Towards a Humanistic Management Paradigm: A Step Back to Embrace the Future?

Abstract

Many scholars and practitioners would agree that current organizational research is in a paradigmatic crisis. The questions we are answering within the ‘normal science’ paradigm of economism resemble Kuhn’s puzzle solving approach but rarely yield important further insights paramount to answering urgent questions of the real world. Looking back at the roots of organizational research, the author proposes a more dedicated and concerted effort to developing an alternative, humanistic paradigm, which can set management research onto a path to higher theoretical accuracy and more practical relevance.

Keywords: humanistic management, paradigm, economism, organizational research