Some management paradoxes

Managers and researchers have been using a number of notions for decades, or even centuries, taking their validity for granted. However, when we look at them with a critical eye, in the way the ancient Greek philosophers did, especially the so-called pre-Socratic ones, although we must not put aside Socrates and Aristotle of course, challenge commonly held ‘truths’, we realize that these notions, when their ‘logic’ is pushed to the limit, hoard a number of paradoxes. This ‘paper’ examines, in a humorous way, some commonly used management notions which conceal ‘strange creatures’. We will look at ‘customer satisfaction’, ‘lean management’, ‘process control’, ‘productivity’, ‘total quality’ and ‘artificial intelligence’.