In Search of Meaning: Managing for the Health of Our Organizations, Our Communities, and the Natural World

From historical perspective, what makes book like In Search of Meaning possible is change in Weltanschauung of Western world that seems to have taken place over course of present century. Accordingly, I propose to inaugurate this review with brief look at this change in topography of occidental world view. Let me begin by recalling that, for West, 20th century opened on note of unparalleled power, privilege, and hegemony. By early decades of this century, cruel age of empires was at its peak, and colonial sway of West extended over close to eighty-five percent of earth (Said, 1979). Accompanying this brutal politico-economic stranglehold on world was West's supreme faith in its own moral right and obligation to bring light and civilization to non-West. However, as century draws toward its end, those naive days of certainty of everlasting Western political and, more important, moral hegemony are gone for ever. As 20th century winds down, not only has West forfeited almost all of its colonies, but even control that Western world seemed to wield over large parts of globe during 1950s and 1960s has been significantly eroded. Auschwitz and Dachau, Hiroshima and Nagasaki; repeated defeats in colonial wars fought in India, Indonesia, Algeria, Vietnam, and scores of other countries; OPEC revolution and energy crisis; unstoppable rise of Asia; these and other events mark moral, political, and economic decline of West from its former position of global preeminence. And this is not whole story. For if in West 20th century began on note of unsurpassed faith in Eurocentric notion of ceaseless progress driven by science and technology, end of century stands like stark monument to terrible failures of myth of progress and technological utopia. For West, this century has been technological century par excellence. But when ozone layer is fast depleting, when industrially produced factory meats and milk are saturated with evil brew of growth hormones and antibiotics, and when countryside is full of toxic waste dumps slowly leaking their lethal merchandise into ground water, it is difficult to remain sanguine about mythology of technological progress. Combine this ecological with ever-shrinking welfare state in several Western countries, appalling poverty and human degradation, escalating social violence, and an overall of community, and result is an angst-laden atmosphere in which certainty with which West could see itself as vanguard of world has dissolved into thin air. For West, end of century is period of extreme self-doubt (Lyotard, 1984). In Search of Meaning may be seen as an expression of this very self-doubt. The book expresses this millennial doubt by declaring, in its very opening sentence, that (t)he field of management is in crisis (p. xiii). In addition to being responsible for growing unemployment, ecological and so on, of management has created hollow that have caused pollution of soul and loss of such that one cannot any longer find meaning in one's activities (p. xiv). This pollution of soul and loss of are traceable to an ideology that single-mindedly stresses the utilitarian and economic functions of ... and work and ignores important fact that organizations are also places where individuals work, dream, suffer, and live and where they should be able to grow, learn, and actualize themselves (p. xv). The book declares that the deep confronting ... managers and ... employees today must be addressed in terms of existential tradition and aims to offer a deeper understanding of sources of of and to help discover concrete avenues for seriously addressing these issues (p. …