Reason and emotions: a critique of management competencies

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Notes

1. To conduct ourselves exclusively by the emotions—or pleasure—as a means to individual happiness, is to fall into utilitarianism. Although utilitarianism was born in the Greece of Epicurus, (at the end of the fourth century B.C.), with Bentham (England, end of the eighteenth century) it acquires a more radical sense—utilitarianism did also adopt multiple social versions and at the same time left a mark on lots of social roles and institutions (MacIntyre, 1987, p. 91). For Bentham, human actions are guided by pain and pleasure, and only those actions that bring about the maximum happiness will be chosen, that is, the greatest amount of pleasure with the minimum possible amount of pain (Bentham, 1991).

2. The term would not be clarified on this paper, but it must be pointed out that there are some aspects which are being called competencies without being so, as for example, ethical commitment, perseverance, clarity of expression, concern about others, analytical thinking.

3. Between a successful headship and the students’ good performance, good teachers are to be count on. The report is the outcome of the research carried out by McKensy & Company, between 2006 and 2007, ‘How the world’s best performing school systems come out on top’ (2007), and after studying 25 world’s school systems, including ten of the top performers, comes to the conclusion that educational success depends on instruction, motivation and on teachers’ constant learning.

4. Morin proposes an ecology of action: ‘the ecology of action indicates that every action escapes progressively from the individual’s intention as it enters the sphere of inter-retro actions of the environment in which it intervenes. Thus the action does not only run the risk of failing; but its meaning may also be deviated or perverted’ (Morin, 2006, p. 47).

5. Weber establishes the distinction between the ethics of conviction (1964) or ethics of the ultimate ends (1985) (Gesinnungsethik) and the ethics of responsibility (1964, 1985) (Veranwortungsethink). The ethics of responsibility commonly appears as ‘the ethics of responsibility or of the consequences’, although it could also be called, according to López-Aranguren (1995, p. 34), ‘the ethics of reality’ (Wirklichkeitsethik). The second name attributed to it, seems to be an anticipation of its meaning: ‘the maxim of an ethic of responsibility [is that] an account must be given of foreseeable consequences of self actions’ (Weber, 1985, p. 67).

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Rosa Vázquez-Recio

Rosa Vázquez-Recio has a PhD in Education and full lecturer in the Faculty of Science Education, Departament of Pedagogy, University of Cadiz, Spain. Email: [email protected]. The fields of research she works in are diversity, School management, new technologies, plagiarism and gender. She has several national and international publications.