Evidence of an Archetypal Management Framework: An Exploratory Examination of Commonality Among Existing Management Frameworks and Resulting Efficacy

Abstract

The burgeoning management science fields have produced and continue to produce vast quantities of advice, frameworks, and checklists for owners, leaders, and managers. Systems scientists have long proposed that systems, both natural and human-made, significantly drive individual behavior within the system and exhibit repeating structures and patterns known as archetypes. Systems do so because the archetypal patterns are fundamental to the system’s dynamics. Enterprises represent a specific class of socio-technical systems, which have been studied using management and social science disciplines. Evidence is emerging that the proliferation of management science may be overwhelming, that the advice is not sufficiently integrated, and only addresses discrete parts of the enterprise, not the whole enterprise system. One would expect to find evidence of repeating patterns in the general class of socio-technical systems known as enterprises. This article is an exploratory analysis of existing management frameworks and researches the evidence for an archetypal construct that may be beneficial to small, and large, business managers. The author presents evidence of such an archetype, thereby building on general management theory that is helpful in assisting management thought in complex environments. Finally, the author proposes a framework for management based on the findings. Using the common elements of the proposed framework, owners and senior managers were surveyed to determine whether using such an archetype as a system and in a systematic way enhanced enterprise performance. Implications for owners, managers, board members, and academics are discussed.