Basic Philosophy

This chapter aims to clarify Barnard’s basic philosophy. Barnard accumulated his experience of managing and observing different organizations; he then formed his philosophy on the basis of his experience and observation. His basic philosophy is regarded as a system of his beliefs. In general, practitioners form their beliefs through their experience as what they think is true. They then apply their beliefs to the reality and verify the rightness through their experiment. Practitioners modify their beliefs in the process; they are gradually convinced of the rightness. This chapter examines Barnard’s three basic philosophies. The first is the conflict of collectivism and individualism, that is, balancing the interest between an organization and an individual. Barnard recognized the importance of this conflict that a manager has to be responsible for. The second is the view that the social world is complicated and ever-changing. Barnard believed that the social world is composed of social forces; and that social forces are systematized into a power such as an individual or an organization. These social forces and powers are interdependent and interrelated; therefore, they cause dynamic changes through their conflict and harmony. The third is the view of an open system approach that is combined by those two basic philosophies. Barnard understood that a whole is a system composed of its parts, the whole and parts are constantly interacting and changing through their interactions, and that a system has a stratified structure. Thus, this chapter suggests that Barnard formed his basic philosophy as a system of his beliefs on the basis of his experience and observation, and that he created his theory from experience and philosophy.