Animal Magic: Nigel Nicholson and Evolutionary Psychology
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2003.00385.x |
| Date | 01 December 2003 |
| Published date | 01 December 2003 |
Animal Magic: Nigel Nicholson and
Evolutionary Psychology
Paul Thompson
University of Strathclyde
Nicholson, N. (2000). Managing the Human
Animal: Why People Behave the Way They
Do in Corporate Settings, Texere Publishing,
316pp. ISBN 1587990318
Evolutionary psychology (EP) has had consider-
able exposure in academic and popular circles in
recent years. Now EP has reached the shores of
management and organization behavior. Its
agent is Nigel Nicholson, who pitches the book
as part conventional academic tome, part pop
management best seller. The arguments expand
on Nicholson’s (e.g. 1997) earlier attempts to
persuade us that EP is a radical and challenging
perspective that will allow organizations to
manage with the grain of human nature.
It is pointless to pretend that I approached this
book with a open mind, hardwired as I am by a
background in sociology and radical organiza-
tion theory. Only one theme provides common
ground – a dislike of the tendency for organiza-
tional writing to embrace any passing novelty
and a foolish belief that by acts of will practi-
tioners can create conflict-free, non-hierarchical
and boundaryless structures and relations. As
Nicholson notes, ‘Underneath the hype, nothing
much has changed’ (p. 260).
The problem, however, is what mechanisms
drive that continuity of structure and practice, or
reproduce the enduring features of large scale
organization? Two mechanisms favoured by
economic sociology (deriving in turn from Marx
and Weber) – the profit motive and the process of
rationalization – do not appear or are dismissed
by Nicholson. Economic rationality is reduced to
a caricature of individual cost-benefit maximiza-
tion, inherently constrained by our irrational
instincts. Apparently we cannot comprehend or
control the economy, and experts (such as
information and financial scientists) are shamans
and storytellers (p. 127). This would come as
surprising news to some of Nicholson’s collea-
gues at London Business School.
An extended example used is Nick Leeson and
Barings Bank. The collapse of the bank is
explained solely by the psychological profile of
Leeson. This produced an exaggerated version of
what is present in all ‘human animals’: the
dominance of feelings not reason, the illusion that
we can control events and our naivete as statis-
ticians compared to our compulsion to categorize.
Now it is perfectly possible to construct an
explanation of the motivations of an individual
that predispose him to reckless behaviour. That
does not, however, explain why some market
contexts allow or encourage different forms of
speculative risk taking. Risk is not a purely
individual predisposition, let alone one associated
primarily with young men (p. 143). It is, among
other things, a consequence of decisions built into
market and financial institutions. The fact that
different state-market configurations produce ar-
rangements that are hugely different with respect
to risk tells us that it cannot be reduced to some
innate and general human essence.
But biological imperatives are all we get from
EP. It is argued that we are driven by uncon-
scious instincts that reflect Stone-Age minds and
bodies that are genetically encoded through
evolutionary adaptation. Man stopped evolving
long before organization and workplaces came
on the scene. Now that they do exist, the people
who work within them are compelled to recreate
the communities of our ancestral environment,
British Journal of Management, Vol. 14, 373–375 (2003) 373
r2003 British Academy of Management
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