Top Careers as a Means of Risk Management in Organisations
Decision-making reproduces organisations and produces risks, and risks inevitably have to be managed. The most far-reaching and risky decisions are the responsibility of an organisation’s higher hierarchical levels. Starting from this premise based on Nik
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Introduction
Depending on the perspective, specific aspects of the far-reaching changes that have taken place both in the economy and in society as a whole since the mid-nineteenth century have to be considered when researching processes of decision-making, the handling of risks and the formation of confidence in banks. With regard to the subject of this chapter, this is particularly the case for the transformation of organisations since that time. The growth of enterprises and the resulting increase of internal organisational complexity in the second half of the nineteenth century were accompanied by the differentiation and shaping of professions and educational pathways leading to professional positions (Kaelble 1983,
D. Wylegala (*) Department for History, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 K. Schönhärl (ed.), Decision Taking, Confidence and Risk Management in Banks from Early Modernity to the 20th Century, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42076-9_3
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31–35; Plumpe 2006, 71), also within the banking business (Liefeith 1983, 19–46). This development of modern organisations was fundamental for professional careers and hence, consequently, for top careers. The latter form the focus of this discussion, which examines their function within organisations in the twentieth century. A series of questions are therefore considered: How is decision-making structured in modern organisations? How are decisions, risks and top careers related to one another within such a structure? How do top careers contribute to the establishing of confidence in organisations? The aim is to illustrate the contribution of careers to dealing with the risks that inevitably result from decisions. One important goal of this volume is to develop methods by which historians can analyse risk management and the decision-making practices of the past. This chapter contributes to this goal by proposing a theoretical model to pursue its objective. The theoretical considerations concerning top careers and their function mainly draw upon Niklas Luhmann’s Systems Theory and in particular its organisational theory approach (Luhmann 1984a, 1997, 826–847; 2005b, 2005c, 2006; Martens and Ortmann 2006). The model itself, however, goes beyond the premises of Systems Theory. This model is constructed as an ideal type based on Max Weber’s approach (Kocka 1986, 86–89; Weber 1980, 9–11), with the intention of gaining terms for the analysis of top careers. A theoretical concept, in Clifford Geertz (1973, 4) words, ‘does not explain everything, not even everything human, but it still explains something’. The choice of a theoretical concept always implicitly involves choosing a specific perspective and concurrently deciding against all other perspectives. The choice of a perspective is inevitable because empirical reality’s complexity is not immediately accessible via cognition. Different perspectives are always possible, i.e. the perspective selected is always contingent. Accord
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