Management/Technology Management, Science, and Technology

Who Is a Manager?

A manager is someone who knows how to take charge, organize, direct, and be accountable for individuals and groups of people operating under his guidance. Anyone who shows leadership skills can be a manager. A manager's goal is to work towards the common good. This means keeping persons on pace to meet their objectives, budgeting time wisely, and instilling in his inferiors a desire to care.

Managerial Ethics

Top management impacts ethics within an organization by setting the tone and the standard for ethical practice. Superiors shape inferiors, not the other way around. Therefore, if top management encourages unethical activity through its own unethical behavior, an organization will, ultimately, be comprised of several unethical attitudes. A great example of this is Enron Corp. Top management of Enron encouraged poor ethical practices by practicing in a disingenuous manner themselves. They hoodwinked investors and encouraged their day traders to hoodwink as well (McLean, Elkind, 2013).

As Chet Holmes (2007) notes in The Ultimate Sales Machine, management needs to bond not only with customers but also with employees -- and unethical managers do not bond: they cheat. To encourage a solid system of ethics in an organization, top management must embody that system within themselves.

A lot of intelligent people on Wall Street thought buying and selling sub-prime mortgages would be a good thing: turned out not to be. In other words, just because a lot of experts agree on something, doesn't mean what they agree upon is true.
Does that mean there is no such thing as scientific truth? Not at all. Aristotle tells us that truth is identity between our minds and reality. Scientific truth exists and it can be grasped when we use our intelligence. We aren't doomed to rely on the opinion of experts, many of whom may be swayed to say something by various factors -- such as the bestowal of grants, peer pressure, etc.

Does science differ from politics, art, or religion, in that case? Not really. A lot of scientific thought today is based on empirical study -- that is, the gathering of lots of information, which is then examined and used as the basis for the formulation of scientific theory. Empiricism also dominates today's political world. Numerous studies are always being performed, and intelligence communities are filled to the gills with data regarding various sorts of people, their practices and habits and so on. As for…