The fourth criticism is bornin the 20th century

The history of management is of course that is indistinguishable from technology. It is all so very deep although less apparent, the history of criticism of the business and capitalism. In fact much social innovations and new methods of organization of the work initially was thought by reformers that their contemporaries were sometimes of utopians, experienced by working against the employer will initiative, before putting into practice and favoured by business leaders informed or listed in the Act. Understood in this perspective, the management must be thought of as production of compromise between the requirements of profitability and adaptation to the technical data of economic activity, on the one hand, and social and moral requirements vary according to the times, on the other hand. Can what links be observed between management practices and the evolution of the critique of capitalism since the mid-19th century Since that time, can be identified broadly four mainstream critical of capitalism which are subdivided into different sub-trends, more or less close to other currents, and that produce various hybridization in their interaction.

The first, which we will call "conservative criticism", a critique of the labor and associated capitalist management methods a critique of the French Revolution and individualistic values of freedom and equality. Proponents of this current often regret the former company to order. They attach importance to the social hierarchy, fought against the idea of equality as a chimera, but want to associate inequality with solidarity and reciprocal duties of States between them, both within the family and the local community or business. They have the nostalgia of the corporations which together employers and employees in the same organization and are destructive of class struggle. This disparate current groups including the social Catholics, the corporatist of the 1930s, whose ideas have been implemented by Vichy, and part of the cooperative movement.

We will call the second current "social criticism". It is without doubt the most prolific. It takes root in the nascent socialism, that the main problem is the misery of the salary requirement and the progressive division of society into two antagonistic groups, capitalists and the proletariat. Social criticism criticized private property and profit. It is multiple, crossed by sub-trends which had swords, on the question of the role and usefulness of the State, trade unions, the general strike, the revolution or reform, the relative importance of the freedom as a principle of social organization... It will take an unprecedented scale with the work and the militant positions of Karl Marx against which all will be required to position themselves. Social criticism however admits in his breast of the non-Marxist supporters including the most notable, historically, are from social technocrats on the long period of the saint-simonisme and that will be planistes in the 1930s, Keynesian after the second world war; they think that only the technical and economic progress will bring social progress and that the State and its engineers can and should intervene in the economy for the streamline and avoid that it produce social disasters.

Conservative criticism and social criticism are when it comes to criticism of labour or the indignity of the labour conditions of life. They are however opposed on issues of equality, respect of traditions, religion or the nature of possible relationships between classes.

The third criticism, that we call the "artist critique", was born also in the 19th century. It is, first, of artists and writers who criticize ambient materialism, utilitarianism and rationalism. They dream of a way of life issued from all oppression and celebrate the virtues of imagination and creativity. Bohemia or the Dandyism allows them to conduct an alternative life marked by the denial of the money. They laugh at the narrowness and petty bourgeois ways of life. Despite its name, the artistic critique is not the fact of all the artists, or artists. It will strongly influence the work of the Frankfurt School in hybridizing with social criticism, it marks more we Situationist thought in the 1960s. Will the students be him particularly sensitive until it becomes a major social force during the events of May 1968. Artist criticism can make alliance with the conservative critic when it comes to criticize the increasing commodification and the disenchantment of the world, the inauthenticity of bourgeois ways of life, but it was opposed with force on the issue of the individualism which struck head-on conservative membership in a society of order, or on the value of the family. Artist criticism grows easily with a social critique of anarchist or libertarian, trend place like her freedom above all, but will be uncomfortable with social criticism claiming a State, or even a dictatorship. The materialism of social criticism and its development at the forefront of the economic dimension is also a point of disagreement between the two criticisms.

The "environmental criticism".

The fourth criticism is born

in the 20th century. It takes root, after almost three centuries of Technophilia, in a pessimistic approach to the technical development, difficult to control, tends to endanger humanity still ever scale. It is the "environmental criticism" began to be a social force from the mid-1970s, on the occasion of the anti-nuclear rallies and which has continued since then to strengthen. Ecological criticism usually goes with one or other of the three oldest critics. But it should be considered as a different criticism because its themes of indignation are radically new. It does not merely in fact lamenting the destruction of landscapes, the lack of hygiene of the new concentrations of population or the ugliness of the industrial world, what was meant already denounced in the 19th century, but who seemed able to be "repaired" by appropriate policies. The "environmental criticism" is more alarming: it points out, on the one hand, the irreversibility of alterations in the activity of men subjected to land, to its genetic heritage and its ecosystem, and on the other hand, the impossibility to continue and extend to the whole world the mode of development was that of the capitalist West.

These four critics have been and are still worn by social movements, associations, trade unions, NGOs, political parties opposed to the practices of companies of their time. They are not also present and threatening to according to the times. Conservative criticism marked Second Empire political and social landscape in the 1940s. It no longer survives today in France than in a form very deteriorated in some far right movements little concerned reform of the company. Three other critics remain active but their respective influences successive time. Social criticism almost dominated reform imagination of the end of the 19th century to the 1960s, the artistic critique it experienced its period of greatest influence during the past three decades of the 20th century and is now with the ecological criticism that businesses will have to count.

Interaction with the various criticisms are born of historically dated forms of management. Conservative criticism largely inspired social policy and management of the workforce of the paternalistic patterns. At the political level, it owes the first legislation on accidents at work, the development of social housing, social welfare with respect to the disease or retirement. Social criticism was its action on the hours of work and the level of wages; It inspired much of the labour law, obtained the generalization of the principle of bargaining employers-Union, resulted in the joint management of social organizations. It strongly inspired the Keynesian policies of the State and the practices of planning long-term business during the thirty Glorieuses. Artist critique traveled to the transformation of the work towards more flexibility and mobility since the 1970s. Its anti-authoritarian fueled new management methods based on a reduction in the number of hierarchical levels, the development of autonomy at work, the collapse of the large conservatism in fleets of companies much more malleable. It was also heard with respect to the refusal of professional destinies all paths. Now, change, adapt, learn all his life, which would be seen that as a step towards less routine and work more fulfilling if this new injunction not to was accompanied by development of unprecedented poverty and the marginalization of a number important employees not equipped to take advantage of the new world. Our hypothesis is that which plays today is a progressive incorporation into ecological criticism claims management. Changes already made sustainable development are nothing compared to the revolution that expect taking seriously the imperative medium term transform in depth our mode of growth.

Each period, the companies have not only been able to adapt to the changes resulting from the incorporation in their modes of management reforms they were suggested by social movements or imposed by law but they have also often made therefore profit or even simply the ability to survive. These reforms were not only allowed to have a workforce more adapted to the needs of the production (e.g. extents and produced in-house in the case of paternalism; more creative, more educated, more oriented towards international and more adaptable in the case of the néo-management), but also to support the membership of employees and consumers without which they may simply not work. The history of the management could not be separated from the history of his criticism, and what are often marginal ideas of today which give rise to the dominant practices of tomorrow. Leaders concerned with avant-garde and managerial innovations likely to give them one advance on the other will, therefore, a great benefit to take seriously the critical movements, not only as forces of opposition but also of proposal