Egocentric Management -- Eduardo Oliva-López

ISSS Meeting at Asilomar, June 28-July 2, 1999 
  • Paper session, June 30, 1999, 3:45 p.m., hosted by Enrique Herrscher 
These participant's notes were created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. These should not be viewed as official transcripts of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. These notes have been contributed by David Ing (http://coevolving.com) at the IBM AdvancedBusiness Institute ( http://www.ibm.com/abi ).

(Continuation from previous session)

Egocentric management 

  • It has an impact on the individual manager. Does it have an impact on the enterprise as a whole? 
Definition of egocentric characteristics

Started with a study of 7 companies, not enough data for six.

Egocentric management 

  • Is rooted in culture. 
    • e.g. TQM project doesn't make sense unless this larger problem is tackled. 
Just at the beginning of the research.

Questions

Survey where? We appear to find the same things in other countries. 
  • Survey in Mexico. 
Is there a difference in management culture? 
  • In Western culture, share a lot through media: "Superman syndrome", i.e. one many in the company who can save the company. 
  • In reality, it's people working in teams. 
  • Managers are become more coordinators. 
In Argentina, Argentine managers are rare. There's been a globalization of management. Is the French manager the same in France as in Spain?

Two cases of egocentric managers: some by nature (who you can't change) and some by the context (which means that it's possible to change to situation).

In military culture, nobody stays in any position of authority for more than two or three years. Beer's system has a lot of change in the system, so that people get multiple views.

Egolessness in practice is common in Zen, and some architecture: 

Suggest reading Persig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (about quality) and Lila (an inquiry into value) 
 
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This page was last modified by David Ing on October 6, 2002.