Introduction

We live in an age of measurement and incommensurability. We live in an age of measurement because the scientific approach to knowledge production has become dominant in bureaucracies running our societies. We live in an age of incommensurability because the house of science has many mansions and paradigms, and successful managers listen to many voices. Still, scientific knowledge enjoys a privileged status, in spite of a proliferation of paradigms, schools and visions of ‘proper’ and ‘normal’ science. In some of them theories and statements are competitively produced and compared, even though they are difficult to compare with one another. Still, openly or not, one measures, benchmarks, evaluates, compares, chooses, classifies, files away. Most of us can easily identify our own or other individuals’ level of education, native language, intelligence and preferences, employment track and career potential, sometimes even social skills and aesthetic tastes. Some of us can identify and understand organizational cultures, climates and missions using one of many available typologies and applying readymade organizational culture assessment instruments. We ask, for instance, what is more important: task or relations? We investigate what is more relevant: bureaucratic position or market potential? We try to determine if people are seen as personnel to fill free slots in a rigid scaffolding of an organization or as precious human resources to be treated as mature citizens, to be coached and developed, around whom organizational forms should be adapted, bent, changed, and improved. One begins to acknowledge the significance of emotional and social intelligence even in the most rigid of bureaucracies. Researchers, consultants, managers and professionals alike begin to uncover and exploit local and tacit knowledge, rituals, symbols, languages, and manners. One begins to appreciate cross-cultural differences

between individuals and groups, and their influence upon personalities and organizations. Metaphors we live by and stories we are socialized with do matter. Differences between ways in which we have been socialized are perceived as a manifestation of cultural variety (diversity is perceived as a challenge and a chance, not a threat), which is increasingly treated as an opportunity for creative development rather than an obstacle and a threat to a co-operative team effort.