Alternative Production Regimes: The Challenge to Karpin

This paper is born of a deep concern about the premise upon which Enterprising Nation, Report of the Industry Task Force on Leadership and Management Skills (The Karpin Report), was undertaken. I argue that the review, report and recommendations are based on a set of simplifying assumptions that are essentially limiting. By conforming to a view of business embedded in neoclassical economic theory, the Task Force has not explored the implications of current developments worldwide that demonstrate the remarkable capacity of small-scale production to galvanise regions like the Third Italy and the Basque provinces of Spain. These enormously productive regions base their economic activity upon a capacity to cooperate as well as compete and this is anathema to the unmitigated competition that the Task Force takes as given in its recommendations about the development of management/leadership in Australia. Moreover, a reliance on this particular theoretical perspective has limited the Task Force's understanding of, and response to, organisational inequality. Ultimately, I argue that the five challenges articulated by the Task Force are important, but I interpret them differently in the light of a broader and more socially-embedded understanding of the importance and nature of business. In particular, management/leadership of the future will be an integral part of all worker's roles; it will no longer be confined to an organisational or societal elite. Understanding and preparing for the universalism of management in the future is a key challenge for both industry and management education.