Are managers dispassionate and rational, or are they shaped by complex dynamics?

What is management?

Is management a personal or collaborative process? What outside factors affect managers on a day-to-day basis? 
Traditional thinking can often give the impression that being objective, rational, dispassionate and independent are prerequisites for being a manager. However it’s quite possible many managers could be caught in a whirlwind of outside influences, affecting their every action and it’s these pressures that critical reflective approaches seek to expose by questioning many of the invisible and informal structures that exist within companies. In this audio collection Caroline Ramsey, Senior Lecturer in Management Practice at The Open University, argues that management is a social, political and moral process, and that knowing this can be of enormous help in developing your own executive practice.