Collaborating Over Meanings PETER DRUKER

8/4/2019 Collaborating Over Meanings PETER DRUKER

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Col laborat ing over Meaningsin Management : Drucker Looksa t E f f e c t i v e n e s sby Stuart Hannabuss, School of Librarianship and Information Studies, Robert Gordon'sInstitute of Technology, Aberdeen

IntroductionIn personal relationships, the clarification and negotiationof meanings is central. We live within a web of lang uage and ,by giving things names and through sharing a nd restructuringknowledge, we communicate with each other. In personnelmanagement in organisations, therefore, the management ofmeaning lies at the heart of things. Such managem ent entailsthe ordering and co-ordinating of work done by ourselvesand other people, as well as the mastery of complex socialand technical patterns of thought and behaviour.

Meaning is embedded in every strategy and statementwithin the organisation, in the job description which reifiesthe managerial conception and perception of a work role,in a policy which operationalises key objectives and prioritiesselected from a context of the perceived reality, and inperformance appraisal where, within authority structures a nddyadic relationships, roles and intentionalities are negotiated.Effective personnel management exemplifies successfulcommunication, a process made up not just of explicit andobjective "public domain" facts and information but alsoovert and latent value and belief systems, attitudes andprejudices. At the same time, people in organisations usemeanings for explanation a nd co mm and as well as to suggestand explore hidden or half-realised symbolisms and myths.Meaning, then, as revealed in action and interaction, is acrucial interpretative dimension of the personnel manager'srole.Knowledge ParadigmsThe work of Kuhn[1], Mannheim [2], Ziman[3] and Gurvitch[4]shows how pervasive are the knowledge paradigms withinwhich particular groups of people work and think. Suchparadigms, of course, are made up of informational orcognitive elements (such as what we know, what we knowwe know, what experts are considered to know, wha t novicesare expected to know) as well as value and belief-ladenknowledge. Into this second category come what educatio nalpsychologists call affective knowledge (i.e. dealing with thefeelings); but research has broadened our conception of thisaxiological area into a fuller view taking in ideology andsymbolism, the pragmatics of discourse, semiotics and non-verbal communication. Ultimately, it is impossible to divideparadigms up like cakes, for the various components inter-penetrate.

In personnel m anagem ent, there is a natural interest in theoperation and scope of such paradigms within theorganisation (or, at least, interpersonally in group structures).Sociologists and social anthropologists like Burrell andMorgan[5], Harris[6], Willmott[7] and Astley[8] have

illuminated the behaviour of people in such groups throughlooking at connections between explicit actions and perceivedrealities, and often there are important outcomes to this, suchas a mismatch between the perceived priorities of topmanagement and personnel. Greatest problems lie overcentral issues like power and roles, tasks and people.It is difficult to conceptualise problems such as these interms of hegemonistic meanings, that is , authoritativeattributions of meaning to key concepts within the subjectdomain or activity. Unlike, say, botany or zoology, or evenin a thesaural structure of a knowledge database, where thesyntactical and semantic relationships between concepts isoften highly ordered (e.g. hierarchically, cohyponymically),the central concepts and meanings in the field ofmanagement are more consensually negotiated. This is , inpart, due to the plain linguistic fact that sociological conceptsare eligible to a plurality of hermeneutic approaches (e.g.concepts like "performance", "socialisation", "justice"), and,in part, to the origins of most common and useful meanings

within an oral and practitioner-orientated tradition.This is why Astley[8] correctly speaks of the ma nage me nt"discipline" as "an arena for the interchange of theoreticalideas uncoupled from their base in managerial practice",emphasising the way in which, as if in an arena, meaningsget shaped and reformulated through use, rarely stay fixed,and change over time as new combinations of skills andperceptions arise. An example of this, with reference to theconcept of "performance", is discussed by Hannabuss[9]. Thepragmatic incrementalism of meaning in management, whatKnorr-Cetina[10] terms "constructivistic", characterises anyarea of professional activity where knowledge exchangesincorporate negotiated meanings of this type. At work,simultaneously, are facts and beliefs, knowledge andmetaknowledge, factors deriving from the organisationalculture.Organisational CulturesThe researcher is encou raged to see this process holistically,partly because managers themselves have beliefs about thetask and business of managing, i.e. they are vigorouslymetacognitive and self-critical. The beliefs they have aboutwhat effective management is[11, 12, 13] and the extent towhich their own practice and attitudes conforms to, ordiverges from this consensual paradigm (e.g. it might be apredominantly entrepreneurial paradigm ), as well as how theythemselves think about their own thinking[14], profoundlyinfluence decision making in the office and on the shop floor.Moreover, they live within an organisational culture to whichthey themselves contribute in no small way. This culture is

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one of shared networks of meanings, of agreed methods ofdoing things (e.g. contractua l bon dings, tacit concessions topower, coping strategies with conflict, perceptions of validrewards), meanings which guide scripts of humanbehaviour[15, 16].The elements of corporate culture are absorbed andexploited by the initiates[17]. People come to conceptualiseabout their own promotion or career patterns in theparadigmatic apparatus which they themselves haveinteriorised[18]. They adopt negotiating ploys impregnatedwith corporate ideology[19], and, in a word, becomesocialised organisationally[20]. Even within constituent sub-units (say, the accounting area of the firm), this normativeeffect of ideology can be seen[21]. Now, this is not to suggestsome deterministic effect on managers within theorganisation. Nevertheless, active participation in theprofessional knowledge and belief domain of managementequips the protagonist with key concepts and values. Thesehe/she often uses as meta-concepts or meta-values, i.e.concepts or values which in themselves depend on, anddefine, the concept, or value system, within which they move.So, in managem ent, concepts like "performance", "growth","success" and "effective" get created, reformulated andapplied in meta-strategic ways in problem-solving anddecision-making situations. Desirability and approval arevested in ostensibly neutral concepts like "efficiency" becausethey are not merely objectively perceived aims of thecompany; they are over-laden and undergirt with complexlayers of axiological meaning, which comes to play anessential part in the use of language and meaning betweeninitiates into the mystery of management. These meta-valuesare so vested and entrenched w ith overtones of the desirablethat "it seems beyond dispute or contention" [22].In addition to the organisational culture and its powerfullyinfluential effect on meaning, managers draw on mentalmodels of management and human behaviour which tapdeep symbolic and m ythical elements in the hum an character.Tales of heroes conquering dragons and capturing treasureare, in tropological terms, not too far remote from tales ofsuccess in management. It is easy to characterise the decision-making process in terms of a quest for the right answer, fortruth and validity, or simply as a way of avoiding disaster.Embedded in human interaction are many symbolic waysof interpreting behaviours and outcomes, perhaps in relationto the exercise of authority, the gesture of friendship orconfrontation, the proxemic configuration of an interview,the decor for a meeting. All these form overlayering codingsin the act of interpretation for the participant, and tap andactivate all kinds of public and private knowledge in him.Ethnomethodological approaches, such as Golding's [23]have clarified the conn ection between such symbolisms andauthority structures in organisations, while the work ofPeters[24] suggests that symbols can take both highly elusiveand abstract forms (like what the senior manager seems tothink of acquisition) and very concrete forms, too, such asagenda at meetings, organisational charts, and so on.Connections are made, in fact, between apparently disparateentities, when symbol and metaphor are employed to givethings names and explain reality[25]. Such reasoning maybe almost purely iconic or associational, and it may be highlyidiosyncratic, yet, as it is used by personnel to make senseof things they do and see, and to endow events and decisionswith a meaningfulness that ultimately is the only factor togive it true identity for them , this kind of think ing responseis a key ingredient in most personnel.

Personnel managers engaged in assessing the range ofmeanings which staff in a company appear to need and useshould look at the full paradigm, the complete arena ofconcepts and meanings, acknowledging the objectivity andthe factuality which people use to make things mean, butalso acknowledging the multifarious effects of valuation andbelief, symbolism and myth on the use and establishmentof meaning. We go back to the no tion of negotiated meaningwhen we argue that, in management, consensual meaningsare constructed collaboratively, and this is particularly tru eof key concepts like "performance" and "effectiveness".Management of MeaningEven when such concepts are widely held to be central, andare defined magisterially by key textbooks a nd g urus in th efield, this process of de-construction and reformulation goeson. This is to be expected in a sphere of activity wherepractitioners interact and establish meanings for things andactions. Managers spend much of their time talking[25], andGowler and Legge argue that this is the oral tradition outof which much of the rhetoric and semantics of managementarise. Management is "a social collectivity whose membersshare a set of implicit and explicit meanings acquired throughinnumerable comm unicative exchanges". Through, and withthe help of, these meanings, people in organisations makesense of pheno men a such as power, conflict and work. Manyof these meanings are intentional, and concern themselveswith the technical and social realities of work. Others areimplicational and help people to make sense of how valuesand beliefs define experience[25]. This is a useful taxonomyfor explaining the con tinuum of m eaning and meaningfulnesswhich operates in an orga nisation. It is particularly valuablewhen researchers seek to analyse central concepts inmanagement.

One of these is why organisations succeed and fail. Theaims of the firm lie at the heart of management thinking.They may consist of growth or survival, profit or goodw ill.Achieving such aims depen ds on leadership, which, in turn ,depends on the ability to take risks, compete, and get workdone through people. This mesh of concepts emerges fromtalk by managers about managing[26, 27, 28, 29, 30], whereeffectiveness is defined in conjunction with authority,efficiency, costs, time and orientation towards people. Forexample, "effective managers manage themselves and thepeople they work with so that both the o rganisation an d thepeople profit from their presence" [30]. There is a heavyemphasis on practical knowledge, learned on the job; onaxiomatic knowledge, in which key concepts are picked outand illustrated with almost proverb-like simplicity; at alltimes, an assumption is made that secrets of a mystery canbe revealed if only the right verbal formulas can be found.Through meaning, then, comes wisdom and control. In amore theoretical but essentially similar way, the managementliterature attempts a similar task, picking out essentials ofthe management activity, encapsulating them in concepts,reflecting relationships in schematic models which serve tocharacterise the much more complex reality of real life.Contrasts, like that between mere activity and trueeffectiveness[31, 32, 33], demonstrate how bo th objective andaxiological meanings are mobilised when good managementpractice is being described.

We gravitate irresistibly towards defining concepts inmanagement. This is not merely an academic activity, forit is part of the continuous negotiation and renegotiationof meaning. It is a tool for defining what the organisation

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is for[34], for analysing the sub-systems' interrelationships[35],and for determining commonly agreed meanings about tasksand roles (e.g. in a personnel specification). Analysis ofconcepts, too, allows us to examine, on a micro-level, thecollocation of elements of meaning which lie at the very heartof management thinking, accepting the empirical provisothat they have been exteriorised in the first place (say, incomment, opinion, conversation, surveys, books, reports orpolicy statements). Often, we find through this that conceptanalysis reveals the open-text discourse structure whichEco[36] finds in narrative discourse, and the value-laden andsymbolic agenda which impregnate so much professional anddemotic discourse[37, 38].Defining EffectivenessIf asked to define a chair, we might draw on semanticmemory for an icon/image and/or concept label, and thengive enough of its attributes to constitute a definition.Alternatively, we might point to one and tell our interrogatorsimply to look at it or sit on it. We might, as a third option,consult a dictionary. There, we would expect to find a conciseaccurate and consensually agreed meaning. Similarly, withwords like "daughter", "judge", "civet cat" and "dream". Theexpectation of both parties is that, ultimately, an ex cathedradefinition exists. This, as far as the labelling process goes,is an area of inherited rather than negotiated meaning.However, it is usual in the subject dom ain of managem entfor major terms to appear and need to be defined ad hoc.It is not that such terms have no prior existence or tha t thereis no consensual identity for them. It is simply that eachwriter needs to establish a zone of workable meaning forhim/herself, and the act of reading his/her discussion (say,in a textbook about management) is an act of acceptanceof his/h er invitation into an area which is as much semanticas managerial, i.e. as much concerned with the linguisticphenom ena of meanings as it is with the referrent m anagerialconcepts and processes.

Dis t ingu i sh ing in fo rm a t ion an ddif ferent ia t ing i t in ca tegoryf o r m . . . i s a c e n t r a l p a r t of a lll e a r n i n g

An example of this establishment of workable meaning isto be found in Peter Drucker's book The EffectiveManager[39]. Early on in the book he concerns himself withthe mu ltiplicity of meanings and associations which readersare likely to bring to the notion of effective, manager andeffective manager. He needs to establish, first of all, whatkind of manager he is talking about, and does this byreferring to the "knowledge worker"; such beings areexecutives, work mostly in organisations, and are expectedin the course of their work ("by virtue of their position ortheir knowledge") to make decisions "that have significantimpact on the performance and results of the whole".He then needs to establish what he means by executive.One of the major challenges he faces lies in the manymeanings and images the concept has for people. It might,for example, have overtones of bureaucracy, of activity, of

taking or giving orders. The first step into this arena ofmeaning, therefore, is one w hich needs to do two im portantthings: first, it needs to concede the plurality and subjectiveimpressionism of meaning to the readers (although not, ofcourse, overtly), and second, it needs to move through thisposition to one of its own in which a meaning can be builtup that is workable and agreed. The notion of building upa meaning is important, since a dogmatic and lexicographicstance on the absolute meanings of a key term is impossible.The impossibility arises for two reasons, first the semanticcomplexity of the term itself, and, second, the susceptibilitywhich the process of definition has for idiosyncraticmeanings.This a pproach is very revealing of the seman tic exchangewhich characterises the negotiation of meaning in the socialsciences. So many ideological or semantic overtonesimpregnate major concepts in management, for example, thatthis form of negotiation or wooing is necessary. It isnecessary in order, first, to persuade the readers to accepta given meaning as plausible in context, and, second, toadopt it as their own in the immediate exercise of theinterpretation of the text and possibly in the longer term asa functional element in their own personal lexicon.Drucker, therefore, demonstrates that he knows of themany interpretations readers are likely to bring to the readingencounter. He presents thumb-na il sketches of different typesof manager, encapsulating the gallery of alternatives, and,in so doing, making sure that readers feel they have entereda congenial and intelligible thought-world. Managers, hesays, may be people with analytical and decision-makingskills, or they are able to use power in organisations to getthings done. At this point, and only then, is he able andwilling to define what he thinks an effective manager actuallyis. Conceding that there is, tout court, no "effectivepersonality" (in the sense that, say, there is a chair), he isthen able to assert that effective personalities generically,generalisably, have "in common the ability to get the rightthings done".The notion of generic or generalisable meaning seemscrucial here as a way of describing what Drucker is doingwith the central concepts of his argument. For it is anargument in the sense that we are being invited to work fromand with meanings which he, the au thor, has decided to giveus (like a seman tic banq uet). H e is presenting the m eaningsfar less in a detached lexicographic manner than in apropositional manner. The p ropositionality of this approachderives partly from the essential ambiguity and negotiabilityof the key concepts and partly from the broadercharacteristics and procedures of the rhetoric. For the reader,there is the challenge of meeting and understanding thesemeanings and propositions.Of equal interest and relevance must be the factor ofgeneralisability. In the reader's own semantic memory andactive cognitive processes, there is a powerful mom entum atwork categorising and ordering information into knowledge.Distinguishing information and differentiating it in categoryform (from A and not-A opposites to more complextaxonomies) is a central part of all learning. This processis also going on in the intelligence of the au thor, and in thiscase is exteriorised on the page of text. In reading the textand responding to it, therefore, the two sets of categoriesmeet each other and the encounter generates new forms ofcategory arrangement. It is possible that the authoritativestatements of the author may overwhelm the arrangements(or concept maps) of the reader for that/those particular

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concept(s). On the other hand, the cognitive dissonance setup for the reader may be so great that great difficulty orreluctance to accept and use the ad hoc meaning can arise.We can see here how Drucker has to present the constituentparts of his argument, as well as the argument itself, inpropositional and even polemic terms. Each definition, if youlike, is acknow ledged to have its own mesh of heuristics, adho c search strategies and requirements as the reader seeksto gain common and productive ground with the othernessof the presented definition.Negotiated Meanings"What all these effective executives have in common is thepractices that ma ke effective whatever they have and whateverthey are." Such practices are the same, he argues, if theeffective executive works in business, in a hospital or in auniversity. From this point, Drucker is able to establish hischosen meaning. This is no t a meaning that he (or indeedany reader) would or might get out of a dictionary. It is aterm unlikely to be found as such in a thesau rus. The reasonfor this must lie in the idiosyncratic source of the meaning.Yet, paradoxically, such a meaning has magisterial authority.It can be accurate, persuasive, workable, integrable by thereader without any trouble or resistance. In fact, many ofthe most effective writers are able to equip readers withappropriate labels for their own concepts. Such concepts ,and the reader's awareness of them, may be inchoate orlatent, and the encounter with the new meaning is, like Adamnaming the animals , a unique moment when the readermoves from vagueness to precision, from having a feelingto operating a concept in external discourse.

But we can not expect, at the start, a neat com prehensivedefinition. Since we have discovered that in this worldmeanings are negotiable, we have to work at the meaning.At this early point, Drucker has been able to convince usthat we are in good hands. This is an important feature inthe process, particularly bec ause the likely readership of thetext will bring, from their own formal and informalexperience, a cluster of meanings, associations andprejudices, which they, consciously or unconsciously, willwish to test out with the author as they proceed through thetext[40]; for there is a case to be presented, not merely a fewmeanings to be exchanged.

We are given an interim meaning. "Effectiveness, in otherwords, is a habit, that is a complex of practices!' At the e nd,he returns to this provisional stage of intent and meaningwhen he says: "Effectiveness is, after all, not a 'subject', buta self-discipline". With this interim meaning, two things thenbecome possible: the first is that he gives himself theoppo rtunity to develop his argument and provide finer detail,and , second, the reader is given the opport unity to reject theargument, as far as it goes, or to concede the plausibilityand usability of the interim definition and, of course, whatit appears to promise.The invitation is given and the gauntlet handed out. Weare, to change the metaphor, invited to the ball. We admitto being willing to reformulate our ideas and even ourconcepts, and yet we feel that we have not been forced toaba ndo n and reject what we already know and think weknow about effectiveness. After all, since the word "effective"comes from the domain of common everyday discourse, wecould not expect otherwise. And perha ps it is because of thisvery origin that this process of negotiation is necessary. Acomparison might be made between this and other wordslike it which have both specialised an d common meanings

(e.g. "significance" in statistics and in comm on speech), an dconcepts like "electrolysis" which draw clearly away fromthe ambit of everyday speech. Further still, we might citemathematical and musical notation.We are moved into the next stage of the reading andlearning encounter. The author is then able to develop hisinterim meaning in a fuller, more systematic manner.Following up on his statement that effectiveness is a complexof practices, he then proceeds to describe (and define) thesepractices. There are five key ones, an interesting piece ofcategorisation or codification in its own right, structuringknowledge for the reader, and implying not merely thateffective management consists of these five key things, butalso that a com prehen sive objectiv e mea ning of "effect-iveness" would comprise or subsume such constituent parts.

Contr ibut ion i s the ex ten t towhich the executive, effectiveor not , cont r ibu tes to theper form ance of th e organ isa t ion

Five practices need to be acquired by effective executives.These are (a) knowing how to focus on contribution, (b)knowing where their time goes, (c) building on theirstrengths, (d) concentrating on a few areas where superiorperform ance m atters most, and (e) ma king effectivedecisions. It is then possible to move to each of these forfull discussion, and in fact the rest of the book is structuredaround these five elements.

Clusters and CollaborationContribution is the extent to which the executive, effectiveor not, contributes to the performance of the organisation.Drucker regards it as a key to effectiveness for a manager.It is about how a manager uses and views his/her efforts,and how he/she concentrates on results. It turns theexecutive's attention from his/her own concerns to theoutside where he/she has results. He/she starts askingquestions about these results, from others in the companyand outside. It is valuable to notice here how incrementalthe meaning is: the author builds up the concept by subtlerhetorical stages, expanding his original idea, broadening itout. In doing this, he handles clusters of concepts, e.g. herethe reader is compelled to handle "perform ance" alongside"effectiveness"; one concept is defined obliquely, thoughtangibly, in terms of another. There is no facile equation ofone with another. Each is introduced as a valuable elementin the map of concepts that go to make up "effectiveness"and, beyond that, "effective management" itself.

Another feature is of interest: that of collusive orcollaborative meaning. In this, in the rhetoric of hisexposition, the author not only introduces the reader to anest of consensual attitudes and beliefs. Here, as in theliterature of many practitioner-based subjects, he makesassum ptions th at m anagers will wish to be effective, that theaim of the manager is indeed performance, and that gettingresults in terms of profits or satisfied customers is theobjective of management, or at least among the most typical

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and admirable. There is thus, in addition to the plainsemantic interpretation, a moral agenda at work in the text,which is not only plain to see, but which readers, if they havegot this far, are willing to accept as part of the mixedlyintellectual and affective framework of the subject.It is then possible to build up more elaborate meaningstructures. Being effective, for instance, involves developingyour strengths. "To focus on strength is to make demandsfor performance". Such interrelationships of concepts are notmerely propositional; they begin to form the essentialsemantic matrix of the concepts the reader is seeking toframe, grasp and co-ordinate.As well as essential relationships of the kind we can detectbetween "effectiveness", "strength" and "performance", thereare satellite meanings. These may be drawn from commonlanguage, such as when Drucker talks abou t weakness in theorganisation, and how effective management "neutralises"such weakness. We are now working with a re-designated"weakness", not the weakness that we might associationallythink of in common language, but a form of weakness onlyembodied, within organisations, in such activities asineffective management. Similarly, "limitations" is a conceptused in this way, as are phrases like "managers being blindt o . . . " and "being aware of limitations".Since the text deals with negotiated meanings, and becauseit also deals with values and beliefs (the moral agenda),satellites may also take the form of anecdotes. These aresatellites in narrative form that illustrate the concept. Theyare intended to exemplify the concept in parable form, andsuch a form is one in which arguably most readers wouldbe willing imaginatively to share. Much managerialexperience, moreover, is acquired and conceptualised innarrative or experiential form[41, 42]; so the notion ofsatellite mean ings in narrative form like this is very logicaland likely to enhance the power and effectiveness of the text.Having essential meanings, with relationships of an "Xis Y" type, suggests that, since we are on polemic ground,there may be "X is not Y" types as well. This is borne outin the structured argumen ts, and it is possible to characterisethese in appropriate linguistic terms. For example, talkingabout effectiveness where personnel planning is concerned,a contrast is made by the author between "placing a man"and "filling a job". This is a central contrast in personnelmanagem ent, where a choice has often to be made betweenunsentimentally filling a job or considering personal factorsand possibly making special exceptions. Drucker's contentionis that the effective manager unfailingly takes the first courseof action , i.e. filling a job . To take the oth er course is to beineffective. In this way, he is stating clearly that they aremutually exclusive courses of action and that, in order todefine effectiveness (and a fortiori to be effective), thatshould be the reader's course of action too. The impliedreader is, of course, a manager set on being effective. Suchpeople are most likely to be reading the text. In this way,then , we can see that the meaning of effectiveness is beingbuilt up out of essential meanings, of the is and is not type,of satellite meanings, semantic and anecdotal, and of moralagendas.

At this stage, the reader is beginning to face a series ofsets of alternatives, some overt and some implicit, about whateffectiveness actually is. We find that effective executives leadfrom strength in their work; they are concerned withlimitations; they "feed opportunities and starve problems".In all these, we find "X is Y" and "X is not Y"dichotomies, and through and with these we are encouraged

to structure our thought and shape our response . We aregiven, then , incremental meaning in polemic form, as a formof collaborative meaning emerges. This can be seen, forexample, when Drucker is talking about the way effectiveexecutives use their time. He argues that such people knowthat they have to get many things do ne and don e effectively."Therefore, they concentrate their own time and energyas well as that of their organisation on doing one thingat a time, and on doing first things first." This statement isnot just a definition with its implied opposite: it is a m oralstatement in which the author expects the reader to share.The moral agenda is very clear, too, when he speaks abouthow much time and energy managers are keen to invest inprojects which enhance their own reputations rather thanthat of the organisation which they serve. He calls this"investment in managerial ego" and continues:...unless they are pruned, and pruned ruthlessly, they drain thelife blood from an organisation. It is always the most capablepeople who are wasted in the futile attempt to obtain for theinvestment of managerial ego the success it "deserves".

By this stage, the different strands of objective semanticmeaning, and that meaning which is impregnated with m oralagenda, are difficult to disentangle. But that is not the wayin which they should be seen; since we live and move in aweb of language, and arguably language is the reality withinwhich managers, like the rest of us, exist, it is logical to arguethat the major concepts of management cannot be used, intheir fullest meaning, without their axiological connotationsand empirical usages. They cannot be disembodied from theirpractical context, because that is where they have acquiredtheir significance and that is where, in the mouths anddecisions of managers, they will go on living and changing.ConclusionsLooking at the central elements of meaning in a work likethis, we can see, then, that we encounter negotiatedmeanings, many of them generalisable and interim, and thatthe move to comprehensive meaning entails collusion orcollaboration and the integration of moral agenda. Also atwork are essential meanings of the is and is no t type, satellitemeanings of the semantic and anecdotal type, and anincrementalism and collaborative activity without whicheffective communication and agreement would not bepossible. By that token, of course, disagreement is equallypossible. For these reasons, it is impossible to claim thateffectiveness is like a chair; it has got far more legs, and manyof them cannot be seen and may not even be there (yet),unless we both agree, or even perhaps if we do not.Within organisational cultures and knowledge paradigms,both substantive knowledge and processual (or procedural)knowledge abound, and part of the processual knowledgelies in the acceptance of negotiated meanings of the kindwe have been exploring. Personnel managers, like allmanagers, share in this domain of consensual meanings andprocedures, and understand the art of being effective if theyknow what they know, and look hard at what they think,about what they are themselves as effective managers.References1. Kuhn, T. S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University ofChicago Press, Chicago, 1962; 2nd rev. ed., 1970.

2. Mannheim, K., Ideology and U topia: An Introduction to theSociology of Knowledge, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1936.3. Ziman, J., Public Knowledge; An Essay Concerning the SocialDimension of Science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1968.

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Collaborating Over Meanings PETER DRUKER