AARMS MANAGEMENT Vol. 6, No. 3 (2007) 349–360 Received: May 14, 2007 Address for correspondence: LÁSZLÓ HORVÁTH Miklós Zrínyi National Defence University P. O. Box 15, H-1581 Budapest, Hungary E-mail: horvath.laszlo@zmne.hu What’s wrong with management? LÁSZLÓ HORVÁTH, PÉTER KORONVÁRY Miklós Zrínyi National Defence University, Budapest, Hungary Training institutions, schools, colleges, academies or universities may provide necessary services in the societal process of leadership development, helping to maintain a balance between the reproduction of quality and quantity on a national (or even international) level. Institutions of leadership development have the task to make students understand why it is essential to pay attention to the continuous development and hands-on practice of leadership skills and knowledge, whether they will work as teachers, lawyers, military officers or public administrators. If we want to live in a continuously developing democracy in the course of the 21st century, we have deliberately to strengthen societal processes of leadership reproduction and development. This is not a particular interest of certain organisations but a shared concern joining all democratic states in the united Europe and outside. Human rights and democracy The 20th century brought forward several major steps toward a new way of thinking about leading both in the political (whether global or national) and in the organisational scene. The horrible experience of World War 1 and 2 caused the emergence of changes in Continental cultures that have resulted in a vision where the cornerstones of thinking are ethical values (propositions) like “Human dignity is unimpeachable” and its (even if quite distant) corollaries (“The dignity of the individual is untouchable,” therefore even criminals have certain rights, “The aim of life is self-actualisation”, i.e. the fulfilment of our aims and objectives through the realisation of our potentials is the sense that life should make, or “Positive discrimination is a tool to balance out social disharmonies”, i.e. unethical distinctions within any group should be challenged). The step-by-step reorganisation of global and European legal systems according to the new structure of ethical principles that emerged in the 20th century has resulted in a trend of ever- increasing extension of human rights in a direction where – in ethical terms – everyone is equal, and therefore has the right to form one’s own life. 1 1 As Karl POPPER (2001; p. 443) put it in his The Open Society and its Enemies in 1943, history has no sense but we can give one to it. People are not equal but we may decide to fight for equal rights. Although history has no target or meaning on its own, we may decide to make our fight for an open society into its objective and essence. It depends on us, what the sense of our lives should be, it is us who have to define our own goals.