1. Explore the concept that management is a ‘language game’. 

Write a 1000 word essay on one of the following topics.

1. Explore the concept that management is a ‘language game’. In your essay focus on metaphor, and how it both explains and constrains thinking.
2. Managing a diversity workforce is an increasingly important element of organisational life. Explore the concept of diversity and how management theorists understand it.
3. Explore Karl Weick’s definition of organisation as “a heterogeneous flow of diverse viscosity moving at variable rates” in the light of contemporary scholarship.

1Taking a clue from Burns’ seminal work, this paper will take a modern philosophical approach, beyond the oft-repeated return to classical philosophers2. Amongst modern philosophies, post-modern ‘continental’ traditions have recently been popular in organization studies, focusing attention especially on the ‘genealogy’ of power relations3 and habits of thought exposed by ‘process philosophies’4. But so far there has been very little application of the Anglo-Saxon tradition of analytical philosophy to the field of organization studies, in spite of the growing interest in semiotics.5This paper proposes an analytical philosophical foundation to leadership studies. Analytic philosophy attempts to clarify, by analysis, the meaning of statements and concepts. It emphasizes a clear, rigorous approach with particular weight being placed upon argumentation and evidence, avoidance of ambiguity, and attention to detail. As such, our approach relies less heavily on psychological assumptions, performative business-oriented approaches, and normative ethical approaches. According to Ciulla,6 leadership studies rests on a paradigm based primarily on the work done in business and psychology7