Let me focus on my area of expertise and work over the past two decades: strategic relationships. At the moment, other than the highly transactional IoT, tech has no relationship with another tech. The interpersonal interactions are between individuals, not logos, buildings, or devices. Sociologists tell us that an average individual can proactively nurture 100-150 relationships at any point in time. Complex analysis of our thousands of contacts and hundreds of deeper relationships is required to understand which ones and why?

What if every morning I got up, an Ironman-like Jarvis continuously, proactively, intentionally, strategically, and thus quantifiably, recommended the prioritized list of relationships I should touch base with, add value to, and engage/influence to move my key strategic priorities forward? Imagine how much more productive, efficient, and impactful we would be in me, the human, augmenting the tech? The tech isn’t in a viable position to ascertain my strategic priorities or make sound judgments on why I should spend more time with Julia than Richard. But it absolutely can do the heavy lifting of the in-depth analysis for me.

I hope my comments have contributed to the discussions. I’m fascinated by this topic and look forward to reading insights from others.

We imbibe from Peter Drucker that respect for humans needs to be at the core of every organization. What threatens it the most today is explained in Orwell’s preface of Animal Farm: patriotism.
In one of his books (I think, Post-Capitalist Society), Drucker explains the difference between patriotism and citizenship. He says something like: patriotism is the willingness to die for one’s country. Citizenship is the willingness to live for one’s country.
Perhaps, the human imperative we need to define today is employee citizenship? I think, management could serve it better by reading Drucker’s books and the works of the many thinkers he cites: Hamilton, Kierkegaard, Shakespeare, and Orwell.

Much more fundamental questions are at stake and once answered, they will richly inform the technocratic vs. humanistic debate.

The first question is about management as a profession. If we agree with Drucker that management is the most important social function, the one that lies at the heart of a society’s ability to build functioning institutions (in business, government and the social sector) in service of the common good, then why haven’t we established management as a true profession? To quote from Gordon & Howell (Higher Education for Business, 1959): a) where is the “systematic body of knowledge of substantial intellectual content”? b) where are the “standards of professional conduct, which take precedent over the goal of personal gain”? and c) where is “the enforcement of minimum standards and competence”?

In his great book “From higher aims to hired hands – the social transformation of American business schools and the unfulfilled promise of management as a profession”, Rakesh Khurana masterfully shows us what went wrong with the first project to professionalize management. It ended with management largely understood as technical gadget bag of tricks and with absolving managers of any meaningful moral obligations. Interestingly, that first project started at a time of great societal and economic change at the end of the 19th century and was seen as instrumental to deal with the corresponding challenges.

I would argue we are in a similar situation today. If we are to deal successfully with the aforementioned challenges we need truly professional management. I also believe we are in a much better position to succeed with a renewed effort at professionalizing management – if only we’ve learned so much from the first, failed attempt. So what holds us back?

The second question is one of worldview. If we talk about the “human imperative” it matters greatly what we believe it means to be human. To say it bluntly: if we humans are nothing but cosmic accidents (as the majority view seems to be these days), then we might just as well stop here. In that case, nothing matters anyway. There is no meaning in our existence, there cannot be any standards for truth. Morality, justice and social good are whatever I think they are. Human nature is neither good nor bad, it just is. True is what the majority thinks is true and that can change tomorrow.

I reject this worldview and so did Drucker. He believed in objective truth and held to a deeply Christian concept of human nature. I quote Joseph Maciariello from a talk he gave on “Peter Drucker’s Theology of Work” (https://youtu.be/VTQhMSRnIQU): “Peter Drucker, for much of his life, tried to bridge the work of the executive with the norm, or what ought to be. And as best I know of the Kingdom of God at work, that is what his norm was.” In that same talk, Joseph Maciariello quotes Drucker like this: “I started out teaching religion, I’m only too aware that human beings perversely insist on behaving like human beings. This means pettiness and greed, vanity and lust for power and, yes, evil. After all, my first book was on the rise of Nazism”.

It is clear why Drucker declared management to be an inherently moral activity, and rightfully so. This means that unless we are prepared to have an honest debate about worldview and human nature, we cannot have a meaningful conversation about the human imperative in management. More importantly, we cannot hope to solve the world’s ills – with or without professional management. Are we prepared to have such a debate?