Machiavelli: In management, does the end justify the means?

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Machiavelli
In management, does the end justify the means?
Hunt, or be hunted. Kill, or be killed. People rowing around in a vicious circle which only
awaits that people are taking the lead by throwing a piece of wood in between its
competitor’s stairway to success. Does the end, always justify the means?
“For those of us climbing to the top of the food chain, there can be no mercy. There is but
one rule: hunt or be hunted." – Frank Underwood, House of Cards (Willimon, House of
Cards, 2014).
Niccolò Machiavelli was born 3rd May 1469 in Florence, but little is known from his early
years. His parents enabled him a good education, by sending him to Paolo da Ronciglione,
a well-known Latin teacher for his period; furthermore it is contemplated if he attended the
University of Florence (Nederman, 2009, para2).
Girolamo Savonarola was an important figure in Florence as a friar and preacher. In 1492
he took a young twenty-three year old man as his disciple, named Niccol Machiavelli. But
it was in May 1498, that Savonarola was condemned, and hanged for blasphemy. By the
same year Niccol Machiavelli arose from the unknown, to a public figure when he gained
his position as the Second Chancellor of the Republic of Florence with only twenty-nine
years of age (Giants of the Renaissance, n.d.). At his time, Italy was far from being a
unified country, even far from being as great as the ancient Roman Empire, which
Machiavelli strived to for its greatness. It was in his believe that only a leader with certain
attributes would be able to re-built and re-unify Italy. When the fallen Medici family
ascended back to power in 1512, Machiavelli was thrown off his current position, and
wrongly imprisoned for conspiracy in 1513. Being on his compulsory exile in his father’s
house on the hills of Florence, and longing for a voice to be heard, he started to write “The
Prince" as a hope to regain a seat as a political figure, but the book was neglected by the
Medici family, and the it was then never published during his lifetime.
By writing The Prince, he engraved his name as “The Father of Political Theory" in the
society of our time. The book is a description of how one person can effectively use the art
of leadership and reign over a government, often using the Duke Cesare Borgia as a
role-model, whom Machiavelli met on the court of Borgia in the years of 1502 and 1503.
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