The Dining section of the 11/26 NYT has a semi-humorous piece, "The CEO of Thanksgiving Dinner," complete with quotes from HBS professor Amy Edmondson http://drfd.hbs.edu/fit/public/facultyInfo.do?facInfo=bio&facEmId=aedmondson on how the host should choose between a tightly controlled, "organize to execute" management style and a looser, "organize to innovate" style:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/dining/26dele.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
Well...perhaps this is an arena in which the host(ess)'s competing managerial values should be active but latent, rather than having one side selected with the clarity Professor Edmondson advocates...
More seriously: The ability of contemporary middle-class adults like those being satirized and lauded in the article to deploy ambivalent managerial values in their home lives and to inculcate these values in their children strikes me as a highly valuable feature of cultural modernity. It also strikes me as a concern, though, if working-class adults and their children do not have a like ability to swing back and forth flexibly in their lives between the "organize to execute" and "organize to innovate" poles.
