of the essential forms of the truth concerning the world as a whole, concerning history and man; ... the world is seen anew, no less (and perhaps more) profoundly than when seen from the serious standpoint.' (p. 66)

In exactly this way, as much in earnest as in humour, the Contradictionary challenges received wisdom, for example about the apparent rationality of managers' choices. It defines a budget as 'A fable chronicled in rows and columns' (p. 14); and a business model as 'A reverse-engineered, retrofitted abstraction of reality, accurate after the fact, because of the fact.' (p. 16) The present reviewers, who have suffered their way through numerous University (as well as corporate) Budgets and Business Models, can attest to these particular truths with feeling. And as for goals, in the Contradictionary's words, they are mere[y 'The line of failed past objectives that form a trajectory of future points to aim for.' (p. 49) Alas, how universally true.

Many commentators on management complain about its preoccupation with what Jean-Louis Barsoux (4) has called 'EJU (excessive jargon usage).' (p. 20) Barsoux identified this practice of 'churning out acronyms and buzz-words to bolster ... professional standing' (p. 19-20), observing that it not only 'hinders cross-cultural communication, but also ... trivializes management. It suggests that management cannot stand up by itself.' (p. 20) He believes that, while '[o]riginally the growth of jargon was intended to achieve clarity.... consultants and academics alike have made of management something more elaborate and mysterious than it really is, leaving it ripe for debunking.' (p. 19)

Enter the Contradictionary, designed to take advantage of such ripe pickings. It successfully skewers fads and euphemisms, as in its entries on sustainability, intrapreneur, best practice, task force and that mantra incessantly chanted by people seeking to justify their own grab for power, corporate governance: 'A useful and focussed way to blame the board of directors for management's mistakes. Much discussed when companies fail; something to do with people who are meant to rein in out-of-control CEOs, except when those executives are doing well and not getting caught.' (p. 28)

Underpinning all the above is a world-weary cynicism about ethical norms and behaviours in business and management generally. The entry on business ethics sums this subject up as being, alternatively, '1. Moving set of temporary values created by organisations to quash uninformed criticism from government and shareholders. [or] 2. All manner of good and bad things categorised as good and bad, but not necessarily in that order.' (p 15) Within the organisation, ethics are little better: individualism is 'Belief in the value of the individual. Inconsistent with the practice of management'. (p 56) And the parallel terms of job enlargement/job enrichment are no more than 'Giving you wider responsibilities without extra pay' and 'Giving you deeper responsibilities without extra pay' (p. 61-2), as indeed many know to their cost.

Moving outside the organisation in order to focus on relations with other parties and society at large, the book finds an ethical dimension still wanting. The tendency of business practice to elevate private over public benefit is identified by the explanation that a reference is 'Fictional praising of underperforming employees in order to remove them from your payroll without a redundancy package' (p. 96); and price fixing, 'Sensible arrangement not to confuse consumers with too much choice' (p. 88). Negotiation, a harrowing, experiential subject for many business school students and practitioners alike, sums up the realities of life in its description as 'The shifting mix of cooperation and competition that precedes victory by the least ethical.' (p. 78)

By revealing such unpleasant truths about shallowness of morality, about the obscurantism and cant to be found both in management-speak and in human behaviour generally, the book liberates its readers from facile acceptance of the jargon it ridicules. In the undertow of the laughter provoked by its witty examples and definitions, there is an offer of empowerment to think and judge for oneself. It is difficult to see what better contribution could possibly be made to serious management education than such an opportunity.

Of course, such an approach is not new. Humour is an honourable tradition applied to business and management. Its themes and situations have provided rich food for comic invention down the ages. One calls to mind the Gilbert and Sullivan light opera, Utopia Ltd, a spoof of the very concept of the limited liability company, and, closer to home in time and geography, The Official History of Blue Sky Mines (as recorded by Trevor Sykes of The Australian Financial Review), the annals of a very shady mining company indeed. It is run (in the best Yes, Minister style), by the devious Company Secretary, Penwiper, whose pre-written Minutes and Accounts merely await the signature of his cataleptic Chairman, Sir Mark Time--if that gentleman can be woken from his bibulous slumbers at the Board table. Scott Adams' popular cartoon strip, Dilbert, (6) uses its creator's pen to expose the power pretensions and hypocrisy of both office manager and subordinates. Another well-known Australian example is the weekly column by Michael West in the Business Section of The Australian, 'Margin Call'. Here West updates Sykes' honourable tradition to apply to the world of investment banking, inventing his own memorable creations, the wine-bibbing investor Sir Frank Sources, and his dubious broker, John Duckanweave, who regularly share their wisdom with readers who are keen on a good punt. (7)

These ironic reflections on the folly to be found in the real world of business are deservedly popular, and their power to elicit laughter can endure long after the precise social situations upon which they comment have passed away. At their best, as in some of the Contradictionary definitions quoted above, they can serve to shock us out of what may be a dangerously solemn, complacent, unquestioning acceptance of conventional wisdom.

As Barsoux puts it, '[b]usiness is remorselessly ludicrous, unfortunate and tragic. If that were not enough, managers often play a large part in their own undoing. Humour springs from this convergence of tensions. It serves to expose them and to help us carry on with all the dignity we can muster.' (p. 20)

The great mentor for Bakhtin (as for his subject, Rabelais) was the humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, famous for his praise of laughter and folly. He saw that these provided a way of celebrating the sacred by subverting it. The effect of Today's Management Contradictionary likewise celebrates while subverting, using the secular structure of a dictionary (that indispensable handbook of the educated professional) to challenge the sacred jargon of Management. If this serves to awaken us from complacent sleep with a taboo-violating burst of enjoyment (or at least a chuckle of appreciation), Rabelais and Erasmus would doubtless approve.

Both Spillane and Marks Senior have served as adjunct faculty of the AGSM, and Spillane also as Dean of the Macquarie Graduate School of Management. Both are subversive teachers, aiming to prod their students into challenging innately held beliefs and to think independently about received wisdom. When humour helps achieve this end, then, as Barsoux avers, it can only be regarded as '[a]n organizational necessity, not a luxury' (p. 190).

Jessica Milner Davis,

Jeremy G. Davis, (second Dean of the AGSM)

(1.) 'Benjamin Marks writes comedy for comedians and political analysis for society. He is considering the commercial value of writing comedy for society and political analysis for comedians. Rodney Marks is Australia's (mis)leading corporate comedian. He is a corporate impostor who infiltrates business events with his hoaxes and jokeses. Most managers do the same, but he waits his turn to speak--and his fraudulent keynote addresses are exposed. Robert Spillane is Professor of Management and former Dean of the Macquarie Graduate School of Management in Sydney. He teaches philosophy in the hope that it will be applied to management, and psychology in the hope that it will not! He is the 2006 winner of the prestigious international prize, the Thomas Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties.' (Blurb for The Management Contradictionary).

(2.) The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Devil's Dictionary at dvldc 10.txt or dvldc 10.zi (unpaginated).

(3.) Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World. Trans. H. Iswolski, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1984.

(4.) Jean-Louis Barsoux, Funny Business: Humour, Management and Business Culture. London and N.Y.: Cassell, 1993.

(5.) Sydney: Australian Financial Review Library, 1996.

(6.) Dilbert runs in The Australian's weekly IT section and in many papers in the USA.

(7.) But not without some danger of being taken overly-seriously, as Mr West has been known to receive complaints from some more credulous punters who have been taken in by Sources' opinions--thus proving that a fool and his/her money are indeed soon parted (personal communication).