Leading Solutions Essays in Business Psychology 9789813364844, 9789813364851

Table of contents :
Foreword
Reference
Preface
Reference
Contents
Emerging Theories of Leadership
Ethical and Relational Leadership
A Key Component of Organizational Leadership
Ethical Principles and Code of Conduct of the American Psychological Association and Student Rights and Responsibilities of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology
The American Psychological Association
The Chicago School of Professional Psychology
Dilemmas in Assessing Ethical Leadership
Living and Advocating Ethics: Principles for Current and Future Leaders
Toward a New Modus Vivendi in Organizational Leadership
References
Paradox and Neuroscience: Emerging Theories of Leadership
Why Theories Emerge
Paradoxical Leadership
Neuroscience Leadership
Conclusion
References
Personal Leadership Development Plans: Essentials and Practicum
Essentials of Personal Leadership Development Plans
Integrating Emerging Theories of Leadership
Outline of a Personal Leadership Development Plan
Personal Philosophy of Leadership
References
Personal Philosophy of Leadership
Formative Experiences of Leadership
Next Steps for Leadership
On Personal Philosophies of Leadership
My Personal Philosophy of Leadership
References
Personal Philosophy of Leadership (2nd Edition)
My Personal Philosophy of Leadership (1st Edition)
Emerging Perspectives on Leadership
My Personal Philosophy of Leadership (2nd Edition)
Postscript
References
Review of Situational Leadership® After 25 Years—A Retrospective (Blanchard, Zigarmi, & Nelson, 1993)
The Research Article
Purpose of the Research
Literature Review
Methodology
Data Analysis and Findings
Discussion and Conclusions
Overall Assessment of the Research Article
References
Ethical & Cultural Considerations
Ethics: My Own Perspective
A Blessed Encyclical
Casting Light or Shadow
A Delectus of Ethical Perspectives
Johnson’s (2015) Ethical Perspectives: An Appreciative Inquiry
Making Ethical Decisions
Concluding Remarks
References
Life-Markers and Personal Values
References
Reflections on Four Case Studies in Ethics
The Spectacular Rise and Fall of a Humanitarian Hero
Chaos on K2
Rooting Out Corruption at Siemens Global
Inside Job
References
Group & Team Leadership
The Self in Teams
On Teams: What’s in a Word?
On Self: What’s in a Word?
The Self in Teams
References
The Self in Teams (Cont’d)
Forming–Storming–Norming–Performing in Team A
The Self in Team A
On Self-Growth in Teams
References
The Self in Teams (Coda)
Performing in Team A: A Self-Evaluation
The Self in Teams: Finding Your Role
References
Leadership Self-Development
Establishing Your Fundamental Self
Getting to the Roots of Positive Forms of Leadership
A Personal Mission Statement
Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership
Four Questions for Positive Change
Am I Results Centered?
Am I Internally Directed?
Am I Other Focused?
Am I Externally Open?
On Motive, Means, and Opportunity
References
The Challenges of Learning from Experience
Render unto Caesar the Things that Are Caesar’s
Coursework and Training ≠ Leader Development
Learning from Experience
Experiential Learning: Are We There Yet?
Yip and Wilson (2010): Wrong Conclusions from Right Premises
References
The Full Range Leadership Model: Essentials and Practicum
Understanding the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire Scales
Administering the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire
Interpreting the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 360 Leader’s Report
Reflecting on My MLQ 360 Leader’s Report
Approach
Average Scores
Aggregate Scores
Style Strengths
Areas for Development
Analyzing My MLQ 360 Leader’s Report
A Disciplined and Open Mind
Style Strengths
Areas for Development
Conducting Individual Planning and Goal Setting
Afterword
Appreciating the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire
Taking Back Control
References
Management Philosophy & Practice
A Taxonomy of Management Theories
References
Mintzberg’s Managing: Implications for Coaching and Training
Leadership vs. Management
Enough of Leadership
Coaching and Training New-Era Managers
Training
Coaching Ourselves
Summing up
References
Mintzberg’s Model of Managing: Random Thoughts from an Observation
The Nature of Managerial Work
Eight Hours of Managing: The Task
Eight Hours of Managing: The Case Study
Eight Hours of Managing: Method of Analysis
Eight Hours of Managing: Findings
Eight Hours of Managing: Reactions
References
Organizational Diagnosis & Cultural Dynamics
Synergizing the Competing Values Framework and the Six-Box Model
Competing Values at ICIMOD
So What?
Synergizing Cameron and Quinn’s Competing Values Framework and Weisbord’s Six-Box Model
Conclusion
References
Personality & Lifespan in the Workplace
Blustein’s Psychology of Working: A Very Short Introduction
Abstract and Setting
Intent
Limitations of Previous Psychology-of-Working Perspectives
Blustein’s Psychology of Working
References
Contextual Factors in Working
Functions of Work
Contextual Factors of Work
Contextual Factors of Work: An Appreciation
Coping with the Global Contextual Factors of Work
References
Developing Expert Leadership
Quid Leader Development?
Terms of Reference for Leader Development
Theoretical Propositions for Leader Development
Practicing Leadership
Identity and Adult Development Processes
Enhancing Leader Development
References
Identity Processes in Leader Development
On Becoming a Leader: The Premise
On Becoming a Leader: Factors of the Environment
On Becoming a Leader: Self-regulation Processes
On Becoming a Leader: Synergizing Self-regulation Processes
References
Leader Development Through Work Experience
How Do Effective Leaders Learn?
The Context of Learning
Learning from Experience
References
Moral Development for Authentic Leadership Effectiveness
Quid Moral Development?
Moral Development and Leadership
Moral Development for Leader Development
Capacitating Authentic Decision-Making and Behavior
References
Seven Entries on Twenty-First Century Working
Ideas, Opinions, and Actions for Personal Leadership Development
Social Identity Theory and Its Contribution to the Growth and Development of Leaders
Business Success: Is Authentic Leadership Necessary and Sufficient?
“Relationships” with Careers
Leader Development Through Learning from Experience
Social Barriers and Working
Integrating Adult, Leader, and Leadership Development in the Twenty-First Century
References
The Reflective Judgment Model: What Role in Leader Development?
A Cognitive Development Toolbox
Quid Reflective Judgment?
The Reflective Judgment Model: What Role in Leader Development?
References
Professional Development
Analyzing the Logic of Articles and Textbooks: Essentials and Practicum
Introduction
The Logic of “Transformational Leadership Behaviors of School Principals: A Qualitative Research Based on Teachers’ Perceptions”
Conclusion
References
Reading Research Articles
The Scaffolding of Research Articles
Thinking Critically About Research
Is Critical Thinking Enough?
References
Scholarly Argument: Linking Doctoral Research to Practice
What Is Happening?
What Do We Know? What Assumptions Have We Made?
What Point of View Can We Reasonably Hold?
Why Are Doctoral Studies Important? What Key Concepts or Theories Guide Our Reasoning?
What Might Be the Purpose of a Research Topic on Doctoral Studies? What Data, Information, and Evidence Might the Reasoning for It Be Based on?
What Conclusions Might Be Drawn?
What Implications and Consequences Might There Be?
References
Psychological, Socio-Cultural, & Political Dimensions of Organizations
Critical Psychology and Organizations: The Case of the United Nations
Critical Psychology and Organizations
The Case of the United Nations
Critical Psychology and the United Nations
References
Development of Critical Psychology
Locating Critical Psychology Approaches
The Historicity of Critical Psychology
Critical Psychology for the Twenty-First Century
References
Minority Population Analysis: The Aeta of the Philippines
Characterizing Indigenous Peoples and Their Vulnerability
The Aeta of the Philippines
Domination, Marginalization, and Exploitation: The Aeta Experience
Concluding Remarks
References
Minority Populations: There Are More Than Meets the Eye
Minority Population Analysis
Globalization and the Multiplication of Minorities
Critical Psychology for Minority Populations
The Intersection of Critical Psychology and Globalization
References
Qualitative Research Methods
Book Analysis of Interviewing as Qualitative Research (Seidman, 2013)
Introduction
Synopsis (and Reflections)
Learnings
References
Research Concept Paper for Leading Organizations of the Future
Primary Reasons for Undertaking the Study
Statement of the Problem
Research Question
Conceptual Framework
Preliminary Literature Review
Preliminary Methods
References
Strategic Change Management
Change Management Strategy in Action: Independent Evaluation for Learning
Independent Evaluation for Learning
The Problématique of Independent Evaluation
Objectives of Evaluation Activity: The Need for Organizational Change and the Issues to Address
Independent Evaluation for Learning: Planning and Delivering Organizational Change
Conclusion
References
Schein’s Process Consultation: Three Reactions
The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling
Reaction: The Case of Either–Or
Reaction: Assumptions
Reaction: The Concept of Client
References
Systems Theory
Five Notes on Systems Theory
The Skeleton of Science
More Than the Sum of Its Parts? Or Other?
Open and Closed Systems
Leverage in Systems
The Disciplines of the Learning Organization
References
Idealized Design for Virtual Teaming: A Modest Proposal
General Electric’s Setting
On Virtual Teaming
Capacitating Virtual Teaming
Potential Pitfalls and Strategies to Avoid Them
References
Idealized Design: Three Reactions
Define: Idealized Design
Idealized Design: Three Reactions
Enriching Idealized Design
References
Mental Models in and of Organizations
Define: Model
Mental Models in Organizations
Mental Models of Organizations
Learning with Mental Models
References
The Learning Organization Needs No Apology
The Ornithomancy of Trends
Is Relevance an Algorithm?
Doubting Thomas Is Alive and Well
Blessed Is He Who Expects Nothing, for He Shall Never Be Disappointed
Milk the Cow, but Don’t Pull off the Udder
An Inspiring Language of Change
Why not Create Learning Organizations?
References
The Role of Technology in Organizations
Planning and Driving a Digital Strategy
Quid Digital Transformation?
The Nature of Digital Strategies
Terms of Reference for a Digital Strategy
Framing Digital Engagement
Driving Digital Transformation
References
Information and Communication Technology in Organizations: An Evolutionary Perspective
Information: What’s in a Word?
Information and Communication Technology in the Scheme of Things
Information and Communication Technology in Organizations
Information and Communication Technology: What’s Next?
References
Index

Citation preview

Olivier Serrat

Leading Solutions Essays in Business Psychology

Leading Solutions

Olivier Serrat

Leading Solutions Essays in Business Psychology

Olivier Serrat The Chicago School of Professional Psychology Washington, DC, USA

ISBN 978-981-33-6484-4 ISBN 978-981-33-6485-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Foreword

“You don’t have to do that,” I told Olivier when we first met in October 2017 on the Washington, DC campus of The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Olivier had enrolled full-time in The Chicago School’s Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership program and taken to submitting exhaustive contributions to the Professional Development Seminar I was teaching. Little did I know then that Olivier had just published a magnum opus on open access with Springer (Serrat, 2017). At 550,000 words, by the way, Knowledge Solutions: Tools, Methods, and Approaches to Drive Organizational Performance is as long as Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Little also did I know that—not content with studying 13 core and two elective courses, sitting competency examinations, and writing an original thesis on Leading Organizations of the Future—Olivier also meant to write Leading Solutions: Essays in Business Psychology on the side. It is a pleasure to introduce this book, seeing it accords with the values, primary discipline of interest and practice, international outlook, and model of education of The Chicago School. Rooted since 1979 in a commitment to innovation, service, and community, The Chicago School has innovated in the field of psychology and related behavioral and health sciences. From locations across the United States (Chicago, Dallas, Irvine, Los Angeles, New Orleans, San Diego, and Washington, DC), but entirely online too, The Chicago School offers 30+ degree programs and a wealth of opportunities for international experiences to 5,600 students from nearly 50 countries. Anchored in The Chicago (Engaged–Professional) Model, students graduate with unrivaled skills, ready to make much-needed changes in agencies, community centers, hospitals, nonprofit organizations, private practice, schools, and elsewhere. The Chicago School strives to be the school of choice in professional psychology in the world. Human diversity and ethics, interpersonal dynamics, leadership theories, organizational interventions, research strategies, strategic change management, systems thinking, teambuilding, … Leadership must infuse the organization. The 13 topics this book covers in 45 chapters treat the near-entire range of subjects The Chicago School’s students can master over three years under the Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership program (core credits = 54; elective credits = 6): our students emerge from the program highly qualified to apply the principles of organizational dynamics and v

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Foreword

leadership theory in business, education, government, international organizations, nonprofits, and more. This book gives readers an unusually accessible, critical, and engaging take on what leadership means. In the form of précis—concise statements of essential points—the book combines rounded explanations of theory with article reviews, case studies, development plans, field observations, group work, journal entries, “lived” experience, proposals, reflections, scholarly arguments, self-assessments, and 360degree feedback to shine exceptional insight into the reality and successful practice of leadership, today and tomorrow. The book’s wealth of thoughtful content makes it particularly useful to those contemplating postgraduate degrees in organizational leadership and a top-notch addition to any business library. Renee L. Roman, Ph.D. Department Chair IO/Business Psychology, Organization Leadership, Behavioral Economics, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, Washington, DC, USA

Reference Serrat, O. (2017). Knowledge solutions: Tools, methods, and approaches to drive organizational performance. Springer.

Preface

Organizational leadership programs have seen steady growth in higher education: this is because, by dint of globalization and information and communication technology, the contexts in which individual and group performance intersect have become more dynamic than in the steady-state past. And so, organizations must now—with inspiring vision—define strategy, synergize people, and reach goals from improved endowments of critical thinking, collaboration, interpersonal, and research skills. Over time, organizational leadership programs have emphasized traits, skills, behavior, situation, path–goal, leader–member exchange, transformation, authenticity, servant leadership, adaptation, followership, systems thinking, ethics, teams, gender, and culture, inter alia; today, there is talk of agile, complexity, crisis, global, technology, and virtual leadership. As you would expect, organizational leadership programs have responded to change by continuously renewing their offerings. And, because syllabuses have aimed to ensure a rounded understanding of extant and emerging theory alongside related practice, we are not short of texts on organizational leadership. Even so, if the “why” of scholarly study in organizational leadership is intuitive and the “what” of it is at any time fairly well established, the “how” of courses of study is far less cognized. In other words, knowing something and actually doing it are two very different things. For that reason, this book bridges the know–do gap of a course of study in organizational leadership by demonstrating how to deliver on assignments for superior learning outcomes, this in 45 short arguments covering 13 subjects. I planned this book soon after enrolling in the Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership program of The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, meaning to share the experience with others considering a similar course of studies, including at the master’s level. That said, the book treats many contemporary dilemmas with reallife cases and should also appeal to experienced practitioners across the public, private, and civil society sectors: using a thematic structure, the book illustrates a great many facets of organizational leadership and explores many tools, methods, and approaches to ramp up performance. The book gained in value from early preparation: the treatment of content is even and to the point, regardless of whether the writing is descriptive, expository, narrative, or persuasive. Each précis can be read in vii

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Preface

any order: objectively, the table of contents lists the topics and the précis within them alphabetically. Lastly, the book invites reference to the popular Knowledge solutions: Tools, methods, and approaches to drive organizational performance (Serrat, 2017), which it extends, complements, and synergizes. Washington, DC, USA

Olivier Serrat

Reference Serrat, O. (2017). Knowledge solutions: Tools, methods, and approaches to drive organizational performance. Springer.

Contents

Emerging Theories of Leadership Ethical and Relational Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3

Paradox and Neuroscience: Emerging Theories of Leadership . . . . . . . . .

11

Personal Leadership Development Plans: Essentials and Practicum . . . .

19

Personal Philosophy of Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

27

Personal Philosophy of Leadership (2nd Edition) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

33

Review of Situational Leadership® After 25 Years—A Retrospective (Blanchard, Zigarmi, & Nelson, 1993) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

41

Ethical & Cultural Considerations Ethics: My Own Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

49

Life-Markers and Personal Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55

Reflections on Four Case Studies in Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

57

Group & Team Leadership The Self in Teams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

71

The Self in Teams (Cont’d) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

77

The Self in Teams (Coda) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

85

Leadership Self-Development Establishing Your Fundamental Self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

93

The Challenges of Learning from Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 The Full Range Leadership Model: Essentials and Practicum . . . . . . . . . . 109 ix

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Contents

Management Philosophy & Practice A Taxonomy of Management Theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Mintzberg’s Managing: Implications for Coaching and Training . . . . . . . 151 Mintzberg’s Model of Managing: Random Thoughts from an Observation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Organizational Diagnosis & Cultural Dynamics Synergizing the Competing Values Framework and the Six-Box Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Personality & Lifespan in the Workplace Blustein’s Psychology of Working: A Very Short Introduction . . . . . . . . . 183 Contextual Factors in Working . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Developing Expert Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Identity Processes in Leader Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Leader Development Through Work Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Moral Development for Authentic Leadership Effectiveness . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Seven Entries on Twenty-First Century Working . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 The Reflective Judgment Model: What Role in Leader Development? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 Professional Development Analyzing the Logic of Articles and Textbooks: Essentials and Practicum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Reading Research Articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Scholarly Argument: Linking Doctoral Research to Practice . . . . . . . . . . 249 Psychological, Socio-Cultural, & Political Dimensions of Organizations Critical Psychology and Organizations: The Case of the United Nations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 Development of Critical Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 Minority Population Analysis: The Aeta of the Philippines . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 Minority Populations: There Are More Than Meets the Eye . . . . . . . . . . . 273

Contents

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Qualitative Research Methods Book Analysis of Interviewing as Qualitative Research (Seidman, 2013) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 Research Concept Paper for Leading Organizations of the Future . . . . . . 287 Strategic Change Management Change Management Strategy in Action: Independent Evaluation for Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 Schein’s Process Consultation: Three Reactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 Systems Theory Five Notes on Systems Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 Idealized Design for Virtual Teaming: A Modest Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 Idealized Design: Three Reactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 Mental Models in and of Organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 The Learning Organization Needs No Apology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 The Role of Technology in Organizations Planning and Driving a Digital Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 Information and Communication Technology in Organizations: An Evolutionary Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371

Emerging Theories of Leadership

Ethical and Relational Leadership

Abstract Leaders are in positions of power and their decisions impact others: therefore, it is imperative that their values should have strong ethical foundations and, above all, that these be aligned with external behaviors and actions that advance the common good.

Wheatley (1992) noted that “Leadership is always dependent on the context but the context is established by the relationships we value” (p. 144). In a subsequent edition, Wheatley (2010) drove home more points about relationality, the state or condition of being relational: “Certainly, relationships are a growing theme in today’s leadership thinking. For many years, the prevailing maxim of management stated: ‘Management is getting things done through others.’ The important thing was the work; the ‘others’ were distractions that needed to be managed into conformity and predictability. But now most of us have had to acknowledge that we are human, with our own insistent needs and gifts” (pp. 224–225). Leaders are in positions of power and their decisions impact others: therefore, it is imperative that their values should have strong ethical foundations and, above all, that these be aligned with external behaviors and actions that advance the common good.

A Key Component of Organizational Leadership Wheatley (1992, 2010) was right: what with repeated scandals about leaders,1 emerging theories of leadership have since the onset of the new millennium engaged

Ethical and Relational Leadership was completed on December 12, 2019. 1 Yukl (2014) wrote that “Powerful leaders can have substantial impact on the lives of followers and

the fate of an organization … Powerful leaders can advance their own careers and economic gains at the expense of organization members and the public. Moreover, by making unethical practices appear to be legitimate, a leader can influence other members of the organization to engage in ‘crimes of obedience’” (p. 340). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_1

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Ethical and Relational Leadership

in subtle discussions about ethical leadership, relational leadership,2 and ethical– relational leadership. These days, ethical and relational leadership summon up a profusion of related terms (and associated theories): in his coverage of ethical leadership, Yukl (2014) included authentic, servant, and spiritual leadership (pp. 340–359). Therefore, what follows comes under the denomination of ethical leadership only (but of course embraces relationality). That said, overlaps and occasional disagreements matter not: as Heifetz (1994), cited in Yukl (2014), explained “… there is no ethically neutral ground for theories of leadership, because they always involve values and implicit assumptions about proper forms of influence” (p. 341). Paraphrasing Vielmetter and Sell (2014), the contemporary paradigm is that “doing the right thing” is more than a moral obligation: it is a critical success factor in ethicized, transparent climate in which power is transferred by leaders to their stakeholders. And so, “Altrocentric leaders integrate ethical values, social responsibility, and concerns for health, safety, and the environment into their decision making. They continually seek innovative ways to improve business performance while contributing to the greater good” (Vielmetter & Sell, 2014).3

Ethical Principles and Code of Conduct of the American Psychological Association and Student Rights and Responsibilities of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology Ethics, that Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines as “the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group”, involve systematizing, defending, and recommending behavior. With the remarkable expansion and evolution of its critical theory, the foregoing made the point that questions of ethics have become central to leadership. But, there is more: here and there, statements on ethics have come to express internal values and eternal behaviors deemed of critical importance.

2 Noting earlier that it was a relatively new term in the leadership literature, Uhl-Bien (2006) defined

relational leadership as “a social influence process through which emergent coordination (i.e., evolving social order) and change (e.g., new values, attitudes, approaches, behaviors, and ideologies) are constructed and produced” (p. 655). Komives, Lucas, and McMahon (2007) mapped out its primary characteristics to be purposeful, inclusive, empowering, ethical, and process-oriented. 3 Altrocentric is a neologism that Vielmetter and Sell (2014) coined to oppose egocentric. (Alter means “other” in Latin.) Altrocentric leaders understand that leadership is a relationship: therefore, they focus on others rather than on themselves.

Ethical Principles and Code of Conduct …

5

The American Psychological Association As the study of the mind and behavior, psychology requires certain ethical guidelines when dealing with people as subjects: frequent topics that invoke a practitioner’s moral responsibility relate to confidentiality, debriefing, deception, informed consent, and right to withdraw. The code of conduct enshrined in the American Psychological Association (APA)’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (2019)—aka APA Ethics Code—”provides a common set of principles and standards upon which psychologists build their professional and scientific work … It has as its goals the welfare and protection of the individuals and groups with whom psychologists work and the education of members, students, and the public regarding ethical standards of the discipline” (p. 3). In its latest form,4 the APA Ethics Code includes an introduction, a preamble, five general principles, and 10 ethical standards that psychologists must adhere to in practice, research, and education across a variety of contexts. In the event of violation, the APA may impose sanctions ranging from termination of APA membership to removal of licensure, and may notify other bodies and individuals of its actions. Currently, the five general principles of the APA Ethics Code are (a) beneficence and nonmaleficence, (b) fidelity and responsibility, (c) integrity, (d) justice, and (e) respect for people’s rights and dignity. The principles serve as ideals to which psychologists should aspire: they do not explicitly inform or instruct adherence. Currently also, the 10 ethical standards have to do with (a) resolving ethical issues, (b) competence, (c) human relations, (d) privacy and confidentiality, (e) advertising and other public statements, (f) record keeping and fees, (g) education and training, (h) research and publication, (i) assessment, and (j) therapy. The standards are enforceable rules that psychologists must consider in the context of a professional relationship. Other professional organizations and licensing boards are invited to adopt and enforce the APA Ethics Code. Recurring issues have to do with the boundary between personal and professional life, even if the APA Ethics Code states that psychologists do not need to adhere to the guidelines outside their professional roles. (The argument is that public’s perception of a psychologist’s behavior in his/her personal time may have detrimental effects on professional relationships with clients/patients, students, supervisees, research participants, organizational clients, and others.) On occasion, the APA has sometimes also taken (or been made to take) a public stance on controversial issues; to note, the 2005 Presidential Task Force Report on Psychological Ethics and National Security rubber-stamped the Bush Administration’s claim that psychologists serve to keep detention and interrogation operations safe, legal, ethical, and effective. Triangulation always shines light. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), to name one other association, is the world’s largest professional society, representing 285,000 members in more than 165 countries: the SHRM Code of Ethics covers (a) professional development, (b) ethical leadership, (c) fairness and justice, (d) conflicts of interest, and (e) use of information, with each concern articulated 4 The

APA first published the APA Ethics Code in 1953.

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Ethical and Relational Leadership

around a core principle, a statement of intent, and guidelines (Society for Human Resource Management, 2019). Intriguingly, the APA Ethics Code and the SHRM Code of Ethics share few similarities: at heart, the principles of the former emphasize respect for the value and agency of human beings; the compass of the standards is comprehensive and directional, the tone almost religious, and violation brings sanctions; the principles of the latter are driven by narrower, utilitarian concerns that are not especially colored by anxiety over right and wrong; they read much as terms of reference do. The only principle that the APA Ethics Code and the SHRM Code of Ethics share relates to justice. In the former, resolving ethical issues is a standard that every man and woman must obey; in the latter, ethics is—as a matter of principle only—the business of leadership (and, it follows, no one else). Likewise, privacy and confidentiality is an enforceable rule of the former; use of information, its nearest approximation in the latter, is but a principle there. In a word, the two codes are a world apart even though both have to do with people.

The Chicago School of Professional Psychology The Chicago School of Professional Psychology’s statements on Ethical, Legal, and Professional Conduct are found in The School’s compendium of Student Rights and Responsibilities (2019): they pertain to (a) compliance with institutional policies and procedures, (b) criminal background check, (c) professional comportment, (d) a statement of academic integrity (dealing with cheating, plagiarism, and fabrication), (e) a student code of conduct, (f) sexual misconduct, (g) suspension or revocation of a professional license, and (h) use of computing resources. The statement on Professional Comportment explains that The School recognizes the importance of personal and professional competencies (in addition to traditional academic skills) and aims to boost these: “As an apprentice of professional psychology, the student is holistically evaluated by all members of the learning community on standards of professional performance, development, and functioning that include, but are not limited to, interpersonal and professional competence …; self-awareness and selfreflection …; openness to feedback; and proactive, engaged resolution of issues that may interfere with professional development or functioning” (The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, 2019). Elsewhere, the Student Code of Conduct stipulates that “A student is required to behave in a manner that is suitable for professional study and practice.” and “Additionally, a student is prohibited from engaging in conduct that is detrimental to The School, poses a threat to the welfare of The School’s employees or students, is prohibited by school policies, or is illegal” (The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, 2019). While it is impossible to list all types of misconduct, the Student Code of Conduct identifies a dozen activities that will subject a student to disciplinary action.

Dilemmas in Assessing Ethical Leadership

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Dilemmas in Assessing Ethical Leadership The APA Ethics Code and The School’s statements on Ethical, Legal, and Professional Conduct are par for the course and it is hard to find in them anything to contend with. But, especially if one operates from a position of leadership, what values, motives, and behaviors drive ethical behavior will (as remarked earlier) ineluctably translate into influence.5 And, as Yukl (2014) made abundantly clear, influence is itself a source of ethical concern that may involve fueling enthusiasm for a risky strategy or project, persuading followers to change their underlying values, and influencing decisions that will benefit some at the expense of others (p. 342). In that respect, Gabriel’s (2008) metaphors of “boundary riders” and “ process sentinels” can serve as valuable allies of ethical practice (even if they were developed in the context of psychotherapy).6

Living and Advocating Ethics: Principles for Current and Future Leaders Informed by understanding of what dilemmas can arise from positions of influence, an ethical leader is a person who—from cultivated concern for such values as altruism, empathy, empowerment, fairness and justice, humility, integrity, and personal growth—lives up to principles of ethical conduct he/she deems crucial. At its Annual Meeting in Davos in 2015, the World Economic Forum dedicated one of its opening panels to the question of leadership in the modern world (Seidman, 2015). The panel concluded that only principled, ethical leadership will survive the challenges ahead and offered six principles. Citing in extenso: • Stop and Think—Pausing creates an oasis of composure amid the chaos; it sharpens our awareness. With refined focus, we can connect our consciousness with our conscience. Active pausing is the heart of ethical decision-making, because it encourages reflection and lessens the likelihood of knee-jerk reactions. • Extend Trust—Aristotle taught us that the virtue of trust lies in giving it away. Ethical leaders should know that the best way to be trusted is to trust others. • Have Two-Way Conversations—Leaders used to be able to say: ‘It’s my way or the highway.’ Now, they need to engage with colleagues, customers, and other stakeholders with mutual respect. Acting in a vacuum does not work … • Demonstrate Moral Authority—Ethical leaders realize their power isn’t over people but through people. Leaders can enlist people in any cause if there is a sense of a common mission and shared values. … What unites [leaders] is what 5 Ethical

leadership is related to a leader’s traits but necessarily occurs in a social context. and summarizing, a boundary is a limit line that the “boundary rider” monitors and maintains to preserve the limit and extent of a given relationship. A “ process sentinel” is the guardian of a relationship: it maintains and develops relational content, process, and progress (Gabriel, 2008).

6 Paraphrasing

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Ethical and Relational Leadership

animates them: principled convictions. To achieve real impact, leaders should rely on moral authority. • Shape the Context—Ethical leadership requires reconnecting with your deepest values and re-examining how you think, behave, and make decisions. This means reminding others what you stand for and leading by example. • Lead with Purpose—Now more than ever, success is a by-product of pursuing a higher purpose. … Ethical leadership means doing the ‘next right thing’ and not the ‘next thing right’. … In the new global context, choosing between what’s practical and what’s principled is a false choice; as Aristotle explained, the highest good is both practical and principled. (Seidman, 2015)

Toward a New Modus Vivendi in Organizational Leadership In the twenty-first century, organizations expect that leaders will behave ethically and encourage employees to do the same. Predictably, ethical leadership theories highlight the importance of values; but, they overlook the fact that ethical leadership is not individualized, decontextualized, or power-neutral. The real value of relationality is to interpret ethical leadership as a relational, contextual, and therefore political practice (as the differences between the APA Ethics Code and the SHRM Code of Ethics demonstrate). Relationality helps ethical leaders understand, if they cannot necessarily always offset, what ethical dilemmas come with influence (Liu, 2017). And so, research into how relationships form and develop in the workplace will do much to nurture and then institute a new modus videndi in organizational leadership. Immediately, the aforementioned principles for ethical leadership invite application by virtue of the accent they give to relationality (Seidman, 2015).

References American Psychological Association. (2019). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/ethics/code/. The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. (2019). Student rights and responsibilities. Retrieved from http://catalog.thechicagoschool.edu/content.php?catoid=44&navoid=2178. Gabriel, L. (2008). Relational ethics, boundary riders, and process sentinels: Allies for ethical practice. Based on a program presented at the ACA Annual Conference & Exhibition, Honolulu, HI. Komives, S., Lucas, N., & McMahon, T. (2007). Exploring leadership: For college students who want to make a difference (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Liu, H. (2017). Reimagining ethical leadership as a relational, contextual, and political practice. Leadership, 13(3), 343–367. Seidman, D. (2015, March 16). Six key principles for ethical leadership [Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/03/six-key-principles-for-ethical-leadership/. Society for Human Resource Management. (2019). Code of ethics. Retrieved from https://www. shrm.org/about-shrm/pages/code-of-ethics.aspx.

References

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Uhl-Bien, M. (2006). Relational leadership theory: Exploring the social processes of leadership and organizing. The Leadership Quarterly, 17(6), 654–676. Vielmetter G., & Sell, Y. (2014). Leadership 2030: The six megatrends you need to understand to lead your company into the future. AMACOM. Wheatley, M. (1992). Leadership and the new science: Learning about organization from an orderly universe. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler. Wheatley, M. (2010). Leadership and the new science: Learning about organization from an orderly universe. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler. Yukl, G. (2014). Leadership in organizations (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Paradox and Neuroscience: Emerging Theories of Leadership

Abstract This précis presents a snapshot of leadership theories and notes their shortening lifespan; it comments on why leadership theories emerge and names the most recent. Next, the précis covers organizational paradox and social neuroscience, approaches that are not conditioned by organizational boundaries and seem relevant to the quickening complexity of our times.

If “There’s nothing so practical as a good theory,” as the social, organizational, and applied psychology pioneer Kurt Lewin (1951) quipped to lasting effect, why do we have so many of them in the field of leadership studies? We have or have had— and the following list is not exhaustive—the Great Man Theory, the Trait Theory of Leadership, the Skills Theory of Leadership, the Style Theory of Leadership, the Situational Leadership Theory, the Contingency Theory, Transactional Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Leader–Member Exchange (or Relational) Theory, Distributed Leadership, Servant Leadership Theory, Ethical Leadership Theory, as well as Authentic Leadership Theory. Thinking of scholars and practitioners in leadership studies, “The Blind Men and the Elephant” syndrome comes to mind: ever more, it seems, leadership means different things to different people, with each theory—in turn—claiming its place in the sun and allegiance over the others. Halfheartedly, observers might accept that there must important truths in each leadership theory and the better we know them the better we are likely to lead; to note, having had their fill of the characteristics of the leader and those of the follower, some of the faithful have moved to ponder the characteristic of the situation. What sense are we to make of the volatility of leadership theories that, much as the S&P 500 companies, have a shortening lifespan?1 Since every theory is born out of an environment, there must be a correlation between what theories attract favor and changing needs for explanatory power.

Paradox and Neuroscience: Emerging Theories of Leadership was completed on June 1, 2018. 1 The

lifespan of large, successful companies has never been shorter: in 1965, the average tenure of companies on the S&P 500 was 33 years; by 1990, it was 20 years.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_2

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Paradox and Neuroscience: Emerging Theories of Leadership

Why Theories Emerge Much as the proverbial onion, new leadership theories add to the corpus of knowledge; only rarely do they replace earlier paradigms in a field that, excepting biology, is drawn entirely from social sciences.2 Theories are the products of their times3 : therefore, much as theories in other fields, leadership theories evolve—shift their line of sight might be a better expression—to better explain everyday realities and sometimes also to circumscribe changing circumstances as the goalposts move. Because there has been massive growth and change in the size, prevalence, complexity, and influence of organizations, we should expect additions to the corpus of knowledge in leadership theory. The only constants impacting consideration of leaders and leadership in organizations—the two concerns being increasingly divorced as we shall see—pertains to the division of labor into various tasks to be performed and the coordination of these tasks to accomplish the activity for which an organization was set up (Mintzberg, 1979). Hence, from among emerging theories of leadership,4 it is those that are not conditioned by organizational boundaries and most pertinently enable us to address the quickening complexity of our modern times that should attract attention: two such theories are paradoxical leadership and neuroscience leadership.5 (Complexity leadership is another.) What follows is an aperçu of organizational

2 Warts

and all, the Great Man Theory still attracts followers (even though it was popularized back in the 1840s). The need that people have for charismatic infusion (and their fascination with the power and authority that accompany it) must be hard-wired. 3 Morgan (2006) is a perceptive investigator of the nature of metaphor and its role in understanding organization and management: he distinguishes organizations as machines, organisms, brains, cultures, political systems, psychic prisons, flux and transformation, and instruments of domination; there are profound implications from using imagery—consciously or not—because all organization and management theories are based, usually unconsciously, on which images theorists have in mind. (The image of organizations as machines is common.) Images offer insights but unavoidably engender great distortions. 4 One should qualify the term “emerging“; certainly, nothing presses at the gate. Interest in traits and styles harks back to the 1930s–1940s and 1960s, respectively; contingency became a subject of interest in the 1970s. Supposedly “new” leadership theories feeding off interest in charisma and transformation came into being in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively, both related to the Great Man Theory. (Transformational leadership is probably the most well-researched concept.) Leader– member exchange is a more recent addition from the mid-1990s. Ethics and authenticity joined the family in the late 1990s and early 2000s. From the mid-2000s, applications of complexity science to leadership theory may make up the most recent model; I think they represent the most radical departure compared to previous explanations. An important point is that no theory stands alone: there are key differences but many similarities (if not overlap): stating the obvious, it is more profitable to treat the corpus of knowledge in leadership theory as one, recognizing that not every theory is suited to all circumstances; hence, it is likely that future research will integrate existing theories into an overarching model of leadership effectiveness, hopefully eschewing jargon and vague concepts. 5 Clarifying, paradoxical leadership and neuroscience leadership are more concerned with approaches to how we think about leadership processes and their execution than hard-and-fast theories.

Why Theories Emerge

13

paradox and social neuroscience with brief explanations of how understanding of each might shape leadership actions in workplaces (and elsewhere).

Paradoxical Leadership Merriam-Webster defines a paradox as a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true. The ancient Greeks, to whom Western civilization owes so much, were of course aware that a paradox can take us outside our usual way of thinking: combining para- (“beyond”, “contrary to”, or “outside of”) with doxa (“opinion”, from dokein “to appear, seem, think”), they formed paradoxos, meaning “contrary to expectation.” Today, pace the staidest (and fast-disappearing) working environments, there is little doubt that modern organizations are hotbeds of paradox. We are all familiar with the tensions of organizational life; they impact individuals (work vs. family), leadership (control vs. empowerment), learning (reflection vs. performance), performance (competition vs. collaboration), promotion (seniority vs. meritocracy), rewards (individual vs. group), strategy (change vs. stability), structure (centralization vs. decentralization), and teamwork (task vs. relationships), to name a few. To better explain the new reality and help navigate it, Smith and Lewis (2011) called for a theory of paradox to replace contingency theory (which too commonsensically argues that organizational systems are most effective when internal elements align with the external environment). Citing in full: Organizing raises multiple tensions, such as collaboration–control, individual–collective, flexibility–efficiency, exploration–exploitation, and profit–social responsibility. As environments become more global, fast paced, and competitive, and as internal organizational processes become more complex, such contradictory demands become increasingly salient and persistent. Leaders’ responses to these tensions may be a fundamental determinant of an organization’s fate. … [Accepting that contingency theory offers one response to tensions,] Paradox studies adopt an alternative approach to tensions, exploring how organizations can attend to competing demands simultaneously. Although choosing among competing tensions might aid short-term performance, a paradox perspective argues that long-term sustainability requires continuous efforts to meet multiple, divergent demands. Discussions of paradox from the late 1980s motivated research in such domains as innovation, change, communication and rhetoric, identity, and leadership. (Smith & Lewis, 2011, p. 381)

Helpfully, Smith and Lewis (2011) grouped organizational tensions in four categories that have to do with (a) learning, (b) belonging, (c) organizing, and (d) performing; the four perspectives—surely, a better term than categories—provide eminently practicable entry points for discerning and managing what tensions associate with them. Vitally, Smith and Lewis (2011) also recognized an important ontological debate: Are tensions inherent to systems or are they social constructions that emerge from cognition and rhetoric?6 (p. 383). Awareness that social constructivism 6 From

the field of organizational culture, a parallel to this ontological debate can be found in the work of Martin (2002), who distinguished three perspectives: (a) integration, (b) differentiation,

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Paradox and Neuroscience: Emerging Theories of Leadership

has a hand in the “existence” of tensions can do no harm either: this is because irrespective of whether they are “real” or not organizational tensions cannot be wished away; and so, pending the emergence of new forms of organizing, the organizations, leaders, teams, and individuals that can visualize and reframe paradox will produce superior outcomes (compared with those who cannot). To this intent, Poole and van de Ven (1989) identified four strategic responses: “(i) acceptance, keeping tensions separate and appreciating their differences; (ii) spatial separation, allocating opposing forces across different organizational units; (iii) temporal separation, choosing one pole of a tension at one point in time and then switching; and (iv) synthesis, seeking a view that accommodates the opposing poles” (as cited in Smith & Lewis, 2011, p. 385). Poole and van de Ven (1989) and Smith and Lewis (2011) are complementary texts: the four strategic responses in Poole and van de Ven (1989) (e.g., acceptance, spatial separation, temporal separation, and synthesis) find actionable ground across the four types of organizational tension mentioned in Smith and Lewis (2011) (e.g., learning, belonging, organizing, and performing). Managing paradox turns management from a science into an art: it springs from different mindsets and requires completely new sets of skills. To enlighten the traveling knowledge worker, Smith and Lewis (2012) posited that four leadership skills are necessary: (a) cognitive complexity, (b) confidence, (c) conflict management, and (d) communication7 (p. 227). This said, a word of caution is in order: even if they did not define leadership, Smith and Lewis (2011, 2012) evidently considered it the property of individuals as distinct from a relationship between leaders and followers or a social process: in the event leadership is, say, a social process, there may be no reason to actualize leadership skills for managing paradoxes. Irrespective, there are plenty of opportunities for individuals: Smith, Lewis, and Tushman (2016) recently authored an article on “both/and” leadership that underscored the necessity to have leaders who embrace strategic paradoxes as organizations face increasingly unpredictable, complex, and challenging environments; in closing, Smith, Lewis, and Tushman (2016) cited Nobel Prize–winning physicist Niels Bohr: “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress” (p. 70). This is all sage advice, to be taken at heart in workplaces (and elsewhere).

and (c) fragmentation. [Paradoxically, if wordplay is permitted, Martin (2002) thought that the three socially-constructed perspectives were themselves in irremediable conflict even if she deemed each legitimate.] 7 A great many publications make much of the ambidexterity that paradoxical leadership entails or rests on; Lavine (2014) provided a handy list of sources on the subject (pp. 191–192). Like many in Asia, I believe in the relevance to ambidexterity of the principle of yin–yang, which accepts seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be interconnected, complementary, and even interdependent. Accepting duality, specifically, being able to “hold” competing interests in mind to reap the benefits of positive outcomes from both poles, is about letting go of attachments and preferences, which can be achieved with emotional intelligence and critical honesty about “comfort zones”. “Integrative complexity” is another name for the ability to move beyond the strengths-based paradigm of skill development, think about what to learn next in a fundamentally different ways, listen less to intuition and more to counterintuition, run toward tension, and learn how to work with opponents instead of just one’s friends (Simmons, 2018).

Neuroscience Leadership

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Neuroscience Leadership For most of the twentieth century, social and biological explanations were treated as incompatible. But, from the 1990s, advances in social neuroscience began to vindicate Aristotle’s concept of man and woman as social animals. An exciting new field, the potential of which is well-nigh limitless,8 social neuroscience seeks to understand how biological systems implement social processes and behavior, this to inform and refine theories about the latter. With the help of neurobiological techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging,9 social neuroscience confirms that human life revolves for the most part around pain and pleasure; and so, it ought not surprise that our social behaviors are often governed by one overarching organizing principle, namely, minimizing threat and maximizing reward, the said principle being conditioned by brain networks that are used primarily for survival needs. In The Neuroscience of Leadership, Rock and Schwartz (2006) drew hard conclusions from cutting-edge research (that severally promote or challenge other leadership theories): (a) change is pain, (b) behaviorism does not work, (c) humanism is overrated, (d) focus is power, (e) expectation shapes reality, and (f) attention density shapes identity. Subsequently, Rock (2008) developed a model defining five domains of social experience that are deeply important to the brain, namely, (a) status, (b) certainty, (c) autonomy, (d) relatedness, and (e) fairness, aka SCARF, and which allow exploration of nuanced actions to reduce threats and increase rewards in the context of collaborating with and influencing others.10 With notable exceptions, the authors of books on leadership, certainly in the 1950s–1970s, often had a background in psychology; this may have had to do with the (then) continuing impact of Scientific Management, which aimed to prime individuals and groups for peak performance; and so, earlier leadership studies drew considerably on theories of motivation and personality, to name but two. With social neuroscience, brain-based approaches should help study the building blocks of what professionals do: past the assembly line lampooned in Charlie Chaplin’s cinematographic masterpiece on the industrialized world (Modern Times, 1936), the compass of concerns and possible interventions has grown much wider: social neuroscience can shed bright light on how to, say, make decisions under pressure, negotiate transactions, promote change, solve complex problems, spark creativity and innovation, and try to persuade others. Not to forget, since his work preceded Rock and Schwartz 8 The

ambit of social neuroscience is such that it is only a matter of time before it brings new tools, methods, and approaches to the challenges people and organizations face. 9 Magnetic resonance imaging measures patterns of blood oxygenation responses in the brain as a subject engages in a particular task. 10 Usefully, Rock (2008) also made suggestions for further research, which serve to underscore the limitless potential of the neuroscience of leadership. Questions that still beg answers are: Which of the domains in the SCARF model generate the strongest threats or rewards given different types of organization? What are the links between the five domains? What are the best techniques for minimizing threats and maximizing rewards in each domain? Does the relative importance of each domain vary across, say, individuals, gender, or tenure? What are the implications of the model for organizational design?

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(2006), Ehin (2000) offered fascinating insights to those who seek to understand how one might relate human nature to organizational context: he did so by drawing attention to innate self-centered and other-centered human drives—that we more commonly refer to as selfishness or altruism—and suggesting that for voluntary workplace collaboration and innovation to thrive leadership must develop organizational “sweet spots”. Again, this is all sage advice, to be taken at heart in workplaces (and elsewhere).

Conclusion “I think the [21st] century will be the century of complexity,” Stephen Hawking said on January 23, 2000 in his “millennium” interview by the San Jose Mercury News: this has become a widely cited prophecy and we are, indeed, more than ever in need of practical theory. Past unadventurous obsession with “leaders”, emerging theories must be framed by appreciation of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity because—like it or not—this is the world in which we live. Specifically, such theories must stop explaining the oppressive structures, practices, and habits that conventional leadership theories have covered ad nauseam because the very nature of organizations, nay, the very act of organizing, is now different. Ever more, kaleidoscopic combinations of hierarchy, market, and network (or community) forms of organizing appear in organizations across the public, private, and civil sectors; as a result, leadership styles and frameworks—designed in general for the closed systems of yesteryear—are consumed by fire-fighting (rather than fire prevention and mitigation) and contribute less and less to the success of collective effort. Paradoxical leadership and neuroscience leadership are not hemmed in by organizational boundaries and seem more relevant to the quickening complexity of our times; in the Age of Complexity, their concepts, findings, and recommendations will henceforth shape leadership actions in workplaces (and elsewhere).

References Ehin, C. (2000). Unleashing intellectual capital. Woburn, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann. Lavine, M. (2014). Paradoxical leadership and the competing values framework. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 50(2), 189–205. Lewin, K. (1951). Problems of research in social psychology. In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Field theory in social science: Selected theoretical papers (pp. 155–169). New York, NY: Harper & Row. Martin, J. (2002). Organizational culture: Mapping the terrain. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Mintzberg, H. (1979). The structuring of organizations. Pearson. Morgan, G. (2006). Images of organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Poole, M., & van de Ven, A. (1989). Using paradox to build management and organization theories. The Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 562–578. Rock, D. (2008). SCARF: A brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others. NeuroLeadership Journal, 8(1), 1–9.

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Rock, D., & Schwartz, J. (2006). The neuroscience of leadership. Strategy + Business, 43, 1–10. Simmons, M. (2018, May 5). Studies show that people who have high “integrative complexity” are more likely to be successful [Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://medium.com/the-mission/ studies-show-that-people-who-have-high-integrative-complexity-are-more-likely-to-be-succes sful-443480e8930c. Smith, W., & Lewis, M. (2011). Toward a theory of paradox: A dynamic equilibrium model of organizing. Academy of Management Review, 36, 381–403. Smith, W., & Lewis, M. (2012). Leadership skills for managing paradox. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 5, 227–231. Smith, W., Lewis, M., & Tushman, M. (2016). Both/And leadership. Harvard Business Review, 94(5), 62–70.

Personal Leadership Development Plans: Essentials and Practicum

Abstract Personal leadership development plans are fluid documents that open up opportunities, beget more impact, and lead to greater overall satisfaction.

Personal leadership development plans guide people through their careers: this involves defining a vision, setting goals with timelines, committing to specific actions for achieving them, and re-evaluating those actions (including accomplishment of the plan itself) at regular intervals. Toward a clear purpose—understanding also that plans are worthless but that planning is everything—personal leadership development plans are fluid documents meant to open up opportunities, beget impact, and lead to greater overall satisfaction.

Essentials of Personal Leadership Development Plans Prominent characteristics of leaders are that they know their business and their people, set goals and priorities, insist on realism, follow through, reward doers, and expand people’s capabilities; leaders can bind these building blocks of behavior together because, above all, they are self-aware and constantly work to better themselves and their situations. Some leaders keep a tab by articulating and updating personal leadership development plans, readily accessible as both reminders of and guidelines for the goals they have set for themselves.1 “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality through planning,” said Warren Bennis. There are, of course, many kinds of plans: but, to begin, a leader must Personal Leadership Development Plans: Essentials and Practicum was completed on June 20, 2018. 1 Some leaders also have personal development plans, tailored to achieve peak performance and life

satisfaction; such plans are characterized by a vision of where these individuals want to be and why, understanding of the skills needed to achieve the vision, a good idea of the standards that should be achieved, a level of priority for each skill area, and a road map to get them from where they are to where they want to be. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_3

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Personal Leadership Development Plans: Essentials and Practicum

know what he/she wants to create for the organization he/she leads and the wherewithal of what will take him/her toward that. And so, at the very least, a leader must have a vision, shared to inspire others; he/she must then formulate personal actions, anticipate obstacles and barriers, leverage strengths,2 hold himself/herself accountable, and find ways to both celebrate accomplishments and reflect on shortcomings. Box 1 makes out the essentials of a personal leadership development plan. Box 1: Personal Leadership Development Plan—Essentials Personal Leadership Development Plan Why: My Vision What personal vision guides my life to provide the direction necessary to chart a course and make choices? What: My Personal Leadership Development Goal What can I do, better or differently, that would improve my leadership competencies to deliver the greatest positive outcome for my organization’s performance? How: Actions I Will Take to Accomplish My Personal Leadership Development Goal 1. Plan Actions Desired/Required Behavior

Response

•

•

•

•

2. Anticipate Obstacles/Barriers Obstacle/Barrier

Resolution

•

•

•

•

3. Leverage Strengths Strength

How Will This Strength Help Me Accomplish My Goal?

•

•

•

•

Who: Resources and Support for Achieving My Personal Leadership Development Goal How will I draw on peers and others to track progress, gather feedback, and support my learning? Who will I ask to support me? Who do I know who already possesses the competencies I want to build? With whom should I share my personal leadership development plan? 4. Accountability When will I take actions to meet my goal?

2 Many personal leadership development programs are prefaced by self-assessments: there are 360°

assessment tools, tests of emotional intelligence, the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, the Thomas– Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, etc.

Essentials of Personal Leadership Development Plans

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(continued) (continued) Personal Leadership Development Plan When do I expect to see significant progress? How will I evaluate my progress? When and how will I update my personal leadership development plan? How will I leverage what I learn? 5. Acknowledgement What might be the personal impact of meeting my goal? How might my organization benefit from the changes and improvements that I identified? How will I celebrate when I accomplish my goal?

Note: Full versions of personal leadership development plans would—where relevant—incorporate measures of success and associated means of verification, depending of course on the nature of the personalized content. For example: Is the work being completed to standard? Is the quality of work improving? Is the team (or the organization) becoming stronger? Is the team (or the organization) developing a sense of pride? Is the leader delegating more work? Is the leader sharing authority with those prepared to assume it? Is the leader making sure that systems and routines are in place for all major processes and functions? Is long-term planning relevant, efficient, and effective? Is the team (or the organization) learning new things? Are people recognized and rewarded for their contributions?

Integrating Emerging Theories of Leadership Interest in traits and styles harks back to the 1930s–1940s and 1960s, respectively; contingency became a subject of interest in the 1970s. Supposedly “new” leadership theories feeding off interest in charisma and transformation came into being in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively, both related to the Great Man Theory. (Not surprisingly, transformational leadership is probably the most well-researched concept.) Leader–member exchange is a more recent addition from the mid-1990s. Ethics and authenticity joined the family in the late 1990s and early 2000s. From the mid-2000s, applications of complexity science to leadership theory represent the most radical departure compared to previous explanations.3

3 Complexity leadership theory has been defined as a “leadership paradigm that focuses on enabling

the learning, creative, and adaptive capacity of complex adaptive systems within a context of knowledge-producing organizations” (Uhl-Bien, Marion, & McKelvey, 2007, p. 298).

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Personal Leadership Development Plans: Essentials and Practicum

Owing to information and communication technology and the related synergies of globalization, organizational boundaries have been stretched, morphed, and redesigned to a degree unimaginable 20 years ago. Hence, from among emerging theories of leadership, it is those that are not conditioned by organizational boundaries and most pertinently enable us to address the quickening complexity of our modern times that should resonate with us: complexity leadership is certainly one, as mentioned earlier; neuroscience leadership and paradoxical leadership are two others.

Outline of a Personal Leadership Development Plan Lord and Hall (2005) posited a theory of leadership development suggesting that changes in leadership skills may be viewed from the perspective of learning and expertise, with consideration of the associated changes in information processing and underlying knowledge structures that occur as skill develops. More specifically, they propose that leadership performance is organized in terms of a progression from novice to intermediate to expert skill levels: at each level, the emphasis is on qualitatively different knowledge and information processing capabilities. Because leadership skill development requires proaction on the part of the leader, Lord and Hall (2005) proposed that identity, meta-cognitive processes, and emotional regulation are critical factors in developing the deeper cognitive structures associated with leadership expertise. Lord and Hall (2005) also posited that expert leaders may develop unique skills in grounding their identities and leadership activities in coherent, self-relevant, authentic values. Box 2 presents the outline of a personal leadership development plan that springs from Lord and Hall’s (2005) theory. Box 2: Personal Leadership Development Plan—Practicum Personal Leadership Development Plan: Olivier Serrat Why We live in a digital age in which business and societal interaction increasingly takes place online. Organizational boundaries have been stretched, morphed, and redesigned. Combinations of hierarchy, market, and network (or community) forms of organizing have appeared across the public, private, and civil sectors. Leadership styles and frameworks—designed for the closed systems of yesteryear—are consumed by fire-fighting and seem to contribute less and less to the success of collective effort. My vision is to become a thought leader in organizational metagovernance: specifically, I aim to develop leadership management systems for metagovernance of hierarchies, markets, and networks, this to help interested parties develop and apply situation-specific intervention strategies based on combining, switching, and maintenance of the three organizational forms (continued)

Outline of a Personal Leadership Development Plan

(continued) Personal Leadership Development Plan: Olivier Serrat What Throughout Year 2 and Year 3 of my doctoral studies, I will endeavor to ground and develop my identity and thought leadership skills in coherent, self-relevant, and authentic values How 1. Plan Actions Desired/Required Behavior Response • Values

• Values have utility for self-regulation and for evaluating others. I will identify what coherent, self-relevant, and authentic values, inspired by Schwartz (1992), best speed the accomplishment of my vision. (Ethics and authenticity would count prominently among these.)

• Skills

• Thought leaders must have skills. I will become increasingly cognizant of the fact that skill acquisition depends on both the ability to access problem-specific knowledge and on processing skills. I will also make continuing efforts to appreciate the qualitative changes in process and knowledge that are associated with the development of expertise. Lastly, I will make explicit efforts to record the progression of my skills from novice to intermediate to expert levels

2. Anticipate Obstacles/Barriers Obstacle/Barrier

Resolution

• Subject Matter

• The doctoral dissertation that I have in mind, provisionally titled Leading Organizations of the Future, will from the outset entail reference to a vast body of literature on governance; next, it will call for an ambitious fusion of related concepts; lastly, it will invite generation or development of a new model for metagovernance. Considerable discipline will have to underpin all related efforts. In addition to complexity leadership and paradoxical leadership (about which more below), I expect that neuroscience leadership will help me elucidate what elements of trust and relationship building can encourage engagement and positive working relationships in hybrid organizations

• Time Management

• I will develop greater awareness of tools and techniques for general time management, prioritization, scheduling, concentration and focus, goal setting, and self-motivation (continued)

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Personal Leadership Development Plans: Essentials and Practicum

(continued) Personal Leadership Development Plan: Olivier Serrat 3. Leverage Strengths Strength

How Will This Strength Help Me Accomplish My Goal?

• Research Networks

• I am a member of research networks such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu, where I rank among the top 2.5–3%, sometimes higher. Membership allows me to receive answers to research questions, share my expertise to other members and my followers, and find collaborators. I also have a presence on Google Scholar, which recorded close to 1,250 citations of my work as of June 2018, thereby enhancing academic standing

• Ability to Synthesize

• From much reading across disciplines, I have developed the ability to synthesize—or combine elements of several sources—to help make a point. Writing a strong researched paper requires such ability. In the face of information overload, some have even called the ability to synthesize (joining the dots, making out patterns, sifting the relevant from the irrelevant, and seeing contrasts) the No. 1 survival skill of the twenty-first century. As organizational ecologies become increasingly dynamic, complex, and competitive, we will face intensified contradictory, or seemingly paradoxical, demands: every one of us—not just leaders—must develop paradoxical leadership understandings and behaviors so we might visualize and reframe paradox (and thereby produce superior outcomes). I will work to strengthen my ability to synthesize. To manage the many paradoxes I experienced in prior work engagements, I adopted the principle of yin–yang, which accepts that seemingly opposite or contrary forces might actually be interconnected, complementary, and even interdependent. The principle of yin–yang serves well when one must synthesize

Who To gather feedback and support my learning I will leverage my research (and other) networks. To track progress I will rely on what scores and citations my research networks advertise as well as the grades and advice I receive at school. I have identified the primary authorities in the fields of complexity leadership and metagovernance. Familiarizing myself with their work will be the object of the literature review I must conduct toward my doctoral dissertation. My qualitative research will also be “grounded” in data gathered through interviews with four or five of the said authorities. Because NVivo is suited to gaining rich insights from unstructured data I may conduct text analyses of the work of experts in metagovernance of hierarchies, markets, and networks, this to ground-truth of sorts what insights the interviews may produce 4. Accountability (continued)

Outline of a Personal Leadership Development Plan

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(continued) Personal Leadership Development Plan: Olivier Serrat All actions to meet the goal are ongoing. I am monitoring progress on a daily and weekly basis, the principal instruments being rising scores and numbers of citations on Academia.edu, Google Scholar, and ResearchGate, as well as what grades I achieve and what feedback I receive at school. One other measure of progress is the number of followers on Academia.edu and ResearchGate. This personal leadership development plan is designed for three years: it is purposeful and self-contained and I do not anticipate having to update it. I will leverage what I learn in the form of the doctoral dissertation I must write (and will continue to self-publish spin-offs in personalized formats every now and then) 5. Acknowledgement I expect the personal impact of meeting my goal to be increased visibility as an expert leader in the field of metagovernance. Beyond one single organization, the parties that would benefit from the changes and improvements that I can identify in the doctoral dissertation would be those who make sense out of the Leadership Management System I will develop. Understanding that celebration gives closure and provides encouragement to continue, reflecting on the path I took will be my way of celebrating the accomplishment of the goal

Personal Philosophy of Leadership “The basic practical–moral problem in life is not what to do, but what kind of person to be” (Cunliffe, 2009, p. 94). Assuming no one will disagree with such a statement of the obvious, it follows from Cunliffe’s (2009) maxim that personal leadership development plans are necessary but not sufficient: personal philosophies of leadership must underpin them. Anchored in a previous discussion of theory, principles, attitude, and behavior for leadership, what follows is a—perforce simple—personal philosophy of leadership to convoy the personal leadership development plan I wrote up earlier, next, move beyond it (Serrat, 2018a, 2018b): Organizations exist to make people’s skills and capabilities effective. From the philosophy that leadership is a responsibility that must be shared by all parties to the act of organizing, I aim in a process of social influence to grow more leaders to bring out the best in fellow knowledge workers so they accomplish more together, in more meaningful ways, than they imagined they might. Implicit in this statement are directions about how I lead and choose to influence, what I value, what I expect from partners, what I do not accept, and—especially— what type of environment I am committed to creating.

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References Cunliffe, A. (2009). The philosopher leader. Management Learning, 40(1), 87–101. Lord, R., & Hall, R. (2005). Identity, deep structure, and the development of leadership skill. The Leadership Quarterly, 16, 591–615. Schwartz, S. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 1–65. San Diego, CA7 Academic Press. Serrat, O. (2018a). Personal philosophy of leadership. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Serrat, O. (2018b). Personal philosophy of leadership (2nd edition). Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R., & McKelvey, B. (2007). Complexity leadership theory: Shifting leadership from the Industrial age to the knowledge era. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(4), 298–318.

Personal Philosophy of Leadership

Abstract This précis tables a preliminary statement of a personal philosophy of leadership. The statement is informed by theoretical perspectives on leadership—themselves based on new-wave leadership literature; key leadership influences; cultural identity; trends in the development of post-bureaucratic organizations; and sundry work experiences.

The old chestnut that organizations are over-managed and under-led needs repeating. Management is a maturing, seemingly omnipresent technology that has witnessed few genuine breakthroughs since Frederick Winslow Taylor and Max Weber set the ground rules 100 years ago in response to and in tune with the emergence of corporations in the twentieth century. To be sure, management remains necessary: especially when they are big, organizations must predictably do what they are supposed to be good at. However, in an increasingly competitive and volatile world beset by interconnected challenges, we must kindle individual and, especially, collective leadership (Ospina & Uhl-Bien, 2011). More change always demands more leadership but erstwhile popular theories about “successful” leaders or their special relationships with followers are fast losing traction in the hurly-burly of the twenty-first century. So, if leadership is not “focused” but—as more and more want it to be—an “outcome”, how might we multiply the occurrence of it?1

Personal Philosophy of Leadership was completed on May 14, 2018. 1 Bolden et al. (2011) grouped theories of leadership in three categories: (a) leadership as a property

of leaders, with related consideration of the traits of leadership, leadership behaviors and styles, situational and contingency approaches, and leadership skills and functions; (b) leadership as a relationship between leaders and followers, with related consideration of leader–member exchange theory and follower-centered perspectives, transformational and charismatic leadership, and servant and quiet leadership; and (c) leadership as a social process, with related consideration of shared and distributed leadership, and discursive and constitutive leadership. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_4

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Formative Experiences of Leadership This is not to say—far from it—that we can learn nothing from the past: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” said Isaac Newton. The past is to the present what the future is to the present: it is intimate part of it. Nor is it that Bolden, Gosling, Hawkins, and Taylor’s (2011) categories discreet or mutually exclusive. Analogously, but from a humbler standpoint, what leadership means to me stems naturally in large part from professional and personal experience, modulated by afterthought: two examples, outlined below, bear this out. In my professional life, in the wake of the 1997–1998 financial crisis, I had the good fortune of working closely with—we never felt we worked under—a senior Japanese civil servant tasked by the international community with reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific (a region that is still home to nearly half of the world’s poorest people). He was a very approachable (and singularly humane) person: a senior official in a large bureaucracy, he resisted the illusion of positional power and control to draw leadership from every one and re-engage people. He beckoned and hosted leadership: Who works here? What do they know? If they contribute fully, how might their insights engender solutions to problem? From him, I learned about distributed leadership, which means that leadership at all levels matters and must be drawn from, not just be added to, individuals and groups in organizations. He was Tadao Chino (1934–2008), the seventh President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Asian Development Bank between 1999 and 2005. In my personal life, I had the privilege of learning from a self-made man. From underprivileged circumstances that should not have seen him continue studies beyond the age of 14, he rose to senior positions in the Ministry of Public Works and the National School of Public Civil Engineering in France; he was responsible among others for promoting French works and services in West Africa and then the whole of the Asian and Pacific region. In recognition of remarkable success, he was awarded the National Order of Merit. “Si tu veux, tu peux,” he would repeat. (If you can will it, you can achieve it.) A scrupulously honest man who stood against privilege, he believed fiercely in self-actualization. From him, I learned about servant leadership, a practical, altruistic philosophy that supports people who choose to serve first, and then lead, as a way of expanding service to individuals and organizations. He was Pierre Serrat (1931–2014), my father.2

2 Springing

from background, education, and sundry work assignments, the principal driver of my cultural identity is that of a global citizen; the tags of other drivers would be male, well-traveled, polyglot, multidisciplinary competencies, interested in post-bureaucratic organizations, and keen on organizational leadership. Apart from the immediate family history recounted, I do not sense that facets such as religion or culture have influenced the personal leadership philosophy delineated here: my views owe principally to experience in Africa, Europe, and the Asian and Pacific region, leavened by much reading of history.

Next Steps for Leadership

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Next Steps for Leadership Much as the past, the present, and the future, theory and practice are inexorably intertwined: to plumb organizational leadership one must continuously fathom the evolving nature of leadership itself, successful expressions of which coevolve with, when they cannot anticipate, the changing environment. This is not easy because, quintessentially, the study of leadership must often focus on the challenge of change. Stephen Hawking holds that the twenty-first century will be the “century of complexity”: one size will not fit all and we should use the right tool for the job, which as the case may be can include older notions and practices of leadership; accordingly, complexity leadership theory that eschews entity and constructionist perspectives, espouses relational leadership,3 and frames modes—not styles—of leadership in multiple contexts, e.g., simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic, should with knowledge management find a place in new-age organizational development (Ospina & Uhl-Bien, 2011). The purpose of leadership, rather than its definition, must be the focal point of leadership in the twenty-first century. (Hickman, 2010) Bolden, Gosling, Hawkins, and Taylor’s related insights appeal too: they proposed to recast leadership as “(1) a process, (2) of social influence, (3) to guide, structure, and/or facilitate, (4) behaviors, activities, and/or relationships, (5) towards the achievement of shared aims” (Bolden et al., 2011, p. 39).

On Personal Philosophies of Leadership Quite literally, the term “philosophy“ means “love of wisdom” (from Greek philo“loving” + sophia “knowledge, wisdom”). Notwithstanding, from the general to the particular (and with an eye to keeping the list short), philosophy is severally defined by Merriam-Webster and other dictionaries as all learning exclusive of technical precepts and practical arts; a search for a general understanding of values and reality by chiefly speculative rather than observational means; the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct; a system of principles for guidance in practical affairs; a theory or attitude that acts as a guiding principle for behavior; the most basic beliefs, concepts, and attitudes of an individual or group; a personal foundation or belief in human nature; an integrated, comprehensive view of life; etc. It follows that a personal philosophy of life is, self-evidently, personal (in the sense that it concerns one’s private life, relationships, and emotions); something one chooses (meaning, that adherence springs from reflection and concomitant determination); and foundational (that is, a core of theory and allied principles), thereby providing the bedrock of sense- and decision-making. A personal philosophy of life draws from purposeful reflection over, let us say, what one values, truly believes, often does, 3 Citing

Ospina and Uhl-Bien (2011): “We have characterized relationality as the understanding that individuals and collectives constitute a field of relationships, which in turn implies that each individual represents the intersection of multiple relationships” (p. 6).

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Personal Philosophy of Leadership

cares about, respects, is curious about, is comfortable with, listens to, spends time on, and hopes to inspire. Philosophy and leadership may seem an odd combination: but, leadership without philosophy is a rudderless ship sailing for distant lands. Consolidating from the above, leadership needs: • Theory—which evolves as new data and information are processed and one learns from individual and collective experience. • Principles—which keep us grounded and consistent in how we lead. • Attitude—which influences fellow knowledge workers in such ways that meaningful results are jointly desired. • Behavior—which is where actions match words (and vice versa) and trust is gained (or lost if they do not).

My Personal Philosophy of Leadership Of course, we can cite famous people: but, the essence of leadership is that it is about what is inside each of us; if we are to live it every day we must all define leadership in our personal ways. “The basic practical–moral problem in life is not what to do, but what kind of person to be”4 (Cunliffe, 2009, p. 94). What is more, the by the organizations we work to build must contextualize the purpose of our leadership: organizing is a key activity in life and organizations are its most visible manifestation.5 An organization happens when people come together and match up with commitment and trust; this said, we know that pursuing a mission without achieving results is dispiriting and that accomplishing results without a mission is meaningless. Unappreciated or dispirited knowledge workers cannot strive, let alone take part, in a highly competitive world: to unleash what synergies come from shared responsibility, the leader in each of us must build diverse and dispersed leadership, distributing leadership to the outermost edges of our organizations. Anchored in the foregoing discussion of theory, principles, attitude, and behavior, what follows is a—perforce simple—personal philosophy of leadership, that I try with character to model consistently in such ways that encourage collaboration toward shared purpose: 4 Cunliffe’s (2009) related reflections on the theme of the Philosopher Leader—in which leadership

becomes a process of thinking more critically and reflexively about ourselves, our actions, and the situations we find ourselves in—are engaging. To develop leaders, she recommends actions along three threads: (a) relational experience (meaning, the phenomenological way of understanding who we are), (b) ethics (meaning, the unfolding of the moral process of recognizing that we are accountable for our self, our actions, and our relationships), and (c) reflexivity (meaning, selfreflection to understand, be responsible, and be true to ourselves in relation to the pressures and influences around us) (Cunliffe, 2009, p. 87). 5 Change is an inevitable part of life and the twenty-first century certainly has its share of it. But, we need to do more than simply respond; we must ask: “What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the organization I serve?” (Lest we forget, we must reach beyond the walls as well.)

My Personal Philosophy of Leadership

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Organizations exist to make people’s skills and capabilities effective. From the philosophy that leadership is a responsibility that must be shared by all parties to the act of organizing, I aim in a process of social influence to grow more leaders to bring out the best in fellow knowledge workers so they accomplish more together, in more meaningful ways, than they imagined they might. Implicit in this statement are directions about how I lead and choose to influence, what I value, what I expect from partners, what I do not accept, and—especially— what type of environment I am committed to creating.

References Bolden, R., Gosling, J., Hawkins, B., & Taylor, S. (2011). Exploring leadership: Individual, organizational, and societal perspectives. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Cunliffe, A. (2009). The philosopher leader. Management Learning, 40(1), 87–101. Hickman, G. (Ed.). (2010). Leading organizations: Perspectives for a new era (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Ospina, S., & Uhl-Bien, M. (2011). Exploring the competing bases for legitimacy in contemporary leadership studies. In M. Uhl-Bien & S. Ospina (Eds.), Advancing relational leadership research: A dialogue among perspectives (pp. 1–40). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Personal Philosophy of Leadership (2nd Edition)

Abstract This précis revisits an opening statement on a personal philosophy of leadership: that initial statement was informed by theories of leadership; formative experiences of leadership; cultural identity; trends in the development of postbureaucratic organizations; and sundry work experiences. This revised edition offers reflections on the initial statement, drawing from scholarly readings, discussions, and other developments since the “first edition”.

Today, most organizations promulgate vision and mission statements, organizational philosophies, and value propositions. Concise explanations of an organization’s raison d’être and theory of the business guide its personnel and inform clients, audiences, and partners: a personal leadership philosophy can serve the same purpose by letting interested parties know what its author values, believes, does, cares about, respects, is curious about, is comfortable with, listens to, spends time on, and hopes to inspire. Much as a compass, a personal philosophy of leadership can also keep its author on course.

My Personal Philosophy of Leadership (1st Edition) Springing from a discussion of theories of leadership, formative experiences of leadership, cultural identity, trends in the development of post-bureaucratic organizations, and sundry work experiences, my initial statement on a personal philosophy of leadership read: Organizations exist to make people’s skills and capabilities effective. From the philosophy that leadership is a responsibility that must be shared by all parties to the act of organizing, I aim in a process of social influence to grow more leaders to bring out the best in fellow knowledge workers so they accomplish more together, in more meaningful ways, than they imagined they might. Implicit in this statement are directions about how I lead and choose to influence, what I value, what I expect from partners, what I do not accept, and—especially— what type of environment I am committed to creating. (Serrat, 2018) Personal Philosophy of Leadership (2nd Edition) was completed on June 28, 2018. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_5

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Two observations can be made considering the language and concern of the “first edition”: • Language. Personal leadership philosophies are not personal ads. The “first edition” made sure to eschew what exaggerations all too commonly characterize the “ideal leader” and are therefore found in the majority of personal leadership philosophies, viz., action-oriented/proactive; authentic; confident/selfaware; creative/positive; customer-/quality-focused; excellent communicator; flexible; good delegator; highly competent; humble; innovator/risk-taker; learns from mistakes; passionate/committed; personally accountable; supportive; team player/collaborator; tough but fair; visionary; etc. • Concern: Self-Centered vs. Other-Centered. Personal leadership philosophies are not necessarily about their author. Differently, what few (sets of) keywords characterized the “first edition” all had to do with other persons: sequentially, one reads about “people’s skills and capabilities”, [to be made] “effective”, “shared responsibility”, “more leaders”, “fellow knowledge workers”, “together”, and “meaningful”. And so, the central message of the “first edition” had to do with democratic leadership.1

Emerging Perspectives on Leadership Vastly different conceptions of leadership have generated a somewhat bewildering literature. A helpful way to classify leadership theory is to arrange it according to what type of variable each conception emphasizes: usefully, Yukl (2014) discerned three primary variables (a) characteristics of the leader, (b) characteristics of followers, and (c) characteristics of the situation. Bolden, Gosling, Hawkins, and Taylor (2011) made the same point.2 Thence, since no variable can be entirely self-contained (but 1 Democratic

leadership, aka participative or shared leadership, is a style of leadership whereby the members of a group are given a more participative role in decision making, based on candid conversations, collaboration, competence, the free flow of ideas, honest and open minds, morality and values, and trust and mutual respect. To note, even if democratic leaders allow shared participation in decision making, they often decide who is a member of the group tasked with that and offer guidance to keep discussions balanced and controlled. Democratic leadership does not equate with free-for-all anarchy. Some best practices are to create a streamlined decision-making process, keep a record of all ideas suggested, and before that—of course—recruit and involve the right people. 2 Bolden et al. (2011) presented three useful theoretical perspectives on leadership: (a) leadership as a property of leaders, with related consideration of the traits of leadership, leadership behaviors and styles, situational and contingency approaches, and leadership skills and functions; (b) leadership as a relationship between leaders and followers, with related consideration of leader–member exchange theory and follower-centered perspectives, transformational and charismatic leadership, and servant and quiet leadership; and (c) leadership as a social process, with related consideration of shared and distributed leadership, and discursive and constitutive leadership. Thence, Bolden et al. (2011) proceeded to (re)define leadership as “(1) a process, (2) of social influence, (3) to guide, structure, and/or facilitate, (4) behaviors, activities, and/or relationships, (5) towards the achievement of shared aims” (pp. 20–21).

Emerging Perspectives on Leadership

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interacts with the others), we have intra-individual theories, dyadic theories, grouplevel theories, and organizational-level theories. (Of course, there are multi-level theories too.) For sure, no single, “correct” definition of leadership can cover all situations: what should matter is how useful each conceptualization is for increasing understanding; in the twenty-first century, however, most leadership theories are coming up increasingly short. “Old paradigm” trait approaches and notions of situational, contingency, transactional, and even transformational leadership—all of which smack of command-and-control more or less overtly—cannot serve the miscellany of organizations that need leadership in the workplace in the twenty-first century. In any case, “ordinary” people work with remarkable success in extraordinarily challenging circumstances all over the world, yet do not advertise superhuman characteristics in their leadership styles. And so, what recent additions have been made to the body of knowledge ought to be of interest. Of course, everyone has a Top 3 or Top 5 of what theories best explain (and perhaps predict) leadership in a world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, aka VUCA. At The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, some emerging theories (perspectives might be a better word) are taken to include ethical and relational leadership; paradoxical leadership; the neuroscience of leadership; emotional leadership; and gender, diversity, and cross-cultural leadership. The School makes passing mention of complexity leadership theory, which may however be the only completely new theory (albeit still in-the-making).3 • Ethical and Relational Leadership. Since the onset of the new millennium, discussions on ethical and relational leadership summon up a profusion of related terms (and associated theories): in his coverage of ethical leadership, Yukl (2014) included authentic, servant, and spiritual leadership. But, overlaps and occasional disagreements matter not: as Heifetz (1994), cited in Yukl (2014), explained “… there is no ethically neutral ground for theories of leadership, because they always involve values and implicit assumptions about proper forms of influence” (Yukl, 2014, p. 341). Paraphrasing Vielmetter and Sell (2014), the contemporary paradigm is that “doing the right thing” is more than a moral obligation: it is a critical success factor in ethicized, transparent climate in which power is 3 To

emerge is to become manifest: this means that what theory emerges need not be entirely new; the only requirement is that it should have come to (some degree of) prominence from a hitherto obscure (or uncertain) position. Depending on how one defines “emerging“, then, other candidates might include evolutionary leadership theory (which states that leading and following are adaptive behavioral strategies that have evolved to solve social coordination problems, the relationship between a leader and his/her followers is fundamentally ambivalent, and modern organizational structures are sometimes inconsistent with the innate psychological mechanisms of leading and following); leader–member exchange (LMX) theory (a still evolving descriptive theory that explains how people relate to and interact with one another); organizational socialization theory (which looks at the processes by which people learn about and adjust to the knowledge, skills, attitudes, expectations, and behaviors needed for new or changing roles in organizations and intuits that without understanding a culture one cannot understand its leadership and vice versa); and social impact theory (which examines the rules whereby individuals can be sources or targets of social influence, with social impact a function of the strength of the source of impact, the immediacy of the event, and the number of sources exerting the impact).

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transferred by leaders to their stakeholders. “Altrocentric leaders integrate ethical values, social responsibility, and concerns for health, safety, and the environment into their decision making. They continually seek innovative ways to improve business performance while contributing to the greater good” (Vielmetter & Sell, 2014). • Paradoxical Leadership. From the late 1980s, many have argued that the orthodox world of ordering, controlling, and organizing should be replaced by a normalizing world of disordering, disrupting, and disorganizing. Handy (1994) was a notable precursor with The Age of Paradox. Today, pace the staidest (and fast-disappearing) working environments, there is little doubt that modern organizations are hotbeds of paradox. We are all familiar with the tensions of organizational life; they impact individuals (work vs. family), leadership (control vs. empowerment), learning (reflection vs. performance), performance (competition vs. collaboration), promotion (seniority vs. meritocracy), rewards (individual vs. group), strategy (change vs. stability), structure (centralization vs. decentralization), and teamwork (task vs. relationships), to name a few. Helpfully, Smith and Lewis (2011) grouped organizational tensions in four categories that have to do with (a) learning, (b) belonging, (c) organizing, and (d) performing. To engage paradox, Poole and van de Ven (1989) had earlier identified four strategic responses: “(i) acceptance, keeping tensions separate and appreciating their differences; (ii) spatial separation, allocating opposing forces across different organizational units; (iii) temporal separation, choosing one pole of a tension at one point in time and then switching; and (iv) synthesis, seeking a view that accommodates the opposing poles” (as cited in Smith & Lewis, 2011, p. 385). Accepting duality, specifically, being able to “hold” competing interests in mind to reap the benefits of positive outcomes from both poles, is about letting go of attachments and preferences, which can be achieved with emotional intelligence and critical honesty about “comfort zones”. • The Neuroscience of Leadership. Neuroscience is the study of the structure or function of the nervous system and brain. Because humans are a social species, social neuroscience has grown as an interdisciplinary field aiming to understand how biological systems implement social processes and behavior and how biological concepts and methods might inform and refine theories of social processes and behavior. In The Neuroscience of Leadership, Rock and Schwartz (2006) drew hard conclusions from cutting-edge research (that severally promote or challenge other leadership theories): (a) change is pain, (b) behaviorism does not work, (c) humanism is overrated, (d) focus is power, (e) expectation shapes reality, and (f) attention density shapes identity. Subsequently, Rock (2008) developed a model defining five domains of social experience that are deeply important to the brain, namely (a) status, (b) certainty, (c) autonomy, (d) relatedness, and (e) fairness, aka SCARF, and which allows exploration of nuanced actions that reduce threats and increase rewards in the context of collaborating with and influencing others.4 4 Usefully,

Rock (2008) made suggestions for further research, the scope of which underscores the limitless potential of the neuroscience of leadership. Questions that still beg answers are: Which

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• Emotional Leadership. Emotional intelligence describes an ability, capacity, skill, or self-perceived ability to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one’s self, of others, and of groups. And so, emotional leadership theory proposes (quite reasonably) that a leader’s emotions, be they positive or negative, influence the performance of individuals and groups in an organization. The theory posits a correlation between positive emotion and effective leadership: with emotional intelligence, leaders can transmit positive moods to individuals and groups through the mechanism of emotional contagion; the specific processes through which they can do so include feedback, in-depth conversations, task allocation, resource distribution, etc. Six emotional leadership styles have been proposed (e.g., affiliative, coaching, commanding, democratic, pacesetting, and visionary), with each style having different effects on the emotions of personnel in organizations. To note, emotional leadership has been criticized precisely because it rests (and perhaps plays) on emotions: detractors find it impulsive; unbalanced; (unnecessarily) feelings-based (whereas effective leaders are expected to have a higher level of self-control than others), which may lead to unethical decisions; and driven by sympathy (as opposed to empathy). • Gender, Diversity, and Cross-Cultural Leadership. Leadership studies have focused on gender and diversity for about 30 years; however, they fixated on differences (and similarities) between male and female leaders and did little other than ponder whether diversity was something a leader had to enhance or just cope with. The focus on gender, for one, has taken a more recent critical turn whereby stereotyped views of masculinity and femininity have been questioned and gendered representations in leadership theory and discourse have been problematized (e.g., the glass ceiling and glass cliff). Meanwhile, the ambit of diversity has grown to include ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, education, and even gender, thus shaping ever more multifaceted concerns (e.g., the bamboo ceiling, the brass ceiling, the concrete ceiling, the glass closet, the sticky floor, etc.) from which one coherent body of theory (as distinct from a set of sometimes conflicting perspectives) is not likely to emerge. Cross-cultural considerations aside, what with the irreversible incorporation of women in the economy and their (slowly) growing but undoubtedly deserved representation in the higher echelons of management, some wonder also whether gender is indeed of such importance to leadership. • Complexity Leadership. Leadership theories of the twentieth century were the expressions of what top-down, bureaucratic paradigms characterized and gave impetus to the Industrial Age; but, to more and more observers, they are not suitable for knowledge economies. Drawing from complexity science, complexity leadership theory reframes leadership as a complex interactive dynamic from which adaptive outcomes emerge. Specifically, complexity leadership theory of the domains in the SCARF model generate the strongest threats or rewards given different types of organization? What are the links between the five domains? What are the best techniques for minimizing threats and maximizing rewards in each domain? Does the relative importance of each domain vary across, say, individuals, gender, or tenure? What are the implications of the model for organizational design? (Rock, 2008, p. 8).

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focuses on enabling the learning, creative, and adaptive capacity of complex adaptive systems in the context of knowledge-producing organizations; its conceptual framework articulates the three (intertwined) roles of adaptive, administrative, and enabling leadership.

My Personal Philosophy of Leadership (2nd Edition) Recapping, it can be seen that complexity, culture, diversity, emotions, ethics, gender, neuroscience, paradox, and relations are additional concerns pressing for inclusion in leadership studies. (Not to forget, others could have to do with evolutionary leadership theory, leader–member exchange theory, organizational socialization theory, and social impact theory, to name a few.) Reiterating, my “first edition” of a personal philosophy of leadership read: Organizations exist to make people’s skills and capabilities effective. From the philosophy that leadership is a responsibility that must be shared by all parties to the act of organizing, I aim in a process of social influence to grow more leaders to bring out the best in fellow knowledge workers so they accomplish more together, in more meaningful ways, than they imagined they might. Implicit in this statement are directions about how I lead and choose to influence, what I value, what I expect from partners, what I do not accept, and—especially— what type of environment I am committed to creating. (Serrat, 2018)

Reflecting on the “first edition” in light of the emerging theories outlined here, I can confirm that culture, diversity, emotions, ethics, gender, neuroscience, and relations are implicit in the other-centered, democratic expression of his personal philosophy of leadership. There remains complexity and paradox which, if they are not implicit, are nonetheless implied: recognition that organizations exist to make people’s skills and capabilities effective but signifying nonetheless the intention to make doubly sure of that intimates appreciation of paradox; and complexity leadership theory, we saw, rests on enhancements to learning, creative, and adaptive capacity that are also already abundantly implied in the text. And so, until such time that experience, circumstances, or events demand modifications, I reckon that the “second edition” of my personal philosophy of leadership can remain unchanged.

Postscript Sometimes, our personal philosophy of leadership may be irrelevant to the situation at hand; in certain such cases—most likely complex (but perhaps even chaotic)— one must be patient, allow time for reflection, and use approaches (such as listening fully to others) that encourage interaction so patterns can emerge; in other such cases, it may just be that our values do not fit the organization we are working in (or dealing with) and one should refrain from fighting its culture. Whenever the situation demands it, provided one’s integrity is not threatened, compromising may

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be the closest thing to winning. An ideal is worth aspiring to and worth using as a standard only if we can get there from here; if not, the second best is the first best.

References Bolden, R., Gosling, J., Hawkins, B., & Taylor, S. (2011). Exploring leadership: Individual, organizational, and societal perspectives. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Handy, C. (1994). The age of paradox. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Poole, M., & van de Ven, A. (1989). Using paradox to build management and organization theories. The Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 562–578. Rock, D. (2008). SCARF: A brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others. NeuroLeadership Journal, 8(1), 1–9. Rock, D., & Schwartz, J. (2006). The neuroscience of leadership. Strategy + Business, 43, 1–10. Serrat, O. (2018). Personal philosophy of leadership. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Smith, W., & Lewis, M. (2011). Toward a theory of paradox: A dynamic equilibrium model of organizing. Academy of Management Review, 36, 381–403. Vielmetter G., & Sell, Y. (2014). Leadership 2030: The six megatrends you need to understand to lead your company into the future. AMACOM. Yukl, G. (2014). Leadership in organizations (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Review of Situational Leadership® After 25 Years—A Retrospective (Blanchard, Zigarmi, & Nelson, 1993)

Abstract The situational leadership theory holds that leaders should change their style based on the competence and commitment of followers. This précis critiques Blanchard, Zigarmi, and Nelson’s (1993) research article on the subject, which offered a 25-year retrospective of the Situational Leadership Model, one of the more widely recognized approaches to leadership.

Yukl (2013) identified that three variables help understand leadership effectiveness: (a) characteristics of leaders, (b) characteristics of followers, and (c) characteristics of the situation1 (p. 10). The Situational Leadership Model by Hersey and Blanchard, which looks into the characteristics of a situation, is one of the more widely recognized approaches to leadership.2 The Situational Leadership Model maintains that there is no single “best” style of leadership: effective leadership is task-relevant and successful leaders are those who adapt their style to the Performance Readiness (ability and willingness) of the individual(s) or group(s) they mean to lead or Review of Situational Leadership® After 25 Years—A Retrospective (Blanchard, Zigarmi, & Nelson, 1993) was completed on May 19, 2018. 1 For

each variable, Yukl (2013) gave examples of what might be termed drivers. He identifies those that impact the characteristics of the situation, with which the research article concerns itself, to be (a) the type of organizational unit, (b) the size of organizational unit, (c) the position power and authority of leader, (d) the task structure and complexity, (e) organizational culture, (f) environmental uncertainty and change, (g) external dependencies and constraints, and (h) national cultural values. 2 Inspired by the changing leadership style needed by parents as a child grows from infancy through adolescence to adulthood, the Situational Leadership Model was introduced as the Life Cycle Theory of Leadership in 1969 and first appeared in Management of Organizational Behavior (Blanchard & Hersey, 1969); as of 2012, the book was in its tenth edition. The Life Cycle Theory of Leadership was rebranded as the Situational Leadership Model in the mid-1970s, with both authors iterating on the original theory until 1977 (when they parted company). In brief, the authors characterized leadership style in terms of the amount of Directive Behavior and Supportive Behavior that a leader provides to his or her followers (e.g., Directing, Coaching, Supporting, or Delegating), that being a function of maturity levels (e.g., Very Capable and Confident, Capable but Unwilling, Unable but Confident, or Unable and Insecure). Next, a good leader would develop competence and commitment so followers become self-motivated rather than dependent on others for direction and guidance. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_6

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influence; to this intent, since influencing behavior is not an event but a process, they diagnose, adapt, communicate, and advance. In 1993, Blanchard, Zigarmi, and Nelson wrote a retrospective of the Situational Leadership Model ahead of the May 1994 meeting of the American Society of Training and Development, this to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Situational Leadership (Blanchard et al., 1993).

The Research Article Purpose of the Research The purpose of Blanchard et al. (1993) was to review work that led to the development of the Situational Leadership Model, revisions that subsequently improved the model, and research that (as of 1993) had been conducted using the revised model and related instrumentation. [And so, Blanchard et al. (1993) is not about “pure” research.] To note, the purpose of the research was not made explicit in Blanchard et al. (1993), and can only be found in the short executive summary.3 Blanchard et al. (1993) was essentially retrospective (and so addressed no particular question): ostensibly, the research article was intended to locate the early background of the Situational Leadership Model, summarize the leadership theories the authors explained it evolved from, look back at the evolution of leadership theories, and highlight what improvements were made to the model over the years (essentially in relation to an instrument called Leader Behavior Analysis and the relabeling of the four leadership styles). But, Blanchard et al. (1993) was also forward-looking in that some conclusions were reached and a couple of research needs were identified.

Literature Review What key theories were cited in Blanchard et al. (1993) will be familiar to all students of management and organizational leadership: they included classic texts by Tannenbaum and Schmidt (1958), Lewin, Lippitt, and White (1960), as well as Blake and Mouton (1964). The cited sources were pertinent to the subject, contemporary to the times when the Situational Leadership Model was being developed, and central to the authors’ argument that the Situational Leadership Model was an evolution of related leadership theories on continuum approaches: “[The] approach was to build historically on the models that preceded them” (Blanchard et al., 1993, p. 23). In support of the Situational Leadership Model, the authors took care to note that, 3 Typically, an executive summary is a short document—or section of a document—that summarizes

the latter in such a way that readers can rapidly become acquainted with the large body of material without having to read it all. The executive summary in the research article is five lines-long and serves only to set the scene.

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“While useful, one of the limitations with the continuum approach to leadership [was] that it was an either/or approach. Either you were autocratic or democratic or somewhere in between—and if you didn’t do either, you were laissez-faire” (Blanchard et al., 1993, p. 23). Given the state of related leadership theories at the time the Situational Leadership Model was being developed, the literature review in Blanchard et al. (1993) is considered broad enough. Given the retrospective nature of the piece, it may not be relevant to search for bias in Blanchard et al. (1993). Yes, the research article was written by one of the original developers of the Situational Leadership Model and two of his colleagues. And, it was self-serving in that the two original developers parted ways in the late 1970s to each establish consultancies hoping to cash in on practical applications of the Situational Leadership Model, and in that the research article hoped to fuel continuing interest. But, given its primary purpose, could the Blanchard et al. (1993) have been expected to entertain contrarian views?

Methodology Having listed what improvements had been made to the Situational Leadership Model over the years, Blanchard et al. (1993) explained that 50 dissertations, master’s theses, and research papers had been written using the Leader Behavior Analysis instrument designed by one of the original developers and associates. Blanchard et al. (1993) shared that a comprehensive summary of findings was available in Zigarmi, Edeburn, and Blanchard (1991) and proceeded to present a general synopsis, noting that “pure” demographic studies had yielded almost no significance between such variables as age, gender, experience, education levels, and so forth. And so, the research design drew entirely from that original study. For clarity, Blanchard et al. (1993) noted that, to understand research trends on the Situational Leadership Model, readers needed to recognize that both the model and the instrumentation had changed over the years, which caused the research to be confusing and at times inconclusive. However, details of measurement tools, procedures, and variables were not shared in Blanchard et al. (1993) per se.

Data Analysis and Findings As mentioned above, Blanchard et al. (1993) drew attention to another document for a comprehensive summary of findings from research on situational leadership using the Situational Leadership Model. Details of how the data was analyzed and whether it was qualitative or quantitative were not shared in the research article per se. Evidently, Blanchard et al. (1993) did not aim to support the hypothesis: it intended to advance the trustworthiness of the Situational Leadership Model.

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Discussion and Conclusions It was not the purpose of Blanchard et al. (1993) to produce new knowledge. Equally, the retrospective nature of Blanchard et al. (1993) understandably curtailed what limitations there might be to it as the intention was not to find fault but, rather, celebrate the appeal of a model that found its place in related leadership literature. This said, Blanchard et al. (1993) did make recommendations for future research: prominent among these was that “Work must be done to classify or pinpoint others’ competence and commitment around a specific task or goal” (Blanchard et al., 1993, p. 23). Moreover, “Greater emphasis should be given to ‘match’ studies that examine [leadership] style in relation to employee perceived development level on a specific goal or task” (Blanchard et al., 1993, p. 23). Concluding, Blanchard et al. (1993) offered definite and practical ways to inform practice even if that was not its avowed intention: given the continuing use of the Situational Leadership Model, what new knowledge might be gained from implementation of its recommendations for further research stands to benefit a large audience.

Overall Assessment of the Research Article Blanchard et al. (1993) was an easy and pithy introduction to the Situational Leadership Model; excepting minor shortcomings such as lack of clarity about purpose, it delivered what the title advertised in 14 pages of readable text. Notwithstanding, readers would have appreciated a statement to the effect that situational leadership is but one variable: other determinants of leadership effectiveness include the characteristics of leaders, the characteristics of followers, and other characteristics of the situation besides leader–employee relations. More recently, eschewing preoccupation with leadership styles, interest has grown in what situation-specific administrative, adaptive, and enabling modes of leadership can support metagovernance of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing.

References Blake, R., & Mouton, J. (1964). The managerial grid. Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing. Blanchard, K., & Hersey, P. (1969). Management of organizational behavior: Utilizing human resources. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Blanchard, K., Zigarmi, D., & Nelson, R. (1993). Situational Leadership® after 25 years: A retrospective. Journal of Leadership Studies, 1(1), 22–36. Lewin, K., Lippitt, R., & White, R. (1960). Leader behavior and member reaction in three social climates. In D. Cartwright & A. Zander (Eds.), Group dynamics: Research and theory. Evanston, IL: Row Peterson & Company. Tannenbaum, R., & Schmidt, W. (1958, March–April). How to choose a leadership pattern. Harvard Business Review.

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Yukl, G. (2013). Leadership in organizations (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Zigarmi, D., Edeburn, C., & Blanchard, K. (1991). Research on the LBAII: A validity and reliability study. Blanchard Training and Development.

Ethical & Cultural Considerations

Ethics: My Own Perspective

Abstract People can hold deeply-held beliefs about why their particular moral choice is best; but, it is always essential to justify why one thinks a decision is right and another is wrong. Considering ethical predicaments from a variety of different perspectives will profit all.

People often ponder what it means to do the right thing. And, as if to underscore that ethics—which concerns itself with what is morally good or bad—is not an easy subject, quite differing approaches to ethical dilemmas have been proposed. People can hold deeply-held beliefs (and belief systems) about why their particular moral choice is best; but, it is always essential to justify why one thinks a decision is right and another is wrong. Considering ethical predicaments (e.g., individual vs. community, justice vs. mercy, short term vs. long-term, truth vs. loyalty) from a variety of different perspectives will profit all (Kidder, 2005).

A Blessed Encyclical According to Merriam-Webster, the term “ethics” refers to the moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity. “To me, it really seems visible today that ethics is not something exterior to the economy, which, as technical matter, could function on its own; rather, ethics is an interior principle of the economy itself, which cannot function if it does not take account of the human values of solidarity and reciprocal responsibility”, Pope Benedict XVI is reported to have said. Beset by fake news in the Age of Complexity, we should be grateful for salutary reminders: ethics is not a detachable adjunct of the busyness of life but integral to its proper—ergo, principled—workings. Then again, the problem with reminders— as children know quite well—is that they pretty much train people to ignore them, knowing there will be more down the road. Besides, no matter how much we would want it to be, ethics is not the easiest of subjects. Past personal understanding of the Ethics: My Own Perspective was completed on February 25, 2020. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_7

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core values of ethics (e.g., caring, fairness, honesty, integrity, respect, responsibility, right and wrong, trustworthiness), how might we discern more clearly the sundry applications of ethics in situations, muster ethical (or moral) courage when we should, and learn to display ethical leadership (whether we are in positions of authority or not)?

Casting Light or Shadow Blackburn (2001) remarked that “We have all learned to become sensitive to the physical environment … Perhaps fewer of us are sensitive to what we might call the moral or ethical environment” (p. 1). And yet, few topics are as important as ethics and few areas of human endeavor are as critical as ethical leadership, which has in point of fact been a recurrent topic of conversation and analysis over the centuries. Confucius, Plato, Machiavelli, Kant, Bentham, Mill, and Carlisle, to name a few, wrote about the moral obligations of leaders. Cutting through the clutter, but without prescribing specific action, Kant suggested a “categorical imperative” whereby we should only act in ways we would want everyone else in the same situation to act. In business, without which there would be no goods or services of any kind (and so very few jobs), ethical leadership will keep morale high (by boosting growth and meaning); foster healthy workplace environments; encourage freedom of action (and so rein in micromanagement); attract better workers; ensure policies are legal; promote a strong public image; build customer and client loyalty; inspire trust among audiences and partners; instill confidence in potential investors; and, fundamentally, develop long-lasting virtuous habits. Examples of poor ethical leadership in business are unfortunately too common to list but would of course include the Enron, Global Crossing, Tyco, and Worldcom fiascos of 2001–2002, which focused the world’s attention on the need to smarten up corporate governance. Portentously, in view of the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump on two charges of high crimes and misdemeanors (viz., abuse of power and obstruction of Congress), the monthly American business magazine Fast Company headed its 2015 “shortlist of leaders who shirked responsibility, or simply showcased a stunning lack of ethics, empathy, and integrity” with the name of the billionaire businessman, reality-TV host, and “Grand Old Party” (GOP) presidential candidate (Dishman, 2015). In the twenty-first century, on top of business, reference must also be made to increasingly contentious arguments regarding the role of ethics in information and communication technology, notably smartphones. (This aside is warranted given the technology’s omnipresence in societies, unavoidably also it seems in our public, private, and secret lives.) Social media were meant, The Economist (2019) hypothesized, to bring people together. But, “Today they are better known for invading privacy, spreading propaganda, and undermining democracy“ (p. 13). There are now 3.5 billion smartphone users in the world and every one of them is a “reporter” of sorts: as a result, now that there are so many ways to supply feedback, the number of complaints that people lodge has risen astronomically. And yet, technology per se is

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not imbued with agency: what good or ill it brings is contingent on how people leverage it (The Economist, 2019). The Big Four tech companies (i.e., Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) should have foreseen that the deluge of information would overload our brains: all the more reason, then, to brush up on ethics, courtesy of which people can impose rules (and enact policies), accommodate change, and decide on trade-offs (The Economist, 2019).

A Delectus of Ethical Perspectives Helpfully, Johnson (2015) showcased five popular perspectives (or systems) for use in ethical decision-making: (1) utilitarianism, (2) Kant’s categorical imperative, (3) justice as fairness, (4) pragmatism, and (5) altruism. (Ethical perspectives are often separated into three schools of thought, namely, consequentialist, duty-based, and virtue ethics: this is a useful way to understand the major concerns of ethics.) Utilitarianism, the brain-child of English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), is ends-based (and so part of the Consequentialist Framework): the fundamental axiom is that whatever produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people is right; accordingly, a utilitarian perspective would have us examine possible results from a course of actions, pick what consequence maximizes the general happiness, and frame political (and other) legislation toward that. Kant’s categorical imperative, named after Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), is rule-based (and so part of the Duty Framework): one should follow only what principles one would want everyone else to follow, no matter the cost; this intuits fixed rules and the moral obligation to act in such a way that one’s actions could become a universal standard. Justice as fairness, which owes to American philosopher John Rawls (1921–2002), is also rule-based (and so also part of the Duty Framework): reacting against utilitarianism, which despite producing the greatest good for the greatest number might nonetheless disadvantage minorities, Rawls envisaged a “veil of ignorance” perspective; recognizing that inequalities exist in rights and opportunities, such attributes as age, ethnicity, gender, etc. ought to be hidden by a veil so no social group becomes entitled to any advantage over another. Pragmatism, of whom the most prominent spokesperson was American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer John Dewey (1859–1952), is ends-based (and so part of the Consequentialist Framework): but, unlike utilitarianism, Kant’s categorical imperative, and justice as fairness, each of which puts forward a modus operandi for application (however different each may be), pragmatism places the process of decision-making at the center of ethical inquiry; pragmatism accepts that moral correctness can be let to evolve similarly to scientific knowledge, with creative solutions since there can be no perfection, but that there must always be an end in mind. Altruism, the belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others, is care-based (and so part of the Virtue Framework): unlike utilitarianism, Kant’s categorical imperative and justice as fairness, which from abstract moral principles underscore consequentiality, impartiality, and fairness, respectively,

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altruism upholds the importance of moral decision-making for needs-based caring of others; compassion is the primordial guideline. Lesser known ethical principles that Johnson (2015) did not discuss include anarchist ethics, communitarianism, postmodern ethics, and role ethics, to name a few. Ethical perspectives that date further back in history but continue to hold relevance here and there include hedonism, which would have people fill time with intellectual pursuits and exercise good judgment in relationships; the Golden Mean, a practicable approach to finding compromise between conflicting points of view (or actions); and the Golden Rule, an ethic of reciprocity that—with echoes in many religions and cultures—enjoins people to treat others as they themselves might want to be treated.

Johnson’s (2015) Ethical Perspectives: An Appreciative Inquiry Blackburn (2001) identified seven threats to ethics: (a) “the death of God”, by which he refers to the collapse of many religious belief systems in the West from the nineteenth century; (b) relativism, which with the end of supernatural authority encourages different communities make up different rules; (c) egoism (“We are pretty selfish animals”, p. 26); (d) evolutionary theory, which some take as meaning that human beings are “programmed”; (e) determinism and futility, which sped by pessimistic views of evolutionary theory lead some to believe it is “all in the genes” and ethical perspectives are therefore hopeless (p. 38); (f) unreasonable demands—“[We] should not demand too much from ourselves and each other” (p. 41); and (g) false consciousness—“[H]idden unconscious motivations, things that really move us, [may leave] ethical concerns exposed as mere whistles on the engine” (p. 44). Blackburn’s (2001) seven threats to ethics appear decidedly “modern” and closely interlinked; some, such as “the death of God”, may be more likely to face some societies than others; but, all can be expected to intensify with continuing developments in information and communication technology, intensifying globalization, and worsening degradation of natural resources and the environment. Forewarned by Blackburn (2001), we can perhaps prepare. Having surveyed the general ethical perspectives that Johnson (2015) isolated, and having sobered up with Blackburn’s (2001) seven threats to ethics, I do not find it pertinent to profess a fondness for one particular perspective (or even one of the three schools). This is not because I place no faith in ethics: if life had no intrinsic value, objective meaning, or purpose there would be no need for nihilists to argue their case and breed skepticism. (Prey to their logic, true nihilists neither see the blessings of good conduct nor the dangers of misconduct: therefore, they must both avoid the former and practice the latter, which cannot make for an enjoyable life …) Even so, it is not the case that any of the three schools helps make perfect ethical decisions. Why? Because a perfect ethical perspective would have driven the others from the field a long time ago. Nonetheless, knowing the pros and cons of each of the

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three schools can help decide which, or more likely what combination of schools, might be of use depending on the situation. Some advantages of utilitarianism, for instance, are that it sets personal interests aside and builds on cumulative experience; but, decision makers can disagree about the greatest good and there can be unanticipated outcomes (Johnson, 2015, p. 158). Kant’s categorical imperative demonstrates respect for others but moral obligations be at odds, especially when or where there is stress (Johnson, 2015, pp. 160–161). Justice as fairness assigns equal weight to the freedom of the individual and the good of social groups but there can be lack of consensus about which rights are more important and divergence over the meaning of fairness (Johnson, 2015, pp. 163– 164). Pragmatism acknowledges limitations and exercises the imagination but lacks a moral center, which can trigger objectionable decisions (Johnson, 2015, pp. 167– 168). Altruism puts the needs of others at the forefront but can take many different forms; besides, it requires compassion, which may not always be in supply (Johnson, 2015, p. 175).

Making Ethical Decisions And so, in preference to holding this or that ethical perspective and applying it pellmell, there is surely more relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability, serving also to conduce equity, in applying a frameworks approach to ethical dilemmas, be that the Consequentialist–Duty–Virtue Framework or, as the case might suggest, simpler frameworks such as the Blanchard–Peale Framework (1988). (The Blanchard–Peale Framework raises three questions: Is it legal? Is it fair? How does it make me feel? There is also Molyneux’s ethical decision-making model, Tucker’s 5-question model, the Markkula Center approach, Davis’s 7-step ethical decision-making model, and a couple of others, all of which follow comparable sequential thinking.) Using a frameworks approach to make ethical decisions would have us, in turn, (a) make out the ethical issue; (b) take into consideration the party (or parties) involved; (c) collect all relevant data and information; (d) weigh alternatives and their implications and frame actions; (e) reach a decision and establish moral intent; (f) take and explain action; and (g) evaluate the outcome. Vitally, from yin–yang thinking, the consideration and integration of alternatives would have us—across the decision tree—contemplate matters from a wholesome variety of ethical perspectives (e.g., utilitarian, Kant’s categorical imperative, justice as fairness, pragmatism, altruism, etc.).

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Concluding Remarks I have always used a frameworks approach to make ethical decisions and never had reason to regret the outcome. Every ethical perspective has shortcomings but it is true also that every ethical perspective does make a valuable contribution to moral problem-solving. Mastering the most widely used ethical perspectives—and bearing in mind such schools of thought as hedonism, the Golden Mean, and the Golden Rule—will heighten our awareness of and sensitivity to the moral environment, generate insights, and boost the likelihood that we will succeed as agents of ethics with win–win solutions. On occasion, we will need the strength and courage to do what we have concluded is right, especially if it is not to everyone’s liking or might entail personal loss (Serrat, 2011). That said, it stands to reason that the frameworks approach should empower analysis of and response to moral problems and so help leaders set the tone.

References Blackburn, S. (2001). Ethics: A very short introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Blanchard, K., & Peale, N. (1988). The power of ethical management. New York, NY: William Morrow and Company Inc. Dishman, L. (2015, December). The 10 best and worst leaders of 2015. Fast Company. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/3054777/the-10-best-and-worst-leaders-of-2015. The Economist. (2019, December). Pessimism v progress. Retrieved from https://www.economist. com/leaders/2019/12/18/pessimism-v-progress. Johnson, C. (2015). Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership: Casting light or shadow (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Kidder, R. (2005). Moral courage. New York, NY: William Morrow and Company Inc. Serrat, O. (2011). Moral courage in organizations. Manila: Asian Development Bank.

Life-Markers and Personal Values

Abstract Life-markers are points of inflection: some are shared (e.g., birth, baptism, graduation, our first job); others are yours alone (e.g., a book, a person). Personal life-markers hold one-of-a-kind energy that frames our values and imbues our lives with sense, coherence, and meaning.

Pour l’Afrique, j’accuse, which might translate in English as For Africa, I accuse, is a book that René Dumont (1904–2001), a French agronomist, economist, and environmentalist, wrote in 1986 (Dumont, 1986); I read it that very year just as, the youngest employee of an engineering consulting firm in Japan, I was gaining the working experience needed to apply for a job in a multilateral development bank. Dumont was a ferocious critic of the development policies and off-the-rack prescriptions of “well-meaning,” Western-educated, urban-based bureaucrats and their institutions. Very early, Dumont made out that rampant consumerism was depleting the planet’s resources, causing unprecedented pollution, and impoverishing developing countries: he was one of the first to use the term “sustainable development” and foresaw the consequences of what eventually became known as globalization. In 1974, Dumont had stood as a pioneering “green” candidate in France’s presidential election—indeed, the first “ecologist” in any presidential election anywhere—on a ticket of radical environmental and social change: but, he did poorly, with just 1.3% of the votes. Dumont was a fearlessly original man and world citizen, prepared to challenge the most powerful leaders and organizations: leading with vision and integrity are values that I took away from that book. In my personal life, I had the privilege of learning from an entirely self-made man. Born in underprivileged circumstances that should not have seen him continue studies beyond the age of 14, he rose to senior positions in the Ministry of Public Works and the National School of State Public Works in France. He quickly became responsible for promoting French works and services in West Africa and then the whole of the Asian and Pacific region. In recognition of remarkable success, he was awarded the National Order of Merit. “Si tu veux, tu peux,” he would repeat. (“If you can will it, you can achieve it.”) A scrupulously honest man who stood against Life-Markers and Personal Values was completed on January 13, 2020. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_8

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privilege, he believed single-mindedly in self-actualization. From him, I learned about servant–leadership. He was Pierre Serrat (1931–2014), my father. From the foregoing, and the subsequent experience of working for development in Asia and the Pacific across numerous sectors in many countries, it came to pass that my core values align with authentic leadership (Serrat, 2018a, 2018b). From ethical foundations, authentic leadership emphasizes legitimacy through honest relationships. Different theorists have different takes but, to me, authentic leaders are self-aware and genuine; they focus on the long term; they are mission-driven and strive for results; and, they lead with their heart. My efforts to nurture these values, both in myself and in others, have not changed over time: in fact, they were given a boost when, in 2002, the then Minister for Economy and Finance of Cambodia and later Deputy Prime Minister, Keat Chhon (1934–), suddenly told me: “You are young and will not have heard of him: but, you remind me of René Dumont, with whom I worked when I too was young.” That was just one year after Dumont had died.

References Dumont, R. (1986). Pour l’Afrique, j’accuse: Le journal d’un agronome au Sahel en voie de destruction. Terre humaine: Civilisations et sociétés. Serrat, O. (2018a). Personal philosophy of leadership. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Serrat, O. (2018b). Personal philosophy of leadership (2nd edition). Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

Reflections on Four Case Studies in Ethics

Abstract Ethics, or moral philosophy, investigates concepts of right and wrong conduct; it is not limited to the acts of a single person but seeks also reasoned, principled, positions vis-à-vis the practices of corporations, governments, and many other groups. Using the case method, a teaching approach that uses decision-forcing roleplay, this précis explores four dramatically different ethical dilemmas at individual, group, corporate, and global levels.

The Spectacular Rise and Fall of a Humanitarian Hero The philosophy, principles, and practice of ethics, which govern a person’s behavior or the conduct of activities, should never be portrayed as easy. The Spectacular Rise and Fall of a Humanitarian Hero (Johnson, 2015, pp. 108–110) is a well-wrought piece that eschews pre-fabricated conclusions to challenge readers with the question of what brought about in 2011–2012 the fall of Greg Mortenson, formerly nurse, veteran, mountaineer, philanthropist, author, and public speaker, and founder of the Central Asia Institute. Was it CBS News and 60 Minutes, its award-winning news magazine? Was it Jon Krakauer’s e-book, Three Cups of Deceit (2011)? Or, should Mortenson get all the blame for his undoing? As of 2011, Mortenson had built a global reputation as a selfless humanitarian and children’s crusader, and had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. But, with the near-simultaneous publication of Three Cups of Deceit (2011), former Central Asia Institute board member and donor Krakauer had appeared on 60 Minutes to claim Mortenson was not what he seemed to be. Specifically, Krakauer charged Mortenson with inventing substantial parts of his bestselling books, Three Cups of Tea (2007) and Stones into Schools (2009), and misusing millions of dollars donated by unsuspecting admirers including Krakauer himself. Three Cups of Tea (2007) had been immensely successful: the book told of Mortenson’s accidental visit to the village of Korphe, Pakistan, in 1993, where locals had nursed him back to health after a failed attempt at scaling K2; the encounter had spurred Mortenson’s school-building Reflections on Four Case Studies in Ethics was completed on April 8, 2020. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_9

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mission, captivating readers worldwide and flooding the Central Asia Institute with donations. (Pointedly, 100% of proceeds from the sale of Krakauer’s e-book were to be donated to the “Stop Girl Trafficking” project of the American Himalayan Foundation.) Following Three Cups of Deceit (2011) and the 60 Minutes exposé, Mortenson’s character and credibility came under attack: Montana legislators filed a lawsuit and the State’s Attorney General launched an investigation. No criminality was found but, in 2012, Mortenson was deemed to have misspent over $6 million of the Central Asia Institute’s money and made to repay $1.2 million. The State’s Attorney General accepted that Mortenson might not have intentionally deceived the board of directors of the Central Asia Institute, or its employees, but that his disregard for and attitude toward basic record-keeping including accounting for his activities had essentially had the same effect. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Mortenson was required to resign as executive director and could no longer serve as a voting member of the Central Asia Institute’s board; however, he was allowed to remain as an employee. In 2014, Mortenson was interviewed on NBC’s Today Show: he apologized and acknowledged that he had let a lot of people down: “I always have operated from my heart. I’m not really a head person. And I really didn’t factor in the very important things of accountability, transparency … I failed in many ways, and it’s an important lesson.” Regarding the inaccuracies in Three Cups of Tea (2007), Mortenson regretted also that he and co-author Relin, who committed suicide in 2012, had been under great pressure to bring about a million words down to 300,000. In a sudden twist, a documentary titled 3000 Cups of Tea (Jordan & Rhoads, 2016) later launched a full-throated defense of Mortenson as a good but flawed man, who had not deserved the rough media treatment. The Central Asia Institute has since reported that it was seeing the return of donors and a rise in contributions. The Spectacular Rise and Fall of a Humanitarian Hero is located in a chapter on “The Leader’s Character” in Johnson (2015): that chapter addresses the inner dimension of leadership ethics, from the premise that to shed light (rather than shadow) we need to develop strong, ethical character made up of positive traits or virtues. But, my reading of this case study, notably its even-handed suggestion that Mortenson might have been overwhelmed by success and somehow “forced” to embellish his story to justify donations, has me opine that other factors probably explain more than allegations of poor character (even if Mortenson himself confessed he had failed). I reflected on Johnson’s (2015) aside that “Greg Mortenson’s rise and fall may have as much to say about American culture as it does about CAI’s founder” and his candid recognition that “In search of heroes, we are all too willing to overlook the fact that even saints have flaws” (2015, p. 110). The subsequent showing of the 3000 Cups of Tea documentary (Jordan & Rhoads, 2016), that Johnson (2015) would not have been aware of at the time of publication, led me also to ponder that success may pose as much danger as failure (and this not exclusively from the perspective of a leader’s character). Why do we often have difficulty acknowledging that our heroes have flaws? My simple take is that demanding superhuman qualities from others, especially from leaders, rather cynically serves to absolve us of responsibility for developing capabilities more broadly in (or among) ourselves. And so, when heroes

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fail as they surely will if perfection is the standard, we reject them with disdain precisely so we do not have to draw lessons from the flaws in ourselves. Every one of us could become a hero, however imperfect, if we accepted that flaws—and even failure—are not incompatible with heroism.1

Chaos on K2 On the face of it, Chaos on K2 (Johnson, 2015, pp. 309–312) has all the makings of a gripping case study in ethics. In the early hours of August 1, 2008, 30 climbers from eight separate international expeditions set off from Camp 4, located 7,500– 8,000 meters (or 24,600–26,250 feet) above sea level, to reach the summit of K2, at 8,611 meters (or 28,251 feet) the second highest mountain in the world after Mount Everest (8,848 meters or 29,029 feet) but one of the most challenging in the world. For two months, the members of the teams had prepared themselves at three other camps below the peak, acclimatizing to thin air and practicing their planned ascent. The final ascent turned into chaos: an advance group of high-altitude porters and Sherpas—gone ahead of the bulk of the climbers to prepare and safeguard the most difficult passage—had somehow run out of rope and was facing the prospect of turning around and descending back in darkness. The advance team had planted lines immediately above Camp 4—where they were not needed—up into the Bottleneck, a narrow and at times almost vertical gulley overhung by seracs from the ice field east of the summit, and so run out of rope for the traverse just above the Bottleneck. (On K2, the high risk of falling ice and avalanches compels climbers to minimize the time they spend in the Bottleneck.) Shortage of rope forced the ascending team to take rope from the lower portion of the route and use it to prepare the lines above the Bottleneck, causing unplanned delay in the climb schedule. What happened next need not be repeated here, for there is much (still unclear) detail. But the gist of the story is that even though they were now behind schedule and should actually have been returning from the summit, about 20 climbers decided to carry on. A Serbian climber then fell to his death and a Pakistani porter died trying to recover the body. As the climbers were—in small groups—returning from the summit, a gigantic ice shelf came crashing down, killed one climber, swept four climbers who were tethered 1 Via

Rome, the literature of Europe owes a great deal to the Greek myths and the Golden Age of Athens, which witnessed a veritable explosion in dramatic poetry (among a great many other accomplishments). That said, hubris—which refers to exaggerated pride or self-confidence—is almost always integral part of their stories. The ancient Greeks considered hubris a dangerous character flaw, which led the heroes of their tragedies (and other texts) to attempt to overstep the boundaries of human limitations and assume a godlike status; and so, the Greeks gods inevitably humbled offenders with sharp reminders of their mortality. We see this in The Iliad, The Odyssey, the heroes of Shakespeare’s tragedies, etc. But, the point is—or rather was—that the flaws of heroes were inseparable from their heroism. These days, few people read ancient literature, the belief systems of the West have pretty much collapsed, and self-help books entice us to think we can achieve perfection if we try harder. Hence, perhaps, our expectations of superhuman qualities from others, especially leaders.

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to ropes to their deaths, and so left others trapped just above or in the Bottleneck— desperately cold, starved of oxygen, and without the fixed ropes they needed to get down. Over the next few hours those still left on K2 battled their way to safety, fell to their deaths, or were lost as smaller icefalls and avalanches continued during the night and the next day. (At over 8,000 meters or 26,250 feet, balance, concentration, vision, and other human body functions break down under the effect of altitude.) Eleven climbers died and three others were seriously injured, making the ascent one of the worst disasters in mountaineering history. The sources that Johnson (2015) relied on to prepare this case study were almost exclusively journalistic. They were The New York Times, National Post, The Christian Science Monitor, Men’s Journal, The Guardian, and The Independent. (The exception is a book promising white-knuckle adventure, the stuff of mountaineering legend …) At a minimum, therefore, it must be recognized that what facts and interpretations this case study presents are likely to concentrate (as they do) on action, with little space given over to reflection. For that reason, my stance is that it is rather tendentious to milk the tragedy in search of ethical dimensions. One could, arguably, ascribe the disaster to bad luck: full stop. Or, one could read all sorts of things into it, such that the tragedy owes to the inability of the climbers to work together to avert and recover from adversity. Continuing down that vein, did division among the teams doom any attempt to cooperate? Well, “division” may not be the right word because the 30 climbers belonged to separate international expeditions: the only cooperation they actually needed to plan, the failure of which lies at the back of the sad affair, consisted in the laying down of safety lines by a trail-breaking team put together for that very purpose. And so, the failure of the trail-breaking team to properly lay the ropes cannot be ascribed to the members of the expeditions (and so to division). But, would the teams have been better off climbing on their own? This question is not relevant: most (if not all) ascents of the world’s highest peaks are performed by very small teams of 2–3 persons and climbing on their own must have been what the members of the separate international expeditions were attempting if one looks at the numbers. But, what steps, if any, could the team leaders have taken to foster intergroup identity? This question does not follow from my treatment of the last. So, why did climbers continued to the top even after they should have turned back? This is perhaps the hardest question to answer. In a short video the author of a book on the disaster explained the decision of the climbers to press on with the following words: “It’s beautiful. It’s an achievement. I think it’s facing down death” (Bowley, 2011, 3:14). This is not my cup of tea but it may be that of others. If anything, and this is where improvements in management might be called for, allowing large number of teams to ascend together can incite recklessness on the part of some if they see that others have already reached the top. Why are modern climbers apparently more selfish than climbers of the past? This case study does not present any evidence that modern climbing is indeed marked by an ethos that stresses individualism: surely, hubris and bad luck remain unchanged; but, politics and journalism—its faithful friend, may possibly now be a further spur to mountaineering ambitions. What can be done to change the culture of climbing? From the foregoing argumentation, and from general observation, I do not see that the culture of climbing necessarily has to

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change: that said, the involvement of journalism, which this case study does much to promote by dint of the many newspaper references it draws from, may need a second look. So, what leadership and followership ethics lessons can one take from this case study? Well, in all honesty, I find no leadership ethics lessons from this case study (nor can I find matters of followership relevant here): for that, Johnson (2015) could have found a better (but less gripping) vehicle elsewhere.2 More than anything else, as I alluded to earlier, improvements in management are assuredly called for: where ethics could be wanting may be on the side of those who pocket permit fees (e.g., the Nepal Tourism Board).3

Rooting Out Corruption at Siemens Global Rooting Out Corruption at Siemens Global (Johnson, 2015, pp. 355–357) makes better reading if the actions of new CEO Peter Loescher—appointed in 2007 to root out corruption in Siemens Global and restore the company’s reputation—are crossreferenced with O’Connell and Bligh (2009), which synthesized from the literature the nine traits that ethical leaders must have if their companies are to emerge from ethical scandal. O’Connell and Bligh’s (2009) ethical leader: • • • • • • • • •

Uses an ethical “lens”; Makes ethical decisions; Considers the long-term implications of business decisions; Considers others’ well-being when making decisions and treats others fairly; Acts ethically or role models ethical behavior; Communicates the importance of ethics; Understands himself/herself and those with whom he/she works; Holds others accountable for acting ethically; and Offers training and support for employees on how to act ethically in the workplace. (p. 219)

Comparing O’Connell and Bligh’s (2009) ethical leader with the 10 decisive actions of Loescher (Johnson, 2015, p. 356), what stands out—far beyond the modeling 2 Public

Broadcasting Service (2008) reproduced remarks on the ethics of climbing by a panel comprising a medical doctor, an attorney, and two climbers. The medical doctor underscored—as mentioned earlier—that high-altitude climbers are under extreme duress. In consequence of addled brains, they cannot possibly have much time for armchair ethics. Public Broadcasting Service’s (2008) e-mail exchange was posted three months before the disaster on K2. 3 The International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation, commonly known by its French name Union Internationale des Associations d’Alpinisme, has a code of ethics (UIAA, n.d.). I found it somewhat general, with the only advice on safety and related comportment being to “… behave in a way which preserves the safety of all, especially valley porters, HA porters, expedition members, etc. from the host country” and to “Give evidence of solidarity and mutual aid” (UIAA, n.d.). In the meantime, the number of people who try to reach (and return from) the summits of the earth’s highest peaks keeps increasing with veritable “traffic jams”. (Crowds of over 200 climbers have been known to await their turn to climb Mount Everest on weekends.)

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of ethical behavior that O’Connell and Bligh (2009) draw near-exclusive attention to—is the sheer comprehensiveness of the latter’s zero-tolerance policy. Regardless, Loescher’s zero-tolerance policy must be—or rather would have been—seen in the context of what would soon become, in 2008, a record $1.6 billion legal settlement with German and American authorities following a string of high-profile bribery scandals from Vietnam to Venezuela and Italy to Israel that demonstrated raw organizational zeal to win contracts. (The corruption involved more than $1.4 billion in bribes to government officials in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas.) “At Siemens, bribery was just a line item” the New York Times would report the same year (Schubert & Miller, 2008). Indeed, from 2002 to 2006, Siemens Global “managed” an annual bribery budget of $40–50 million (Schubert & Miller, 2008). Given the company’s massive size and the scale of its activities, did Siemens get off too easy? Should it have faced additional financial penalties? These questions are worth asking. But, surely, the sum of $1.6 billion was not plucked from the air: it must have been supported by careful calculations of warranted financial penalties for harm done. Besides, on top of the $1.6 billion legal settlement in Germany and the United States, Siemens Global also spent an additional $1 billion on internal investigations and reforms as Loescher vowed to make Siemens Global state-of-the-art in anticorruption measures (Schubert & Miller, 2008). At the time of the fine, there was also the chance that additional penalties might be levied as related investigations were continuing. [Indeed, in 2013, the general counsel of Siemens Global reported that the bribery-related fallout and court proceedings were continuing (Watson, 2013)]. In any event, Loescher’s response was widely praised by many independent anticorruption and ethics experts, including the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and US Federal authorities (Dietz & Gillespie, 2012). What should be the elements of a zero-tolerance ethics policy? Are there any of these elements missing at Siemens Global? Loescher quickly resolved not to miss the opportunities that come with a good crisis. He later confessed that “The scandal created a sense of urgency without which change would have been much more difficult to achieve” (Loescher, 2012). For sure, a zero-tolerance ethics policy— that Siemens Global had no elements of prior to the scandal—is indispensable: but, beyond scope, execution matters most. A list of the actions that Siemens Global took as the scandal unfolded, some of which are not mentioned in Johnson (2015), includes: • Loescher announced a month-long amnesty for employees to come forward, explicitly excluding former directors: about 40 whistleblowers submitted incriminating evidence, which extended the scandal’s reach into the previous Board of Directors. • Early on, Siemens Global appointed Michael Hershman, the co-founder of Transparency International, to serve as its adviser. • Within months of Loescher taking over, Siemens Global had replaced about 80% of the top level of executives, 70% of the next level down, and 40% of the level below that.

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• Siemens Global’s matrix structure was streamlined into three divisions, whose managing directors would sit on the Board of Directors. • Siemens Global rolled out strict new rules and anti-corruption/compliance processes. It hired over 500 full-time compliance officers (up from just 86 in 2006), and a former Interpol official to head its new investigation unit: millions of bank account statements, documents, and transactions were reviewed. Siemens Global took over 900 internal disciplinary actions, including dismissals. It established compliance hotlines, and an external ombudsperson based worldwide and online. And, Siemens Global created a web portal for employees to evaluate risk in their client and supplier interactions. • Siemens Global launched a comprehensive training and education program on anti-corruption practices for its employees. By 2008, Siemens Global had trained more than half its 400,000-strong global workforce on anti-corruption issues. • Of its own accord, Siemens Global decided to suspend for two years all bidding on projects funded by the World Bank. It announced it would avoid competing in hotspots of corruption or unethical practice, such as Sudan. • Siemens Global agreed to a 15-year program to pay $100 million to nonprofit organizations fighting corruption. (Dietz & Gillespie, 2012; Johnson, 2015) Details of Siemens Global’s current antibribery rules, mentioned in Johnson (2015), are not available. One must assume that, prefaced by an integrity statement, they now stipulate that (a) all forms of bribery and corruption, including facilitation payments, and other unethical behavior are strictly prohibited in compliance with the law; (b) doubtful behavior should be challenged and rumors of improper payments or activities should be reported to management via compliance hotlines; (c) gifts or entertainment should always be proportionate and reasonable, should have a legitimate purpose, and should never create a conflict of interest or a perception thereof; (d) Siemens Global would not allow employees and third parties to make on its behalf gifts or political donations to political parties or to offer gifts or entertainment to candidates for political positions; (e) principles and practices for accurate accounting; (f) reporting mechanisms for anti-corruption/compliance processes and associate confidentiality; and (g) decisions to allow (paid and unpaid) internships and secondments should be based exclusively on merit. Beyond expectations of such staples, my appreciation of this case study is that Siemens Global also acted across leadership, structure, relationships, and helpful mechanisms, although perhaps less so vis-à-vis purposes (if that was needed), rewards (e.g., for good behavior), and what more proactive participation by employees might be encouraged in relation to helpful mechanisms (Weisbord, 1976). What lessons can one take away from Siemens’ efforts to eliminate corruption? A couple of lessons were alluded to earlier: they are the need for a sense of urgency and the fact that a good crisis invites change that would have been difficult to achieve otherwise. Another, related, lesson is that driving an ethical culture requires more than just words: it demands vision, commitment, resources, expertise, an empowered compliance and ethics function, and above all, visible action. A fourth lesson is that compliance and ethics must have a voice in the C-Suite. (Siemens Global’s legal

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and compliance department falls directly under the purview of new CEO Joe Kaeser, who succeeded Loescher in 2013.) A fifth lesson is that corruption will spread like a virus without real counter-action by authorities, with companies infecting one other.

Inside Job “They were having massive private gains at public loss” is how one interviewee in Inside Job (Ferguson, 2010) sums up the greed that, with roots in deregulation, drove continued reckless risk-taking in the American financial services industry before infecting the rest of the world. (Deregulation is the reduction or elimination of government power in a particular industry, typically enacted to create more competition within it). To illustrate the scale of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008–2009, the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, Inside Job (1:48:39) opens up with a look at its expressions and effects in Iceland, an island country of 360,000 people living on 103,000 square kilometers (or 40,000 square miles). Pursuant to the default of Iceland’s three major privately-owned commercial banks (i.e., Glitnir, Kaupthing, and Landsbanki) in late 2008, the collapse of the country’s banking system was, relative to the size of its economy, the largest experienced by any country in economic history. What sparked the Global Financial Crisis? Inside Job notes that there had been sundry (and increasingly severe) financial crises in the wake of the deregulation that President Reagan initiated in the 1980s and that his successors—Presidents G. H. W. Bush, Clinton, and G. W. Bush—continued (with much critical acclaim from the economics profession).4 With growing wealth and lobbying, the financial services industry, especially investment bankers, gradually captured the political system, an interviewee explains in Inside Job. (More and more, bankers were invited to work for the government at senior levels in finance-related functions.) Scandals, especially accounting frauds, broke out but became business as usual since—before long—everyone was doing it. In the 1990s, with advances in information and communication technology, more complex (and potentially dangerous) financial products such as derivatives emerged but pressure from the private sector (with the help of allies in government) made sure they remained unregulated. With evermore complicit legislation and government, lenders, investment bankers, and investors developed more clout throughout the 2000s; they then turned their attention to home buyers. The essence of what started as the Subprime Mortgage Crisis before it became the Global Financial Crisis is that, to earn greater fees, banks in the United States began 4 In

truth, deregulation (and the Reaganomics behind its initial expressions) can be traced even further back, specifically to the mid-1970s (and so Presidents Ford and Carter); slow productivity growth and increasing operation and capital costs in key sectors are what sparked it. (That said, the first “meaningful” legislation—the Airline Deregulation Act—was only cleared by Congress in 1978.) We should therefore probably also factor in the 1973–1975 recession (and of course the oil shock of 1973), which in the United States put an end to the overall Post–World War II economic expansion.

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to provide mortgages to people who—being potentially high risk for such causes as low income—were unable to afford them. Through financial engineering, over 2000– 2003, fast-growing numbers (and quantities) of “toxic” mortgages were repackaged as collateralized debt obligations and sold off to outside investors, who subsequently lost out when borrowers defaulted and house prices declined in 2007–2008. But, with Armageddon staring them in the face, despite advance warning from the International Monetary Fund in particular, neither the financial services industry nor the federal government had done any planning for impending bankruptcy. Ultimately, at the cost of tens of trillions of US dollars, the Global Financial Crisis drove millions of people into bankruptcy or out of their homes, brought entire economies into recession, and triggered unemployment across the world. “At the end of the day, the poorest as always pay the most,” commented an Inside Job interviewee. Closing the loop, Inside Job reveals that high-profile members of the economics profession had, against remuneration, given stamps of approval on matters regarding the health of the financial sector of Iceland, and elsewhere. Asked to comment on conflicts of interest in academia, an Inside Job interviewee chuckles that the discipline of economics has no relevance to anything and that “it is an important part of the problem”. Campaigning for election on 28 September 2008, future President Obama proclaimed that “The era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and in Washington has led us to a financial crisis as serious as any that we’ve faced since the Great Depression” and blamed lack of oversight. Inside Job’s signal contribution is to place the Global Financial Crisis in its historical perspective. To note, the rising power of the financial services sector was part of a wider change in America. From the mid-1980s, with the lifting of the Bamboo Curtain and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the economic dominance of the United States began to decline as countries such as the People’s Republic of China opened their economies and released billions of new workers on the world markets. In the face of competition, its (hitherto sheltered) manufacturing base (e.g., General Motors, Chrysler, US Steel) was destroyed over the course of a few years. Other industries, such as the financial services sector and information and communication technology, rose to take up the slack but require fewer and highly-educated personnel (and tuition costs have been rising). Meanwhile, tax policy shifted to favor the wealthy (so that inequality of wealth in the United States is now higher than in any other developed country). American families responded by working longer hours and going into debt: but, as the middle-class fell further and further behind, successive governments felt a political urge to make it easier for families to get credit (for homes, cars, healthcare, and education). President Obama’s package of 2010 was not able to change much: with the continuing presence of bankers at senior levels in the administration, some of whom had orchestrated the deregulation, an Inside Job interviewee remarked at the time that “It’s a Wall Street government”. No doubt, President Obama helped alleviate the crisis by reassuring the public and downplaying the depth of the problem: but, he protected the banks rather than the mortgage holders, thereby exacerbating the gap between America’s haves and have-nots; by so doing, President Obama ushered in President Trump.

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Reflections on Four Case Studies in Ethics

Inside Job dissects the Global Financial Crisis with surgical precision and elucidates its causes. Schoen (2017)—and no doubt many others—saw the Global Financial Crisis as an erosion of ethics. Schoen (2017) pointed the finger in turn at the compensations paid to mortgage brokers, the marketing and promotion of subprime mortgages “designed to default”, the securitization of mortgages, rating firms, regulatory agencies, the American International Group, commercial and investment banks, and the over-the-counter derivatives market (pp. 820–827). But, beyond the flotsam and jetsam on the surface, it is the historicity of the Global Financial Crisis, beginning with President Reagan’s investiture in 1981, that captured my attention. It is easy to become angry about the events in the documentary; it is easy to blame its unsavory characters; and, many leaders of Wall Street firms (and tens of thousands of their smaller fry) should probably have gone to jail. But, in the greater scheme of things, none of this would amount to very much. We need to see the bigger picture, which is that simple assumptions about, say, conflict of interest policies, cannot be counted on in an increasingly interconnected world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. In the twenty-first century, the obsessive self-interest of Wall Street (and other appendages of the modern economy) obscures the lens of interconnectedness, curtails the perspective needed to explore options, and cripples agility; thence, cupidity turns a blind eye to consequences and multiplies the likelihood that extensive harm will be done. The Global Financial Crisis was caused by the failure of markets, the failure of institutions, and the failure of moral virtues.5 Beyond ethical band-aid, it follows, what is needed is a nation-wide reperceiving of corporate social responsibility with a realignment of vision, culture, and image. This is not easy, as the limited success of President Obama’s reforms demonstrated: there will be winners and losers in the cold reality of international competition, with successive governments expected as always to please everybody (as if there were no such things as trade-offs). “[A]sk not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country,” President Kennedy enjoined in his inaugural address of 1961, at another moment of global crisis; by so doing, he was challenging every American to contribute in some way to the public good. But, it is not often remembered that in the same address President Kennedy also asked other citizens of the world to see what all might do together. And so, even if much in the Global Financial Crisis was decidedly unethical, an examination of its historical roots beckons us to ponder whether the field of ethics might not need to develop further: too much of it seems to be, evermore, about right and wrong or us versus them across narrow horizons. Moving forward, how might ethics help individuals and communities cope with overwhelming problems where binary scenarios do not exist and where the journey is as relevant as the destination, if not more so? 5 Looking for systems archetypes in the Global Financial Crisis, I detect “success to the successful”;

“escalation” and “tragedy of the commons”; but also “balancing process with delay”, “fixes that fail”, “limits to growth”, “shifting the burden”, and “shifting the burden to the intervenor” (Senge, 2006). In fact, referencing the most common systems archetypes, it seems that only “drifting goals” and “growth and underinvestment” do not apply, as needed goals were never achieved (beyond avoiding total meltdown) and there was nothing left to invest in.

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References Bowley, G. (2011). No way down—Graham Bowley on the K2 mountaineering disaster [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeRNf3oZLIc. Dietz, G., & Gillespie, N. (2012, March 26). Rebuilding trust: How Siemens atoned for its sins. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/recoveringbusiness-trust-siemens. Ferguson, C. (Producer, Director, & Writer). (2010). Inside job [Documentary]. United States: Sony Pictures Classics. Retrieved from http://watchdocumentaries.com/inside-job/ Johnson, C. (2015). Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership: Casting light or shadow (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Jordan, J. (Director, Writer, & Co-Producer), & Rhoads, J. (Co-Producer). (2016). 3000 cups of tea [Motion picture]. United States: Skyline Ventures Productions. Krakauer, J. (2011). Three cups of deceit: How Greg Mortenson, humanitarian hero, lost his way. Byliner. Loescher, P. (2012, November). The CEO of Siemens on using a scandal to drive change. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2012/11/the-ceo-of-siemens-on-usinga-scandal-to-drive-change. Mortenson, G., & Relin, D. (2007). Three cups of tea: One man’s mission to promote peace … One school at a time. New York, NY: Penguin Books. O’Connell, W., & Bligh, M. (2009). Emerging from ethical scandal: Can corruption really have a happy ending? Leadership, 5(2), 213–235. Public Broadcasting Service. (2008, May 13). Roundtable: The ethics of climbing. Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/everest/etc/roundtable.html. Schoen, J. (2017). The 2007–2009 financial crisis: An erosion of ethics: A case study. Journal of Business Ethics, 146(4), 805–830. Schubert, S., & Miller, C. (2008, December 20). At Siemens, bribery was just a line item. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/worldbusiness/ 21siemens.html. Senge, P. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Currency/Doubleday. UIAA. (n.d.). Ethical code for expeditions. Retrieved from https://www.theuiaa.org/declarations/ ethical-code-for-expeditions/. Watson, B. (2013, September 18). Siemens and the battle against bribery and corruption. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/siemens-sol mssen-bribery-corruption. Weisbord, M. (1976). Organizational diagnosis: Six places to look for trouble with or without a theory. Group and Organization Studies, 1(4), 430–447.

Group & Team Leadership

The Self in Teams

Abstract Groups that range from two persons to many are a very big part of social life—in all its facets—and most organizations rely on teamwork: the justification is that teams are better at solving problems and learn more rapidly and with more effect than individuals (Serrat, 2009). This précis offers reflections on personal experiences of teamwork, noting what does not work. The précis identifies a meaningful common purpose as the single highest requirement for getting work done but underscores other key ingredients of practice. The précis also notes the importance of integrating team identity for team effectiveness.

On Teams: What’s in a Word? “In a sense, words are encyclopedias of ignorance because they freeze perceptions at one moment in history, and then people continue to use these frozen perceptions when we should know better,” reflected de Bono, cited in Sears (2007, p. 8). What’s in a word like “team”, for example? “When we think about a great team, the image we conjure up almost always includes a great leader,” Hackman declared in Hickman (2010). And yet, despite the myriad of interpretations, we are still far from fully understanding how teams—as distinct from groups—can with or without leadership be made to click. Apropos teams, specifically, much of the problem owes to familiarity, which as the expression goes breeds contempt and, in this case, thoughtless association with groups. It helps, therefore, that Katzenbach and Smith (1993) made out teams from other forms of working groups: their distinction turning on performance results and theirs is a vision of “real teams that perform, not amorphous groups that we call teams because we think that the label is motivating and energizing” (p. 111). And so, “A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable” (Katzenbach & Smith, 1993, p. 112). For fear that it might pass unnoticed, one should point out also that Katzenbach and Smith’s The Self in Teams was completed on September 9, 2019. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_10

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(1993) definition brought to both mind and heart five essential ingredients of practice: (a) “a meaningful common purpose that the team has helped shaped”; (b) “specific performance goals that flow from the common purpose“; (c) “a mix of complementary skills“; (d) “a strong commitment to how the work gets done”; and (e) “mutual accountability”, an exacting but nonetheless practicable definition that summoned more than Hackman’s (2010) straightforward call for leaders to “stack the deck” in the right order with “a compelling direction, an enabling structure, and a supporting context” (Katzenbach & Smith, 2011, pp. 178–179; Hackman, 2010, p. 212). The order is undoubtedly tall but, with the essentials ingredients of practice at hand, a team can then concentrate on the business for which it has been purposefully assembled, namely, the collective work product, be that to make recommendations (in which case the critical challenge is to make a quick and fecund start before handing off), make or do things (in which case the critical challenge is to bear specific performance goals in mind), or run things (in which case the critical challenge is to distinguish what requires a team approach from what does not) (Katzenbach & Smith, 2011, p. 179). This does not mean there is no role for leadership in teams but, per Yukl (2013), the determinants of team performance have—first and foremost and elaborating on Katzenbach and Smith (1993)—to do with “commitment to task objectives and strategies[;] member skills and role clarity[;] internal organization and coordination[;] external coordination[;] resources and political support[;] mutual trust, cohesiveness, and cooperation[;] collective efficacy and potency[;] accurate, shared mental models[;] collective learning[;] and member diversity” (Yukl, 2013, p. 255): with variations depending on the type of team, e.g., functional, cross-functional, selfmanaged, or virtual, what scope there is leadership has to do with influencing—hard enough as that may be—but can never supplant or even make up for the essential ingredients of practice. Incongruously, individual or shared leadership may actually be more necessary where a team does not come together, thus connoting that something is not quite right.

On Self: What’s in a Word? And what of the word “self”? Springing from self-awareness, self-control, selfesteem, self-knowledge, and self-perception, the self is higher-level cognition that helped address the question: “Who am I?”; identity is more specific and relates to particular aspects of the self, meaning, the beliefs, expressions, looks, personality, qualities, etc. that make a person (or a social group). Helpfully, from the perspective of organization development (and so teams), Markus and Wurf (1987), cited in Hultman and Hultman (2015), see that identity includes “a sense of personal identity across time and space[;] an awareness of personal abilities[;] acknowledging certain characteristics as being self-designing[;] accepting specific roles and responsibilities [;] being committed to a set of values, beliefs, and goals[;] and holding a life-view that provides a sense of meaning and purpose” (p. 40). Paraphrasing John Donne, since no man (or woman) is an island, entire of itself, it follows that both self and

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identity have to do with relationships, with the personal self (e.g., unique traits) nesting inside a relational self (e.g., family, friends, colleagues), itself nesting inside a collective self (e.g., group memberships) per Brewer and Gardner (1996). Developing a personal self apart from relational and collective selves cannot be easily envisaged, at least not without inward or outward struggle or conflict; not to forget, with no denigration of the benefits of diversity, integrating individual and organizational identity can help build effective and healthy work environments, especially in teams. Helpfully, from the perspective of integrating team identity for team effectiveness, Hultman and Hultman (2015) identified processes (i.e., leadership, communication, coordination, conflict resolution, and learning) as well as cognitive (i.e., climate, shared mental models, and transactive memory) and affective/motivational (i.e., psychological safety, cohesion, team efficacy, and potency) factors that are associated with team effectiveness and so should be promoted (p. 46).

The Self in Teams When the teams I was a member of (or led) were infused by Katzenbach and Smith’s (1993) essential ingredients of practice, my experience of teamwork wholeheartedly confirmed the validity of the determinants of team performance that Yukl (2013) identified: these teams generated astonishing results by reason of common goal, commitment, and competence, with uncommon integration of individual and organizational identities and ongoing clarification of answers to the question “Who are we?” by interrogating the interrelationships between the selves and their teams. (To note, what with globalization and the rise of virtual teaming, it may become more difficult to forge and continuously reinforce social identity in the face of increasingly transient personal, relational, and collective contexts.) In such instances, neither I nor my other team members ever felt the need to take over because someone might not deliver his/her share, let alone sat back to let others step in, or waited until the last minute before taking any sort of action. Box 1: A Team That Clicked John once had 10 days to conduct, with the help of a consultant selected for his skills, the midterm review mission of a multimillion-dollar land resource evaluation and planning project covering 18 provinces of ***. (Midterm reviews address all the institutional, administrative, organizational, technical, environmental, social, economic, and financial aspects of a project.) All parameters being set with detailed terms of reference establishing direction, urgency, and performance standards (but the consultant—David—being new to John and to that particular job), there remained only interpersonal processes to work on. Time being of the essence, John proposed that David and he should sit side-by-side and work on one laptop computer in quick conversations across

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multiple files and applications: the results of that symbiotic “brain-trust” were extraordinary. Teaming in complete harmony in a modus operandi of their own device, all the impediments that Schein (1999) associated with interpersonal processes never eventuated: John and David delivered in the time allotted, which also involved three long flights and associated field trips across a vast country, a report of +120 (single-space) pages. On leaving, David confessed he had never worked so hard in his life but that he had never had so much fun either. John and David’s particularized approach to interpersonal processes proved so efficient and effective that they continued to work in the same way on numerous projects for many years thereafter. Note Names and other identifying details have been changed. That said, even though a team is not necessarily the best organizational structure for what an organization sets out to accomplish, teams are often put together for no other reason than political correctness, or because no one can think of other organizational arrangements: and so, teaming recurrently becomes a rite of passage and, wastefully, little else. In truth, what (admittedly challenging) problems are universally associated with teaming would not be half so difficult if, in the first place, the rationale for their formation was made clear from the beginning: this is something most organizations, textbooks, and models only pay lip service to. Tuckman’s (1965) model of group development, for example, specified forming–storming–norming– performing stages: reasonably, one might expect that the rationale for forming would be addressed from the onset; but, at the first stage of forming, Tuckman (1965) showed exclusive concern for anxiety, roles, responsibilities, and the need for members to get to know each other, not with the raison d’être, the motivation, behind the proposed association. Little wonder, then, that here, there, and everywhere, teams tend to cluster at opposite ends of the performance continuum: people love them or—much more frequently—hate them. Lencioni (2002) put his finger on the pulse when he listed the dysfunctions that the failure to build a cohesive team engenders as absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results: for sure, these pitfalls are what anyone involved in group and team leadership would want to concentrate on avoiding or remedying and so develop proficiency toward. And yet, just like Tuckman (1965), Lencioni (2002) paid no attention to raison d’être. Box 2: A Team That Failed Not long ago, senior staff of an organization that John was working for mooted the idea of an action plan to ramp up operations in information and communication technology. John and two others were nominated to help but things went awry from the outset: group boundary management, group task accomplishment, and interpersonal and group management proved impossible. The

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formation of the team having been suggested, not decided, with a spur-ofthe-moment sign-off but no genuine commitment at higher-levels in John’s department, the team immediately fell prey to organizational politics. Because the boundaries of the assignment were neither the group’s nor anybody else’s, John’s two colleagues felt under no compulsion to work hard just so some (unknown) party might eventually take the credit (if there was appetite for that). Competence—meaning, technical expertise and problem-solving skills—the team assuredly had; but, commitment to a vague goal it did not. John drafted the plan without help: interdepartmental consultations at junior levels elicited all-round praise but the plan could not secure endorsement at senior levels and so was not acted upon. Note Names and other identifying details have been changed.

References Brewer, M., & Gardner, W. (1996). Who is this “we”? Levels of collective identity and self representations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(1), 83–93. Hackman, J. (2010). Leading teams: Imperatives for leaders. In G. Hickman (Ed.), Leading organizations: Perspectives for a new era (pp. 209–238). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Hultman, K., & Hultman, J. (2015). Organizational development as identity change. Organization Development Journal, 33(3), 39–54. Katzenbach, J., & Smith, D. (1993). The discipline of teams. Harvard Business Review, 71(2), 111–120. Katzenbach, J., & Smith, D. (2011). The discipline of teams. In HBR’s 10 must reads: On managing people (pp. 175–194). Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. Lencioni, P. (2002). The five dysfunctions of a team. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Schein, E. (1999). Process consultation revisited: Building the helping relationship. San Francisco, CA: Addison-Wesley. Sears, W. (2007). The frontline guide to thinking clearly. Amherst, MA: HRD Press Inc. Serrat, O. (2009). Working in teams. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Tuckman, B. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384– 399. Yukl, G. (2013). Leadership in organizations (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

The Self in Teams (Cont’d)

Abstract This précis offers early reflections on a personal experience of teamwork, noting what had worked as of this writing and drawing attention to important next steps in relation to performing. The précis underscores in particular the utility of team charters, designed expressly to promote a healthy and positive experience, that look to the storming–norming–performing stages of group development. The précis remarks on how the team members of the project referred to had lived up to their team charter as of this writing, and shares observations on personal growth with reference to three specific opportunities (including incidents) illustrating development. The précis concludes with a few reflections on self-growth.

Groups that range from two persons to many are a very big part of social life—in all its facets—and most organizations rely on teamwork: the recurrent justification is that teams are better at solving problems and learn more rapidly and with more effect than individuals (Serrat, 2019). Even so, acknowledging that cooperative work by a team can produce remarkable results, the challenge is to move from the realm of the possible to the realm of practice: some teams succeed but many do not. Early reflections on an ongoing, personal experience of teamwork follow, with an accent on the utility of team charters.

Forming–Storming–Norming–Performing in Team A Team A was formed in early September 2019 to engage in hearty, learning activities over the period September–December 2019, aiming—in due course—to suggest tips for managers to establish or empower teams in their organizations. Table 1 specifies Team A’s members, project, and research question. Forming–storming–norming–performing, the model of group development that Tuckman (1965) proposed, is as good a framework as any to chart Team A’s progress The Self in Teams (Cont’d) was completed on October 7, 2019. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_11

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Table 1 Team A members, project, and research question Team A Members

Joanna; Mick; Olivier; Theresa

Project

Outline Useful Tips for Managers to Establish or Empower Teams in Their Organizations

Research question What Can You Do to Motivate Teams to Achieve More Positive Results? Note Names and other identifying details have been changed

as it grows, grapples with challenges or tackles problems, fashions solutions, plans work, and delivers results, with each step building on the previous one. • Forming. Forming is the stage at which a team makes contact, learns of the challenge(s) it must face, agrees on goals, and begins to organize itself. Accepting it was still relatively uninformed of what issues the project might raise, Team A at once (a) began to model appropriate behavior, (b) decided on the project and research question (from the options at hand), (c) set about considering opportunities and challenges, (d) defined the scope of the task, (e) agreed on next steps, (f) (tentatively) assigned roles tasks, and (g) began to draft a team charter.1 (In the last respect, the assumption was that building and holding members to a team charter would help ensure a healthy and positive experience.) Presciently, taking heed of the possible dysfunctions of a team per Lencioni (2002), the team charter looked to the storming–norming–performing stages of group development. The team charter is reproduced verbatim in Table 2. • Storming. Storming is the stage at which a team sorts itself out and team members gain each other’s trust. Some teams never develop past the storming stage, what with disagreements over, say, goals, roles, values, procedures, relationships, or learning. (Roles are often impacted by clashes over power and control.) Or, teams may subsequently re-enter the storming phase if new challenges or disputes arise. That said, some teams may avoid the phase altogether: thanks to the team charter, this has been Team A’s experience thus far, with no evidence of disagreement in any of the six dimensions listed earlier. • Norming. Norming is the stage at which a team has put an end to disagreements, including personality clashes; the team has by now developed feedback mechanisms, intimacy, and a spirit of cooperation, with every team member confidently taking responsibility for the success of the team’s goals. By and large, this is the stage at which Team A now finds itself, with early individual contributions that must next be coordinated toward performing. • Performing. Performing is the stage at which norms have been established and team members begin to achieve goals. At the performing stage, when teaming is a success, team members are very motivated yet defer to the team’s needs with 1 The

only obstacle to Team A’s progress at the forming stage had to do with electronic access rights that, until the issue was resolved, locked one team member out of the team’s communication platform for three weeks (and by extension perturbed the entire team).

Shared, collective, and extended leadership—meaning, distributed leadership that builds a team’s capacity to formulate and table practical recommendations—will condition the team’s roles. Facilitator, timekeeper, and record keeper assignments will rotate as required by circumstances, with inputs submitted via shared files. That said, on September 8, 2019, the team considered that Joanna might take the lead in assembling the final project deliverables, viz., a 5–10 page write-up (using a minimum of 25–30 peer-reviewed references) and a PowerPoint presentation; adhering to high standards of written work, the members of the team would all make submissions for incorporation and jointly review the products prior to finalization. On the same day, Olivier and Theresa volunteered to initiate and progress work on the Team Charter

The core value that the members of the team are expected to own jointly is a growth mindset, focused on what is best for the whole team so it might deliver its goals, powered by efficient collaboration and feedback

Roles

Values

(continued)

Our team aims to outline useful tips for managers to establish or empower teams in their organizations. Our team will achieve this by researching the question: What can you do to motivate teams to achieve more positive results? Thus, the overarching goal of the team is to formulate and table recommendations; therefore, the critical challenge is to make a quick and fecund start before handing off to prospective managers. A subsidiary but nonetheless complementary goal is to make the experience of teamwork as congenial and informative as possible

Goals

Team charter

Table 2 Team charter

Forming–Storming–Norming–Performing in Team a 79

Procedures

Team charter

(continued)

The team must plan and conduct a GoTo meeting to discuss and agree on specific procedures to divide up the work. The possibilities are that, to begin, one person could take the lead in writing the sections of the paper or that each member be ascribed his/her own sections. It is proposed that the sections of the paper (and associated research) follow the course syllabus for Group and Team Leadership (i.e., key components of team, team formation, maintaining an effective team, avoiding dysfunctionality, facing conflict in teams, working with conflict, formally rewarding teams, informally rewarding teams, principles of virtual teams, working in a virtual team, and leading a team). Subsequent GoTo meetings will be organized to progress contributions toward the paper (and eventual PowerPoint presentation) At GoTo meetings, the members of the team will be governed by the need to: • Participate in the conversation throughout, not just at the beginning or at the end • Listen carefully • Ask for clarification, when needed • Speak loud enough for everyone to hear, taking care to enunciate clearly • Acknowledge previous speakers by name, or by nodding • Make eye contact • Go to the point, not off-track • Move the conversation forward with connections to literature and life experiences • Build on the ideas/comments of other members • Make comments that spur the conversation and help think of new things and new ways • Back up ideas with evidence, namely, by referring directly to the material at hand (e.g., on p. 12 it says …) The first GoTo meeting will confirm if there is a need for a facilitator (noting the small size of the team). Pursuant to GoTo meetings, it is possible that changes might be made to the Team Charter, this to promote it also as a living document

Table 2 (continued)

80 The Self in Teams (Cont’d)

Learning expands horizons: the horizons of who we are and those of what we might become, singly and together with others. Individually and working as a group, the team will strive to ask, learn, and share throughout the project: related actions will include being open to new ideas or ways of doing things; promoting a team environment where critical thinking is encouraged; and mastering tools, methods, and approaches that enrich team discussions

Note Names and other identifying details have been changed. At mid-point and at the end of the project period, the members of Team A are to complete team evaluation forms: in reviewing these, each will know what is expected of him/her in a team environment, which will also serve to maintain the Team Charter Source Author

Learning

Relationships The members of the team will commit themselves to attend GoTo meetings, with dates to be circulated in advance. To conduce positive roles and associated relationships toward the goal, such individual “PhD Behaviors” as purposive perspective, critical thinking, ability to self-organize, gratitude, humility, respect, and inclusiveness are encouraged, thereby curtailing the chances of indifference or lack of performance. Given the nature of the project, the team does not anticipate to have to address irresolvable issues: if it does, every issue will be examined case-by-case in a spirit of appreciative inquiry, always with constructive criticism should any be warranted, and with decision-making by majority

Team charter

Table 2 (continued)

Forming–Storming–Norming–Performing in Team a 81

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empathy and high trust; display an objective outlook; can handle the decisionmaking process without supervision; risk confrontation; work efficiently with little waste; and take pleasure in the accomplishments of the team. Team A must soon, meaning, over the next couple of weeks, reach this stage: toward this, it has just begun consultations aiming to hammer out next steps.

The Self in Team A Based on the foregoing section on forming–storming–norming–performing, I reckon that, so far, the individuals listed in Table 1 have been living up to the team charter reproduced in Table 2. A contributing factor behind Team A’s progress to date may well be that, pursuant to forming, the team charter was drafted specifically with the storming–norming–performing stages of group development in mind. Teams must get off “on the right foot” and team charters are best drawn when a team is established, that being the very first stage, this to ensure its members are focused on the right things from the onset. (Of course, team charters also come in handy if—or rather when—a team later experiences difficulties and members must regain a view of the “big picture”.) That said, reflecting on a team’s performance should also invite reflection on the self in teams; in this respect, three specific opportunities (including one incident) served as lessons learned that promoted my self-growth: • Team Charter. I led the drafting of the team charter: in the course of that, the first opportunity for self-growth was to recognize that (a) the exact format of a team charter should depend on the situation (and indeed should differ from team to team); (b) the true value of a team charter comes from thinking through—and agreeing on—the elements of the charter; and (c) a team charter should be a living document. Given the project and the research question for Team A, defining goals, roles, values, relationships, and learning was thankfully straightforward; but, the matter of procedures will continue to call for quick thinking and action. In relation to procedure, what lesson must be borne in mind is that preoccupation with the higher components of teams is fine, nay, obligatory: but, the rubber must hit the road at some point. • Procedures. Without front-loading a decision, the team charter posits that one team member could take the lead in writing the sections of the paper the team is tasked with delivering or that each member might be ascribed his/her own sections; a conclusion still has not been reached, probably because no discussion has been held on the actual contents of the paper. (Toward this, however, each member is researching peer-reviewed articles on the broader subject on group and team leadership). Notwithstanding, recognizing early that lack of clarity over procedures might prove a thorn in the team’s side, I suggested in the team charter that the contents of the paper could follow the course syllabus for Group and Team Leadership (i.e., key components of team, team formation, maintaining an effective team, avoiding dysfunctionality, facing conflict in teams, working with conflict, formally

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rewarding teams, informally rewarding teams, principles of virtual teams, working in a virtual team, and leading a team). In mid-September 2019, I also proposed that the multilevel framework in Costa, Fulmer, and Anderson (2018) could help organize inputs toward Team A’s project. (I recently reminded the other team members of this possibility.) As things now stand, Team A will probably avail of the opportunity of the next on-ground class reunion, scheduled on October 6, 2019, to agree on the contents of the paper and on related task assignments. • Communications. Teams that communicate well deliver outcomes more efficiently (and likely more quickly) than others. For effective communications, it helps if—for instance—teams have an open-door policy, are open to two-way feedback, are clear about tasks so everyone might know his/her responsibility, and decide what form of communication works best. These days, online collaboration tools are essential, not least because virtual teaming is increasingly common. I learned much about the importance of communications in teams when it was finally dawned on Team A, as related earlier, that one team member could not read the team’s posts on account of faulty electronic access rights. At first, no one grasped that something was amiss: assuming that the team member was “in the loop”, but might have decided to “lie low” for a while at least, no one wanted to intervene. And so, ambiguity prevailed, with each team member wondering if someone (else) should do something. At long last, it took (in actual fact) a quite simple electronic message from me to discover where the problem was, to the delight of the affected (and quite confused) party. The mishap in communications among the members of Team A, now resolved, underscored that “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken”, a quote attributed to George Bernard Shaw (but also to others).

On Self-Growth in Teams Individually or as a group, setting ourselves goals in any area of life frequently requires us to stretch if we are to achieve them. But, growth does not happen overnight: it is a daily, incremental process, the outcome of which is cumulative. And so, if one is to evidence progress tomorrow, one had better start yesterday and continue throughout today: from the outset, this may require a learning plan, hence the accent on learning in the team charter, to help identify what particularized knowledge, skills, and abilities are required so we might become who we want to be. Out of many, and in no particular order, a few retrospective and prospective questions that can promote self-growth in teams are: Where, and how, might I have been more effective today? In what role might I have performed better?2 Where might I have been more 2 De Bono’s (1985) six thinking hats come to mind: this is a tool for individual reflection and group

discussion that involves the figurative wearing of six colored hats representing six different ways in which the brain can be challenged. White hat thinking is neutral; red hat thinking is intuitive; black hat thinking is pessimistic; yellow hat thinking is optimistic; green hat thinking is creative; and blue hat thinking is managerial (de Bono, 1985).

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understanding and compassionate? Why, and how, might I have been more assertive? How can I connect more personally with other team members in future? Where can I be more [insert area of knowledge, skill, or ability]? How, from now on, can I help team members better complement one another? How can I better manage my own boundaries? How will I celebrate everyone’s victories? For better effect, such questions had better be asked with self-awareness, self-regulation, self-motivation, social awareness, and social skills (Goleman, 1995).3

References Costa, A., Fulmer, C., & Anderson, N. (2018). Trust in work teams: An integrative review, multilevel model, and future directions. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 39, 169–184. de Bono, E. (1985). Six thinking hats: An essential approach to business management. Boston: Little, Brown. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. New York, NY: Bantam Books. Lencioni, P. (2002). The five dysfunctions of a team. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Serrat, O. (2019). The self in teams. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Tuckman, B. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384– 399.

3 Individuals

have different personalities, wants, needs, and ways of showing their emotions, and navigating through this requires tact and shrewdness. Goleman’s (1995) five domains of selfawareness, self-regulation, self-motivation, social awareness, and social skills point to the right direction.

The Self in Teams (Coda)

Abstract Team A was formed in early September 2019 to engage in hearty, learning activities over the period September–December 2019, aiming to suggest tips for managers to implement or empower teams in their organizations. Concluding the short journey synopsized in Serrat (The self in teams [Unpublished manuscript]. The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, 2019a; The self in teams (cont’d), [Unpublished manuscript]. The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, 2019b), this précis on the self in teams considers its author’s performance as a member of Team A and ponders how the practice of self-reflection might be enriched for better team performance in general.

Serrat (2019a) recalled experiences of teamwork and identified a meaningful common purpose as the indispensable ingredient to getting a joint work product done, be that to formulate recommendations, manufacture things, or run an operation (Katzenbach & Smith, 2011, p. 179). Referencing Tuckman (1965) and Lencioni (2002) in particular, Serrat (2019b) offered early reflections on an ongoing experience of teamwork in Team A1 ; underscored the utility of team charters; and shared observations on personal growth with reference to three opportunities (including incidents) illustrating development. Concluding the short journey synopsized in Serrat (2019a, 2019b), this précis on the self in teams considers my performance as a member of Team A and ponders how the practice of self-reflection might be enriched for better team performance in general.

The Self in Teams (Coda) was completed on December 3, 2019. 1 Team

A was formed in early September 2019 to formulate by December 2019 tips for managers to energize teams in organizations.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_12

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Performing in Team A: A Self-Evaluation Team A’s performance was anchored in the team charter its four original members drew in September 2019: the charter stipulated goals, roles, values, procedures, relationships, and the rationale for learning. In early December 2019, Team A (which had by then grown to number six persons, of which four women and two men) delivered a report treating the key components of teams, trust in teams, facing conflict in teams, working with conflict in teams, team recognition and rewards, team motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic), principles of virtual teams, working in virtual teams, and leading teams.2 In relation to each of the nine topics/themes it addressed, Team A isolated the central issue, described the state of the art of good practice, and suggested directions for scholarly investigation; findings, analyses, and recommendations from more than 100 peer-reviewed articles published in the last five years (i.e., 2014–2019) underpinned Team A’s treatment of the nine topics/themes. To evaluate is to determine the character, nature, quality, or value of something and a self-evaluation is an assessment of one’s own performance. The success of others can be a source of good feelings but an individual should self-evaluate his or her contribution to a joint work product, bearing continuously in mind that the said contribution does not stand alone but was conditioned by the accomplishments of others Not to forget, an individual is also likely—and much more commonly—to be evaluated by others. Table 1 lists the 10 criteria by which the performance of each member of Team A was to be gauged. If the motive is self-improvement,3 a self-evaluation is usually designed to be positive for the explicit purpose of learning. And so, to accentuate the importance that the team charter placed on learning,4 I resolved at the inception of Team A to 2 Pell-mell,

the tips that Team A formulated to implement or empower teams in organizations are: (a) design workplaces that are open to growth; (b) build trust through effective communications; (c) identify conflict and work out strategies to manage or leverage it; (d) appreciate intrinsic and extrinsic motivation at individual and team levels; (e) recognize and reward employees depending on their needs; (f) develop soft virtual teaming skills; (g) foster learning in virtual teams and map learning curves; (h) redefine virtual teaming away from geographically, organizationally, and/or time-dispersed collaboration because, these days, teams make choices about virtuality based on a confluence of factors including group structure, task, and interaction frequency; (i) conduct social network analysis to make out relationships and knowledge flows and see how they might be measured, monitored, and evaluated for higher team (and organizational) performance; and (j) accept that team leadership is not synonymous with a single team leader’s style but hangs on efficient interdependence powered by distributed approaches. 3 In social psychology, self-improvement refers to the motive behind efforts to become a better individual. The other, less common, motives that might drive self-evaluation are self-assessment (to appraise aspects that are important to one’s identity), self-verification (to be known and understood according to what beliefs one holds), and self-enhancement (to maintain self-esteem) (Sedikides, 1993). 4 Apropos learning, the team charter averred that “Learning expands the horizons of who we are and what we can become. Individually and working as a group, the team will strive to ask, learn, and share throughout the project: related actions will include being open to new ideas or ways of doing things; promoting a team environment where critical thinking is encouraged; and mastering tools, methods, and approaches that enrich team discussions” (Serrat, 2019b).

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Table 1 Team member evaluation Team member initials Criterion

AA BB CC DD EE

1. This person did his/her share of the work 2. This person advanced my understanding of the topics and stretched my learning 3. It was obvious that this person was prepared for the discussions 4. This person was able to offer and accept constructive criticism 5. This person submitted his/her assigned tasks according to time needed 6. This person demonstrated a positive, respectful attitude toward all 7. This person remained focused on important issues during team discussions 8. This person submitted work that adhered to standards expected of written work 9. It was obvious that this person cared that we worked as a team and sought the opinion and help of all 10. This person had an attitude of learning and not just getting the assignments done Note Across the 10 criteria, each member of Team A was to rank others in keeping with the following scale: 1–2—strongly disagree; 3–4—disagree; 5–6—neutral; 7–8—agree; 9–10—strongly agree; DNA—does not apply. Respondents were advised to avoid “5” or “6” and to use “10” only when a team member had performed in a way they would wish to model

ongoingly gauge my performance by the 10 criteria listed in the table. The members of Team A were not to evaluate themselves, but I trust that my performance throughout the experience, not just at the conclusion of it, was in the range of 7–8 or 9–10. “A rising tide lifts all boats”: in a curious derivative of that aphorism, it dawned on me as I tracked my performance across the 10 criteria that mindful engagement with one criteria in its evaluation setting boosts one’s chances of succeeding across the others.5 Beyond the ultimate—and so final, hence, rather narrow—purpose of evaluation, I resolved also to act across the 10 criteria for the added purpose of promoting the team charter (Beckhard, 1972).6 Reflection develops higher-level thinking and problem-solving: in turn, that transforms experience into genuine learning, for example about individual values or broader issues. My take on the experience of Team A is that team building should be practiced across the forming–storming–norming–performing stages of Tuckman’s (1965) model of group development: team building does not just underpin the first 5 Merriam-Webster

defines mindfulness as the practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of one’s thoughts, emotions, or experiences on a moment-tomoment basis. 6 According to Beckhard (1972), team building serves to set goals or priorities; analyze or allocate the way work is performed; estimate the way the team is working; and examine relationships among team members.

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stage (i.e., forming). According to Burke (1982), a team-building perspective helps the members of a team figure out the nature of team dynamics, notably the interrelationship between process and content, and so entices them also to learn on the job and practice certain principles for greater team effectiveness. At the individual level, to extend Burke (1982), a team-building mindset is what can turn a single member into a high performer, which since there is no “I” in “Team” ultimately means that— beyond allotted tasks—he or she is an authentic team player. On the word of Babe Ruth, “The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.”7 Teamwork that blends complementary strengths can produce remarkable results: the majority of them have to do with efficiency and productivity but teamwork can also offer appreciable learning opportunities and boost social capital. And so, it is no accident that the most common behavioral questions in job interviews all connect to teamwork8 : after all, every occupation requires us—one way or another—to work with other people. In the Age of Knowledge, therefore, it is incumbent on students and professionals alike to continuingly reflect: self-reflection supports the development of the soft skills (i.e., self-management skills, people skills) that are required when working with others, soft skills that can in addition be used to enhance personal effectiveness, develop team dynamics, and maximize the performance of teams.9

The Self in Teams: Finding Your Role Granted: not every person is, at least initially, a practiced leader; and, nurturing a team-building mindset is not necessarily for everyone; but, in a complex, turbulent, and so increasingly competitive world, the odds against teams succeeding are high and merely delivering against allotted tasks is not sufficient either. It cannot just be that absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results, the five dysfunctions that Lencioni (2002) identified, explain all: a functionality that Lencioni (2002) did not discern pertains to team roles, which if one considers the self in teams should also be the subject of self-evaluation.

7 Babe

Ruth’s assertion rings the bell: the term “team” was borrowed from sport by management.

8 For example: Tell me about a project that required inputs from different people. Give me an example

of a team that failed. Share a rewarding team experience. How would you work with a difficult team member? Tell me about a time you stepped up to a leadership role. 9 Self-management skills include emotion regulation, a growth mindset, patience, perceptiveness, perseverance and persistence, resilience, self-awareness, self-confidence, skills to forgive and forget, and stress management. People skills have to do with coaching and mentoring, communicating, dealing with difficult people and situations, facilitating, influencing, leading, managing, managing upwards, negotiating, networking, persuading, presenting, self-promotion, selling, and savviness about office politics.

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The charter for Team A envisaged that shared, collective, and extended leadership—meaning, distributed leadership that builds the team’s capacity to formulate and table practical recommendations—would condition the team’s roles. In action and in retrospect, distributed leadership worked well for Team A, with each team member coming to the fore as the opportunity demanded or beckoned. But, along with encouraging team members to take the helm in turn, the team charter might also have invited each team member to find his or her particularized role. Belbin Associates (2009) discovered there are nine clusters of behavior, called “team roles”, that each team needs to access so it might become a high-performance team.10 Belbin Associates (2009) made clear this does not mean that every team requires nine people or that all team roles are always required at the same time: one should first look at a team’s goals and objectives and then discuss which team role behaviors should be displayed, and when, based on what tasks must be undertaken.) Belbin Associates’ (2009) nine clusters of behavior, in relation to which self-perception inventories should be conducted and feedback sought, are: • Plant—plants are imaginative and unorthodox. • Monitor evaluator—monitor evaluators are logical, discriminating, and always make the right decisions. • Coordinator—coordinators clarify goals, promote decision making, and involve others in appropriate ways. • Implementers—implementers are disciplined, systematic, and love structure. • Completer finisher—completer finishers are perfectionists who ensure that every detail is correct. • Resource investigator—resource investigators are enthusiastic, inquisitive, and explore opportunities. • Shaper—shapers are dynamic and make things happen. • Team worker—team workers are diplomatic, popular, and avert friction • Specialist—specialists are professionally dedicated, single-minded, and are prepared to build up their knowledge. (pp. 21–35) Driskell, Driskell, Burke, and Salas (2017) recognized that “Roles are important in teams because they represent patterns of behavior that are interrelated with the activities of other team members in pursuit of the overall team goal” (p. 482). But, pace Belbin Associates (2009), a universally accepted taxonomy of team roles does not (yet) exist. Noting the state of the art, some of which describes primary team roles in as few as two behavioral dimensions to as many as 27, Driskell et al. (2017) presented a model describing three primary behavioral dimensions: (a) dominance, (b) sociability, and (c) task orientation. And, in recognition of varying degrees of dominance, sociability, and task orientation, Driskell et al. (2017) then made out 13 clusters: (a) team leader, (b) task motivator, (c) power seeker, (d) critic, (e) attention seeker, (f) negative, (g) social, (h) coordinator, (i) follower, (j) teamwork support, (k) 10 In a basketball team, to pursue the parallelism between teams and sport, the five primary roles include two guards, two forwards, and a center (or—to be exact—a point guard, a shooting guard, a small forward, a power forward, and a center), each with his or her own roles and responsibilities.

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evaluator, (l) problem solver, and (m) task completer. I, for one, find the nine clusters of behavior in Belbin Associates (2009) more comprehensive (and yet practicable) than those in Driskell et al. (2017): irrespective, the vast literature that Driskell et al. (2017) reviewed underscores the potential that team role models hold for optimizing team composition and, as a result, team effectiveness. Further research should yield valuable insights into team role structure and performance.

References Beckhard, R. (1972). Optimizing team-building efforts. Journal of Contemporary Business, 1(3), 23–32. Belbin Associates. (2009). The Belbin guide to succeeding at work. London, UK: A & C Black Publishers Ltd. Burke, W. (1982). Organization development: Principles and practices. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. Driskell, T., Driskell, J., Burke, C., & Salas, E. (2017). Team roles: A review and integration. Small Group Research, 48(4), 482–511. Katzenbach, J., & Smith, D. (2011). The discipline of teams. In HBR’s 10 must reads: On managing people (pp. 175–194). Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. Lencioni, P. (2002). The five dysfunctions of a team. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Sedikides, C. (1993). Assessment, enhancement, and verification determinants of the self-evaluation process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(2), 317–338. Serrat, O. (2019a). The self in teams. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Serrat, O. (2019b). The self in teams (cont’d). Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Tuckman, B. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384– 399.

Leadership Self-Development

Establishing Your Fundamental Self

Abstract A personal mission statement defines who you are: it identifies your purpose, explains why it matters, and describes how you intend to pursue it. This précis reproduces one such statement. Anchored in positive psychology and positive leadership, the précis references Quinn’s (2005) fundamental state of leadership and leverages its four questions for positive change to retrospectively cast light on my past and present disposition and investigate where and how Quinn’s (2005) fundamental state of leadership might serve in future.

Positive psychology is concerned with eudaemonia, a Greek word and fundamental tenet of Aristotelian ethics that variously translates as blessedness, happiness, human flourishing, prosperity, or welfare from “eu” (“good”) and “daim¯on” (“spirit”). For Aristotle, achieving eudaemonia was conditional on the pursuit of virtue, excellence, and the very best in each of us, which meant it had to be a rational activity. Twentyfour centuries later, in the belief that human beings are more drawn to the future than they are driven by the past, Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) introduced the new field of positive psychology to offset their discipline’s excessive concern with pathology and “preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life” (p. 5). According to its newfound precepts, the compass of positive psychology spans positive subjective experience, positive individual traits, and positive institutions (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). How positive leadership might shape positive organizational behaviors is one area of investigation.

Getting to the Roots of Positive Forms of Leadership Leadership is best defined by results, not attributes, and distinct leadership styles will serve depending on the situation, singly or in combination. That said, there can be no doubt that positive leaders who mitigate suffering and increase people’s Establishing Your Fundamental Self was completed on May 26, 2020. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_13

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happiness can help optimize the performance of individuals, groups, and organizations. Positive leadership, a catch-all concept and practice that includes authentic, charismatic, ethical, servant, spiritual, and transformational leadership, typically demonstrates concern for individual and collective well-being and health both as a means to organizational effectiveness and as an end in itself. Notwithstanding varying degrees of emphasis, notably in terms of the focus given to the organizational level, Avolio and Gardner (2005) identified that common forms of positive leadership share preoccupation with positive psychological capital, positive moral perspective, leader self-awareness, leader self-regulation, leadership processes/behaviors, follower selfawareness/regulation, follower development, organizational context, and veritable and sustained performance beyond expectations (p. 323). Put simply, positive leadership is about affirming human potential to profoundly impact organizational performance for the better, which Cameron (2008) suggested rests on the four leadership strategies of cultivating positive climate, relationships, communication, and meaning with a focus on positively deviant performance, affirmative bias, and eudaemonism.

A Personal Mission Statement Serrat (2018a) articulated a personal philosophy of leadership, which the following reproduces but specifies further: Organizations exist to make people’s skills and capabilities effective so organizations might themselves deliver on vision and mission. I believe that leadership is a responsibility that must be shared by all parties to the act of organizing: in a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, it must become the capacity to see, think, and act. Toward this, by means of the leadership management system I have conceptualized, I aim in a process of social influence to grow more leaders to bring out the best in fellow knowledge workers so they accomplish more together, in more meaningful ways, than they imagined they might. Implicit in this statement are directions about how I lead and choose to influence, aka authentic leadership; what I value; what I expect from partners; what I do not accept; and— especially—what type of environment I am committed to creating. I choose to measure my life in terms of “portfolio work”, meaning, the organization of my career as an integrated portfolio of endeavors, not mere jobs. (Serrat, 2018a)

Fusing theory, principles, attitude, and behavior, the personal mission statement manifestly draws from the positivism of authentic leadership, which it imbues with values from the lesser known style of distributed leadership. The statement also means to be actionable, which raises the following question: In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, how might I identify or create for myself personal opportunities to act on my mission, enhance what I do, or at least do it differently?

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Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership Consonant with positive psychology, Quinn (2005) made the point that “nearly all corporate training programs and books on leadership are grounded in the assumption that we should study the behaviors of those who have been successful and teach people to emulate them” (p. 115). And yet, Quinn (2005) continued, leaders who do their best work do not copy others: on the contrary, “they draw on their own fundamental values and capabilities” to lead in thought and action by being truly “on” and tapping into their values and capabilities (p. 115). There is no magic here, Quinn (2005) implied, with no need for special skills or techniques. If there is no secret sauce for leadership, then, how are common people, not just leaders, to shift into Quinn’s (2005) fundamental state of leadership? How might they be helped to navigate the complexity and challenges of leading—not forcing— change? To galvanize positive emotions and engender new possibilities for what situation we face, Quinn (2005) reasoned we must first recognize that we already have experience of entering the fundamental state of leadership; next, we must analyze our current situation to compare ongoing behavior with our past best and fuel confidence that we can re-enter the state. Then, Quinn (2005) explained, we must ask ourselves four transformative questions: “Am I results centered?”, “Am I internally directed?”, “Am I other focused?”, and “Am I externally open?” (pp. 126–130). Why these questions? Because, Quinn (2005) argued, we understandably tend to be reactive problem solvers and our normal state is comfort centered, externally driven, selffocused, and internally closed.

Four Questions for Positive Change Quinn’s (2005) fundamental state of leadership suggests we can become results centered, internally driven, other focused, and externally open if we ask ourselves the four questions for positive change. The fundamental state of leadership posits that when we do ask the four questions for positive change, we transform, become positive deviant, and so in turn transformational; that we become creators and attract others to the creative process; and that at such times relationships or organizations become learning systems (Anding & Quinn, 2005). Asking and answering the four questions for positive change prompts new feelings, thoughts, behaviors, and techniques but few of us choose to do so even though anybody can, on the word of Anding and Quinn (2005). Why? Because “It requires giving up control, and that is terrifying,” Anding and Quinn (2005) contended (p. 490).

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Am I Results Centered? Paraphrasing Quinn (2005), have I articulated the results I want to create? Paraphrasing further, instead of remaining in my comfort zone and solving familiar problems, dare I move toward possibilities that do not yet exist (Quinn, 2005)? My answer is “yes”. Courtesy of an unusual background and upbringing, my cultural identity structure is that of a well-traveled, polyglot, and global citizen with multidisciplinary competencies. I have no comfort zone because I long ago made the conscious decision to avoid developing preferences for situations that make me feel at ease and in control, including routines of behavior. My Myers–Briggs Type Indicator is ENTP (Extroversion, Intuition, Thinking, Perception), which suggests that I am an idea person who prefers to dwell in the world of possibilities. A problem-solver, my tasks have generally been self-contained and almost always directly linked to the accomplishment and analysis of results from policies, strategies, programs, and projects. To help focus on output accomplishment, I even invented—and regularly applied—a methodology to improve the effectiveness of design and monitoring frameworks, that is, the logic models that structure the main elements of a program (or project) and serve to highlight the (expected) linkages between inputs, outputs, outcomes, and impact (Serrat, 2008). Elsewhere, I used to invite executing agencies to fill in questionnaires to assess the effectiveness of assistance in capacity development and further inform technical assistance completion reports (Serrat, 2009).

Am I Internally Directed? Paraphrasing Quinn (2005), am I willing to challenge others’ expectations? Paraphrasing further, instead of complying with others’ expectations and conforming to existing conditions, dare I clarify my core values, acting with authenticity and confidence, and willingly initiate productive conflict (Quinn, 2005)? My answer is also “yes”. Through work across numerous sectors in many countries, I acquired one after the other a degree of expertise in project management, strategic planning, public communication, environmental and natural resource management, operations evaluation, knowledge management, and more recently information and communication technology. I know who I am and what my values and beliefs are. With authenticity and self-confidence, I have launched initiatives to synergize organization, people, knowledge, and technology for results and, especially, for learning from results.

Am I Other Focused? Paraphrasing Quinn (2005), have I put my organization’s needs above my own? Paraphrasing further, instead of allowing the pursuit of my own self-interest to shape

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my relationships, dare I commit to the collective good in organizations—even at a personal cost (Quinn, 2005)? My answer is still “yes”. Change is inevitable part of life but we need to do more than simply respond. Each of us should ask: “What can I do to improve the effectiveness of the institution in which I serve?” Of course, acting for the collective good will more often than not—quite paradoxically it may seem—come at a personal cost. In such instances, we must have the nerve to do what we reason is right even though the outcome will displease. We must summon moral courage. “Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change”, said Robert F. Kennedy (Kennedy, 1966).

Am I Externally Open? Paraphrasing Quinn (2005), do I recognize signals suggesting the need for change? Paraphrasing further, instead of controlling my environment, making incremental changes, and relying on established routines, dare I learn from my environment, acknowledging the need for major change, and departing from routines (Quinn, 2005)? My answer is “yes” too. It is not logical (and certainly unwise) to be externally closed if one is results centered, internally driven, and—in particular—other focused. True: one may find it difficult to turn criticism around until one finds its gift but this is assuredly a most valuable habit of mind if one manages to do it. Being externally open is also congruent with both the concept and practice of the knowledge worker (who must think for a living and so welcome feedback) as well as the principles of the learning organization (Davenport, 2005; Senge, 2006): therefore, the most pressing issue is how one can set up systems for quality feedback and, especially, feedforward. In my career, I have if anything used a surfeit of tools (e.g., formal reviews, newsletters, presentations, technical reports, web pages) to continuingly communicate and report on accomplishments with thorough explanations about obstacles, steps taken, and measures of success. Much learning, all in all, that I reflected upon during and after with such questions as: What went well? What might be done better? Not to forget, we must also learn before during. It is not for me to judge whether positive responses to the aforementioned questions ever afforded me what Quinn (2005) termed “moments of greatness”; and, considering whether they will in the future may be moot because, more often than we care to confess, we are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence. But, paraphrasing Quinn (2005), there is—to my mind at least—deep meaning in venturing beyond the familiar to pursue different outcomes; owning one’s values; advancing the collective good; and learning from the environment to appreciate when and where there might be a need for some kind of change (p. 120). The personal mission statement I reproduced is neither new nor a one-off design: it is serviceable and has staying power; it can be acted upon in myriad ways; in future, this might well be

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by means of the leadership management system referred to in the statement, which would aim to answer the question of what modes and combinations of leadership and associated management systems for sense- and decision-making can most effectively address simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic problems (Serrat, 2018b). As I look for opportunities to act on the statement, repeatedly raising and answering the four questions for positive change will help test my approaches and suggest what to do differently and what to enhance.

On Motive, Means, and Opportunity A caveat is in order. Past a carefully formulated motive (or reason), there must also be means (or tools, methods, and approaches) and opportunities (or occasions) to achieve “moments of greatness”. Personal mission statements will remain good intentions if they do not find concrete expression on the ground. And yet, in more instances than we care to recognize (or admit), the means and opportunities to act on our motive may not be there. Not everything is necessarily in the hands of the would-be architect, which means that positive psychology, positive leadership, and personal mission statements should not oversell.

References Anding, J., & Quinn, R. (2005). An interview with Robert E. Quinn entering the fundamental state of leadership: Reflections on the path to transformational teaching. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 4(4), 487–495. Avolio, B., & Gardner, W. (2005). Authentic leadership development: Getting to the root of positive forms of leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 16, 315–338. Cameron, K. (2008). Positive leadership: Strategies for extraordinary performance. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler. Davenport, T. (2005). Thinking for a living: How to get better performance and results from knowledge workers. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Kennedy, R. (1966, June 6). Day of affirmation address, University of Capetown, Capetown, South Africa. Retrieved from https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/robertf-kennedy/robert-f-kennedy-speeches/day-of-affirmation-address-university-of-capetown-cap etown-south-africa-june-6-1966. Quinn, R. (2005). Moments of greatness. In On managing yourself (pp. 115–134, 2010). Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press. Seligman, M., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55(1), 5–14. Senge, P. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Currency/Doubleday. Serrat, O. (2008). Output accomplishment and the design and monitoring framework. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Serrat, O. (2009). Assessing the effectiveness of assistance in capacity development. Manila: Asian Development Bank.

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Serrat, O. (2018a). Personal philosophy of leadership. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Serrat, O. (2018b). Research concept paper for leading organizations of the future. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

The Challenges of Learning from Experience

Abstract Yip and Wilson (2010) offered challenging insights into the well-quoted saying that “experience is the best teacher”, notably by distinguishing the main event cluster of experiential learning to be challenging assignments, not the corporate staple of coursework and training. This précis comments on the main precepts of learning from experience including Yip and Wilson’s (2010) roadmap to help organizations on the journey of experience-based learning. The précis argues that creating work environments that give everyone the opportunity to flourish in the age of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity demands more tailored and democratic approaches.

Through the lens of behaviorism—the theory that much in human and animal conduct owes to interaction with the environment, “many of the crucial aspects of learning can be understood as a relatively permanent change in behavior as a consequence of experience“ (Haselgrove, 2016, p. 2).1 Unlike other living species, however, human beings are intensely aware that they need experience so they might learn, thence survive and thrive. And so, interest in emotional, mental, physical, and religious or spiritual experience is as old as mankind and the subject is ordinarily defined as first-person knowledge, practical wisdom, and skills derived from what one has encountered, interpreted, observed, practiced, repeated, or undergone.2

The Challenges of Learning from Experience was completed on June 24, 2020. 1 The act of introspection—the examination of one’s own mental and emotional processes—suggests

that suchlike definitions should also include a change in potential behavior. 2 Classical conditioning results from interactions with the environment and leads to learning through

association; operant conditioning results from rewards and punishments and leads to learning through consequences; social learning results from observation and modeling to meet the demands of a particular environment; and individual learning, the difference between a first and a second moment, results from a change in behavior or knowledge from new information, a different representation of a situation, or a new strategy borne out of experience, instruction, imitation, reflection, trial and error, etc. Borenstein, Feldman, and Aoki (2008) proposed that the social learner–explorer represents another form of learning, which amalgamates social learning with exploratory individual learning to create and innovate in fluctuating environments. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_14

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Render unto Caesar the Things that Are Caesar’s Remarkably, the earliest recorded version of the saying that “experience is the teacher of all things” owes to no other than Julius Caesar, who in Commentarii de Bello Civili (Commentaries on the Civil War) implied that the only way to learn is to reflect on experience (Caesar, ca 52 B.C.). It is fitting that Caesar should be the first on record for the word “experience” has Latin roots—specifically, “ex-”, meaning “out of, from”; and “-per¯ır¯ı”, signifying “to attempt, to try”—which intimates that knowledge is gained by being put to the test. (The word “peril” is related.) Predictably, there has been no shortage of variations on Caesar’s ruling for the last 2,000 years, with sundry quips adding that experience is also the most expensive teacher or—more humorously—that it is the name men give to their mistakes (Wilde, 1880).

Coursework and Training  = Leader Development Artificial intelligence, asymmetric population growth and ageing, big data, climate change, digitization, financial crises, globalization, resource depletion, robotization, etc.: we are transforming our world and, evermore, the leadership industry promotes conferences, executive meetings, inspirational speeches, op-eds, training sessions, workshops, etc. so we might manage better. TrainingIndustry.com (2020) reckons that the leadership industry is worth about $370 billion globally, of which about $170 billion (or approximately 45%) is spent in North America: what share of that tidy sum relates to challenging assignments, developmental relationships, and coursework and training is not known—the intuitive “golden” ratio is 70–20–10 (Lombardo & Eichinger, 1996)—but Gallup found a surfeit of coursework and training and—by implication—a deficit on the side of experiential learning, aka learning by doing (Ratanjee, 2018). And yet, it has for long been known that the three organizational needs that are supposedly served by leader development, viz., performance improvement, succession management, and organizational change (McCauley, Kanaga, & Lafferty, 2010), are rarely (if ever) advanced by coursework and training; even where a modicum of success has been achieved and the gap between knowing and doing closes somewhat, participants habitually regress to pre-training levels because “the individuals [have] less power to change the system surrounding them than that system [has] to shape them” (Beer, Finnström, & Schrader, 2016). Put differently, “If the system does not change, it will not support and sustain individual behavior change—indeed, it will set people up to fail” (Beer et al. 2016).3 Even so, the systems in which we operate cannot be blamed for everything: it is also a fact that coursework and training does not individualize and so can neither match leaders to what experiences are most 3 McCauley

et al. (2010) meant to sell leader development but the realpolitik of ends and means signals that the concerns of an organization will always be given preference over those of its personnel when traditional coursework and training is the order of the day.

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needed nor consequently help them reflect so they might more effectively apply new knowledge in the future (Ratanjee, 2018). All told, “Too few programs can clearly define the experiences that lead to excellence in leadership” (Ratanjee, 2018). In the twenty-first century, the leadership industry and the organizations it targets may need to recast and recalibrate their efforts at leader development. Why? Because the architecture of performance improvement, succession management, and organizational change that McCauley et al. (2010) promoted was designed for the brick-andmortar outfits of the last century, specifically, the 1980s–1990s (if not earlier). What sense are we to make of it when (a) the average life-span of organizations is shorter and shorter (i.e., 33 years in 1964, 24 years in 2016, and 12 years in 2027, according to S&P 500) (Anthony, Viguerie, Schwartz, & Van Landeghem, 2018); (b) hitherto ideal types of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing are hybridizing across the public, private, and civil society sectors and call for context-specific modes, not styles, or leadership (Serrat, 2018); (c) more and more organizations outsource so they might hire on “as-needed basis”; (d) Millennials are not interested in careers; and (e) virtual teaming has been on the rise for some time (and has just been boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic)?

Learning from Experience It is not that theories of learning have underestimated the importance of reflective practice. Kolb (1984), for instance, promulgated a highly perceptive fourstage learning cycle comprising concrete experience (feeling), reflective observation (watching), abstract conceptualization (thinking), and active experimentation (doing), from which—along processing and perception continuums—he deduced different experiential learning styles for individuals having to do with, say, educational backgrounds, cognitive structures, and social environments.4 (The styles are not mutually exclusive but individuals typically favor one over the others: if possible, the art would be to match a learning style to the occasion.) Significantly, for Kolb (1984), “Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience” (p. 38). And so, Kolb’s (1984) learning cycle can be used to evaluate learning provisions and develop learning opportunities. More recent texts on leader development have also acknowledged that “Learning from experience is the number one way that leaders develop” (McCauley, DeRue, Yost, & Taylor, 2013, p. ii). The consensus is that “key experiences” push people out of their comfort zones, challenge their abilities, and stretch their skills to bring 4 The

learning styles that Kolb (1984) identified are (a) accommodating [concrete experience (feeling) and active experimentation (doing)], demonstrated by “What if?” type of questions; (b) diverging [concrete experience (feeling) and reflective observation (watching)], demonstrated by “Why?” type of questions; (c) converging [abstract conceptualization (thinking) and active experimentation (doing), demonstrated by “How?” type of questions; and (d) assimilating [abstract conceptualization (thinking) and reflective observation (watching)], demonstrated by “What is there to know?” type of questions.

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about faster learning and development. Of course, key experiences are understandably specific to roles and will also vary by organization: but, they typically include such endeavors as, say, building a network of supporters; spearheading a crossfunctional, mission-critical team; navigating a different culture, country, customer segment, or technology; salvaging a product or business; working on an out-ofexpertise project; and experiencing failure in any of these and learning from that (Ratanjee, 2018). McCall (2010), adapting from McCauley, Ruderman, Ohlott, and Morrow (1994), listed the core elements of powerful experiential learning to be (a) job transitions (i.e., handling unfamiliar responsibilities, having to prove yourself); (b) task-related characteristics (i.e., creating change, high levels of responsibility, influencing without authority); and (c) obstacles (i.e., adverse conditions, lack of top management support, lack of personal support) (p. 683). McCall (2010) offered but one typology of the core elements of powerful experiential learning: there must surely be other taxonomies, the elements of which will in the real world often impact a would-be leader at the same time. That said, even where it is realized that the change- and succession-related needs of an organization will not be advanced if the performance needs of its leaders are not and that coursework and training does not equate with leader development, it is also common knowledge that experiential learning must also somehow improved. So, how might (more) leaders be forged or, less hyperbolically perhaps, “simply” grow through experiences that matter? Yip and Wilson (2010) too shared that “When effective managers in organizations are asked to think back over their careers and identify the events that have had the greatest impact on how they lead and manage today, they are most likely to point to challenging job assignments, developmental relationships, and adverse situations they endured” (p. 63). But, beyond such commonsensical generalities, Yip and Wilson (2010) also averred that organizations should know what types of experiences are developmental and how they might be phased and synergized to intentionally fructify learning. Building on McCall (2010), Yip and Wilson (2010) isolated the main event clusters to be challenging assignments; developmental relationships; adverse situations; personal experience; and coursework and training in descending order of importance (with some variation across countries).5 Yip and Wilson (2010) explained that each event cluster affords a one-off context, that the outcomes of learning are not the same in each, but that challenging assignments dispense significantly more lessons to be learned than the other event clusters. Yip and Wilson’s (2010) sober assessment of the contribution of coursework and training-based developmental experience is consistent with Beer et al.’s (2016) reservations. 5 Per Yip & Wilson (2010), the event types that the first three clusters can involve are (a) challenging

assignments—increase in scope, creating change, job rotation or transition, stakeholder engagement, and work in a different culture; (b) developmental relationships—constructive bosses and superiors, difficult people, and nonwork guides; and (c) adverse situations—crises, scandals, mistakes, career setbacks, and ethical dilemmas (pp. 66–67). Personal experiences in early life or work, midcareer (or midlife) transitions, and traumas can create emotion-laden memories and influence a leader’s values or approaches; and coursework and training can be self-initiated or organization-sponsored (Yip & Wilson, 2010, pp. 66–67).

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Recognizing that organizational initiatives are usually measured by financial return on investment, the returns from experience-based learning that Yip and Wilson (2010) advised organizations to consider spring from (a) mastery— the outcome of increased ability; (b) versatility— the outcome of increased capacity; and (3) transfer—the outcome of increased impact (at individual, group, and organizational levels) (p. 81).6 Taking the three-fold return on experience into account, but accepting also that experience does not automatically yield learning, Yip and Wilson’s (2010) roadmap is that organizations should (a) sequence experiences to enhance mastery, taking care to align with the strategic priorities of the organization and with levels of responsibility; (b) diversify experiences to enhance versatility, taking care to cross organizational and cultural boundaries; and (c) integrate experiences to enhance transfer, taking care to leverage developmental relationships and learning management systems in support (pp. 86–93).

Experiential Learning: Are We There Yet? “Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him” (Huxley, 1933, p. 5). Aldous Huxley’s remark gives the true measure of the challenges of learning from experience. First of all, at the level of the individual, learning from an experience requires that: • The learner must be willing to be actively involved in the experience; • The learner must be able to reflect on the experience; • The learner must possess and use analytical skills to conceptualize the experience; and • The learner must possess decision-making and problem-solving skills in order to use the new ideas gained from the experience. (Kolb, 1984) Kolb’s (1984) preconditions are testing: they demand that learners should become reflective practitioners who actively engage in the process of witnessing their experience: they must examine it, give meaning to it, and learn from it. Specifically, reflective practitioners must both reflect on action and in action with “What?”, “So what?”, and “Now what?” type of questions. Attending to context, assumptions, actions, and results, reflective practitioners must create a habit, structure, or routine for reflecting on experience to extract adaptive, generative, and radical learning. The competencies that reflective practitioners need are critical thinking, emotional intelligence, inquisitiveness, and self-knowledge. Journaling; rich pictures; and learning before, during, and after are some of the tools, methods, and approaches that reflective practitioners use. Of course, none of this comes easy: recurring obstacles to 6 Hallenbeck (2017) offered a person-based counterpoint to Yip and Wilson’s (2010) organizational

returns from experience-based learning when he made out the four meta-skills that grow out of key experiences to be (a) learning agility, (b) self-awareness, (c) influence, and (d) communication. To my mind, the two perspectives are interdependent and there is no causality dilemma here.

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reflective practice include (perceived or actual) lack of time, the undervaluing of reflection, the underdevelopment of competencies, limited experience of reflective practice, fear of feedback, anxiety about possible failure, and insufficient awareness of one’s expertise (Britton & Serrat, 2013). But, there is more: at group, intraorganizational, organizational, or interorganizational levels, frequent obstacles to reflective practice include the pressure to perform, the task orientation that pervades many organizational configurations, especially the machine (bureaucracy) organization; competency traps that dissuade investment in new capabilities; the undervaluing of reflection by colleagues (or leadership itself); the dearth of forums or structures for learning; and cultures of blame (Britton & Serrat, 2013).7 In recognition of such limitations and inspired by systems theory, the voluminous literature on organizational learning and the learning organization has for long posited that we must proactively fashion “learning systems”, meaning, institutions that can effect their own continuing transformation (Schön, 1971; Senge, 2006).

Yip and Wilson (2010): Wrong Conclusions from Right Premises Yip and Wilson’s (2010) review of three decades of lessons from experience research is incisive and persuasive. The central message—that experience matters, that challenging assignments are the most developmental, and that organizations stand to gain the greatest returns from experience-based learning if they sequence, diversify, and integrate it—makes intuitive and imminent sense. Helpfully, Yip and Wilson (2010) sketched a roadmap to help organizations on the journey of experience-based learning. Still, as another proverb has it, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”. In a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, the overwhelming majority of organizations—not the large “blue-riband” organizations that the leadership industry centers on—are hard-pressed to know what tomorrow will bring.8 In such circumstances, notwithstanding Yip and Wilson’s (2010) implicit assumption that the words “leader” and “leadership” mean the same thing to the whole world,9 what chances are there that closed-system, ideal-world, leadership mythologizing, 7 Noting

that “[d]efining roadblocks, however numerous they may be, is half the battle to removing them—it might make them part of the solution instead of part of the problem”, Serrat (2009) gave details of 17 possible roadblocks lo learning at the level of the organization. 8 The United States thrive on small business. The United States Census Bureau records that there were 5.6 million employer firms in 2016 (latest data) and that firms with less than 20 workers made up 89 percent of these. If we add nonemployer businesses, of which there were 24.8 million that year, the share of American businesses with fewer than 20 workers reaches 98 percent (United States Census Bureau, 2020). 9 With endless variations involving followers, functions, goals, personal attributes, relationships, situations, styles, and vision, there may be as many definitions of leadership as there are leaders. To

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technocratic, and unavoidably costly approaches will appeal when the organizational ecosystem that would entertain them is ever more topsy-turvy? When the future is no longer what it was, organizations must make strategic decisions that will be sound for all plausible futures: they must not strive for what they hope will come to pass. Identifying developmental experiences, recognizing potential, delivering the right experience at the right time, increasing the odds that learning will occur, and developing a career-long perspective and a focus on transitions, the five leverage points for organizations that McCall (2010, pp. 687–702) delineated, make perfect sense in the well-ordered world that Yip and Wilson (2010) have in mind; but, the coherence, relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact, and sustainability of such resolute leveraging of experience is in question when top–down power structures and rule-based management systems à la Fayol (1916)—planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and controlling—are less and less appropriate in ever-flatter organizations where leadership must be reinterpreted as an outcome of performance rather than an input to it. Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity summon new ways of perceiving the world, new approaches to sense and decision making, and new modes and combinations of leadership (Serrat, 2019). Obsession with the normative (e.g., what leaders ought to do and how things should be) can only frustrate the adaptive and enabling leadership the new world of organizations need. In the twenty-first century, human capital truly is an organization’s greatest asset: the right perspective on that is abundance, not scarcity. To make the skills and capabilities of others effective and thereby enhance the capacity to see, think, and act one must foster an environment that conduces learning: every area of a business must be deemed fertile ground because every area has its own needs and challenges (Beer et al., 2016). Tailored and democratic approaches must capitalize on individual differences and learning styles and convert them—from sources of conflict—into sources of diversity, strength, and improved results. A propos human capital, the real issue facing organizations these days is not talent management but better self-development; however, even that requires new thinking, to wit, a vision of the organization as active facilitator of experiencedriven development. As a consequence of the quickening mass retirement of Baby Boomers, I anticipate that organizations will be packaging experiential learning options that Millennials, the next generation of leaders, will canvas and strategically select from. In relation to this, Moldoveanu and Narayandas (2019) wrote of the rise of the “personal learning cloud”, a twenty-first-century form of personalized, socialized, and contextualized learning journey that is anchored in “high-value experiences such as personalized coaching, project-based learning, and feedbackintensive group sessions” (p. 44). If only because virtual work environments are more and more commonplace, platforms and applications that customize content to a learner’s role and his/her organization’s needs may be the next best thing to challenging assignments in the rough-and-tumble of face-to-face interactions. me, a “leader” is a person who makes the skills and capabilities of others effective and “leadership” is the capacity to see, think, and act.

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References Anthony, S., Viguerie, P., Schwartz, E., & Van Landeghem, J. (2018). 2018 Corporate longevity forecast: Creative destruction is accelerating. Retrieved from https://www.innosight.com/insight/ creative-destruction/. Beer, M., Finnström, M., & Schrader, D. (2016, October). Why leadership training fails—and what to do about it. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/10/why-leadershiptraining-fails-and-what-to-do-about-it. Borenstein, E., Feldman, M., & Aoki, K. (2008). Evolution of learning in fluctuating environments: When selection favors both social and exploratory individual learning. Society for the Study of Evolution, 62(3), 586–602. Britton, B., & Serrat, O. (2013). Reflective practice [PowerPoint presentation]. Caesar, J. (c. 52 BC). Commentarii de bello civili (in Latin) (n.p.). Fayol, H. (1916). Administration industrielle et générale. Bulletin de la Société de l’Industrie Minérale. Hallenbeck, G. (2017). Lead 4 success: Learn the essentials of true leadership. Center for Creative Leadership. Haselgrove, M. (2016). Learning: A very short introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Huxley, A. (1933). Texts and pretexts: An anthology with commentaries. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers. Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Lombardo, M., & Eichinger, R. (1996). The career architect development planner (1st ed.). Minneapolis, MN: Lominger. McCall, M. (2010). The experience conundrum. In N. Nohria & R. Khurana (Eds.), Handbook of leadership theory and practice: A Harvard Business School centennial colloquium (pp. 679–707). Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. McCauley, C., DeRue, D., Yost, P., & Taylor, S. (Eds.). (2013). Experience-driven leader development: Models, tools, best practices, and advice for on-the-job development. San Francisco, CA: Wiley. McCauley, C., Kanaga, K., & Lafferty, K. (2010). Leadership development systems. In Handbook of leadership development (3rd ed., pp. 29–61). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. McCauley, C., Ruderman, M., Ohlott, P., & Morrow, J. (1994). Assessing the developmental components of managerial jobs. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79(4), 544–560. Moldoveanu, M., & Narayandas, D. (2019). The future of leadership development. Harvard Business Review, 97(4), 40–48. Ratanjee, V. (2018, August 29). Experience reigns in leadership development. Retrieved from https://www.gallup.com/workplace/241730/experience-reigns-leadership-development.aspx. Schön, D. (1971). Beyond the stable state. Public and private learning in a changing society. New York, NY: Random House. Senge, P. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Currency/Doubleday. Serrat, O. (2009). Overcoming roadblocks to learning. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Serrat, O. (2018). Research concept paper for leading organizations of the future. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Serrat, O. (2019, June 13). Leading organizations of the future (Poster session). Graduate Research Forum, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. TrainingIndustry.com. (2020, April 1). Size of the training industry. Retrieved from https://traini ngindustry.com/wiki/outsourcing/size-of-training-industry/. United States Census Bureau. (2020). Business and economy. Retrieved from https://www.census. gov/. Wilde, O. (1880). Vera, or the nihilists (n.p.). Yip, J., & Wilson, M. (2010). Learning from experience. In Handbook of leadership development (3rd ed., pp. 63–95). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

The Full Range Leadership Model: Essentials and Practicum

Abstract The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire generates a psychological inventory from propositions that aim to assess leadership styles and leadership outcomes: it is a multi-rater (or 360-degree) instrument, which means that its output— the MLQ 360 Leader’s Report—interprets and compares a leader’s self-assessment with ratings contributed across the same items by associates. This précis reflects on a Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire exercise conducted in May 2020.

Avolio and Bass (1991) introduced the Full Range Leadership Model to shine light on the ability and behavior of leaders in different work situations. The Full Range Leadership Model owes much to Burns’s (1978) trait-based approach to leadership, from whose work Bass (1985) drew heavily: the model condenses all leadership approaches into motivation, stimulation, and influencing (transformational leadership); management-by-exception and contingent reward (transactional leadership); and de facto denial of responsibility for leadership (passive–avoidant or laissez-faire behaviors) (Avolio & Bass, 1991). The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire borne out of Avolio and Bass (1991) is used to assess leadership ability and behavior across many types of organizations—with a view to training and coaching but also selection, transfer, and promotion activities—and is much referenced in organizational studies (Mind Garden, n.d.).

Understanding the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire Scales The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire contains 45 items (or 36 items having to do with leadership styles and nine items relating to leadership outcomes) across nine components, termed “scales” (Transformational leadership has five scales. Transactional leadership and passive–avoidant or laissez-faire behaviors have two scales The Full Range Leadership Model: Essentials and Practicum was completed on July 7, 2020. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_15

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The Full Range Leadership Model … Transformational Leadership •Builds Trust (Idealized Influence _ Attributes) •Acts with Integrity (Idealized Influence _ Behaviors) •Encourages Others (Inspirational Motivation) •Encourages Innovative Thinking (Intellectual Stimulation) •Coaches & Develops People (Individualized Consideration) Transactional Leadership •Rewards Achievement (Contingent Reward)a •Monitors Deviations & Mistakes (Management-by-Exception: Active)b Passive _ Avoidant (or Laissez-Faire) Leadership •Fights Fires (Management-by-Exception: Passive) •Avoids Involvement (Laissez-Faire: Avoidant)

Fig. 1 Categories and scales of the Full Range Leadership Model (Note a Constructive; b Corrective [Mind Garden, n.d.])

each. Leadership outcomes have three scales). Each of the nine scales for transformational, transactional, and passive–avoidant or laissez-faire behaviors is assessed by four highly inter-correlated items, all of them having the lowest possible correlation with those of the other scales. Drawing from Mind Garden (n.d.), Fig. 1 groups the categories and associated behaviors of the Full Range Leadership Model. As shown in Fig. 1, per Mind Garden (n.d.), the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire assesses transformational leadership with five scales (20 items in toto): • Builds Trust—This 4-item scale assesses the frequency with which a leader builds trust, inspires power and pride, and goes beyond his/her own individual interests to focus on those of the group. • Acts with Integrity—This 4-item scale assesses the frequency with which a leader acts with integrity, talks about his/her values and beliefs, focuses on a desirable vision, and considers the moral and ethical consequences of his/her actions. • Encourages Others—This 4-item scale assesses the frequency with which a leader motivates those around him/her by providing meaning and challenge. • Encourages Innovative Thinking—This 4-item scale assesses the frequency with which a leader stimulates efforts to be innovative and creative by questioning assumptions, reframing problems, and approaching old situations in new ways. • Coaches & Develops People—This 4-item scale assesses the frequency with which a leader pays attention to individual needs for achievement and growth by acting as a coach or mentor (Mind Garden, n.d.). Next, per Mind Garden (n.d.), the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire assesses transactional leadership with two scales (eight items in toto):

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• Rewards Achievement—This 4-item scale assesses the frequency with which a leader rewards in return for achievement of expected levels of performance. • Monitors Deviations & Mistakes—This 4-item scale assesses the frequency with which a leader monitors for deviations, mistakes, and errors and takes corrective action (Mind Garden, n.d.). Then, per Garden (n.d.), the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire assesses passive–avoidant or laissez-faire behaviors with two scales (eight items in toto): • Fights Fires—This 4-item scale assesses the frequency with which a leader waits for a problem to appear before taking corrective action. • Avoids Involvement—This 4-item scale assesses the frequency with which a leader refuses to assume the responsibilities that are a part of his/her position as leader (Mind Garden, n.d.). In addition, per Mind Garden (n.d.), the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire assesses outcomes of leadership with three scales (nine items in toto), questions toward which are only put to raters: • Generates Extra Effort—This 3-item scale assess the frequency with which a leader is perceived to be able to influence his/her followers to do more than they are expected to do. • Is Productive—This 4-item scale assesses the frequency with which a leader is perceived as being effective when interacting at different levels of the organization. • Generates Satisfaction—This 2-item scale assesses the frequency with which raters are satisfied with their leader’s methods of working with others (Mind Garden, n.d.). The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire comprises two forms: (a) the Leader Form (36 items); and (b) the Rater Form (45 items). (The Rater Form includes the perceptions of raters vis-à-vis the outcomes of leadership.) All scales are assessed using a 5-point scoring rubric as follows: (a) 0.0 = Not at all; (b) 1.0 = Once in a while; (c) 2.0 = Sometimes; (d) 3.0 = Fairly often; and (e) 4.0 = Frequently, if not always (Mind Garden, n.d.).

Administering the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire Using Mind Garden’s Transform™ System, the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire is administered online to individuals (or groups) and takes about 15 min to complete. Leaders prepare the names and email addresses of 12–20 individuals who will serve as objective and honest raters. Preferably, 3–5 individuals should be at a higher organizational level (aka Above), 3–5 should be at the same organizational level (aka Same), 3–5 should be at a lower organizational level (aka Lower), and 3–5 should be others who work or have worked with the leader (aka Other). The feedback from raters is grouped so the leaders do not know how each assessed them.

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Mind Garden’s Transform™ System’s online survey platform gives leaders 24/7 access to assessments, data, and reports. As raters complete the survey, the data and scoring file is dynamically updated and individual (or group) reports become available (Mind Garden, n.d.). The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 360 Leader’s Report—the MLQ 360 Leader’s Report—is a 50-page document that presents (a) aggregate scores; (b) self and rater feedback (by level); (c) comparison with norms; (d) transformational leadership strengths and areas for development; (e) self to all rater gaps; (f) complete ratings of all rater levels; and (g) rater feedback to open-ended questions (Mind Garden, n.d.).

Interpreting the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 360 Leader’s Report A leader may feel challenged by rater statements and wish to contest their importance or meaning (Mind Garden, n.d.). But, Mind Garden (n.d.) remarks commonsensically that leaders must manage what others believe as well as the reality. So that leaders might make the most of feedback, Mind Garden (n.d.) underscores that each item is a validated marker: hence, a leader may need to scrutinize his/her own implicit assumptions about leadership (Mind Garden, n.d.). Mind Garden (n.d.) underscores also that leaders should not get locked into one particular aspect of the MLQ 360 Leader’s Report but reflect on the whole. Citing from Mind Garden (n.d.), when viewing the MLQ 360 Leader’s Report, one should consider the following questions: • What are my leadership strengths? (Notice what leadership behaviors were rated high that you already knew were strengths.) • What are the areas where I tend not to perceive myself as having leadership strengths, but where my raters see me as having strengths? (Focus on leadership behaviors that were rated high but which you did not know were strengths.) • In which areas do I need to develop my leadership behaviors? (Notice leadership behaviors that were rated low that you know are low and could develop.) • Which specific leadership behavior items do I need to do more frequently? (Focus on leadership behaviors that are rated low that you could practice more frequently.) • Which specific behavior items do I need to do less frequently? (Focus on items in the transactional or passive–avoidant scales.) • In which areas do I see myself as being stronger than my raters see me? (Notice leadership behaviors where I rate my frequency higher than I am being rated.) (Mind Garden, n.d.) Next, per Mind Garden (n.d.), one should consider how to change one’s leadership style: • How can I be a more effective leader with my followers? • How can I be a more effective leader with my peers?

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• How can I influence “upwards” more effectively? (Focus on leadership behaviors I can practice with those at a higher organizational level than I am.) • Which issues really challenge my thinking about my leadership? (Mind Garden, n.d.). Then, per Mind Garden (n.d.), one should focus on the transformational leadership section: • What are my strongest transformational leadership behaviors? How can I leverage those behaviors? • What transformational leadership behaviors are most important for me to improve given my current role in the organization and the surrounding environment? (Mind Garden, n.d.). Finally, per Mind Garden (n.d.), one should look at transactional and passive– avoidant behaviors: • Do I reward achievement more frequently than I monitor deviations and mistakes, and if not why not? Do I rely too much on transactional behaviors when compared with my transformational repertoire? • Am I frequently seen to be engaging in fire-fighting? Do I frequently avoid involvement? Should I pay more attention to perceptions that I am passive–avoidant lest it should discourage others (Mind Garden, n.d.).

Reflecting on My MLQ 360 Leader’s Report Approach The first section of this précis was given over to understanding the categories and scales of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire; the second itemized the logistics of the survey associated with the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire; and the third clarified the precepts for interpretation of the MLQ 360 Leader’s Report. This section summarizes key elements of feedback from my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report (dated May 19, 2020). The next section will analyze my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report and that which follows will conduct individual and goal setting for two areas for development. The concluding section in this précis will offer thoughts on how to appreciate multi-rater feedback in a world that is not short of it. Figure 2 outlines the organizing structure and steps for the review of my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report. Table 1 gives some details of the 14 individuals who took part in the survey and offered feedback.

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Understanding the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire Categories and Scales

Administering the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire

Interpreting the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 360 Leader's Report

Reflecting on My MLQ 360 Leader's Report

Conducting Individual Planning and Goal Setting

Fig. 2 Reflecting on My MLQ 360 Leader’s Report

Table 1 My MLQ 360 Leader’s Report: Rater population

Organizational level

Number of raters

Gender Male

Female

Above

2

2

0

Same

4

3

1

Lower

2

0

2

Other

6

3

3

Total

14

8

6

Note Ten of the 14 raters were former colleagues who were— at some point or another—closely associated with the work I conducted for an international organization in the areas of environmental management, evaluation, information and communication technology, project design and administration, public relations, and strategic planning. One worked with me from a different organization. Three are doctoral students at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology

Average Scores The average scores in my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report are: • Transformational Leadership (14 Raters)—Score = 3.3 [According to Mind Garden (n.d.), the ideal frequency of all five Transformational behaviors is a “Fairly often” rating of 3.0 or greater.] • Rewards Achievement (14 Raters)— Score = 3.3 [According to Mind Garden (n.d.), the ideal frequency of Rewards Achievement is between “Sometimes” and “Fairly often” (2.0–3.0).]

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• Monitors Deviations & Mistakes (14 Raters)—Score = 2.1 [According to Mind Garden (n.d.), the ideal frequency of Monitors Deviations & Mistakes is between “Once in a while” and “Sometimes” (1.0–2.0).] • Fights Fires (14 Raters)—Score = 0.5 [According to Mind Garden (n.d.), the ideal frequency of Passive–Avoidant behaviors is between “Not at all” and “Once in a while” (0.0–1.0).] • Avoids Involvement (14 Raters)—Score = 0.1 [According to Mind Garden (n.d.), the ideal frequency of Passive–Avoidant behaviors is between “Not at all” and “Once in a while” (0.0–1.0).]

Aggregate Scores Table 2 reproduces the aggregate scores recorded in my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report and matches the ideal frequency of behavior and outcome of research validated benchmarks to corresponding categories or scales.

Table 2 My MLQ 360 Leader’s Report: Aggregate scores Category

Scale

Score (rater’s average)

Ideal frequency (research validated benchmark)

Transformational leadership Builds trust

3.3

≥3.0

Acts with integrity

3.3

≥3.0

Encourages others

3.4

≥3.0

Encouraged innovative thinking

3.4

≥3.0

Coaches and develops people

3.2

≥3.0

Rewards achievement

3.3

2.0–3.0

Monitors deviations and mistakes

2.1

1.0–2.0

Fights fires

0.5

0.0–1.0

Avoids involvement

0.1

0.0–1.0

3.2

≥3.5

Transactional leadership

Passive–avoidant behaviors

Outcomes of leadership Generates extra effort Is productive

3.2

≥3.5

Generates satisfaction

3.5

≥3.5

Note 0.0 = Not at all; 1.0 = Once in a while; 2.0 = Sometimes; 3.0 = Fairly often; 4.0 = Frequently, if not always

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Table 3 My MLQ 360 Leader’s Report: Feedback by rater level Category

Scale

Score (rater’s average)

Above

Same

Lower

Other

Transformational leadership Builds trust

3.3

2.9

3.4

3.4

3.2

Acts with integrity

3.3

3.0

3.6

3.6

3.2

Encourages others

3.4

3.5

3.5

3.4

3.3

Encouraged innovative thinking

3.4

3.4

3.6

3.3

3.3

Coaches and develops people

3.2

2.7

3.4

3.4

3.1

Rewards achievement

3.3

3.3

3.4

3.5

3.1

Monitors deviations and mistakes

2.1

2.0

2.6

2.3

1.7

Transactional leadership

Passive–avoidant behaviors Fights fires

0.5

0.5

0.4

0.5

0.6

Avoids involvement

0.1

0.4

0.1

0.0

0.1

Generates extra effort

3.2

2.2

3.5

4.0

3.1

Is productive

3.2

2.3

3.5

3.4

3.3

Generates satisfaction

3.5

3.0

3.6

3.5

3.5

Outcomes of leadership

Note 0.0 = Not at all; 1.0 = Once in a while; 2.0 = Sometimes; 3.0 = Fairly often; 4.0 = Frequently, if not always

Table 3 reproduces the feedback by rater level recorded in my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report.

Style Strengths Table 4 reproduces the style strengths suggested by my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report and matches each to its corresponding score and scale.

Areas for Development Table 5 reproduces the areas for development suggested by my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report and matches each to its corresponding score and scale.

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Table 4 My MLQ 360 Leader’s Report: Style strengths Score (rater’s average)

Scale

Item

3.9

Encourages others

I articulate a compelling vision of the future

3.9

Encourages others

I talk enthusiastically about what needs to be accomplished

3.6

Encourages innovative thinking

I get others to look at problems from many different angles

3.6

Acts with integrity

I consider the moral and ethical consequences of decisions

3.6

Builds trust

I act in ways that build others’ respect for me

3.5

Encourages innovative thinking

I re-examine critical assumptions to question whether they are appropriate

3.4

Encourages others

I express confidence that goals will be achieved

3.4

Encourages innovative thinking

I suggest new ways of looking at how to complete assignments

3.4

Coaches and develops people

I treat others as individuals rather than just as members of the group

3.4

Builds trust

I go beyond self-interest for the good of the group

Note 0.0 = Not at all; 1.0 = Once in a while; 2.0 = Sometimes; 3.0 = Fairly often; 4.0 = Frequently, if not always

Analyzing My MLQ 360 Leader’s Report A Disciplined and Open Mind The MLQ 360 Leader’s Report provides group calculations but shares scant interpretation: the near-entirety of the report consists of sequential self-ratings, rater averages, and research validated benchmarks across the items in each scale. The only comments to be found in the MLQ 360 Leader’s Report—provided unedited and in no order of relative importance—are in the section on rater feedback to open-ended questions regarding (a) what might help the leader be more effective; (b) obstacles facing the leader’s effectiveness; and (c) what is admired about the leader. And so, interpreting the MLQ 360 Leader’s Report requires discipline as well as an open mind. Specifically, to extract value from the MLQ 360 Leader’s Report, one should according to Mind Garden (n.d.) (a) take to heart the ratings to appreciate how others perceive the leadership behaviors; (b) ponder the outcomes of leadership in relation to one’s leadership style; (c) scrutinize the differences between self-ratings and those of others, paying attention to variances across rater levels; (d) compare each rating

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Table 5 My MLQ 360 Leader’s Report: Areas for development Score (rater’s average)

Scale

Item

2.3

Encourages others

I talk optimistically about the future

2.8

Builds trust

I instill pride in others for being associated with me

3.0

Encourages innovative thinking

I seek differing perspectives when solving problems

3.1

Coaches and develops people

I spend time teaching and coaching

3.1

Coaches and develops people

I help others to develop their strengths

3.1

Acts with integrity

I emphasize the importance of having a collective sense of mission

3.1

Builds trust

I display a sense of power and confidence

3.3

Coaches and develops people

I consider each individual as having different needs, abilities, and aspirations from others

3.4

Acts with integrity

I talk about my most important values and beliefs

3.4

Acts with integrity

I specify the importance of having a strong sense of purpose

Note 0.0 = Not at all; 1.0 = Once in a while; 2.0 = Sometimes; 3.0 = Fairly often; 4.0 = Frequently, if not always

with the benchmark validated by research; and (e) formulate a plan to increase or decrease behaviors, preferably picking items that would lift the average score for a leadership style (Mind Garden, n.d.).

Style Strengths Table 2 indicates that all the aggregates scores for transformational leadership in my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report were above the ideal frequency by 0.2–0.4 points; the aggregate score for constructive transactional leadership is above the ideal frequency range by 0.3 points while that for corrective transactional leadership is outside the ideal frequency range by only 0.1 points. All aggregate scores for passive–avoidant behaviors are within the ideal frequency range. But, the aggregate scores for outcomes of leadership are below the ideal frequency range by 0.3 points in two out of three scales, a relative shortcoming that will be touched upon in the following section. Table 3 breaks down the feedback in my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report by rater level. To note, the feedback from raters at same (aka Same) and lower (aka Lower) organizational levels, or 10 of 14 individuals who took part in the survey and offered feedback, is here and there higher, sometimes by as much as 0.6 points, than that of

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raters at higher (aka Above) and other (aka Other) organizational levels. Then again, the population of raters at higher (aka Above) and other (aka Other) organizational levels is too small to hazard a guess for relatively lower perceptions. Lastly, although no table was prepared to demonstrate this here, the aggregate scores recorded in my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report show that my behaviors as perceived by the raters are in every instance higher than the universal norms (N = 3,755) associated with transformational leadership, transactional leadership, passive–avoidant (or laissezfaire) leadership, and outcomes of leadership. [The word “better” would be more appropriate apropos passive–avoidant (or laissez-faire) leadership.] Table 4 shows the notable strengths of transformational leadership in my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report to be (a) Scale: Encourages Others: I articulate a compelling vision of the future (Score = 3.9); and (b) Scale: Encourages Others: I talk enthusiastically about what needs to be accomplished (Score = 3.9). Three others strengths of transformational leadership in my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report are scored at 3.6, one is scored at 3.5, and four are scored at 3.4. The strengths cut across all five scales of transformational leadership. Concluding, the feedback on transformational leadership in my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report does not suggest areas that the raters but not I see leadership strengths in; there was no surprise there. All scores, both from followers and peers, are characteristically high and do not volunteer behavior items I need to perform more frequently or less frequently. To note, although no table was prepared to demonstrate this here, I deemed myself—across all scales—as being stronger than my raters see me. “Ambition is not what man does … but what man would do,” Robert Browning was reinterpreted as saying. Then again, one should not hang on miracles. In relation to this, one rater commented on “… the sometimes unrealistically high expectations [I have of myself]”, which is representative of other rater feedback in my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report on what can help me be more effective and what obstacles face my effectiveness. Rater feedback in my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report to open-ended questions on what was admired will not be reproduced in this précis but confidence, dedication, moral standards, passion, self-reflection, tenacity, transparency, trustworthiness, and vision and strategy were common themes. (Here is one representative example of a repartee: “Strong vision of the future, strong intuition and tension to accomplishment”.)

Areas for Development Table 2 indicates that the aggregate scores for outcomes of leadership are below the ideal frequency range by 0.3 points in two out of three scales, as reported earlier, even if both are higher than the universal norms (N = 3,755) by 0.1–0.5 points. My MLQ 360 Leader’s Report does not flag this as an area for development but the outcomes of leadership are self-evidently important and the matter assuredly demands attention in the future. The two scales are (a) Scale: Generates Extra Effort: I get others to do more than they expected to do; I heighten others’ desire to succeed;

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and I increase others’ willingness to try harder (Score = 3.2); and (b) Scale: Is Productive: I am effective in meeting others’ job-related needs; I am effective in representing my group to higher authority; I am effective in meeting organizational requirements; and I lead a group that is effective (Score = 3.2). Table 3 exposes perceived shortcomings relative to extra effort and productivity: specifically, the shortfall regarding Scale: Generates Extra Effort is explained by raters at higher (aka Above) organizational level perceiving that I only once in a while or sometimes—not fairly often or frequently—get others to do more than they expected to do whereas two raters at lower (aka Lower) organizational level perceive I frequently achieve this; the shortfall regarding Scale: Is Productive is explained by the same raters perceiving that I am only sometimes—not fairly often or frequently—effective in meeting others’ job-related needs and effective in representing my group to higher authority. At any rate, Table 5 does flag two areas for development of transformational leadership: (a) Scale: Encourages Others: I talk optimistically about the future (Score = 2.3); and (b) Scale: Builds Trust: I instill pride in others for being associated with me (Score = 2.8). [Paradoxically, with respect to the first area for development of transformational leadership, my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report identified that my two highest style strengths relate to (a) Scale: Encourages Others: I articulate a compelling vision of the future (Score = 3.9); and (b) (a) Scale: Encourages Others: I talk enthusiastically about what needs to be accomplished (Score = 3.9).] Although no table was prepared to demonstrate this here, the complete ratings of all rater levels for transformational leadership recorded in my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report reveal widely differing feedback regarding both (a) Scale: Encourages Others: I talk optimistically about the future (Score = 2.3); and (b) Scale: Builds Trust: I instill pride in others for being associated with me (Score = 2.8). Specifically, regarding Scale: Encourages Others: I talk optimistically about the future (Score = 2.3), I note that one rater at the other (aka Other) organizational level scored me at 0 (Not at all) and that one rater at the lower (aka Lower) organizational level scored me at 1 (Once in a while). Regarding Scale: Builds Trust: I instill pride in others for being associated with me (Score = 2.8), I note also that two raters at the other (aka Other) organizational level scored me at 0 (Not at all) and 1 (Once in a while), respectively. I can think of no explanation but the disparity of feedback across these two scales explains why my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report singled out them as areas for development: therefore, they will be the subject of individual planning and goal setting. No other score in the areas for development of transformational leadership in my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report is inferior to 3 (Fairly often). Away from numbers, I found unexpected value in the rater feedback in my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report to open-ended questions on what can help me be more effective and what obstacles face my effectiveness. Pell-mell, rater advice was to “Be a better listener, be less intense”, “Don’t try to be right all the time and try different, less confronting pathways to achieve your goal[s]”, “[Be] more understanding of those who may not meet [your] own productivity standards, more empathetic, and less inclined to criticize or draw attention to weaknesses”, “[Be] more inclusive, accepting other people’s limits”, and “Tak[e] on board the views of supervisors”. References

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to “Perfectionism” and “Intolerance or lack of understanding of those who fail to satisfy his high standards” cropped up too. I probably need to manage “upwards” better: rater feedback in my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report to open-ended questions on what can help me be more effective drew attention to “[My] tendency to assume everyone understands [me]”, “Assumptions that everyone understands the nuances of what [I] try to implement”, “[My] relationship with authority”, and the fact that “[C]onfrontation is not always the right path. Build more coalitions. Don’t theorize too much but stay practical”.

Conducting Individual Planning and Goal Setting Exhibiting willingness to receive feedback is essential part of leadership selfdevelopment, a personal journey with different destinations that each leader works toward in the broader context of his/her life space. But, change is what all leaders have in common and change is the main goal of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. Summing up, my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report infers that I can be a more effective leader if, in particular, I do a better job of talking optimistically about the future and instilling pride in others for being associated with me. According to my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report, I can also make marginal improvements at getting others to do more than they expected to do, meeting others’ job-related needs, and representing my group to higher authority. Drawing from information received through my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report, Table 6 specifies two generic developmental goals to encourage others and build trust in furtherance of my self-development. The note to Table 6 explains why the actions for changing myself and changing how I relate to others are not case-specific, hence draw in extenso from Bass and Avolio’s (2015) prototypical suggestions.

Afterword Appreciating the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire is founded on the premise that transformational and transactional attributes must be displayed if a leader is to be successful. However, the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire cannot account for all the dimensions of leadership (e.g., authentic, autocratic, democratic, paternalistic) and ignores the leadership modes (i.e., administrative, enabling, and adaptive) that Uhl-Bien, Marion, and McKelvey (2007) made out. To this critique, Marion and Gonzales (2014) added the difficulty of spotting pseudo-transformational leaders who display all the required abilities and behaviors but are subsequently found to have worked

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Table 6 My MLQ 360 Leader’s Report: Individual planning and goal setting Scale

Score (rater’s average)

Item

Outcome

Encourages others

2.3

I talk optimistically about the future

My associates are motivated by meaning and challenge

Changing Myself: • Communicate a clear scenario of the organization’s potential • Create a positive and enthusiastic work climate that will energize associates • Speak openly about the kinds of rewards I receive from my job • Expect resistance to change: anticipating this normal reaction, I will include requisite strategies in the change process • Frequently consider how what I am doing now and plan to do in the future may affect associates • Talk about the future • Volunteer to lead and help to motivate a group that is struggling with low morale. • Respond to challenges with optimism and show energy to get them solved (Bass & Avolio, 2015) Changing How I Relate to Others: • Communicate clearly with associates and define changes that are being planned • Work to encourage the commitment of associates to the organization • Build the expectation among associates that money is not the only recognition for high performance • Meet with associates to point up how their inputs help deliver the goals of the organization • Help associates maintain enthusiasm for their jobs by being enthusiastic myself • Motivate employees to take on added responsibility to develop and use their skills to fullest potential • Offer support and advice to associates when they are faced with obstacles • Recognize early successes, respond with encouragement, and showcase the achievements of my work unit (Bass & Avolio, 2015) Builds Trust

2.8

I instill pride in others for being associated with me

My associates have a positive, team-oriented approach

Changing Myself: • Become the “best” representative of associates by volunteering for initiatives • Be more relaxed so associates do not feel inhibited by my opinions • Recall a person from my past (e.g., an athletic coach, a cultural hero, a fictional character, a mentor, a supervisor, a teacher) who acted admirably in difficult circumstances. Behave as that person would in my situation • Think of people with whom I am proud to be associated and reflect on why I feel that way • Whenever I fear I may act inappropriately, I will consider how I would like associates to behave in similar circumstances and I will model their behavior • Upon meeting someone, I will show a friendly face and display an optimistic attitude (Bass & Avolio, 2015) (continued)

Afterword

123

Table 6 (continued) Scale

Score (rater’s average)

Item

Outcome

Changing How I Relate to Others: • Focus still more on the qualities of associates • Look for opportunities to build relations with associates (e.g., small talk and informal lunch invitations) • Recognize associates on the occasion of milestones (e.g., birthdays, project completions, promotions, and years of service) (Bass & Avolio, 2015) Note 0.0 = Not at all; 1.0 = Once in a while; 2.0 = Sometimes; 3.0 = Fairly often; 4.0 = Frequently, if not always. I am on a sabbatical and the actions that this development plan lists do not relate to a particular organization, except such that I may join or assist next. Hence, the actions will be acted upon as the opportunity arises or social connections demand in congruence with my philosophy of leadership and the personal leadership development plan I designed in support of my doctoral dissertation (Serrat, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c). The actions are generic and behavioral and do not call for resources or support or the monitoring of progress according to a particular deadline

for their self-interest. In addition, the centered leadership approach advocates that leaders should first lead themselves (Barsh, Mogelof, & Webb, 2010). To boot, the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire makes no account of the interplay between the external environment and organizational configuration and the impact that interaction has on organizational culture and related organizational ideology, thence on leadership and associated behaviors. Surely, diagnosis of organizational culture using, say, Cameron and Quinn’s (2011) competing values framework would clarify what is expected (or permitted) of leaders, with differing (or dissenting) views made known by, say, Martin’s (2002) integration, differentiation, and fragmentation perspectives or Schein’s (2017) three intraorganizational typologies (e.g., operator, engineer, and executive). In such cacophony, leaders must spend precious time learning and re-learning on which foot to dance depending on the audience, which cannot make for the effectiveness the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire means to promote. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire suffers also from the inherent limitations of questionnaire surveys. Yes: questionnaires are affordable, easy, and practical ways to gather quantitative data from a large (and often anonymous) audience, data that one can then—comfortably and without time constraint—analyze, compare, and contrast with other results to, say, examine trends or devise strategies. But, respondent bias can be an issue; respondents may not understand questions fully, may interpret them differently, or may leave them unanswered; respondents may not be entirely truthful; questionnaires cannot capture emotions or feelings; open-ended questions cannot be quantified and must be reviewed by a person, not an algorithm; survey fatigue or lack of accessibility can lead to low completion rates; and lack of personalization can put off potential respondents. Most problematic of all, what individual planning and goal setting can one confidently embark on if there is no way to know if respondents have really understood a question (as divergent responses can suggest)? To promote the likelihood of accurate and consistent results, it has been suggested that raters should be trained on the process and use of measurement instruments so

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they might avoid biases and rating errors (or simply “missclicks”): but, how feasible is that? Pace the above caveats, which confirm if there ever was a need to that magic bullets are not of this world, leaders who wish to gain the most from the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire can consider using other personality inventory tools in tandem. The Emotional and Social Competency Inventory, another multi-rater instrument; the Emotional Intelligence (or EQ) test, a self-assessment instrument; and, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, another self-assessment instrument, come to mind.

Taking Back Control On the topic of my MLQ 360 Leader’s Report, the issue that principally challenged my thinking is well encapsulated in Mind Garden’s (n.d.) remark, paraphrased earlier, that leaders must manage what others believe as well as the reality. “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body; it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things. If it is heeded in time, danger may be averted; if it is suppressed, a fatal distemper may develop,” said Churchill (1939). If so, shock, anger, and rejection—if such are the reactions—are both meaningless and unprofitable; one had better accept as many of the ratings as one can and determine a course for action because practicable hope lies there. So, feedback gives people the opportunity to look at themselves in a different light: but in 2020, contrasted with 1939, there may be a surfeit of advice. In a world that is so driven by information and communication technology the greater ease with which one can be judged can sap the desire to pursue the life we want to create for ourselves. Gervais (2019) declared that “If you want to be your best and perform at a high level, fear of people’s opinions may be holding you back”. Paraphrasing, conforming to what others may or may not think harms potential and undermines the talents, beliefs, and values that make you you, Gervais (2019) explained further. And so, Gervais (2019) recommended we should (a) articulate a personal philosophy to guide thoughts, decisions, and actions; (b) commit to live in line with our personal philosophy; (c) solicit feedback from a few persons—not a grouping of individuals at various levels—who, paraphrasing, have a good sense of who we are and who we are striving to become; and (d) keep in mind that growth and learning happen best when we operate at the edge of capacity. In my view, Gervais’s (2019) is not a call for splendid isolation but for taking back control, thence extract even more value from the MLQ 360 Leader’s Report and suchlike multi-rater (or 360-degree) instruments. Gervais (2019) is consonant with positive psychology and Quinn’s (2005) assertion that the leaders who do their best work do not copy others: rather, “they draw on their own fundamental values and capabilities” to lead in thought and action (p. 115).

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References Avolio, B., & Bass, B. (1991). The full range of leadership development: Basic and advanced manuals. Binghamton, NY: Bass, Avolio, & Associates. Barsh, J., Mogelof, J., & Webb, C. (2010). How centered leaders achieve extraordinary results. McKinsey Quarterly, 4, 78–88. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/lea dership/how-centered-leaders-achieve-extraordinary-results. Bass, B. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations. New York, NY: Free Press. Bass, B., & Avolio, B. (2015). Multifactor leadership questionnaire leader’s workbook. Menlo Park, CA: Mind Garden, Inc. Burns, J. (1978). Leadership. New York, NY: Harper and Row. Cameron, K., & Quinn, R. (2011). Diagnosing and change organizational culture: Based on the competing values framework (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Churchill, W. (1939, January 7). The British people would rather go down fighting. New Statesman. Retrieved from https://www.newstatesman.com/archive/2013/12/british-people-would-rathergo-down-fighting. Gervais, M. (2019). How to stop worrying about what other people think of you. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2019/05/how-to-stop-worrying-about-what-other-peoplethink-of-you. Marion, R., & Gonzales, L. (2014). Leadership in education: Organizational theory for the practitioner (2nd ed.). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press. Martin, J. (2002). Organizational culture: Mapping the terrain. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Mind Garden. (n.d.). Mind Garden: Tools for positive transformation. Retrieved from https://www. mindgarden.com/. Quinn, R. (2005). Moments of greatness. In On managing yourself (pp. 115–134, 2010). Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press. Schein, E. (2017). Organizational culture and leadership (7th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Serrat, O. (2018a). Personal philosophy of leadership. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Serrat, O. (2018b). Personal leadership development plans: Essentials and practicum. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Serrat, O. (2018c). Personal philosophy of leadership (2nd edition). Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R., & McKelvey, B. (2007). Complexity leadership theory: Shifting leadership from the industrial age to the knowledge era. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(4), 298–318.

Management Philosophy & Practice

A Taxonomy of Management Theories

Abstract Deming, Drucker, Maslow, McGregor, Schein, Senge, Taylor, Weber … This précis references influential management theories in the last hundred years: in each instance, the taxonomy flags the historical foundation, highlights basic theory and application, lists principally cited publications, and passes comment on how the theory is viewed today.

Management theories1 matter because management matters: a means to an end, it changes organizations and the way people work. Throughout the ages,2 but especially from the second half of the 20th century, original and influential thinkers have offered guidance on management, notably in the United States where the search for the next “Big Idea” has often been the game preserve of management “gurus” (Smith & Hitt, 2007). From scientific management to time-and-motion studies, from the hierarchy of needs to motivation theory, from competitive advantage to the learning organization, and from managing information to scenario planning, to name a few Big Ideas, management philosophy and practice have been driven by concern for greater efficiency, productivity, performance, or profits on the one hand and higher satisfaction among workers on the other, preferably all at once but more often than not in seemingly partisan opposition.

A Taxonomy of Management Theories was completed on September 26, 2018. 1 Merriam-Webster

defines a theory as a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena. Social science theories endeavor to explain relationships between variables and few such theories, if any, are amenable to testing in laboratories; therefore, the term “theory” is in this paper taken to mean a contemplative and rational type of abstract or generalizing thinking, or the results of such thinking. 2 For instance, it goes without saying that effective management played a role in, say, the construction of pyramids in Egypt; administration in the Roman Empire; the conduct of business by the Phoenicians; the Muslim Agricultural Revolution of the 8th–13th century; and the legal framework for commerce in Venice in the 14th century. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_16

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Some management theories have stayed the course while others have not3 : but, much as paradigm shifts are better represented as a series of waves overriding one another, the general effect has been one of continuous renewal in the face of change. Taxonomy is the science of defining and naming groups based on (perceptions of) shared characteristics: Table 1 overleaf posits and clusters a few influential management theories of the ages. Many theories vie for attention but a selection of the foremost drivers is always subjective and cannot be encyclopedic when illustration and attendant brevity are of the essence: for about 30 theories, Table 1 overleaf flags the years and historical foundation, names the representative eminent thinker, highlights basic theory and application, lists the principally cited publication(s), and passes quick comments on how each theory is viewed today (Fig. 1).

3 Every two years since 2001, Thinkers50 has published its ranking of the world’s top 50 management

and leadership thinkers. Thinkers50 ranking is based on a combination of voting at the Thinkers50 website and input from a team of advisors. The criteria are (a) relevance of ideas; (b) rigor of research; (c) presentation of ideas; (d) accessibility/dissemination of ideas; (e) international outlook; (f) originality of ideas; (g) impact of ideas; (h) practicality of ideas; (i) business sense; and (j) power to inspire. Criteria 1–5 are based on how the thinker has performed over the last two years (since the last ranking); Criteria 6–10 are evaluated based on the thinker’s performance over the long term (the last 20 years). Those recognized previously have included, alphabetically, Richard Branson, Peter Drucker, Clayton Christensen, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Tom Peters, and Michael Porter.

Human Relations and Behavioral Science

Weber described the rational–legal form of authority that now exists in many organizations, to which he ascribed the term “bureaucracy”

Elton Mayo Whereas quantitative methods and engineering theorists had been concerned with structure and the mechanics of organizations, the theorists of human relations and behavioral sciences in the Hawthorne Studies focused on motivation and leadership; assumptions about the relationship between employers and employees were at the center of their thinking

1930s Organization Theory and Max Weber Strategic Management

Bureaucracy based on hierarchy of authority and a system of rules was deemed the most efficient way of working. Subsequent analysis identified many disadvantages including the tendency of bureaucracies to become procedure dominated, heavily formalized to the detriment of initiative and flexibility, and characterized by rigid behavior among senior managers that can lead to standardized services that do not meet the needs of the client. As a result, bureaucracies are known to demotivate their personnel

Fayol was describing the structure of formal organizations, hence the somewhat dictatorial language used. Many of Fayol’s 14 principles were subsequently applied in many organizations but cannot cope with conditions of rapid change or other forms of organization

Scientific management was (and continues to be) used to increase productivity and efficiency; however, it discounts the human aspects of employment (for both individuals and groups)

Brief observation

(continued)

The Human Problems From the 1950s, doubt was increasingly cast on the of an Industrial applicability of the Hawthorne Studies to everyday Civilization (1933); The working lif Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization (1945)

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; translated, 1930); The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (1920; translated 1947)

Administration Industrielle et Générale (1916, translated in 1949)

Organization Theory and Henri Fayol Fayol defined management, viz., planning, organizing, Strategic Management commanding, coordinating, and controlling, and enunciated 14 principles to guide decision-making and management actions

Principal publication(s) The Principles of Scientific Management (1911)

Frederick W. Taylor

1910s Quantitative Methods and Engineering

Basic theory and application

Taylorism broke down the components of manual work in manufacturing environments, measuring movement (hence Gantt charts and the “time-and-motion” studies of Frank and Lillian Gilbreths) so there might be a proven best way to perform each task

Eminent thinker

When Historical foundation

Table 1 A taxonomy of management theories

A Taxonomy of Management Theories 131

1950s Organization Theory and Tavistock Strategic Management Institute

Kurt Lewin

Reginald Revans

1940s Human Relations and Behavioral Science

Human Relations and Behavioral Science

Eminent thinker

When Historical foundation

Table 1 (continued)

Originating from research at the Tavistock Institute, sociotechnical systems theory had at its core the idea that the design and performance of any organizational system can only be understood and improved if social and technical aspects are brought together in a more complex system that treats task, structure, technology, and people (actors) as interdependent parts

The core idea of action research, which owes to Lewin, is that there should be an intimate relationship between inquiry and practical activities. Action research is applied, problem-based research that usually involves the researcher as an active participant in an interactive, collaborative, and iterative process. The action research process is usually designed not only to generate knowledge but also to employ that knowledge

Revans explained that for an organization to survive its rate of learning must be at least equal to the rate of change in its external environment. The Revans Formula is L = P + Q, where L (learning) = P (programmed knowledge) + Q (questioning insight)

Basic theory and application

Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Longwall Method of Coal Getting (1951)

A Dynamic Theory of Personality (1935); Principles of Topological Psychology (1935); Action Research and Minority Problems (1946); Resolving Social Conflicts (1948); Field Theory in Social Science (1951)

Developing Effective Managers (1971); The Origins and Growth of Action Learning (1982); ABC of Action Learning (1983)

Principal publication(s)

(continued)

The Tavistock Institute researchers who worked on sociotechnical systems theory saw it as a breakthrough in the design of organizations fit for people to work in. But, the first sociotechnical systems studies were undertaken in coal mines and weaving mills, a far cry from organizations in which information and communication technology is a fundamental part of the technical system or where virtual teaming is the norm. At best, sociotechnical systems theory may help understand helping us understand what happens when information and communication technology is introduced in this or that way

Action research has been called a contradiction in terms and deemed inherently unstable: in practice, it resolves itself either into inquiry that is subordinated to another activity or into specialized research

From its inception, action learning has developed in numerous ways including virtual action learning, critical action learning, and action–reflection learning

Brief observation

132 A Taxonomy of Management Theories

The Practice of Management was the first book to look at management as a whole. Drucker proposed that a business exists as an economic establishment that produces value for its stakeholders and for the society; as a community that employs, pays, and develops people and coordinates their efforts to raise productivity; and as a social institution that is embedded in society and values

Building on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Herzberg developed a list of hygiene factors that should be present in a job before attempts are made to motivate workers. The basic assumption of Herzberg’s two-factor theory revolved around redesigning and improving employee positions to increase motivation and involvement. The satisfiers that Herzberg identified were recognition, achievement, advancement, growth, responsibility, and job challenge; the dissatisfiers were working conditions, policies and administrative practices, salary and benefits, supervision, status, job security, fellow workers, and personal life

Organization Theory and Peter Strategic Management; Drucker Human Relations and Behavioral Science

Human Relations and Behavioral Science

Frederick Herzberg

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory comprising a five-tier model of human needs: (a) physiological needs; (b) safety needs; (c) belongingness and love needs; (d) esteem needs; and (e) self-actualization needs

Abraham Maslow

Human Relations and Behavioral Science

Basic theory and application

Eminent thinker

When Historical foundation

Table 1 (continued)

Drucker is considered the most influential management thinker ever and deemed by many to have invented management: both modern and systematic (and in many ways postmodern), advancing both organization theory and strategic management as well as human relations and behavioral science, his pioneering and prolific work transcends typologies. The Practice of Management (1954) is as relevant today as when it was first written. Drucker conceived business as a human-driven enterprise that could be both profitable and socially responsible

Maslow was not finished with the hierarchy of needs when he passed away; in his later years, he had placed self-transcendence at the apex of the hierarchy, above self-actualization. Maslow foresaw needs for highly-focused mental states—mindfulness, flow—that enable people to surpass individual well-being

Brief observation

(continued)

The Motivation to Work Herzberg coined the concept of “job enrichment”: he (1959) separated the elements of a job into those that serve animal or economic needs (hygiene or maintenance) and those that meet deeper aspirations (motivation) and remains a major influence on management thinking. Herzberg’s work influenced such corporate developments as “flextime” as well as “cafeteria” plans, which allow employees to select their mix of benefits

The Practice of Management (1954)

A Theory of Human Motivation (1943); Motivation and Personality (1954)

Principal publication(s)

A Taxonomy of Management Theories 133

Eminent thinker

1960s Organization Theory and Douglas Strategic Management; McGregor Human Relations and Behavioral Science

When Historical foundation

Table 1 (continued) Principal publication(s)

Building also on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, The Human Side of McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y are theories of Enterprise (1960) human work motivation and management. Theory X states that management believes workers will do as little as possible to get by and thus need a great deal of direction, which underscores the importance of heightened supervision, external rewards, and penalties; conversely, Theory Y states that management believes workers are interested in doing their best and will perform well if given freedom, which highlights the motivating role of job satisfaction and encourages workers to approach tasks without direct supervision. Crucially, McGregor did not consider Theory X and Theory Y to be opposite ends of the same continuum but rather two different continua in themselves: a manager would need to adopt (variants of) both approaches depending on the evolving circumstances and levels of internal and external locus of control throughout a particular workplace

Basic theory and application

(continued)

McGregor may have couched Theory X too negatively, which logically ought to preclude its use entirely. With work to be done and wages to be claimed, there is little alternative to the carrot and stick if, paraphrasing the clichés of Theory X, the average employee is indolent; lacks ambition, dislikes responsibility, prefers to be led; is inherently self-centered, indifferent to organizational needs; is resistant to change; is gullible, not very bright, and the ready dupe of the charlatan and the demagogue? But what if the average worker is not a slacker yet needs a modicum of guidance (or if the nature of the work demands it)? For a while, Theory X and Theory Y influenced the design and implementation of personnel policies and practice; but, as managerial research progressed, McGregor’s binary division of styles came to be considered simplistic

Brief observation

134 A Taxonomy of Management Theories

Human Relations and Behavioral Science

When Historical foundation

Table 1 (continued)

Robert Blake and Jane Mouton

Eminent thinker

Principal publication(s)

Robert Blake and Jane Mouton developed a binary The Managerial Grid management model based on two orientations: (a) (low (1964) to high) concern for people—this evidences the degree to which a leader considers the needs, interests, and areas of personal development of personnel when deciding how best to accomplish a task; and (b) (low to high) concern for results—this evidences the degree to which a leader emphasizes concrete objectives, organizational efficiency, and high productivity when deciding how best to accomplish a task. In the resulting grid, Blake and Mouton made out five different combinations of the two orientations, with which they associated distinct leadership styles: (a) impoverished management (low results/low people); (b) deliver-or-perish management (high results/low people); (c) middle-of-the-road management (medium results/medium people); (d) country club management (high people/low results); and (e) team management (high results/high people). (Team management, the optimal leadership style in the model, is based on McGregor’s Theory Y.)

Basic theory and application

(continued)

Asserting that a mere two dimensions can characterize managerial behavior offers the promise of vital truths about management styles and their implications. Would-be managers should understand the basics of the Managerial Grid. But, the problem with binary explanations of the world is that they describe what they promise: nothing less—for what that is worth— but certainly nothing more: the Managerial Grid, for instance, sheds no light on the characteristics of leaders, the characteristics of followers, or the characteristics of the situation

Brief observation

A Taxonomy of Management Theories 135

Eminent thinker

Basic theory and application

1970s Human Relations and Behavioral Science

Victor Vroom and Philip Yetton

General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications (1969)

Principal publication(s)

The Vroom–Yetton Decision Model developed by Leadership and Victor Vroom in collaboration with Phillip Yetton (and Decision-Making later with Arthur Jago) hinges on seven “yes/no” (1973) questions that one needs to answer to find the best decision-making process for a situation. The seven questions are: (a) Is the quality of the decision important? (b) Is team commitment to the decision important? (c) Do you have enough information to make the decision on your own? (d) Is the problem well structured? (e) If you made the decision yourself, would the team support it? (f) Does the team share organizational goals? and (g) Is conflict amongst the team over the decision likely? The five different styles (ranging from autocratic to consultative to group-based decisions) to be adopted based on the situation and level of involvement are (a) Autocratic Type 1 (AI); (b) Autocratic Type 2 (AII); (c) Consultative Type 1 (CI); (d) Consultative Type 2 (CII); and (e) Group-Based Type 2 (GII)

Organization Theory and Ludwig von Models that were conceptualized organizations and Strategic Management Bertalanffy their human agents as closed systems include Taylor’s scientific management and Weber’s bureaucratic theory. Generally, closed systems deal with routine tasks, task specialization, emphasis on means (of, say, production), and top–down management of related conflicts: they have minimal or no interaction with the surrounding environment. Bertalanffy, the best known of the system theorists, described organizations as open systems that are influenced by both internal and external environmental factors; crucially, however, organizations influence in turn the same internal and external environmental factors so that dynamic relationships can develop as a result

When Historical foundation

Table 1 (continued)

(continued)

The underlying assumption of the Vroom-Yetton Decision Model is that no single decision-making process fits all situations. The model walks decision makers through logical steps to help them identify the most appropriate processes and associated leadership styles. However, the model takes no account of the many kinds of social interaction that typically impact stakeholder relations. Moreover, it stands to reason that constructive, well-managed controversy can improve the outcome of decision making. Hence, the model may be more useful at the preplanning stages of a decision

Bertalanffy developed systems theory to help (a) investigate the whole, not just the parts; (b) understand the interactions, interdependencies, and inter-relationships of the parts within their system, with other systems, and with the surrounding environment; and (c) deal with increasing numbers of variables and with complexity. Nowadays, most organizations run as open systems but even then, pace Bertalanffy and such as Senge, often act as if they can operate independently of the world around them: if systems theory must be blamed, one can point to its interpretation of organizations and environments as concrete items and to its epistemological inability to recognize that functional unity and harmony are not necessarily (or easily) possible. (Systems theory may also push the metaphor of organizations as organisms too far.)

Brief observation

136 A Taxonomy of Management Theories

Eminent thinker

Human Relations and Behavioral Science

Disconcertingly, the reality of what managers actually do was unexplored until Mintzberg searched for it: he found that managers were slaves to the moment, shifting from task to task with every move dogged by yet another diversion and yet another call. Mintzberg made out that the manager at work performs a great quantity of work at unrelenting pace; undertakes activities marked by variety, brevity, and fragmentation; favors issues that are current, specific, and non-routine; prefers verbal rather than written means of communication; acts within a web of internal and external contacts; and is subject to heavy constraints but can exert some control over the work. From these observations, Mintzberg identified the manager’s work roles to be (a) interpersonal (i.e., figurehead, leader, and liaiser); (b) informational (i.e., monitor, disseminator, and spokesman; and (c) decisional (i.e., entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator)

Basic theory and application The Nature of Managerial Work (1973); Simply Managing (2013)

Principal publication(s)

Tom Gilbert Gilbert devised human performance technology when Human Competence: he realized that formal learning programs often only Engineering Worthy brought about a change in knowledge, not a change in Performance (1978) behavior. The Behavior Engineering Model that Gilbert devised consists of three Leisurely Theorems that (a) distinguish between accomplishment and behavior to define worthy performance; (b identify methods for determining the potential for improving performance; and (c) describe six components of behavior that can be manipulated to change performance (i.e., environmental—data, resources, and incentives; and individual—knowledge, capacity, and motives)

Organization Theory and Henry Strategic Management; Mintzberg Human Relations and Behavioral Science

When Historical foundation

Table 1 (continued)

(continued)

Gilbert founded the field of human performance technology: his work inspired much of the organizing framework upon which the International Society for Performance Improvement is based

In Simply Managing (2013), an abbreviated version of Managing (2009), Mintzberg revisited the work he conducted 40 years earlier: he reviewed in greater detail what managers do but concentrated on what they might do better; the highlights include a Model of Managing on the three planes of information, people, and action, and thoughtful reflection on 13 inescapable conundrums of managing. Remarkably, Mintzberg’s original work seems evermore relevant

Brief observation

A Taxonomy of Management Theories 137

Porter developed three generic strategies—lowest cost, differentiation, and focus—to bring structure to the task of strategic positioning. He showed how competitive advantage can be defined in terms of relative cost and relative prices, thus linking it directly to profitability, and presented new perspectives on how profit is created and divided

Organization Theory and Michael Strategic Management Porter

Burns described two contrasting two modes of leadership—transactional and transformational. At its simplest, transactional leadership is the promise of reward for work (that could be psychological or material in nature); transactional leadership also promotes compliance through threat of punishment. However, transformational leaders approach their work from a more altruistic perspective, seeking to truly engage their followers and motivate them to higher levels of performance; transformational leadership originates in the personal values and beliefs of leaders, not in an exchange of commodities with followers

Basic theory and application

Hofstede is noted for seminal work on the influences that shape national culture (viz. power distance index, individualism vs. collectivism, masculinity vs. femininity, uncertainty avoidance index, long-term orientation vs. short-term orientation, and indulgence vs. restraint). The six dimensions allow accurate measurement of organizational culture, enabling in turn the delivery of solutions to optimize international teamwork, improve global cooperation, and find the right balance between standardization and localization

James MacGregor Burns

Eminent thinker

Geert Hofstede

1980s Human Relations and Behavioral Science

Human Relations and Behavioral Science

When Historical foundation

Table 1 (continued)

Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors (1980)

Culture‘s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values (1980)

Leadership (1978)

Principal publication(s)

(continued)

The lowest cost strategy may actually be a differentiation strategy based on low price. Also, research has shown that differentiation and lowest cost strategies can co-exist even though Porter stipulated that each requires a different culture. Elsewhere, contrary to Porter’s views, differentiation strategies have been shown to be more profitable than lowest cost strategies

Originally based on a worldwide survey of IBM employees, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory is a framework for cross-cultural communication: the theory is well known and makes for fascinating comparisons across countries and their cultures. This said, in Hofstede’s work just as anywhere else, what are termed “dimensions” are of course imagined and there can be any number of others. On top, as globalization intensifies and organizations become ever more international, Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions may come to reveal less and less in a categorical sense

Critics have pointed out that rewards motivate only at a base level and produce poor results where higher-level thinking is needed: exchanging higher-quality commodities may help for a time but approaching leader–follower relationships from a transactional perspective cannot but limit outcomes. This said, the principal challenge of transformational leadership is that the intentions of transformational leaders cannot be guaranteed, even if they are conceived as morally positive; in the hands of a skilled operator, this can lead to abuse of power (a conundrum that then sparked interest in authentic leadership). What is more, transformational leadership sheds no light on the characteristics of followers nor on those of the situation by virtue of its near-exclusive focus on those of transformational leaders

Brief observation

138 A Taxonomy of Management Theories

Total Quality Management, as Deming’s set of Out of the Crisis (1982) management practices came to be known, was premised on the idea that the key to quality improvement was in the hands of management; in other words, most problems are the result of the system and not the fault of employees. Deming offered a theory based on Fourteen Points for Management: (a) create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service; (b) adopt the new philosophy; (c) cease dependence on mass inspection; (d) end the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag alone; (e) improve constantly and forever the systems of production and service; (f) institute training and retraining; (g) institute leadership; (h) drive out fear; (i) break down barriers between staff areas; (j) eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the workforce; (k) eliminate numerical quotas; (l) remove barriers to pride of workmanship; (m) institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement; and (n) put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation

In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies (1982)

Principal publication(s)

Quantitative Methods W. Edwards and Engineering; Deming Organization Theory and Strategic Management

Basic theory and application

Peters and Waterman argued that eight common attributes were responsible for the success of the 43 corporations they reviewed: (a) a bias for action; (b) close to the customer; (c) autonomy and entrepreneurship; (d) productivity though people; (e) hands-on, value-driven; (f) stick to the knitting; (g) simple form, lean staff; and (h) simultaneous loose–tight properties. The platform for Peters and Waterman, onto which their research and theorizing built, was the McKinsey 7-S Model of strategy, structure, systems, shared values, skills, style, and staff

Eminent thinker

Organization Theory and Tom Peters Strategic Management and Robert Waterman

When Historical foundation

Table 1 (continued)

(continued)

Deming’s precepts for quality control remain essentially unchallenged, though they can be and are constantly redirected, refined, and absorbed into new management techniques, such as business process redesign (or reengineering). Deming himself considered the Fourteen Points work in progress

As early as 1984 it had become apparent that Peters and Waterman’s choice of companies ranged from poor to indifferent: NCR, Wang Labs, Xerox, and others were no longer producing excellent results and seemed to have just been large firms with dominant positions in markets that were senescent or static. The research methodology that Peters and Waterman employed was criticized as the delusion of connecting winning dots

Brief observation

A Taxonomy of Management Theories 139

Eminent thinker

1990s Organization Theory and C. K. Strategic Management Prahalad and Gary Hamel

Organization Theory and Edgar Strategic Management; Schein Human Relations and Behavioral Science

When Historical foundation

Table 1 (continued) Principal publication(s)

The concept of core competency that Prahalad and The Core Competence Hamel introduced was defined as a harmonized of the Corporation combination of multiple resources and skills that (1990) distinguish a company in the marketplace and are therefore the foundation of that company’s competitiveness. Prahalad and Hamel outlined three tests that determine whether something is a core competence: (a) a core competence provides potential access to a wide variety of markets; (b) a core competence makes a significant contribution to the perceived customer benefits of the end-product; and (c) a core competence is difficult for competitors to imitate because it is a complex harmonization of individual technologies and production skills

Schein enriched the field of organizational development Organizational Culture in the areas of career development—where he coined and Leadership (1985) the concepts of the “psychological contract” and “career anchor”—and group process consultation but his mark on organizational culture is arguably greatest. Schein held that culture is the primary source of resistance to change within an organization and that an accurate understanding of organizational dynamics begins with recognizing this fact. To help describe and analyze organizational culture phenomena, Schein made out a three-level model comprising: (a) artifacts—visible and “feelable” phenomena; (b) espoused beliefs and values; and (c) basic underlying assumptions

Basic theory and application

(continued)

Organizations are more complex than ever, what with multi-national operations; outsourcing; offshoring; contingent staffing; out-tasking; layoffs, downsizing, rightsizing, reductions in force, etc.; and mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. Excepting the case of small companies, focusing on core competencies may no longer be practicable

Ever the reflexive thinker in the vein of Mintzberg, Schein considers of late that organizational culture is no longer the relevant topic: what with globalization, organizational culture must now be considered through the prism of macro culture, nations, and corporations—where nationalities and occupations play out—as well as micro cultures because multicultural teams comprising different occupations increasingly interplay. Evermore, cultural literacy is becoming of the essence, which places a premium on learning—or rather learning to learn—as the world becomes more different, more complex, and more culturally diverse

Brief observation

140 A Taxonomy of Management Theories

Eminent thinker

Basic theory and application

Principal publication(s)

Organization Theory and Peter Senge Senge popularized the concept of the “learning The Fifth Discipline Strategic Management organization“ and brought it to the forefront of (1990) management thinking. He described the learning organization as a place where: “… people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.” In an environment of rapid change, Senge argued, only those organizations that have the flexibility and skills to adapt will survive. They must master five basic disciplines: (a) shared vision—a genuine vision that encourages people to excel and learn because they want to; (b) mental models—deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures and images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action; (c) personal mastery—the proficiency to live in a continual learning mode, which brings self-confidence to the individual, who is not afraid to admit ignorance and the need to grow; (d) team learning—because people need to be able to act together and learn from one another in order to achieve maximum creativity and innovation; and (e) systems thinking—the ability to see the whole rather small, unrelated, and manageable parts

When Historical foundation

Table 1 (continued)

(continued)

It is still difficult to find an example of Senge’s learning organization, perhaps because the ideal he made out seems at odds with the need—or perceived imperative—to deliver short-term profits to shareholders. However, we live in fast-moving times when knowledge and the ability to identify, create, store, share, and use it for creativity and innovation are at a premium. The learning organization may not yet be a reality but aspiration toward the ideal has led many to see learning as a benefit and not a cost. It would be fascinating to see learning organizations develop in our lifetimes; in spite of everything, the leaning organization needs no apology

Brief observation

A Taxonomy of Management Theories 141

Eminent thinker

Organization Theory and Peter Strategic Management Schwartz

When Historical foundation

Table 1 (continued) Principal publication(s)

No one can accurately predict what tomorrow will The Art of the Long bring but we do know that do that volatility, uncertainty, View (1991) complexity, and ambiguity now define the future. Scenario planning, aka called scenario thinking or scenario analysis, is a strategic planning method that some large organizations use to make flexible long-term plans: it involves aspects of systems thinking, specifically the recognition that many factors may combine in complex ways to create sometime surprising futures. Schwartz, a leading theorist and practitioner, has specified the discrete steps of scenario planning to be (a) uncovering the focal issue; (b) making out key factors; (c) listing driving forces; (d) ranking driving forces; (e) fleshing out scenarios; (f) drawing implications; and (g) selecting indicators

Basic theory and application

(continued)

Scenario planning is not a panacea: the end result is not an accurate picture of tomorrow but better thinking about the future. Since scenarios provide a context for decisions, better thinking should lead to more robust decisions. Still, just as important as the permanent process of reading the future is planned and systematic abandonment of what no longer serves purpose, conveys satisfaction, or makes a contribution; otherwise, the best definition of the focal issue under scenario planning will turn out to have been a thankless exercise

Brief observation

142 A Taxonomy of Management Theories

Eminent thinker

Organization Theory and Richard Strategic Management D’Aveni

When Historical foundation

Table 1 (continued) Principal publication(s)

Hypercompetition takes place when technologies (or Hypercompetition offerings) are so new that standards and rules are in flux (1994) and competitive advantages and profits cannot be sustained. Under hypercompetition, D’Aveni explains, companies must find and build temporary advantages through market disruption. Specifically, companies must move up escalation ladders whereby advantage is continually created, eroded, destroyed, and recreated by maneuvers in the four arenas of (a) price and quality; (b) timing and know-how; (c) stronghold creation/invasion; and (d) deep pockets

Basic theory and application

(continued)

In a Schumpeterian update of Porter’s five competitive forces (i.e., competitive rivalry, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of customers, threat of new entrants, and threat of substitute products or services), D’Aveni advocates that companies in hypercompetitive markets should seek temporary advantages rather than structure themselves to achieve equilibrium in their environment: toward this, what is needed is a new set of guidelines, aka the new 7S’s framework, that provides a vision for generating the next market disruption. D’Aveni’s new 7S’s framework hangs vision, capability, and tactics, on (a) stakeholder satisfaction; (b) strategic soothsaying; (c) positioning for speed; (d) positioning for surprise; (e) shifting the rule of the game; (f) signaling the strategic intent; and (g) simultaneous and sequential strategic thrust. There is something of the Big Idea in D’Aveni’s definition of and approaches to hypercompetition: much as Porter’s (and so many others’), time will (rapidly) tell. Typically, Big Ideas are framed to encompass and explain all: but, it is not clear if hypercompetition is the hallmark of new markets and industries or any market and industry; however refreshing the Big Idea may be, hypercompetition does not speak to the public or civil society sectors either Paradoxically, D’Aveni’s overarching message is that the only real sustainable competitive strategy lies in a company’s ability to reinvent itself; and, that is nothing new

Brief observation

A Taxonomy of Management Theories 143

Economics and Philosophy

When Historical foundation

Table 1 (continued)

Linda Treviño and Katherine Nelson

Eminent thinker

Business ethics encompass business management theory; theories of individualism vs. collectivism; free will among participants in the marketplace; the role of self-interest; invisible hand theories; the requirements of social justice; natural rights—especially property rights—in relation to the business enterprise; the social responsibilities of businesses; and, unavoidably, ethical leadership. Treviño and Nelson, to name but two, have developed a systems approach to thinking about organizational ethics, the premise being that ethical cultures depend on aligning multiple formal and informal systems to send consistent messages about expected behavior. The formal systems by means of which to promote ethical cultures include the selection system; policies and codes; orientation and training; the performance management system; the authority structure; formal decision processes; and formal communications from leadership. The informal systems by means of which ethics can be advanced in organizations include the behavior of role models and heroes; norms of daily behavior; organizational rituals; and myths, stories, and language

Basic theory and application Managing Business Ethics: Straight Talk about How to Do It Right (1995)

Principal publication(s)

(continued)

Conceptual clarity is hard to come by and theory testing is made difficult when theories involve many constructs (e.g., leader traits, skills, values, and behaviors; follower values, perceptions, and needs; group-level and organizational processes; and multiple outcomes and criteria. But, the need for ethical leadership is a sine qua non and the key messages of eminent thinkers such as Treviño and Nelson are pertinent and will endure

Brief observation

144 A Taxonomy of Management Theories

Eminent thinker

Organization Theory and Karl Weick Strategic Management; Human Relations and Behavioral Science

When Historical foundation

Table 1 (continued) Principal publication(s)

Sensemaking is the process by which people give Sensemaking in meaning to collective experience. Weick introduced the Organizations (1995) concept the 1970s to encourage a shift away from the traditional focus of organization theorists on decision-making and toward the processes that constitute the meaning of the decisions that are enacted in behavior. Weick articulated the principal attributes of sensemaking to be: (a) sensemaking starts with noticing and bracketing; (b) sensemaking is about labeling; (c) sensemaking is retrospective; (d) sensemaking is about presumption; (e) sensemaking is about action; and (f) sensemaking is about organizing through communication. The idea was that a consciously detailed process of sensemaking can help us understand not only the impact that a certain experience has but also what made that experience have the impact of interest; crucially, understanding the process of sensemaking empowers us to build more impactful experiences in the future

Basic theory and application

(continued)

Organization theory and strategic management have been dominated by a focus on decision-making and the concept of strategic rationality: however, the rational model ignores the inherent complexity and ambiguity of real-world organizations and their environments. Weick broke much new ground when he defined how the sensemaking process shapes organizational structure and behavior; surely, there is much more work to de done in this area

Brief observation

A Taxonomy of Management Theories 145

Eminent thinker

Organization Theory and Clayton Strategic Management Christensen

When Historical foundation

Table 1 (continued) Principal publication(s)

Innovation plays an important role in an organization’s The Innovator’s success and Christensen made out two types of Dilemma (1997) innovative technology. There are what he called sustaining technologies, which merely improve existing products and services, and disruptive technologies (e.g., mobile phones, digital photography, and internet shopping) that completely change the nature of a market or business (and are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and, frequently, more convenient to use). Focusing on disruptive technology, Christensen showed why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation and presented a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon. He noted that successful companies (a) develop the disruptive technology with the “right” customers, not necessarily their current customer set; (b) place the disruptive technology into an autonomous organization that can be rewarded with small wins and small customer sets; (c) fail early and often to find the correct disruptive technology; and (d) allow the disrupting organization to utilize all of the company’s resources when needed but are careful to make sure the processes and values were not those of the company

Basic theory and application

(continued)

Much as In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies (1982), the Innovator’s Dilemma (1997) has been criticized as a theory that explains little other than the instances when it happens to be true. This said, there is no doubt that Christensen, climbing on the shoulders of such as Drucker and Joseph Schumpeter, helped place innovation on the map. The purview of innovation has since expanded greatly to include business model innovation, management innovation, and social innovation, all of which invite new theories

Brief observation

146 A Taxonomy of Management Theories

Eminent thinker

Organization Theory and Mary UhlStrategic Management Bien and Russ Marion

2000s Quantitative Methods Various and Engineering; Organization Theory and Strategic Management

When Historical foundation

Table 1 (continued) Principal publication(s)

With roots in complexity science, complexity leadership Complexity Leadership: theory aims to broaden leadership study beyond its Part 1: Conceptual traditional focus on the actions and influence of leaders Foundations (2007) to consideration of leadership as a broader—dynamic and interactive—organizing process. Complexity leadership theory proposes a leadership paradigm that focuses on enabling the learning, creative, and adaptive capacity of complex adaptive systems within the context of knowledge-producing organizations: the framework includes three entangled leadership roles (i.e., administrative leadership, adaptive leadership, and enabling leadership) that reflect a dynamic relationship between the bureaucratic, administrative functions of organizations and the emergent, informal dynamics of complex adaptive systems

Business process management can be traced to Various ancestral record management, studies of workflows in the 1960s–1970s, and business process reengineering in the 1990s. Specifically, and commonly by means of information and communication technology, business process management addresses how organizations can discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate processes between systems (that may involve human interaction), this to automate and streamline to save time and money and put the greatest energy into the most strategic and vital activities. A complete business process management framework addresses four elements: (a) workflow management; (b) content management; (c) enterprise application integration; and (d) process monitoring

Basic theory and application

(continued)

Approaches that are not conditioned by organizational boundaries seem most relevant to the quickening complexity of our times. Potentially, complexity leadership theory can shift leadership from the industrial age to the knowledge era. Surely, there is much more work to de done in this area

In theory at least, business process management looks at processes that may span an entire organization. In practice, while the steps can be viewed as a cycle, all sorts of constraints (e.g., economic, political, time, etc.) are likely to limit the process to a few iterations. The true value of business process management may lie in the discovery of informal business processes; but, discovery frequently plays second fiddle to the enshrinement of formal processes

Brief observation

A Taxonomy of Management Theories 147

Edward Deci; Marylène Gagné; Daniel Pink; Richard Ryan

Human Relations and Behavioral Science

The concept of “drive” in motivational theories has been around since the early 1900s but Pink has argued against old models of motivation driven by extrinsic factors (e.g., fear, reward) and laid forth the premise that human motivation is largely intrinsic. The intrinsic aspects of motivation can be divided into: (a) autonomy—the desire to be self-directed; (b) mastery—we want to get better at doing things; and (c) purpose—connecting to a cause larger than yourself. Reference to Pink’s work must acknowledge Deci, Gagné and Ryan’s work on self-determination, which focuses on the degree to which an individual’s behavior is shaped by universal, innate, and psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness

Basic theory and application Self-Determination Theory and Work Motivation (2005); Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (2011)

Principal publication(s)

Eminent thinkers have dismissed the carrot-and-stick approach ever since Taylor turned it into the cornerstone of scientific management in the early 20th century. Pink offers another—very optimistic—rebuttal: people will do more if they are given the opportunity to work on their own time, be creative, and do good. Missing from Pink’s arguments, however, is the Maslovian idea that there are five or six different needs, attention to which changes over time. What is more, motivation may not serve if what is needed to perform (i.e., means and opportunity) is missing. Context is everything

Brief observation

Note The English verb “manage” comes via the French word mesnagement (or ménagement) from the two Latin words manus (hand) and agere (to act): it stood for housekeeping, including the care of domestic animals. Management is not a modern conceptualization: evidence of management thinking in history can be found (among many others) in • The Code of Ur-Nammu (~2,100–2,050 BCE)—The oldest (surviving) code of law • Egyptian papyri (~3,000–1,300 BCE)—These contain miscellaneous information on administration, law, and management • The Code of Hammurabi (~1,754 BCE)—The oldest (surviving) extensive code of law • The Art of War (~771–476 BCE)—Sun Tsu wrote the first military treatise, with each of the 13 chapters devoted to a distinct aspect of warfare • Socrates (469–399 BCE)—Philosopher and teacher (ethics, morality, government) • Aristotle (384–322 BCE)—Philosopher and teacher (formal inductive reasoning) • Meditations (Undated)—Marcus Aurelius (121–180) recorded ideas on Stoic philosophy and made notes to himself • The Quipu (also called khipu) (~1400–1532)—A method based on strings and knots used by the Incas (and other ancient Andean cultures) to keep records and communicate information in the absence of an alphabetic writing system • Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita (1494)—Luca Pacioli is recognized as the father of accounting • The Prince (1532)— Niccolò Machiavelli offered practical guidance on getting and retaining political power • Cameralists (1700s)—German and Austrian advisers on management of the state’s finances and the science and technology of administration • Political Arithmetick (1690)—Sir William Petty is recognized as the father of political economy

Eminent thinker

When Historical foundation

Table 1 (continued)

148 A Taxonomy of Management Theories

• The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)—Adam Smith is recognized as the father of classical economics Note The elements that make up the taxonomy of management theories—including others not listed there—are usually (and sometimes subjectively) aggregated into schools. The high-level taxonomy adopted in this précis classifies them into economics and philosophy, human relations and behavioral science, organization theory and strategic management, and quantitative methods and engineering. (The number of management theories that fall under human relations and behavioral science is high—about 60%, which suggests that psychology has played a preponderant role in the development of management theories.) Another (common) high-level taxonomy detects—or rather ascribes—chronological order, with management theories classified as pre-industrial (administrative, legal, military, political), political economy, scientific management, bureaucracy (public administration), classical, neo-classical, and modern (contingency, systems, etc.). Yet another taxonomy categorizes management theories by the nuts and bolts of their outlook: financial management, human resource management, information and communication technology management, marketing management, operations management and production management, and strategic management. Otherwise, McGrath (2014) proposed that we have seen three “ages” of management since the industrial revolution, each placing emphasis on a different theme, namely, execution, expertise, and empathy. For McGrath (2014), the focus of the first era (up to the 1920s) was wholly on execution of mass production. The second era (from the 1930s to the 1990s, one might say) witnessed such writers as Elton Mayo, Mary Parker Follett, Chester Barnard, Max Weber, Chris Argyris, Douglas McGregor, and Peter Drucker importing theories from other fields (e.g., psychology, sociology) so that managers might with expertise provide advanced services. Beyond execution and expertise, McGrath (2014) saw that in the third era organizations should with empathy create complete and meaningful experiences Note Sometimes, the work of eminent thinkers spans decades: for example, Drucker’s first book, Concept of the Corporation, appeared in 1946; his last, The Five Most Important Questions, was published posthumously in 2008, more than 60 years later. Hence, what chronology is given in this précis flags principal publications only and should be considered approximate

A Taxonomy of Management Theories 149

150

A Taxonomy of Management Theories 1900s

• 1908 – The Assembly Line

1910s

• 1911– Scientific Management • 1916 – Fayol's Principles

1930s

• 1930 – Bureaucracy & Public Administration • 1932 – Hawthorne Studies

1940s

• 1945 – Action Learning • 1946 – Action Research

1950s

• 1951 – • 1954 – • 1954 – • 1959 –

1960s

• 1960 – Theory X & Theory Y • 1964 – The Managerial Grid • 1969 – Systems Theory

1970s

• 1973 – • 1973 – • 1978 – • 1978 –

Vroom–Yetton Decision Model The Nature of Managerial Work Human Competence Transformational & Transactional Leadership

1980s

• 1980 – • 1980 – • 1980 – • 1982 – • 1982 – • 1985 –

Cultural Dimensions Competitive Strategy Supply Chain Management Excellence Total Quality Management Organizational Culture

1990s

• 1990 – • 1990 – • 1991 – • 1994 – • 1995 – • 1995 – • 1997 –

Core Competency Learning Organization Scenario Planning Hypercompetition Ethics Sensemaking Disruptive Innovation

2000s

• Early 2000s – Business Process Management • Mid-2000s – Complexity Leadership • 2011 – Drive

Sociotechnical Systems Theory Hierarchy of Needs The Practice of Management Hygiene & Motivational Factors

Fig. 1 Select timeline of management theories

References McGrath, R. (2014, July). Management’s three eras: A brief history. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2014/07/managements-three-eras-a-brief-history. Smith, K., & Hitt, M. (Eds.). (2007). Great minds in management: The process of theory development. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Mintzberg’s Managing: Implications for Coaching and Training

Abstract This précis contextualizes Mintzberg’s work to expose the cult of leadership and restore management to the front and center, quickly elucidates Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing, and makes the supporting point that if managing is indeed a practice then wide vistas open in coaching and training for competency-buliding.

Mintzberg (2009) remarked that it has become fashionable to distinguish between leaders and managers: “Sure, we can separate leading and managing conceptually. But can we separate them in practice? Or, more to the point, should we even try?” (p. 8). This précis contextualizes Mintzberg’s work to expose the cult of leadership and restore management to the front and center, quickly elucidates Mintzberg’s Model of Managing, and makes the supporting point that if managing is indeed a practice then wide vistas open in coaching and training for competency-building.

Leadership vs. Management Tens of thousands of books have been written on leadership and academic journals such as the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, the Journal of Leadership Studies, and The Leadership Quarterly are devoted to the subject; by the same token, tens of thousands of books have been written on management and academic journals such as the Academy of Management Review, the Journal of International Management, and Management Science are devoted to that subject.1 Paraphrasing Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong’s famous expression, letting a hundred Mintzberg’s Managing: Implications for Coaching and Training was completed on November 27, 2018. 1 To

note, few books (including Mintzberg’s) and even fewer academic journals treat the subject of small businesses and organizations. Most management theories and models, including Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing, are premised on critical mass in medium or large businesses or organizations but the character of managing smaller ventures is much different because they have fewer employees and managers must often provide oversight for several business functions. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_17

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flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend should promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science: if so, a myriad of books and dozens of academic journals on the separate subjects of leadership and management should be cause for celebration. However, specialization that drives a wedge between leadership and management may not be propitious: witness the (oft-repeated) Delphic pronouncement that managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing (Bennis and Nanus 1985, p. 21). Most of what we read about leadership has to do with leaders: Yukl (2014) distinguished characteristics of leaders, followers, and the situation; Bolden, Gosling, Hawkins, and Taylor (2011) made much the same point on leadership as a property of leaders, as a relationship between leaders and followers, and as a social process. But, can trait approaches and notions of, say, situational, transactional, and transformational leadership—all of which still smack of command and control 100 years after Taylor (1911)—serve organizations of ordinary people who without advertising superhuman qualities work with success in the new normal of volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous circumstances. More prosaically: “How would you like to be managed by someone who doesn’t lead? That can be awfully dispiriting. Well, then, why would you want to be led by someone who doesn’t manage? That can be terribly disengaging: how are such ‘leaders’ to know what is going on? As Jim March put it: ‘Leadership involves plumbing as well as poetry’” (Mintzberg, 2009, p. 8).

Enough of Leadership Springing from The Nature of Managerial Work (1973) and Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development (2005), to name but two of the works through which Mintzberg drove his compelling argument, Mintzberg (2009) meant to help us descend from the cloud of leadership theory to the ground of management practice: “It has become popular to talk about us being overmanaged and underled. I believe we are now overled and undermanaged; … leadership cannot simply delegate management; instead of distinguishing managers from leaders, we should be seeing managers as leaders, and leadership as management practiced well; … it is time to recognize that managing is neither a science nor a profession: it is a practice, learned primarily through experience, and rooted in context” (p. 9). Building in particular on The Nature of Managerial Work (1973), which defined the manager’s work roles as interpersonal, informational, and decisional, Mintzberg (2009) fleshed out a Model of Managing that takes place on the three planes of information, people, and action, subject of course to external, organizational, job, situational, and personal contexts. Mintzberg’s Model of Managing is depicted in Fig. 1.

Enough of Leadership

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Fig. 1 A model of managing (Source Mintzberg [2009, p. 48])

If, as Mintzberg (2009) averred, the problem with managing is in the practice, not the theory (p. 90), then we must look into and seek to strengthen the various competencies that might accompany work roles. Drawing from the literature, Mintzberg (1971) identified a manager’s work roles as (i) interpersonal (i.e., figurehead—representing the organization/unit to outsiders; leader—motivating subordinates, unifying effort; and liaiser—maintaining lateral contacts); (ii) informational (i.e., monitor—of information flows; disseminator—of information to subordinates; and spokesperson— transmission of information to outsiders); and (iii) decisional (i.e., entrepreneur— initiator and designer of change; disturbance handler—handling non-routine events; resource allocator—deciding who gets what and who will do what; and negotiator— negotiating). Table 1 overleaf specifies the competencies of managing, including also personal competencies.

Coaching and Training New-Era Managers If competencies matter even more than we thought, Mintzberg’s research has powerful implications for how we select and develop managers and, just as importantly, for how they might be trained or coached. To note, Mintzberg (2009) made little of competency-building in Managing apart from saying that the job of development is best seen as managers helping people to develop themselves (p. 67): preferring perhaps to keep to the higher subject of managerial practice, with insistence that

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Table 1 Competencies of managing A. Personal competencies 1. Managing self, internally (reflecting, strategic thinking) 2. Managing self, externally (time, information, stress, career) 3. Scheduling (chunking, prioritizing, agenda setting, juggling, timing) B. Interpersonal competencies 1. Leading individuals (selecting, teaching/mentoring/coaching, inspiring, dealing with experts) 2. Leading groups (team building, resolving conflicts/meditating, facilitating processes, running meetings) 3. Leading the organization/unit (building culture) 4. Administering (organizing, resource allocating, delegating, authorizing, systematizing, goal setting, performance appraising) 1. Linking the organization/unit (networking, representing, collaborating, promoting/lobbying, protecting/buffering) C. Informational competencies 1. Communicating verbally (listening, interviewing, speaking/presenting/briefing, writing, information gathering, information disseminating) 2. Communicating nonverbally (seeing [visual literacy], sensing [visceral literacy]) 3. Analyzing (data processing, modeling, measuring, evaluating) D. Actional competencies 1. Designing (planning, crafting, visioning) 2. Mobilizing (firefighting, project managing, negotiating/dealing, politicking, managing change) Source Mintzberg (2009, p. 91)

managing is learned on the job, Mintzberg (2009) did not mention that managers might themselves need to be trained or coached (but see the reference to Coaching Ourselves below).

Training Much has been written on the subject of training, aka training and development: this précis will not chronicle changes in the philosophy, practice, and terminology, all of them lightning rods of vigorous debate. That said, it can be contended that— much as annual performance reviews—training has typically been used to detect shortcomings and put paid to these. Characteristically, the official purpose of training programs is to improve group and individual performance by increasing and honing skills (and sometimes knowledge) as part of an organization’s talent management strategy, this in alignment with an organization’s overall vision, goal, and objectives. At the practical level, the personnel responsible for training proceeds to identify skills gaps among groups and teams—often through SMART objectives, one-on-one interviews, and (as we

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saw) annual performance reviews; next, the personnel proceeds to deliver or procure suitable training to fill the gaps identified. Depending on the organization, of course, training can aim to strengthen the entrepreneurial, instrumental, inter-organizational, political, or public interest functions of managers. But, Mintzberg (2013) argued, “Programs for managers need to be organized according to the nature of managing itself—for example, in terms of managerial mindsets, not business functions. Marketing + finance + accounting, etc., does not = management” (p. 170). This is because focusing on business functions overstates analysis, which is but one mindset of managing. What Mintzberg (2009) made plain also is that, beyond imparting skills, the new role of training should be to mediate knowledge in relation to the problems and conundrums managers face in the workplace, aiming to boost evenly necessary personal, interpersonal, informational, and actional competencies.

Coaching Ourselves Usually correctly, training vaunts wholesale transfer of skills: but, even with skills (and knowledge), personnel is not likely to stretch to full potential without guidance that inspires, energizes, and facilitates. Coaching can help people achieve selfdirection, self-esteem, and efficacy: there are many applications, each to be looked at from as many points of view as possible, but it stands to reason that there will be times when coaching can deliver more intimately than training in relation to the personal, interpersonal, informational, and actional competencies managers need. (But, it is not a case of either–or: training and coaching should go hand-in-hand.) In 2007, Mintzberg co-founded Coaching Ourselves with Phil LeNir to bring modern, engaged, and people-focused management education in the workplace and create a culture of continuous learning and growth in organizations. From the premise that training should result in managers actually doing a better job of managing and that this happens best when managers learn from each other in small groups, Coaching Ourselves’s ambition is to increase an organization’s ability to self-develop while building a culture of learning and collaboration. Specifically, Coaching Ourselves is a peer-coaching program of human-centered social learning comprising, to date, over 80–90-minute peer-coaching modules on such subjects as Dealing with the Pressures of Managing, Feedforward Instead of Feedback, From Top Performer to Manager, Managing on Tightropes: The Inescapable Conundrums of Managing; and Understanding Organizations. [The objectives of the module about Managing on Tightropes: The Inescapable Conundrums of Managing, for example, are to explore a few of the conundrums at the heart of managing (e.g., how to connect when managing is inherently disconnected? How to go deep when the pressure is to get it done? How to be confident in managing without becoming arrogant?) and share ways to face these in order to be more effective in managing.] Guided by a facilitator, face-to-face or online, groups of 4–6 participants embark on a process of reflection and dialog on managerial practices around specific themes. For each theme, a Coaching Ourselves module provides content, questions, and

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structure for beneficial outcomes. Coaching Ourselves is now used in more than 30 different countries and 8 languages by more than 20,000 managers every year. (For now, the modules are available in English and French.)

Summing up Bennis and Nanus (1985) convinced many people that there is a huge gap between managers and leaders: in the exceptional circumstances that call for great leaders, there is value in the distinction; but, leadership and management must fit together in all other instances. Everyday organizations need managers who can lead: they can do without heroic leaders who oversee unimaginative managers from afar. Mintzberg (2009) offered a Model of Managing with which to make out and perfect the art (vision), craft (experience), and science (analysis) of managing (Serrat, 2018): the three planes of information, people, and action invite on-the-go application and refinement; vitally, because managing was thereby reclaimed as practice, Mintzberg (2009) opened wide vistas in coaching and training for competencybuilding. The deeper message of Mintzberg (2009) was that emphasis on business functions in the course of conventional training builds skills that are valuable per se but do not necessarily contribute to the success of an organization. However, with human-centered social learning facilitated by coaching, managers can become more human and empathetic, rather than cold and calculating, and make organizations better places for communityship. In relation to this, Mintzberg (2009) helped understand what the nature of management truly is, enabled more meaningful (self-)observation and analysis of managerial behavior, and made it easier to see how managers can develop the mindsets and related competencies necessary to work through information, with people, and for action.

References Bennis, W., & Nanus, B. (1985). Leaders: The strategies for taking charge. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Bolden, R., Gosling, J., Hawkins, B., & Taylor, S. (2011). Exploring leadership: Individual, organizational, and societal perspectives. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Mintzberg, H. (1971). Managerial work: Analysis from observation. Management Science, 18(2), 97–110. Mintzberg, H. (1973). The nature of managerial work. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Mintzberg, H. (2005). Managers not MBAs: A hard look at the soft practice of managing and management development. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Inc. Mintzberg, H. (2009). Managing. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Inc. Mintzberg, H. (2013). Simply managing. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Inc. Serrat, O. (2018). Mintzberg’s model of managing: Random thoughts from an observation. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Taylor, F. (1911). The principles of scientific management. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers. Yukl, G. (2014). Leadership in organizations (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Mintzberg’s Model of Managing: Random Thoughts from an Observation

Abstract The classical view of a manager’s role has been that he/she organizes, coordinates, plans, and controls. In 1973, Mintzberg clarified that on any given day managers are very busy, frequently interrupted, and at pains to control what they do. Revisiting his observations 35 years later, Mintzberg (2009) delineated a Model of Managing that depicts managing on three planes: through information, with people, and for action. Framed by Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing, this précis presents findings, analyses, and reactions from observation of a single manager.

Courtesy of Fayol (1916), the classical view of a manager’s role has been that he/she organizes, coordinates, plans, and controls.1 On the contrary, Mintzberg (1973) explained that on any given day—far from Fayol’s orderly world—managers are very busy, frequently interrupted, and at pains to control what they do. Revisiting his observations thirty-five years later, Mintzberg (2009) delineated a Model of Managing: the model depicts managing as taking place on three planes—through information, with people, and for action—and invites related competencies (and their development). Framed by Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing, this précis presents findings, analyses, and reactions from observation of a single manager over eight hours in October 2018.

Mintzberg’s Model of Managing: Random Thoughts from an Observation was completed on October 18, 2018. 1 Fayol was a mining engineer and it is too easily forgotten that he originally discerned five primary

functions of management (and 14 principles of management) in the context of the mining industry; to be exact, the five primary functions of management were planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. (The 14 principles of management were division of work, authority and responsibility, discipline, unity of command, unity of direction, subordination, remuneration, centralization and decentralization, scalar chain, order, equity, stability of tenure of personnel, initiative, and esprit de corps.) Most likely, Fayol conceived of the five primary functions as all-encompassing and mutually supporting dimensions of management, not necessarily what each and every manager would need to be engaged in 24 hours a day. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_18

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The Nature of Managerial Work The reality of what managers actually do was largely unexplored until Mintzberg’s The Nature of Managerial Work, published in 1973. Refusing to accept the managerial mystique (e.g., vision, charisma, ability, etc.) Mintzberg watched five managers of medium to large organizations,2 each for one week, toward the doctoral thesis he defended in 1968: he recorded their verbal contacts, telephone calls, and handling of mail in chronological order; he found that—rather than being engaged in deep thought—they were slaves to the moment and moved from task to task, every move dogged by calls and diversions. Mintzberg (1973) documented the characteristics of the manager at work: • Characteristic 1: The manager performs a great quantity of work at an unrelenting pace; • Characteristic 2: Managerial activity is characterized by variety, fragmentation, and brevity; • Characteristic 3: Managers prefer issues that are current, specific, and ad hoc; • Characteristic 4: The manager sits between his organization and a network of contacts; • Characteristic 5: The manager demonstrates a strong preference for the verbal media; and • Characteristic 6: Despite the preponderance of obligations, the manager appears to be able to control his own affairs. (Mintzberg, 1971, pp. 99–101) From these observations, Mintzberg (1990) identified the manager’s work roles as (a) interpersonal (i.e., figurehead—representing the organization/unit to outsiders; leader—motivating subordinates, unifying effort; and liaiser—maintaining lateral contacts); (b) informational (i.e., monitor—of information flows; disseminator— of information to subordinates; and spokesperson—transmission of information to outsiders); and (c) decisional (i.e., entrepreneur—initiator and designer of change; disturbance handler—handling non-routine events; resource allocator—deciding who gets what and who will do what; and negotiator—negotiating). To note, The Nature of Managerial Work (Mintzberg, 1973) produced few worthwhile imitators: to this day, researchers rely on case studies filled with retrospective wisdom or general interviews in which managers hold forth but eschew particulars; behind fashion and hyperbole, the actual work of managing continues to go unnoticed. There is one exception: in 1983, Kurke and Aldrich replicated and extended Mintzberg’s work (Kurke & Aldrich, 1983). Kurke and Aldrich’s (1983) sample consisted of four top executives3 : in each instance, they recorded the number of

2 The

employers of the managers that Mintzberg observed were a consulting firm, a school system, a technology firm, a consumer goods manufacturer, and a hospital. 3 The organizations were a public hospital (hospital administrator), a school system (a school superintendent), a high technology manufacturing firm (plant manager, with high autonomy), and a bank (bank president).

The Nature of Managerial Work

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Fig. 1 Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing Mintzberg (2009)

activities per day, deskwork sessions, telephone calls, scheduled meetings, unscheduled meetings, tours, proportion of activities lasting less than 9 minutes, proportion of activities lasting less than 60 minutes, proportion of time spent in verbal contact with others, proportion of scheduled meetings with more than three participants, and proportion of contact time for (the distinct) purposes of organizational work and ceremony. The findings of Kurke and Aldrich (1983) supported Mintzberg’s work across all dimensions. In 2009, Mintzberg revisited his earlier work. For his new book, Mintzberg (2009) observed 29 managers for a day each: he wrote what he called “straight descriptions of what happened (as well as what was discussed) and conceptual interpretations of what [he] could make of these descriptions” (p. 237). Mintzberg (2009) aimed to flesh out a Model of Managing, depicted in Fig. 1.

Eight Hours of Managing: The Task My task, delivered in October 2018, was to replicate Mintzberg’s study on a much smaller scale. Specifically, the game plan was to identify a manager whom I would shadow for one day or—minimally—for one half day twice; prepare the manager for

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the observation; conduct the observation; write up the observation; identify in particular the skills the manager exhibited; compare and contrast findings with Mintzberg using an appropriate model; and volunteer reactions.

Eight Hours of Managing: The Case Study I identified a manager in a multilateral development bank headquartered in Washington, DC. Having briefed the manager on the purpose, conduct, and expected outputs of the assignment with reference to Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing, I proceeded to observe her performance over eight hours. The observation cut across the three planes of information, people, and action, taking care to record the pace, variety, and interruptions that characterize the relentlessness of managerial work. A report on the observation is presented in the Box below. Box: María Lapeña—Urban Development and Housing, Acme Development Bank María Lapeña heads the Acme Development Bank’s operations in urban development and housing in Latin America and the Caribbean from her organization’s headquarters in Washington, DC.a Acting as Division Chief under the supervision of a Sector Manager, she oversees a complement of 70 professionals (of whom 23 are staff recruited on the international market and 47 are long-term consultants).b On Monday morning,c María reports to work at 8:15 after a bus ride and a brisk walk: she connects and boots her laptop, buys a coffee at the cafeteria, and goes straight back up to her office to deal with the electronic mail she received while riding on the bus: there are 10, which have to do with internal news (2), staff and consultant absences or sick leave (3), and sundry messages she was copied to (5). At 8:30, other electronic mail alerts blink, the first has to do with a document on the establishment of a multimilliondollar trust fund, that she must review on the day; the second requires human resource actions for the movement of staff; and the third contains plans for a trip to Berne, Switzerland, where she will consult the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs responsible for cooperation between Switzerland and the Acme Development Bank. Reviewing the proposal for the trust fund demands full attention and occupies her for the next two hours; in the mist of her review, her work is interrupted by an urgent telephone call seeking confirmation that she will coordinate a session at the Smart City Expo World Congress to be held in Barcelona, Spain on 13–15 November. From 11:30–12:00, her 30-minutes lunch break is spent at her desk: she catches up with WhatsApp texts from staff currently on mission, or from colleagues seeking appointments, and responds to two more telephone calls: the first requests her division to extend technical

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guidance to staff outposted in a country of the region; the second invites her to review within five working days the draft of a recent independent evaluation of marketplaces in Montevideo, Uruguay under a project cofinanced by the European Commission. On Monday afternoon, María holds three meetings, two of which planned; the first concerns a discussion of the results of a fact-finding mission to Panama; the second, unplanned, is an on-the-spot discussion with a staff member of a proposal—issued by another division—toward the establishment of a disaster risk management facility; the third is held in the Sector Manager’s office, where she and two of her staff review the outcome of the recent Mayors Forum held in Medellín, Colombia—that she had recently returned from— against the background of that city hosting the World Cities Summit in 2019. (Among others, that last meeting thrashed out ideas for contributions by the UrbanLab, a university-level competition sponsored by the Acme Development Bank to engender creative solutions to urban challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean.) Later still, an impromptu meeting sees María discussing with the responsible team a project that has finally received the greenlight for submission to the Board of Directors for approval: this concerns financial intermediation worth $110 million for urban projects in the State of Paraná, Brazil. At 15:30, to save time, she walks over to the operations coordinator in the Sector Manager’s office to brief her on a project in Panama and expedite mission clearance. More electronic mail, now totaling about 90 since the morning, keeps coming: some are for information, others call for attention, others still have to do with future operations. She launches CareerPoint, the organization’s work plan and evaluation system, and spends 30 minutes reviewing the progress of work programs and signing off on proposed changes. She speaks to Alfredo, her assistant, to take note of developments, be reminded of what she might have forgotten to do, coordinate his responses to inquiries, and authorize the use of her electronic signature on sundry approvals. Incoming electronic mail tapers off, for a cumulative total of 110 since the morning. She finalizes the review of the document on the establishment of a multimillion-dollar trust fund and sends her comments by electronic mail, taking care to copy all interested parties. By now, it is 19:15: María glances at tomorrow’s schedule and calls it a day. She has not had five minutes of free time. She realizes she forgot to decide on the particulars of a staff movement. What is more, she could not find time to begin drafting a chapter for a forthcoming book on urban planning in Latin America and the Caribbean; she decides she will draft something later that night, to get the ball rolling. The buses are running late; she finally arrives home by Uber at 20:00. For her, it has been a relatively quiet day. Note. This observation was conducted on October 1, 2018. Names and other identifying details have been changed.

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With a history dating back to 1959, 48 member countries, and about 2,000 employees, the Acme Development Bank is the leading source of multilateral development financing for Latin America and the Caribbean: it provides loans, grants, and technical assistance and conducts extensive research. In 2017, the Acme Development Bank’s approved lending totaled $11.4 billion. The Acme Development Bank’s current focus areas include the three development challenges of social inclusion and inequality, productivity and innovation, and economic integration as well as the three crosscutting issues of gender equality and diversity, climate change and environmental sustainability, and institutional capacity and the rule of law. The Acme Development Bank’s overarching objective for urban development and housing in Latin America and the Caribbean is to extend the full benefits of urbanization to all urban residents, both today and tomorrow: achieving this entails support for interventions and institutional changes that systematically address the four major problems that affecting the region’s cities, viz., deficits in urban infrastructure and services, deficits in housing, degradation of habitat, and deficits in urban governance. b From an operational perspective, the four goals that María is responsible for and is evaluated against annually are to (a) provide financial support to the region guided by the principles of high quality, efficiency, and development effectiveness (Weight: 45%); (b) advance the consolidation of the Acme Development Bank as a provider of integral solutions to the development challenges (Weight: 10%); (c) promote the development of strategic knowledge and innovation (Weight: 30%); and (d) continue promoting efficiency in the use of resources (Weight: 15%). In 2017, the Acme Development Bank’s lending for urban development and housing totaled $327 million for four projects. c In advance of Monday, October 1, 2018, I introduced Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing to María to reveal how I would subsequently analyze the record of observation. Ahead of the observation, María shared her (a) job description (background, key responsibilities, qualifications, leadership competencies, and technical competencies); (b) 2017 annual performance review, (c) divisional goal details; and (d) calendar for two weeks of September 2018, this to illustrate her typical workload. In advance of the same day, I obtained copies of the Acme Development Bank’s annual report for 2017 as well as that organization’s institutional strategy, 2016–2019, this to obtain contextual information of mission, vision, goal, core values, strategies, objectives, operations, and business processes.

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Eight Hours of Managing: Method of Analysis Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing was based on the premise that only by fulfilling roles on the three planes of information, people, and action will managers provide the balance that is essential to practice managing: in others words, the manager has to practice a well-rounded job. Toward the delivery of the sundry roles associated with the three planes [e.g., framing, scheduling, communicating, and controlling (information plane); leading and linking (people lane); and doing and dealing (action plane)] Mintzberg (2009) identified personal, interpersonal, informational, and actional competencies. Recognizing that the distinctions between roles can blur at the margins (because managers are active in multiple roles, roles cross over into others, and roles infuse each other), Mintzberg’s (2009) Competencies of Managing are a practical tool with which to observe management in action because they most pithily capture the component parts (or ingredients) of Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing. The method used to analyze the manager’s eight hours of managing was to transcribe the record of observation through the eyes, as it were, of the competencies displayed including their perceived occurrence (i.e., seldom, often, or always) as shown in Table 1.

Eight Hours of Managing: Findings At the personal level, managing self internally and externally and scheduling occupied María’s time throughout the day of observation, meaning always. At the interpersonal level, leading individuals, leading groups, leading the organization, administering, and linking the organization/unit occupied María often in the first two instances and always in the latter three; her roles were indeed those of figurehead, leader, and liaiser, in no particular order. At the informational level, communicating verbally, communicating nonverbally, and analyzing data occupied María always, seldom, and always, respectively; her roles were indeed those of monitor, disseminator, and spokesperson, in no particular order still. And, at the actional level, designing and mobilizing also occupied María throughout the day of observation, meaning always; her roles were indeed those of resource allocator and negotiator (but that of entrepreneur was less so on the day). Put differently, 10 competencies (out of the total of 13) were always displayed, 2 were often displayed, and 1 was seldom displayed. Personal and actional competencies were always displayed and communicating nonverbally was the only competency to be seldom displayed. Here, it is necessary to remind the reader that María’s organizational context evidently holds most explanatory power in relation to the occurrence of the competencies displayed, followed by her job context.4 (The accent on organizational context 4 Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing recognized untold varieties of managing that stem from 12

factors of management: (a) external context—which pertains to national culture, sector (business,

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Table 1 María Lapeña—competencies of managing Competency

Observation of occurrence Seldom Often Always

A. Personal Competencies 1. Managing self, internally (reflecting, strategic thinking) 2. Managing self, externally (time, information, stress, career) 3. Scheduling (chunking, prioritizing, agenda setting, juggling, timing) B. Interpersonal Competencies 1.• Leading individuals (selecting, teaching/mentoring/coaching, inspiring, dealing with experts) 2.• Leading groups (team building, resolving conflicts/meditating, facilitating processes, running meetings) 3.• Leading the organization/unit (building culture) 4.• Administering (organizing, resource allocating, delegating, authorizing, systematizing, goal setting, performance appraising) 1. Linking the organization/unit (networking, representing, collaborating, promoting/lobbying, protecting/buffering) C. Informational Competencies 1. Communicating verbally (listening, interviewing, speaking/presenting/briefing, writing, information gathering, information disseminating) 2. Communicating nonverbally (seeing [visual literacy], sensing [visceral literacy]) 3. Analyzing (data processing, modeling, measuring, evaluating) D. Actional Competencies 1. Designing (planning, crafting, visioning) 2. Mobilizing (firefighting, project managing, negotiating/dealing, politicking, managing change) Note Seldom = 0–30% of the time; Often = 31–70% of the time; Always = 71–100% of the time

government, etc.), and industry; (b) organizational context—which pertains to the form of the organization (entrepreneurial, professional, etc.) and its age, size, and stage of development; (c) job context—which pertains to the level in the hierarchy and the function (or work) supervised; (d) situational context—which pertains to temporary pressures and managerial fashion; and (e) personal context—which pertains to the background of the incumbent, his or her tenure (in the job, the organization, the industry), and personal style. Mintzberg makes the point that each of the 12 factors is insignificant on any given day: they must all be considered together, one managerial

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supports Mintzberg’s claim that the most significant impact on a manager’s behavior is the nature of the organization, which in María’s case is a multilateral development bank).5 The external and situational contexts being more or less predictable in the case of her organization, María’s personal context, especially background and tenure, probably explains the rest. María’s personal style is proactive and she sees herself as being “throughout” her unit, as distinct from being “on top” or “in the center”. She does not tilt toward art (vision), craft (experience), or science (analysis) in practicing management and took care to blend the three although a predilection for science could be detected by virtue of a doctoral degree in environmental engineering. According to the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, María’s typology is ENFP (Extraversion, Intuition, Feeling, Perception), a rather unusual combination in a machine organization type of environment that attracts a (more than) fair share of ISTJs (Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, Judgment) that David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates referred to as Inspectors, one of four types belonging to the temperament they called the Guardians (Keirsey & Bates, 1984; Mintzberg, 1979).6,7 Looking at specifics, María’s postures (or positional preferences as the situation demanded) displayed the near-totality of Mintzberg’s varieties: continuously, she maintained the workflow, connected externally, blended all around, fortified the culture, intervened strategically, managed in the middle, managed out of the middle,

practice at a time, recognizing however that the most significant impact on a manager’s behavior is the nature of the organization. 5 The business models of multilateral development banks are country and client-driven, and priorities are identified in coordination with the countries themselves and other development partners including citizens, civil society and nongovernment organizations, foundations, the private sector, other development finance institutions, etc. Country strategies (leading to business plans for particularized portfolios of loans, grants, technical assistance, and equity operations) take shape through collaborative dialogue to ensure country involvement and ownership throughout the so-called project cycle. 6 ENFPs are outgoing and creative with the key skill of perceiving complicated patterns and information and assimilating these quickly; they are flexible, highly adaptable workers; they are driven by a keen devotion to their ideals and a strong drive to help others; less developed are their patience for routine tasks and projection of a serious, committed image. ENFPs need time alone to center themselves and make sure they are moving in a direction that is congruent with their values. Keirsey and Bates referred to ENFPs as Champions, one of four types belonging to the temperament they called the Idealists (Keirsey & Bates, 1984). 7 Another of Mintzberg’s notable contributions to the philosophy and practice of management is that of organizational configurations (aka species) (Mintzberg, 1979). Mintzberg (1979) distinguished entrepreneurial organizations, machine organizations (bureaucracies), professional organizations, project organizations (adhocracies), missionary organizations, and political organizations. For one, the machine organization is characterized by standardization: decision-making is centralized, tasks are grouped by functional departments, and work is formalized, with many routines and procedures; jobs are well-defined, with a formal planning process underpinned by budgets and verified by audits; business processes are regularly analyzed for efficiency. The chief feature of a machine organization is a pyramidal structure, with hierarchical functional lines that allow increasingly senior managers to command and control in turn.

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and advised from the side.8 Taking all in stride, she never seemed perturbed by Mintzberg’s (2009) Conundrums of Managing.9

Eight Hours of Managing: Reactions I observed a manager through the eyes of Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing: in agreement with Kurke and Aldrich (1983), notwithstanding the minimalist size of the sample and the short duration of the observation, the experience generally supported the idea that managers—regardless of the type of organization or their level within it—perform an untold variety of nonetheless similar roles. That said, the observation of María at Acme Development Bank did not fully accord with Mintzberg’s conclusion that the roles of disseminator, figurehead, negotiator, liaiser, and spokesperson may be more important at higher levels of an organization, while 8 Mintzberg’s (2009) Postures of Managing are to (a) maintain the workflow—to keep the organiza-

tion on course; (b) connect externally—to maintain the boundary condition of the organization; (c) blend all around—to integrate the organization’s activities; (d) remote-control—to manage handsoff on the information plane; (e) fortify the culture—to instill a sense of community so that people might be trusted to function appropriately; (f) intervene strategically—to dive specific changes; (g) manage in the middle—to communicate and control on the information plane to facilitate the downward flow of strategies and transmit performance information back up the hierarchy; (h) manage out of the middle—to focus on the external roles of linking and dealing, thereby making special use of the negotiating skills of the manager; and (i) advise from the side—to influence others or simply respond to requests. (To complete his panoply of postures, Mintzberg has identified two others: the new manager—who has to learn to lead by persuasion since the usual hands-on autocratic approach Mintzberg says newcomers inevitably adopt reportedly comes up short; and the reluctant manager—who dispenses with managerial duties quickly to concentrate on other interests. (María is not new and certainly not reluctant). 9 Mintzberg’s (2009) Conundrums of Managing, titled to sound like unpublished oeuvres of J. K. Rowling, are (a) The Syndrome of Superficiality—how to get in deep when there is so much pressure to get it done; (b) The Predicament of Planning—how to plan, strategize, just plain think, let alone think ahead, in such a hectic job; (c) The Labyrinth of Decomposition—where to find synthesis in a world so decomposed by analysis; (d) The Quandary of Connecting—how to keep informed when managing by its very nature removed the manager from the very things being managed; (e) The Dilemma of Delegating—how to delegate when so much of the relevant information is personal, oral, and so often privileged; (f) The Mysteries of Measurement—how to manage it when you cannot rely on measuring it; (g) The Enigma of Order—how to bring order to the work of others when the work of managing is itself so disorderly; (h) The Paradox of Control—how to maintain the necessary state of controlled disorder when one’s own manager is imposing order; (i) The Clutch of Confidence—how to maintain a sufficient level of confidence without crossing over into arrogance; (j) The Ambiguity of Acting—how to act decisively in a complicated, nuanced world; (k) The Riddle of Change—how to manage change when there is the need to maintain continuity; and (l) The Ultimate Conundrum—how to possibly cope with all these conundrums concurrently. In my opinion, Mintzberg’s (2009) use of the word “conundrum” is not the best: the word appeared in the sixteenth century from unknown origins but is first recorded as a term of abuse for a crank or pedant, later coming to denote a whim or fancy, also a pun: this somehow detracts from Mintzberg’s (2009) intention to describe management as “a practice, learned primarily through experience, and rooted in context” (p. 9), with effective management “a tapestry woven of the threads of reflection,

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the role of leader is more important for lower-level managers than it is for either middle- or top-level managers: as mentioned earlier, María served either simultaneously or in quick succession as disseminator, disturbance handler, figurehead, leader, liaiser, monitor, negotiator, resource allocator, and spokesperson (even if less so as entrepreneur on the day). Mintzberg only associates the Internet with electronic mail (and so disparages that medium for its poverty of words): he concludes that the Internet is not changing the practice of management fundamentally; instead, it is reinforcing characteristics we are supposed to have seen for decades.10 Nothing could be further from the truth: we live in a digital age where interactions increasingly take place online thanks in large part to smart phones. Ever faster and cheaper, information and communication technology allows people to seek, acquire, and share expertise, ideas, services, and technologies locally, nationally, regionally, and around the world. Information and communication technology is now integral to the very practice of managing: it requires particularized aptitudes beyond Mintzberg’s (2009) Competencies of Managing, all of which makes Mintzberg’s (2009) supposedly updated Model of Managing look rather flat in our three-dimensional world.11 Additionally, Mintzberg’s (2009) Conundrums of Managing are presented as fixed in time and space, this largely for the purposes of rhetoric; in reality, however, a manager can chip away at a particular conundrum, give it time and space to breathe, and so lessen its effects (as Mintzberg himself admits).12 For example, The Ambiguity of Acting makes much of the doubtfulness of decision: however, the conundrum of ambiguity can be solved by recognizing that decision making is a stream of inquiry, not an event. Interestingly, Mintzberg chooses not to define managerial effectiveness. Instead, he offers a framework to consider managerial effectiveness in context— that he sees woven by energetic, reflective, analytic, worldly, collaborative, proactive, and analysis, worldliness, collaboration, and proactiveness, all of it infused with personal energy and bonded by social integration” (p. 217). 10 Everyone knows that workers spend a third of their time reading and answering electronic mail. Even then, Mintzberg (2009) took no notice of the fact that electronic email—certainly official electronic mail—very often channels attachments such as voluminous technical reports that must be read, digested, and acted upon. (Oddly, the ease with which one can attach files leads many to expect immediate reactions to the content thereof). 11 Virtual teaming is one example: with respect to virtual team management, the predictor of success remains clarity of purpose; but, managing teams whose members are not in the same location or time zone (or may not even work in the same organization) requires deeper understanding of people, processes, and technology and recognition that trust is a much more important variable compared to face-to-face interactions. 12 Mintzberg’s (2009) Conundrums of Managing invited reference to paradoxical leadership (aka “both/and” leadership). As organizational ecologies become increasingly dynamic, complex, and competitive, we face intensified contradictory, or seemingly paradoxical, demands: every one of us—not just managers—must develop paradoxical leadership understandings and behaviors so we might visualize and reframe paradox (and thereby produce superior outcomes). The principle of yin– yang, which accepts that seemingly opposite or contrary forces might actually be interconnected, complementary, and even interdependent, serves well when one must synthesize with polarity thinking.

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integrative threads—and concludes that: (a) managers are not effective; matches are effective; (b) there are no effective managers in general; (c) there is no such thing as a professional manager; (d) to assess managerial effectiveness, you must also have to assess the effectiveness of the unit; (e) a manager can be considered effective only to the extent that he/she has helped to make the unit more effective; (f) managerial effectiveness is always relative, not only to the situation inherited, but also in comparison with other possible people in that job; and (g) managerial effectiveness also has to be assessed for broader impact, beyond the unit and even the organization. Given the typically elastic use of criteria for effectiveness in organizations, few will ask whether anyone can ever be judged to be effective by Mintzberg’s framework.13,14 So, we have a model of managing that, openly and almost with relish, advertises its delineations and limitations at every opportunity. Mintzberg thrives on self-criticism: not for him Stephen King’s assertion that “… writers are often the worst judges of what they have written”; he prefers James Barrie (of Peter Pan fame), who reportedly reckoned that “We are all failures—at least, the best of us are” (Barrie, n.d.; King, 2002). For its sheer honesty alone, Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing is unlike those of other theorists (and not just early theorists). Deming (2014) and McGregor (2014), to name but two, were unwitting seekers of the one best way of Taylorism even as they tried to distance themselves from it: in other words, they offered solutions (that Deming continued to tinker with in his old age). On the contrary, Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing is a prism through which to study problems. (A model, one should recall, is a schematic description or representation of something, especially a phenomenon or system, used to underscore important properties and/or dynamics in a process). A model, then, not a theory awaiting falsification, is what Mintzberg thinks is needed to understand and perfect the practice of managing; his three planes of information, people, and action are purposely generic to invite on-the-go application, testing, and eventual refinement of other management theories, such as human relations theory, management by walking around, systems theory, etc., including those of the experts mentioned earlier. (By inviting integration of other theories, Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing alleviated the sectarianism that often characterizes the latter, meaning, that individual management theories often have a particular point to make—or axe to grind.) Citing Albert Hirschman, Mintzberg (2014) put it very well, “A model is never defeated by the facts, however damaging, but only by another model”. Models are quite fine—and I find Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing elegant—but they often end up being discussed for what they miss out, not what they explain (as this précis attempted to do 13 Many reasons have been advanced for abandoning performance reviews: in no particular order, levelheaded arguments are that performance reviews are backward-looking; they are frequently inconsistent; they damage teamwork; they are not necessary to lead a team; and they are expensive. The bottom line is that performance reviews are a solution in search of a problem. 14 Effectiveness is a measure of the extent to which an activity attains its objectives. But, effectiveness per se is insufficient: it needs to be countervailed and complemented by others—efficiency, impact, quality, sustainability, etc.—else everything becomes a nail to single-minded application of a hammer. Performance criteria should reflect as best they can the raison d’être of an organization (or related personnel functions).

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in the main), which in the final analysis is not entirely fair. And so, regardless of the caveats brought up earlier, Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing is as good as they come: it offers an eminently logical and comprehensive depiction of what managers must practice and how they might do so: organizations will do themselves no harm if they use Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing to identify required competencies of managers, recruit in its spirit (with particular attention to “communityship”), and design executive learning and development programs to help managers hone their practice of management.15

References Deming, W. (2014). Out of the crisis. In J. Pierce & J. Newstrom (Eds.), The manager’s bookshelf (10th ed., pp. 35–39). Pearson. Fayol, H. (1916). Administration industrielle et générale. Bulletin de la Société de l’Industrie Minérale. Keirsey, D., & Bates, M. (1984). Please understand me: Character and temperament types (5th ed.). Prometheus Nemesis Book Company. King, S. (2002). Everything’s eventual: 14 dark tales. Scribner. Kurke, L., & Aldrich, H. (1983). Mintzberg was right!: A replication and extension of the nature of managerial work. Management Science, 29(8), 975–984. McGregor, D. (2014). The human side of enterprise. In J. Pierce & J. Newstrom (Eds.), The manager’s bookshelf (10th ed., pp. 40–45). Pearson. Mintzberg, H. (1971). Managerial work: Analysis from observation. Management Science, 18(2), 97–110. Mintzberg, H. (1973). The nature of managerial work. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Mintzberg, H. (1979). The structuring of organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Mintzberg, H. (1990). The manager’s job: Folklore and fact. Harvard Business Review (March/April), 163–176. Mintzberg, H. (2009). Managing. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Inc. Mintzberg, H. (2014). Developing theory about the development of theory. Unpublished. Retrieved from http://www.mintzberg.org/sites/default/files/article/download/develo ping_theory_about_the_development_of_theory_jan_2014.pdf. Mintzberg, H. (2015). Rebalancing society: Radical renewal beyond left, right, and center. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Inc.

15 Somewhere

between maximal and minimal managing, “communityship”—which designates “how people pull together to function in collaborative institutions”—beckons consideration and use (as warranted) of participative, shared, distributed, and supportive managing (Mintzberg, 2015, p. 35).

Organizational Diagnosis & Cultural Dynamics

Synergizing the Competing Values Framework and the Six-Box Model

Abstract This précis suggests that Cameron and Quinn’s (2011) competing values framework and Weisbord’s (1976) Six-Box Model can be leveraged in concert to make organizations more effective.

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) is an intergovernmental learning, knowledge, and enabling center—founded in 1983 and located in Lalitpur, Nepal—whose mission is to enable sustainable and resilient mountain development for improved and equitable livelihoods through knowledge and regional cooperation in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region. That region extends 3,500 km over all or part of eight countries: it is the source of 10 large Asian river systems and provides water, ecosystem services, and the basis for livelihoods to a population of around 210 million people. The basins of the 10 rivers provide water to 1.3 billion people, a fifth of the world’s population.

Competing Values at ICIMOD Cameron and Quinn’s (2011) competing values framework—one of several quantitative diagnostic approaches to assessing organizational culture—revolves around six questions that test an organization’s predilection for (i) internal focus and integration or external focus and differentiation; and (ii) stability and control or flexibility and discretion. The questions relate to dominant characteristics, organizational leadership, management of employees, organization glue, strategic emphases, and criteria of success. Apropos each question, 100 points must be divided among four possible, non-exclusionary answers depending on the extent to which each is felt to adequately describe an organization (in an assessor’s opinion).1 Synergizing the Competing Values Framework and the Six-Box Model was completed on November 10, 2017. 1 Toward

this, an Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) is available at www.ocaionline.com/. (OCAI spreadsheets can also be downloaded.)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_19

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In the spirit of inquiry, I explored ICIMOD’s culture archetypes by inputting data into an OCAI spreadsheet: the exercise was inspired by a short visit I conducted in 2016.2 With respect to each of the 6 questions, my distribution of points suggested that the target organization is a hierarchy. (The three other typologies that OCAI helps make out from the two polarities mentioned above are clan, adhocracy, and market cultures). Copying verbatim from www.ocai-online.com/, “[A hierarchy is a formalized and structured workplace. Procedures direct what people do. Leaders are proud of efficiency-based coordination and organization. Keeping the organization functioning smoothly is most crucial. Formal rules and policies keep the organization together. The long-term goals are stability and results, paired with an efficient and smooth execution of tasks. Reliable delivery, continuous planning, and low cost define success. The personnel management has to guarantee work and predictability” (Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument, (n.d.). To note, the distribution of points was not entirely oriented toward hierarchy (but it was significantly so): here and there, OCAI also revealed a modicum of market culture in 5 instances; a clan culture in 2 instances (one of which noteworthy); and an adhocracy culture in only 1 instance. Specifically, the preliminary diagnosis of the culture of ICIMOD using OCAI (and its precise phraseology) implied that: • Dominant Characteristics. The organization is a very controlled and structured place. Formal procedures generally govern what people do. (I ascribed 80 points to the statement associated with a hierarchy culture and 20 to the statement associated with a market culture). • Organizational Leadership. The leadership in the organization is generally considered to exemplify coordinating, organizing, or smooth-running efficiency. (I ascribed 80 points to the statement associated with a hierarchy culture and 20 to the statement associated with a market culture). • Management of Employees. The management style in the organization is characterized by security of employment, conformity, predictability, and stability in relationships. (I ascribed 70 points to the statement associated with a hierarchy culture and 30 to the statement associated with a clan culture). • Organization Glue. The glue that holds the organization together is formal rules and policies. Maintaining a smooth-running organization is important. (I ascribed 90 points to the statement associated with a hierarchy culture and 10 to the statement associated with a market culture). • Strategic Emphases. The organization emphasizes permanence and stability. Efficiency, control, and smooth operations are important. (I ascribed 80 points to the statement associated with a hierarchy culture, 10 to the statement associated with a clan culture, and 10 to the statement associated with a market culture).

2 It follows that the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this précis are mine, with no guarantee

of accuracy or completeness. Any other organization might have been selected: the idea was to explore how Cameron and Quinn’s competing values framework and Weisbord’s Six-Box Model might be leveraged in concert to make organizations more effective.

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• Criteria of Success. The organization defines success on the basis of efficiency. Dependable delivery, smooth scheduling, and low-cost production are critical. (I ascribed 80 points to the statement associated with a hierarchy culture, 10 to the statement associated with an adhocracy culture, and 10 to the statement associated with a market culture).

So What? Notwithstanding, bearing in mind also Schein’s (2017) compelling doubts regarding the usefulness of surveys, it is hard to decide what to make of these “results” regarding ICIMOD. In accordance with my perceptions, that organization may be a hierarchy; but, so what? And, what next? Interpreted by the same or indeed any other person through other instruments, one might also describe it as a normative organization (Etzioni, 1975), a task culture (Handy, 1978), a support-oriented organization (Harrison, 1979), and a fragmented culture (Goffee & Jones, 1998). Then again, using Schein’s (2017) three intraorganizational typologies (e.g., operator, engineer, and executive), the organization might be considered to evidence a dominant engineering subculture managed by a small executive subculture. For sure, therefore, OCAI will be most useful if—eschewing dogmatic judgment—one uses it to frame (a series of) in-house conversations about culture, preferably in combination with other instruments. (By the same token, the same applies to other instruments.) The questions in-house conversations about culture would ask include: • Are there opportunities for ICIMOD to accomplish its mission/goal(s)/objective(s) better? • If so, how might its culture be changed? • Might changes entail strengthening the current culture? • Might changes entail changing the current culture to another? • Or, more likely, might a practicable mix of cultures be preferred (and if so in which areas would one see the greatest need for change)? With his five most important questions, Drucker (2008) challenged leaders to take a close look at the very heart of their organizations and what drives them: What is our mission? Who is our customer? What does the customer value? What are our results? What is our plan? Usefully, hence the earlier reference to in-house conversations, OCAI permits a distinction between current (labeled “Now”) and future (labeled “Preferred”) cultures, a preferred culture describing what respondents hope to have in the future. Not forgetting the need for multifarious investigations, a (mix of) culture that enables organizations to respond to Drucker’s five questions is what they should aim to develop; and, if OCAI (and other instruments) can take them there, this is ultimately where the real value of typologies lies.

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Purposes

Relationships

Structure Leadership

Helpful Mechanisms

Rewards

Fig. 1 Weisbord’s six-box model Weisbord (1976)

Synergizing Cameron and Quinn’s Competing Values Framework and Weisbord’s Six-Box Model Weisbord’s (1976) Six-Box Model is a generic diagnostic tool that shines a light on both formal and informal systems in six key areas where things must work in internally consistent fashion; the model holds that the bigger the gap between systems the less effective the organization; the model underscores also the need to balance the six “boxes”. In the spirit of inquiry, and with the same disclaimers made earlier, Serrat (2017) completed Weisbord’s Six-Box Model for ICIMOD to draw a rough cognitive map of that organization; what follows summarizes the inferences I made. • The key inferences in Serrat (2017) were (Fig. 1): • Purpose. The fitness of ICIMOD’s mission, meaning, the degree to which it is appropriate given the environment, can be questioned.3 What with global warming and the melting of glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, the organization 3 The

Hindu Kush Himalayan region contains the largest body of ice (17%) outside the Polar caps; but, the Himalayan glaciers are receding faster than anywhere else. In my opinion, there is tension in ICIMOD confining itself to local ambitions (that are still far from being achieved) in a region

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•

•

•

•

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has a greater, more explicit role to play: but, it has not gathered the political impetus needed to do so (or perhaps even considered that it might play such a role). It is the perceived tension between “what is” and “what could be” that, in my opinion, fails to provide sufficient guidance to the organization’s personnel and dampens worthy accomplishments across the organization’s seven strategic goals.4 Structure. Changes to the organization’s structure have been rational (if slow). A rare occurrence, the configuration actually matches what is (or might be) needed, except that the organization appears to purposely underplay performance. What work the organization conducts follows a predictable routine but takes a long time to accomplish, two years being the time its researchers spend on average to write-up the results of a small-scale project. Relationships. The relationships between and among staff and management seem distant. Personnel appear unnecessarily tentative; managers give the impression they are careful not to tread on what turf is not theirs and are wont to deflate statements. The units tasked with performing tasks execute these with adequate resources; however, each tries to minimize interdependence and since all are part of the production process there ought to be built-in conflict. Rewards. The organization should reward what findings, conclusions, and recommendations attract the widest attention to enrich policy and practice. But, its research seems supply-driven and thus perhaps only rarely meets demand: the corollary is likely to be that a good deal the organization’s research falls on barren ground and so there can be no rationale for rewarding this or that. Leadership. The organization is political. Its eight regional countries, two of them the largest in the world, probably vie for influence. From afar, a handful of countries offer directional advice and grant financing, taking care not to ruffle regional sensibilities. For leaders to act decisively in such conditions challenges the imagination (but is surely not impossible). Helpful Mechanisms. The organization is well-equipped with helpful mechanisms, mostly formal. The more relevant consideration is that while helpful mechanisms can of course improve the inner workings of an organization they

facing massive and irreversible damage from climate change; ICIMOD is uniquely placed and there is no other organization to champion action. 4 From competencies in the thematic areas of livelihoods, ecosystem services, water and air, and geospatial solutions, ICIMOD aims to deliver impacts in the six regional programs of adaptation and resilience building, transboundary landscapes, river basins and cryosphere, atmosphere, its Mountain Environment Regional Information System, and mountain knowledge and action networks. Specifically, the seven strategic results it is committed to attain are (i) widespread adoption of innovations and practices developed by the organization and its partners to adapt to change, leading to positive impacts for women, men, and children; (ii) significant advances in the generation and use of relevant data, knowledge, and analysis; (iii) significant advances made in approaches and knowledge that promote gender equality and inclusive development; (iv) significantly developed human and institutional capacity; (v) policies considerably influenced by the work of the organization and its partners; (vi) enhanced regional cooperation related to sustainable mountain development; and (vii) global recognition of the importance of mountains to ensure improved and resilient livelihoods and ecosystems.

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cannot inspire it when it must look elsewhere; they are impotent, perhaps even detrimental, where an organization must create value, not just appropriate it. From the foregoing, without a theory, the places ICIMOD seems most deficient in relate to (i) purpose, (ii) relationships, (iii) rewards, and (iv) leadership. From these four perspectives, there is merit in pondering how Weisbord’s Six-Box Model might inform consideration of a preferred culture per OCAI (and also show thereby how concern for culture would have enriched Weisbord’s Six-Box Model)5 : • Dominant Characteristics. The organization is a very controlled and structured place. Formal procedures generally govern what people do. Considering the higher purpose the organization might (or perhaps should) strive to accomplish, a preferred culture might ascribe equal weight to adhocracy and market cultures. In consequence, the organization would become a very dynamic and entrepreneurial place and people would be willing to stick their necks out and take risks (adhocracy). The organization would also become very results-oriented: a major concern would be with getting the job done; people would be very competitive and achievement-oriented (market). • Organizational Leadership. The leadership in the organization is generally considered to exemplify coordinating, organizing, or smooth-running efficiency. Considering the higher purpose to which the organization might (or perhaps should) aspire, but bearing in mind that it is aresearch organization after all, a preferred culture might ascribe equal weight to clan and adhocracy cultures. In consequence, the organization’s leadership would generally be considered to exemplify mentoring, facilitating, or nurturing (clan). The organization’s leadership would also generally be considered to exemplify entrepreneurship, innovation, or risk taking (adhocracy). • Management of Employees. The management style in the organization is characterized by security of employment, conformity, predictability, and stability in relationships. To turn the organization so it might face the challenges of the twentyfirst century in its areas of expertise, a preferred culture might be adhocracy. The management style in the organization would be characterized by individual risk taking, innovation, freedom, and uniqueness (adhocracy). • Organization Glue. The glue that holds the organization together is formal rules and policies. Maintaining a smooth-running organization is important. To direct the management of employees toward adhocracy, a preferred culture might also need to be that of an adhocracy. The glue that would holds the organization together would be commitment to innovation and development and there would be an emphasis on being on the cutting edge (adhocracy). • Strategic Emphases. The organization emphasizes permanence and stability. Efficiency, control, and smooth operations are important. Considering the higher purpose the organization might (or perhaps should) strive to accomplish, a preferred culture might ascribe equal weight to adhocracy and market cultures. In consequence, the organization would emphasize acquiring new resources and 5 To

note again, the opening sentences reflect OCAI’s phraseology in each instance.

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creating new challenges and trying new things and prospecting for opportunities would be valued (adhocracy). The organization would also emphasize competitive actions and achievement; hitting stretch targets and winning in the marketplace would be dominant (market). • Criteria of Success. The organization defines success on the basis of efficiency. Dependable delivery, smooth scheduling, and low-cost production are critical. Again, considering the higher purpose to which the organization might (or perhaps should) aspire, but still bearing in mind that it is aresearch organization after all, a preferred culture might ascribe equal weight to clan and adhocracy cultures. In consequence, the organization would define success on the basis of the development of human resources, teamwork, employee commitment, and concern for people (clan). The organization would also define success on the basis of having the most unique or newest products; it would be a product leader and innovator (adhocracy).

Conclusion The preliminary diagnosis of the culture of ICIMOD using OCAI suggests that organization is basically a hierarchy with sprinklings of market, clan, and adhocracy cultures. To prepare the ground for a possible change of culture away from insufficiently productive hierarchy, this précis identifies questions that in-house conversations about culture in ICIMOD might raise and refers also to Drucker’s (2008) five most important questions. Notably, the précis examines how Weisbord’s Six-Box Model, which pays no attention to culture, might somehow complement Cameron and Quinn’s (2011) competing values framework; above all, the exercise demonstrates the existence of synergies between the two; for the purposes of the case study, the exercise hints that, were ICIMOD inclined to have a more ambitious mission (to be specified of course), its preferred culture might need to be that of an adhocracy, here and there buttressed by a clan culture (2 instances) and a market culture (2 instances).

References Cameron, K., & Quinn, R. (2011). Diagnosing and change organizational culture: Based on the competing values framework (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Drucker, P. (2008). The five most important questions you will ever ask about your organization. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Etzioni, A. (1975). A comparative analysis of complex organizations. New York, NY: Free Press. Goffee, R., & Jones, G. (1998). The character of a corporation. New York, NY: Harper Business. Handy, C. (1978). The gods of management. London, UK: Pan Books. Harrison, R. (1979). Understanding your organization’s character. Harvard Business Review, 57(5), 119–128.

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Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument. (n.d.). Organizational culture assessment instrument online. Retrieved from https://www.ocai-online.com/ Schein, E. (2017). Organizational culture and leadership (7th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Serrat, O. (2017). Diagnosing the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Weisbord, M. (1976). Organizational diagnosis: Six places to look for trouble with or without a theory. Group and Organization Studies, 1(4), 430–447.

Personality & Lifespan in the Workplace

Blustein’s Psychology of Working: A Very Short Introduction

Abstract This précis introduces Blustein (2006) and its new perspective for career development, counseling, and public policy.

Abstract and Setting In 2006, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. published Blustein’s Psychology of Working (2006) and offered the following abstract: In this original and major new work, David Blustein places working at the same level of attention for social and behavioral scientists and psychotherapists as other major life concerns, such as intimate relationships, physical and mental health, and socio-economic inequities. He also provides readers with an expanded conceptual framework within which to think about working in human development and human experience. As a result, this creative new synthesis enriches the discourse on working across the broad spectrum of psychology’s concerns and agendas, and especially for those readers in career development, counseling, and policy-related fields. This textbook is ideal for use in graduate courses on counseling and work or vocational counseling. (Blustein, 2006)

There is no doubt that work is a deeply important part of life and Blustein (2006) achieved notoriety in relation to the psychological aspects of it. So, what limitations did Blustein (2006) detect in previous approaches to the study of work and career, and what new perspectives did it shine?

Intent Noting that “Most American adults spend a third to a half of their waking hours at work (p. ix)” the foreword to Blustein (2006)—and we can assume its author, Paul Wachtel, spoke for David Blustein—aimed to elevate work to the position of primary factor in the well-being of people. This is because “Ours is a consumer society, and that fact has distorted our perception of work to an extraordinary degree. We measure Blustein’s Psychology of Working: A Very Short Introduction was completed on March 7, 2019. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_20

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our success as a society in terms of what we consume, and we give surprisingly little attention to how what we consume was produced (Blustein, 2006, pp. ix–x)”. Subsequently, Blustein (2006) both confirmed and amplified this statement of intent in the preface: I seek to place working [emphasis in original] at the same level of attention for social and behavioral scientists as other major life concerns, like intimate relationships, physical and mental health, and socioeconomic inequities. I also seek to provide … an expanded conceptual framework within which to think about working in human development and human experience. Furthermore, I seek to construct a coherent metaperspective about working that will enrich the discourse across the broad spectrum of psychology’s concerns and agendas. (pp. xii–xiii)

Limitations of Previous Psychology-of-Working Perspectives Psychologists have not neglected the study of work and working, Blustein (2006) recognized; but, pace the pioneering work of such as Marx, Heidegger, and Gini and Sullivan, Blustein (2006) wished to confront such mindsets as O’Brien’s (1986), which well into the twentieth century defined work as “the expenditure of effort in the performance of a task (p. 1)”. To begin, Blustein (2006) articulated its critique of historical studies of the psychological experience of working (and the poverty of related models) with reference to pre-industrial and industrial trends. The range of the first period is too broad to condense, but the gist of it is that the development of agriculture fixed people in man-made environments, an outcome of which was the increasingly hierarchical nature of increasingly undesirable work, with paroxysms of fatigue and suffering later being endured, in the United States, by sweatshop workers of the urban centers and sharecroppers in the southern part of the country. Next, the Industrial Revolution shook the entire structure of working with the pressganging of workers into factories. As industrialization became more pervasive, the number and diversity of occupational categories grew. The vocational guidance movement emerged to make sense of working, but “the major focus of attention was on helping individuals to find the best match between their interests and abilities and the requirements of a given position or job (Blustein, 2006, pp. 10–11)”. Thus, vocational counselors and applied psychologists did little more than assume a fixed environment and (endeavor to) help individuals fit within it. Blustein (2006), it seems, found the first glimmers of hope in the work of Super (1957), who made substantial contributions to psychology and working by introducing the notion of self -concept, by which he implied that ideas of the self— constructed from the beliefs one holds about oneself and the responses of others— change over time and develop as a result of experience; consequently, career development must be lifelong. Not surprisingly, self-concept is integral to Super’s (1957) definition of career development as “a lifelong, continuous process of developing and implementing a self-concept, testing it against reality, with satisfaction to self

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and benefit to society” (p. 282). Life span and life space, it follows, are thus also integral to Super’s compelling and creative inputs, which “embedded the role of work into a more coherent and expansive set of assumptions about human development (Blustein, 2006, p. 11)”.1 Much as vocational psychology (slowly) did, Blustein (2006) saw that industrial/organizational psychology “made significant and long-standing contributions to the lives of many workers and to the productivity of many corporations” (p. 15) (even if he referred the reader to other authors for examples and did not make enough of industrial/organizational psychology’s close linkages with the corporate world, from which a Marxist critique—for instance—could be sprung). But, Blustein’s (2006) criticism of Super’s accent on career—not work—extended there too: paraphrasing, much of industrial/organizational psychology had (with implications for social justice) ignored the experiences of the working class and poor individuals, as well as persons of color, and had therefore underrepresented the vast diversity of work roles in contemporary society. Paraphrasing Blustein (2006), industrial/organizational psychology, both in theory and in practice, had been guilty of segregating work and nonwork roles even though the lines between were fading. Occupational health psychology, however, was spared this criticism because of its inherent work/home interface, which in Blustein’s (2006) opinion boded well for an inclusive psychology of working (p. 17). Notwithstanding the limitations of earlier approaches to the study of work and career, Blustein (2006) made out four important perspectives of the psychological attributes of working, viz., psychological, self-concept, contextual, and integrative perspectives. Freud and Axelrod were singled out for, respectively, first placing the psychology of work into a psychological framework—albeit from a rigid drive theory perspective, and positing that the fructification of talents and skills at work can be a source of pleasure and self-esteem. Super (1957), mentioned earlier, was credited with advancing the self-concept perspective, the ambition of which is ideal manifestation of intrinsic interests, talents, and values in the world of work. Marx was deemed the original contributor of contextual views, but with near-exclusive focus on the resultant alienation among workers performing routine functions in rote fashion (even though Marx entertained the thought that work might in its purest form potentially connect people with nature). Integrative perspectives were ascribed largely to Neff (1985) and his Maslovian, some would say, discussion of material needs, self-esteem, activity, respect by others, and need for creativity.

1 An

aside is warranted: Blustein (2006) argued that by emphasizing career as “a sequence of positions held during the course of a lifetime (Super, 1980)”, “Super (1957) inadvertently placed the notion of work in the context of relatively well-educated and often affluent people within Western countries” (Blustein, 2006, p. 12). Given Super’s influence, Blustein (2006) reckoned that focusing on careers—not work—encouraged concern for the work lives of people of status and achievement.

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Blustein’s Psychology of Working Building on psychological, self-concept, contextual, and integrative perspectives, Blustein (2006) theorized an inclusive,2 comprehensive, humanistic, and serviceable taxonomy of three core functions that working can hypothetically fulfill: (i) working as a means for survival and power—“The first function of work is the role that work plays in providing people with a means of accessing survival and power (Blustein, 2006, p. 22)”; (ii) working as a means of social connection—“The second major function of work is the way in which working connects people to their social context and to interpersonal relationships (Blustein, 2006, p. 22)”; and (iii) working as a means of self-determination—“The third major function of work … is the potential offered by work in fostering self-determination (Blustein, 2006, p. 22)”. And so, to all intents and purposes, Blustein (2006) meant to depart from vocational psychology and industrial/organizational psychology with inputs from other social science disciplines and theoretical paradigms and perspectives3 : this is because “We … developed our previous psychologies of work from vastly different social conditions, at a time when the needs of society were very much rooted in an industrial era that fostered a great deal of regularity and constancy in work lives (Blustein, 2006, p. 25)”; because “much of the literature that has been developed [around these psychologies] has not relied upon the inner lives of individuals who are coping with their work lives (Blustein, 2006, p. 225)”; and because, with a new trajectory, “a psychology of working [must] place work at the central place that it ought to occupy in contemporary psychological discourse” (Blustein, 2006, p. 25).

References Blustein, D. (2006). The psychology of working: A new perspective for career development, counseling, and public policy. New York, NY: Routledge. Blustein, D. (2013). The psychology of working: A new perspective for a new era. In D. Blustein (Ed.), Oxford handbooks online. Retrieved from http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10. 1093/oxfordhb/9780199758791.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199758791-e-001. Neff, W. (1985). Work and human behavior (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Aldine Publishing Company. O’Brien, G. (1986). Psychology of work and employment. New York, NY: Wiley. Super, D. (1957). The psychology of careers. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Super, D. (1980). A life-span, life-space, approach to career development. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 13, 282–298.

2 Inclusiveness means giving voice to the modal worker across the globe; accepting that there is work

outside the labor market; paying attention to the psychology of working for nonworkers (e.g., adults in training programs, students, young people); and promoting intellectual diversity in research and development (Blustein, 2006, pp. 303–305). 3 Blustein (2013) underscored that “Diverse epistemologies, including logical positivism, postpositivism, as well as social constructionism, are viable strategies to use in understanding the nature of working” (p. 6) and chooses not to reify one vantage point over another.

Contextual Factors in Working

Abstract More and more, the literature recognizes that work is influenced by contextual factors: this précis traces the argument, considers of the relative importance of individual, group, and global factors in this researcher’s work experience, and sketches ways of coping with the global contextual factors of work.

Functions of Work Everywhere, work holds a central role in the lives of most adults and adolescents, this to such an extent that most of them will spend more time engaged in work than in any other waking activity (American Psychological Association, 2016). The centrality that work holds in lives owes to the three core functions it can hypothetically fulfill: as articulated by Blustein (2006) (a) work is as a means for survival and power— “The first function of work is the role that work plays in providing people with a means of accessing survival and power (p. 22)”; (b) work is a means of social connection—“The second major function of work is the way in which working connects people to their social context and to interpersonal relationships (p. 22)”; and (c) work is a means of self-determination—“The third major function of work … is the potential offered by work in fostering self-determination (p. 22)”. For sure, however, work has had a complex history and the three functions that Blustein (2006) helpfully made out have not always been fulfilled alongside, if at all in the same individual degree, across—say—time, geographic location, sector or industry, worldview, culture, labor markets, occupation, socioeconomic status, age, gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, etc.; to note, especially (but not exclusively) in lower-income countries, the primary function of work is still to ensure survival and the functions of social connection and self-determination are the stuff of fantasy.

Contextual Factors in Working was completed on March 14, 2019. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_21

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Contextual Factors of Work In the wake of the Industrial Revolution and well into the twentieth century, vocational counselors and applied psychologists did little more than assume a fixed environment and (endeavor to) help individuals fit within it. Belatedly, just as the current new millennium was beginning, Blustein (2006) cautioned that wholesale preoccupation with career choice and development overplayed choice, ignored the reality of people who do not have the access to resources that might afford career choices, and—indeed—that the very concept of job security,1 never mind career, had probably become irrelevant in the age of globalization and information and communication technology.2 Blustein (2006) credited Marx as the originator of contextualized perspectives regarding the functional analysis of work (p. 19). What will not change whatever may happen is the importance of contextual factors, some of which were listed earlier. Contextual factors are characteristics (or circumstances) that, through connectedness (or linkages),3 are unique to groups, communities, societies, and individuals: and so, it follows that community, economic, environmental, legal, political, social, and technological contexts, to name the most crosscutting, must often be taken into consideration when developing solutions to challenges or, conversely, seizing opportunities. (To note, contextual factors can also be at large within an organization, not just in its external environment, and so impact workers internally.) At the level of the individual, Super’s (1980) insights about personal contextual factors are also likely to perdure, even though lengthening lifespans will test the ambit of the development stages he particularized, particularly the Maintenance (or Management) and Decline (or Disengagement) stages.4 1 Blustein

(2006) saw that, owing to the spread of free market capitalism, lack of job security had become a major theme in the narrative of the new economy (p. 43); Blustein (2006) saw also that the integration of technology with globalization had created a labor market that was no longer bounded by national or linguistic lines (p. 43); and, Blustein (2006) saw further that what workplaces remain have become more stressful and frenetic (p. 45). As a result, among others, the erstwhile psychological contract is being recast (where it still exists at all); workers long for connection; caregiving is no longer carried out exclusively by women (in consequence of the push for dual working couples); labor unions are in decline; many struggle to find employment; and there is a continuing need for even greater levels of skills and knowledge. Thence, the major counterpoints that Blustein (2006) detected were, first, that there is too much work but not enough jobs; and, second, that people no longer experience feelings of connection, social engagement, and investment in a greater social entity because of technology (p. 63). In sum, we are left to ponder the meanings of work as a means of self-expression and spiritual growth versus work as a means to an end (Blustein, 2006, p. 64). 2 There is little doubt that information and communication technology in particular has grown into one of the most powerful forces shaping the twenty-first century. Through the globalization it simultaneously feeds on and accelerates, it is reshaping societies, economies, and governments worldwide. 3 Socially, people are drawn together in organizations and groups framed by formal and informal rules (e.g., laws, mores, policies, regulations), resources (e.g., environmental, financial, human, and in-kind), and relationships. 4 Super (1980) proposed that—across their entire lifespan—people go through five developmental stages: (a) Growth (0–14), with emphasis on physical growth, forming the self-concept, and

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Because of the role that contextual factors (at both group and individual levels) play in working, the American Psychological Association (2016), for one, instructed psychologists to strive to understand how economic, legal, and social factors impact opportunities for and barriers to employment, and subsequently alter the career trajectory.5 The stipulated rationale behind American Psychological Association (2016) was that (a) “The impact of global economies, advances in technology, and decreased confidence in the predictability of employment increase the likelihood that adult workers will experience multiple work transitions, both expected and unexpected” (p. 19); (b) “Periods of economic stress, such as recessions or depressions, have a significant impact on employment and on well-being” (p. 9); (c) “… [E]ven in times of global recession and economic distress, the impact is not equivalent across groups” (p. 9); (d) “Racial, gender, ability, and sexual identities have all demonstrated some relationship to differential employment statistics, in both good and bad economic periods” (p. 9); (e) “… [S]ocial and legal factors intersect in the employment of individuals with a history of incarceration and these individuals face multiple barriers to obtaining employment after release” (p. 20); and (f) “… [S]ome workers are employed in settings that are either toxic or unhealthy” (p. 20).

exploring early interests and abilities; (b) Exploration (15–24), with emphasis on exploring different areas of work, beginning to focus on a specific career direction, getting specialized training, and beginning to engage in work; (c) Establishment (25–44), with emphasis on settling into a career field, making contributions to the field, and achieving higher levels of responsibility; (d) Maintenance (or Management) (45–64), with emphasis on maintaining a job position, updating skills as needed to stay competitive, and planning for retirement; and (e) Decline (or Disengagement) (65+), with emphasis on gradually separating from work and engaging in other projects such as leisure, time with family, and community activities. 5 The full set of the American Psychological Association’s Guidelines for Integrating the Role of Work and Career into Professional Psychology Practice is: • Guideline #1: Psychologists strive to have an awareness of the pervasive impact of work on an individual’s identity and quality of life. • Guideline # 2: Psychologists are encouraged to be aware of the influence work has on behavioral, emotional and physical health, as well as the influence of health on work. • Guideline # 3: Psychologists are encouraged to understand the role of work transitions across the lifespan. • Guideline # 4: Psychologists strive to understand how cultural, individual, and role differences, including those based on age, gender, gender identity, geographic location, race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, socioeconomic status, religion, sexual orientation, disability, and language, may influence the pursuit and experience of work. • Guideline # 5: Psychologists strive to understand how the individual negotiates multiple life roles, including that of the worker. • Guideline # 6: Psychologists strive to understand how economic and social factors impact opportunities for and barriers to employment, and subsequently alter one’s career trajectory. (American Psychological Association, 2016)

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Contextual Factors of Work: An Appreciation 1. Individual Context For Super (1980), “A career is defined as the combination and sequence of roles played by a person during the course of a lifetime” (p. 282). Along the continuum of Super’s (1980) five development phases, in terms of age, I am to find myself at the Maintenance (or Management) stage. However, the major task of the Maintenance (or Management) stage is—allegedly—continual adjustment to improve one’s position. And, in terms of developmental tasks, one is to sequentially accept one’s own limitations (Growth), identify new tasks to work on (Exploration), develop new skills (Establishment), hold one’s own against competition (Maintenance or Management), and focus on essentials (Decline or Disengagement). The main idea, it seems, is that little new ground is broken: one continues established work patterns, preserves gains, and faces competition from younger workers; thus, this stage could be a plateau. Without going into details, I cannot see that any of these apply to my situation but am mindful (see below) that I may have a relatively unusual background, set of experiences, competencies, etc.). Notwithstanding, I opine that Super’s (1980) developmental view of career development, preferably enriched by the concept of adaptability per Herr (1997), is appropriate to the twenty-first century workplace. Certainly, Super’s (1980) framework can helps identify the career development stage one is at and set goals for mastery of the tasks unique to each stage; it provides much food for thinking about individual contextual factors. 2. Group Context Owing to international education, work on three or four continents, and a life spent overseas, the key items in my culture identity structure are global citizen, male, well-traveled, polyglot, multidisciplinary competencies, interested in Organization 4.0, and keen on organizational leadership: this is distinct from the standard typologies of diversity, viz., race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, physical abilities, social class, age, etc., this in a globalizing, multicultural world (Serrat, 2017). (Millennials might bridle at such reductionism.) The contention is that unless one lives in a tightly circumscribed environment—and who does, these days?—there is every chance that a person considering dissimilar reference groups will respond differently to such questions as: What is the group like? How do I feel about it? What relationship is there between me and the group? Strikingly, even where cultural identity structures are similar, cultural identity mapping can (and usually does) reveal different individual interpretations of where, how, and to what degree a group’s culture is represented in the self (Serrat, 2017). The departure from the vignettes in Blustein (2006)—one dated 1978 on life in a mill town (p. 32), another dated 1889 (pp. 33–34) on the lives of many workers, and a third taken from a song dated 1978 (p. 34) on the routine of industrial era workers—is striking.

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3. Global Context In a globalizing world characterized by job insecurity and—paradoxically— isolation, the global context will play an ever-greater role in self-concept, life span, and life space, to use Super’s (1957) continuingly useful notions, even if career development—“a series of upward moves with steadily increasing income, power, status, and security”, is with job security per se a thing of the past (Hall & Associates, 1996, p. 1). In the literature—even as the productive energies and abilities of the poor, uneducated, or simply less privileged are constrained to the detriment of society—“boundaryless”, “portfolio”, and “protean” are in relation to the now defunct career terms that imply the necessity for individuals to ongoingly their human capital and trade job security for employability (Hall & Associates, 1996). Irrespective, we have little choice but to explore a wider, more inclusive, comprehensive, and diverse world of work and be open to the possibilities for growth, learning, and change (Covey, 2004).

Coping with the Global Contextual Factors of Work Job insecurity and the accompanying loss of the psychological contract, isolation, stress, and changes in the fabric of the family are factors of global origins now impacting work. To cope with each, workers may—sundrily—have to reinterpret what job security now means to them and trade the erstwhile understandings of the psychological contract for “employability security”; offset lack of social interactions by participating in interest groups or other social groups; find activities that put them at ease and help restore energy; and proactively experience other aspects of their personality by trying on different roles in the family (R. Gramillano, personal communication, March 13, 2019).

References American Psychological Association. (2016). Professional practice guidelines for integrating the role of work and career into psychological practice. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/about/ policy/work-career-practice.pdf. Blustein, D. (2006). The psychology of working: A new perspective for career development, counseling, and public policy. New York, NY: Routledge. Covey, S. (2004). The 7 habits of highly effective people: Restoring the character ethic. New York, NY: The Free Press. Hall, D., & Associates (Eds.). (1996). The Career is dead—Long live the career: A relational approach to careers. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Herr, E. (1997). Super’s life-span, life-space approach and its outlook for refinement. The Career Development Quarterly, 45(3), 238–246. Serrat, O. (2017). Who am I? Presenting cultural identities [PowerPoint slides]. Super, D. (1957). The psychology of careers. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Super, D. (1980). A life-span, life-space, approach to career development. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 16, 282–298.

Developing Expert Leadership

Abstract Day, Harrison, and Halpin (2009) specified that leader development focuses on the three domains of expertise and expert performance, identity and self-regulation processes, and adult development; this précis explores the theoretical propositions they submitted toward developing expert leadership.

Quid Leader Development? McCauley, Van Velsor and Rudeman (2010) defined leadership development as “the expansion of the organization’s capacity to enact the basic leadership tasks needed for collective work: setting direction, creating alignment, and maintaining commitment” (p. 18). In purposeful contrast to that oft-used concept, McCauley et al. (2010) also defined leader development as “the expansion of a person’s capacity to be effective in leadership roles and processes” (p. 2) and—by so doing—“understand leader development as one aspect of [the] broader concept of leadership development” (p. 18). It follows that the perspective of leader development is investment in human capital and that of leadership development is investment in social capital.

Terms of Reference for Leader Development Being a good leader is not the same thing as being an effective leader and—sorry to say even if there are exceptions to the rule—vice versa. Put simply, effective leaders achieve their goals and good leaders do the right thing. That said, it is now incumbent on leaders to be both good and effective as neither attribute is sufficient per se. And so, becoming an expert leader is about developing a repertoire of skills and competencies, all of which as Day, Harrison, and Halpin (2009) made clear can take “a lifetime of experience, intense practice, and learning to master” (p. 172). To begin, would-be leaders should recognize that they will have to prepare themselves if they Developing Expert Leadership was completed on April 9, 2019. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_22

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are to meet the challenge of leader development, which has to do with more than the honing of technical skills and demands also mastery of social and strategic competencies; next, their endeavors should spring from “a strong theoretical foundation for understanding, predicting, and accelerating leader development”, appreciating that process is as important as content (Day et al., 2009, p. 172).

Theoretical Propositions for Leader Development Day et al. (2009) specified that leader development focuses on three domains: “(i) expertise, competencies, and skill acquisition (including adult learning); (ii) identity processes, self-regulation, and individual differences in regulatory processes; and (iii) adult development processes and lifespan development” (p. 169). Day et al. (2009) integrative theory of leader development was articulated around expertise, identity, and adult development processes: it is self-evidently comprehensive, with cornerstones that are complementary and mutually reinforcing. Five theoretical propositions of Day et al. (2009), reproduced verbatim below, aim to deliver expertise and expert performance: • Proposition 1: Expert leadership can be differentiated from novice (less expert) leadership. • Proposition 2: The development of leadership expertise occurs as a result of identity changes that take place throughout the lifespan, but particularly in adulthood. • Proposition 3: Basic level skills combine to form complex and multifaceted leadership competencies. • Proposition 4: The development of expert leadership follows a longitudinal trajectory that parallels the development of expertise in other domains. • Proposition 5: Intentional practice in leadership is needed to reach a level of expert leader performance. (p. 174) Peering through the architecture of Day, Harrison, and Halpin’s (2009) five theoretical propositions for expertise and expert performance, one can make out their acknowledgment that development calls for change, that change takes time, and that there is a requirement for the timing of things: the propositions “range along a continuum of developmental complexity” (Day et al., 2009, p. 176). One may also note that the five propositions deal with the visible (or surface level) of expertise and expert performance, in contrast to the less visible (or meso level) of identity and self-regulation processes and the invisible (or foundation) of adult development (Day & Sin, 2011). However, some may query why the set of propositions—thence, the trajectory of leader development—should not be reversed to build bottom–up rather than top–down, as it were, with priority investments in adult development, next in identity and self-regulation processes, and then in expertise and expert development. Day et al. (2009) offered no explanation for the (apparent) back-to-front arrangements of the three-fold architecture of propositions: Did they see deliberate

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practice as paramount? Does the prioritization of expertise and expert performance owe to the longer vista for identity and self-regulation processes and the even longer requirements of adult development? Is it, quite simply, because organizations are more willing to buy into expertise and expert performance than in the other two domains? Pace these perhaps esoteric qualms about the sequencing of investments for leader development, the five theoretical propositions placed an unmistakable accent on expertise and demonstrated internal logic and concern for the development— in turn—of declarative skills, procedural skills, strategic competencies, and adaptive competencies, leading to the conclusion that “Leader development is therefore conceptually closer to what it takes to become an expert than acquiring a particular skill” (Day et al., 2009, p. 178).

Practicing Leadership The proposition that “Intentional practice in leadership is needed to reach a level of expert leader performance” is the culmination of Day et al. (2009) architecture for expertise and expert performance and deserves an aside (pp. 181–182). Incongruously, perhaps, if one bears in mind “the unrelenting pace”, “the brevity and variety of its activities”, “the fragmentation and discontinuity of the job”, “the orientation to action”, etc. that Mintzberg (2009, p. 18)—who had little time for leadership— found in managing, Day et al. (2009) compared the practice of leadership to the levels of performance attained by expert musicians. The only concession to a difference between practicing leadership and developing expertise in music (or chess, sports, etc.) lies in serendipity, that leadership but not other domains of expertise affords: “Instead of providing a pat solution, the practicing leader offers support and encouragement to help the person construct a solution on his or her own” (Day et al., 2009, p. 181). [The word “manager” never appears in Day et al. (2009): what distinction they made between leaders and managers cannot be fathomed but, if manager development has to do with gaining particularized knowledge, skills, and abilities to ramp up task performance in management roles, then that ought entail also offering support and encouragement.] And so, per Day et al. (2009, p. 182), it all boils down to intentionality: in the process of (his/her) development, is the leader aware that he/she is practicing leadership? In the hurly-burly of daily exertions that Mintzberg (2009) characterized, some may find Day et al. (2009) reduction of the practice of leadership to mere intentionality a curious simplification. Intentionality can only serve so far if, per Bolden, Gosling, Hawkins, and Taylor (2011), leadership is “(1) a process, (2) of social influence, (3) to guide, structure, and/or facilitate, (4) behaviors, activities, and/or relationships, (5) towards the achievement of shared aims” (p. 21).

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Identity and Adult Development Processes Of course, as mentioned earlier, Day et al. (2009) fastened expertise development to identity and adult development processes and made each dimension integral to the others. Linking the three processes makes eminent sense, at least in theory, even if the prioritization of investments across the three domains (around which their integrative theory of leader development is framed) raises questions—that Day, Harrison, and Halpin (2009) did not address—and little (if anything) is said of necessary synergistic interactions among the domains or the practicalities thereof. Three theoretical propositions of Day, Harrison, and Halpin (2009), reproduced verbatim below, aim to deliver identity and self-regulation processes: • Proposition 6: Leadership competence is formed through spirals of leader identity formation and change in the context of learning and development through leadership experience. • Proposition 7: Individual differences between leaders influence the rate and direction of the spirals of identity development and leader development. • Proposition 7a: Self-regulatory strength accelerates the ongoing learning and development of leaders. • Proposition 7b: Learning goal orientations facilitate development of leader expertise through the use of self-regulation strategies. • Proposition 7c: A leader’s generalized self-efficacy will positively relate to leader development and learning. • Proposition 7d: Self-awareness will facilitate the development of leader learning and expertise. • Proposition 7e: Forming implementation intentions regarding initiating leadership practice and persisting through distractions will facilitate leader development. (p. 174) The essence of Day et al. (2009) theoretical propositions for identity and selfregulation processes is that “leaders develop through a cyclical process of developing a leader’s identity and engaging in developmental experiences” (p. 211). With assessment, challenge, and support, the identity-development spiral can be reinforced by such variables as self-regulatory strength, learning goal orientation, self-efficacy, self-awareness, and implementation intentions (p. 211). Lastly, six theoretical propositions of Day et al. (2009), reproduced verbatim below, aim to deliver adult development: • Proposition 8: Leader development is ongoing throughout the adult lifespan and is shaped by experience as well as through adult development and age-related maturation processes. • Proposition 9: Maintaining an active and healthy lifestyle and building selfregulatory resources may facilitate health and well-being into late adulthood and contribute to lifelong development.

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• Proposition 10: Individuals engage in selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) processes in maximizing developmental gains and minimizing losses associated with developing as a leader. • Proposition 11: The development of complex multifaceted leadership competencies is supported by a web of adult development that is dynamic and nonlinear in nature. • Proposition 12: Moral reasoning and reflective judgment (i.e., epistemic cognition) develop concomitant with positive identity-development spirals. • Proposition 13: Wisdom involves the alignment of morality and moral reasoning (virtue), identity and self-regulation (self) and reflective judgment (knowledge and thinking). (p. 175) The primary message of Day et al. (2009) theoretical propositions for adult development was that expert leadership must be conceptualized within the broader compass of the former, which implies selective adaptation and transformation as well as a healthy lifestyle (p. 227). “The transformation of leaders is one that transpires across the entire lifespan” (Day et al., 2009, p. 227). Therefore, selection, optimization, and compensation processes must mitigate across changing situations to dynamically support increasingly multifaceted leadership competencies, sharpen moral reasoning and reflective judgment, and promote the wisdom needed to align virtue and self as well as knowledge and thinking.

Enhancing Leader Development Synergizing as one must the 13 theoretical propositions in the three domains, it is incontestable that the process of becoming an expert leader is complex, developmental, and must extend over the course of adult development. Accepting that leaders can—and in fact, do—learn, change, and grow over time, Day et al. (2009) integrative theory of leader development invites contributions to the process and gives hope that development might be enhanced by influencing the three domains with informed and scientifically grounded interventions. Toward this, on-the-job experiences combined with assessment, challenge, and support can particularly enhance a leader’s ability to learn, especially if approaches are systemic rather than events-based and tie in with leadership development. And so, now that they understand better the dimensions of leader development, organizations must move from new-found understanding to general dynamics. But, this is where the difficulty lies: unless they are particularly well resourced, organizations are limited by internal operating systems and may not—owing to the number of individuals, their different stages of development, and the sheer variety of work experiences—be able to orchestrate actions across the three domains of leader development. In short, accepting limitations, what is urgently needed is advice on such essentials as aligning leader development and organizational strategy; identifying the desired outcomes of leader development; determining the sequencing of inputs

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to leader development; and, last but not least, instituting organizational and social contexts that enable leader development.

References Bolden, R., Gosling, J., Hawkins, B., & Taylor, S. (2011). Exploring leadership: Individual, organizational, and societal perspectives. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Day, D., Harrison, M., & Halpin, S. (2009). An integrative approach to leader development: Connecting adult development, identity, and expertise. New York, NY: Psychology Press. Day, D., & Sin, H. (2011). Longitudinal tests of an integrative model of leader development: Charting and understanding developmental trajectories. The Leadership Quarterly, 22, 545–560. McCauley, C., Van Velsor, E., & Ruderman, M. (2010). Introduction: Our viewpoint of leadership development. In E. Van Velsor, C. D. McCauley, & M. N. Ruderman (Eds.), The center for creative leadership handbook of leadership development (pp. 1–26). San Francisco, CA: Wiley. Mintzberg, H. (2009). Managing. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

Identity Processes in Leader Development

Abstract Day, Harrison and Halpin (2009) articulated five variables that frame individual differences in leader development (i.e., self-regulatory strength, goal orientation, self-efficacy, self-awareness, and implementation intentions). Referencing environmental factors, this précis locates self-regulation processes and points up the potential contribution of each to leader development.

On Becoming a Leader: The Premise “A person does not gather learnings as possessions but rather becomes a new person with those learnings as a part of his or her new self. To learn is not to have; it is to be,” said Akin (1987, p. 38) in a bon mot frequently attributed to Bennis (1989), who reproduced it. Akin’s (1987) use of the word “become” was important: firstly, it asserted that one is not born a leader but—rather—develops into one; secondly, it implied that growing into a leader is—necessarily—subject to an ongoing process of engaging in experiences and forging identity. In agreement, Day, Harrison, and Halpin (2009) specified that “As individuals come to view themselves as leaders, they will likely seek out more experiences to develop requisite leadership skills and competencies, and engage in what [they] call ‘practicing leadership.’ Participation in these experiences also strengthens a leader identity” (p. 211). And so, in direct opposition to “Great Man” and trait theories, Day et al. (2009) asserted that leadership learning is an activity and—more often than not—the child of choice.

On Becoming a Leader: Factors of the Environment Which came first: the chicken or the egg; a leader’s identity or the outcomes of his/her leadership experiences? Faced with an intractable conundrum, the best response may be that a circle has no beginning. Likewise, with a few provisos but in a fundamentally Identity Processes in Leader Development was completed on April 19, 2019. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_23

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virtuous cycle, a leader’s ability to learn from experience and integrate learnings into identity can add quality to later experiences that will in turn firm up the new identity. The provisos are that not all experiences have the same developmental potential, of course, but that assessment, challenge, and support can in a corporate setting play a key role (McCauley, Van Velsor, & Ruderman, 2010). Indeed, “Organizations that have strong and positive leader development climates provide leaders with more opportunities for development such as feedback, coaching, mentoring, training, stretch assignments, or action learning programs” (Day et al., 2009, p. 190).

On Becoming a Leader: Self-regulation Processes Nonetheless, pace the rightful accent on the environment, more and more research suggests that the maturity of a leader’s identity is a particularly formative process in his/her development, with long-term and future-oriented involvement in relationships (e.g., authority figures, peer relationships, and other organizational relationships) deemed a primary means of forming and reinforcing identity (Wilkinson, n.d). Moreover, learning demands that one should take responsibility for development: pell-mell, this involves looking out for growth opportunities, making out when new behaviors and ways of thinking are called for and engaging in activities that specifically provide the opportunity to test these, developing and using learning tactics to acquire knowledge and skills, reflecting on the process of learning, and striving for self-understanding (McCauley, Van Velsor, & Ruderman, 2010). Self-regulation processes and individual differences, it follows, do much to explain the direction and rhythm of the spiral of identity and leadership development (Day et al., 2009, p. 191). Self-regulation is a requirement because it is in the nature of goals that they will not be accomplished easily, a truism that demands adjustment; specifically, self-regulation plays a role in establishing a desired state, monitoring process, and normalizing thoughts, emotions, and behaviors (Day et al., 2009, pp. 191–193). Framed initially by environmental factors, individual differences in self-regulation processes that will impact leader development (via skill acquisition, competency development, expertise, and ultimately leader identity) have to do with self-regulatory strength, goal orientation, self-efficacy, self-awareness, and implementation intentions (Day et al., 2009, p. 202). Much as muscular strength, the ability to build selfregulatory strength comes from repeated practice, for example to inhibit, override, or alter responses, with close attention to feedback to engender focus and perseverance (Baumeister, Heatherton, & Tice, 1994). Goal orientation is the manifestation of motivational processes that trigger an individual’s task choice, self-set goals, and effort mechanisms in learning and performance contexts (Dweck, 1996): to note, the setting of goals demonstrates an interest in challenge, to the effect that the individual then directs attention to the task in preference to himself or herself. Self-efficacy is the domain-specific belief—based on past performance or observation of the performance of others—that an individual has about his or her ability to operate at certain

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levels of performance toward goals that modulate impacts on his or her life; “Generalized self-efficacy refers to a global trait-like characteristic of one’s estimate of … overall ability to achieve required performance in a variety of situations” (Bandura, 1997). A byword for self-perceptual accuracy, self-awareness denotes the extent to which an individual is mindful of facets of his or her identity and the degree to which that self-perception is both integrated and compatible with perceptions of him or her (Hall, 2004). Lastly, implementation intentions mean to buttress goal-orientation by particularizing when, where, and how behavior will lead to goal attainment through near-automatic enaction (Gollwitzer, 1999).

On Becoming a Leader: Synergizing Self-regulation Processes Day et al. (2009) integrative theory of leader development spans the three domains of expertise and expert performance, identity and self-regulation processes, and adult development. Concerning the direction and rhythm of the spiral of identity and leadership development, Day et al. (2009) proposed to explain individual differences that: Self-regulatory strength accelerates the ongoing learning and development of leaders. Learning goal orientations facilitate development of leader expertise through the use of self-regulation strategies. A leader’s generalized self-efficacy will positively relate to leader development and learning. Self-awareness will facilitate the development of leader learning and expertise. Forming implementation intentions regarding initiating leadership practice and persisting through distractions will facilitate leader development. (p. 174)

It goes without saying that self-regulatory strength, goal orientation, self-efficacy, self-awareness, and implementation intentions can singly and in unison have a bearing on identity processes in leader development; and, each of the five variables can make unique contributions. Notwithstanding, while self-regulatory strength, goal orientation, self-efficacy, self-awareness, and implementation intentions all bear on skill acquisition, competency development, expertise, and leader identity in interaction with the factors of the environment, individuals will reveal different proclivities across the five self-regulatory processes; this is not a cause for worry, far from it: in the spirit of leader development, as it happens, the objective should be to maximize each and synergize the five with emphasis on “how” rather than on “what”.

References Akin, G. (1987). Varieties of managerial learning. Organizational Dynamics, 16(1), 36–48.

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Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: W H Freeman/Times Books/Henry Holt & Co. Baumeister, R., Heatherton, T., & Tice, D. (1994). Losing control: How and why people fail at self-regulation. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Bennis, W. (1989). On becoming a leader. Basic Books. Day, D., Harrison, M., & Halpin, S. (2009). An integrative approach to leader development: Connecting adult development, identity, and expertise. New York, NY: Psychology Press. Dweck, C. (1996). Implicit theories as organizers of goals and behavior. In P. Gollwitzer & J. Bargh (Eds.), The psychology of action: Linking cognition and motivation to behavior (pp. 69–90). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Gollwitzer, P. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54(7), 493–503. Hall, D. (2004). Self-awareness, identity, and leader development. In D. Day, S. Zaccaro, & S. Halpin (Eds.), Leader development for transforming organizations: Growing leaders for tomorrow (pp. 163–176). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. McCauley, C., Van Velsor, E., & Ruderman, M. (2010). Introduction: Our viewpoint of leadership development. In E. Van Velsor, C. McCauley, & M. Ruderman (Eds.), The Center for Creative Leadership handbook of leadership development (3rd ed., pp. 1–26). San Francisco, CA: JosseyBass.

Leader Development Through Work Experience

Abstract Very few leaders are born: most need experience and the earlier one starts, the better. But, if leaders need exposure, they must seek or be presented with a wide variety of work experiences and truly learn from these. This précis discusses how effective leaders learn, distinguishes social and personal contexts of learning, and illustrates theory with a quick example.

How Do Effective Leaders Learn? Both leaders and leadership have been studied for thousands of years. For much the same reasons that some hope to be enlightened about human affairs by studying celestial objects, viz., to be informed and reassured about the future, to be absolved of current and future decisions, and to feel connected to something larger, people believed that leaders were born, hence the Great Man Theory of Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), who imagined that leaders were gifted with divine inspiration and associated traits, much as demi-gods. But, the pendulum has now swung so far in the opposite direction that some argue leadership and its cornucopia of characteristics is a myth, and that context should take center stage. Interestingly, leadership hardly featured in Drucker’s work: much as Mintzberg, he preferred to advance the practice of management. But, if it is indeed the case that “[T]he only definition of a leader is someone who has followers” (Drucker, 1992, p. 103), then it follows that anyone can learn to lead or learn to lead better, in light of prevailing or projected circumstances, and that leadership is thus both a process of learning and a voyage of discovery. So, how might effective leaders learn? Seijts (2013), for one, interviewed more than 30 leaders across industries, sectors, and countries and made out ten clear pathways for learning to lead that, citing in full, are: • Performing, or excelling in a role; • Risking, or taking chances to lead and to learn; • Stretching, or going beyond one’s own personal comfort zone; Leader Development Through Work Experience was completed on April 5, 2019. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_24

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• Learning, or taking the time to reflect on past events to discern the lessons they offer; • Self-awareness, or deliberately seeking to know one’s personal strengths and weaknesses; • Trusting, or relying on one’s abilities and those of others to build a reputation for being trustworthy; • Adapting, or the ability to act appropriately in different situations; • Mentoring, or learning from other leaders and role models how to develop as a leader; • Observing, or watching others and oneself to better understand events and situations; • Integrating, or having the capacity to see and understand the “big picture”. (para. 3) Encouragingly, the 30 leaders that Seijts (2013) interviewed concurred that “[L]eadership can be learned by anyone with basic smarts backed by an unwavering commitment to ongoing development and collaboration” (para. 12). “Leadership skills are innate to all of us,” Seijts (2013) reported Western University’s president and vice-chancellor, Amit Chakma, as saying, “but how much we develop those skills is in a large part determined by the opportunities we have to take on leadership roles, and how readily we embrace those opportunities” (para. 12). However, Seijts (2013) stopped short of specifying the context, meaning, the factors or variables, that condition what learning opportunities there might be for leaders.

The Context of Learning From a review of academic and practitioner literature, Mintzberg (2009) isolated in five groups 12 factors that impact the varieties of managing, and which in this précis are also seen to condition leadership and the work of leaders. Citing in full, the 12 factors that Mintzberg (2009) listed are: • External context: national culture, sector (business, government, etc.), and industry; • Organizational context: form of the organization (entrepreneurial, professional, etc.) and its age, size, and stage of development; • Job context: the level in the hierarchy and the function (or work) supervised; • Situational context: temporary pressures and managerial fashion; • Personal context: background of the incumbent, tenure (in the job, the organization, the industry), and personal style. (p. 98) Mintzberg (2009) recognized that the nature of the organization has the greatest impact on a manager’s behavior; but, he cautioned also that any specific factor does not matter much on a given day and that they must all be dealt with collectively.

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At a glance, it is easy to see that the external, organizational, job, and situational variables have to do with the social context that enables or hampers an individual’s occupational function. On the other hand, the personal context has to do with his or her internal environment, derived from beliefs, cultural background, gender, state of mind, values, etc. Therefore, amplifying from Seijts (2013), what learning opportunities there might be for leaders can be found in both the social and the personal contexts, principally by means of their interactions, across the 12 factors that are found there. The abilities that might be built pertain to administrative and managerial skills, interpersonal skills, leader skills, problem-solving skills, and technical skills, the venues for which could be corporate classroom education informed by principles of andragogy, self-directed initiatives, and—especially—job (i.e. operational) assignments, aka experiential learning. McCauley, Ruderman, Ohlott, and Morrow (1994) determined that job transitions, task-related characteristics, and obstacles, in particular, best activate on-the-job learning. All the while, learning from others, be it through vicarious learning or through learning from corporate or individual narratives, ought to heighten leader development.

Learning from Experience For sure, learning from experience will matter if leaders are made, rather than born. And so, taking into consideration Mintzberg’s (2009) five contexts—that this précis fused into social and personal contexts—and Seijts’ (2013) ten clear pathways, it stands to reason that the primary source of learning to lead will be work experience. The breadth and depth of the social context in Mintzberg (2009) intuits a myriad of possible situations in which leaders might find themselves. However, not every experience conduces learning and this précis shared earlier McCauley, Ruderman, Ohlott, and Morrow’s (1994) commonsensical opinion that job transitions, task-related characteristics, and obstacles would magnify situational learning opportunities. All the while, assessment, challenge, and support—not to forget the initial ability to learn— stand to make related experiences more developmental, particularly if leaders can experience the consequences of their decisions. The personal context of leaders likewise intuits particularized responses to different situations. But, again, whatever the instance, certain attributes may need to be developed if learning is to take place. In challenging situations, key determinants of experiential learning would be self-reflection, motivation, action, and assessment in hindsight. To note, assessment is vital because experience cannot be one-time but simultaneously past, present, and future. Helpfully, McCall, Lombardo, and Morrison (1988) isolated 15 types of experiences that can teach valuable leadership lessons: bosses and superiors, career setbacks, coursework and training, crises, cultural crossings, difficult people, ethical dilemmas, feedback and coaching, horizontal moves, increases in job scope, mistakes, new initiatives, personal experiences, stakeholder engagements, and fix-it/turnaround assignments.

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Over several years, which makes for very long experiential learning and demonstrates that such learning need not be one-time, I faced all 15 types of experiences that McCall et al. (1988) isolated in the course of one job transition. Specifically, over the period 2002–2006, I formulated and led the Tonle Sap Initiative: it was a partnership of organizations and people set on addressing the poverty and environment challenges of the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia because “[t]he lake’s fisheries directly support more than 1 million people and provide the single largest source of protein for Cambodia’s young and increasing population” (Serrat, Gallego-Lizon, & Moffatt, 2004, p. ii). This précis is not the place to give details but the considerable increase in job scope, to name one source of experiential learning, led to attribution of substantial financial and human resources and—especially—growing complexity of tasks, all of which involved expansion of visibility and responsibility; elsewhere, the overriding need for stakeholder engagement called for high-level interactions on three continents, reconciliation of viewpoints, and development of solutions beyond my initial formal authority; elsewhere still, at least in the early years, there was understandable chafing from distinct preferences. Much learning, all in all, that I reflected upon (i.e., what went well? what might be done better?) and continuingly reported on in formal reviews, newsletters, presentations, technical reports, and web pages, with thorough explanations about obstacles, steps taken, and measures of success (Serrat & Moffatt, 2006).

References Drucker, P. (1992). Managing for the future. New York, NY: Harper Collins. Mintzberg, H. (2009). Managing. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler. McCall, M., Lombardo, M., & Morrison, A. (1988). Lessons of experience: How successful executives develop on the job. New York, NY: Lexington Books. McCauley, C., Ruderman, M., Ohlott, P., & Morrow, J. (1994). Assessing the developmental components of managerial jobs. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79(4), 544–560. Seijts, G. (2013). Good leaders never stop learning. Ivey Business Journal (July–August). Retrieved from https://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/good-leaders-never-stop-learning/. Serrat, O., & Moffatt, D. (2006). From strategy to practice: The Tonle Sap initiative. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Serrat, O., Gallego-Lizon, T., & Moffatt, D. (2004). The Tonle Sap basin strategy. Manila: Asian Development Bank.

Moral Development for Authentic Leadership Effectiveness

Abstract This précis argues that leadership and ethics are inherently intertwined: for higher effectiveness, leader development needs to foster moral capacity, efficacy, courage, and resiliency.

Quid Moral Development? Moral development—the field of study—concerns itself with the emergence, change, and understanding of morality from infancy through adulthood. The basic tenet of moral development—evident in ancient philosophies and religions—is that human nature is innately good (or at least tends toward the good more willingly than toward the bad).1 And so, in the vein of the body and its basic mental and social capacities, human nature is self-realizing and self-perfecting in aspiration even if psychological and social factors can slow (or de-rail) the process, preferably for a short time. Nevertheless, with general abilities and sensibilities in place, the common assumption from times immemorial has been that social experience would shape desirable performance. Not surprisingly, therefore, moral development has always been a concern of parents: and, teaching a child to distinguish right from wrong and to behave in consequence has always been a goal of parenting. Even if it has for long been a topic of discussion, however, moral development was not studied scientifically until the late 1950s. Thereafter, from the cognitivedevelopmental approach of Piaget and his work to separate nature from nurture,2 research made rapid progress thanks to Kohlberg’s (1976) theory of moral development—which isolated stages (of thinking about moral issues) in terms of preconventional (maximizing personal rewards and avoiding punishments), conventional Moral Development for Authentic Leadership Effectiveness was completed on March 22, 2019. 1 Ethics,

a branch of philosophy, preoccupies itself with systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct. 2 Here, the term “nature” refers to the influence of genes and hereditary factors; the term “nurture” refers to the influence of external factors after conception, viz., upbringing, learning, surrounding culture, social relationships, life experiences, etc. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_25

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(understanding social rules and obligations), and post-conventional (internalizing universalistic moral principles) levels of reasoning. But, Kohlberg’s (1976) theory of moral development was originally postulated as a developmental theory for children (despite evidence that stage development can occur well into later life): to many, it lacks explanatory power and direction in the hurly-burly of corporate life, notably in relation to ethical behavior in work environments. Thence, to list but three chief contributions to the subsequently fast-growing body of knowledge about moral development, Blasi’s (1980) review of the relation (and potential gap) between moral reasoning and ethical behavior moved critical debate beyond mere cognition; Ashforth and Anand (2003) helped understand the vital role of environmental influences on ethical behavior by shedding light on normalization, viz., the interrelated processes of institutionalization, rationalization, and socialization3 ; and Rest (1986) delineated the four essential psychological processes of moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral motivation, and implementation as determinants of the link between moral reasoning and ethical behavior. In consequence, ethical behavior is ever more it seems seen as a function of environmental influences, which makes the field of study of moral development quite rich with practical implications for leader development.

Moral Development and Leadership “His peaceful resistance shook the foundations of an empire, exposed the emptiness of a repressive ideology, and proved that moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon,” said President Obama when Václav Havel passed away (The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 2011). Michelle Obama would have recognized the foundation of Havel’s fortitude: “I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values—and follow my own moral compass—then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own,” she remarked on another occasion (The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 2015). Navigating the difficult trade-offs that inevitably arise when one has to make decisions will test any leader.4 But, there is no doubt that—especially from faster connectivity in a globalizing world—exercising leadership that is untethered from ethical considerations puts individuals, communities, organizations, industries, and even economies at risk as the Enron, Global Crossing, Tyco, and Worldcom debacles of 2001–2002, to name but four corporate accounting scandals, made clear. And, lest 3 “Institutionalization [is] the process by which corrupt practices are enacted as a matter of routine, often without conscious thought about their propriety; rationalization [is] the process by which individuals who engage in corrupt acts use socially constructed accounts to legitimate the acts in their own eyes; and socialization [is] the process by which newcomers are taught to perform and accept the corrupt practices” (Ashforth & Anand, 2003, p. 3). 4 In this paper, the term “leadership” refers to the action of leading a group of people or an organization with emphasis on the leader (but not the characteristics of the followers or the circumstances of the situation).

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we forget, ethical people sometimes make unethical choices, for instance when they are cajoled or forced by a working environment (Carucci, 2016).5 Identifying ethical dilemmas, weighing courses of action and their respective implications, and acting in the most appropriate manner spring from moral reasoning. For that reason, there is certainly scope, nay, a critical need for developing selfawareness and reflection capacities in leaders (and in others too since leaders do not appear ab ovo but emerge from talent pools) (Day, Harrison, & Halpin, 2009).

Moral Development for Leader Development Treviño, Brown, and Hartman (2003) found that ethical leaders exude integrity, display values-based skills, and use communication and rewards systems to promote ethical behavior in others.6 Assuredly, ethical leaders have other traits and behaviors: the point is that a leader may consider himself or herself a “good” leader (and— indeed—be considered as such) but it does not follow that he or she is necessarily an ethical leader.7 And yet, almost every decision that a leader takes has ethical implications; a leader is a role model and the subject of identification and emulation by followers; and, a leader shapes the climate of his or her organization (Day et al., 2009). From the foregoing, one may infer that the hitherto overlooked attributes of moral capacity, efficacy, courage, and resiliency are building blocks of authentic leadership development.8,9 Moral capacity is “[The] ability [of leaders] to see their role as including an ethical responsibility to their stakeholders, having the level of moral perspective to recognize and evaluate ethical issues, and having learned from past experiences how they might best deal with moral dilemmas at work” (May et al., 5 Carucci (2016) cautioned that organizations can needlessly provoke good people to make unethical

choices when “[I]t is psychologically unsafe to speak up, … there is excessive pressure to reach unrealistic performance targets, … conflicting goals provoke a sense of unfairness, [and] … a positive example is not being set.” 6 The importance of empowering ethical relationships at individual, team, and organization levels cannot be understated: only by acting at these three levels of organizational life can an organization become “a community of people working together in an environment of mutual respect, where they grow personally, feel fulfilled, contribute to a common good, and share in the personal, emotional, and financial rewards of a job well done,” that is, an ethical organization (Berghofer & Schwartz, n.d.). Some organizations formulate strategies for ethics management; some focus on core values of integrity that reflect basic social obligations; and, others emphasize ethically desirable aspirations (Paine, 1994). 7 For sure, there are also more leaders who intend to act authentically than actually end up doing so. 8 Intuitively, May, Chan, Hodges and Avolio (2003) concluded that self-awareness and reflection engender moral capacity and moral efficacy, and that moral efficacy is the fount of moral courage and moral resiliency. 9 Per Gardner, Avolio, Luthans, May and Walumbwa (2005) authentic leadership is characterized by transparency, openness, and trust; guidance toward worthy objectives; and an emphasis on follower development (p. 345).

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2003, p. 247). Moral efficacy is “[T]he skills, abilities, and ultimately the motivation to justify a given moral action” (May et al., 2003, p. 255). Moral courage is “[The] leader’s fortitude to convert moral intentions into actions despite pressures from either inside or outside of the organization to do otherwise” (May et al., 2003, p. 255).10 And, moral resiliency is the ability to positively adapt in the face of significant adversity or risk and continuingly cope with principled, authentic actions (May et al., 2003, p. 256).11 Moral development centered around these attributes will boost authentic leadership effectiveness.

Capacitating Authentic Decision-Making and Behavior May et al. (2003) components of authentic leadership open up avenues for developing meta-cognitive abilities and emotional regulation: for higher effectiveness, leaders might follow sundry approaches (or methodologies) meaning, for instance, to capacitate authentic decision-making (i.e., recognizing moral dilemmas, evaluating alternatives transparent, intending to act authentically) and behavior (i.e., taking authentic moral action, demonstrating sustained authentic behavior over time). Blasi’s (1995) concept of the moral self, for one, bodes well for capacitating authentic decision-making and behavior by enhancing congruence in thought and action. Positing that identity can bridge moral cognition and moral action, Blasi (1995) suggested that “The highest degree of moral integration is achieved when one’s moral understanding and concerns become part of one’s sense of identity” (p. 229). Toward this, Blasi’s (1995) three-component model of moral identity fused the moral self—ascertaining the centrality and salience of morality in one’s life; personal responsibility for moral action—reconciling the moral judgement–action paradigm; and self-consistency (or integrity)—achieving congruence in moral action and reasoning (Day et al., 2009). Hannah, Lester, and Vogelsang (2005), for example, articulated a model of authentic–moral leadership that sets a framework for leaders to make moral decisions through activation cum concordance of current selves (meaning, who they perceive themselves to be), current goals (specifically, what they want to accomplish), and possible selves (that is, who they might become) (p. 46). From a richer, forward-moving definition of self-concept, according to Hannah et al. (2005) model, 10 In complementary interpretation, reproduced here for purposes of comparison only, Rate, Clarke, Lindsay, and Sternberg (2007) defined moral courage as a willful, intentional act, executed after mindful deliberation, involving objective substantial risk to the bearer, and primarily motivated to bring about a noble good or worthy end despite, perhaps (emphasis in original), the presence of the emotion of fear (p. 95). 11 Notwithstanding May et al. (2003) profession to help develop the moral component of authentic leadership, we are not to assume that moral capacity, efficacy, courage, and resiliency are the exclusive preserve of leaders and their development and that the less exalted individuals who comprise the near-entirety of organizational personnel cannot be agents or, indeed, prime movers of their moral fates.

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the leader’s moral agency spans across leadership episodes—where leaders manifest their more authentic moral self—through to the follower outcomes of “greater trust in the leader, higher power and latitude afforded to the leader, increased social identification with the leader and emulation of his or her moral actions; and activation of the follower’s moral working self-concept” (p. 67). Notwithstanding the opportunities if offers for self-development and 360° feedback, Hannah et al. (2005) model also seems to lend itself to authentic leadership coaching.

References Ashforth, B., & Anand, V. (2003). The normalization of corruption in organizations. In R. Kramer & B. Staw (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior. Research in organizational behavior: An annual series of analytical essays and critical reviews (Vol. 25, pp. 1–52). Oxford, UK: Elsevier Science Ltd. Berghofer, D., & Schwartz, G. (n.d.). Ethical leadership: Right relationships and the emotional bottom line—The gold standard for success. Retrieved from http://www.ethicalleadership.com/ BusinessArticle.htm. Blasi, A. (1995). Moral understanding and the moral personality: The process of moral integration. In W. Kurtines & J. Gewirtz (Eds.), Moral development: An introduction (pp. 229–253). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Blasi, A. (1980). Bridging moral cognition and moral action: A critical review of the literature. Psychological Bulletin, 88(1), 1–45. Carucci, R. (2016). Why ethical people make unethical choices. Harvard Business Review, 12. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/12/why-ethical-people-make-unethical-choices. Day, D., Harrison, M., & Halpin, S. (2009). An integrative approach to leader development: Connecting adult development, identity, and expertise. New York, NY: Psychology Press. Gardner, W., Avolio, B., Luthans, F., May, D., & Walumbwa, F. (2005). “Can you see the real me?” A self-based model of authentic leader and follower development. The Leadership Quarterly, 16(3), 343–372. Hannah, S., Lester, P., & Vogelsang, G. (2005). Moral leadership: Explicating the moral component of authentic leadership. In W. Gardner, B. Avolio, & F. Walumbwa (Eds.), Authentic leadership theory and practice: Origins, effects, and development (pp. 43–81). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier. Kohlberg, L. (1976). Moral stages and moralization: The cognitive-developmental. In T. Lickona (Ed.), Moral development and behavior: Theory, research, and social issues. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. May, D., Chan, A., Hodges, T., & Avolio, B. (2003). Developing the moral component of authentic leadership. Organizational Dynamics, 32(3), 247–260. Paine, L. (1994). Managing for organizational integrity. Harvard Business Review, 72(2), 106–117. Rate, C., Clarke, J., Lindsay, D., & Sternberg, R. (2007). Implicit theories of courage. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2(2), 80–98. Rest, J. (1986). Moral development: Advances in research and theory. New York, NY: Praeger. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary. (2011). Statement of President Obama on the death of Vaclav Havel [Press release]. Retrieved from https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-pressoffice/2011/12/18/statement-president-obama-death-vaclav-havel. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary. (2015). Remarks by the First Lady at Tuskegee University Commencement Address [Press release]. Retrieved from https://obamawhitehouse.arc hives.gov/the-press-office/2015/05/09/remarks-first-lady-tuskegee-university-commencementaddress.

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Treviño, L., Brown, M., & Hartman, L. (2003). A qualitative investigation of perceived executive ethical leadership: Perceptions from inside and outside the executive suite. Human Relations, 56(1), 5–37.

Seven Entries on Twenty-First Century Working

Abstract This précis records seven short takes on personal leadership development; social identity theory; authentic leadership; relationships with careers; leader development; social barriers; and integrating adult, leader, and leadership development.

Ideas, Opinions, and Actions for Personal Leadership Development “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything,” Eisenhower said to the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference in Washington, D.C. (Eisenhower, 1957). (One must take it the former American army general and president of the United States knew whereof he spoke.) From like-minded people, we are often told that personal leadership development plans can guide people through their work lives (and perhaps careers). It helps, at the outset, to know where one stands: that is why many personal leadership development plans are framed by 360° assessment tools, tests of emotional intelligence, the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, the Thomas–Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, etc. Follow-on “what?,” “so what?,” and “now what?” questions should then beckon. Why? Because, personal leadership development plans should be located in the where and when of Super’s (1957) “lifelong, continuous process of developing and implementing a self-concept, testing it against reality, with satisfaction to self and benefit to society” (p. 282). Illustrating, I joined The Chicago School of Professional Psychology to open a new window: at Super’s (somewhat dated) Maintenance (or Management) stage,1 but happier with the ideas Seven Entries on Twenty-First Century Working was completed on April 26, 2019. 1 Super

(1980) proposed that—across their entire lifespan—people go through five developmental stages: (a) Growth (0–14), with emphasis on physical growth, forming the self-concept, and exploring early interests and abilities; (b) Exploration (15–24), with emphasis on exploring different areas of work, beginning to focus on a specific career direction, getting specialized training, and beginning to engage in work; (c) Establishment (25–44), with emphasis on settling into a career

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that Handy (1991) advanced about “portfolio workers,” my present-day personal leadership development plan relates to the third major function of work according to Blustein’s (2006) integrative taxonomy of working, viz., working as a means of self-determination; it has less to do with the second, viz., working as a means of social connection and lesser still with the first, viz., working as a means of survival and power. Personal Leadership Development Plan: Olivier Serrat Why We live in a digital age in which business and societal interaction increasingly takes place online. Organizational boundaries have been stretched, morphed, and redesigned. Combinations of hierarchy, market, and network (or community) forms of organizing have appeared across the public, private, and civil sectors. Leadership styles and frameworks—designed for the closed systems of yesteryear—are consumed by fire-fighting and seem to contribute less and less to the success of collective effort. My vision is to become a thought leader in organizational metagovernance. Specifically, I aim to develop leadership management systems for metagovernance of hierarchies, markets, and networks, this to help them apply situation-specific intervention strategies based on combining, switching, and maintenance What Throughout Year 2 and Year 3 of my doctoral studies, I will endeavor to ground and develop my identity and thought leadership skills in coherent, self-relevant, and authentic values How: Actions I Will Take to Accomplish My Personal Leadership Development Goal 1. Plan Actions Desired/Required Behavior Response • Values

• Values have utility for self-regulation and for evaluating others. I will identify what coherent, self-relevant, and authentic values, inspired by Schwartz (1992), best speed the accomplishment of my vision. (Ethics and authenticity would count prominently among these.)

• Skills

• Thought leaders must have skills. I will become increasingly conscious that skill acquisition depends on the ability to access problem-specific knowledge and on processing skills. I will also make continuing efforts to appreciate the qualitative changes in process and knowledge that are associated with the development of expertise. Lastly, I will attempt to record the progression of my skills along the continuum from novice to intermediate to expert levels

How: Actions I Will Take to Accomplish My Personal Leadership Development Goal 2. Anticipate Obstacles/Barriers Obstacle/Barrier

Resolution (continued)

field, making contributions to the field, and achieving higher levels of responsibility; (d) Maintenance (or Management) (45–64), with emphasis on maintaining a job position, updating skills as needed to stay competitive, and planning for retirement; and (e) Decline (or Disengagement) (65+), with emphasis on gradually separating from work and engaging in other projects such as leisure, time with family, and community activities.

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(continued) • Subject Matter

• The doctoral dissertation that I have in mind, provisionally titled Leading Organizations of the Future, will first entail reference to literature on complexity leadership theory, knowledge management, and metagovernance; next, it will call for an ambitious fusion of related concepts; lastly, it will invite generation or development of a new model for metagovernance. Considerable discipline will have to underpin all related efforts. In addition to complexity leadership and paradoxical leadership (about which more later), I expect that neuroscience leadership will help me elucidate what elements of trust and relationship building can encourage engagement and positive working relationships in hybrid organizations

• Time Management

• I will develop greater awareness of tools and techniques for general time management, prioritization, scheduling, concentration and focus, goal setting, and self-motivation

3. Leverage Strengths Strength

How Will This Strength Help Me Accomplish My Goal?

• Research Networks

• I am a member of networks such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu, where I rank in the top 0.5–2.5%. Membership enables me to receive answers to research questions, share my expertise to other members and my followers, and find collaborators. I also have a presence on Google Scholar, which records 1500 citations as of April 2019

• Ability to Synthesize

• From much reading across disciplines, I have developed the ability to synthesize—or combine elements of several sources—to help make a point. Writing a strong researched paper requires such ability. In the face of information overload, some have even called the ability to synthesize (joining the dots, making out patterns, sifting the relevant from the irrelevant, and seeing contrasts) the No. 1 survival skill in the twenty-first century. As organizational ecologies become increasingly dynamic, complex, and competitive, we will all face intensified contradictory, or seemingly paradoxical, demands: every one of us—not just leaders—must develop paradoxical leadership understandings and behaviors so we might visualize and reframe paradox (and thereby produce superior outcomes). To manage the many paradoxes experienced in my work life I adopted the principle of yin–yang, which accepts that seemingly opposite or contrary forces might actually be interconnected, complementary, and even interdependent. The principle of yin–yang serves well when one must synthesize

Who: Resources and Support for Achieving My Personal Leadership Development Goal (continued)

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(continued) To gather feedback and support my learning, I will leverage my research (and other) networks. To track progress, I will rely on what scores and citations my research networks advertise as well as the grades and advice I receive at school. I have identified the primary authorities in the fields of complexity leadership and metagovernance. Familiarizing myself with their work will be the object of the literature review I must conduct toward the doctoral dissertation that I have in mind. My qualitative research will also be “grounded” in data gathered through interviews with four or five of the said authorities. Because NVivo is suited to gaining rich insights from unstructured data I may conduct text analyses of what is out there in the field of metagovernance of hierarchies, markets, and networks, to ground-truth of sorts what insights the interviews may produce. My personal leadership development plan will be available to interested parties upon request 4. Accountability All actions to meet my goal are ongoing. I am monitoring progress on a daily and weekly basis, the principal instruments being rising scores and numbers of citations on Academia.edu, Google Scholar, and ResearchGate, as well as what grades I achieve and feedback I receive at school. Out of many, one measure of progress is the number of followers I attract on ResearchGate. My personal leadership development plan is designed for three years: it is purposeful and self-contained and I do not anticipate having to update it. I will leverage what I learn in the form of the doctoral dissertation I must write (and will continue to self-publish spin-offs in personalized formats every now and then) 5. Acknowledgment I expect the personal impact of meeting my goal to be increased visibility as an expert leader in the field of metagovernance. Beyond one single organization, the parties that would benefit from the changes and improvements that I can identify in the doctoral dissertation would be those who make sense out of the model for leadership management that I will develop Serrat (2018a)

And yet, “The basic practical–moral problem in life is not what to do, but what kind of person to be” (Cunliffe, 2009, p. 94). Assuming no one will disagree with this statement of the obvious, it follows from Cunliffe’s maxim that personal leadership development plans are necessary but not sufficient: personal philosophies of leadership must underpin them. What follows is personal philosophy of leadership to both convoy the personal leadership development plan pictured above and help move beyond it in due time: Organizations exist to make people’s skills and capabilities effective. From the philosophy that leadership is a responsibility that must be shared by all parties to the act of organizing, I aim in a process of social influence to grow more leaders to bring out the best in fellow knowledge workers so they accomplish more together, in more meaningful ways, than they imagined they might. Implicit in this statement are directions about how I lead and choose to influence, what I value, what I expect from partners, what I do not accept, and—especially— what type of environment I am committed to creating. (Serrat, 2018b)

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Social Identity Theory and Its Contribution to the Growth and Development of Leaders We all have personal ideas of ourselves: what we look like, what we are like, how we think, how good (and less often bad) we are at certain things, etc.; most if not all of us reckon these self-assessments grew out of personal experiences. However, social psychologists have found that the most important determinant of self-concept (or self-image) is how others, especially groups, see us.2 In 1902, Cooley described the self-concept as the “looking-glass self,” meaning that a person’s self grows out of society’s interpersonal interactions and the perceptions of others (Cooley, 1902). Thence, from Tajfel’s (1978) conviction that membership of one or more social groups helps people instill meaning in social situations, Tajfel and Turner (1979) saw that social groups are an important source of belonging, pride, and self-esteem, with social identity the portion of an individual’s self-concept that is derived from perceived membership of a relevant social group (Turner & Oakes, 1986).3,4 Specifically, the social identity theory that Tajfel and Turner developed in the 1970s and 1980s aims, in the first instance, to specify and predict the circumstances under which individuals think of themselves as individuals or as group members; but, social identity theory also considers the consequences of personal and social identities for individual perceptions and group behavior, this on the basis of perceived differences in group status, the perceived legitimacy and stability of the differences, and the perceived ability to move from one group to another. And so, social identity theory posits that social behavior will vary along a continuum of interpersonal and intergroup behavior: in a group, entirely interpersonal behavior would be determined exclusively by the individual characteristics of and interpersonal relationships among only two persons entirely intergroup behavior would be determined solely by the social group memberships that apply to more than two persons. At each point along the interpersonal–intergroup continuum, there are implications for positive distinctiveness, individual mobility, social creativity, and social competition. A secondary group is one we choose to be a part of based on interests and activities: one joins a secondary group (or several of them) to perform functions 2 A social group is a collective of people who share certain characteristics, interact with one another,

accept expectations and obligations as members of the group, and thus defined by a common identity. A primary social group is archetypally small and characterized by personal and enduring relationships: examples include families, friends, peers, neighbors, and perhaps church members. A secondary group is generally large and characterized by impersonal and temporary relationships, often goal-oriented: examples include university classes, committees, and groups of co-workers. In general, secondary groups develop later in one’s life and are much less likely to be influential on an individual’s identity than primary social groups. 3 The term “social identity theory“ only gained currency in the late 1970s but the underlying concepts are as old as time. 4 To note, social identity does not equate with social categorization: in terms of that, I recognizably belong to certain age, cultural, ethnic, economic, gender, and other categories; but, deeming none salient, I have no interest in highlighting, emphasizing, or—the operative term—accentuating any of them.

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that may differ from group to group. With the advent of social media, a momentous change is taking place and revolutionizing the way we live, learn, work, and play. To wit, virtual social networks now exist in almost every conceivable domain, be it relationship-, interest-, transaction-, or fantasy-oriented. Here, there, and everywhere, Web 2.0 applications are enabling many-to-many connections powered—alphabetically—by blogs, image and video sharing, mashups, podcasts, ratings, Really Simple Syndication, social bookmarking, tweets, widgets, and wikis, among others. According to Super (1980), I am at the Maintenance (or Management) stage and therefore see more opportunities in such secondary groups than in primary groups. Over the last few years, by means of LinkedIn, I have developed a presence in relationship-oriented domains with like-minded professionals in the fields of leadership and management. To a larger extent, by means of Academia.edu and ResearchGate, I have been active in several interest-oriented domains.5 Toward my doctoral dissertation, I plan to draw survey participants through LinkedIn; I also intend to upload successive drafts on ResearchGate, invite comments, and post questions there; at other times, I will spin off assignments in personalized formats.

Business Success: Is Authentic Leadership Necessary and Sufficient? “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority,” said Lord Acton, a nineteenth century English historian. In the heydays of the British Empire, when East India companies were developing and imposing colonial rule, Lord Acton might more appropriately have referred to businessmen, some would suggest. But, what is new? Has it not always been the case that—especially in the hands of a skilled operator—power and authority can lead to unethical behavior? Is this not why, from the Greek philosophers (“Know thyself”) to the works of Shakespeare (“To thine own self be true”), authenticity has been explored throughout history? Even so, authentic leadership (and ethical leadership also if one makes a point of distinguishing the two) is a relatively recent addition to the corpus of leadership studies: the earliest texts were published in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It may be that the field of management theories is crowded; it may be that, in the new millennium, the challenges facing organizations invite a focus on what constitutes 5 The

domains include business model innovation, change management, communities of practice, digital, emergence, environmental management, evaluation, foresight, future studies, history, human resource management, governance, information and communication technology, innovation, knowledge culture, knowledge management, knowledge sharing, leadership, leadership development, management, natural resources, organizational culture, organizational design, organizational development, organizational learning, organizational theory, performance management, postmodernism, social media, strategic management, strategic planning, strategic thinking, sustainable development, team performance, and virtual organizations.

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genuine leadership; it may be that the Enron, Global Crossing, Tyco, and Worldcom debacles of 2001–2002 focused attention on the need for better corporate governance. To be authentic is to be true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character, with the implication (since one can be authentically evil) that such authenticity has ethical dimensions and is therefore worthy of acceptance or belief. However, as if this were not good enough, authentic leaders and their relations with others are at the hands of authentic leadership authorities characterized by nothing less than transparency, openness, and trust; guidance toward “worthy” objectives; and an emphasis on follower development (Gardner, Avolio, Luthans, May, & Walumbwa, 2005). In the literature, this too often means that authentic leaders must be good listeners, open and consistent, transparent, self-reflective, team-oriented, and visionary; they must be of good character; and they must draw upon experience, have healthy egos, and focus on possibilities. In my view, there is a “shifting the burden” archetype to all this: demanding superman qualities from leaders absolves us of responsibility for developing leadership capabilities more broadly in (or among) ourselves. Conversely, let us not turn a blind eye to the fact that “ordinary” people work with remarkable success all over the world without advertising superhuman characteristics in their leadership styles. In logic, necessity and sufficiency describe an implicational relationship between conditions (or statements). For instance, a condition can be necessary or sufficient without being the other; or, there can be simultaneous necessity and sufficiency. The reason behind recurrent calls for authentic leadership (or ethical leadership) is that—in business—the line between the profit motive and ethics sometime becomes blurred. Let us not delude ourselves: business will always, at the first opportunity, be accused of acting in its narrow self-interest instead of contributing more broadly to society: but, of course with exceptions, business is not deliberately trying to be untrue, unethical, or blind to social needs when its very success depends on meeting these. (Parenthetically, let us not forget that the morality of society itself has at times been deemed wanting in hindsight or real time.) From the foregoing, it follows easily that not every businessman or businesswoman is suspect and that authentic leadership is not necessarily detrimental to business. But, it does not follow that we should stop from promoting authentic leadership in others, beginning with ourselves, or that authentic leadership per se is sufficient. To further boost (not incorporate) authentic leadership in the course of self-development, I would eschew the kind of definition cited earlier: if it is to serve, a definition must be pithy; it must not be a laundry list. Specifically, I would recast authentic leadership as values-infused leadership to connote preoccupation with quality actions in respect of personal and organizational values. To my way of thinking, values-infused leaders are self-aware and genuine; they are mission-driven and dedicated to results; and, they lead from the heart. Because values-infused leadership demands action, I would continuingly confirm demonstration in practice and look for improvements.

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“Relationships” with Careers Social connection refers to the feeling that one belongs to a group, which generally entails feeling close to others. Aristotle observed in his Politics that Man is by nature a social animal and declared, unequivocally, that anyone who cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient that he or she does not need to is either a beast or a god. Of course, Aristotle was right: Man is a profoundly social species and the pleasures of social life affect us much as physical pleasure does; the drive to connect is embedded in our biology and, upstream of that, in our evolutionary history: scientific evidence demonstrates it is a core psychological need, essential to being satisfied with life, as Maslow (1943) posited in detail.6 For each of us, the inherent need for social connection begins at birth (when the relationship with our caregiver is an absolute necessity); thereafter, it conditions our lives and only ends with our demise.7 Quite appropriately, therefore, working as a means of social connection is the second major function of work on the word of Blustein (2006), who underscored thereby the way in which “working connects people to their social context and to interpersonal relationships“ (p. 22).8 Blustein (2006) saw that two dimensions define this element: “First, work furnishes us with a means of developing important social relationships and bonds” and “Second, working links people with a broader social milieu, thereby providing a structured means of relating to their proximal and distal social contexts” (p. 22). Blustein (2013) continued on the theme of working as a means of social connection in much the same way: “Working serves as one of the major theaters for interactions with others, including relationships that are supportive as well as relationships that are problematic. In addition, working provides an informal connection to the social world via the sense of contribution that people experience in their work” (Blustein, 2013, p. 8).9

6 From

the bottom of his hierarchy of human needs upwards, Maslow’s (1943) five-stage model included physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging needs, esteem needs, and selfactualization needs (and so one can see that the need for social connection underpins the third and fourth levels). (To note, the five-stage model can also be divided into deficiency needs and growth needs, with the first four levels in the first category and the top level in the second; hence, the third and fourth levels are associated with deficiency needs, which underscores their primacy.) Beyond self-actualization, Maslow (1993) later posited transcendence needs, meaning that a person can be motivated by values beyond the personal self (e.g., mystical experiences, certain experiences with nature, aesthetic experiences, service to others, the pursuit of science, religious faith, etc.); one can see that the need for social connection also finds traction there. 7 Relatedness takes multiple forms: family connections, friendships, romantic attachments, casual acquaintances, peer groups, work-based relationships, etc. 8 In Blustein (2006), working as a means for survival and power is the first function of work and working as a means of self-determination is the third. 9 Work leads to direct interpersonal interactions with a finite number of others (e.g., coworkers, clients, supervisees, and supervisors) and indirect links to society at large, which lets workers feel they are contributing to larger economic, political, and social worlds and thus connects them to broader cultural contexts (Blustein, 2011). Needless to say, inequalities, working arrangements, and other factors can—and often do—inhibit workers from fulfilling relational needs at work. Also,

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Summarizing, then, Blustein (2006) averred that the working context and relational world share considerable overlap; that supportive relationships (i.e., emotional, nurturance-based, and instrumental) are very likely helpful to people as they negotiate the complexities of work life; and that the nature of work connects people to the broader social context (p. 113). Comparing and contrasting with the experience of my work life gives reason to reprioritize the benefits that Blustein (2006) found in working as means of social connection. I was brought up in West Africa and— from the age of 15 or so—in England where I eventually obtained undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. In between universities, I had a stint as Assistant Cultural Attaché in the French Embassy in Indonesia. I then moved to Japan and practiced for half a dozen years in engineering consulting companies. The ground plan was to join an international organization at some point: when that happened, I developed in turn specialties in project design, project implementation, strategic planning, public relations, environmental management, evaluation, knowledge management, information and communication technology, and much else through working across sectors in many countries. I never sought the supportive emotional, nurturance-based, and instrumental relationships that Blustein (2006) ascribed weight to because, having established a reputation as a problem-solver, my tasks were almost always selfcontained; the explanation was that, for me, connection to the broader economic, environmental (especially), political, and social worlds was far more important than connecting to the organization I operated from—I used to say—in contrast to worked in. How so? I have always placed in the ENTP (Extroversion, Intuition, Thinking, Perception) personality type of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator assessment. Why I should have given so much time to global concerns is that ENTPs live in the world of possibilities. But, one downside, from the perspective of social connections, is that ENTPs can neglect close relationships when they pursue new ideas.

Leader Development Through Learning from Experience Correctly, McCall, Lombardo, and Morrison (1988)—cited in Day, Harrison, and Halpin (2009)—made much of the fact that—although generally recognized as important—the phenomenon of learning on the job had not received enough attention from researchers to enable people to make the most of it. The focus of McCall, Lombardo, and Morrison (1988) was executive (i.e., leader) development: toward the research, interviewees were asked to reflect on at least three key events in their careers and, predictably perhaps, responses underscored that on-the-job experiences had instilled more lessons than classroom experiences; but, more significantly, responses revealed also that what lessons were drawn owed more to self-reflection than to experiences per se. Subsequent research by McCauley, Ruderman, Ohlott, and Morrow (1994), also cited in Day et al. (2009), on what circumstances can activate on-the-job what social connections work affords usually detract from the enjoyment of others (e.g., family life), which evokes considerable stress.

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learning isolated the main categories of job transitions, task-related characteristics, and obstacles. Further research by McCauley and Brutus (1998), also cited in Day et al. (2009), concluded that assignments play a central role in leader development; that some are more developmental than others; and that different types of assignments are associated with different kinds of learning (Day et al., 2009, p. 135). Assessment, challenge, support, and the ability to learn ought, therefore, make experience more developmental, and the Center for Creative Leadership—which funded the research mentioned above—has since developed its own practical theory to maximize benefits from experiences in the leader development process, involving quantitative and qualitative components with attention to interactions between the two (Gurvis, McCauley, & Swofford, 2016). Of course, the Center for Creative Leadership’s insights are precious. But, potential contributions to learning from job transitions, task-related characteristics, and obstacles must still be factored in the hurly-burly of work experiences. And, even though they can in theory be educational, operational, and self-developmental, job experiences will in practice (and quite overwhelmingly) spring from a myriad distinct and concurrent operational activities that cannot be readily measured with the same yardstick even if one somehow found time for that. Further, experiential learning ought to entail learning before and during, not just after, which makes the need for appropriate tools, methods, and approaches even more exigent on the off-chance such can, as it should, be factored in. What is more, notwithstanding difficulties of measurement before, during, and after, experiential learning demands “synergetic transactions between the person and the environment” (Kolb & Kolb, 2005, p. 194); alas, the learning cycle of experiencing, reflecting, thinking, and acting can hardly be expected to eventuate if one does not operate in a learning organization per Senge (1990), who forewarned against the delusion of learning. [By delusion of learning, Senge (1990) meant it is impossible to learn from direct experience when actions have consequences beyond one’s learning horizon.] And yet, some organizations learn better than others, assuming surviving or thriving are the gauge10 : if the difficulties of learning from experience (such as those mentioned above) are not insurmountable, how then does the Center for Creative Leadership propose we should match its theory to each organization? Taking a perhaps more realistic account of the circumstances of working, Bandura (1997) posited vicarious (or social) learning, viz., learning that occurs through the observation and modeling of others, which may be how all learning begins. There is also a large body of work on learning from narratives, but less so of the corporate kind. In my work life, what important lessons I have drawn from experience always seemed an outcome of operational experiences from job transitions, task-related characteristics, and—especially—obstacles. (But, by what criteria are we to gauge importance? Does overcoming obstacles, and nothing else, equate with learning?) 10 As

said by Senge (1990), learning organizations are “… organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together” (p. 3).

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Elsewhere, I do not think that educational and self-developmental experiences ever gave me food for thought, perhaps if we agree with the Center for Creative Leadership because these experiences were never couched against an assessment, challenge, and support framework. (But, neither—for that matter—were my operational experiences.) Elsewhere still, excepting one role model whom I briefly observed from afar in formative years, I do not think that social learning contributed much either: most operational experiences were of a problem-solving nature while regular assignments followed the tried-and-tested formula of business processes, procedures, and “good practice,” aka routines. Lastly, I concur with Day et al. (2009) that narratives can help learn from others’ experience. I have a soft spot for storytelling: it enables articulation of emotional aspects as well as factual content; provides the broader context in which knowledge arises and so increases the potential for meaningful knowledge-sharing; and augments the likelihood that learning will take place and will be passed on because it grounds facts in a narrative structure (Serrat, 2008). And so, 10 and 8 years ago, respectively, I launched two storytelling initiatives: one led to a book providing very personal and human perspectives on the challenges of the development world; the outcome of the other was a multimedia platform (of about 500 videos) that chronicled accomplishments in sustainable development through the views and insights of staff and external stakeholders. So much for my work life: in my personal life, the learning style is decidedly visual (spatial), verbal (linguistic), and solitary (intrapersonal); much of it is based on reading.

Social Barriers and Working Devine (1995) acknowledged that social categorization helps human beings process information in stimuli-rich social and interpersonal circumstances but remarks also on the propensity of people to organize their perceptions of others according to irrelevant categories. Expanding on social categorization theory, Blustein (2006) highlighted racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, and ablism as so many social filters—barriers, really—that can “inhibit and even prevent the full expression of natural strivings to engage in meaningful and rewarding work” (p. 154), this because a frequent outcome of the pervasive process of social categorization is prejudice. More specifically, “The implicit hierarchy in which groups are viewed has created social barriers in which some groups have greater advantages than others based on demographic characteristic” (Blustein, 2006, p. 155). If the repercussions of iniquitous barriers on working and the psychological experience of working are not flagged, Blustein (2006) reasoned further, there can be no hope that individuals will ever fructify their talents; and there can, of course, be no hope that the three renewed functions of working in the twenty-first century that Blustein (2006) ardently sponsored—viz., working as a means of survival and power, working as a means of social connection, and working as a means of self-determination—will eventuate either. Reading Blustein (2006), it is difficult to imagine that anyone would ever disagree with the argument that social barriers create inequitable conditions for some but ease

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access to wealth and power for others are concerned, or that their removal is as urgent as the advancement of feminism, multiculturalism, and other social justice movements (Blustein, 2006, pp. 194–195). And yet, social barriers are alive and well here, there, and everywhere. The sad vignettes with which Blustein (2006) illustrated race and racism, gender and sexism, social class and classism, disabling conditions, sexual orientation diversity and heterosexism, etc. have a local, meaning, American, flavor, which does not surprise given the author’s origins; but, one social barrier that Blustein (2006) did not allude to has an international dimension. These days, many organizations profess they have no unintended discrimination and claim to be equal opportunity employers, often with some variant of “[Name of organization] is an equal opportunity employer” at the end of a job advertisement. International organizations are no exception to the equal opportunity employer movement, even adding that “Women are particularly encouraged to apply.” In these organizations, however an informal formula is applied whereby staff positions are apportioned to larger shareholding countries and senior management positions are filled likewise; thus, nationals of larger shareholding countries are found across grade levels for the purpose of eventually replacing senior compatriots. Blustein’s (2006) treatment of social barriers and working concluded with the pious hope that his book “will generate a body of knowledge that will ultimately inform social policy efforts to reduce and eradicate social barriers, by this means enhancing opportunities for people to feel empowered and engaged in their working lives” (p 195); he might have expressed the hope that “the truly deserving”—not just “people”—will one day feel empowered and engaged.

Integrating Adult, Leader, and Leadership Development in the Twenty-First Century Van Velsor, McCauley, and Ruderman (2010) defined leader development and leadership development, respectively, as “the expansion of a person’s capacity to be effective in leadership roles and processes” (2010, p. 2) and “the expansion of a collective’s capacity to produce direction, alignment, and commitment” (2010, p. 20). Day (2000) offered a similar distinction: “Leadership development is defined as expanding the collective capacity of organizational members to engage effectively in leadership roles and processes” (p. 582) while leader development is concerned with enhancing the capacity of individuals to engage successfully in leadership tasks and roles in organizations. The distinction between leader development and leadership development is subtle but telling: leader development has to do with human capital and leadership development has to do with social capital; this summons practical and research insights into how individual-based knowledge, skills, and abilities might be developed both singly and in unison with network-based knowledge, skills, and abilities to create organizational value (Day, 2000, p. 585). That said, the distinction having been made,

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this précis entry is contextualized by the felt need to integrate approaches to adult, leader, and leadership development in a fast-changing and interconnected world that demands more individual and collective contributions than ever before. The individual and collective dimensions that both distinguish and associate adult, leader, and leadership development are at the heart of the personal philosophy of leadership development mentioned earlier. Even so, personal definitionscum-philosophies of leadership are but statements of understanding or intent: they must be tested if they are to gain traction in the outside world. Therefore, I have borne that personal definition-cum-philosophy in mind for the purpose of self-development and scrutinized its expansive expression for possible limitations in conceptual, practice, and research contexts. Does the personal definition-cum-philosophy of leadership, for example, accommodate the concerns raised by such questions as: How do external factors shape adult and leadership development? What role, if any, do gender and other individual differences play in adult and leadership development? What is the role of work and vocation in adult and leadership development? To what extent can individuals influence and shape their own experiences during the adult development years? If adult development influences vocational expertise, does vocational leadership experience affect social experiences? Conceivably, elements of responses to these and suchlike questions can help integrate adult, leader, and leadership development in the twenty-first century. Without a doubt, external factors shape adult, leader, and leadership development. In a globalizing world characterized by job insecurity and—paradoxically—isolation, workers have no choice but to explore a wider, more inclusive, comprehensive, and diverse world of work than before and be open to possibilities for growth, learning, and change (Covey, 2004). In the literature, “boundaryless,” “portfolio,” and “protean” are terms that imply the necessity for individuals to ongoingly develop their human capital and trade job security for employability (Hall & Associates, 1996). For many, career choice and career development are a thing of the past: in view of that, Blustein (2006) repositioned work, three-fold, as a means of survival and power, a means of social connection, and a means of self-determination. Moving beyond the confines of vocational counselling, to cite but one other response to the modern preponderance of external factors in work lives, the American Psychological Association (2016) instructed psychologists to strive to understand how economic, legal, and social factors can impact opportunities for and barriers to employment and how they subsequently alter career trajectories. Of course, adult development is not the only going concern: in a world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, leader and leadership development must at long last eschew myopic fascination with mainstream theories of leadership—many of which such as transactional and transformational leadership still smack of command and control 100 years after Taylor—and concentrate instead on making leadership happen throughout organizations as an output. Of course, individual differences also play a role in adult and leader development. Super (1980) proposed that—across their entire lifespan—people go through five developmental stages: (a) Growth (0–14), with emphasis on physical growth, forming the self-concept, and exploring early interests and abilities; (b) Exploration

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(15–24), with emphasis on exploring different areas of work, beginning to focus on a specific career direction, getting specialized training, and beginning to engage in work; (c) Establishment (25–44), with emphasis on settling into a career field, making contributions to the field, and achieving higher levels of responsibility; (d) Maintenance (or Management) (45–64), with emphasis on maintaining a job position, updating skills as needed to stay competitive, and planning for retirement; and (e) Decline (or Disengagement) (65 +), with emphasis on gradually separating from work and engaging in other projects such as leisure, time with family, and community activities. Super’s (1980) insights are likely to perdure, and so continue to impact both adult and leader development. But, lengthening lifespans will test the ambit of the development stages that Super (1980) particularized, particularly regarding what he termed the Maintenance (or Management) stage and the Decline (or Disengagement) stage. Elsewhere, racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, and ablism are so many outcomes of social categorization, meaning to both focus on and denigrate individual differences, that can curtail (or prevent) aspirations to engage in meaningful and rewarding work: removing social barriers must be on a par with feminism, multiculturalism, and other social justice movements. For sure, to note but one, the rise in female labor force participation rates demands action to offset inequities such as the “Glass Ceiling” and the gender wage gap. The average American worker now works 44 h a week (or 8.8 h a day Monday to Friday), up from 40 h a week in 2000 (and above the peak of 42 h a week in 1950): therefore, the role of work and vocation in adult, leader, and leadership development is important. Certainly, recasting work as a means of survival and power, social connection, and self-determination opens rich vistas for career development, counseling, and public policy. But, Blustein (2006) rightly cautioned that “We … developed our previous psychologies of work from vastly different social conditions, at a time when the needs of society were very much rooted in an industrial era that fostered a great deal of regularity and constancy in work lives” (p. 25). Some might say that Blustein’s (2006) emphasis on working as a means of social connection was itself obsolete: there is a long history of alienation among workers performing routine functions in rote fashion; alienation can be traced to the development of agriculture, which fixed people in man-made environments. Today, FlexJobs reports that half of all American employees work remotely at least half of the week (Flexjobs Corporation, n.d.). But, the increasing virtualization of work is a global phenomenon: if direct interpersonal interactions at work continue to dwindle it will be necessary to further develop indirect links to society at large—which let workers feel they are contributing to larger economic, political, and social worlds—and also offset lack of social interactions by participating in interest groups or other social groups. Likewise, to be more relevant to the twenty-first century workplace and specifically to the role of work and vocation in adult, leader, and leadership development, Super’s (1957) developmental view of career development must, above all, be enriched by the concept of adaptability (Herr, 1997). But, for fuller interpretation and application of the role of work and vocation in adult, leader, and leadership development, concerns other than adaptability in the whirlwind of globalization must also find their place. A contemporary concern is that power—even if survival remain the primary

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concern of hundreds of millions of people—can no longer be the ultimate goal of vocational extension for the privileged; with the spread of common ethical principles, the time has come for internal impetus, moral development, and moral behavior. Rest (1986) delineated the four essential psychological processes of moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral motivation, and implementation as determinants of the link between moral reasoning and ethical behavior: in consequence, ethical behavior is ever more it seems seen as a function of environmental influences, which makes the field of study of moral development quite rich with practical implications for adult, leader, and leadership development. There is growing interest too in how work might become more meaningful: Deci and Ryan’s (1985) self-determination theory underscored the need for autonomy, relatedness, and competence in context but Blustein (2006) pointed also to the need for value congruence and, vitally, the need for access to the opportunity structure. Another modern concern revolves around the concept of “thinking about knowing”: for adult, leader, and leadership development, we should all want to develop cognition mapping by means of heuristics, schemas, and cognitive complexity; exemplify related abilities in our working life (as elsewhere); and sharpen our understanding of how—considering the varying circumstances of their work days—leaders engage in sense-making. Recognizing that leadership is not, expressly, a cognitive endeavor, Day et al. (2009) argued persuasively that thinking is for doing, that adaptive behavior hinges on accurate sensemaking, and that cognition grows from experience (p. 117). Of the essence also in the Age of Knowledge is the idea of “wisdom”: Day et al. (2009) remarked that, excepting Sternberg’s (2003) WICS model—WICS stands for wisdom, intelligence, and creativity, synthesized— the leader or leadership development literature has not paid much attention to wisdom (p. 223). The argument behind the WISC model is that “One is not ‘born’ a leader. Rather, wisdom, intelligence, and creativity are, to some extent, forms of developing expertise“ (Sternberg, 2003, p. 386). The WISC model jives with Sternberg’s (1985) view of intelligence as how well individuals deal with environmental changes throughout lifespan, toward which he postulated the triarchic theory of intelligence: componential (analytical), experiential (creative), and practical (contextual); how andragogy can advance Sternberg’s (1985) definition of intelligence is a research need with practical implications. There ought to be fascinating overlap also with Van Velsor, McCauley, and Ruderman (2010), who recommended that three key questions be raised when designing experiential developmental opportunities: “How might this experience build on and deepen … existing abilities? How might this experience broaden … capacity by adding new skills and perspectives? Which processes and systems would aid the transfer of … lessons of experience and benefit the broader enterprise?” (p. 82). Aside from Sternberg (1985, 2003), Day et al. (2009) noted that the only other approach to wisdom that conceptualizes it as an expert knowledge system is the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm proposed by Baltes and Staudinger (2000). The Berlin Wisdom Paradigm concerns itself with the fundamental pragmatics of life and considers wisdom “the pinnacle of insight into the human condition and about the means and ends of a good life” (Baltes & Staudinger, 2000, p. 122). The key message that one can take to both heart and mind is that, as envisaged by the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm, wisdom is a means to an end (and not an end per se) that must

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find application (pursuant to activation and organization) and that the beneficiaries of the application of wisdom should be others just as much as oneself (if not more). Clearly, wisdom is more than knowledge: it is experiential knowledge that, somehow, enables people to make virtuous judgments for the common good; but, how does the turn come? Life experiences, coaching, and age cannot be all there is to it. What are (some of) the micro- and macrofactors and processes, using the language of the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm, that must collaborate to generate wisdom? We saw that competence in context—together with autonomy, relatedness, value congruence, and access to the opportunity structure—conduces self-determination. But, the process of developing competence is complex, developmental, and must extend over the course of adult and leadership development (Day et al., 2009); therefore, more than ever before, individuals must influence and shape their own experiences with care for identity and self-regulation processes. Help is at hand: Day et al. (2009) integrative theory of leader development is articulated around expertise, identity, and adult development processes; it is self-evidently comprehensive, with cornerstones that are complementary and mutually reinforcing. On-the-job experiences combined with assessment, challenge, and support can particularly enhance the ability to learn, especially if approaches are systemic rather than events-based (McCauley, Van Velsor, & Ruderman, 2010). But, this is where the difficulty lies: individuals are assumed to be willing and able but (unless they are particularly well resourced) organizations are limited by internal operating systems and may not— owing to the number of individuals, their different stages of development, and the sheer variety of work experiences—be able to orchestrate actions for adult development. In short, accepting limitations, what is urgently needed is advice on such essentials as aligning adult, leader, and leadership development and organizational strategy; identifying the desired outcomes of adult, leader, and leadership development; determining the sequencing of inputs to adult, leader, and leadership development; and, last but not least, instituting social and organizational contexts that enable adult, leader, and leadership development. Adult, leader, and leadership development presupposes also that vocational leadership experience can affect social experience. Through the act of leading, what identity has been forged by vocational experience can facilitate the communication of vision and the motivating, directing, and supporting of colleagues; indeed, leaders with well-developed identities will actively seek out experiences that enact leadership (Day et al., 2009). As leadership competencies develop, the likelihood of a leader’s identity crystalizing increases and—in a mutually reinforcing spiral—further supports the motivation to lead, learn more about learning, transmute individualbased knowledge, skills, and abilities into network-based knowledge, skills, and abilities, and thus transform the social experience itself. Towers Watson (2013) advised its corporate clients that agile thinking, authenticity and responsiveness, change leadership, collaborative problem solving, digital business skills, and global operating skills are competencies that will be required in leaders of the future. Granted that Towers Watson (2013) spoke to an elite, it is not clear why such competencies should only be required of leaders tomorrow when they

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might here and now constitute terms of reference for a great many workers in industrialized and newly industrialized economies. Regardless, the point is that Tower Watson’s (2013) language illustrated for a growing number of workers in a growing number of countries the chasm that separates the twenty-first century from the world of working in the second half of the last century: integrating adult, leader, and leadership development, for instance along the themes developed here, has become the responsibility of each and every. Having revisited the personal philosophy of leadership development with which this précis opened in light of the five questions considered earlier, I find it an even trustier statement of understanding and intent, connoting among others connection, expertise, identity for adult, leader, and leadership development in a self-avowedly modern psychology of working. For continuing self-development, I look to further cultivating self-discovery, for example by evaluating methodologies that support the development of emotional intelligence, and researching the wisdom of leadership.

References Baltes, P., & Staudinger, U. (2000). Wisdom: A metaheuristic (pragmatic) to orchestrate mind and virtue toward excellence. American Psychologist, 55(1), 122–136. Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: W H Freeman/Times Books/Henry Holt & Co. Blustein, D. (2006). The psychology of working: A new perspective for career development, counseling, and public policy. New York, NY: Routledge. Blustein, D. (2011). A relational theory of working. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 79(1), 1–17. Blustein, D. (2013). The psychology of working: A new perspective for a new era. In D. Blustein (Ed.), Oxford handbooks online. Retrieved from http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10. 1093/oxfordhb/9780199758791.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199758791-e-001. Cooley, C. (1902). Human nature and the social order. New York, NY: C. Scribner’s Sons. Covey, S. (2004). The 7 habits of highly effective people: Restoring the character ethic. New York, NY: The Free Press. Cunliffe, A. (2009). The philosopher leader. Management Learning, 40(1), 87–101. Day, D. (2000). Leadership development: A review in context. Leadership Quarterly, 11, 581–613. Day, D., Harrison, M., & Halpin, S. (2009). An integrative approach to leader development: Connecting adult development, identity, and expertise. New York, NY: Psychology Press. Deci, E., & Ryan, R. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York, NY: Plenum. Devine, P. (1995). Prejudice and out-group perception. In A. Tesser (Ed.), Advanced Social Psychology (pp. 467–524). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill. Eisenhower, D. (1957). A speech to the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference in Washington, D.C., November 14. In D. Eisenhower (Ed.), Public papers of the presidents of the United States, National Archives and Records Service, Government Printing Office, p. 818. Flexjobs Corporation. (n.d.). Flexjobs. Retrieved from https://www.flexjobs.com/. Gardner, W., Avolio, B., Luthans, F., May, D., & Walumbwa, F. (2005). “Can you see the real me?” A self-based model of authentic leader and follower development. The Leadership Quarterly, 16(3), 343–372. Gurvis, J., McCauley, C., & Swofford, M. (2016). Putting experience at the center of talent management [White Paper]. Center for Creative Leadership. Retrieved from https://www.ccl.org/articles/ white-papers/putting-experience-center-talent-management/.

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Hall, D., & Associates (Eds.). (1996). The career is dead—Long live the career: A relational approach to careers. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Handy, C. (1991). The age of unreason. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Herr, E. (1997). Super’s life-span, life-space approach and its outlook for refinement. The Career Development Quarterly, 45(3), 238–246. Kolb, A., & Kolb, D. (2005). Learning styles and learning spaces: Enhancing experiential learning in higher education. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 4(2), 193–212. Maslow, A. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396. Maslow, A. (1993). The farther reaches of human nature. New York, NY: Arkana. McCall, M., Lombardo, M., & Morrison, A. (1988). The lessons of experience: How successful executives develop on the job. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. McCauley, C., & Brutus, S. (1998). Management development through job assignments: An annotated bibliography. Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership. McCauley, C., Ruderman, M., Ohlott, P., & Morrow, J. (1994). Assessing the developmental components of managerial jobs. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79(4), 544–560. McCauley, C., Van Velsor, E., & Ruderman, M. (2010). Introduction: Our viewpoint of leadership development. In E. Van Velsor, C. McCauley, & M. Ruderman (Eds.), The center for creative leadership handbook of leadership development (3rd ed., pp. 1–26). San Francisco, CA: JosseyBass. Rest, J. (1986). Moral development: Advances in research and theory. New York, NY: Praeger. Schwartz, S. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 1–65. Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York, NY: Doubleday/Currency. Serrat, O. (2008). Storytelling. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Serrat, O. (2018a). Outline of a personal leadership development plan. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Serrat, O. (2018b). Personal philosophy of leadership. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Sternberg, R. (1985). Beyond IQ: A triarchic theory of intelligence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. (2003). WICS: A model of leadership in organizations. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2, 386–401. Super, D. (1957). The psychology of careers. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Super, D. (1980). A life-span, life-space, approach to career development. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 13, 282–298. Tajfel, H. (1978). Differentiation between social groups. Studies in the social psychology of intergroup relations. London, UK: Academic Press. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. (1979). An integrative theory of inter-group conflict. In W. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of inter-group relations (pp. 33–47). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. Towers Watson. (2013). Developing the 21st century leader. Perspectives. Retrieved from https://www.towerswatson.com/en-US/Insights/IC-Types/Ad-hoc-Point-of-View/2013/10/ developing-the-21st-century-leader. Turner, J., & Oakes, P. (1986). The significance of the social identity concept for social psychology with reference to individualism, interactionism, and social influence. British Journal of Social Psychology, 25(3), 237–252. Van Velsor, E., McCauley, C., & Ruderman, M. (Eds.). (2010). The center for creative leadership handbook of leadership development (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

The Reflective Judgment Model: What Role in Leader Development?

Abstract This précis outlines the Reflective Judgment model, defines its seven stages, notes the basis for their articulation as a developmental process, flags intrinsic and extrinsic limitations, and ponders a desired relationship between cognitive development, leader development, and organization-wide learning.

A Cognitive Development Toolbox Epistemic cognition, critical thinking, and reflective judgment go a long way: if nothing is more tragic than ignorance in action, as Goethe aptly put it, the alternative is to develop the ability to interpret and assess situations and take requisite action. Kitchener (1983), who introduced the term into the literature, defined epistemic cognition as “individual understanding of knowledge itself; the process an individual invokes to monitor the epistemic nature of problems and the truth value of alternative solutions” (p. 298).1 To Kitchener (1983), epistemic cognition, which describes an understanding of the limits, certainty, and criteria of thought, was the highest level of thinking. The others are cognition, which describes the basic processing of thought, and meta-cognition, in which an individual can monitor his/her progress in learning (Kitchener, 1983). Quintessentially, therefore, epistemic cognition invites individuals to reflect upon the sources of their learning; the certainty of the truth of their learning (i.e., absolute or relative); the simplicity or complexity of knowledge; and the justifications for that knowledge (Day, Harrison, & Halpin, 2009, p. 86). Critical thinking, about which much more is usually said, has ancient roots in the “Socratic Method”, viz., argumentative but cooperative dialogue bent on asking and answering questions. Particularizing, critical thinking is about searching for evidence, analyzing underlying concepts, scrutinizing reasoning and assumptions, and tracing the implications and repercussions not only of what is said but of what is The Reflective Judgment Model: What Role in Leader Development? was completed on March 27, 2019. 1 Other have defined epistemic cognition more simply, for example as “the ways that people acquire,

justify, and use knowledge“ (Greene, Cartiff, & Duke, 2018, p. 1). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_27

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done as well. As a process of inquiry, critical thinking is conscious, deliberate, and cognitive: it supports goal-directed behavior and so, unlike epistemic cognition, has associated training suggestions. Reflective judgment, the third element in the cognitive development toolbox, is predicated after Dewey (1933) in particular on the assumption that some problems are ill-structured and so cannot be framed let alone addressed with certainty; hence, “reflective thinking requires the continual evaluation of beliefs, assumptions, and hypotheses against existing data and against other plausible interpretations of the data (King & Kitchener, 1994, p. 7).2 Thus, while epistemic cognition and critical thinking are unapologetically about knowing, particularly the process of that in the latter instance, reflective judgment wisely acknowledges that views might subsequently be falsified (but also conversely enriched) by supplementary data and information (King & Kitchener, 1994).

Quid Reflective Judgment? Per King and Kitchener (1994), the conceptual framework for reflective judgment is a stage model. Specifically, the Reflective Judgment model is characterized by seven distinct, but developmentally related, sets of assumptions about the process of knowing and how knowledge is acquired: the Reflective Judgment model entail pre-reflective (Stages 1–3), quasi-reflective (Stages 4 and 5), and reflective (Stages 6 and 7) periods of thinking.3 “In the pre-reflective reasoning period, … assumptions center on the belief that knowledge is gained through the word of an authority figure or through first-hand observation or evaluation of evidence“ (Day et al., 2009, p. 90). “In the quasi-reflective reasoning period, people recognize that knowledge, or more accurately claims about knowledge, contains elements of uncertainty (Day et al., 2009, p. 90). “In the reflective period, a core assumption is that no knowledge claims can be made with absolute certainty”; however, eschewing analysis paralysis, 2 Well-structured

problems (e.g., algebraic equations) are problems that are defined completely and can ultimately be resolved with certainty. In contrast, ill-structured problems (e.g., hunger, inflation, overpopulation, pollution, etc.) are problems that “cannot be described with a high degree of completeness or solved with a high degree of certainty” (King & Kitchener, 1994, p. 10). 3 Summarizing, the essence of each stage of reasoning is: (a) Stage 1—”I know what I have seen.”; (b) Stage 2—”If it is on the news, it has to be true.”; (c) Stage 3—”When there is evidence that people can give to convince everybody one way or another, then it will be knowledge, until then, it’s just a guess.”; (d) Stage 4—”I’d be more inclined to believe evolution if they had proof. It’s just like the pyramids: I don’t think we’ll ever know. Who are you going to ask? No one was there.”; (e) Stage 5—”People think differently and so they attack the problem differently. Other theories could be as true as my own, but based on different evidence.”; (f) Stage 6—”It’s very difficult in this life to be sure. There are degrees of sureness. You come to a point at which you are sure enough for a personal stance on the issue.”; and (g) Stage 7—”One can judge an argument by how well thought-out the positions are, what kinds of reasoning and evidence are used to support it, and how consistent the way one argues on this topic is as compared with other topics.” (King & Kitchener, 2002).

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reflective thinkers make judgments they feel are reasonably certain (Day et al., 2009, p. 91). King and Kitchener (1994) concluded that a stage model was the most appropriate framework for conceptualizing the Reflective Judgment model because it captures the observed consistency between defining components of the model that reflect an underlying, organized structure; delineates the qualitative differences between the seven sets of assumptions; and provides a framework for observed sequential changes in the emergence of epistemic assumptions. Not surprisingly, ergo the theory that moving up levels is—intrinsically—a developmental process, King and Kitchener (1994) as educationalists held the—rather stern—view that the real challenge of education was “… empowering individuals to know that the world is far more complex than it first appears, and that they must make interpretive arguments and decision judgments that entail real consequences for which they must take responsibility and from which they may not flee by disclaiming expertise“ (King & Kitchener, 1994, p. 1). That said, most individuals appear to use two or occasionally three (typically adjacent) stages, depending on circumstances. Notwithstanding its intuitive appeal, reflective judgment is prey to attribution errors, confirmation bias, certainty, and source reliability, which raises questions about how best to develop it in individuals.4 Moreover, the Reflective Judgment model does not say anything about ethnicity, gender, race, or other demographic factors that, by means of inequalities, likely affect development. Elsewhere still, King and Kitchener admit that research on the relationship between personality and the development of reflective judgment is still “in its infancy” (King & Kitchener, 2002, p. 53).

The Reflective Judgment Model: What Role in Leader Development? All the same, epistemic cognition, critical thinking, and reflective judgment speak to leader development. In a globalizing world beset by economic, environmental, political, and social problems, all of them ill-structured and therefore complex if not chaotic, leaders simply cannot rely on prior training and experience. For sure, ill-structured problems cast doubt on the efficacy (and before that sheer relevance) of well-recognized decision-making processes, invite better awareness of the limits and uncertainty of knowledge, and demand reinterpretation of the leader’s agency in events. The Great Man Theory that Thomas Carlyle promoted and many still 4 To

illustrate, the forces commonly arraigned against reflective judgment include ad hominem attacks, which aim to discredit an argument by harming the good reputation of the person advancing it; the bandwagon fallacy, which claims that the popularity of an idea is a good enough reason for accepting it; appeals to antiquity (or tradition), which assert that a traditional idea must be true because it has been around for a while; the straw man fallacy, which misrepresents a position to make it appear weaker than it actually is; and post hoc ergo propter hoc arguments, which claim that because one thing occurred after another it must have been caused by it.

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enthuse about no longer satisfies: in stark contrast to the cornucopia of qualities that many, quite mechanically, continue to attribute to leaders (e.g., ambitious, authentic, charismatic, empowering, ethical, humble, inspiring, visionary, etc.), Yukl (2013), for one, identified that three deeply interconnected variables help understand leadership but also condition its effectiveness: (a) characteristics of leaders, (b) characteristics of followers, and—evermore so it seems—(c) characteristics of the situation (p. 10). Bolden, Gosling, Hawkins, and Taylor (2011), to cite other dissenting views that open wide vistas for leader development, noted that “Leadership has variously been presented as a ‘science’, ‘art’ or ‘craft’, and conceptual clarity has proved elusive” (p. 38). Next, Bolden et al. (2011) both audaciously and comprehensively (re)defined leadership as “(1) a process, (2) of social influence, (3) to guide, structure, and/or facilitate, (4) behaviors, activities, and/or relationships, (5) towards the achievement of shared aims” (p. 21). Unmistakably, new-era definitions of leadership such as Yukl’s (2013) and Bolden et al.’s (2011) are a clarion call for leader development. That said, if there is—as there must—be a role for the Reflective Judgment model in leader development, however, this must be in association (or at least in close parallel) with long-term developmental inputs, not training, in epistemic cognition and critical thinking, the other elements in the cognitive development toolbox; where possible, and with an accent on functionality (not optimality), such leader development would entail formal education, on-the-job assignments, and self-directed development. But, there is another side to the reinterpretation of the leader’s agency in events, mentioned earlier, and to the enlargement of the concept and practice of leadership. Noting that, in the twenty-first century, organizations must increasingly be concerned with leadership modes—not just (if at all) with leadership styles—there is a need to decentralize (or rather distribute) cognitive development organizationwide and promote both reflecting on action and reflecting in action.5 After-action reviews and retrospects, dialog on ill-structured problems, electronic discussion groups, exit interviews, Future Search conferencing, group problem-solving, guided reflections, learning histories, meta-cognitive reflection, peer assists, personal journaling/microblogging, premortems, retreats, Socratic dialogue, and not least of all use-modeling of reflective judgment (based on difficulty, complexity, and structuredness of problems), to name but a few tools, methods, and approaches of knowledge management, should be the bread-and-butter of Senge’s (2006) vision of a learning organization.6 If leader development thusly distributes cognitive development, distributed leadership may at long last herald the appearance of what Raelin

5 Leadership

modes are administrative, adaptive, and enabling leadership—and combinations thereof—that need not be person-centered. Leadership modes are distinct from leadership styles, be they—say—autocratic, bureaucratic, charismatic, situational, transactional, or transformational. 6 Knowledge management is about identifying, creating, storing, sharing, and using knowledge to improve organizational performance. With a view to learning before, during, and after, knowledge management has applications across the five disciplines of systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning.

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(2003) termed “leaderful” organizations, where capacitated and empowered individuals concurrently and collectively participate in leading and leaderful practice dispels the idea of leadership “being out in front” (Raelin, 2005, p. 18).

References Bolden, R., Gosling, J., Hawkins, B., & Taylor, S. (2011). Exploring leadership: Individual, organizational, and societal perspectives. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Day, D., Harrison, M., & Halpin, S. (2009). An integrative approach to leader development: Connecting adult development, identity, and expertise. New York, NY: Psychology Press. Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. Boston, MA: D.C. Heath & Co Publishers. Greene, J., Cartiff, B., & Duke, R. (2018). A meta-analytic review of the relationship between epistemic cognition and academic achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 110(8), 1084–1111. King, P., & Kitchener, K. (1994). Developing reflective judgment: Understanding and promoting intellectual growth and critical thinking in adolescents and adults. San Francisco, CA: JosseyBass. King, P., & Kitchener, K. (2002). The Reflective Judgment Model: Twenty years of research on epistemic cognition. In B. Hofer & P. Pintrich (Eds.), Personal epistemology: The psychology of beliefs about knowledge and knowing (pp. 37–61). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Kitchener, K. (1983). Cognition, meta-cognition, and epistemic cognition: A three-level model of cognitive processing. Human Development, 26, 222–232. Raelin, J. (2003). Creating leaderful organizations: How to bring out leadership in everyone. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler. Raelin, J. (2005). We the leaders: In order to form a leaderful organization. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 12(2), 18–30. Senge, P. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Currency/Doubleday. Yukl, G. (2013). Leadership in organizations (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Professional Development

Analyzing the Logic of Articles and Textbooks: Essentials and Practicum

Abstract This précis demonstrates how one can in written form apply intellectual standards such as clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic, significance, and fairness to analyze and evaluate the reasoning behind an article or textbook.

To analyze and evaluate thinking, one can apply intellectual standards such as clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic, significance, and fairness to its parts. For example, we can ask whether the purpose and question of an article or textbook are clear, the information relevant and accurate, the inferences and implications logical, the assumptions and concepts justifiable, the point of view relevant, etc.

Introduction Paul and Elder (2008) proposed that thinking critically involves three things: (i) an attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one’s experiences, (ii) knowledge of methods of logical inquiry and reasoning, and (iii) some skill in applying those methods. To analyze and evaluate reasoning Paul and Elder (2008) urged that we should focus on its parts: the purpose of the thinking; the key question the thinking is pursuing; the data, information, and evidence being used; the inferences and conclusions being made; the relevant concepts and theories as well as the author’s take on these; the assumptions that underlie the thinking; the implications and consequences if we accept the line of reasoning; and the point of view presented. Using Paul and Elder’s 8-point template, this précis demonstrates how the logic of a document can be assessed in written form, here in the case of Balyer (2012), an article selected at random.

Analyzing the Logic of Articles and Textbooks: Essentials and Practicum was completed on September 8, 2017. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_28

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The Logic of “Transformational Leadership Behaviors of School Principals: A Qualitative Research Based on Teachers’ Perceptions” 1. Purpose The main purpose of Balyer (2012), revealed on the third page of an 11-page submission to the International Online Journal of Educational Sciences, was “to discover the level of transformational leadership behaviors that [in the Turkish system of education] school principals demonstrate during their administrative practices on [a] daily basis”. The secondary purpose of the article is less clear: rephrasing for intelligibility at the risk of misinterpreting, the article hopes the findings will inform the ways school principals are selected and how training programs might be designed. Presumably, the main purpose of the article springs from the author’s (unsubstantiated) claims (backed by referencing the work of many similarly-inclined researchers) that from “idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individualized consideration[,] and intellectual stimulation”, transformational leadership is best placed to “make any organization a better performing place”, especially in schools where transformational leadership behaviors have become more important [and] “are the dynamics of change for the society in which they operate” [sic]. 2. Question The key question that Balyer (2012) hoped to address was clarification of the extent to which—or “level” at which in Balyer’s (2012) own words—transformational leadership behaviors are demonstrated by school principals in their daily practice. “Transformational leadership”, “school principals”, and “school administration”, the keywords for Balyer (2012), would seem to confirm the intent and dimensions of the question. 3. Data, Information, and Evidence The data gathering on which Balyer (2012) was based was qualitative. The participants were 30 teachers from 6 different schools, selected by using “a purposive sampling method described as the best used with small numbers of individuals or groups which may well be sufficient for understanding human perceptions, problems, needs, behaviors[,] and contexts, which are the main justification for a qualitative audience research“. The participants were first approached by electronic mail and then interviewed over approximately 50–60 min. The following semi-structured questions, the correspondence among which was not explained in Balyer (2012), were raised: • • • • •

Does your school principal consider your needs before his[her] own needs? Does s/he use power for personal gain? Does s/he demonstrate high moral standards? Does s/he set challenging goals for her/his followers? Does s/he display enthusiasm and optimism?

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Does s/he involve the followers in envisioning attractive future states? Does s/he communicate high expectations? Does s/he demonstrate commitment to the goals? Does s/he behave individuals as if they are special people? Does s/he act as a coach or mentor to develop her/his followers’ potential? Does s/he stimulate followers to be innovative and creative?

To note, Balyer (2012) recognized that all participants were volunteers: therefore, Balyer (2012) acknowledged that they are not necessarily representatives of other teachers in other schools and that “caution should be exercised when attempting to infer about any of the results with regard to other populations”. Balyer (2012) mentioned also that its author was the main instrument of data analysis, so that interpretation was based on his knowledge and social location; therefore, “the theoryladen nature of the investigation can be a recognized limitation as well as its strength”. Why Balyer (2012) would want ex-ante to so openly (yet vaguely) limit its inferences and conclusions was not explained. (The section where Balyer’s (2012) shortcomings are conceded is titled Trustworthiness and Rigor.) 4. Inferences and Conclusions The main inference/conclusion of Balyer (2012), drawn from the 11 questions raised, is that “ … teachers’ opinions concerning their principals’ transformational leadership behaviors are positive in general. It can also be inferred that female principals’ behaviors are perceived more polite than male colleagues” (p. 588). From this, Balyer (2012) settled that: • Principals have important influences on student and teachers’ performance, so principal candidates should be trained as transformational leaders during their college trainings. • Principals have to deal with heavy official procedures which take too much time. This could be reduced by empowering school managements with co-principalship. • Current principals should be supported to be transformational leaders with inservice trainings prepared by university–ministry cooperation. • Principals should be asked to have a degree from educational administration field to be eligible for that post in the future. • Principals should be chosen and appointed to their posts based on their qualities and qualifications without any political manipulations (p. 588). 5. Concepts and Theories The key concept we are to understand from Balyer (2012) is that “transformational leadership behaviors, such as idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation are positively related to greater employee acceptance, better performance, and increased job satisfaction at schools. Basically, these effects are vision building, high performance expectations, developing consensus about group goals and intellectual stimulation. Therefore, transformational leadership is very substantial for schools to move forward. However, it is

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an ongoing matter of discussion whether principals demonstrate this characteristics [sic] properly, which is main [sic] concern of this study” (p. 588). We are, of course, meant to understand that idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation—the list belongs to Bass (1985)—equate with transformational leadership, however wide-ranging the characteristics of that have been recognized to be in time and space. We are also to understand that there is no leadership unless it is transformational. 6. Assumptions The main assumption underlying Balyer’s (2012) thinking is that, however arbitrarily it is defined, transformational leadership is the only kind of leadership. And yet, from the four (overlapping) characteristics reported, the traits of transformational leadership can only be considered so wide-ranging that no one could possibly be trained in their development. 7. Implications and Consequences The implications and consequences, if we take Balyer’s (2012) line of reasoning seriously, is that there is no room for styles of leadership that might include, say, contingency leadership, distributed leadership (which, incidentally, has been welcomed in schools), or transactional leadership (or a mix thereof). Must we await, on bended knee, the appearance of some Great Man à la Mahatma Gandhi or Moses? “No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings”, said Drucker (1946, p. 26). So, if only because modern times throw so many challenges to organizations, it is probably best to ignore Balyer’s (2012) reasoning and investigate how “ordinary” people can lead in the workplace. Thankfully, perhaps, it is in any event difficult to see how the five conclusions in Balyer (2012) relate to transformational leadership and how it might be advanced (if that were warranted). 8. Point of View The single point of view presented in Balyer (2012) is that school administrators can only cope with a rapidly changing world if they develop “abilities such as being team-oriented, strong communicators, team players, problem solvers, changemakers[,] and transformational leaders” (p. 581). If this is, for sure, how Balyer (2012) saw things, it is however difficult to understand what that article was looking at: Balyer (2012) never represented the reality of the Turkish system of education (even less that of “the world” and the two are in any case surely not equal). What exactly was it about the Turkish system of education (systems might be a better word) that calls for transformational leadership? And, has transformational leadership delivered results in other education systems of the world?

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Conclusion Without doubt, transformational leadership is necessary in instances; more often than not, such instances tend to be dire, hence the appeal of heroic leaders. Yet, transformational leadership finds wide appeal in normal circumstances too. Why? In my opinion, the main reason is that such leadership absolves us of responsibility for developing leadership capabilities more broadly. Kofman and Senge (1995) showed that there is in every walk of life a preference for shifting the burden: a perceived need for leadership (a symptom) can be met by developing capacities throughout the organization (the fundamental solution) or by relying on a heroic leader (the symptomatic solution). But, success in finding a heroic leader reinforces belief in powerlessness, thus making the fundamental solution even more difficult (Kofman & Senge, 1995).

References Bass, B. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectation. New York, NY: Free Press. Balyer, A. (2012). Transformational leadership behaviors of school principals: A qualitative research based on teachers’ perceptions. International Online Journal of Educational Sciences, 4(3), 581– 591. Drucker, P. (1946). Concept of the corporation. New York, NY: John Day Company. Kofman, F., & Senge, P. (1995). Communities of commitment: The heart of learning organizations. In S. Chawla & J. Renesch (Eds.), Learning organizations: Developing cultures for tomorrow’s workplace. Portland, OR: Productivity Press Inc. Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2008). The miniature guide to critical thinking: Concepts and tools. Dillon Beach, CA: The Foundation for Critical Thinking.

Reading Research Articles

Abstract Reading research articles does not come naturally. This précis reviews the contribution that critical thinking can make to discerning proof.

When scientists (and other scholars) want to publicize the results of their work they usually circulate them in academic journals after one or more referees—typically academics working in the same field—have confirmed that the contents are suitable for publication.1 Since the idea is to advance knowledge, the requirement is that research articles should present original research results or review existing results: for this reason, they cannot be opinion-based documents such as newspaper articles, editorials, book or test reviews, or columns giving advice.

The Scaffolding of Research Articles IMRAD (Introduction, Methods, Results, [and] Discussion) is a useful mnemonic for the basic structure of research articles (to which an abstract and references are as a rule also added). The “meat”, however, is to be found in the sections that should elaborate the Introduction and Theoretical Framework, Statement of the Problem, Purpose of the Study, Review of the Literature, Question(s) and/or Hypothesis/Hypotheses, Design—Methods and Procedures, Limitations and Delimitations, and Significance of the Study. The idea, then, is to logically group and sequence ideas in expository writing.

Reading Research Articles was completed on September 1, 2017. 1 A paper may undergo several reviews, revisions, and re-submissions before it is accepted or as the

case may be rejected. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_29

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Thinking Critically About Research Researchers aim to write clear, accurate, and convincing articles. But, if the world is replete with ill-substantiated proofs and false predictions, and Meltzoff (1998) showed how very wrong the predictions of a few outstanding authorities were, are we to accept without a doubt—merely on account of faith in authoritative pronouncements and democratic judgments, pure reason, feelings, sensory information and experiences, legal methods, or empirical and experimental methods—everything research articles say? Rather, hearing that “research shows …”, we should exercise basic skepticism about proof and characterize our responses by a “show me”, “prove it”, and “what is the evidence”. Some, such as Paul and Elder (2008), and Meltzoff (1998), thought likewise: inspired by Socratic Questioning, they urged critical thinking (and naturally development of the capacity to do so). Specifically, Paul and Elder (2008) held that critical thinking is the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it and the ability to think critically involves three things: (i) an attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one’s experiences, (ii) knowledge of methods of logical inquiry and reasoning, and (iii) some skill in applying those methods. To Paul and Elder (2008), then, a well-cultivated critical thinker: • Raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely; • Gathers and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards; • Thinks open-mindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences; and • Communicates effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems. (Paul & Elder, 2008) So, if one were to read a research article critically, what approach might one take? Specifically, how might our appreciation be analytical, judgmental, and selective? Paul and Elder (2008) invited attention to eight elements of thought, that (much as they can direct our own thinking) we can also leverage to the best of our abilities to read research articles critically. Paraphrasing Paul and Elder (2008) in extenso: • All reasoning has a purpose. Therefore, we should take time to identify the purpose behind a research article, distinguish that from related purposes, check periodically to confirm the purpose is still on target, and confirm it is significant and realistic. • All reasoning is an attempt to figure something out, to settle some question, to solve some problem. Therefore, we should take time to clearly and precisely review the question at issue, check that it is expressed in what ways clarify its meaning and scope, break the question into sub questions, and identify if the research article has one right answer, is a matter of opinion, or requires reasoning from more than one point of view.

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• All reasoning is based on assumptions. Therefore, we should clearly identify what assumptions the research article makes and determine whether they are justifiable, and consider how the assumptions are shaping the research article’s point of view. • All reasoning is done from some point of view. Therefore, we should identify the research article’s point of view, seek other points of view and identify their strengths as well as weaknesses, and strive to be fair-minded in evaluating all points of view. • All reasoning is based on data, information, and evidence. Therefore, we should check that the research article’s claims are restricted to those that are supported by the data it has; search for information that opposes the research article’s position as well as information that supports it; make sure that all the information used is clear, accurate, and relevant to the question at issue; and confirm that the research article has gathered sufficient information. • All reasoning is expressed through, and shaped by, concepts and ideas. Therefore, we should identify what key concepts underpin the research article and check that they have been explained clearly, consider alternative concepts or alternative definitions to concepts, and confirm that the research article has used concepts with care and precision. • All reasoning contains inferences by which we draw conclusions and give meaning to data. Therefore, we should investigate if the research article has inferred only what the evidence implies, check inferences for consistency with one another, and identify what assumptions led to the inferences. • All reasoning leads somewhere, has implications and consequences. Therefore, we should trace the implications and consequences that follow from the research article’s reasoning, search for negative as well as positive implications, and consider all possible consequences. (Paul & Elder, 2008) For maximum understanding, Meltzoff (1998) suggested we should engage in interactive reading with knowledge of research design. Unlike passive–receptive readers, who take in what the text says, interactive readers anticipate what is to come and then discover whether expectations have been met along the way. With critical thinking, interactive readers work all the way. Toward this, Meltzoff (1998) and Paul and Elder (2008) agreed that such readers must have background and training in principles of research design, such as the basic structure of research articles and the eight elements of thought mentioned earlier, so they might critique research articles intelligently. Fortunately, principles of research design transcend content areas. That said, because of cognitive limitations (such as bounded rationality and personality), we often “see” bias in others but not in ourselves: we are wont to think that we are objective and we may, for example, reckon ourselves more ethical and fairer than others. With self-serving introspection, we acquit ourselves of accusations of bias but use unrealistic (or harsh) notions of human behavior to detect bias in others. Because of this, pace Meltzoff (1998), it is not always easy to judge a research article purely on its merits, with unprejudiced consideration of its arguments.2 2 Cognitive

biases creep into pretty much all our sense- and decision-making processes, excepting the simplest. A select—yet long—alphabetical list includes anchoring and adjustment, attribution

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Is Critical Thinking Enough? Critical thinking, then, is analytical, judgmental, and selective: when you are thinking critically, you are making choices. But what of creative (or lateral) thinking? That is generative, nonjudgmental, and expansive. Creative thinking has to do with change, especially when that involves escaping from a pattern. When you are thinking creatively, you are generating ideas that are unique and effective. Sadly, even if critical thinking and creative thinking are both crucial for solving problems and discovering new knowledge, they are often treated separately. Critical thinking is typically thought of as a left-brain activity and creative thinking as a right-brain activity. Yet, both involve thinking. Some have spoken of critico-creative thinking to emphasize the positive, imaginative aspects of critical thinking; however, this ungainly expression has not caught on. Culturally, we need to discard the belief that critical thinking is sufficient: obviously, critical thinking is a very valuable part of thinking but it is totally inadequate in the absence of the possibility systems that the generative, productive, creative, and design aspects of creative thinking throw up. When reading research articles, discerning proof may not be all that is needed. For superior outcomes, since nature has equipped us with complementary ways of processing information, whole-brain thinking is needed.3 To this intent, thankfully, Gardner’s (1993) notion of multiple intelligences refreshed and expanded traditional views of human potential.

References Gardner, H. (1993). Multiple intelligences: The theory in practice. New York, NY: Basic Books. Meltzoff, J. (1998). Chapter 1: Critical reading. Critical thinking about research: Psychology and related fields (pp. 1–12). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Pascal, B. (1623–1662 [1958]). Pascal’s pensées. New York, NY: E.P. Dutton. Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2008). The miniature guide to critical thinking concepts and tools. Dillon Beach, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking Press.

asymmetry, choice-supportive bias, framing bias, groupthink, incremental decision making and escalating commitment, optimism or wishful thinking, premature termination of search for evidence, inertia, recency, repetition bias, role fulfillment, selective perception, selective search for evidence, source credibility bias, and underestimates of uncertainty and the illusion of control. Recognizing some of the foregoing biases will not arise when reading research articles, It stands to reason we should constantly be on our guard against subjectivity: here, there may be more art than science. 3 Like many others, Pascal felt that “Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought” (Pascal, 1958). A contemporary of Descartes, Pascal is however best remembered for resisting rationalism, which he thought could not determine major truths: “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know” (Pascal, 1958). Pascal and Descartes are reference points for two major attitudes to conscious representation of the world: although both saw reason as the primary source of knowledge, they disagreed profoundly over the competence of Man. (More often than not, the “truth” will lie somewhere between faith and radical doubt.)

Scholarly Argument: Linking Doctoral Research to Practice

Abstract Leveraging the approach to critical thinking advocated by Paul and Elder (2008), this précis makes a short argument for a research topic on linking doctoral research to practice to contribute new knowledge to the field and help address a real-world issue or opportunity.

Critical thinking is the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it (Serrat, 2011). Leveraging the approach to critical thinking advocated by Paul and Elder (2008), this précis makes a short argument for a research topic on linking doctoral research to practice to contribute new knowledge to the field and help address a real-world issue or opportunity.

What Is Happening? According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2016), more people than ever before are completing doctoral degrees, including in emerging economies. With about 67,500 PhDs delivered each year, the United States produce more than twice as many PhD graduates as the nearest rival, Germany, which awards about 28,000; the United Kingdom comes third with about 25,000 PhD graduates.) About 40% of new doctorates in the OECD area graduate in sciences, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); this percentage increases to 58% of all new graduates if doctorates in health are included. So, what quantum improvements can we expect if all are tasked with—and succeed in—contributing new knowledge in a research topic that will address a real-world issue or opportunity?

Scholarly Argument: Linking Doctoral Research to Practice was completed on November 12, 2017. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_30

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What Do We Know? What Assumptions Have We Made? But what, one might ask to begin, is a contribution to knowledge? Is it sufficient for, say, a PhD thesis to discourse on something no one else has written about before, amplify an argument one has not heard much before, or critique what has been asserted before (whether often or less so)? Does that count as a contribution to knowledge? And, if knowledge means different things to different persons in different fields of study, perhaps even at different times, what body of knowledge is one contributing to? To what ends? Can we all assume, as some academics do with somewhat sociocentric thinking, that knowledge will somehow percolate from academia into society, making it more productive and healthier?

What Point of View Can We Reasonably Hold? Presumably, at least in the mind of the doctoral student, some answers to these questions must begin to form as he or she sharpens the research question and refines the theoretical framework for the research topic. Still, is the outcome of doctoral studies commensurate with the efforts and other resources that doctoral students deploy towards them? And, what is the impact of the main output of doctoral studies, meaning, the PhD thesis? Paraphrasing Merriam-Webster’s definition of impact, what strong effect does it have on someone or something?

Why Are Doctoral Studies Important? What Key Concepts or Theories Guide Our Reasoning? The more traditional purpose of doctoral studies might be to demonstrate a candidate’s ability to conduct independent research, possibly on a novel concept, and to communicate the results in accessible ways. From that perspective, the outcome of doctoral studies would be more important than what impact they might have. Still, is there no better use to make of the main output? A bold but levelheaded argument is that there should: too many PhD theses languish unread with barely a scholarly citation as searches for them in Google Scholar demonstrate. (Indeed, the very origins of Google Search trace back to the PhD theses of Google LLC’s founders whose intuition—inspired by the concept and practice of scholarly citations—was that a website’s relevance (including its contents) could be ascertained by considering the number of pages that linked back to the original site as well as and the importance of these.) But, there is much more: lest we forget, the United Nations strongly expect that science, technology, and innovation can advance the Sustainable Development Goals its 193-member countries approved in September 2015.

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What Might Be the Purpose of a Research Topic on Doctoral Studies? What Data, Information, and Evidence Might the Reasoning for It Be Based on? The quality of our lives depends on the quality of our thoughts. A research topic that might contribute new knowledge to the field of tertiary education and help address real-world issues or opportunities is how to identify ways to better link doctoral research to practice. Research is about both generation and dissemination of findings. Indeed, some might argue that the failure of researchers to link evidence to policy and practice produces evidence that no one uses, holds up innovation, and so—willynilly—contributes to mediocre or even detrimental results (Serrat, 2008a). Therefore, given the numbers cited earlier and the plentiful data in ProQuest’s database, it ought not be too difficult to both make the case for such a research topic and leverage clear, accurate, and relevant information in support of it. (ProQuest’s repository of graduate dissertations and theses includes 4 million works; it grows by 130,000 each year with deposits from universities in 88 countries; it is accessed by 3000 institutions with over 45,000 downloads every month.)

What Conclusions Might Be Drawn? What conclusions might be drawn based on inferences and interpretations from such a research topic would depend entirely on the terms of reference for the research (and of course what data gives meaning to them). At the simplest level, a research agenda might only look at how doctoral students might draw a dissemination plan, a dissemination strategy, and dissemination tactics. More ambitiously, a research agenda might examine how universities could groom policy entrepreneurs (comprising professors and successive cohorts of students) that use outcome-mapping to enrich policy and practice with research (Pellini & Serrat, 2010). [Outcome mapping entails defining a clear, overarching policy objective; mapping the policy context; identifying key stakeholders; making out desired behavioral changes; developing a strategy; analyzing internal capacity to effect change; and establishing a monitoring and learning framework (Serrat, 2008b).] More ambitiously still, a research agenda might investigate how doctoral courses and related functional domains of education (e.g., curriculum development, library and information services, research and development, teaching and learning processes, etc.) could be modernized en masse as contributory inputs toward the production of high-impact PhD theses.

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What Implications and Consequences Might There Be? Depending on the orientation and scope of a research agenda to identify ways to link research to practice, there might be implications—both positive and negative— and consequences for a multiplicity of relevant stakeholders including universities, students, curricula, professors, industry, and of course sundry groups of “beneficiaries”. (A research topic on linking doctoral research to practice would be of the multi-system type: it would require evidence and reasoning within multiple, often conflicting systems, and a good deal of intellectual humility coupled with fairmindedness, among other intellectual traits.) Pell-mell, the nature of these might have to do with products, services, processes, and methods of delivery, as well as policy in the case of government(s). The perspectives that would conduce recommended initiatives might be ecological, organizational, and/or technocentric. Naturally, recommendations would have to be SMART—Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-related—and of course politically acceptable since judgments would be passed vis-à-vis the best (or second-best) answers they provide.

References OECD. (2016). OECD science, technology, and innovation outlook 2016. Paris: OECD Publishing. Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2008). The miniature guide to critical thinking: Concepts and tools. Dillon Beach, CA: The Foundation for Critical Thinking. Pellini, A., & Serrat, O. (2010). Enriching policy with research. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Serrat, O. (2008a). Linking research to practice. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Serrat, O. (2008b). Outcome mapping. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Serrat, O. (2011). Critical thinking. Manila: Asian Development Bank.

Psychological, Socio-Cultural, & Political Dimensions of Organizations

Critical Psychology and Organizations: The Case of the United Nations

Abstract With attention to cultural dynamics, diversity, power, and privilege, this précis investigates the contribution of critical psychology to organizational performance. The précis flags the case of the United Nations system, especially the General Assembly, to identify key challenges in the twenty-first century and consider how it might advance social justice and well-being.

The study of human behavior in organizations and the workplace, aka industrial–organizational (I/O) psychology, harks to the early 1900s: Münsterberg (1913), an admirer of Taylorism, thought the discipline had applications in business, clinical, educational, legal, and medical settings. These days, I/O psychologists build workforces; change the nature of performance development and management; engage employees; foster work–life balance; leverage social media in employment-related decisions; manage virtual teams; stimulate agility and flexibility in business processes; and use big data for better decision making. Much as I/O psychologists mean to, critical psychologists purport to improve the mental and physical well-being of individuals and communities but their ontology, epistemology, axiology, and methodology are different. Critical psychologists charge that organizations and institutional arrangements are not value-free but active agents of domination, oppression, and privilege: thus, what knowledge and techniques I/O psychologists use to help people perform or fit in reinforce the status quo, with hard effects on the vulnerable (Fox, Prilleltensky, & Austin, 2009). For social justice and well-being, with concern for class, gender, race, and other differences, critical psychologists have for 50 years advocated change in power relations as the predicate of progress (Serrat, 2020).

Critical Psychology and Organizations: The Case of the United Nations was completed on October 1, 2020. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_31

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Critical Psychology and Organizations Critical psychology makes intuitive sense. First, there can be no well-being if you are dominated, oppressed, or under-privileged; by the same token, the cultural, economic, political, social, and other resources needed to offset inequities cannot be allocated without social justice. Second, organizations are socially constructed and so designed to further the microsocial and macrosocial orientations of prevailing ideologies and elites. For these reasons, the structures of inequality that frame power and disadvantage must be taken seriously. Morgan (1997), an organizational theorist who used images (or metaphors) to elucidate organizational contexts, discerned that organizations could be interpreted as instruments of domination (as well as machines, organisms, brains, cultures, political systems, psychic prisons, and flux and transformation). Alongside critical psychologists, Morgan (1997) opined that the image of organizations as instruments of domination “[…] creates a new level of social consciousness and an appreciation of why relations between exploiting and exploited groups can get so polarized” (p. 259). Per Morgan (1997), the domination metaphor suggests that rationality is a mode of domination that may be intrinsic to organizations: and so, the ideological and ethical aspects of organizing should be central concerns and challenge managers to better appreciate corporate social responsibility; additionally, the metaphor helps understand why the history of organization has been prone to conflict and provides a way to turn the table on power structures. However, the limitations of the domination metaphor are that it may exacerbate the polarization of stakeholders if domination is seen to be the intention, not an unintended result; else, if domination is deemed to be the responsibility of a few, the upshot of the metaphor may be to assign blame to the detriment of whole system approaches or attempts to create non-dominating forms of organization; lastly, the metaphor is sometimes considered too extreme (Morgan, 1997). Irrespective, Morgan (1997) saw that organizations as instruments of domination lead to workaholism, occupational accidents and disease, and social and mental stress. The foregoing reasoned that new modes of organizing will not come about if one thinks in old ways. Critical psychologists will subscribe to the domination metaphor and—in vindication of the need to attend to the intersection of organization and social justice—images of organizations as cultures, political systems, psychic prisons, and flux and transformation will appeal to them too. So, in a globalizing world, how do critical psychologists propose to see, understand, and redesign organizations for social justice? Critical psychology has applications at individual, group, and organizational levels. Because critical psychologists approach organizations with an eye to ideology, they reframe such social categories and issues as careers, work-related stress, and organizational culture as power-relevant (Islam & Zyphur, 2009). Especially in corporations, for example, critical psychologists observe that individuals are forced to internalize the logic of the market and commodify themselves to compete with others in situations of mutual hostility, not humility and solidarity (Abbott,

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Bakan, & Simpson, 2003). To remedy individualized forms of alienation where selfidentity is defined by materialistic and occupational criteria and leads to increased levels of addiction, anxiety, and depression, critical psychologists invite consideration of—say—individual differences and self-actualization strategies (Islam & Zyphur, 2009). Critical psychologists reject the intertwining of I/O psychology and human resource management practices that, with meritocratic policies and practices kowtowing to strategy, allow standing inequalities to color job descriptions and define social relations; encourage stereotyping; favor the fortunate; nurture organizational cultures of winners and losers; and perpetuate domination, oppression, and privilege (Parker, 1989; Sandel, 2020). With interventions across planning, organizing, leading, and controlling, critical psychology can help individuals and groups in organizations move from alienation to emancipation. But, what of critical psychology’s contributions at the level of systems?

The Case of the United Nations The world is now flat (Friedman, 2007): this opens up opportunities but the need to reconcile economic, environmental, and social dimensions in the Anthropocene tests peace, dignity, and equality on a healthy planet (United Nations, n.d.). Thus, it is pertinent to look at the United Nations, an institution that was established “to maintain international peace and security”, “develop friendly relations among nations”, “achieve international cooperation in solving international problems”, and “be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends” (United Nations, 1945, p. 3). A 75-year old vision of the future and the world’s only truly global intergovernmental organization with 193 member states—with headquarters in New York; main offices in Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna, and The Hague; and duty stations, specialized agencies, programs, and bodies around the world—the United Nations would have to be invented if it did not exist (United Nations, n.d.). The structures of the United Nations system—encompassing its six principal organs (i.e., General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, Trusteeship Council, International Court of Justice, and Secretariat), 15 specialized agencies (e.g., Food and Agriculture Organization, International Labour Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank Group), and several programs and bodies (e.g., United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Children’s Fund, United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, United Nations Environment Programme)—seem all the time more relevant (United Nations, n.d.). But, is the organization truly fit for purpose in the twenty-first century? “This organization is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isn’t created to take you to heaven,” is how Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 1953–1960, put it (1954, as cited in Hanhimäki, 2015, p. 2). The United Nations is an impossible hybrid and the job of its secretary-general might be advertised as the most difficult in the world. Criticism of the United Nations

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targets its ability to enforce rulings, administration, effectiveness, ideology, policies, and representativeness. The need for reform is felt most urgently in the composition and workings of the Security Council and fragmented activities for development, democracy and human rights, and peace. The American Psychological Association, for one, advances psychology to benefit societies and improve lives around the world: its representatives at the United Nations have worked with other nongovernment organizations, with staff of the United Nations, and with representatives of member states to expand the understanding of psychology; make psychological science accessible to decision makers; and use psychology’s contributions to health and human welfare, human rights, science and technology, and public policy in support of the Sustainable Development Goals, notably SDG 3 which aims to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages (American Psychological Association, n.d.; United Nations, 2015). In particular, the American Psychological Association has underscored that fulfilment of physiological and safety needs (Maslow, 1943) has psychological implications across the work of the United Nations: therefore, a psychological lens can inform its initiatives (Juneau, Rubin, & Jaipal, 2012. However, Juneau et al. (2012) reported that “… many believe the sustainable development agenda conceals structural inequalities, human rights violations, international power imbalances, and the transnational corporations’ unprecedented reach and influence, which are the real drivers of unsustainable development” (para. 17). Juneau et al.’s (2012) reflections are of the essence of critical approaches to “organizations as social practices which reflect dominant agendas as well as cultural contests occurring in society” and a counter to functionalism (Casey, 2002, pp. 9–10). Born to prevent war, the United Nations at 75 must inter alia contend with a pandemic, regional conflicts, a shrinking economy, growing inequality, and climate change in an even more polarized world. What has befallen the United Nations owes to original sin: the organization is premised on multilateralism, with countries large and small collaborating for solutions, but its power structure is a relic of the Second World War. The Security Council is the only organ that can deliver legally binding resolutions backed by sanctions, blue-helmets, or armed forces (United Nations, n.d.). Yet, its permanent members are a hegemony of that war’s victors, viz., the People’s Republic of China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, each with veto power and the ability to—in furtherance of global inequality— to override decisions. There are no African or Latin American states among the permanent members and what of the European Union? Multicultural India—the largest democracy—but also Brazil, Germany, Japan, South Africa, and Nigeria ought to be candidates to the Security Council: France and the United Kingdom favor an expansion; Russia and the United States are tepid; the People’s Republic of China is against. Sponsored by France, an alternative suggestion has been to dilute the veto but Russia objects. Ten temporary members, elected by the General Assembly on two-year terms, brings the total number of Security Council members to 15: for a resolution to be passed, if no veto is exercised, nine members must endorse it. Power struggles rifle through the rest of the United Nations system: economic and technological forces have urged globalization but geopolitical fragmentation is the

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new anarchy. Humankind will be in trouble if the Security Council is doomed as an institution.

Critical Psychology and the United Nations “If the United Nations is to survive, those who represent it must bolster it; those who advocate it must submit to it; and those who believe in it must fight for it,” said political journalist and world peace advocate Norman Cousins (1956, as cited in Hanhimäki, 2015, p. 135). Critical psychology looks to social change as a means to prevent and treat psychopathology: if it is to suggest a strategy to tackle the issues that challenge the United Nations system, critical psychology should explore and advocate alterations in the mechanisms of social structure including their dynamics in such ways that garner wide international support and prevent large countries from abusing or ignoring the United Nations. The United Nations is a tool of nations but the Security Council, which serves as its executive committee, has allowed a handful of them to boost up their national interests. That said, the General Assembly is its parliament: each of the 193 member states can make its voice heard and each has one vote regardless of size. The General Assembly is inclusive, which does not facilitate consensus: but, it is the only place where coalitions for change—that tap networks of actors in governments, international organizations, the corporate sector, and civil society—can be built to bridge and informational and participatory gaps, and where critical choices can be made (Reinicke et al., 2000). There have been countless calls for reforms of the United Nations: an item for revitalization of the work of the General Assembly has been on the agenda since 1991 but the beneficiaries of the status quo belittling “utopian” proposals for more substantial change. One such, long-standing, proposal concerns the creation, as a subsidiary body of the General Assembly, of a Parliamentary Assembly that would allow direct election of world citizens and so break the hold that bureaucrats exert. This précis is not the place for related details but critical psychologist will agree— and so should advocate—that doing the right thing for social justice and well-being hangs on more than having the right policies: in the first place, it requires having the right structures to implement them (Leinen & Bummel, 2018).

References Abbott, J. (Director), Bakan, J. (Director, Producer, and Writer), & Simpson, B. (Producer). (2003). The corporation. [Motion picture]. Big Picture Media Corporation. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Y888wVY5hzw. American Psychological Association. (n.d.). APA at the United Nations. https://www.apa.org/intern ational/united-nations.

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Casey, C. (2002). Critical analysis of organizations: Theory, practice, revitalization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Fox, D., Prilleltensky, I., & Austin, S. (Eds.). (2009). Critical psychology: An introduction (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Friedman, T. (2007). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Islam, G., & Zyphur, M. (2009). Concepts and directions in critical industrial/organizational psychology. In D. Fox, I. Prilleltensky, & S. Austin (Eds.), Critical psychology: An introduction (2nd ed., pp. 110–125). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Hanhimäki, J. (2015). The United Nations: A very short introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Juneau, G., Rubin, N., & Jaipal, R. (2012). United Nations celebrates 70 years and uses psychological science to confront world challenges. https://www.apa.org/international/pi/2015/12/worldchallenges. Leinen, J., & Bummel, A. (2018). A world parliament: Governance and democracy in the 21st century. Berlin, Germany: Democracy Without Borders. Maslow, A. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396. https:// doi.org/10.1037/h0054346. Morgan, G. (1997). Images of organization (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Münsterberg, M. (1913). Psychology and industrial efficiency. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Parker, I. (1989). The crisis in modern social psychology—And how to end it. London, UK: Routledge. Reinicke, W., Deng, F., Witte, J., Benner, T., Whitaker, B., & Gershman, J. (2000). Critical choices: The United Nations, networks, and the future of global governance. International Development Research Centre. https://www.idrc.ca/en/book/critical-choices-united-nations-networks-and-fut ure-global-governance. Sandel, M. (2020). The tyranny of merit: What’s become of the common good?. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Serrat, O. (2020). Development of critical psychology. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. United Nations. (1945). Charter of the United Nations. https://www.un.org/en/charter-united-nat ions/index.html. United Nations. (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. A/RES/70/1. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld/. United Nations. (n.d.). United Nations: Peace, dignity, and equality on a healthy planet. https:// www.un.org/en/.

Development of Critical Psychology

Abstract This précis locates critical psychology in the discourse of critical theory. The précis reflects on historical and social events that shaped decolonization, postcolonialism, and globalization and identifies a relationship between them. The précis proposes that critical psychology must now find ways to enrich policy with research if it is to better serve social justice.

Anchored in critical (social) theory, critical psychology was born of the belief that mainstream psychology means well but insentiently buys into the prevailing economic, social, and political outlook as if it were tabula rasa. Tersely, critical psychology charges that, by failing to locate psychological experiences in their context and overlooking the fact that the dominant position of some is typically achieved at the expense of others, mainstream psychology furthers powerful interests and strengthens social systems that oppress and alienate the disenfranchised (Fox, Prilleltensky, & Austin, 2009).

Locating Critical Psychology Approaches The timeline of psychology spans centuries, indeed, millennia, with the Ebers Papyrus mentioning depression and dementia ca. 1550 B.C., but the scientific study of the mind and behavior is a relatively new—and multifaceted—discipline. With applications across a wide range of individual and group endeavors (e.g., business management, human development, mental health, sports), modern psychologists have—from the time Wundt founded the first experimental psychology laboratory in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany—investigated many clinical, cognitive, and social processes to describe, explicate, predict, and change them (McLeod, 2019). Behaviorist, biological, cognitive, humanistic, and psychodynamic approaches now feature prominently in mainstream (or Western) psychology, the kind of psychology that universities teach and clinicians, consultants, and researchers practice (Fox et al., 2009). Development of Critical Psychology was completed on September 23, 2020. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_32

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Critical psychology is an even more recent subset of critical theory, a philosophy of science (or interpretive framework), heavily influenced by Marx and Freud, that saw light in the Frankfurt School (or Institute for Social Research), Germany in 1923; there, an all-star crew of cultural critics, philosophers, and sociologists including Adorno, Benjamin, Fromm, Grünberg, Horkheimer, Löwenthal, Marcuse, and Pollock resolved to expose and challenge the power structures that condition society in keeping with class, gender, race, and other differences (Fox et al., 2009). Also with origins in Germany, but from the 1970s and—initially—courtesy of Holzkamp, critical psychology contends that power differences do impact mental and physical well-being. From different ontology (“What is the nature of reality?”), epistemology (“What counts as knowledge?”), axiology (“What is the role of values?”), and methodology (“What is the process of research? What is the language of research?”) (Creswell, 2013, p. 21), critical psychology set out in the 1960s–1970s, also in Germany, to promote innovative thinking for social justice in the face of inequality and oppression (Fox et al., 2009). Unlike mainstream psychology, which preoccupies itself with the individual as the primary unit of analysis and source of psychopathology, critical psychology ponders what impacts society might be having on both individuals and groups and looks to social change as therapy. Concisely, critical psychology is premised on four assumptions. Citing, • [T]he societal status quo contributes to the oppression of large segments of the population, • [P]sychology upholds the societal status quo, • [S]ociety can be transformed to promote meaningful lives and social justice, and • [P]sychology can contribute to the creation of more just and meaningful ways of living. (Prilleltensky, 1999, p. 100)

The Historicity of Critical Psychology Necessarily, given the accent critical psychology places on historicity, it behooves any treatment of that branch of psychology to circumscribe its historical context. Because it is grounded in critical theory, critical psychology’s roots are deep and its branches are wide: this paper is not the place for a comprehensive treatment of the historicity of critical psychology, if only because—with the benefit of hindsight—explanations often play catch-up with events. That said, critical psychology is less than 50 years old and it is possible to isolate major 20th century economic, social, and political phenomena that shaped its development: fascism, decolonization, postcolonialism, and globalization are among these. 1. The Crucible of Fascism In 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany: before long, the National Socialist German Workers’ (or Nazi) Party moved to eliminate all political opposition. Nazi

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political strategy was at first anti-bourgeois, anti-big business, and anti-capitalist, then antisemitic and anti-Marxist. Pseudoscientific racist theories were central to Nazism, expressly through the idea of a “people’s community“, and thousands of scholars (including Freud) were banned from their professions and left for Britain or the United States. Most of the Frankfurt School’s scholars found refuge in the United States and associated with Columbia University (in the main). The crucible of fascism made the Frankfurt School, hence critical psychologists, increasingly doubtful of the possibility of agency: the subjective factors (or conditions) for social transformation were in their opinion not ripe (or had been undermined) (Bohman, 2019). The aftermath of the Second World War, notably decolonization, postcolonialism, and globalization, vitalized concern about the economic, social, and political conditions that—realized by institutions—allow for social change; naturally, critical psychology’s investigation of the linkages between human wellbeing and social justice has echoed critical theory’s revisionist approach to political history and its methods of historical inquiry. 2. Decolonization Decolonization is the undoing of colonialism, that being the process whereby a country establishes and maintains domination on territories (and their people) overseas, usually with the aim of economic dominance. In 1945, when the United Nations was established, about 750 million people (or one third of the world population at the time) lived in territories administered by colonial powers including Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and—last but not least—the United Kingdom. (What with the Philippines, the United States could join the list.) Over the period 1945–1960, three dozen new states in Africa and Asia achieved independence. Even after decolonization, however, the institutional forces that had maintained colonial power remained: this might have been expected since—horror vacui—nationalists saw themselves as the heirs of the former European powers, but also because the world system that colonialism was part of could not just vanish at independence (Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 2013). De facto, filiative connections with former colonists continued on account of global financial institutions, multinational corporations, and trade, leading to allegations of neo-colonialism. From the perspective of critical psychology, Martín-Baró (1994) advanced a theory of liberation from continuing oppression and Smith (2012) clarified that divesting the bureaucratic, cultural, linguistic, and psychological apparatus of colonial power should have entailed active participation by the colonizers, not the mere handing over of the instruments of government. 3. Postcolonialism With an understandably wide variety of approaches, postcolonialism examines the economic, political, and social legacy of colonialism, particularly the consequences of control and exploitation on formerly colonized people, including their cultures, languages, literature, religions, and social groups. Illustrating, Fox et al. (2009, p. 343) cited the examples of the indigenous peoples of Canada, South America, and the United States; institutionalized racial segregation in South Africa under

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apartheid; and the Maori in New Zealand. Since the two share some common territory, dependency theory can be explored alongside postcolonial theory: the perspective that guides the first is structuralist and socioeconomic; that of the second is post-structuralist and cultural; even so, both see a binary, neo-imperialistic logic in the perpetuation of world systems. At any rate, from the perspective of critical psychology, an agenda for social justice cannot simply be fastened on former colonies: and so, mainstream psychology should formulate new aims (that identify and challenge iniquities); new relationships (that proactively share power throughout the research process); new topics (that include impacts such as exploitation, migration, and discord); and new locations for research (that investigate the spaces where class, gender, race, and other differences have been disrupted) (Fox et al., 2009, p. 344). 4. Globalization Globalization is the process whereby individuals and communities are impacted by economic, social, and political forces that operate worldwide (Ashcroft et al., 2013). The contemporary drivers of globalization include capital flows, information and communication technology, international trade, and migration. Of course, globalization is not new: the silk roads (from the 1st century B.C. to the 5th century, and in the 13th and 14th centuries); the spice routes (from the 7th to the 15th century); the Age of Discovery (from the 15th to the 18th centuries); the first big wave of globalization (from the 19th century to 1914); and, in particular, the couple of decades that followed the Second World War are milestones (Vanham, 2019). No matter, globalization became an all-conquering force when the Berlin Wall fell (1989), the Soviet Union ceased to exist (1991), and the People’s Republic of China became a member of the World Trade Organization (2001). Fueled by digital technologies, the pace of globalization currently seems relentless: everywhere, distributive justice, mutuality, and even democracy are being tested; everywhere, powerful questions need answering. Who is to prosper? Who is to suffer? Who is to decide? Exploitative globalization is not a given: but, fueled by capitalism, some contemporary patterns have been viewed—paraphrasing Clausewitz—as a continuation of colonization through other means. Irrespective, if globalization is to benefit all equally there assuredly is a need for what is termed “glocalization“, viz., the practice of conducting business according to both local and global considerations. Therefore, the accent that critical psychology places on social justice opens up opportunities for significant contributions: quite possibly, harking back to Fox et al.’s (2009) new research strategies to deal with postcolonialism, a critical psychology perspective would suggest that mainstream psychology could also formulate new aims, new relationships, new topics, and new locations for research.

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Critical Psychology for the Twenty-First Century Decolonization, postcolonialism, globalization: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose as the perennial conundrum of income inequality demonstrates. Without doubt, globalization has created fresh opportunities for hundreds of millions of people: but, the gap between high-income and low-income countries has widened and inequality within many countries has increased. Piketty (2014) was discourse-changing scholarship on income inequality: the gist of it was not that—per Marxian dogma— inequality is determined by the modes of production that technology dictates. Moving on from Marx, but in keeping with the tenets of critical theory, Piketty (2014) pronounced inequality to be a social phenomenon that is driven by institutions. Gloomily, there is more to the twenty-first century than widening social schisms: per Kagan and Burton (2001), we are also witnessing commodification of people, communication, and human relations; increased harshness toward minorities; privatization of public and community space and withdrawal from politics; and domination of global capital and threats to sustainability. In the new century, critical psychology’s enduring concern for fair and just relations can continue to shine singular insight on economic, social, and political dilemmas, this to critique society and envision new possibilities vis-à-vis domination, oppression, and privilege. And yet, much as critical theory, critical psychology’s analysis of the past and the present is more impressive than the actions it takes for the future. Because the future will not take care of itself, critical psychologists must become policy entrepreneurs: all their research should be linked to action. Inspired by Kagan and Burton (2001), critical psychologists should accept that whole systems thinking summons a “person-in-context” ecological approach that, in turn, beckons action. If they are to cultivate practical precepts, critical psychologists must also become interdisciplinary: in the social sciences, interdisciplinarity is the only way to promote dialectical relationships between people and systems, enter peoples’ consciousness, and—in due course—influence policy makers. Past rhetoric, policy entrepreneurship can help critical psychology live up to its liberatory promise.

References Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (2013). Postcolonial studies: The key concepts (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Bohman, J. (2019). Critical theory. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from https:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/critical-theory. Creswell, J. (2013). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (3rd ed.) Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Fox, D., Prilleltensky, I., & Austin, S. (2009). Critical psychology: An introduction (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kagan, C., & Burton, M. (2001, March). Critical community psychology praxis for the 21st century. Paper presented at British Psychological Society Conference, Glasgow, Scotland. Retrieved from http://www.compsy.org.uk/GLASGOX5.pdf.

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Martín-Baró, I. (1994). Writings for a liberation psychology (A. Aron, & S. Corne Trans.). Boston, MA: Harvard University Press. McLeod, S. (2019). What is psychology? Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/wha tispsychology.html. Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press. Prilleltensky, I. (1999). Critical psychology foundations for the promotion of mental health. Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 1, 100–118. Retrieved from https://sites.education.miami.edu/fac ulty/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/31.-Critical-Psychology-Foundations-for-the-Promotion-ofMental-Health.pdf. Smith, L. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Zed Books. Vanham, P. (2019). A brief history of globalization. World Economic Forum. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/how-globalization-4-0-fits-into-the-history-ofglobalization.

Minority Population Analysis: The Aeta of the Philippines

Abstract This précis uses a critical psychology lens for minority population analysis. Specifically, the précis characterizes indigenous peoples and their vulnerability; researches the treatment of the Aeta, an indigenous people living in the mountainous areas of Luzon in the Philippines; and reflects on their experience of domination, marginalization, and exploitation.

When researching minority populations, critical psychologists examine identity categories (e.g., class, gender, race) and their mutually constitutive nature. They look into how minorities have been affected by power structures; what organizations (if any) support them; and what opportunities and limitations exist for them, especially in the educational, political, professional, and social realms (Crenshaw, 1989; Fox, Prilleltensky, & Austin, 2009).

Characterizing Indigenous Peoples and Their Vulnerability Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups whose identities, cultures, livelihoods, and physical and spiritual well-being are interlinked with the land and natural resources of their territory and distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live (United Nations, n.d.; World Bank, 2019). There are 476 million indigenous peoples—and some 5,000 different indigenous groups speaking more than 4,000 languages—across 90 countries worldwide (Transparency International, n.d., para. 1; World Bank, 2019, para. 2). About 70% of all indigenous peoples live in Asia. European colonization, war, and natural disasters, explain much of the displacement that indigenous peoples have suffered over the last 400 years; more recently, development projects and especially logging must be blamed (Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 2013; Serrat, 1994). Regardless, the outcome is that indigenous peoples have often become refugees in their own lands: they make up about 15% of the world’s extreme poor although they only represent over 6% of the global population (World Bank, Minority Population Analysis: The Aeta of the Philippines was completed on October 9, 2020. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_33

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2019, para. 2). All told, inequality and exclusion threaten their self-identity, vital knowledge systems, cultural survival, and—with dire implications for all including those who marginalize them—biodiversity custodianship (World Bank, 2019).

The Aeta of the Philippines Aeta (but Agta, Alta, Arta, Atta, etc. are other ethnonyms) is an umbrella term for the nomadic indigenous peoples living in the mountainous areas of Luzon in the Philippines, with small numbers in the Visayas and Mindanao (The People of the World Foundation, 2020). The consensus of anthropologists and historians is that the Aeta migrated to Luzon through Palawan from Borneo, using a now mostly sunken land bridge, 20,000–30,000 years ago (The People of the World Foundation, 2020). The Aeta are without doubt among the first—if not the first—inhabitants of the Philippines (The People of the World Foundation, 2020). The Aeta have the small stature and frame (about 1.5 m or 5 ft tall), dark to very dark brown skin, dark brown eyes, curly hair, and small nose of the Australo-Melanesian ethnic group that inhabits isolated parts of Southeast Asia and the Andaman Islands (The People of the World Foundation, 2020). The Spaniards who colonized the Philippines from 1565 called the Aeta negritos, the diminutive for negro. The population census of 2015 numbered 57,707 Aeta in the Philippines, most of them living near Mount Pinatubo in Zambales Province (Philippines Statistics Authority, 2015). Comparing, the total population of the Philippines in 2015 was 100 million: most identified themselves as being of the Malay race and 92.0% were of Christian denomination (Philippines Statistics Authority, 2015). Of course, the Aeta are not the only indigenous peoples in the Philippines. The country boasts an estimated 14–17 million indigenous peoples affiliated with 110 ethno-linguistic groups in Luzon (33%) and Mindanao (61%), with a few groups in the Visayas (UNDP, 2013). By tradition, the Aeta are hunter-gatherers who move in small groups of 1–5 families and build temporary shelters: therefore, adaptation plays an important role in their lives, which entails gaining knowledge of the tropical forest they live in and seasonal weather changes that affect its fauna and flora (Dahlberg, 1981). At age 15, most Aetas including women are trained for hunting and gathering using bows and arrows, dogs, knives, and traps (Dahlberg, 1981). Fishing and food gathering are done by both males and females, much as swiddens for future harvests although women do most of the harvesting (Dahlberg, 1981). In terms of gender, therefore, the Aeta are quite egalitarian. Storytelling helps spread social values among the Aeta (Dahlberg, 1981). But, theirs is a particularly poignant tale.

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Domination, Marginalization, and Exploitation: The Aeta Experience From the late 16th century, the Indigenous peoples of the Philippines including the Aeta were progressively elbowed out. All forest lands were made to legally belong to the state, even though indigenous peoples had long inhabited them. In 1898, the United States secured the cession of the Philippines from Spain by force of arms and moved in. Under what President McKinley called “benevolent assimilation”, the United States introduced the concept of property titles. Over the years, deforestation, illegal logging, mining, and slash-and-burn farming by intensifying economic and other interests placed extreme strain on the Aeta: their attempts to secure tenure came to naught in the face of the wealthier and more politically astute lowland Filipinos. Disliking violence and retreating from economic and political domination, especially land alienation, the Aeta never fought back, took refuge further up the mountains, and lost all self-determination. Then, rapid urbanization and private developers turned their diminishing forest settlements into virtual islands, impacting the deer, jungle fowl, and wild boar the Aeta depend on (Morella, 2015). On June 15, 1991, Mount Pinatubo erupted: this was the second-largest terrestrial eruption of the 20th century after that of Novarupta in Alaska in 1912 (Gajanan, 2018). The eruption coincided with the arrival of Typhoon Yunya on June 11–17, 1991, which brought a lethal mix of ash and rain over the areas surrounding the volcano, burying banana trees, beans, corn, rice, sweet potatoes, and other root crops (Fuller, 2001). The Aeta moved to shelters in the surrounding towns, with families reduced to begging on the roadsides (Morella, 2015). Some were evacuated to distant resettlement camps (Morella, 2015). Soon, they were afflicted by measles and chicken pox, diseases they had not been exposed to before (Fuller, 2001). In the wake of the eruption, the government and nongovernment organizations set up workshops for the Aeta, teaching them handicrafts. But, “How can you go into the jungle to get materials for baskets when you have nothing to eat?”, an Aeta remarked in Fuller (2001). With nascent skills in agro-forestry developed through government programs, Aeta families support themselves by bartering jungle products with local traders in exchange for rice (Fuller, 2001). Except as groundskeepers, household help, or janitors, finding jobs in towns is not easy because the Aeta lack the job skills of lowlanders. They do not know how to compete and most of them are illiterate. With government funds and donations, some Aeta have built concrete houses but huddle in native rest areas annexed to them: talking with L. Arboleda (personal communication, September 27, 2020), this is because they feel they cannot “breathe” in houses. Schools—sheds, really—have sprung up: Aeta children are taught in Tagalog— the most widely spoken language in the Philippines—with features of community education. On account of newly-acquired literacy, the Aeta may one day become more involved in economic and political life, fight for their communities, better protect their land, and realize their interests. Meanwhile, as the Aeta become ever so slowly

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urbanized and “acculturated”, travel agencies ferry tourists to Mount Pinatubo to see the beautiful blue and green lake that formed in its crater after the eruption.

Concluding Remarks It would be easy to say that the eruption of Mount Pinatubo accelerated the inevitable, meaning, that the nomadic lifestyle of the Aeta was destined to clash with development: but, racism and its negative effects explain more (Durrheim, Hook, & Riggs, 2009). “‘Race‘ is a term for the classification of human beings into physically, biologically, and genetically distinct groups“ and “[r]ace thinking and colonialism are imbued with the same impetus to draw a binary distinction between ‘civilized’ and ‘primitive’” (Ashcroft et al., 2013, p. 218). Critical psychology locates individuals and groups in historical and social relations: from that perspective, there is no doubt that from colonial times to modern days the unique background, distributed mind, foreground, habitus, and interpretive repertoires of the Aeta set them apart from the lowland Filipinos (Durrheim et al., 2009). Henceforth, racism impelled their domination, marginalization, and exploitation with callous disregard for social justice, human rights, and well-being. With the government offering no protection, land grabbing became the primary agent of domination, marginalization, and exploitation in the Aeta’s experience. Eder (1994) noted that access to land is central to any discourse about indigenous peoples but that the Ancestral Domain Bill of 1987 failed to be enacted into law. Belatedly, in 1997, the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act passed key provisions on rights to ancestral domain, right to self-governance and empowerment, social justice and human rights, and cultural integrity and established a National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (Government of the Philippines, 1997). The Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997 was good news at last: that said, privileged elites and their political allies have for long found ways to circumvent the intent of legislation.

References Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (2013). Postcolonial studies: The key concepts (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1(8). Retrieved from https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8. Dahlberg, F. (Ed.). (1981). Woman the gatherer. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Durrheim, K., Hook, D., & Riggs, D. (2009). Race and racism. In D. Fox, I. Prilleltensky, & S. Austin (Eds.), Critical psychology: An introduction (2nd ed., pp. 197–214). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Eder, J. (1994). Indigenous peoples, ancestral lands, and human rights in the Philippines. Cultural Survival Quarterly, 18(2).

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Fox, D., Prilleltensky, I., & Austin, S. (Eds.). (2009). Critical psychology: An introduction (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Fuller, T. (2001, May 9). Philippine eruption snuffed out tribe’s way of life: Pinatubo: 10 years later. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/09/news/philippine-eruption-snu ffed-out-tribes-way-of-life-pinatubo10-years.html. Gajanan, M. (2018, June 6). 8 of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes, according to experts. Time. https://time.com/5300683/volcanoes-most-dangerous-active/. Government of the Philippines. (1997). Republic act no. 8371. https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/ 1997/10/29/republic-act-no-8371/. Morella, C. (2015, August 7). Philippines’ Aeta people “beggars” in their own land. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/afp-philippines-aeta-people-beggars-in-their-ownland-2015-8. The People of the World Foundation. (2020). The indigenous Aeta people. http://www.peoplesof theworld.org/text?people=Aeta. Philippines Statistics Authority. (2015). 2015 census of population. https://psa.gov.ph/statistics/cen sus/2015-census-of-population. Serrat, O. (1994). Deforestation in the Philippines. Unpublished manuscript. Transparency International. (n.d.). Indigenous peoples. https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/ indigenous-peoples/. United Nations. (n.d.). Indigenous peoples at the United Nations. https://www.un.org/development/ desa/indigenouspeoples/about-us.html. United Nations Development Programme. (2013, July 24). Fast facts: Indigenous peoples in the Philippines. https://www.ph.undp.org/content/philippines/en/home/library/democratic_gove rnance/FastFacts-IPs.html. World Bank. (2019). Indigenous peoples. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/indigenouspeoples.

Minority Populations: There Are More Than Meets the Eye

Abstract This précis contends that hitherto unnoticed minority populations, subject to an even more systemic and tenuous dynamic of domination, oppression, and privilege, have appeared in the wake of globalization. The précis suggests that critical psychology can advocate justice-focused policy making better across an even larger constituency if it integrates concern for class, gender, race, and other identity categories more constitutively. The précis reasons that the existing and evolving institutional infrastructure of the United Nations System can help offset iniquities provided the binarism of realpolitik does not undercut far-sighted vision. Referencing Prilleltensky (2012) in particular, the précis flags core concepts at the intersection of critical psychology and globalization.

When they research the treatment of minority populations, critical psychologists look into the dynamics of how these groups have been affected by domination, oppression, and privilege; what organizations have been designed to support them; and what opportunities and limitations exist for them, especially in the educational, political, professional, and social realms. Inspired by emancipatory first-wave feminism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, gender began to feature in second-wave feminist discussions of power structures and social justice from the 1960s to the early 1980s. Because they shape the experience of all people, class and race are now also widely documented in research to situate inequalities. But, there is more: intersectionality, a framework that Crenshaw (1989) developed before the third wave of feminism began in the late-1990s, makes clear that social identities can overlap and has broadened the focus on class, gender, and race. Deleterious effects from the globalization that the end of Communism ushered suggest that intersectionality has an even larger role to play in minority population analysis.

Minority Populations: There Are More Than Meets the Eye was completed on September 28, 2020.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_34

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Minority Population Analysis 1. How Do You Define a Minority? A minority displays class, gender, race, and other identity characteristics that are not those of a majority. With origins in anthropology and sociology, the term “minority” refers in psychology to any population that is subjected to domination and oppression by others in more privileged social positions, irrespective of whether or not it is a numerical minority (Teo, 2014). 2. The Class, Gender, and Race Lens Class, gender, and race have been relied upon to characterize critical social issues impacting minorities: to illustrate, contemporary examples include communities working in poor or dangerous conditions in Bangladesh, Chile, the People’s Republic of China, India, or Taiwan (officially, the Republic of China); women (across many countries); the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in India; Tibetans and other non-Han populations in the People’s Republic of China; the Maori in New Zealand; people living under authoritarian regimes; etc. Class, gender, and race explain much but not all: other identity categories include age, career, disability, education, ethnicity, family size and composition, language, marital or relationship status, parent or childless, physical appearance, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status. Also, Crenshaw (1989) drew attention to the mutually constitutive nature of inequalities: to wit, identities do combine and beget additional modes of domination, oppression, and privilege that must be uncovered and explicated. Certainly, now that the world has been “flattened” by globalization, hitherto unnoticed communities of disenfranchised people have appeared (Friedman, 2007). In short, an even more systemic and tenuous dynamic of domination, oppression, and privilege is at play.

Globalization and the Multiplication of Minorities Globalization has created jobs and raised productivity, output, and wages in low- and middle-income countries, lowered the prices of products in high-income countries, and spread knowledge and technology to improve people’s lives all around; but, with enactment in everyday practice, it has also eroded communities and widened the gap between elites and the rest in every country. In the past, power was often linked to the holdings of assets, notably land, by the few: in a word, elites inherited power. Today, most people draw their power from institutional affiliations: in nearly every country, they make up a far larger and more transient group whose members lose their influence as they are dismissed from their jobs, resign, or retire. Hardoon (2015) described a world, fueled by the endless pursuit of profit, where more than a billion people survive on less than $1.25 a day and the combined wealth of the 80 richest persons, most of them male, equals that of the poorest 50% of humanity (In 2015, 8 of the top 10 wealthiest billionaires were American). Hardoon (2015) noted that the wealth of the 80 richest people in the world had doubled in nominal terms between

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2009 and 2014. So the world might reward work, not wealth, and end the inequality crisis, Vázquez Pimentel et al. (2018) entreated the business and political elites of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland to build an economy for ordinary working people, not the rich and powerful. Because labor costs in the developing world can be a tenth of what they are elsewhere, millions of people in the West have taken to the streets to protest against the effects of globalization on their jobs and communities. (The election of President Trump on a clearly protectionist platform in 2016 and the United Kingdom referendum of the same year on withdrawing from the European Union are but two recent, national-level examples of the backlash against globalization; increased populism elsewhere is another.) In high-income countries, the working class whose jobs were physically exported feature prominently among the newly disenfranchised but knockon effects as globalization increased demand for professionals have marginalized the less educated and widened income gaps; migrants seeking livelihoods are another emergent progeny of globalization. In developing countries, bottom-line business incentives drive poor working conditions in manufacturing even as employment in services rises here and there. There is more: the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, spread by the ceaseless traveling that globalization has encouraged, has over the last six months killed more than 942,000 persons worldwide and affected every individual and community one way or the other (World Health Organization, 2020). COVID-19 could lead to the emergence of a “lockdown generation”, with young people being disproportionately affected by multiple shocks such as disruption to education and training, loss of employment and income, and difficulties in securing a job (International Labour Organization, 2020). Among young workers, one also finds disparities by education and by race: Black and Hispanic workers and workers with lower levels of education are suffering larger increases in unemployment. Meanwhile, from a study of 3 million people, DeFilippis et al. (2020) confirmed that work-from-home employees are swamped with more meetings and emails. Next, boosted by COVID19, information and communication technology will allow virtual migration of jobs thanks to telerobotics and telepresence. Then, those developing countries that benefited most from globalization in recent decades (e.g., the People’s Republic of China, India) will see their manufacturing industries offshore where costs are lower: in turn, they will experience the effects that globalization had in the West. Based on earlier work, Sen (2009) topically positioned capability, the set of valuable functionings that a person has effective access to, as an alternative to economic approaches to the evaluation of well-being. And yet, globalization will continue: ubiquitous information and communication technology has been its main engine and the ideology of neoliberalism, which (self-servingly) emphasizes the value of free market competition, has played an active supporting role. So it might be more successful, the cultural, ecological, economic, and political dimensions of globalization must be addressed with policies that help the communities the process impacts.

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Critical Psychology for Minority Populations 1. The Continuing Relevance of Critical Theory in the Twenty-First Century Born of different historical and social events from the late eighteenth century to the late twentieth century, anarchism, chaos theory, and postmodernism are critical (social) theories that, from different perspectives, reveal how institutional arrangements can inhibit social justice and well-being (Fox et al., 2009; Serrat, 2020). Anarchism signals ways to reorganize society on a voluntary, cooperative basis to better suit human needs. In chaos theory, societies are complex adaptive systems that defy predictability. Postmodernism warns that progress is not assured: Glenn et al. (2017) listed the challenges of the twenty-first century as sustainable development and climate change, water and sanitation, population and resources, democratization, global foresight and decision making, global convergence of information and communication technology, the rich–poor gap, health issues, education and learning, peace and conflict, the status of women, transnational organized crime, energy, science and technology, and global ethics. Likewise, critical psychology helps explicate growing opposition to globalization: it sees that Occupy Wall Street (2011) and the Yellow Vests (2018–) are expressions of dissatisfaction with unfettered markets that—with governments serving as handmaidens—emphasize profits rather than human benefits. Even so, economic integration cannot be easily undone, as the Brexit negotiations that began in 2017 have demonstrated, and strictly national solutions cannot suffice. Why? Because globalization is “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa” (Giddens, 1991, p. 64). And so, critical psychology reasons that countries must unite around social market models, make common use of institutions, and project what values of social justice and well-being associate with these. 2. Institutional Arrangements for Social Justice and Well-Being It is not that institutional arrangements for social justice and well-being must be built from scratch: thankfully, in this case, the world remains connected by an institutional infrastructure that was set up in the 1940s and 1950s “to maintain international peace and security”, “develop friendly relations among nations”, “achieve international cooperation in solving international problems”, and “be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends” (United Nations, 1945, p. 3). The United Nations System has been resilient: its specialized agencies and affiliated organizations remain highly relevant; ready to synergize institutional arrangements at regional, national, and local levels; and willing to help offset iniquities where they are. Similarly, the emergence in 1999 of the Group of Twenty (G20) to discuss international financial stability suggests the idea of global governance may not be utopian (Steger, 2017). It is by way of existing and evolving institutional arrangements, not “America First” or suchlike attitudes, that global commerce can be made to serve social justice and well-being. The United Nations, for example, has promoted glocalization in

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support of the Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2015). Glocalization welcomes universalizing and particularizing forces in economic, political, and social systems so people might with global awareness live more local lives (Robertson, 1995). The glocalization of governance, for one, would have global standards adapt to local specifics and local developments inform global regulations. Glocalization would humanize globalization. Toward this, the geopolitical binarism that has undercut the far-sighted vision of the United Nations must be tempered if legitimate institutional arrangements for social justice and wellbeing are to boost subsidiarity, relationships, accountability, and learning for better governance.

The Intersection of Critical Psychology and Globalization Globalization impacts individuals and communities and engenders social issues through what Scholte (2000) made out to be deterritorialization, internationalization, liberalization, universalization, and Westernization. The psychological dimensions globalization bears on include the nature of the self and identity, quality of life, mental health, responses to climate change, and intergroup relations (Diaz & Zirkel, 2012). Elaborating, Diaz and Zirkel (2012) explained that “Bronfenbrenner’s (1977) ecological model […] captures the multifaceted interplay between small systems (the individual), intermediate systems (i.e., family, school, work, neighborhood) and large systems (prevailing norms, historical events)” and “[…] provides the appropriate theoretical heuristic to make connections between macroscale processes such as globalization and individual level processes such as identity development, individual beliefs, attitudes, behavior, and health” (p. 444). If they integrate class, gender, race, and other identity categories into critical theory constitutively, critical psychologists can advocate for social justice and wellbeing better across more—and larger—minority populations. So they might join the discourse on globalization and frame their interventions as clinicians, consultants, and researchers, Prilleltensky (2012) invited critical psychologists to investigate the what, who, why, and how of the process: The first question consists of three elements: people, products, and processes. The second question contains two parts: by whom and for whom. The third answer consists of an agentic response and a socio-historical one. Finally, the last question contains several answers, ranging from the psychological to the political. (Prilleltensky, 2012, p. 612)

To push globalization towards justice and well-being with implications for education, research, and policy, Prilleltensky (2012) advised critical psychologists to embrace an ecological and multidimensional view of justice; an ecological and multidimensional view of well-being; and a systematic approach to personal, organizational, and social change. Accepting that “the challenge of globalization for justice and well-being is too big to bear by any one discipline”, Prilleltensky (2012) invited the larger body of psychology to stop “individualizing problems, arrogating power, neglecting context, blaming victims of injustice, and extolling the virtues of the status quo” (p. 626).

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References Bronfenbrenner, U. (1977). Toward an experimental ecology of human development. American Psychologist, 32(7), 513–531. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1(8). Retrieved from https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8. DeFilippis, E., Impink, S., Singell, M., Polzer, J., & Sadun, R. (2020, July 16). Collaborating during Coronavirus: The impact of COVID-19 on the nature of work. Harvard Business School Organizational Behavior Unit Working Paper, 21(6). Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ ssrn.3654470. Diaz, J., & Zirkel, S. (2012). Globalization, psychology, and social issues research: An introduction and conceptual framework. Journal of Social Issues, 68(3), 439–453. Fox, D., Prilleltensky, I., & Austin, S. (Eds.). (2009). Critical psychology: An introduction (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Friedman, T. (2007). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Giddens, A. (1991). The consequences of modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Glenn, J., Florescu, E., & The Millennium Project Team. (2017). State of the future 19.0. Washington, DC: The Millennium Project. Hardoon, D. (2015). Wealth: Having it all and wanting more. Oxfam International. Retrieved from https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/wealth-having-it-all-and-wanting-more. International Labour Organization. (2020, May 27). ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the world of work (4th ed). Retrieved from https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/coronavirus/lang–en/index.htm. Prilleltensky, I. (2012). The what, why, who, and how of globalization: What is psychology to do? Journal of Social Issues, 68(3), 612–629. Robertson, R. (1995). Glocalization: Time–space and homogenity–heterogenity. In M. Featherstone, S. Lash, & R. Robertson (Eds.), Global modernities (pp. 25–44). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Scholte, J. (2000). Globalization: A critical introduction. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan. Sen, A. (2009). The idea of justice. London, UK: Penguin. Serrat, O. (2020). Development of critical psychology. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Steger, M. (2017). Globalization: A very short introduction (4th ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Teo, T. (Ed.) (2014). Encyclopedia of critical psychology. New York, NY: Springer. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7. Vázquez Pimentel, D., Aymar, I. M., & Lawson, M. (2018). Reward work, not wealth. Oxfam International. Retrieved from https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/reward-work-not-wealth. United Nations. (1945). Charter of the United Nations. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/en/cha rter-united-nations/index.html. United Nations. (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. A/RES/70/1. Retrieved from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transforming ourworld/. Word Health Organization. (2020). WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) dashboard. Retrieved from https://covid19.who.int/.

Qualitative Research Methods

Book Analysis of Interviewing as Qualitative Research (Seidman, 2013)

Abstract This précis presents a description, critical analysis, and evaluation of the quality, meaning, and significance of Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education and the Social Sciences (Seidman, 2013).

This précis presents a description, critical analysis, and evaluation of the quality, meaning, and significance of Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education and the Social Sciences (Seidman, 2013). The précis analyses the book’s purpose, content (e.g., concepts and ideas), and authority, noting strengths and weaknesses; it includes a statement of what the author tried to do, evaluates how well—in my opinion—the author succeeded, and presents evidence to support the judgment. The précis relates also the analysis to my plans to leverage interviewing as qualitative research toward my own topic of interest in Leading Organizations of the Future (Serrat, 2018).

Introduction Now in its fourth edition—the first edition appeared in 1991—Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education and the Social Sciences (Seidman, 2013) is a slim but comprehensive volume of 192 pages (retailing at the relatively expensive price of about $27 on Amazon.com) that aimed to provide clear, step-by-step guidance for new and experienced interviewers to develop, shape, and reflect on in-depth interviewing as a qualitative research approach. Using concrete examples, (Seidman, 2013) purported also to help the reader understand the complexities of interviewing—with emphasis on (establishing) context—and the connections of interviewing to broader issues of qualitative research. Notably, Seidman (2013) included principles and methods its author claimed can be adapted to a wide range of research interests. Book Analysis of Interviewing as Qualitative Research (Seidman 2013) was completed on January 26, 2019. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_35

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In the fourth edition, the chapters in Seidman (2013) are not different from those of the third edition that appeared in 2006: they are “Why Interview?” (Chapter 1); “A Structure for In-Depth, Phenomenological Interviewing“ (Chapter 2); “Proposing Research: From Mind to Paper to Action” (Chapter 3); “Establishing Access to, Making Contact with, and Selecting Participants” (Chapter 4); “The Path to Institutional Review Boards and Informed Consent” (Chapter 5); “Technique Isn’t Everything, But It Is a Lot” (Chapter 6); “Interviewing as a Relationship“ (Chapter 7); “Analyzing, Interpreting, and Sharing Interview Material” (Chapter 8); and—the only addition—”The Ethics of Doing Good Work” (Chapter 9). The projected learning objective is to help the reader turn an idea into a research project, structure interviews, choose appropriate participants, conduct the interviews, and organize the data. Seidman (2013) presented no special features (e.g., maps, color plates, etc.). Explicitly, Seidman (2013) was targeted at doctoral students who think that indepth interviewing might be relevant to their topic of interest. But, the author hoped also that the book can serve the purposes of seasoned researchers who turn for the first time to the possibilities of interviewing.

Synopsis (and Reflections) Acknowledging that research methods—be they qualitative, quantitative, or mixed— should always align with research questions, Chapter 1, “Why Interview?”, positioned interviewing as meaning making (or sense making). In other words, “The purpose of interviewing is not to test hypotheses, sand not to evaluate as the term is normally used. At the root of in-depth interviewing is an interest in understanding the lived experience of other people and the meaning they make of that experience“ (Seidman, 2013, p. 9). To contextualize this new-found purpose, the chapter harked back to the paradigm wars of the 1970s and 1980s, when the positivism of the scientific method cast doubt on the legitimacy of qualitative research. But, having come of age, the chapter cautioned that interviewing must not become “a process that turns others into subjects so their words might be appropriated for the benefit of the researcher” (Seidman, 2013, p. 12). Framed by essential phenomenological themes (e.g., “The Temporal and Transitory Nature of Human Existence”; “Whose Understanding Is It? Subjective Understanding”; “Lived Experience as the Foundation of ‘Phenomena’”, and “Emphasis on Meaning and Meaning in Context”), Chapter 2, “A Structure for In-Depth, Phenomenological Interviewing“, advocated a three-interview approach, with the first interview concentrating on “Focused Life History”, the second on “The Details of Experience”, and the third on “Reflection on the Meaning” (of what experiences the first two interviews unearthed). The reader is told the interviews should be three days to a week apart and last 90 min each. The justification for the three-interview approach is to allow both parties, meaning the researcher and the interviewee, to sequentially explore the lived experience, place it in context, and reflect on its meaning. Seidman (2013) addressed concern for validity and reliability too: the

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chapter acknowledged that some qualitative researchers prefer to substitute these terms with such as “confirmability”, “credibility”, “dependability”, “transferability”, and “trustworthiness”; the chapter then made the point that the three-interview approach incorporates features that enhance the accomplishment of validity and reliability by allowing the interviewees to make sense to themselves and to the interviewers, which goes a long way toward validity and reliability. That said, because Seidman (2013) accepted alternatives to the three-interview structure and process, the chapter would have made for richer discussion if the author had explored the pros and cons of alternatives in relation to validity and reliability. Chapter 3, “Proposing Research: From Mind to Paper to Action”, addressed the specific needs of doctoral students engaged in writing research proposals. The questions of “what?”, “why?”, “how?”, “who?”, “when?”, and “where?”, the fundamental issues that frame research (and much else in life) have been discussed in other books: but, the value-added that the chapter provided was to relate these questions to indepth interviewing and deepen them considerably in the process: (a) In what am I interested? What am I trying to learn about and understand? What is the basis of my interest? (b) Why is the subject significant? What is the background of this subject and why is that background important to understand? To what else does the subject relate? If I understand the complexities of this subject, what will be the benefit and who will obtain it? What is the context of previous work that has been done on the subject? How will my work build on what has been done before? (c) How can I adapt the three-interview approach to in-depth, phenomenological interviewing to my subject of study? (d–f) What will the range of participants be? What strategy of gaining access to them will I use? How will I make contact with the participants? Chapter 4, “ Establishing Access To, Making Contact With, and Selecting Participants”, listed the perils of easy access to potential interviewees. For example, conflicts of interest are inherent to interviewing people one supervises, and students can hardly be open to their teachers; interviewing acquaintances can lead to uncomfortable situations; and interviewing friends can reduce the distance needed to take nothing for granted. Conversely, interviewing strangers is good discipline because it forces the interviewer to take himself/herself seriously enough. However, making contact with strangers can mean gaining access through formal or informal gatekeepers, having to deal with hierarchy, and making necessary logistical considerations. Where random sampling is not an option and sampling must be purposeful, snares to avoid in the selection process include eager participants and supposed luminaries. Finally, and most importantly, one must decide how many interviewees are necessary. There are two criteria for enough: the first is sufficiency; the second is saturation, the point at which the researcher hears the same information. Chapter 5, “The Path to Institutional Review Boards and Informed Consent”, responded to increasing concern about ethical issues in interviewing and introduced the Institutional Review Board process and its implications for researchers who interview. The chapter explained what risks, inherent to interviewing, require Informed Consent Forms. Chapter 6, “Technique Isn’t Everything, but It Is a Lot” will be most valuable to researchers who already have interviewing experience and wish to hone their skills.

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The author discussed the importance of listening over speaking. Specifically, the interviewer must listen at three levels: first, he/she must concentrate on the substance of what the interviewee is saying; second, he/she must look for “inner voice”, not the guarded “outer” or “public voice” that interviewees betray by using of words such as “adventure”, “challenge“, and “fascinate”. The author also invited interviewers to follow up on what interviewees say, for example by asking questions when they do not understand, asking to hear more about a subject, and exploring without probing. Interviewers should avoid leading questions and ask open-ended questions; favorite approaches to ask interviewees to talk to them as if they were someone else, and ask them to tell a story. Other recommendations were to ask interviewees to reconstruct, not remember; to keep interviewees focused and to ask for concrete details; to refrain from taking the ebbs and flows of interviewing too seriously; to limit interaction; to explore laughter; to follow hunches; to use interview guides cautiously; and, to tolerate silence. But, there is no recipe for the effective question. Chapter 7, “Interviewing as a Relationship“, drew attention to issues of equity in an interviewing relationship that might be occasioned by race and ethnicity; gender; class, hierarchy, and status; linguistic differences; age; and elites. Elsewhere, “Interviewing relationship are also shaped by what the interviewer and participant deem are appropriate subjects to explore in the interview” (Seidman, 2013, p. 108): in other words, it is important to distinguish between private, personal, and public experiences, and realize that each party may have different boundaries. The chapter recommended also that interviewers should avoid therapeutic relationships. Lastly, the chapter endorses interviews by telephone of Skype and discourages e-mail. Chapter 8, “Analyzing, Interpreting, and Sharing Interview Material”, offered self-evident tips on data management (by means of order, labels, filing, and documentation) and transcription. The chapter suggested two ways of sharing interview data, namely, profiles and themes. Toward data reduction, the chapter discussed the role of computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) as an organizational tool, but warned researchers to avoid the trap of overcoding. Chapter 9, “The Ethics of Doing Good Work”, affirmed the centrality of ethics to interviewing. The author reminded the reader of the need to act virtuously, which calls for “interviewers [to] approach each component of the interviewing process with a sense of the underlying logic of each task” (Seidman 2013, pp. 139–140) and to treat interviewees with dignity.

Learnings The fourth edition of Seidman (2013) spoke to the book’s resonance and importance. With succinct writing, the author covered the entire process of interview-based qualitative research from conceptualization to presentation of findings. Seidman (2013) was grounded in a phenomenological approach that rests on three distinct, thematic interviews, designed to sequentially explore the lived experience, place it in context, and mine its meaning. In phenomenological interviewing, meaning

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is not “the facts” but “the understandings” one reaches. Of course, physical, social, mental, and communicative skills embody the act of interviewing; but, skills alone will not provide answers to a research question; rather, a researcher must develop the competence of attention. To note, “[M]eaningfulness does not reside in the lived experience itself, but is the ‘act of attention’ which brings experiences that would otherwise be simply lived through into our ‘intentional gaze’ and opens the pathway to meaningfulness” (Seidman, 2013, p. 18). To reach understanding, “Researchers must ask themselves what they have learned from doing the interviews, studying the transcripts, marking and labeling them, crafting profiles, and organizing categories of excerpts. What connective threads are there among the experiences of the participants they interviewed? How do they understand and explain these connections? What do they understand now that they did not understand before they began the interviews? What surprises have there been? What confirmations of previous instincts? How have their interviews been consistent with the literature? How inconsistent? How have they gone beyond?” (Seidman, 2013, pp. 130–131). Seidman’s three-interview approach—aka Focused Life History, The Details of Experience, and Reflection on the Meaning—is what I found new, significant, relevant, and so most useful to my own topic of interest in Leading Organizations of the Future (Serrat, 2018) Details of the research method for that are not needed here but it will assuredly be qualitative. Specifically, to both offset the limitations of available literature and ground-truth what is at hand, I look to hold expert-interviews1 with four or five authorities in metagovernance, complexity leadership theory, and knowledge management: this is because leading organizations of the future is about discovering order in an increasingly complex world, for which we need to evolve greater intelligence. Therefore, metagovernance, complexity leadership theory, and knowledge management underpin my research question, will frame the expanded literature review, and will be the subject of grounded theory involving interviews, the most appropriate and most effective way (and there can be no other) to find meaningfulness in the phenomenon that I will explore. Toward the planned expert-interviews, inspired by the concepts and ideas in Seidman (2013), questions will be formulated to underpin continuing conversations. The conversations will investigate, in critical ways, the interviewees’ comprehensions of their experiences and beliefs—as well as mine. I agree with Seidman (2013) that meaningfulness, not a check-and-balance additive, lies at the heart of interviewing as qualitative research. “What are needed are not formulaic approaches to enhancing either validity or trustworthiness but understanding of and respect for the issues that underlie those terms. We must grapple with them, doing our best to increase our ways of knowing and of avoiding ignorance, realizing that our efforts are quite small in the larger scale of things” (p. 30). Such language resonates with my interest in

1 By

expert (not elite, layperson, or even specialist), I refer to individuals holding technical knowledge (e.g., specialized knowledge, administrative competences, etc.), process-related knowledge (e.g., interactions, decision making, organizational constellations, etc.), and/or interpretative–evaluative knowledge (e.g., everyday theories, etc.).

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leading organizations of the future, which means to sundrily “develop”, “generate”, “propose”, and “theorize”.

References Seidman, I. (2013). Interviewing as qualitative research: A guide for researchers in education and the social sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Serrat, O. (2018). Research concept paper for leading organizations of the future. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

Research Concept Paper for Leading Organizations of the Future

Abstract This précis presents a research concept paper for Leading Organizations of the Future: it specifies the primary reasons for undertaking the proposed study, states the problem to be examined, particularizes the research question, articulates the conceptual framework for the expanded literature review while flagging one key text, and justifies what methods of data collection and analysis would underpin next steps.

Primary Reasons for Undertaking the Study I became interested in the metagovernance of organizational forms while working in Asia and the Pacific, a region that is home to 4.5 billion people (or nearly 60% of the world’s population). There, across sectors in more than a dozen different countries including the People’s Republic of China, I experienced at first hand the rapidly changing—and, at times, excessively complex—nature of development and the myriad positive and negative impacts of globalization: I saw that organizations, including the individuals and groups who staff them, must quickly learn to lead with greater relevance, coherence, efficiency, effectiveness, impact, and sustainability in new ways of organizing if they are survive (but preferably thrive) amidst the mounting economic, environmental, political, and social challenges that undertakings such as the Sustainable Development Goals insist on (UN General Assembly, 2015). (The Sustainable Development Goals are an intergovernmental set of 17 aspirational goals and 169 targets that the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted on 25 September 2015 to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.)

Research Concept Paper for Leading Organizations of the Future was completed on August 4, 2018. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_36

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Statement of the Problem Information and communication technology is reshaping the world we live in: ever more, interactions take place online. Organizations, taken to mean goaloriented, boundary-maintaining, activity systems—have consequently morphed in such ways that our turbulent world seems a jumble of undertakings struggling in their environments (Aldrich, 1979). Six dimensions delineate organizational forms: size of labor force, object of labor, means of labor, division of labor, management of labor, and ownership and control of labor (Heydebrand, 1989). Governance—defined as the totality of interactions by which private, public, and civil society configurations along these six dimensions solve problems and create opportunity—was until the late 2000s framed by three “ideal types”: hierarchy, market, and network (or community). With information and communication technology, however, increasingly kaleidoscopic (or hybrid) combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing have appeared. As a result, what autocratic, bureaucratic, charismatic, situational, transactional, and transformational styles of leadership and associated management systems found favor in the closed systems of yesteryear are (all the time more) consumed by fire-fighting and contribute less and less to the success of collective effort. Given the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, aka VUCA, of operating environments over the last 20 years, grasping what forms and combinations of “leadership management systems“ best serve metagovernance of hierarchies, markets, and networks is both important and urgent to societies, economies, and governments worldwide. (Here, metagovernance is defined as coordinated governance of hierarchy, market, and network forms to achieve best outcomes.) Yet, what little discourse takes place about metagovernance generates little direction from scant literature about and limited understanding of the need for management innovation in what has been labeled the Age of Complexity. Organizations must learn to apply situation-specific intervention strategies based on combining, switching, or maintaining hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing; for sure, single modes of governance that are not suited to a situation bring high tangible, intangible, and opportunity costs. The purpose of the proposed research would be to close the gap in knowledge of what situation-specific modes—not styles—of leadership can support metagovernance in organizations of the future. (By modes, I refer to administrative, adaptive, and enabling leadership—or combinations thereof.) In a VUCA world, organizational effectiveness is contingent on knowing how tensions and conflicts between hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing can be alleviated and—why not?—where, when, and how the three forms can be combined to generate synergistic outcomes.

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Research Question The research question that the proposed research will answer is: What modes and combinations of leadership and associated management systems for sense- and decision-making can most effectively address simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic problems?

Conceptual Framework The research method for the proposed research will be qualitative. The purpose of qualitative research is to solve problems by studying everyday life, exploring lived experiences, taking on participants’ points of view, and discovering patterns in behaviors or phenomena. (In so doing, it can also build theory.) As in this case, research questions in qualitative research are broad, seek to explore, may not include variables, accept that relationships can emerge throughout the research process, and do not necessarily rest on hypotheses. Ergo, inductive reasoning (e.g., observation, pattern, tentative hypothesis, theory) will be of the essence. Pending confirmation, social constructivism (often described as interpretivism) may be the best theoretical perspective from which to present what would be a world view on organizations of the future and how they might be led. (Of course, the ontology, epistemology, axiology, rhetoric, and methodology of social constructivism would be associated with the research paradigm.) Among emerging theories of leadership, it is those that are not conditioned by organizational boundaries and most pertinently enable actors to locate themselves in a VUCA world that are germane to the topic. I expect that, nested in the research paradigm of social constructivism, complexity leadership theory will inform the proposed research more than any other. Borrowing from complexity science, complexity leadership theory looks to (a) study an organization’s systems of interactions; (b) make out dynamic, complex systems and processes in organizing; (c) distinguish leadership from managerial positions; (d) recognize three broad genres of leadership: administrative, adaptive, and enabling; and (e) foster the dynamics of complex adaptive systems while at the same time enabling control structures for coordinating formal organization and producing outcomes appropriate to the vision and mission of an organization (Uhl-Bien, Marion, & McKelvey, 2007). This said, complexity leadership theory alone cannot entirely frame the proposed research: I expect that knowledge management will also find traction. The proposed research will leverage grounded theory, one of the main qualitative inquiry traditions. The language of grounded theory resonates with that of the proposed research, which will sundrily “develop”, “generate”, “propose”, or “theorize”: this is because the latter aims to “conceive” a theory about optimum combinations of situationally-determined and time-specific governance styles (e.g., hierarchies, markets, and networks) for problem-solving. (“Discover” might be a

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Complexity Leadership

•Adaptive •Administrative •Enabling

Knowledge Management

•Ecological •Organizational •Technocentric

Metagovernance

Social Constructivism

•Hierarchy •Market •Network •Grounded Theory

Leading Organizations of the Future

Fig. 1 Conceptual Framework for the Proposed Research (Note In association with the expanded literature review on metagovernance, I would leverage Google Trends to chronicle interest in the primary and secondary keywords. To ground theory from a social constructivism perspective, the primary method of data collection and analysis is expected to be expert interviews. [Text analyses of literature on metagovernance may be carried out to ground-truth information from the expert interviews.] In turn, ResearchGate would be used to ground-truth emerging outcomes of the proposed research by uploading successive drafts on ResearchGate, inviting comments, and posting questions there)

better word: if the language of grounded theory research rings the clearest bell, there are no examples of constructs that I might elaborate on, even in “high-performance“ organizations such as those that Fortune 500 lists: all is “in the making”; the idea will not be to prove but to suggest a unified theoretical explanation.) A first cut of the conceptual framework for the proposed research is in the Fig. 1.

Preliminary Literature Review Serrat (2017) presented the results of a quick literature search that highlighted 30 subject-related peer-reviewed articles, using two keywords; 30 is not a large number but the exercise gave confidence that the topic can be studied. Serrat (2017) also included appreciations of the three articles deemed most closely connected to the proposed research. Because complexity leadership theory is likely to underpin investigations under the proposed research, Serrat (2018a) assembled an annotated bibliography of 20 references—specifically, 15 peer-reviewed articles as well as five books—on that very topic. Additionally, Serrat (2018b) reviewed and critiqued the early chapters of Public Management and the Metagovernance of Hierarchies,

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Networks, and Markets: The Feasibility of Designing and Managing Governance Style Combinations (Meuleman, 2008). I hope to carry on from where Meuleman (2008) stopped, this to articulate what leadership management systems are needed depending on both situationally-determined and time-specific combinations of the three governance styles. Of course, the proposed research calls for wider and deeper investigation of literature. The primary keywords of “complexity leadership”, “management innovation“, “leadership modes“, “organizational ecology“, and “postmodern organizations“ have been selected. (I have also identified a dozen secondary keywords.) In association with the expanded literature review, I would leverage Google Trends to chronicle interest in the primary and secondary keywords. This said, Serrat (2017, 2018a, 2018b) confirmed the relative paucity to date of material on the topic: hence, there ought to be considerable, cross-disciplinary demand for more contributions to the small pool of knowledge.

Preliminary Methods To both offset the limitations of available literature and ground-truth what is at hand, the proposed research looks to hold expert interviews with four or five authorities in complexity leadership theory, metagovernance, and knowledge management; most likely, the participants will comprise academics and civil servants. (The recruitment of four or five authorities is considered sufficient given the newness of complexity leadership theory and the art of metagovernance.) The selection criteria will be conditioned by the research question, which suggests that expertise in interpretative–evaluative and process-related knowledge will drive recruitment (I have drawn a short-list of the candidates.). Most likely, the expert interviews will be explorative, systemizing, and theory-generating; during their course, I will take field notes to further serve member-checking and discussion and what coding, categorizing, and reflecting will be carried out during data analysis. NVivo seems suited to gaining rich insights from unstructured data; it may help me make patterns visible and understandable from the expert interviews. If possible, I may also conduct text analyses of some of the literature on metagovernance, this to ground-truth of sorts what insights the expert interviews may produce. I would upload successive drafts on ResearchGate, invite comments, and post questions there. A theory is a spotlight: “[I]t draws your attention to particular events or phenomena, and sheds light on relationships that might otherwise go unnoticed or misunderstood” (Maxwell, 2013, pp. 49–50). A theory being exactly what the proposed research aims to generate, I expect that the conceptual framework, expanded literature review, and methods referred to will deliver what is needed.

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References Aldrich, H. (1979). Organizations and environments. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Inc. Heydebrand, W. (1989). New organizational forms. Work and Occupations, 16(3), 323–357. Maxwell, J. (2013). Qualitative research design: An interactive approach (3rd ed.). Applied Social Research Methods Series No. 41. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Meuleman, L. (2008). Public management and the metagovernance of hierarchies, networks, and markets: the feasibility of designing and managing governance style combinations. Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag. Serrat, O. (2017). Literature search paper on leading organizations of the future. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Serrat, O. (2018a). Annotated bibliography on complexity leadership. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Serrat, O. (2018b). Dissertation critique of public management and the metagovernance of hierarchies, networks, and markets: The feasibility of designing and managing governance style combinations (Meuleman, 2008). Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R., & McKelvey, B. (2007). Complexity leadership theory: Shifting leadership from the industrial age to the knowledge era. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(4), 298–318. UN General Assembly. (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. A/RES/70/1.

Strategic Change Management

Change Management Strategy in Action: Independent Evaluation for Learning

Abstract Informed by trends and citing predictions about the future of evaluation, this précis lays out requirements, considerations, and steps for planning and delivering change that would support the recalibration of independent evaluation so it might better serve learning.

Independent Evaluation for Learning Many organizations (e.g., United Nations agencies, multilateral development banks, international institutions, bilateral aid agencies, national agencies, nongovernment organizations, etc.) conduct independent evaluations that assess policies, strategies, programs, and projects—including their design, implementation, results, and business processes—to systematically and objectively determine relevance, coherence, efficiency, effectiveness, impact, and sustainability. (Evaluations of institutions are less common.) Of course, there are different types of evaluation (e.g., formative, summative, process, outcomes, and impact) but what lessons these uncover serve two distinct and irreconcilable purposes, namely, accountability and learning: the first is concerned with the provision of information to the public; the second means to improve the development effectiveness of plans through feedback of lessons learned. The characteristics (e.g., basic aim, emphasis, clientele, selection of topics, etc.)— and the very conduct and delivery—of evaluation for accountability and evaluation for learning are quite different, as shown in the Table 1. And, while evaluation for accountability predominates, evaluation for learning is the area where most audiences find the greatest need today and tomorrow1 ; however, this need remains largely unmet

Change Management Strategy in Action: Independent Evaluation for Learning was completed on April 14, 2018. 1 The

parties that can learn from evaluation for learning include the beneficiaries who are affected by the work being evaluated; the people whose work is being evaluated (including implementing agencies); the people who contribute to the evaluation (including direct stakeholders); the people

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Table 1 Characteristics of Accountability and Lesson-Learning as Objectives of Evaluation Activity Item

Accountability as the objective

Lesson-learning as the objective

Basic Aim

The basic aim is to find out about the past

The basic aim is to improve future performance

Emphasis

Emphasis is on the degree of success or failure

Emphasis is on the reasons for success or failure

Favored By

Parliaments, treasuries, media, pressure groups

Development agencies and their staff, developing countries, research institutions, consultants

Selection of Topics

Topics are selected based on random samples.

Topics are selected for their potential lessons

Status of Evaluation

Evaluation is an end-product

Evaluation is part of the project cycle

Status of Evaluators

Evaluators should be independent (and impartial)

Evaluators usually include staff members of the aid agency

Importance of Data from Evaluations

Data are only one consideration Data are highly valued for the planning and appraising of new development activities

Importance of Feedback

Feedback is relatively unimportant

Feedback is vitally important

Adapted from Cracknell (2000)

because the underlying political issues as well as the content and process for required change are complicated.

The Problématique of Independent Evaluation The problématique behind the selection of evaluation’s purpose, viz. accountability or learning, is multifaceted: at the insistent request of shareholders tasked with reporting to political leadership, taxpayers, and citizens, feedback from evaluation studies focuses on accountability (and hence provides for command, control, and fingerpointing); however, evaluation for accountability does not serve as an important foundation of learning organizations even if evaluations are shifting to new horizons (e.g., from the project to the program to the country and sometimes regional and global levels). Hence, these days, the primary audiences for evaluations are most commonly boards of directors—the members of which, across the aforementioned agencies, are appointed by the very same shareholders—and, far less often, in-country who conduct the evaluation; the people who commission the evaluation; people who are or will be planning, managing, or executing similar interventions in the future; and the wider community.

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audiences (e.g., policy makers, counterparts) or staff in the concerned agencies (e.g., senior management, policy units, line offices and departments). All the while, the growing practice of self-evaluation (by line offices and departments) means that the centralized units which are given responsibility for independent evaluation are ever more hard-pressed to increase and demonstrate value added from their activities (that fewer and fewer audiences beyond boards of directors refer to). In short, owing primarily to an outdated emphasis on evaluation for accountability, the contribution of evaluation units to organizational performance has plateaued: evaluation reports are hardly ever read (and are fought tooth and nail if they are). The problématique of purpose that evaluation units face is convoluted indeed: this is because the common framework and methodologies that boards of directors (heeding weighty advice from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) have imposed or encouraged across the aforementioned aid architecture offer insufficient elbowroom for change toward evaluation for learning despite the fast-rising demand for that. The issue is intractable because mandatory logic models that demand early determination of strategic elements (e.g., inputs, outputs, outcome, and impact) and their causal relationships, indicators, and what assumptions or risks may influence success or failure impose (before the fact) significant limitations that affect the design of evaluation systems and irremediably constrain the potential for learning.2

Objectives of Evaluation Activity: The Need for Organizational Change and the Issues to Address Originally, evaluation units formed integral part of their respective organizations; but, they were declared independent in the late 1990s following the introduction of results-based management and now report to board of directors. The independence of the evaluation function has encouraged differentiation—not integration—and an “Us vs. Them” mentality at (quite polar) opposite from what is needed by evaluation for learning, which hinges on partnerships (Martin, 2002) (Consequently, other offices and departments do their best to ignore what studies the evaluation units generate.). The walls that evaluation units have built around themselves since the late 1990s act as a strong disincentive to change and work against psychological commitment to any sort of change—after all, the argument goes, evaluation units must be in the right since they do the bidding of boards of directors. (And so, resistance to change in evaluation units is simultaneously blind, ideological, and political.)

2 Logic

models usually assume simple, linear cause–effect relationships: they overlook unintended or unplanned outcomes; do not make explicit the theory of change underlying the initiative; do not cope well with multi-factor, multi-stakeholder processes; undervalue creativity and experimentation in the pursuit of long-term, sustainable impact (the “lockframe” problem); encourage fragmented rather than holistic thinking; and require a high level of planning capacity.

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In the many organizations mentioned earlier, evaluation for accountability is passé but lesson-learning as the primary objective of evaluation activity remains a pipe dream. Still, ten predictions by Gargani (2012) hinted at quickly shifting sands: in 10 years, he argued, (a) most evaluations will be have become internal (and so will not conducted by evaluation units); (b) valuation reports will have become obsolete; (c) evaluations will have abandoned data collection in favor of data mining; (d) national registries of evaluations will have been created; (e) evaluations will be conducted in more open ways; (f) the Request for Proposals will Rest in Peace (because most evaluations will be conducted internally); (g) evaluation theories (plural) will have disappeared (because a comprehensive, contingent, context-sensitive theory will have emerged); (h) the demand for evaluators will have grown; (i) the number of training programs in “ will have gone out of favor (replaced by some new term such as “social impact and management” to highlight the process of managing interventions over that of merely understanding them). [It will take longer than Gargani (2012) expected for these changes to eventuate but the points he made are valid; regarding what remains to be done, Gargani (2012) might also have called for the introduction of more participatory technologies (e.g., appreciate inquiry, learning histories, the Most Significant Change technique, and outcome-mapping) and underscored the considerable potential of remote sensing technology and social media analytics.] It is poignant that relevance, coherence, efficiency, effectiveness, impact, and sustainability should now become the criteria by which one could (or perhaps should) judge the performance of evaluation units: independent evaluation needs a shot in the arm, with 70–80% of evaluation reports given over to evaluation for learning.

Independent Evaluation for Learning: Planning and Delivering Organizational Change At first glance, the implications for leadership are not easy to discern. In the circumstances delineated above, reforming evaluation units should call for nothing less than revolutionary change in what used to be an open system; yet, even evolutionary change is hard to contemplate: their patterns, structures, and processes are those of tightly coupled systems. Tightly coupled systems are thought easier to change but this is not the case: first, reform would have to be sanctified by the international system framed by the Evaluation Cooperation Group (and its 10 member organizations) that was established in 1996 to promote a more harmonized approach to evaluation methodology; second, past that larger system, change would fully impact evaluation units and their experts (most of whom would need training in user-centric evaluation, associated methodologies, and new techniques). (Indeed, at the level of the individual, change would assuredly have deep implications for selection, recruitment, replacement, and displacement, not forgetting coaching and counseling.) Evaluation units would have to revisit sacrosanct assumptions about the mission, purpose, and raison d’être of evaluation units—primarily the notion of independence—as well as

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what competencies are required if the objective of evaluation activity shifts. Heeding Drucker (1994), new assumptions would have to fit emerging reality, be congruent with one another, be known and understood by all staff in the host organizations (not just staff in evaluation units), and be tested constantly. If change of such political and organizational dimensions were acceptable to both the international community and, say, a multilateral development bank, perhaps on a trial basis, the steps to take to ensure a successful implementation process for the proposed changes would—informed first by an organizational diagnosis such as Cameron and Quinn’s Competing Values Framework, aka Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI), (Cameron & Quinn, 2011)3 and then framed by the Burke–Litwin Model (Burke & Litwin, 1992)4 —assuredly need to spring from the complete set of activities that Burke lists for discontinuous change leaders: (i) prelaunch phase (leader self-examination; gathering information from the external environment, not forgetting the adversarial internal environment in this case; establishing the need for change; providing clarity of vision and direction); (ii) launch phase (communicating the need for change; initiating key activities; dealing with resistance); (iii) postlaunch phase (multiple leverage; taking the heat; consistency; perseverance; repeating the message); and (iv) sustaining the change (dealing with unanticipated consequences; momentum; choosing successors; launching yet again new initiatives) (Burke, 2014, pp. 328–329). Conspicuously in relation to establishing the need for change, providing clarity of vision and direction, initiating key activities, and dealing with resistance, consideration of the “Change Formula” would prior to that help define and power the pre-launch and launch phases (Fig. 1).5 3 In evaluation units, the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument developed by Cameron and

Quinn would likely reveal a hierarchy culture buttressed by elements of a clan culture. Toward evaluation for learning, a change management strategy in action would probably see adhocracy as the preferred culture, with a theory of effectiveness and quality improvement strategy informed by elements of a market culture. 4 Even if its effectiveness is subject to how well each of the 12 dimensions identified are explored and put to use, the Burke–Litwin Model is one of the most comprehensive causal model of organizational performance and change and—compared with others—would permit better framing (e.g., understanding, categorizing, and interpreting) of the complex circumstances in which evaluation units operate, as shown in Fig. 1. The mix of transformational factors (long-term levers), transactional factors (operational levers), and individual and personal factors (short-term levers) the model demarcates and the interrelationships that it flags would provide ample and much-needed opportunity to hypothesize how the performance of evaluation units is affected by external and internal factors [including external environment, mission and strategy, leadership, organizational culture, structure, management practices, systems (policies and procedures), work unit climate, task and individual skills, individual needs and values, motivation, and individual and organizational performance]. Other models—for example by Leavitt, Mintzberg, Nadler–Tushman, Porras, and Weisbord—integrate content and process but they are more about organizational functioning than they are about change. Tichy’s (1982) attention to technical, political, and cultural systems is welcome, critical as they are to understanding organizations in general and change in particular, but Tichy (1982) skims over the all-important psychological aspects of change; does not distinguish transformational and transactional dimensions; and, in the final analysis, overplays the need for alignment and congruence to the detriment of vivifying change. [Paradoxically, the technical, political, and cultural dynamics of Tichy’s (1982) framework are lifeless.] And so, there is added reality in the Burke–Litwin model that one looks for in vain elsewhere.

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Fig. 1 The Burke–Litwin Causal Model of Organizational Performance and Change (Source Burke & Litwin [1992])

Schein’s (1999) insights regarding group boundary management (and criteria for inclusion and exclusion) would be relevant: indeed, the boundaries of evaluation units would need to shift substantially.6 Based on this and the highly technical nature 5 The

“Change Formula” has undergone modifications since it was developed by Gleicher in the early 1960s to underscore what key factors and relationships can affect readiness for change: in its first iteration, the Change Formula read C = (ABD) > X, where C = Change, A = Level of dissatisfaction with the status quo; B = Clear or understood desired state; D = Practical first steps to the desired state, X = ”Cost” of changing. Subsequently, Dannemiller refined the Change Formula to read D x V x F > R, where D = Dissatisfaction with how things are now, V = Vision of what is possible, F = First, concrete steps that can be taken towards the vision; and R = Resistance. (Note the addition of multipliers.) With other inputs by Beckhard and Harris (1977), the Change Formula now usually reads C = D x V x F x S > R, where C = Change; D = Dissatisfaction with how things are now; V = Vision of what is possible; F = First, concrete steps that can be taken towards the vision; S = Support systems; and R = Resistance. 6 Involving stakeholders (and so broadening boundaries) is a major challenge facing learningoriented evaluations, made all the harder by underinvestment in the architecture of knowledge management and learning. To begin to build learning into evaluations, for instance, one would have

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of evaluation work, the kind of leadership required would not be of the either–or but of the both–and variety: in other words, a leader–manager able to transform and transact would be needed, this to encourage individual and collective sense-making and turn resistance into resource in a psychology of safety, trust, and commitment. Assuredly also, beginning in Process Consultation mode, the leader–manager would need to act in the three capacities of expert, doctor, and process consultant and continually move from one mode to another as the situation dictates (Schein, 1999). By such means, he/she would need not only to build a helping relationship with the evaluation unit but also, crucially, help that unit (re)build a helping relationship with the host organization, especially its senior management, policy units, and line offices and departments. Active inquiry and listening that balances problem-solving with appreciative inquiry; the deciphering of hidden forces and process with due respect for intrapsychic processes (observation—emotional reaction—judgment— intervention) and the traps of misperception they are prey to; careful attention to faceto-face dynamics, levels of communication, and deliberate feedback; and a focus on both group task accomplishment and interpersonal and group management would be “par for the course”.

Conclusion This précis has argued that, to enable adaptability and resilience in the face of change, learning must now be at the core of every organization. Evaluation provides unique opportunities to learn throughout the management cycle: however, to reap these opportunities, evaluation must be designed, conducted, and followed-up with learning, not accountability, in mind for the fundamental reason that the objective of the first is to prove while that of the second it to improve. That said, the précis makes clear that evaluation is an eminently political issue: a change management strategy to boost evaluation for learning would do well to first conduct an organizational diagnosis using Cameron and Quinn’s Competing Values Framework (Cameron & Quinn, 2011); consider early all implications from the “Change Formula”; leverage the Burke–Litwin Model (Burke & Litwin, 1992) in light of the intricate patterns, structures, and processes of evaluation units (that no other causal models of organizational performance and change would help frame so well); follow through the complete set of activities that Burke lists for discontinuous change leaders (Burke 2014, pp. 328–329); and both absorb Schein’s (1999) insights regarding group boundary management—which is vitally important here— and adhere also to his precepts for Process Consultation in the delivery thereof. Most to make the drafting of the terms of reference a participatory activity that involves stakeholders, consider the utilization of the evaluation from the outset, spend time getting the evaluation questions clear and include questions about unintended outcomes, bring stakeholders into the process, ensure that the “deliverables” include learning points aimed at distinct audiences, build in diverse reporting and dissemination methods for a range of audiences, ensure there is follow-up by assigning responsibilities for implementing recommendations, and build in a review of the evaluation process.

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OCAI Assessment: Clan, Adhocracy, Market, Hierarchy (Now & Preferred)

Change Formula C=DxVxFxS>R Two Person-Months

Prelaunch, launch, postlaunch, & sustaining the change

Burke _ Litwin Model

Process Consultation (including boundary management)a

Three Years

Fig. 2 Change Management Strategy in Action

likely, a plan of action across the 12 dimensions of the Burke–Litwin Model would span three years in the four phases of prelaunch, launch, postlaunch, and sustaining the change (which might call for a follow-up rolling work program). (Research associated with the application of the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument and itemizing of the Change Formula would only take about two person-months at the onset but provide essential inputs toward subsequent definition and refinement of the action plan.) The change management strategy in action is depicted in Fig. 2. Without presupposing the outcome of research associated with Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument and the Change Formula, it is likely that—among the 12 dimensions—a critical mass of recommendations would concern about eight of them; they include mission and strategy (e.g., revisiting the mission, purpose, and raison d’être of the evaluation unit—primarily the notion of independence), leadership (e.g., reframing the leadership structure and composition to place an accent on leader–manager role models), organizational culture (e.g., recasting explicit and implied values, principles, customs, rules, and regulations that influence organizational behavior to encourage learning partnerships with other units of the host organization), systems (policies and procedures) (e.g., devising or adopting methodologies and techniques for user-centric evaluations for learning), work unit climate (e.g., gauging how the evaluations experts think and feel, and what they expect, about the kinds of relationships they share with other experts in their teams and other staff in the host organization they would have to work more closely with), task and individual skills (e.g., devising and conducting training in user-centric evaluation, associated methodologies, and new techniques), individual needs and values (e.g., exploring levels of engagement among the evaluation experts to identify what quality factors will enrich jobs and lead to better job satisfaction), and motivation (e.g., assessing the motivation levels of the evaluation experts to determine their willingness to achieve

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the new mission and strategy and—where willingness is insufficient—formulate motivational triggers necessary to deliver these).

References Beckhard, R., & Harris, R. (1977). Organizational transitions: Mapping complex change (2nd ed.). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Burke, W. (2014). Organization change: Theory and practice (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Burke, W., & Litwin, G. (1992). A causal model of organizational performance and change. Journal of Management, 18(3), 523–545. Cameron, K., & Quinn, R. (2011). Diagnosing and change organizational culture: Based on the competing values framework (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Cracknell, B. (2000). Evaluating development aid: Issues, problems, and solutions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Drucker, P. (1994). The theory of the business. Harvard Business Review, 72(5), 95–104. Gargani, J. (2012, January 30). The future of evaluation: 10 predictions [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://evalblog.com/2012/01/30/the-future-of-evaluation-10-predictions/. Martin, J. (2002). Organizational culture: Mapping the terrain. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Schein, E. (1999). Process consultation revisited: Building the helping relationship. San Francisco, CA: Addison-Wesley. Tichy, N. (1982). Managing change strategically: The technical, political, and cultural keys. Organizational Dynamics, 11(2), 59–80.

Schein’s Process Consultation: Three Reactions

Abstract This précis outlines the process consulting style and notes three reactions to the exclusive division of alternatives it intuits, the assumptions of the approach, and the concept of client.

The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling Any discussion of process consultation would do well to recognize from the outset that Schein (2011) developed this consulting style from “ … realization that helping was not only an important ingredient of what organizational consulting was all about, but was a core social process in its own right that needed analysis” (p. xiii). Because offers of help can be resisted and resented, when they are not categorically refused, Schein (2011) felt the need to investigate what social and psychological dynamics are common to different types of helping relationships, explain why help does not always help, and give advice to would-be helpers about how they might build effective dynamics in one-to-one, group, and organizational situations to make their assistance welcomed and practicably useful. Shrewdly, this in contrast with pure, diagnostic, or confrontational kinds of inquiry, from Schein (1969, 1999) saw that “Process Consultation is the creation of a relationship with the client that permits the client to perceive, understand, and act on the process events that occur in the client’s internal and external environment in order to improve the situation as defined by the client” (p. 20). Vitally, “Process consultation means that the helper focuses from the very beginning on the communication process” (Schein, 2011, p. 61). That said, the adoption of process consultation rests on a good number of assumptions: • Clients … often do not know what is really wrong and need help in diagnosing what their problems actually are. But only they own and live with the problem. • Clients often do not know what kinds of help consultants can give to them; they need guidance to know what kinds of help to seek. Schein’s Process Consultation: Three Reactions was completed on January 18, 2018. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_38

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• Most clients have a constructive intent to improve things, but need help in identifying what to improve and how to improve it. • Only clients know what will ultimately work in their situation. • Unless clients learn to see problems for themselves and think through their own remedies, they will be less likely to implement the solution and less likely to learn how to fix such problems should they recur. • The ultimate function of help is to pass on diagnostic skills and intervene constructively so that clients are more able to continue to improve their situations on their own. (Schein, 2011, pp. 63–64)

Reaction: The Case of Either–Or Explicatory as it may be, there is something of the purist behind process consultation: it is not—simply—that “Someone who is asked for help has a choice [emphasis added] of three possible helping roles: expert, doctor, and process consultant” (Schein, 2011, p. 64). There never is a perfect situation whereby—paraphrasing—an expert only provides information or service, a doctor only diagnoses and prescribes, and a process consultant only aims “to reveal the information necessary to decide on what kind of help is needed and how best to provide it” (Schein, 2011, p. 64). Both academics and consultants are wont to isolate variables so they might all the better make their case: and yet, notwithstanding the above, a careful reading of Schein’s (1999, 2011) work suggests ambivalence about the three roles: they are at times mutually exclusive; at other times, they are not. In point of fact, organizations rarely recruit consultants to fulfill one role and no other: yet, Schein (1999, 2011) gave no pointers on possible trade-offs between the three helping roles or how the need for pure, diagnostic, and/or confrontational kinds of inquiry might help ascribe relative weights to the distribution of one’s services as an expert, a doctor, and/or a process consultant.

Reaction: Assumptions The six assumptions on which the adoption of process consultation rests, according to Schein (2011), evidence a strong problem-solving mindset. For instance: “Clients … often do not know what is really wrong and need help in diagnosing what their problems actually are. But only they own and live with the problem” (Schein, 2011, p. 63); and: “Unless clients learn to see problems for themselves and think through their own remedies, they will be less likely to implement the solution and less likely to learn how to fix such problems should they recur” (Schein, 2011, p. 64). But, not all consultants are engaged to solve thorny problems: they can also help develop strategies, advise on policies, facilitate, unleash energy and strengths in the organization, etc. Therefore, harking back to the necessity, we are told, to choose between

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the three possible helping roles of expert, doctor, and process consultant, there is a need to clarify what kinds of situations warrant process consultation and which do not. Surely, it cannot just be that process consulting and nothing else (e.g., an expert, a doctor) is most effective when, say, “Clients often do not know what kinds of help consultants can give to them; they need guidance to know what kinds of help to seek” (Schein, 2011, p. 63) or when “Most clients have a constructive intent to improve things, but need help in identifying what to improve and how to improve it” (Schein, 2011, p. 63). On top, these assumptions seem at odds also with Schein’s (2011) other assumption that “Only clients know what will ultimately work in their situation” (p. 64).

Reaction: The Concept of Client Helpfully, Schein (1999) isolated six basic types of clients: (a) contact clients, (b) intermediate clients, (c) primary clients, (d) unwitting clients, (e) ultimate clients, and (f) involved “non-clients”, which presumably refers to what we would these days term “stakeholders”. Usefully, Schein (1999) also drew attention to seven levels of problems (or issues): (a) individual, (b) interpersonal, (c) face-to-face group, (d) intergroup, (e) organizational, (f) interorganizational, and (g) system. [Inexplicably, Schein (1999) did not mention the intraorganizational level, which in large organizations simply cannot be ignored.] These distinctions can only help where the problem is relatively simple (in which case, paradoxically, the resources one devotes to it need not be onerous); they might also help where the problem is complicated. But how, one may ask, can process consulting serve effectively where the problems are complex (if not chaotic) and a process consultant must simultaneously work with the six basic types of clients at the seven levels identified, of which the intraorganizational level is likely to be the most difficult?

References Schein, E. (1969). Process consultation. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Schein, E. (1999). Process consultation revisited: Building the helping relationship. San Francisco, CA: Addison-Wesley. Schein, E. (2011). Helping: How to offer, give, and receive help. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Systems Theory

Five Notes on Systems Theory

Abstract This précis chronicles five short notes on the General System Theory; the nature of a system; open and closed systems; leverage points; and the learning organization.

The Skeleton of Science In his Metaphysics (n.d.), Aristotle (384–322 BC)—the Father of Western Philosophy—sagely recognized that “… many things have a plurality of parts and are not merely a complete aggregate but instead some kind of a whole beyond its parts …”. Oppositely, from the time of Descartes (1596–1650) through The Age of Enlightenment and well into the 20th century, the scientific method progressed under two related assumptions: a system could be broken down into individual components so that each might be analyzed as an independent entity, and the components could be added in linear fashion to describe the totality of the system. For sure, reductionism can make large, complicated problems less intimidating and more amenable to solutions; by systematic observation, measurement, and experimentation and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses, the scientific method has broken much ground and delivered immense knowledge; even so, one always risks losing the interconnectedness of situations in their fullest expressions. “Independently of each other, similar problems and solutions have developed in widely different fields”, von Bertalanffy (1969) remarked in the face of ever-increasing specialization and the splitting of science into innumerable disciplines and subdisciplines (p. 31).1 Positing that focusing on complexity and interdependence promotes understanding of the

Five Notes on Systems Theory was completed on July 10, 2019. 1 This

intuits that von Bertalanffy (1969) did not formulate the General System Theory to fill a gap in knowledge but, rather, to put paid to the proliferation of gaps as “… the physicist, the biologist, the psychologist, and the social scientist are, so to speak, encapsulated in their private universes, and it is difficult to get word from one cocoon to the other” (p. 30).

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dynamic behavior of systems, von Bertalanffy (1969) then proposed the General System Theory for application in the natural and social sciences.2 Today, the applications of systems theory include computing, ecology, engineering, family psychotherapy, the learning organization (Senge, 2006), and management. In the latter instance, given that the first consideration of an organization (e.g., a business or a city) is to survive (Leonard, 2009), systems analysis—developed independently of systems theory—now helps decision-makers identify, reconstruct, optimize, and control organizations in light of multiple objectives, constraints, and resources. In such instances, systems analysis helps specify possible courses of action and their benefits, costs, and risks. Ideas related to systems theory are also used in the emerging sciences of complexity, such as Complexity Leadership Theory; in the study of self-organization and heterogeneous networks of interacting actors; and in associated domains such as artificial intelligence, artificial life, chaotic dynamics, computer modeling and simulation, far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics, and neural networks. There can be no doubt that systems thinking complements reductionism and that the world and our lives would be poorer without it. But, try as one might, systems thinking is not the be-all and end-all of approaches to problem solving: (a) systems thinking encourages binary (or black-and-white) solutions, even though real-life is about paradox (or gray areas), and so may prevent creative types from contributing because such personalities are entirely intuitive; (b) systems thinking underrates the inestimable value of experiencing, something that happens in social organizations but not in natural systems; (c) systems thinking may be more suited to circumstances of apparent complexity (that some might instead term complicated)—where the interaction of components seems complex at first glance but demonstrates relatively simpler order below the surface—and may have limitations in instances of truly complex systems, such as social systems; and (d) systems thinking needs to be followed by “systems doing” since one must by then deal with real people instead of models. Perhaps because of this, systems thinking in business life is yet to demonstrate unalloyed success in the formulation of, say, policy, strategy, or investments or—put plainly—performance that is unequivocally superior to that of other approaches to thinking about the world, which systems thinking seems intrinsically wont to crowd out.

2 To

put it simply, a system is a set of regularly interacting or interdependent elements (or components, entities, factors, members, parts, units, etc.) that work together to form an integrated whole. (Hence, the term “systemic” refers to something that spreads throughout and so affects a system entirely.) Every system is confined by spatial and temporal boundaries, influenced by its environment (unless it is closed), described by structure and purpose, and expressed by functioning that—in complex systems—can involve the acquisition of qualitatively new properties through emergence and lead to continual evolution.

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More Than the Sum of Its Parts? Or Other? First articulated by Aristotle, then, systems thinking is now summed up by the catchphrase that the whole is more (or greater) than the sum of its parts; usually, this is taken to mean that the whole is “better” than one might expect from the totally of the individual parts because the way they combine adds a different quality, or synergy, such as what one might expect from successful teamwork; more pertinently, perhaps, the notion should impart that the whole is “other” than the sum of the parts (and of course the individual effect of each part), “other” being taken to denote the system that comes about from the cohesion (or “togetherness”) of the parts in a given environment. That said, there is more to the attributes of a system than mere cohesion (or “togetherness”) of the parts within an environment, as von Bertalanffy (1969), Senge (2006), and Meadows (2008), among others, have explained. To be given full expression so it might truly be “more than the sum of its parts” and function in this or that way, several other factors must both be at play and maintain integrity across the elements: the main factors—indeed, characteristics—have to do with resilience, self-organization, and hierarchy (and the balance among them) (Meadows, 2008, pp. 75–85). Effectiveness, the measure of a system’s ability to perform the functions necessary to achieve its goal, may be the ultimate attestation that a system is “more than the sum of its parts.” Effectiveness was described by Hitchins (2007) as a combination of performance (meaning, how well a function is carried out), availability (that is, how often the function can be deployed when needed), and survivability (namely, how likely is it that the system will be able to use the function fully). Hitchins (2007) offered an engineering perspective on systems and, unsurprisingly, other perspectives exist: from the perspective of organizations, Senge (2006) explained that a system can (or rather should) also learn, thereby improving its effectiveness over time. We live in a world of organizations and Senge (2006), for one, offered both a convincing rationale why such (socio-technical) systems should be both more and other than the sum of their parts and how they might achieve that.

Open and Closed Systems At the heart of the General System Theory, von Bertalanffy (1969) contrasted two types of systems, viz., open systems and closed systems. Open systems are systems that allow interactions between their internal elements and the environment.3 “An open system is defined as a system in exchange of matter with its environment, presenting import and export, building-up and breaking-down of its material components” (von Bertalanffy, 1969, p. 140). To wit, “Every living organism is essentially an open system. It maintains itself in a continuous inflow and outflow, a building 3 Interactions can take the form of energy, information, or material transfers into or out of a system’s

boundaries.

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up and breaking down of components, never being, so long as it is alive, in a state of chemical and thermodynamic equilibrium but maintained in a so-called steady state which is distinct from the latter. This is the very essence of that fundamental phenomenon of life which is called metabolism, the chemical processes within living cells” (von Bertalanffy, 1969, p. 39). Elaborating, von Bertalanffy (1969) wrote that an open system is a complex of interacting elements that interact with their environments, can acquire qualitatively new properties through emergence, and are thus in continual evolution by means of feedback.4 In the social sciences, for instance, an open system is a process that exchanges, say, capital, information, material, or people with its environment. The key characteristics of an open system pertain to: • Importation of Energy. An open system takes energy—in various kinds of inputs—from the environment; without inputs of energy, no open system can survive. • Throughput. An open system converts inputs into various kinds of outputs; the transformation process is known as throughput. • Outputs. An open system exports outputs to the environment; the manner in which it does so determines its viability and existence. • System as Cycles of Events. The pattern of an open system’s activities—inputs, throughput, outputs—has a cyclical character; outputs that are exported to the environment provide inputs toward the repetition of other cycles. • Negative Entropy. To endure, open systems must slow the entropic process; this can be achieved by importing more energy from the environment than what a system expends. (A law of nature, entropy dictates that all organized forms eventually degrade or run down.) • Feedback Mechanism. With feedback, an open system receives information from the environment; with negative feedback, a system can correct deviations from a more optimal (or desired) course of actions. • Steady State. When maintaining negative entropy, the importation of energy from the environment can hold a degree of constancy in energy exchange, and so that the open system achieves steady state; however, this steady state is not a true equilibrium since energy import and export is a continuous process and a new equilibrium is soon formed. • Differentiation. An open system moves to differentiation and elaboration; old patterns are changed by new specialized functions. • Integration and Coordination. As differentiation proceeds, an open system must somehow integrate and coordinate related parts. • Equifinality. Equifinality, the property of allowing or having the same effect or result from different events, means that an open system can reach a given end-state by many potential means. (Accountlearning.com, n.d.) 4 In

precisely opposite fashion, closed systems are isolated from their environment. “In any closed system, the final state is unequivocally determined by the initial conditions” (von Bertalanffy, 1969, p. 40). Equilibrium thermodynamics, to mention but one, is a field of study that applies to closed systems.

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The methodology and mathematical modeling technique of system dynamics, which owes to Forrester’s work in the mid-1950s, is an approach to understanding the nonlinear behavior of complex systems over time using stocks, flows, internal feedback loops, table functions, and time delays. The main idea of systems dynamics was borrowed from control engineering (or control systems engineering) to model the dynamics of business and social systems and highlight the impacts of different feedback loops in the systems. Developed independently from the General System Theory, which deals with the concept and principles of open systems in general, the basics are nevertheless similar. To note, the General System Theory’s conception of open systems and—more to the point—closed systems (generally) resonates with the system dynamics concept of an endogenous isolating boundary (e.g., rate, stock, time, etc.), with the important caveat that the closed-boundary concept of systems dynamics implies that the system behavior of interest is not imposed from the outside but created from within, the object being to study dynamics and model impacts. (In systems dynamics, a system’s boundaries demarcate limits to the system’s internal components and processes; internal to its boundaries, the system has some degree of integrity, meaning the parts work together with integrity to give the system a degree of autonomy; beyond the boundaries, the system loses its autonomy.)

Leverage in Systems In the context of systems analysis, Meadows (1997) explained that “[leverage points] are places within a complex system (a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything” (p. 1). [That said, in an online version of the same article, Meadows (n.d.) cautioned that “Th[e] idea [of leverage points] is not unique to systems analysis—it’s embedded in legend. The silver bullet, the trimtab, the miracle cure, the secret passage, the magic password, the single hero who turns the tide of history.” (Meadows (n.d.)] In increasing order of effectiveness, Meadows (1997) identified the places to intervene in a system to be: 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.

Constants, parameters, numbers (e.g., standards, subsidies, taxes) Regulating negative feedback loops Driving positive feedback loops Material flows and nodes of material intersection Information flows The rules of the system (e.g., constraints, incentives, punishments) The distribution of power over the rules of the system The goals of the system The mindset or paradigm out of which the system—its goals, power structure, rules, its culture—arises

The nine places to intervene in a system are commonsensical, not to say obvious. But, “Counterintuitive. That’s Forrester’s word to describe complex systems. Leverage

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points are not intuitive. Or if they are, we intuitively use them backward, systematically worsening whatever problems we are trying to solve”, Meadows (n.d.) added. Why places to intervene in a system should be counterintuitive demands explanation that neither Meadows (1997) nor (presumably) Forrester provided. Counterintuitive may be the wrong word: instead, Meadows and Forrester might have explained that, particularly in hierarchies but more likely than not everywhere, it is the distribution of power over the rules of the system, meaning, the pigeonholing of responsibilities and associated lack of incentives, that more often than not dissuades personnel from volunteering fixes. From this perspective, begging to differ also with Repenning and Sterman (2001), it is not that “The ability to identify and learn about new improvement methods no longer presents a significant barrier to most managers [and that] … [i]nstead, successfully implementing these innovations presents the biggest challenge“ (Repenning & Sterman, 2001, p. 65, emphasis in original). How to multiply the outcome of efforts without a corresponding increase in the consumption of resources ought to be what each and every organization seeks: and yet, all too often, organizations are comfortable with policies, strategies, structures, systems, and business processes that keep them in the middle of the road. “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world,” Archimedes (287– 212 BC) is alleged to have said: notwithstanding, the principle of leverage is rarely applied in organizations because not enough attention is paid to the fulcrum, the point on which a lever rests (or is supported) and on which it pivots. In organizations, lest we forget, the fulcrum is people and organizations that hope to leverage for change had better understand people and their organizational cultures.

The Disciplines of the Learning Organization In the first appendix of The Fifth Discipline, which presents the five component technologies of the learning organization as learning disciplines, Senge (2006) remarked that each discipline can be pondered at three distinct levels: (a) essences (viz. the state of being of those with high levels of mastery in the discipline); (b) principles (viz. guiding ideas and insights); and (c) practices (viz. what you do) (p. 383). Because we all go through distinct stages of learning, Senge (2006) averred that it is helpful to approach the learning disciplines by developing new cognitive capacities (Stage 1), experimenting with new action rules (Stage 2), and enacting new values and assumptions (Stage 3). The three levels of the five “pyramids” used to depict the practices, principles, and essences are compiled in Table 1. Presenting the five disciplines as learning disciplines at the end of The Fifth Discipline seems a strange afterthought but underscores the idealistic pragmatism of Senge (2006), which moved him to both explore and promote ideas that many would consider utopian (or as a minimum abstract), and to mediate these with a clear architecture so they might be worked on. An accent on learning runs through Senge (2006): of course, “survival learning” in situations of rapid change is not good enough; but, even “adaptive learning” must be joined by “generative learning” to

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Table 1 The learning disciplines Learning discipline Essence

Principle

Practice

Systems Thinking

• Holism • Interconnectedness

• Structure Influences Behavior • Policy Resistance • Leverage

• Systems Archetypes • Simulation

Personal Mastery

• Being • Generativeness • Connectedness

• Vision • Creative Tension vs. Emotional Tension • Subconscious

• Clarifying Personal Vision • Holding Creative Tension (Focusing on the Result, Seeing Current Reality) • Making Choices

Mental Models

• Love of Truth • Openness

• Espoused Theory vs. Theory-in-Use • Ladder of Inference • Balance Inquiry and Advocacy

• Distinguishing “Data” from Abstractions Based on Data • Testing Assumptions • ”Left-Hand” Column

Shared Vision

• Commonality of Purpose • Partnership

• Shared Vision as “Hologram” • Commitment vs. Compliance

• Visioning Process (Sharing Personal Visions, Listening to Others, Allowing Freedom of Choice) • Acknowledging Current Reality

Team Learning

• Collective Intelligence • Alignment

• Dia Logos • Integrate Dialogue and Discussion • Defensive Routines

• Suspending Assumptions • Acting as Colleagues • Surfacing Own Defensiveness • Practicing

Note Compiled from Senge (2006)

enhance the capacity to create. For Senge (2006), real learning gets to the heart of what it is to be human. The architecture of the five disciplines—that the literature never seems to discuss—is ingenious: summarizing perforce, the construct and its interrelationships are about promoting enrollment, commitment, and compliance toward shared meaning (shared vision), engaging oneself in the world (personal mastery), reflecting on assumptions and biases (mental models), fructifying the ability to cooperate (team learning), and discerning the “big picture” (systems thinking). So, the answer to the question of how do Senge’s (2006) five learning disciplines aid in creating a learning organization is superficially straightforward: one should follow Senge’s (2006) good advice. Except, of course, that building a learning organization is not as easy as Senge’s (2006) construct has us make out. Senge’s (2006) advice was aimed at practicing

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and aspiring managers and leaders: but, did it foster praxis, meaning, informed and committed action on the part of those The Fifth Discipline was addressed at? The harsh reality is that—at a glance—very few organizations have come close to the combination of characteristics that Senge (2006) identified with the learning organization. First, this is because wholehearted cultivation of learning is not likely to happen (or could at best only ever be a tangential concern) in a capitalist system that hangs for dear life on financial imperatives. Second, the people that Senge (2006) addressed rarely have the disposition, the theoretical tools, the like-minded colleagues, or even the time with which to follow through: in most organizations, the move in perpetual beta from product to process and then back again is psychologically and socially demanding (if the systems in place allow it at all). Third, Senge (2006) underestimated the political dimensions of organizational life, especially with regard to shared vision. Considering why few organizations adopt systems thinking, Ackoff (n.d.) identified one general reason and one specific reason: the general reason is that—from kindergarten all the way through university and so in organizations too—mistakes are treated as bad things. “Therefore, organizations and individuals that never admit to a mistake never learn anything. Organizations and individuals that always transfer responsibility for their mistakes to others also avoid learning” (Ackoff, n.d., p. 2).5 The specific reason, that Senge’s (2006) success as a bestselling book should imaginably have remedied in time, is that very few managers have any knowledge or understanding of systems thinking. In backhanded reference of the “Success to the Successful” system archetype,6 there is every chance that if people were required to give an example of a contemporary learning organization they would (from an American perspective) choose such corporate “winners” as Amazon Web Services, Salesforce, Cisco, Ingersoll Rand, and T-Mobile.7 But, the trouble with self-fulfilling prophesies is that they obscure real accomplishments elsewhere, which some would argue need not necessarily be at the corporate level. Senge (2006) may have been the victim of perfectionism: it does not have to be—systematically—all or nothing. If we were to celebrate learning offices (and departments) we might have more reasons to believe in the ideal of the learning organization for the reason that we would find more expressions of it, however imperfect. “The maxim ‘Nothing avails but perfection’ may be spelt shorter: ‘Paralysis’,” said Winston Churchill.

5 Ackoff (n.d.) made an important distinction between errors of commission and errors of omission,

and argued that the latter are more serious (p. 2). systems thinking, an archetype is a recurring pattern of behavior (or “common story”) that throws light on the structures that drive systems (Kim & Anderson, 1998). Senge (2006) described 10 archetypes: (a) balancing process with delay, (b) limits to growth, (c) shifting the burden, (d) shifting the burden to the intervenor, (e) eroding goals, (f) escalation, (g) success to the successful, (h) the tragedy of the commons, (i) fixes that fail, and (j) growth and underinvestment (pp. 389–400). 7 I would choose Pixar Animation Studios for its approaches to overcoming the forces that stand in the way of inspiration. 6 In

References

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References Accountlearning.com. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://accountlearning.com/. Ackoff, R. (n.d.). Why few organizations adopt systems thinking. Retrieved from https://ackoffcen ter.blogs.com/ackoff_center_weblog/files/Why_few_aopt_ST.pdf. Hitchins, D. (2007). Systems engineering: A 21st century systems methodology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Kim, D., & Anderson, V. (1998). Systems archetype basics: From story to structure. Waltham, MA: Pegasus Communications Inc. Leonard, A. (2009). The viable systems model and its application to complex organizations. Systemic Practice and Action Research, 22, 223–233. Meadows, D. (1997). Leverage points: Places to intervene in a system. The Sustainability Institute, 19. Meadows, D. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Pub. Meadows, D. (n.d.). Leverage points: places to intervene in a system. Retrieved from http://donell ameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/. Repenning, N. P., & Sterman, J. D. (2001). Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened: Creating and sustaining process improvement. California Management Review, 43(4), 64–88. Senge, P. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Currency/Doubleday. Von Bertalanffy, L. (1969). General system theory: Foundations, development, applications. New York, NY: George Braziller Inc.

Idealized Design for Virtual Teaming: A Modest Proposal

Abstract This précis submits a business proposal for idealized design of virtual teaming at General Electric, a multinational conglomerate that retains more than 313,000 employees around the world and so must synergize a dispersed workforce.

General Electric’s Setting General Electric is a global high-tech industrial company operating in aviation, capital, energy connections and lighting, healthcare, power, oil and gas, renewable energy, and transportation (General Electric Company, 2019a). With some 313,000 employees worldwide (2017), General Electric serves customers in 180 countries across seven regions and generates more than US$120 billion (2017) in revenues (General Electric Company, 2019b). General Electric’s stakeholders include communities and individuals; customers and consumers; employees; the physical environment; and shareholders. Its customers and consumers cut across economy and society, being individuals, companies, and governments. General Electric’s competitive climate is characterized by ever-changing technology (General Electric Company, 2019a). For a long time, four strategic principles drove actions: (a) building leadership businesses, (b) focusing on reliable execution and financial discipline, (c) driving growth as a process, and (d) spreading ideas across great people and teams that share common values (General Electric Company, 2019b). But, with precipitous corporate decline and near-meltdown in 2017—when profits were–$5.8 billion and total return to shareholders was–3.8%— General Electric’s “back to basics” strategy now focuses on three things: (a) put customers at the center, (b) manage for operational performance first, and (c) set fewer, more impactful priorities (General Electric Company, 2019a). “Back to basics” gives clarity: however, the accent on the chief means with which to deliver the new strategy, that is, employees, has consequently been lost.

Idealized Design for Virtual Teaming: A Modest Proposal was completed on April 14, 2019. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_40

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On Virtual Teaming With cloud-based videoconferencing and other technologies, more and more companies are becoming virtual: the teams they host are geographically dispersed and rely on information and communication technology to collaborate. There are many types of virtual teams: action teams; management teams; networked teams; offshore information systems development (ISD) teams; parallel teams; project or product development teams; service teams; and work, production, or functional teams (Management Study Guide, 2019). The virtual teams in General Electric are not just geographically dispersed: they cross time zones, cultures, and languages. Half of all American employees hold a job deemed compatible with telework (Flexjobs Corporation, 2019). FlexJobs reckons that telecommuting grew 103% since 2009 and expects that 50% of people will work remotely by 2020 (Flexjobs Corporation, 2019). Referencing, General Electric had 106,000 employees in the United States in 2017, or 34% of its workforce (General Electric Company, 2019a). But, the virtualization of work is a global phenomenon. Organizations that are designed for face-to-face interactions face large costs: large returns can be expected from virtual teaming, at least in principle. The key advantages of virtual teaming are lower overhead costs, more satisfied employees, and higher scalability; if they were not addressed early by design, the pitfalls of virtual teaming can be cultural clashes, dearth of social interaction, lack of trust, less cohesiveness, poor team spirit, risk to reputation, and security and compliance issues (Bailey, 2013; Management Study Guide, 2019). However, General Electric’s 2018 annual report only refers to personnel in a section on restructuring and personnel, warning (despite its once famed human capital and culture) that the organization is carrying out extensive cost reductions that could impact operations, employee retention, and results negatively without achieving the expected benefits (General Electric Company, 2019a). Indeed, the word “team” appears only three times in the 185-page long document (General Electric Company, 2019a). And yet, expressly so that its global workforce might communicate effectively, General Electric invested early in virtual, instructor-led training curricula on how to lead and manage virtual teams (DeRosa, 2017). For example: • Employees have developed collaboration skills with e-learning and quizzes on virtual teamwork concepts. • Training involves virtual breakout rooms, games, polls, and role-playing scenarios. • Personal feedback has helped identify ways to enhance performance. • Virtual leaders have received training to address cultural differences, indispensable for effective leadership. (DeRosa, 2017) Training such as this can reshape a workforce: but, loss of institutional knowledge and loss of key personnel associated with restructuring mean that General Electric

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should take steps to retain critical knowledge and—the very subject of this proposal— upgrade and scale virtual teaming.1 In the process described overleaf, General Electric would likely have to examine the advantages and disadvantages, critical competencies, critical success factors, needed degrees of virtuality, and different types of their virtual teams as well as associated requirements for leadership essentials, managing conflict, managing knowledge, managing social isolation, and measuring return on investment, among others.

Capacitating Virtual Teaming Design is a conscious effort to impose meaningful order by questioning assumptions about what ultimate state is to be achieved; it is interactive, in decided opposition to being inactivist, reactivist, or even preactivist (Ackoff, 2001). Ackoff, the main proponent of idealized design, saw that “[An organization] creates its future by continuously closing the gap between where it is at any moment of time and where it would most like to be” and his idealized design approach “is based on the belief that an organization’s future depends at least as much on what it does between now and then, as on what is done to it” (2001, p. 3). And so, interactive planning for idealized design has two parts, viz., idealization and realization, that are in turn divisible into six interrelated phases: (a) formulating the mess, (b) ends planning, (c) means planning, (d) resource planning, (e) design of implementation, and (f) design of controls (Ackoff, 2001, pp. 5–7). In brief, idealized design entails: (a) formulating a mission statement, (b) specifying the properties the designers want the designed organization to have, and (c) designing an organization that holds these properties (Ackoff, 2001, p. 8). Systems thinking focuses the mind on the interactions of parts, not on their individual behaviors. To treat a system that functions poorly, idealized design makes explicit the need to plan interactively for a desirable present: therefore, idealized design places great importance on the formulation of a mission statement that would represent the raison d’être of an organization’s existence and be the expression of its highest aspirations (Ackoff, 2001). 1. Envisioning “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion,” said former General Electric CEO Jack Welch (Tichy & Charan, 1989, para. 7). General Electric’s corporate vision is to become the world’s premier digital industrial company, transforming industry with software-defined machines and solutions that are connected, responsive, and predictive (General Electric Company, 2019a). General Electric’s mission is to invent the next industrial era, to build, move, power and cure the world 1 The

views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this précis are mine, with no guarantee of accuracy or completeness. Organizations other than General Electric might have been selected for the illustrative purposes of this exercise.

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(General Electric Company, 2019a). Without a compelling vision statement for virtual teaming that encapsulates decided purpose, General Electric will find it difficult to promote enrollment, commitment, and compliance toward shared meaning: it will not get people excited. If General Electric were to sharpen its vision statement for virtual teaming, it would need to (a) demonstrate willingness to change, which would later entail examining what is not working, letting go, and accepting a new paradigm if necessary; (b) appoint a dedicated team leader who promotes openness, rises above office politics, relies on his/her team, and ties closely to stakeholders to appreciate hopes and tend to needs; and (c) follow a structured process to effect recalibration. Underlying the process of recalibration would be questions, designed to challenge participants to the exercise. Core questions would seek a diversity of personal views on: (a) what are strengths and assets of General Electric’s virtual teaming? (b) what needs to be changed, (e.g., what major issues or problems should be addressed and what are their costs to stakeholders?); and (c) what would the dream end-state of General Electric’s virtual teaming look like in a perfect world (e.g., what, specifically, would success look like to General Electric’s virtual teams and to other units)? As an outcome of discussions, the building blocks of the vision statement would preferably include (in descending order of priority) 4–5 of the following: (a) actions, (b) targeted beneficiaries, (c) services, (d) problems, (e) partners, (f) causes, and (g) time horizon. 2. Formulating the Mess Formulating the mess will be the process of understanding General Electric’s current situation, capabilities, and needed changes vis-à-vis virtual teaming. Specifically, a team drawing representatives from the entire organizations will conduct a situational analysis including (a) a systems analysis, viz., a comprehensive description and assessment of how General Electric operates; (b) an obstruction analysis, viz., an identification of features and properties of General Electric, especially—beyond linear cause-and-effect relationships or mere events— patterns of behavior (and related influencing factors) and above all assumptions (or worldviews) that hinder progress; (c) reference projections, viz., forecasts of relevant aspects of General Electric’s future; and (d) a reference scenario, viz., a prognosis of what will happen to General Electric if current behaviors and activities do not change and the analyses and projections in (a)–(c) hold (Ackoff, 2001, p. 5). Formulating the mess will be about identifying General Electric’s Achilles’ heel—the weakness that will lead to downfall—if the organization cannot adapt to changing internal and external circumstances: that weakness is what General Electric must remedy. The compass of investigations to formulate the mess would include markets, services, organization, management, personnel, facilities and equipment, and external affairs and relations, to name a few parameters (Ackoff, 2001, p. 10–13). 3. Ends Planning Ends planning will be the primordial process of defining General Electric’s desired present state: the phase will define what the team would like General Electric to be now if—from a blank canvas—it could be whatever the team

Capacitating Virtual Teaming

4.

5.

6.

7.

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wanted; it will also identify gaps between the desired present state and the reference scenario, gaps that will be filled by the rest of the planning process. Ends planning cannot be an example of the archetype of Fixes that Fail: crucially, the idealized design for virtual teaming at General Electric will have to demonstrably counteract the self-destruction prognosticated by the reference scenario in the formulation of the mess (Ackoff, 2001, p. 6). Means Planning Means planning will be the process of determining what must be done (e.g., actions, good practices, innovations, programs, projects, policies, strategies, etc.) to close the gaps between the desired present state and the reference scenario (Ackoff, 2001, p. 6). Vitally, however, means planning must obey two constraints and adhere to one requirement: the idealized design will have to be technologically feasible and operationally viable, which ought also condition the scope and scale of virtual teaming, for example subject to industry, function, business processes, etc. because General Electric obviously cannot become an entirely virtual organization; also, the design will have to be such that General Electric can learn from successes and failures and adapt in consequence (Ackoff, 2001, p. 7–8). Resource Planning Resources planning will be the process of identifying what resources (e.g., finance; information, facilities and equipment; materials and services, personnel, etc.) are needed, when they will be needed, and what to do if shortages (but also excesses) occur (Ackoff, 2001, p. 6). In ascribing resources, General Electric will look out for the archetype of the Attractiveness Principle and perhaps also for that of Growth and Underinvestment. Design of Implementation Design of implementation will the process of articulating the what, when, where, who, and how of the idealized design so it might be put into action: taking into account motivational, organizational, technological, and other relevant factors, this will call for the creation of schedules and the allocation of requisite resources to corresponding tasks (Ackoff, 2001, p. 6). Design of Controls Design of controls will be the process of deciding how to monitor the schedules and related decisions of the implementation phase of the idealized design, recalibrating for failure to avoid the archetype of Eroding Goals, accounting for unexpected success, and evaluating results after all has been implemented (Ackoff, 2001, p. 7).

Potential Pitfalls and Strategies to Avoid Them “Strategy is not a lengthy action plan. It is the evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances,” said Clausewitz (Howard, 2002). Notionally, idealized design promotes understanding of what is to be designed (or redesigned),

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boosts creativity, generates new approaches to what is feasible, expedites planning, and speeds implementation (Ackoff, Magidson, & Addison, 2006, p. 11). However, three potential pitfalls in the process of idealized design for virtual teaming stand out and demand that countervailing strategies be formulated. 1. Synergizing Organizational Forms A priori, the relevance of idealized design of virtual teaming is heightened in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world that increasingly calls for network forms of organizing to complement hierarchies and markets. Virtual teams are more important than ever; this is a strength and clear evidence of the growing power of networks. Nonetheless, the blend of virtual and face-to-face teaming must be determined according to criteria. So, how is one to decide? Virtuality is best understood as a continuum in which pure co-located teams and pure virtual teams represent two extremes and most teams lie between the two extremes (Management Study Guide, 2019). Necessarily, the degree of dependence on the means of communication, the worth of the information provided by the tools, and the need for synchronicity of information exchange are three factors that will condition the level of virtuality in General Electric; that said, the languages and cultural make-up of virtual team members as well as the sheer number of work sites will be other factors (Management Study Guide, 2019). 2. Reconciling Integration, Differentiation, and Fragmentation Martin (2002) distinguishes three perspectives on organizational culture: (a) integration—which interprets culture as what people unambiguously share, viz., the social glue that keeps them together; (b) differentiation—which perceives that culture only exists in islands of clarity, consensus, and consistency (aka subcultures) that may exist in harmony or more likely disagree with one another; and (c) fragmentation—which asserts that culture cannot be described because consensus is both transient and issue-specific and patterns shift all the time. Martin (2002) thinks the three perspectives are legitimate but labors to say they are in irremediable conflict: she reckons this explains why people cannot agree on definitions of organizational culture and what might be the best way to understand that. If so, given the control the integration perspective typically exerts in organizations, General Electric will need to make sure it arrives at a shared vision for virtual teaming that also draws from the differentiation and fragmentation perspectives: a strategy to achieve the consensus that idealized design demands could leverage Future Search conferencing. Future Search conferencing is a 3day event designed to represent an organization’s system in one room; explore the entire system in context before seeking to act on its parts, while focusing on common ground and desired futures and treating problems as information; and take responsibility for action (Weisbord & Janoff, 1995; Serrat, 2012). Toward this, in sessions lasting half a day each, participants bring their attention to bear on the past (highlights and milestones), the present (external trends, responses to trends, and owning actions), and the future (ideal scenarios) (Weisbord & Janoff, 1995). It would help to intersperse the four or five sessions of Future Search

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conferencing across the six phases of idealization and realization when General Electric initiates idealized design for virtual teaming. 3. Enriching Idealized Design For higher chances of success, General Electric’s experience of idealized design for virtual teaming should make the most of such tools as force field analysis, organigraphs, participatory methods, the premortem technique, social network analysis, stakeholder analysis, etc. throughout the six phases of idealization and realization. If not, General Electric will miss out on opportunities for more “outside–in” by not being in greater dialogue with the many interrelated and interdependent components of its very open system.

References Ackoff, R. (2001). A brief guide to interactive planning and idealized design (p. 31). Interact Consulting, May: Unpublished Paper. Ackoff, R., Magidson, J., & Addison, H. (2006). Idealized design: How to dissolve tomorrow’s crisis … today. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Bailey, S. (2013, March 5). How to beat the five killers of virtual working. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastianbailey/2013/03/05/how-to-overcome-thefive-major-disadvantages-of-virtual-working/#1442b78f2734. DeRosa, D. (2017, October 5). 3 companies with high-performing virtual teams. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.onpointconsultingllc.com/blog/3-companies-with-high-performingvirtual-teams. Flexjobs Corporation. (2019). Flexjobs. Retrieved from https://www.flexjobs.com/. General Electric Company. (2019a). 2018 annual report of General Electric. Retrieved from https:// www.ge.com/investor-relations/annual-report. General Electric Company. (2019b). General electric company. Retrieved from https://www.ge. com/. Howard, M. (2002). Clausewitz: A very short introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Management Study Guide. (2019). Different types of virtual teams. Retrieved from https://www. managementstudyguide.com/virtual-teams-articles.htm. Martin, J. (2002). Organizational culture: Mapping the terrain. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Serrat, O. (2012). Future search conferencing. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Tichy, N., & Charan, R. (1989). Speed, simplicity, self-confidence: An interview with Jack Welch. Harvard Business Review, 67(5), 112–120. Weisbord, M., & Janoff, S. (1995). Future search: An action guide to finding common ground in organizations and communities. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

Idealized Design: Three Reactions

Abstract This précis identifies strengths and weaknesses of the idealized design approach and suggests why and how it might be used to better effect.

Noting that the average life expectancy of a corporation in North America had dipped well below 20 years—and that a full third of the 1970 Fortune 500 companies had been acquired, merged, or broken apart by 1983—Ackoff (1999) proposed five organizational goals of successful corporate systems: (a) plan effectively, (b) learn and adapt rapidly, (c) democratize, (d) introduce internal market economies, and (e) employ a flexible structure that will minimize the need for future restructuring. Toward the design of organizations for the twenty-first century, reasoning that organizations cannot formulate a vision of their future if they do not know what they want it to be now, Ackoff (1999) argued that “What an organization most wants to be now is best learned and captured in an idealized design (emphasis in original) of that organization” (p. 88).

Define: Idealized Design Idealized design is inseparable from interactive planning and interactive planning is inseparable from Ackoff (Ackoff, Magidson, & Addison, 2006). Interactive planning, as defined by Ackoff (2001), was based on the belief that “An organization’s future depends at least as much on what it does between now and then, as on what is done to it” (p. 3). Thus, “[An organization] creates its future by continuously closing the gap between where it is at any moment of time and where it would most like to be” (Ackoff, 2001, p. 3).1 Specifically, interactive planning has two parts, viz., Idealized Design: Three Reactions was completed on March 12, 2019. 1 And

so, interactive planning is unlike other types of planning, such as reactive planning and preactive planning. “Reactive planning is tactically oriented, bottom–up planning that consists of identifying deficiencies in an organization’s performance and devising projects to remove or reduce

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idealization and realization, that are in turn divisible into six interrelated phases: (a) formulating the mess (situational analysis),2 (b) ends planning, (c) means planning, (d) resource planning, (e) design of implementation, and (f) design of controls. Put simply, idealized design holds that the key to solving problems is to first think about the ideal solution and then work back from there.3 That said, the commonsensical requirements are that idealized design is subject to two constraints, viz., technological feasibility and operational viability, and one requirement, namely, an ability to learn and adapt rapidly and effectively. Subject to the foregoing, the idealized design process entails: (a) formulating a mission statement,4 (b) specifying the properties the designers want the designed organization to have, and (c) designing an organization that holds these properties (Ackoff, 2001, p. 8).5 Not to forget, as stipulated by Ackoff, an idealized design is a group product: decisions should be made by consensus, which means complete agreement.6 Crucially, it should also be understood that idealized design involves discontinuous change but that improvement of the design over time should be continuous.

them one by one” (Ackoff , 2001, p. 3). “Preactive planning is strategically oriented, top–down planning that consists of two major activities: prediction and preparation” (Ackoff, 2001, p. 3). The term may be an oxymoron but there is also inactive planning: this type of planning is characterized by satisfaction with the way things are (in the sense that they might not be perfect but they are good enough). 2 Formulating the mess involves preparation of a systems analysis, an obstruction analysis, reference projections, a reference scenario, and ends planning. 3 There is something here of the idea, often attributed without proof to Einstein in a host of variants, that “Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current patterns of thought.” 4 An organization’s mission statement should be unique, that is, distinct from that of any other organization; it should define the business the organization wants to be in, which may not be what it is in); it should be relevant to all of the organization’s stakeholders; and, it should be exciting, challenging, and inspiring (Ackoff, 2001, p. 9). 5 Specifications and design would be informed by questions relating to, say, products and services; markets; distribution systems; organizational structure; internal financial structure; management style; internal functions (including marketing and sales, research and development, accounting, planning, human resources, etc.); administrative services; facilities; and industry, government, and community affairs; all of which bound idealized design (Ackoff, 1999, p. 90). The idealized design of an organization is always bounded by the nature of the system that hosts it: because the system may change, Ackoff (1999) suggested also that organizations should prepare unbounded idealized designs (but only if they would improve the performance of the organization) (p. 91). 6 Where complete agreement cannot be obtained Ackoff (2001) proposed two recourses: (a) the design of a test of the alternatives, to the results of which all agree to abide; and (b) executive decision after participants have summarized their positions on the issue (p. 14).

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Idealized Design: Three Reactions 1. Systems Thinking The basic managerial idea that systems thinking introduced is that—to manage a system effectively—one should focus on the interactions of component parts and not on individual behaviors. Idealized design is an approach to organizational development: it is based on the belief that a desirable future is not likely to occur unless appropriate actions are taken across an organization, thus increasing the likelihood that the desired future will eventuate. To move from treating the parts to treating the system, idealized design underscores the need to plan interactively for a desirable present [and indirectly cautions against the pitfalls of inactive (present-oriented), reactive (past-oriented), and even preactive (future-oriented) planning]. The methodology for idealization (formulation of the mess and ends planning) and realization (means planning, resource planning, design of implementation, and design of controls) is straightforward, at least conceptually. Idealized design also ascribes requisite importance to the formulation of a mission statement, that being the raison d’être of an organization’s existence and the expression of its highest aspirations, by means of stakeholder participation. Taken at face value, the strength of idealized design is that it promotes understanding, transforms the concept of feasibility, simplifies the planning process, enhances creativity, and facilitates implementation.7 2. Organizational Forms Until the late 2000s, the totality of interactions by which organizations solve problems and create opportunity was framed by sharply delineated ideal types, viz., hierarchy (authority), market (price), and network (trust). Because of their omnipresent participation in the labor market, what Mintzberg (1989) termed entrepreneurial, machine (bureaucracy), professional, divisional (diversified), innovative (adhocracy), missionary, and political organizations were the most commonly recognized organizational form.8 But, increasingly kaleidoscopic (or hybrid) forms of organizing have appeared; as a result, what management theories—especially styles of leadership—were usually based on “corporations” and found favor yesteryear explain less and less in a world where organizations are simultaneously adopting plural forms and hollowing out and such concepts as career and job security may be dead.9 A priori, the relevance of systems thinking 7 This

is not to say idealized design is not open to high risk and high cost, unless low risk and low cost are part of the ideal; but, Ackoff (1999, 2001) and Ackoff, Magidson, & Addison (2006) made no mention of such issues. 8 Morgan (2006) is a perceptive investigator of the nature of metaphor and its role in understanding organization and management: he distinguishes organizations as machines, organisms, brains, cultures, political systems, psychic prisons, flux and transformation, and instruments of domination; there are profound implications from using imagery—consciously or not—because all organization and management theories are based, usually unconsciously, on which images theorists have in mind. (The image of organizations as machines is common.) Images offer insights but unavoidably engender great distortions. 9 Handy (1989) recognized early that organizational arrangements were changing: the shamrock organization he made out is “a form of organization based around a core of essential executives and workers supported by outside contractors and part-time help” (p. 32).

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and the need to search for idealized design are not questioned in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, aka VUCA, world:10 if anything, they are more important than ever, which is a strength; but, even if the least one should say is that the methodology of idealized design deserves recurrent testing in organizations of the future, such concerns as “democratic hierarchy,” “internal market economy,” and “permanently structured multidimensional organization” no longer seems entirely apropos, which is a weakness (Ackoff, 1999). 3. Reconciling Integration, Differentiation, and Fragmentation Martin (2002) distinguished three perspectives on organizational culture: (a) integration—which interprets culture as what people unambiguously share, viz., the social glue that keeps them together; (b) differentiation—which perceives that culture only exists in islands of clarity, consensus, and consistency (aka subcultures) that may exist in harmony or more likely disagree with one another; and (c) fragmentation—which asserts that culture cannot be described because consensus is both transient and issue-specific and patterns shift all the time. Martin (2002) thought the three perspectives are legitimate but labors to say they are in irremediable conflict. And so, given the control the integration perspective typically exerts in traditional organizations, one may question how idealized design can arrive at the mission statement—shared by all stakeholders and so by the differentiation and fragmentation perspectives—that the approach deems essential. Today’s societies are evermore interdependent yet increasingly polarized: in conflicting circumstances, building shared vision and achieving multiparty action on complex issues—such as those that idealized design aims to address—is not easy. Idealized design may be weakest with regard to how organizations can engage stakeholders: it assumes that participation will be forthcoming—a heroic assumption, this—and that conflict, for example between power structures, can ultimately be resolved by executive decision. To ensure the continuing utility of idealized design in organizations of the future, there might be value in contrasting and comparing it with Future Search conferencing, a system-wide strategic planning tool that was conceptualized expressly to enable diverse and potentially conflicting groups find common ground for constructive action (Weisbord & Janoff, 1995).

Enriching Idealized Design Idealized design is an inside–out technocratic approach to complexity: it looks for interacting or interdependent elements that with a dash of democracy can be made to work better, together, in an integrated whole. In realpolitik,11 however, it is evidently not just through idealized design and the ability to imagine what does not exist that 10 This said, independent, empirically-based, comprehensive, and critical evaluations of applications of idealized design are hard to find. 11 Realpolitik is a system of politics or principles based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations.

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one can successfully introduce change. If it is to be more than an intellectual exercise, at any rate in a world of plural organizational forms, idealized design should accept that—except for the duration of the exercise—one cannot reasonably assume a tabula rasa from which a brave new world will be easily built: for lasting chances of success, idealized design should integrate such tools as force field analysis, organigraphs,12 participatory methods, the premortem technique,13 social network analysis, stakeholder analysis, etc., else it will miss opportunities by not being in greater dialogue with realpolitik for more outside–in.

References Ackoff, R. (1999). Re-creating the corporation: A design of organizations for the 21st century. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Ackoff, R. (2001). A brief guide to interactive planning and idealized design (p. 31). Interact Consulting, May: Unpublished Paper. Ackoff, R., Magidson, J., & Addison, H. (2006). Idealized design: How to dissolve tomorrow’s crisis … today. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School Publishing. Handy, C. (1989). The age of unreason. Harvard Business School Press. Klein, G. (2007). Performing a project premortem. Harvard Business Review, 85(9), 18–19. Martin, J. (2002). Organizational culture: Mapping the terrain. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Mintzberg, H. (1989). Mintzberg on management: Inside our strange world of organizations. New York, NY: The Free Press. Mintzberg, H., & Van der Heyden, L. (1999). Organigraphs: Drawing how companies really work. Harvard Business Review, 77(5), 87–94. Morgan, G. (2006). Images of organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Weisbord, M., & Janoff, S. (1995). Future search: An action guide to finding common ground in organizations and communities. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

12 An organigraph is a graphical representation of an organization’s structure or processes—depicted

with sets, chains, hubs, and webs—that does not imply the same degree of linear hierarchy found in organizational charts (Mintzberg & Van der Heyden, 1999). 13 During a premortem, a team imagines that a project or organization has failed in the future and then works backward to determine what might potentially lead to failure. By reframing, a premortem raises awareness of possibilities—including their likely consequences—to enrich planning (Klein, 2007).

Mental Models in and of Organizations

Abstract This précis describes how, from origins in Mintzberg (1989) and Morgan (2006) and in consideration of their assumptions and shortcomings, a personal mental model of organizations—more suited to the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of the 21st century—was arrived at.

Define: Model A model is a schematic description of something—typically, a phenomenon or a system—that people employ to make out important properties or dynamics, reach better decisions, and sometimes advance predictions.1 In the world of science, models are customary tools of sensemaking in such disciplines as chemistry, mathematics, and physics; but, evermore it seems—doubtless to help cope with the intensifying complexities of the modern world, they are found elsewhere too (e.g., in business, computer science, economics, leadership studies, management, etc.). In general, models have an information input, an information processor, and an output of expected results, or comprise what Richardson, Andersen, Maxwell, and Stewart (1994) termed more accurately means, means/ends, and ends sub-models: the feedback process (or loop) is sometimes basic, sometimes sophisticated. Most models are (no more than) simplified representations, often enough mere generalizations, and so understandably have limitations; others have more tangible ambitions; but, all can

Mental Models in and of Organizations was completed on February 22, 2019. 1 Comparing,

(a) a framework is a set of assumptions, definitions, concepts, ideas, practices, principles, and values that describes a complex concept; a way of perceiving reality; (b) a methodology is a body of practices, procedures, and rules used by those who work in a discipline or engage in an inquiry; a set of working methods; (c) a process is a series of actions, changes, or functions that produce something or lead to a particular result; and (d) a tool is all-purpose terminology for anything one uses to accomplish a task; ambiguously, a tool can be a framework, a methodology, a model, and a process.

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be modified as new evidence becomes available2 ; for superior outcomes, obviously, we had better test and improve them. There are abstract, concrete, and mimetic models (Friedman, Friedman, & Pollack, 2008).3 In the realm of cognitive science, Craik (1943) laid the foundation for the concept of mental models—otherwise called habits of thinking, linguistic paradigms, and mindsets—by suggesting that the mind constructs “small-scale models” of reality that it uses to anticipate events.4 Forrester, the father of systems dynamics, added the following precision: The image of the world around us, which we carry in our head, is just a model. Nobody in his head imagines all the world, government or country. He has only selected concepts, and relationships between them, and uses those to represent the real system. (p. 53)

Comprehensively, Jones, Ross, Lynam, Perez, and Leitch (2011) explained that: Mental models are personal, internal representations of external reality that people use to interact with the world around them. They are constructed by individuals based on their unique life experiences, perceptions, and understandings of the world. Mental models are used to reason and make decisions and can be the basis of individual behaviors. They provide the mechanism through which new information is filtered and stored. (p. 46)

Mental Models in Organizations Most (but not all) of our mental models of how things work are unconscious and implicit: typically, they are based on repeating what we have done before and so carry the past into the future; more often than we realize (or own up to), we also copy what others do. Elsewhere, notably in organizations, collective mental models can be powerful drivers of organizational culture that Schein (2017), for one, defined as: … [T]he accumulated shared learning of [a] group as it solves its problems of external adaptation and internal integration; which has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, feel, and behave in relation to those problems. This accumulated learning is a pattern or system of beliefs, values, and behavioral norms that come to be taken for granted as basic assumptions and eventually drop out of awareness. (p. 6)5 2 “People

are untrustworthy” or “people act with noble intent” would be examples of simple generalizations; supply-and-demand or game theory would be more powerful constructs; irrespective, all mental models also guide their holder’s perception and behavior. 3 Abstract models can be analytical (e.g., statistical formulas), numerical (e.g., system simulations), and theoretical (e.g., chaos theory); concrete models can be two- or three-dimensional physical constructs such as, respectively, architectural blueprints and model airplanes; and mimetic models can be imitations of life such as works of art and virtual reality environments (Friedman et al., 2008). 4 Group mental models, which are not the focus of this précis, represent the collective knowledge and understanding held by a specific population of individuals in a particular domain. 5 Specifically, Schein (2017) identified three distinct levels in organizational cultures: artifacts and behaviors; espoused values; and assumptions.

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More tersely, Handy (1976) defined organizational culture as “the ways things get done around here”. The crucial point is that organizational culture and associated mental models are passed to new generations through the process of socialization and acculturation. “In this regard, culture is a mechanism of social control and can be the basis of explicitly manipulating members into perceiving, thinking, and feeling in certain ways” (Schein, 2017, p. 12).6 Deeply held internal images of how the world works are prime determinants of success or failure. And so, where change is called for, for example to adapt to the external environment and solve organizational problems, it is essential to diagnose and as necessary replace mental models by means of sensebreaking and sensegiving (Marcy, 2015).7 (Mental models that have dropped out of awareness would have to be surfaced first.)8

Mental Models of Organizations Mental models in organizations are one thing; personal mental models of organizations are another. Here, there, and everywhere, people live in a world of organizations from birth to death: and so, one might think they would—at some time or other but preferably before they join one—intellectualize individual mental models of organization; but, few do. At any rate, blissful ignorance (and an embarrassing lack of assumptions) characterized me when, all 21 years of age, I embarked on securing my first employment during a gap year: organizations were, well, organizations. Mintzberg (1979) was an early explorer of organizational configurations (or species): Mintzberg’s (1979) insight was that organizational structure emerges from the interplay of an organization’s raison d’être—aka the theory of the business; the environmental forces it experiences; and the organizational structure itself. The organizational configurations that Mintzberg (1979) identified were (a) the entrepreneurial organization, (b) the machine organization (bureaucracy), (c) the professional organization, (d) the divisional (diversified) organization, and (e) the

6 To

note, socialization and acculturation does not prevent the emergence of subcultures. Schein (2017) explained also that, as they age and grow, all organizations undergo a process of differentiation. Variously, this is caused by functional or occupational differentiation; geographical decentralization; differentiation by product, market, or technology; divisionalization; or differentiation by hierarchical level as the number of people in the organization increases (pp. 211–212). 7 Marcy (2015) defined sensebreaking as “what needs to happen for people to be able to understand and accept the change” (p. 382); sensegiving is “how to inform people about the change” (p. 382). 8 The biggest problems with mental models arise when they have dropped out of awareness. Unconscious and implicit mental models remain unexamined: as the world changes, the gap with reality widens and leads to increasingly counterproductive actions (Senge, 2006, p. 166). “It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so,” is a bon mot attributed to Mark Twain (among others). Failure to surface mental models with skills and tools of reflection can only retard systems thinking.

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innovative organization (“adhocracy”). Subsequently, for a total of seven configurations, Mintzberg (1989) added the missionary organization and the political organization to the list. Mintzberg’s (1979, 1989) insights on organizational configurations were precious, and for a while formed a primary mental model of mine: soon enough, I saw machine organizations (bureaucracies) everywhere.9 In the course of time, however, I found Mintzberg’s (1979, 1989) taxonomy unsatisfactory: consider, for example, that even entrepreneurial organizations have elements of the machine organization (bureaucracy) in them; and, some organizations such as international organizations boast elements of all seven configurations. And, what of the networked organization? Sped by the internet and by mobile computing, a phenomenon that Mintzberg could not have foreseen in the 1970s or even in the 1980s, networks are becoming the new social operating system. The real test of a mental model is not truth but utility. And so, moving on with reluctance from Mintzberg (1979, 1989), I looked elsewhere for other inputs to my mental model of organizations. Enter Morgan (2006), whose work juxtaposed in my mind different images (or metaphors) of organizations. In the most explicit recognition to date of the significance of mental models, Morgan (2006) was based on the premise that most of our thinking about organizations is framed by one or more of eight basic metaphors: (a) machine, (b) organism, (c) brain, (d) culture, (e) political system, (f) psychic prison, (g) flux and transformation, and (h) instrument of domination.10 Soon enough, on a variant of organizations as organisms, I developed a personal metaphor of organizations as parasites, that might explain the calculated dysfunctionality one finds in the machine organization (bureaucracy). Dictionary.com defines a parasite as “an organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, known as the host, from the body of which it obtains nutriment”.11 That said, there is no chance that a single metaphor will explain everything. Also, there is every likelihood that different persons will view the same object through different eyes and, indeed, that the same

9 The machine organization (bureaucracy) is defined by its standardization. Work is very formalized,

there are many routines and procedures, decision-making is centralized, and tasks are grouped by functional departments. Jobs are clearly defined; there is a formal planning process with budgets and audits and procedures are regularly analyzed for efficiency. There is a tight vertical structure, with functional lines that go all the way to the top, allowing top managers to maintain centralized control. The machine organization (bureaucracy) can be very efficient but relies heavily on economies of scope and scale for its success; however, formalization leads to specialization and functional units soon develop goals that can be inconsistent with overall corporate objectives; formalization can also come to the detriment of organizational health. 10 In a parallel to Mintzberg (1979), for example, Morgan (2006) drew attention to the organization as machine, in which people are parts, and notes that the thrust of much management thinking is that organizations are rational and can be optimized for efficiency. 11 Now, why would a host not rid itself of its parasite? Admittedly, some parasites—such as the remora (or suckerfish), which attaches itself to large fish (e.g., a shark) by means of a sucker on top of the head—provide services of sorts, just enough to be tolerated (some would say invited) by the host; it is a delicate balancing act that, when performed well, is akin to symbiosis. (The remora feeds on its host’s external parasites.)

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person may shift perspective depending on job or situational contexts12 ; if so, by what metaphor are we then to explain, say, a proposed organizational change? To repeat, the real test of a mental model is not truth but utility. Much as models are wont to, Mintzberg’s (1979, 1989) and Morgan’s (2006) underplayed the principle of yin–yang, which accepts that seemingly opposite or contrary forces may paradoxically actually be interconnected, complementary, and even interdependent. To discover order in an increasingly complex world, we need to evolve greater intelligence. And so, I continued my journey up what Senge, Kleiner, Roberts, Ross, and Smith (1994) termed the “ladder of inference”, taking care—much as the foregoing showed—to step down a rung every now and then.13 Recognizing that organizational configurations and images of organization à la Mintzberg (1979, 1989) and Morgan (2006), respectively, no longer make discrete sense in the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (aka, VUCA) world of the twenty-first century, I eventually evolved a new mental model. The new mental model brings to light hybrid forms of organizing (that most observers once considered mutually exclusive) and suggests forms, combinations, and contents of “leadership management systems” to better serve their metagovernance. This is but the end of the beginning: much as the original mental models and their associated assumptions were ultimately found wanting, my now transmogrified version needs perpetual validating—not mere validation—if it is to find enduring utility. Specifically, the idea will be to close the gap in knowledge of what situation-specific modes—not styles—of leadership can support metagovernance of hybridized forms of hierarchies (authority), markets (price), and networks (trust) in the future (Serrat, 2018). Toward this, nested in the research paradigm of social constructivism, a study will leverage grounded theory by means of explorative, systemizing, and theory-generating expert interviews with four or five authorities in metagovernance, complexity leadership theory, and knowledge management.

Learning with Mental Models Single-loop learning stops at a question such as: Are we doing things right? Doubleloop learning asks: Are we doing the right things? (Argyris, 1991). Triple-loop 12 One organization that I originally saw a brain became in turn—in my imagination—a machine, a culture, a political system, an instrument of domination, a parasitic organism, and a psychic prison; I never saw it as flux and transformation. 13 Senge et al. (1994) defined the ladder of inference as a common pathway of increasing abstraction that, in the absence of reflection, often leads to misguided beliefs: “(i) observable “data” and experiences, (ii) I select “data” from what I observe, (iii) I add meanings (cultural and personal), (iv) I make assumptions based on the meanings I added, (v) I draw conclusions, (vi) I adopt beliefs about the world, an (vii) I take actions based on my beliefs [emphasis added]” (p. 243). The way to avoid the fallacies of the ladder of inference is to become more aware of one’s thinking and reasoning, make one’s thinking and reasoning more visible to others, and inquire into others’ thinking and reasoning (Senge et al., 1994, p. 245).

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learning inquires: How do we decide what is right? (Hawkins, 1991).14 Models, including mental models, are simplified representations of reality (or a part thereof). More meaningfully, they should be described as simplified representations of reality (or a part thereof) that we want to learn about continuingly: this means models must integrate feedback if they are to productively power the cycle of planning, acting, reflecting, and learning (and not become belief traps). Models demand reflection, that being the active process of (preferably recurrently) revisiting experience to examine it more closely, give new meaning to it, and learn more from it. What? So what? Now what? Oft-repeated, this set of questions will galvanize more intentional and evolved mental models that, beyond sketches of reality, will generate the kind of knowledge that Eliot (1942) speaks of in the poem Little Gidding: “We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.”

References Argyris, C. (1991). Teaching smart people how to learn. Harvard Business Review, 69(3), 99–109. Craik, K. (1943). The nature of explanation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Eliot, T. (1942). Little Gidding. London, UK: Faber & Faber. Forrester, J. (1971). Counterintuitive behavior of social systems. Technology Review, 73(3), 52–68. Friedman, L., Friedman, H., & Pollack, S. (2008). The role of modelling in scientific disciplines: A taxonomy. Review of Business, 29(1), 61–67. Handy, C. (1976). Understanding organizations. London, UK: Penguin Books. Hawkins, P. (1991). The spiritual dimension of the learning organization. Management Education and Development, 22(3), 166–181. Jones, N., Ross, H., Lynam, T., Perez, P., & Leitch, A. (2011). Mental models: An interdisciplinary synthesis of theory and methods. Ecology and Society, 16(1), 46. Marcy, R. (2015). Breaking mental models as a form of creative destruction: The role of leader cognition in radical social innovations. The Leadership Quarterly, 26, 370–385. Mintzberg, M. (1979). The structuring of organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Mintzberg, M. (1989). Mintzberg on management: Inside our strange world of organizations. New York, NY: The Free Press. Morgan, G. (2006). Images of organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Richardson, G., Andersen, D., Maxwell, T., & Stewart, T. (1994, July 11–15). Foundations of mental model research. Paper presented at the 1994 International System Dynamics Conference, Stirling, Scotland. Schein, E. (2017). Organizational culture and leadership (5th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Senge, P. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Currency/Doubleday. Senge, P., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R., & Smith, B. (1994). The fifth discipline fieldbook: Strategies for building a learning organization. New York, NY: Currency/Doubleday. Serrat, O. (2018). Research concept paper for leading organizations of the future (Unpublished manuscript). The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

14 There is talk also of quadruple-loop learning, which considers systemic options and evaluates the

foundational claims of each.

The Learning Organization Needs No Apology

Abstract The demise of the learning organization has seemingly been enacted: Google Trends chronicles the worldwide waning of the search-term “learning organization” from the high of 100 in April 2004 to 10 in June 2018. This précis means to talk down trends in management ideas whose particularized if not proprietary vocabulary largely explains why what is in vogue one day is antiquated the next.

In Whatever Happened to Knowledge Management? Davenport (2015) surmised that the rise of Google, a new focus on analytics, and various organizational and cultural challenges each played a part in the discipline’s declining popularity.

The Ornithomancy of Trends And now, the numbers are in: Google Trends, a real-time public web facility of Google Inc. that draws from Google Search, records the near-extinction of “knowledge management” as a search-term—relative to the total search-volume—from the maximum of 100 points worldwide in April 2004, the first year for which Google Trends makes results available, to just 8 in June 2018.1,2 The demise of the learning organization has seemingly also been enacted: Google Trends chronicles the worldwide waning of the search-term “learning organization” from the high of 100 in April 2004 to 10 in June 2018. (“Organizational learning” has fared poorly too: the search-term fetched a score of 9 in June 2018 from the maximum search interest of 100 in April 2004.) In comparison, the search-term “big data” struck 100 worldwide on Google Trends as recently as March 2017 after minimal interest in the range of The Learning Organization Needs No Apology was completed on June 29, 2018. 1 The

data is indexed to 100 points, where 100 is the maximum search interest for the period and location selected and 0 the lowest; a value of 50 means that the term is half as popular; a score of 0 means there was not enough data for the search-term. 2 Quotation marks were used around the search-terms to retrieve the exact terminology and exclude similar terms or derived words. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_43

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Fig. 1 ”Knowledge Management”, “Learning Organization”, “Organizational Learning”, and “Big Data”—Interest Over Time, Worldwide (Google Trends)

4–6 over the period April 2004–2011 began to grow exponentially from October 2011 (Fig. 1).

Is Relevance an Algorithm? If relevance, in the sense of social applicability, is an algorithm, a digital product, the results of Google Trends-based search analysis for the “learning organization” confirm that the concept was in the 1990s and early 2000s what “excellence” was in the 1980s; look, the numbers say, “The world has moved on” (Pedler, 1995). But, who—or rather what, pace Google Trends—is to say excellence (and by extension knowledge management, the learning organization, and organizational learning) is no longer a going concern? Were these disciplines and topics mere apparitions, figments of our imagination? Thankfully, the aphorism says, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted”. Much noise is inherent in any behavioral and time-series data and it (the noise) will get louder: every day, the internet creates 2–3 quintillion bytes of data. So, what with the information glut and the poverty of attention it causes, this précis means to talk down trends in management ideas whose particularized if not proprietary vocabulary largely explains why what is in vogue one day is antiquated the next. Infobesity should neither adjudicate how well a vision helps understand, categorize, and interpret (and thus at the second-remove influences practice) nor suggest a lack of results when the vision, self-confessedly, only aims to crystalize thinking. Who could possibly

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disagree with the following statement? “The future is likely to belong to those organizations that never stop asking ‘How can we better organize and manage ourselves?’” (Galbraith, Lawler, & Associates, 1993, p. 299). But, never mind yesterday: in the competitive world of today it is curious that enthusiasts of the learning organization should be made to pass—when they are not forced to serve—as apologists: after all, if knowledge is the strategic resource of a twenty-first century that is so markedly beset by economic, environmental, and social challenges,3 to name the main transects, how can “… organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together” (Senge, 1990, p. 3) ever be thought outmoded or, Heaven forfend!, undesirable?

Doubting Thomas Is Alive and Well Senge (1990), with whom the ideal of the learning organization is closely associated even if the term had occurred before, offered a no-nonsense rationale: “The organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people’s commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organization” (p. 4). Obligingly, Senge (1990) catalogued the attributes of learning organizations as personal mastery, shared vision, mental models, team learning, and systems thinking (the fifth discipline that integrates the other four).4 Command of these attributes, that Senge (1990) knew were exacting preconditions to the realization of the ideal, would empower organizations to add generative learning to adaptive learning,5 which 3 In a globalizing world, our population of 7.6 billion people—that will reach 8.5 billion by 2030—

must alleviate poverty; mitigate and adapt to climate change; end abuse of natural resources and the environment; clean up environmental pollution; deal with natural disasters; counter medical challenges, e.g., pandemics; encouraging disarmament; coping with security threats; accommodate nonstate power; handle failed states; tap capacity for social action; allay frustration among minorities; confront violence; formulate global rights; build a global rule of law; evolve regulatory and institutional frameworks to contain global financial and economic crises; optimize international trade; manage mass migrations; employ human resources better; and—for its own sake but also toward resolution of the foregoing—identify, create, store, share, and use knowledge (Serrat, 2010). 4 According to Senge (1990), personal mastery hangs on clarifying personal vision, focusing energy, and seeing reality. Shared vision is built by transforming personal vision into common vision. Mental models are put together by unearthing internal pictures and understanding how they shape actions. Team learning grows from suspending judgments and fostering dialogue. And, systems thinking fuses the first four disciplines to create a whole from distinct parts. Engagingly, Senge (1990) depicted the core learning capabilities of organizations as a three-legged stool—a stool that would not stand if any of its legs were missing: the legs represent aspiration (personal mastery and shared vision), reflective conversation (mental models and team learning), and understanding complexity (systems thinking). 5 Adaptive learning focuses on incremental change: that type of learning solves problems but ignores the question of why the problem arose in the first place. (Adaptive learning is about coping.) Generative learning concentrates on transformational change that changes the status quo: this type

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promotes organizational health6 : as a result, organizational performance would be high. But, The Fifth Discipline could not calm disquiet: the heart of the problem—as Senge, Kleiner, and Roberts (1994) sagely conceded—was that the learning organization could not be explained in detail: each organization had to nurture its own version of the ideal (p. 15). Their appetites whetted, academics and practitioners alike demanded clarity: if no learning organization can be like another, the absence of a roadmap would surely discourage those wishing to make the journey. Doubting Thomas is alive and well. Yes, there have been proposals to the effect that “… the idea of the learning organization should be abandoned on the grounds that it was an imaginative idea that has now run its course” (Grieves, 2008, p. 1). For sure, critical thinking challenges people to question assumptions and provocations spur debate. “It is by doubting that we come to investigate, and by investigating that we recognize the truth,” thought Pierre Abélard. Nonetheless, in the manifest absence of humane alternatives to the learning organization, should we not multiply our efforts to craft our own answers to the far more rewarding question: “Why not have a learning organization?”

Blessed Is He Who Expects Nothing, for He Shall Never Be Disappointed Twenty to thirty short years after their conceptualization, as new publications avow, neither the learning organization nor knowledge management ought to be pronounced dead (or even short of breath): on the contrary, both were in the greater scheme of things well ahead of their time; in the harsh light of worldwide challenges, both may actually be in the vanguard of developments for profound behavioral change at the global level (Serrat, 2017). A knowledge advantage is a sustainable advantage that provides increasing returns as it is used; however, building a knowledge position is a long-term endeavor that requires foresight and planning, which explains disappointments. Quite commonly, strategic reversals are failures of execution: a strategy is abandoned out of impatience or because of pressure for an instant payoff before it has had a chance to take root and yield results. Or, its focal point is allowed to drift overtime (Serrat, 2009a). Above all, as noted earlier, it is the absence of a template for success that has held back the faint of heart. “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed,” said Alexander Pope, surely meaning something else. of learning uses feedback from past actions to interrogate the assumptions underlying current views. (At heart, generative learning is about creating.) 6 The notion of organizational ill-health is easily understood and needs little explanation. Long ago, Bennis (1962) warned that organizational ill-health affects coherence of identity, the ability to perceive the world correctly, and adaptability. The point here is that organizational learning can make a necessary and valuable contribution to organizational health by advancing the shared values, clarity of purpose, institutionalized leadership, technical capability, open and honest channels of communications, and ability to deal constructively with conflict.

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Milk the Cow, but Don’t Pull off the Udder Notwithstanding issues of dimensions, measurement, and validation (Yang, Watkins, & Marsick, 2004), Örtenblad (2002) saw that “organizational learning”, “learning at work”, “learning climate”, and “learning structure” are distinct types of understanding—each of which wholesome and potentially complementary—that emerge from Senge’s three-legged stool metaphor; the term “learning organization” ought not, therefore, confuse academics and practitioners: it can find practical expression depending on opportunity and demand. Örtenblad, Hsu, and Lamb (2015) saw also that to materialize the four types of understanding into action their instrumental use should be considered from the perspectives of stakeholders, namely, the employer perspective, the employee perspective, and the societal perspective. Moving forward, never mind stimulating but ultimately unprofitable arguments that “Organization and learning are essentially antithetical … To learn is to disorganize and increase variety. To organize is to forget and to reduce variety” (Weick & Westley, 1996, p. 190). Milk the cow, but don’t pull off the udder! Plainly, everything depends on how organizing and learning are conceptualized.7 In any case, organizing is a key activity in life and organizations are its most visible manifestation. An organization happens when people come together and match up with commitment and trust. Apart from the anticipated cultural, economic, political, and social benefits of cooperation, a principal stimulus of organization is competition; all things considered, if resources were unlimited the need to organize would be minimal (Serrat, 2013).

An Inspiring Language of Change Interest in excellence, knowledge, and learning will perdure: considering this, it is an eminently vivid and agreeable vision of what the learning organization says is possible that naysayers attack. For sure, initiating and sustaining change is a more daunting task than The Fifth Discipline’s upbeat presentation intimated: over and above the incontestable difficulty of change, this is because (if they are to change) big companies need to stop thinking like mechanics and start acting like gardeners8 7 To

their credit, Senge, Kleiner, and Roberts (1999) described in detail what obstacles can stall momentum toward the learning organization: they are (a) the challenges of initiating (e.g., “We don’t have time for this stuff!”; “We have no help!”; “This stuff isn’t relevant!”; and “They’re not walking the talk!”); (b) the challenges of sustaining transformation (e.g., “This stuff is ________!”; “This stuff isn’t working!”; and “They don’t understand us!”; and (c) the challenges of rethinking and redesigning (e.g., “Who’s in charge of this stuff?”; “We keep reinventing the wheel!”; and “Where are we going? What are we here for?”). Senge, Kleiner, and Roberts (1999) submitted also how organizations might build the personal and organizational capabilities needed to overcome each obstacle. 8 To stay relevant, your company and employees must keep learning, the chorus has it; but, we find it difficult to practice what we preach. The reasons why organizations do not learn are too numerous to list but fixed mindsets, overreliance on past performance, and fear of failure loom universally

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(Senge, Kleiner, and Roberts 1999). In almost synchronous parallel to eloquent proposals that organizations should move beyond strategy, structure, and systems— the corollary of scientific management—to a framework built on purpose, processes, and people, the ideal of the learning organization gives us an inspiring language of change that all kinds of organizations can embrace. In the face of digital Taylorim and multiplying warnings such that “ You Will Lose Your Job to a Robot—and Sooner Than You Think”, the learning organization offers a vision of humane workplaces (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1994, 1995; Ghoshal & Bartlett,1995). Think otherwise if you dare.

Why not Create Learning Organizations? Why are we here? What are we really trying to create? Why does any of this matter to us? Creation, according to Merriam-Webster, is the act of bringing the world into ordered existence. Creative orientation lies at the heart of the learning organization. Specifically, amidst the hurly-burly of daily busyness, how can one help people both deal with the reality they face and maintain an orientation toward where they want to go? Whatever critics may say, The Fifth Disciple remains one of the most influential management books on systems thinking for organizational learning. Eschewing easy recommendations for management practice, Senge (1990) offered a way to view, understand, and manage what influences and interactions impact organizations in their environments: this makes his message widely applicable and evermore relevant. Figure 2 provides matter-of-fact, multidisciplinary arguments for why one might want to strive toward the ideal of the learning organization; each affirmation hints at what values one might then want to defend and promote, both instrumentally and symbolically, even if the learning organization senso strictu— meaning, Senge’s (1990) definition—may never find concrete expression in the real world. The message of the figure is that diverse motivations can drive attempts to build a learning organization; they need not restricted to, or even include, organizational effectiveness. By the same token, the domains that might inform approaches to the learning organization need not be restricted to, or even include, knowledge management, organizational learning, or big data; they might include, say, change management, complexity thinking, diversity and inclusion, emotional intelligence, futures studies, information and communication technology, institutional analysis, leadership studies, participative management, and social network theory. All roads lead to Rome but some may on occasion take you there faster than others.

large (Gino & Staats, 2015). Serrat (2009b) enumerated several roadblocks to learning: identifying and defining roadblocks, however numerous they may be, is half the battle to removing them.

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To produce a wide range of solutions to organizational issues To clarify vision, purpose, values, and organizational behavior

For client relations

To reduce the likelihood of repeated mistakes

To balance the demands of stakeholders

To reconcile the pressures of long-term effectiveness and short-term efficiency

For innovation For an energized committed workforce For superior organizational performance and competitive advantage

To understand risks and diversity more deeply To expand the horizons of who we are and what we can become

For independence and liberty To increase ability to manage change

To engage in community For awareness of the critical nature of interdependence To avoid decline

Fig. 2 Why create a learning organization? (Note This figure was inspired by section headings in Senge et al. [1994, pp. 9–12])

References Bennis, W. (1962). Toward a “truly” scientific management: The concept of organizational health. General Systems Yearbook, 7, 269–282. Bartlett, C., & Ghoshal, S. (1994, November–December). Changing the role of top management: Beyond strategy to purpose. Harvard Business Review, pp. 79–88. Bartlett, C., & Ghoshal, S. (1995, May–June). Changing the role of top management: Beyond systems to people. Harvard Business Review, pp. 132–142. Davenport, T. (2015, June 24). Whatever happened to knowledge management? The Wall Street Journal. Galbraith, J., Lawler, E., & Associates. (1993). Organizing for the future: The new logic for managing complex organizations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Ghoshal, S., & Bartlett, C. (1995, January–February). Changing the role of top management: Beyond structure to processes. Harvard Business Review, pp. 86–96. Gino, F., & Staats, B. (2015, November–December). Why organizations don’t learn. Harvard Business Review, pp. 110–118. Grieves, J. (2008). Why we should abandon the idea of the learning organization. The Learning Organization, 15(6), 463–473. Örtenblad, A. (2002). A typology of the idea of learning organization. Management Learning, 33(2), 213–230. Örtenblad, A. (2004). The learning organization: towards an integrated model. The Learning Organization, 11(2), 129–144. Örtenblad, A., Hsu, S-w, & Lamb, P. (2015). A stakeholder approach to advising on the relevance of fashionable management ideas. In A. Örtenblad (Ed.), Handbook of research on management

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ideas and panaceas: Adaptation and context (pp. 380–396). Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Pedler, M. (1995). A guide to the learning organization. Industrial and Commercial Training, 27(4), 21–25. Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York, NY: Currency Double Day. Senge, P., Kleiner, A. & Roberts, C. (1994). The fifth discipline fieldbook: Strategies and tools for building a learning organization. New York, NY: Currency Doubleday. Senge, P., Kleiner, A., & Roberts, C. (1999). The dance of change: The challenges to sustaining momentum in a learning organization. New York, NY: Currency Doubleday. Serrat, O. (2009a). From strategy to practice. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Serrat, O. (2009b). Overcoming roadblocks to learning. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Serrat, O. (2010). Sparking social innovations. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Serrat, O. (2013). On networked organizations. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Serrat, O. (2017). How would you motivate interest in knowledge management? (Unpublished manuscript). Weick, K., & Westley, F. (1996). Organizational learning. Affirming an oxymoron. In S. Clegg, C. Hardy, & W. Nord (Eds.), Handbook of organization studies. London, UK: Sage. Yang, B., Watkins, K., & Marsick, V. (2004). The construct of the learning organization: Dimensions, measurement, and validation. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 15(1), 31–55.

The Role of Technology in Organizations

Planning and Driving a Digital Strategy

Abstract This précis argues that in the Internet of Things organizations must embrace the digital world if they are to survive and, preferably, thrive. Irrespective of the sector or industry an organization is in, digital transformation enables fundamentally different ways for it to think about clients, audiences, and partners, and to engage with them.

There is now overwhelming evidence—with more accumulating every day—that information and communication technology is a critical determinant of an organization’s success (Serrat, 2015). Digital, viz., content or communication that is delivered through the Internet whether the user is on a desktop, laptop, or tablet computer, a smartphone, or another device not yet invented, is no longer optional: in the Internet of Things, that is to say, the networking capability that links billions of devices via the Internet,1 organizations must embrace the digital world if they are to survive and, preferably, thrive.

Quid Digital Transformation? Digitization is the process of converting information into a computer-readable format, digitalization is the use of information and communication technology to change business models, and digital transformation is the strategy of leveraging new, fast, and frequently changing information and communication technology to create opportunity and gain strategic advantage. Regardless of the “arena” an organization finds itself in, digital transformation enables fundamentally different ways in which to think about clients, audiences, and Planning and Driving a Digital Strategy was completed on August 26, 2020. 1 Hung

(2017) reckoned that about 20 billion devices would be connected to the Internet by 2020: one third of them were to be computers, smartphones, tablets, and TVs; the rest were to be imbedded technology (e.g., actuators, sensors, and intelligent devices) that would monitor, and help enhance performance. Many sources predict Internet of Things connections will reach 50 billion by 2030.

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partners and, vitally, to engage them. Digital transformation helps answer questions such as: • What are the expressed and latent needs of clients, audiences, and partners (not forgetting relationships and behaviors)? • How does one build products and services to better meet these needs? • How does one integrate these products and services into a digital strategy? (Needless to say, how might a digital strategy conduce new, value-adding products and services?) • What are the organizational, directional, process-based, and information technology-related changes required to make the transition happen? (Serrat, 2015)

The Nature of Digital Strategies We live in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world but our thinking, attitudes, and decision making do not automatically agree with that reality: across the public, private, and civil society sectors, many organizations continue to scan the environment and tweak their offerings in response. Ever more, however, meeting customer desires calls for experimentation and learning.2 To fulfil stakeholder needs, as shown in Fig. 1, digital strategies must involve: • Rethinking. Organizations can no longer make the needs of clients, audiences, and partners match existing arrangements with outdated one-size-fits-all approaches: on the contrary, they should characterize demand and build products and services around requirements. In the digital world, value-added springs from conceptualizing ecosystems and business models that redefine and upgrade organizational performance to meet demand. The key is to identify what value means to clients, audiences, and partners, and to deliver just that. • Designing. Organizations that deploy SMART3 digital strategies do not just address the needs of clients, audiences, and partners: with design thinking, they make out unarticulated wants and deliberately imagine, envision, and spawn futures (Serrat, 2010a); with digital engagement, they can co-opt stakeholders and—at the peak of a continuum of involvement (i.e., reached, interested, involved, and activated)—entice them to co-create for bottom-up change that adds value on the organization’s behalf. 2 This

is not to say that digital strategies happen out of the blue: rather, they must both advance and sharpen what Drucker (1994) termed the “theory of the business”. In that spirit, Henderson and Venkatraman (1999) emphasized the need for strategic fit and functional integration across (a) longterm strategy, (b) digital strategy, (c) organization infrastructure and business processes, and (d) information and communication technology infrastructure and business processes. Contemporary business model development approaches have also highlighted the role that digital transformation can play in aid of organizational performance (Schallmo & Williams, 2018). 3 SMART is an acronym (and mnemonic) for five criteria with which to set the objectives of an initiative, viz., Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Timebound.

The Nature of Digital Strategies

Rethink

• Characterize the needs of clients, audiences, and partners • Conceptualize ecosystems and business models

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Design

• Craft a digital strategy • Formulate SMART digital initiatives

Implement

• Shift from traditional to digital • Move the organization to the online world in a joined-up, end-to-end way

Develop

• Identify the organizational, directional, process-based, and information and communication technologyrelated changes needed to make the transition happen • Build digital skills and capacity in the organization

Fig. 1 Planning and driving a digital strategy

• Implementing. The Internet, together with the social media and mobile applications that leverage it and boost it, have changed the way we search, connect, and collect. (Mobile applications, which materialized in 2008, are increasingly prevalent across smartphone users.) Information and communication technology has also dramatically transformed the way organizations build brands. But, developing a digital strategy often requires that offline and online operations be integrated end-to-end; for this to happen, personnel too must migrate to the online world. • Developing. In organizations, new digital skills and capacity are needed to successfully make the transition to the digital world. Organizational, directional, process-based, and information and communication technology-related changes must be effected to make the transition happen (Serrat, 2015).

Terms of Reference for a Digital Strategy “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be,” said Wayne Gretzky. In organizations, Gretzky’s bon mot has been degraded to trite cliché. We can take Gretzky at his word but, recognizing the world of work is not all fun and games, how might organizations—rather than individuals—move from good to great when greatness is not defined by personal ability but very much by strategic choice and discipline? To rethink, design, implement, and develop digital nous, a high-level—but not necessarily linear—methodology is to: • Identify key business challenges and needs, locate them in the digital space, and translate objectives into actionable recommendations.

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• Evaluate digital products and services against requirements and develop new digital initiatives to improve user experiences and drive value. • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to plan, deliver, and execute digital campaigns. • Educate and inspire personnel on digital opportunities, latest technologies, and best practices. • Ensure alignment between the digital strategy and the organization’s theory of the business, including its knowledge management strategy. Of course, there is more, much more. With a view to rethinking, design, implementing, and developing a digital strategy, preliminary, supporting, or follow-up steps would be to: • Research the Market. Identify, exactly, the organization’s clients, audiences, and partners. How might the organization develop a 360-degree view of them? • Appreciate Change. Ask what is different now. What has changed? What assumptions do people make that are no longer true? Why does everything feel as if it is speeding up? Staggering amounts of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data, aka big data, can be mined for information; mobile devices reach everyone, everywhere, anytime; and cloud computing puts a supercomputer in people’s pockets. Organizations can no longer get away with middle-of-theroad products and services: power has shifted from companies to consumers, who—when online—demand “intuitive interfaces, around-the-clock availability, real-time fulfillment, personalized treatment, global consistency, and zero errors” (Markovitch & Willmott, 2014). Especially where information and communication technology impacts, incremental organizational improvements are guaranteed to become obsolete in no time. Within organizations, “creatives” can now have a massive impact (Serrat, 2010b). Organizational boundaries are more porous and silos are coming under pressure. • Diagnose the Organization. With respect to the mission, vision, and long-term strategy of the organization, assess the level of technical and cultural maturity, since this will one way or another determine the scope and depth of the digital strategy. What does work? Is the organization, burdened with sunk costs and legacy systems, slow by design? Is its digital culture agile, user-centered, innovative, and responsive? Does it have soul and passion? Is it open-minded? What is known about stocks and flows of knowledge? What are the main social networks? Where does automation potential lie? Where might decision making be informed by information and communication technology? Have surveys and other investigations (e.g., knowledge audits, modelling of business processes) been conducted that shed light? • Verbalize Expectations. Identify or clarify through semi-structured interviews the expectations of senior management vis-à-vis the digital strategy. Where do they see the value of digital? • Formulate the Mess. Conduct an “as-is” analysis of what the organization is currently doing, thence, identify gaps in, say, organization (including functions), direction, business processes, and information and communication technology. It

Terms of Reference for a Digital Strategy

•

•

•

•

•

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is, in particular, possible to use a capability maturity model to assess the ability of business processes to perform their functions. The consultative quality and value of a digital strategy can also be enhanced by means of action research, for example using communities of practice, and/or action learning, this to uncover aspects not envisaged at the outset while simultaneously gaining political and organizational buy-in as the digital strategy develops. Define the Desired End-State. What could be true in the future? Pick a date, say, 2030, and make a bet on that. Envision how units/offices/departments across the organization might by then be using technology to conduct their work. One can paint these cases in a detailed way and then play them back into the business of the organization. Where they resonate, one would then have a future state to aim for: one would know where the organization is going, that is, the objective, and one would then have to figure out how to get there, meaning, the digital strategy. A clear vision can help find common ground for action and enlist commitment in support of that. Future Search is a related system-wide strategic planning tool for such purposes (Serrat, 2012a). As a rule of thumb, investments should be proportional to the value at stake. Form a Coalition. Profile senior management to best locate and sustain support for a digital strategy. Because the success or failure of digital programs owe to managerial factors, aka lack of urgency, not technical considerations, more and more Chief Executive Officers/Presidents choose to lead their organization’s digital transformation themselves. Make the case for digital transformation. (Does the information and communication technology in the organization reflect its mission, vision, and long-term strategy? What are the inherent risks and impediments to change embedded in the organization’s information and communication technology? What does a viable portfolio of information and communication technology capabilities look like?) Constitute a team of champions to advance and fortify SMART digital initiatives, pursuant perhaps to review and challenge by a digital advisory panel. (What should be the overall governance set-up for the digital strategy?) Use Metrics and Scorecards. Use the balanced scorecard approach—which structures learning and growth, business process, customer, and financial perspectives—to qualify, quantify, monitor, and evaluate desired results. A threeyear rolling plan—driven by stand-alone, preparatory, or mutually reinforcing digital initiatives across, say, 4–6 (internal and external) strategic thrusts—might constitute a practicable roadmap. Define Success. Define success, including a reporting framework comprising specific activity indicators and useful results indicators (not forgetting targets and sources of verification). What typology and examples of returns on investment, not necessarily financial, might one identify and expect? Assess whether the digital strategy is being delivered successfully by means of after-action reviews and retrospects (Serrat, 2008). Build Digital Skills and Capacity. Digital skills are in short supply and successful digital strategies emphasize the need to build in-house capabilities, beginning with assessments of existing capacity (e.g., novice, beginner, competent, proficient,

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expert). It helps also to create a center of excellence with skilled personnel (e.g., data scientists, digital marketers, brand experts, mobile application designers, etc.). In addition, a governance model adapted to decentralized digital responsibilities should underpin a digital strategy: five models that describe how organizations are internally structured to embrace new information and communication technology, along a decreasing continuum of control and coordination, are centralized, decentralized, hub and spoke, multiple hub-and-spoke (dandelion), and holistic. (Half the time, hub-and-spoke is the most common governance model, at least for social media.) Each model exhibits distinct advantages and disadvantages. Conceivably, a temporary decentralization model that pulls experts from distinct arms of the organization—each with different knowledge and expertise but with specific skills relevant to the digital strategy that cannot be solved by a single unit/office/department, by senior management, or by a center of excellence alone—might be envisaged.

Framing Digital Engagement Anchored in digital strategy, digital engagement outreaches an organization’s tangible and intangible assets to clients, audiences, and partners to promote engagement and co-creation of value. Figure 2 show how—framed by an organization’s mission, vision, strategy, and trends and driven through channels in two-way communications via business processes and metrics—digital engagement serves to maximize value. Figure 3 particularizes the scope of an organization’s investigations and actions for digital engagement. Summing up, Fig. 4 underscores the primordial role

Assets

Reach

Clients, Audiences, and Partners

Channels

Metrics

Business Processes

Engagement

Mission

Vision

Fig. 2 Framing digital engagement

Long-Term Strategy

Trends

Framing Digital Engagement

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Assets

• What makes XYZ, Inc. stand out? Why do people choose XYZ, Inc.? What does XYZ, Inc. "sell"? What are XYZ, Inc.'s values? What can XYZ, Inc. give away? What experience does XYZ, Inc. offer? How does XYZ, Inc. differ from comparator organizations?

Business Processes

• What are XYZ, Inc.'s business processes? Who is responsible for what? How does XYZ, Inc. respond to unexpected developments?

Channels

• Which media, technologies, and tools will XYZ, Inc. use? What content will XYZ, Inc. share and invite?

Clients, Audiences, and Partners

• What communities are XYZ, Inc.'s clients, audiences, and partners members of? How does XYZ, Inc. relate to these communities? Who does XYZ, Inc. reach? Who frequently visits XYZ, Inc. online? Who does XYZ, Inc. have formalized relationships with? Who only knows about XYZ, Inc.? Who knows about XYZ, Inc., but does not visit it online? What new groups would XYZ, Inc. like to reach? What are the specifics of the new groups XYZ, Inc. would like to engage?

Engagement

• What can XYZ, Inc. offer its clients, audiences, and partners so they remain interested? How can XYZ, Inc. involve them more in what it does? How can XYZ, Inc. co-opt them to become active advocates for the organization? How can XYZ, Inc. work with them to cocreate value? How can XYZ, Inc. build communities?

Long-Term Strategy

• What is XYZ, Inc.'s strategic agenda? What drivers of change has it identified? What are XYZ, Inc.'s core areas of operation? What are XYZ, Inc.'s other areas of operation? What are XYZ, Inc.'s operational and institutional goals? How is XYZ, Inc. resourcing its long-term strategy? What is XYZ, Inc.'s vision for information and communication technology? What is XYZ, Inc.'s digital strategy? What are its major programs?

Metrics

• How does XYZ, Inc.'s "science of measuring"? What is success? How does XYZ, Inc. report on success? What are XYZ, Inc.'s key performance indicators?

Mission

• What does XYZ, Inc. want to achieve with digital engagement? What are XYZ, Inc.'s organization-wide goals and objectives? What does XYZ, Inc. need to accomplish to make the entire organization more social?

Reach

• How does XYZ, Inc. connect with clients, audiences, and partners (online)? What assets can XYZ, Inc. offer clients, audiences, and partners so they might commit and co-create value? How can XYZ, Inc. connect with new clients, audiences, and partners?

Trends

• What are important developments in XYZ, Inc.'s sector or industry? What new technologies, media, and tools does XYZ, Inc. see coming? How will society be different in 5 years' time?

Vision

• Why does XYZ, Inc. exist? How will XYZ, Inc. be different in 15 years' time because of digital media? How will XYZ, Inc. make Asia and the Pacific a better place? What will people say about XYZ, Inc.?

Fig. 3 Particularizing digital engagement (Note Assets = XYZ, Inc.’s financial (i.e., monetary and physical) and intellectual capital (i.e., human, relational, and structural); Channels = The information and communication technology that enables XYZ, Inc. to share content and reach and engage people; Clients, Audiences, and Partners = The people XYZ, Inc. exists for, both those it reaches and those it does not reach yet, including in-house; Engagement = The relationships between XYZ, Inc. and its clients, audiences, and partners—only reached clients, audiences, and partners will engage; Guidelines = The instructions that tell XYZ, Inc. how it will work; Metrics = The key performance indicators that help monitor progress and measure success; Mission = The final aim of XYZ, Inc., the justification for its existence that characterizes it as different from other organizations; Reach = The ways in which XYZ, Inc. connects to existing or new clients, audiences, and partners and aim to interest, involve, and activate them; Strategy = XYZ, Inc.’s longterm strategic framework; Trends = Descriptions of developments that affect XYZ, Inc., including its clients, audiences, and partners, assets, and vision; Vision = What XYZ, Inc. believes its future looks like)

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Communicating Effectively

Digitalizing Business Processes

Engaging Clients, Audiences, and Partners

Fig. 4 Going digital: Effective communications for action

that effective communications play in the digitalization of business processes for higher engagement of clients, audiences, and partners.4

Driving Digital Transformation Once begun, digital transformation must be driven (and continually assessed). Helpfully, Westerman, Bonnet, and McAfee (2014) itemized questions and related actions with which to gauge the evolving state of affairs. Westerman et al.’s (2014) comprehensive formula for digital transformation relates to: • Framing. How well has the organization framed the digital challenge? The steps are to (a) build awareness; (b) know the starting point; and (c) craft a vision and align the top team (Westerman et al., 2014, pp. 175–188). • Focusing. How well has the organization focused its investment? The steps are to (a) translate the vision into action, (b) build governance, and (c) fund the transformation (Westerman et al., 2014, pp. 189–207). 4 Communication is the process by which relationships are instituted, sustained, altered, and ended:

comprehensive engagement requires that communications adhere to such principles as continuity, credibility, dialogue, integration, precision, results-orientation, ubiquity, and understanding (Serrat, 2012b).

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• Mobilizing. How well has the organization been mobilized? The steps are to (a) signal ambitions; (b) earn the right to engage; and (c) set new behaviors and evolve culture (Westerman et al., 2014, pp. 209–223). • Sustaining. How well is the organization sustaining digital transformation? The steps are to (a) build foundation skills; (b) align incentives and rewards; and (c) measure, monitor, and iterate (Westerman et al., 2014, pp. 225–243).

References Drucker, P. (1994). The theory of the business. Harvard Business Review, 72(5), 95–104. Henderson, J., & Venkatraman, N. (1999). Strategic alignment: Aligning information technology for transforming organizations. IBM Systems Journal, 32(1), 472–484. Hung, M. (Ed.). (2017). Leading the IoT: Gartner insights on how to lead in a connected world. Retrieved from https://www.gartner.com/imagesrv/books/iot/iotEbook_digital.pdf. Markovitch, S., & Willmott, P. (2014). Accelerating the digitization of business processes. McKinsey & Company. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/ our-insights/accelerating-the-digitization-of-business-processes. Schallmo, D., & Williams, C. (2018). Digital transformation now! Guiding the successful digitalization of your business model. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Serrat, O. (2008). Conducting after-action reviews and retrospects. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Serrat, O. (2010a). Design thinking. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Serrat, O. (2010b). Leading top talent in the workplace. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Serrat, O. (2012a). Future search conferencing. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Serrat, O. (2012b). Communications for development outcomes. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Serrat, O. (2015). Striking a balance between physical and digital resources. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Westerman, G., Bonnet, D., & McAfee, A. (2014). Leading digital: Turning technology into business transformation. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.

Information and Communication Technology in Organizations: An Evolutionary Perspective

Abstract Human beings have “managed” information from times immemorial but information and communication technology (ICT) surged from the mid-twentieth century and advances ever faster. Firstly, this précis points out the growing role of information in modern society. Exploring the historical context of technological revolutions but referencing in particular recent demographic patterns and globalization too, the précis then reflects on pre-eminent first-order results from enhanced use of ICT in organizations. Finally, the précis draws attention to future challenges and summons better understanding of how ICT might help deliver requisite organizational agility.

About 45,000–35,000 years ago, genetically modern human beings—our ancestors— accomplished what Harris (1990) termed “cultural takeoff”: cultural selection, that is, the mimetic transmission of a beneficial trait or ability, began to serve as a proxy for natural selection in many if not most dimensions of their social lives. The “cultural takeoff” that Harris (1990) discerned was almost certainly sparked by linguistic development. With speech (viz., vocal communication using language), communitybased negotiation, customs, rules, decision-making, planning, and execution became possible (Axelrod, 1984). (Homo sapiens, the genus and species to which we belong, signifies “wise man” in Latin.) At long last, with the appearance of writing systems in Mesopotamia (ca. 3400–3200 BCE), Egypt (ca. 3200 BCE), the Indus region (ca. 2600–1700 BCE), China (ca. 1200 BCE), and Mesoamerica (ca. 900–600 BCE), our ancestors established the means for increasingly coordinated and extended action across larger groups of people, called for by the transition from hunter–gatherer to agricultural societies (Harris, 2013). Demonstrably, human beings have “managed” information from times immemorial. Even so, information and communication technology (ICT) pressed on from the mid-twentieth century and is picking up the pace (Campbell-Kelly et al., 2014). Remarkably, perhaps even unnervingly, human welfare in the twenty-first century is inextricably interlinked with ever more complex management of information. Information and Communication Technology in Organizations: An Evolutionary Perspective was completed on February 18, 2021. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_45

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Information: What’s in a Word? Data—the building blocks of information—can be primary, secondary, meta-, operational, or derivative (Floridi, 2010) but in every instance will be “discrete and objective facts, measurements, or observations that can be analyzed” (Serrat, 2009, p. 1). Information, on the other hand, is “data that have been categorized, analyzed, summarized, and placed in context in a form that has structure and meaning” (Serrat, 2009, p. 1). Tellingly, the word “information” is derived from the Latin verb informare, specifically, to give form to, delineate, or shape and figuratively to educate, instruct, or train. Our ancestors may have considered information chiefly as the resolution of uncertainty. However, past early recording systems (e.g., tokens, pictographs, logograms, the alphabet) (Schmandt-Besserat, 1996), people have near-miraculous means to impart or exchange information: across the information life cycle, per Floridi (2010), they can severally “create (generate), collect, record (store), process, distribute (transmit), consume (use), and recycle (erase)” information with a few keystrokes (p. 5). Before time, Naisbitt (1982) underscored the megashift from an industrial to an information society in which the production, manipulation, and distribution of information was fast becoming the premier economic and cultural activity. And now, every second of every hour, environmental, factual, or instructional information imbued with biological, economic, mathematical, physical, or semantic content washes over the world (Floridi, 2010). Our primary, secondary, and tertiary sources of information include abstracts, academic journals, books, brochures, conversations, databases, directories, electronic mail, encyclopedias, the Global Positioning System, indexes, journals, magazines and newspapers, podcasts, radio and television programs, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, sensors, statistics, technical manuals, texts, tweets, and much else. Information pervades our reality because producing and distributing it is easy; distance no longer matters. (Until Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1436, the manuscripts in monastic libraries were secured to workspaces with a chain so they might be referred to but not removed.) But, the law of unintended consequences is always at work and the chickens have come home to roost: “information glut” is figurative language for the gigantic amount of content that overloads our brains. Although we have become better at capturing and storing information digitally, human capacity to process information is not cognitively unlimited. As a consequence of the superfluity of interpretations, we hesitate to draw conclusions and sidestep decisions. Ignoring the validity of content, we are susceptible to misinformation (or are swayed by “fake news”). Craving certainty, we may inadvertently or intentionally shut ourselves in information bubbles. Besides, are precious accomplishments, breakthroughs, or initiatives being discounted because vital information is entombed in the glut? (Serrat, 2010). Fifty years ago, Simon (1971) cautioned us: [I]n an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a

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poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it. (pp. 40–41)

Echoing Simon (1971), Naisbitt (1982) declared that “We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge” (p. 24). “Uncontrolled and unorganized information is no longer a resource in an information society. Instead, it becomes the enemy of the information worker,” Naisbitt (1982) continued (p. 24). These days, when global problems challenge sense making, who will disagree that we must more proficiently discern between information and knowledge if we are to engage in intelligent behavior? Expressly, knowledge is: A combination of data and information, to which is added expert opinion, skills, and experience, resulting in a valuable asset that aids decision making. In organizational terms, knowledge is generally thought of as being know-how, applied information, information with judgment, or the capacity for effective action. Knowledge may be tacit, explicit, individual, and/or collective. It is intrinsically linked to people. (Serrat, 2009, p. 2)

Because ever-increasing amounts of data and information are exchanged per time unit, we must make it a habit to reflect on what (we think) we know and how we know it: this calls for higher-order thinking skills (e.g., analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating) and education for the development thereof (Bloom et al., 1956). Per Scriven and Paul (1987), as cited in the Foundation for Critical Thinking (n.d.), “Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action” (para. 3). Toward this, we must also recognize the processes of development, adoption, use, and effects of ICT so we might leverage it astutely for reflective practice, a better life, and a better world.

Information and Communication Technology in the Scheme of Things ICT is a broader term for information technology: it describes the varied set of tools and resources—including computer hardware and related peripherals, computer software, the internet (e.g., blogs, electronic mail, websites), live broadcasting technologies (e.g., radio, television, webcasting), recorded broadcasting technologies (audio and video players, podcasting, storage devices), and telephony (e.g., fixed or mobile, satellite, video-conferencing)—used to handle information (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, n.d.). ICT has a longer history than we appreciate. Computer hardware and software, in particular, only relatively recently marked the Information (or Third Industrial) Revolution (ca. 1980–2000) and the transition to an information-based economy. But, the invention of the electric telegraph (1837) and the telephone (1876) had earlier enabled near-instantaneous communication by wire over distances, an immense improvement over mail delivery services by runner, horse, rail, automobile, ship, or even air

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(Buchanan, n.d.). The wireless telegraph (1895), shortwave radio (1926), and highfrequency microwave radio (1946) followed presently (Buchanan, n.d.). The world’s first electronic automatic computer was built in 1946 and mainframe computers came online in the late 1960s (Campbell-Kelly et al., 2014). But, it was after the invention of the microprocessor in 1971 that the first personal “kit” computers reached the general public. Wireless communications via the first mobile phone took place in 1973. Thereafter, transistor density on integrated circuits expanded exponentially, computing storage capacity expanded in response, and the speed of transmission followed suit. From the 1980s, when the Information Revolution truly accelerated, improvements in computer software matched those in hardware: user-friendly interfaces and both standardized and specialized computer software greatly facilitated technology adoption. The IBM PC appeared in 1981 and the Apple Macintosh was unveiled to great fanfare in 1984 (Freiberger, n.d.). Berners-Lee published the first web site on the World Wide Web in 1990, with breathtaking implications for connectivity. In the 1990s, the internet stopped being the preserve of universities and research institutions, moved to corporate headquarters and, later, became a functionality of individual homes (Karoly & Panis, 2004). Ex nihilo nihil fit: in the vein of innovations, technological revolutions are more appropriately represented as waves, each following another since one creates some (but not all) of the conditions for the next (Šmihula, 2010). The hallmark of any technological revolution is also that it is a cluster of interrelated systems whose impact extends beyond the industries it propels. History is the means by which we explain— and in instances justify—the present. The Information Revolution had its offing in (a) the Scientific Revolution (ca. 1540–1730) that saw the birth of modern science with developments in astronomy, biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics; (b) the Financial–Agricultural Revolution (ca. 1600–1740) that transformed agriculture, finance, and trade; (c) the Industrial Revolution (ca. 1760–1840) that advanced, for example, the coal, iron, railways, and textile sectors; (d) the Technological (or Second Industrial) Revolution (ca. 1870–1914) that witnessed innovations in, say, electrical, oil, and steel production, led to the first automobiles and airplanes, and fueled the Gilded Age; and (e) the Scientific–Technical Revolution (ca. 1940–1970) that powered astronautics, cybernetics, and synthetic materials; the aviation, nuclear, and oil industries; and the first computers (Šmihula, 2010; Vickers & Ziebarth, 2016). Today, in furtherance of the Information Revolution, the Digital Revolution (ca. 2000–) under way stands for the shift from mechanical and analog electronic technology to digital electronics (and the proliferation of digital tools and applications that accompanies it). To wit, the International Telecommunication Union (2021) estimated that 51% of the world’s population (or 4 billion people) were using the internet in 2019, with the proportion increasing to 69% for youth aged 15–24 years. In parallel, there is talk of a conjoined Fourth Industrial Revolution (ca. 2000–) that will automate traditional manufacturing and industrial practices with ICT: related breakthroughs have to do with artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, “decentralized consensus”, fully autonomous vehicles, the internet of things, nanotechnology, fifth-generation wireless technologies, 3D printing, quantum computing, and robotics (Schwab, 2016). The foregoing should not be taken to mean that progress is linear:

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rather, technological revolutions are undulatory, with each the upshot of alternative courses of action in the evolving macro-environment (e.g., demographic and sociocultural, ecological and physical, economic, political and legal, technological). Perez (2002) detected four recurring phases in technological revolutions, each cycle taking 50–60 years: (a) irruption (beginning with a “big bang”); (b) frenzy (ending with a crash); (c) synergy (beginning with institutional adjustment); and (d) maturity (ending with the subsequent “big bang”). Going forward, some may dispute the time interval that Perez (2002) detected in each cycle but the growing inequality and political unrest we are witnessing indicate, in keeping with Perez’s (2002) characterization, that the Information Revolution is at the synergy phase. And so, past the installation period (i.e., irruption and frenzy), we may be at the beginning of the deployment period (i.e., synergy and maturity), the turning point at which Perez (2002) argued we must rethink and reroute development to determine whether the revolutionary advances that pervade society deliver on their promises. Because social media platforms have outgrown their initial mission and constitute an unruly “public square”, for instance, we hear frequent calls for their nationalization for the reason that elected legislators, not private sector interests, should set the rules that govern free speech. Lest we forget, it is also a fact that the state often plays an important upstream role in facilitating technological breakthroughs, notably with upstream investments (such as the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network— aka ARPANET—in the case of the Information Revolution) and with legal reforms: therefore, the private sector cannot claim all the credit either. An unstated truth in Perez (2002) is that ICT shapes but is in turn influenced by the evolving macroenvironment: it does not—or rather need not—evolve blindly under forces beyond our control. Eventually, however fraught with controversy technological revolutions may be, their evolvement is always subject to people and values.

Information and Communication Technology in Organizations Before the widespread adoption of personal computers and the internet in the 1990s, organizations used information technology for bulk processing (with mainframe computers) of files and databases associated with day-to-day operations (e.g., book keeping, customer billing, inventory management, payroll). Not forgetting the staples of face-to-face interaction and in-person meetings, organizations relied on typewritten letters, interoffice memorandums, photocopiers, and telephone conversations. Telex—the first teleprinter service for which began operations in 1933—was the principal means for sending written messages electronically but its use declined when facsimile (or “fax”) machines gained popularity in the 1980s (Buchanan, n.d.). From the 1990s, personal computers and the internet became integral to organizational processes and ICT began to bear on the very nature of the workforce and the workplace.

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From humble beginnings, the role that ICT has played in organizations has grown by leaps and bounds. Across the organizational landscape, Skyrme (1995) categorized the key impacts of ICT in the following areas: (a) organizational configuration, for example by stretching organizational boundaries and enabling networking in virtual teams; (b) organizational culture, for example by circumventing traditional top–down routines and both amplifying and accelerating the flow of data and information among personnel and between customers and suppliers to hasten the development of open cultures; (c) business strategy, for example by enabling new business models, condensing or eliding temporal and spatial distances, and enabling electronic commerce through the levers of portability, resequencing, reusability, simultaneity, and time extension; (d) management processes, for example by supporting unstructured decision-making and highly routinized business processes and providing effective ways to access information from multiple sources; (e) work, for example by multiplying the share of jobs requiring nonroutine cognitive (analytical) and interactive (communication) skills, shortening worker tenure, and asking each and every to ongoingly apply technology-mediated learning to research sources, access information, connect to experts, communicate ideas and results, and package knowledge assets for reuse; and (f) workplace, for example by allowing desk sharing, teleworking, and telecommuting. Skyrme (1995) articulated a workmanlike perspective on the role of ICT in organizations but organizational components (and their interactions with the outside world) are gradually more interdependent because of it: hence, the foremost impact of ICT has been to hasten the development of organizations as dynamic open systems, begetting an exacting need to leverage big data and tend to information ecologies (Von Bertalanffy 1969; Davenport & Prusak, 1997). And yet, ICT’s furtherance of open systems suggests it would be incorrect to ascribe all manner of causal effects exclusively to it. Two other elemental forces it behooves policy to address have assuredly affected the workforce and the workplace: they are demographic patterns and globalization (Karoly & Panis, 2004). In a nutshell, the “Baby Boom” (1946–1964) was followed by an enduring “Baby Bust”, with the Total Fertility Rate declining from 5.0 to 2.4 births per woman over the period 1965–2020 (United Nations Population Fund, 2020). Therefore, the rate of growth of the labor force declined from the 1970s (and is projected to slow even further). Pell-mell, after-effects are that women greatly increased their participation in the workforce, immigrants helped offset labor shortages, and the working population is becoming more diverse in terms of age (with Millennials born in 1981–1996 soon to comprise the largest generation in the labor force), ethnicity, gender, and race. From the 1990s, owing to economic reforms in the People’s Republic of China (1976–1989) and the collapse of the Soviet Union (1989), political, economic, and technological developments quickened foreign direct investment and other capital flows, cross-border transactions of goods and services, technology transfer, and the movement of people. Globalization conditioned the size of the markets that industries produce for, the mix of products and services that people consume, and the nature of competition, with extensive side effects on the supply of and demand for labor. Of course, right the way through, ICT underpinned rapid application of scientific advances in products, services, and processes; spurred innovation in organizations;

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and promoted the shift to knowledge-intensive industries and services. As regards organizations, but in coevolution with demographic patterns and globalization, it is also true that ICT dynamized work with job displacement and job instability; impacted the nature of organizations and how they operate; and generally heightened skills requirements among the workforce, expressly in sectors that involve high technology (Karoly & Panis, 2004).

Information and Communication Technology: What’s Next? As said by Taleb (2007), “A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: it is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was” (p. 1). Notwithstanding the fact that globalization and pandemics are closely intertwined, few could have foreseen the extent to which the “black swan” of COVID-19 triggered unprecedented reliance on ICT, especially social media, across the world’s population. Never mind the information glut and “fake news”: for sure, following the intercontinental spread of COVID-19 from January 2020, ICT helped maintain social order (Yang et al., 2020). Just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Baldwin (2019) analyzed how the combined forces of ICT and globalization could shape societies and organizations in the years to come. According to Baldwin (2019), globalization is no longer simply the trade of, say, goods, ideas, and people across boundaries: collaborative platforms such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Trello are slashing the cost of face-to-face interaction and encouraging “telemigration”—a new form of work that allows workers with recognizable skills to live in one country and work in offices in another. Reminiscent of the industrial robots that began to replace blue-collar workers from the 1960s–1970s, a new phase of automation will also involve AI-based digital assistants, white-collar robots that will perform functions that only human beings could accomplish in former times (Baldwin, 2019). In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the social distancing norms and lockdowns are prompting a surge in the use of ICT for work-from-home and gig work that can only hasten the advent of Baldwin’s (2019) predictions. A paradigm, or view of the world, endures until it no longer explains how something works: subsequently, a profound change in models or perceptions of events is needed (Kuhn, 1962). The old paradigm of the machine organization (bureaucracy)— or indeed any of the other six configurations that Mintzberg (1979, 1989) made out— is fast becoming outdated social technology. In any event, Millennials now power the workforce: they have traits and different values that machine organizations cannot oblige: • Millennials believe all assets are equal; • Millennials are everyday changemakers; • Millennials believe in activism;

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Millennials are passionate about issues, not institutions; Millennials value collective action and networks; Millennials support the greater good, not partisan politicking; Millennials are sector agnostic; Millennials take an innovative approach to creating change; Millennials believe all actions matter—big and small; and Peer influence is key to Millennial engagement. (Feldmann, 2019, pp. 6–15)

Fifteen years ago, Karoly and Panis (2004) speculated that, from coevolution of demographic patterns, globalization, and technological change (including in ICT), the workers of the twenty-first century would have to live with changes in (a) the organization of production; (b) the nature of employer–employee relationships and work location; (c) safety, security, and privacy; (d) the nature of work and job skill requirements; (e) the size and composition of the workforce; and (f) compensation in the form of wages and benefits (pp. 185–186). But, there is more on the horizon: in relation to the role of technology in organizations, Karoly and Panis (2004) might have, say, prefigured the significance of the Millennials because of that generation’s use of ICT (and immersion in social media), transcended the travails of the information society to elucidate the dynamics of the knowledge economy, and enquired into the ethical challenges of digital technologies. All the same, the conjectures that Karoly and Panis (2004) made were as clairvoyant as any. Incited by anxiety and the inability to envisage the future, predictions of social catastrophe attend every technological revolution: they cannot be counterbalanced by naïve policy-optimism. That is why, without succumbing to techno-pessimism, our organizations must deliberate what to do in respect of the inbound modus operandi, which will assuredly call for new leadership literacies. “Agile organizations” that putatively balance stability and dynamism are mooted as the new organizational paradigm: hence, how ICT might help deliver requisite organizational agility across people, processes, strategy, and structure deserves painstaking investigations.

References Axelrod, R. (1984). The evolution of cooperation. New York, NY: Basic Books. Baldwin, R. (2019). The globotics upheaval: Globalization, robotics, and the future of work. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Bloom, B. (Ed.), Engelhart, M., Furst, E., Hill, W., & Krathwohl, D. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook I: Cognitive domain. New York, NY: David McKay Company. Buchanan, R. (n.d.). History of technology. In Encyclopædia Britannica online. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/technology/history-of-technology. Campbell-Kelly, M., Aspray, W., Ensmenger, N., & Yost, J. (2014). Computer: A history of the information machine (3rd ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Davenport, T., & Prusak, L. (1997). Information ecology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Floridi, L. (2010). Information: A very short introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

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Index

A Accountability, 20, 24, 58, 72, 74, 88, 216, 277, 295–298, 301 Adult development, 194–197, 201, 225, 228 Applications, 12, 21, 43, 50, 74, 107, 136, 155, 218, 234, 255, 256, 261, 312, 332, 353, 364, 366 Assumptions, 4, 35, 66, 105, 110, 112, 117, 121, 131, 140, 141, 185, 231–233, 239, 242, 246, 247, 262, 297–299, 305–307, 311, 316, 317, 323, 324, 335–337, 339, 344, 354 Authenticity, 12, 21, 23, 96, 214, 218, 219, 228

B Behavior, 3–5, 7, 15, 19, 20, 23–25, 27, 29, 30, 34–36, 41, 42, 49, 57, 61–63, 78, 89, 90, 93–96, 101, 102, 109, 110, 112–119, 121–123, 131, 135, 137, 144, 145, 148, 156, 165, 167, 195, 200, 201, 204, 208–210, 214, 215, 217, 218, 227, 232, 234, 240, 241, 247, 255, 261, 277, 289, 302, 312, 315, 317, 318, 323, 324, 331, 336, 352, 359, 363 Bias, 43, 94, 123, 124, 139, 233, 247, 248, 317 Big data, 366 Business, 4, 6, 19, 22, 33, 36, 50, 61, 64, 72, 104, 106, 107, 129, 130, 133, 139, 144, 146, 151, 155, 156, 163, 165, 204, 214, 219, 228, 255, 261, 263, 264, 275, 312, 321, 323, 330, 335, 337, 353–355, 366

models, 146, 147, 165, 218, 315, 351, 352, 354, 366 processes, 139, 147, 162, 165, 223, 255, 295, 316, 325, 352, 354–356, 358, 366

C Career, 3, 19, 94, 97, 103, 104, 107, 154, 164, 183, 185, 188–191, 205, 213, 221, 225, 226, 256, 274, 331 development, 140, 183, 184, 188, 190, 191, 225, 226 Case study, 58–61, 63, 158, 179 Causal models, 299–301 Challenge, 7, 15, 27, 29, 36, 55, 57, 63, 72, 77–79, 95, 96, 103, 105, 107, 110, 112, 113, 122, 133, 138, 161, 162, 175, 177–179, 188, 194, 196, 197, 200, 205, 206, 218, 222, 223, 228, 233, 242, 256, 259, 262, 264, 276, 277, 284, 287, 300, 316, 324, 341, 343–345, 353, 355, 358, 363, 368 Change, 4, 7, 12, 13, 15, 27, 29, 30, 36, 41, 51, 55, 60–63, 65, 95, 97, 98, 101–104, 112, 121, 122, 130–132, 134, 137, 140, 141, 146, 153, 154, 158, 162, 166, 175, 177, 179, 184, 188, 191, 194, 196, 197, 207, 218, 225, 228, 240, 242, 248, 251, 255, 258, 259, 261–263, 276, 277, 296– 302, 316, 324, 330, 332, 337, 339, 343–346, 351, 352, 355, 367, 368 Charters, 77–83, 85–87, 89 Class, 37, 65, 83, 185, 190, 217, 224, 255, 262, 264, 267, 273–275, 277, 284

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 O. Serrat, Leading Solutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1

371

372 Closed systems, 16, 22, 136, 214, 288, 313– 315 Coaching, 37, 41, 88, 107, 109, 118, 151, 154–156, 164, 200, 205, 211, 228, 298 Cognition, 13, 72, 197, 208, 210, 227, 231– 234 Colonialism, 263, 270 Communications, 13, 14, 22, 50, 52, 64, 65, 73, 74, 78, 83, 86, 94, 96, 105, 114, 124, 132, 137, 138, 144, 145, 147, 149, 167, 188, 191, 209, 218, 221, 228, 264, 265, 269, 275, 276, 288, 301, 305, 322, 326, 344, 346, 351–358, 361, 363, 364, 366 Community, 6, 16, 22, 28, 49, 52, 66, 133, 166, 188, 189, 208, 209, 214, 218, 226, 255, 263–265, 269, 274, 275, 277, 288, 296, 299, 321, 330, 355, 361 Competency, 6, 20, 28, 96, 105, 106, 124, 140, 151, 153–157, 162–164, 167, 169, 177, 190, 193–195, 197, 199– 201, 228, 299, 323 Complexity, 12, 14, 16, 22, 29, 35, 37, 38, 41, 49, 66, 94, 95, 107, 136, 142, 145, 147, 194, 206, 225, 227, 231, 234, 288, 289, 311, 312, 332, 343, 346 Concepts, 12, 15, 16, 21, 23, 29, 36, 57, 94, 97, 133, 140, 141, 145, 148, 188, 190, 193, 207, 210, 213, 215, 217, 226, 227, 231, 234, 239, 241, 247, 250, 269, 281, 285, 315, 322, 331, 335, 336, 342 Conditioning, 101 Consultation, 75, 82 Contextual factors, 188–190 Critical psychology, 256, 257, 259, 261–265, 270, 276 theory, 4, 261–263, 265, 276, 277 thinking, 81, 86, 105, 231–234, 246–249, 344, 363 Critique, 121, 184, 185, 247, 250, 265 Culture, 12, 13, 28, 35, 38, 41, 52, 58, 60, 63, 66, 104, 106, 123, 138, 140, 144, 148, 154, 155, 163–166, 173–175, 178, 179, 187, 189, 190, 204, 207, 218, 256, 257, 263, 267, 299, 302, 315, 316, 322, 326, 331, 332, 336–339, 359, 366

Index D Democracy, 50, 258, 264, 332 Diagnosis, 123, 174, 179, 299, 301 Digital culture, 354 strategy, 352–356 transformation, 351, 352, 355, 358, 359 Digitalization, 351, 358 Domination, 12, 255–257, 263, 265, 269, 270, 273, 274, 331, 338, 339 Dynamics, 88, 140, 147, 168, 197, 240, 259, 273, 289, 299, 301, 305, 312, 315, 335, 336, 366, 368

E Emerging, 3, 12, 16, 22, 35, 38, 249, 289, 290, 299, 312 Engagement, 23, 24, 87, 104, 188, 205, 206, 215, 302, 352, 356–358, 368 Ethics, 4–6, 8, 12, 21, 23, 30, 38, 49–52, 54, 57–59, 61–63, 66, 93, 144, 148, 207, 209, 214, 219, 276, 284 Evaluation, 73, 81, 86, 87, 96, 114, 161, 218, 221, 232, 275, 281, 295–302, 332 Evidence, 60, 62, 78, 80, 83, 135, 148, 175, 208, 220, 231, 232, 239, 247, 248, 251, 252, 281, 306, 326, 336, 351 Excellence, 93, 103, 342, 345, 356 Experience, 15, 28, 30, 33, 36, 38, 43, 53, 55, 56, 73, 77–80, 82, 85, 87, 88, 93, 95, 101–107, 145, 149, 152, 156, 165, 166, 183–185, 188–191, 193, 196, 197, 199, 200, 205–207, 209, 217, 219–223, 225, 227, 228, 233, 239, 246, 261, 270, 273, 275, 282–285, 289, 327, 336, 337, 340, 354, 363 Experiential learning, 102–104, 107, 205, 206, 222 Expertise, 22–24, 63, 75, 96, 106, 149, 167, 178, 194–196, 200, 201, 215, 225, 227–229, 233, 291, 356

F Fragmentation, 14, 123, 137, 158, 258, 326, 332

G Gender, 15, 35, 37, 38, 43, 51, 162, 177, 187, 189, 190, 205, 217, 224–226, 233, 255, 262, 264, 267, 268, 273, 274, 277, 284, 366

Index General System Theory, 136, 311–313, 315 Global Financial Crisis, 64–66 Globalization, 22, 52, 55, 73, 102, 138, 140, 188, 226, 258, 262–265, 273–277, 287, 366–368 Glocalization, 264, 276, 277 Goal orientation, 196, 200, 201 Groups, 5, 15, 28, 37, 53, 57, 59, 71, 77, 94, 110, 111, 130, 131, 154, 155, 163, 164, 188–191, 204, 217, 218, 220, 223, 226, 234, 240, 252, 256, 257, 262, 263, 267, 268, 270, 273, 287, 296, 332, 361

H Human rights, 258, 270

I Idealized design, 323, 325–327, 329–333 Identity, 13, 15, 22, 23, 28, 33, 36, 60, 72, 73, 86, 96, 189, 190, 194–197, 199–201, 210, 214, 217, 228, 229, 267, 273, 274, 277, 344 Indigenous peoples, 263, 267–270 Individual differences, 107, 194, 196, 200, 201, 225, 226, 257 Inequality, 51, 65, 162, 220, 233, 256–258, 262, 265, 268, 273–275, 365 Inflection point, 55 Interactive planning, 323, 329 Internet of things, 351, 364 Interviewing, 154, 164, 281–285

J Job, 29, 50, 55, 73, 88, 94, 104, 120–122, 133, 134, 152–155, 162–164, 166, 168, 178, 184, 188, 189, 191, 204– 206, 209, 214, 221, 222, 224–226, 241, 257, 269, 274, 275, 302, 322, 339, 366–368 security, 133, 188, 191, 225, 331 transitions, 104, 205, 206, 222

K Knowledge, 12, 14, 21–23, 29, 30, 35, 37, 38, 44, 51, 72, 83, 84, 86, 88, 89, 94, 96, 97, 101–104, 132, 137, 141, 147, 148, 154, 155, 162, 173, 177, 188, 195, 197, 200, 208, 215, 216, 218, 221, 223, 224, 227, 228, 231–234,

373 239, 241, 245–251, 255, 268, 274, 285, 288, 289, 291, 300, 311, 318, 322, 323, 336, 339, 340, 342–346, 354, 356, 363, 366–368

L Leader development, 102–104, 193–198, 200, 201, 205, 208, 222, 224–226, 228, 233, 234 Leadership complexity, 12, 21–24, 29, 35, 37, 38, 147, 215, 216, 285, 289–291, 312, 339 democratic, 34, 37, 38, 43, 121 development, 19–22, 25, 123, 193, 194, 196, 197, 200, 201, 208, 209, 213–216, 218, 224–229, 242 distributed, 11, 27, 28, 34, 79, 89, 94, 234, 242 ethical, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 35, 50, 56, 94, 144, 218, 219 modes, 29, 44, 98, 107, 138, 234, 289, 291, 339 positive, 93, 94, 98 relational, 4, 29, 35 situational, 11, 35, 41–44, 152, 288 Learning, 6, 20–22, 24, 28, 29, 36, 38, 55, 72, 73, 77, 78, 81–83, 86–88, 95–97, 101–107, 123, 124, 132, 137, 140, 141, 147, 155, 156, 169, 173, 191, 193, 194, 196, 199–201, 203–207, 216, 221–223, 225, 228, 231, 234, 251, 276, 277, 282, 295–302, 316– 318, 336, 339, 340, 343, 345, 346, 352, 355, 366 Learning organization, 97, 106, 129, 141, 222, 234, 296, 312, 316–318, 341– 347 Lessons, 58, 59, 61, 63, 64, 82, 104, 106, 204, 205, 221, 222, 227, 295, 296, 298 Leverage points, 107, 315, 316 Life-markers, 55

M Management innovation, 146, 288, 291 Managers, 77, 79, 85, 104, 131, 132, 134, 135, 137, 149, 151–160, 163, 165– 169, 177, 195, 204, 256, 301, 302, 316, 318, 338 Managing, 13, 14, 63, 88, 129, 137, 151– 160, 162–164, 166–169, 195, 204, 296, 298, 323

374 Mental models, 72, 73, 141, 234, 317, 336– 340, 343 Metaphors, 7, 12, 136, 256, 331, 338, 339, 345 Methodology, 96, 139, 210, 229, 255, 262, 289, 297, 298, 302, 315, 331, 332, 335, 353 Metrics, 355–357 Mindfulness, 87, 133 Mindsets, 14, 79, 88, 155, 156, 184, 306, 315, 336, 345 Minority populations, 267, 273, 277 Model(s), 12, 15, 23, 30, 36, 37, 41–44, 53, 61, 74, 77, 78, 87, 89, 90, 96, 109, 122, 133, 135–137, 139, 140, 144, 145, 148, 151, 152, 157, 160, 168, 176, 184, 204, 209–211, 215, 216, 220, 223, 227, 232–234, 276, 277, 297, 299, 302, 312, 315, 335, 336, 339, 340, 351, 355, 356, 367 Moral capacity, 209, 210 courage, 50, 97, 209, 210 development, 207–210, 227 efficacy, 209, 210 resiliency, 209, 210 N Neuroscience, 12, 13, 15, 16, 22, 23, 35, 36, 38, 215 O Observation, 34, 60, 85, 101, 103, 137, 156– 158, 160–163, 166, 200, 222, 232, 289, 301, 311, 362, 363 Open systems, 136, 298, 313–315, 327, 366 Oppression, 255, 257, 262, 263, 265, 273, 274 Organizational ecology, 291 forms, 22, 287, 288, 326, 331, 333 learning, 13, 14, 36, 106, 218, 341, 342, 344–346 psychology, 11, 185, 186, 255 Organization(s), 3, 5, 8, 12–16, 20, 21, 23, 25, 27, 28, 30, 33, 35–38, 55, 63, 72, 74, 77, 79, 85, 86, 94–97, 102– 107, 109, 111, 113, 114, 122, 123, 129, 131–134, 136–147, 149, 151– 156, 158, 160–169, 173–179, 188, 190, 193, 195, 197, 200, 204, 206, 208–210, 215, 216, 218, 221, 222,

Index 224, 225, 228, 234, 235, 240, 242, 243, 255–259, 267, 269, 273, 276, 285–290, 295, 297–299, 301, 302, 306, 307, 312, 313, 316, 318, 322– 326, 329–333, 336–339, 343–346, 351–359, 363, 365–368 P Paradox, 13, 14, 24, 36, 38, 166, 167, 215, 312 Performance, 4, 6, 13, 15, 19, 20, 22, 30, 36, 37, 41, 71–74, 81, 82, 85–90, 94, 102–104, 107, 111, 122, 129, 130, 132, 137, 138, 144, 154, 155, 160, 162, 164, 166, 168, 177, 184, 194, 195, 200, 201, 207, 209, 218, 234, 241, 255, 290, 296–301, 312, 313, 321, 322, 329, 330, 344, 345, 351, 352, 357 Personal context, 73, 152, 164, 165, 204, 205 philosophy, 25, 29, 33, 38, 94, 124, 216, 229 Perspectives, 13, 14, 22, 27, 29, 34, 35, 37, 49, 51–54, 58, 65, 66, 72, 73, 81, 88, 94, 105, 107, 118, 123, 138, 162, 178, 183, 185, 186, 188, 193, 209, 221, 223, 227, 250, 252, 263, 264, 270, 276, 289, 290, 313, 316, 318, 326, 332, 339, 345, 355, 366 Philosophy, 28–30, 33, 34, 57, 123, 129, 139, 144, 148, 149, 154, 165, 207, 216, 225, 262 Point of view, 239, 242, 246, 247 Postcolonialism, 262–265 Postmodern organizations, 291 Power, 3, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12, 15, 28, 35, 36, 41, 50, 64, 65, 78, 89, 97, 102, 107, 110, 118, 130, 138, 143, 148, 163, 186, 187, 191, 208, 211, 214, 218, 220, 223–226, 240, 255, 256, 258, 262– 264, 267, 273, 274, 277, 299, 315, 316, 321, 323, 326, 332, 340, 343, 354, 367 Practice, 3, 5–8, 16, 29, 34, 44, 51, 52, 57, 63, 72, 73, 77, 85–88, 94, 97, 112, 113, 129, 132–134, 139, 147, 151– 156, 163, 165–169, 177, 185, 193– 196, 200, 201, 203, 208, 218, 219, 222, 225, 234, 235, 240, 249–252, 257, 258, 261, 264, 274, 297, 299, 316, 325, 335, 342, 345, 346, 354, 355, 364

Index Principles, 4–8, 25, 29, 30, 49, 51, 52, 57, 63, 80, 83, 86, 88, 94, 97, 129, 131, 157, 162, 205, 208, 227, 247, 281, 302, 315, 316, 321, 332, 335, 358 Privilege, 28, 55, 56, 255, 257, 265, 273, 274 Problem solving, 228, 312 Process, 4, 7, 14, 23, 27, 29, 30, 34, 42, 51, 66, 82, 83, 88, 94, 95, 103, 105, 122, 123, 132, 136, 142, 145, 147, 152, 155, 165, 168, 177, 184, 194–197, 199, 200, 203, 207, 208, 213, 214, 216, 222, 223, 228, 231–234, 262– 264, 275, 277, 282–285, 289, 291, 295, 296, 298, 299, 301, 305–307, 314, 317, 318, 321, 323–326, 330, 331, 335, 337, 338, 340, 351–353, 358, 362, 363, 365, 366, 368 consultation, 140, 301, 305–307 Professional development, 5, 6 Psychology of working, 185, 186, 229 Purpose, 8, 19, 29, 30, 33, 42–44, 52, 60, 63, 71, 72, 85–87, 118, 139, 142, 148, 154, 159, 160, 167, 176, 178, 179, 186, 210, 224, 225, 239, 240, 246, 250, 257, 281, 282, 288, 289, 295– 298, 302, 312, 317, 323, 324, 335, 344, 346, 355 Q Questionnaires, 96, 109–113, 121, 123 Question(s), 4, 7, 15, 24, 36, 42, 53, 57, 60, 62, 72, 73, 77–79, 82–84, 88, 94, 95, 97, 98, 103, 105, 107, 111, 112, 117, 119–121, 123, 136, 155, 173–175, 179, 190, 196, 213, 215, 218, 225, 227, 229, 231, 233, 239–241, 245– 247, 250, 264, 277, 282–285, 289– 291, 301, 317, 324, 330, 332, 339, 340, 343, 344, 352, 358 R Race, 187, 189, 190, 224, 233, 255, 262, 264, 267, 268, 270, 273–275, 277, 284, 366 Racism, 223, 224, 226, 270 Reasoning, 148, 197, 208–210, 227, 231, 232, 239, 242, 246, 247, 250, 252, 289, 329, 339, 363 Recommendations, 16, 44, 72, 79, 85, 86, 89, 177, 252, 284, 301, 302, 346, 353 Reflection, 6, 7, 13, 29, 30, 36, 38, 60, 77, 82, 83, 85, 87, 88, 101, 106, 119, 132,

375 137, 155, 166, 209, 221, 234, 258, 282, 285, 337, 339, 340, 363 Reflective practice, 103, 106, 363 Reform, 62, 66, 258, 259, 298, 365, 366 Relational ethics, 8 theory, 11 Relationality, 3, 4, 8, 29 Relationships, 3–5, 7, 8, 13, 14, 23, 27, 29, 30, 34–36, 52, 56, 63, 73, 78, 81, 82, 86–88, 94, 95, 97, 102, 104–106, 121, 129, 131, 132, 136, 138, 147, 152, 174, 177, 178, 183, 184, 186–190, 195, 200, 207, 209, 215, 217–221, 233, 234, 264, 265, 274, 277, 282, 284, 289, 291, 297, 299–302, 305, 324, 336, 352, 357, 368 Research, 5, 8, 12, 13, 15, 24, 36, 41–44, 77, 78, 80, 82, 90, 106, 115, 117, 118, 130, 132, 134, 138, 139, 153, 162, 177–179, 186, 200, 207, 215, 216, 221, 222, 224, 225, 227, 233, 240, 245–252, 262, 264, 265, 273, 277, 281–285, 288–291, 296, 302, 330, 339, 355, 364, 366 Resistance, 122, 140, 208, 297, 299–301, 317 Responsibility, 4–6, 13, 25, 30, 33, 34, 36, 38, 49, 50, 58, 65, 66, 72, 74, 78, 83, 89, 94, 104, 105, 109, 111, 122, 133, 134, 144, 157, 162, 189, 200, 206, 209, 210, 214, 216, 219, 226, 229, 233, 243, 256, 297, 301, 316, 318, 326, 356 Results, 30, 51, 56, 71, 73, 74, 77–79, 88, 93, 95–97, 101, 105, 107, 123, 129, 135, 138, 139, 141, 161, 174, 175, 177, 178, 219, 222, 241, 242, 245, 250, 251, 290, 295, 297, 322, 325, 330, 335, 341–344, 355, 366 Roles, 5, 35, 38, 72, 74, 78, 79, 81, 82, 86, 88, 89, 104, 137, 147, 152, 153, 158, 163, 166, 185, 189–191, 193, 195, 204, 224, 306, 307, 365, 366, 368 S Selfawareness, 6, 72, 84, 88, 94, 105, 196, 200, 201, 204, 209 development, 107, 121, 211, 222, 223, 225, 229 efficacy, 155, 196, 200, 201 growth, 82, 83

376 regulation, 23, 84, 94, 194–197, 200, 201, 214, 228 Sensebreaking, 337 Sensemaking, 145, 227, 335 Situational context, 164, 165, 204, 339 Skills, 6, 14, 19, 22, 23, 25, 27, 31, 33–35, 38, 71–73, 75, 83, 84, 86, 88, 94, 95, 101, 103, 105, 107, 122, 139–141, 144, 154–156, 160, 166, 185, 188– 190, 193–195, 199, 200, 204, 205, 209, 210, 214, 216, 224, 226–228, 269, 283, 285, 299, 302, 322, 337, 353, 355, 356, 359, 363, 366–368 Smartphones, 50, 351, 353 Social barriers, 189, 223, 224, 226 influence, 4, 25, 29, 31, 33–35, 38, 94, 195, 216, 234 justice, 144, 185, 224, 226, 255, 256, 259, 262–264, 270, 273, 276, 277 sciences, 12, 129, 132, 186, 265, 312, 314 Soft skills, 88 Strategy, 7, 13, 36, 101, 119, 138, 139, 143, 154, 162, 197, 228, 251, 257, 259, 263, 283, 299, 301–303, 312, 321, 325, 326, 344, 346, 351, 352, 354–357, 366, 368 Surveys, 112, 113, 118, 123, 175, 218, 354 Systems, 12, 13, 15, 21, 22, 36, 38, 49, 51, 52, 59, 66, 95, 97, 98, 102, 105–107, 132, 136, 139, 144, 147, 149, 168, 173, 176, 197, 209, 214, 227, 228, 242, 246, 248, 252, 256, 257, 261, 264, 265, 268, 276, 277, 288, 289, 291, 297–300, 302, 312, 313, 315– 318, 322, 329–331, 336, 339, 346, 354, 361, 362, 364 thinking, 141, 142, 234, 265, 312, 313, 317, 318, 323, 330, 331, 337, 343, 346 T Taxonomy, 89, 130, 131, 149, 186, 214, 338 Teams, 14, 59, 60, 71–74, 77–80, 82, 83, 85, 86, 88, 89, 140, 154, 167, 302, 321, 322, 326, 354

Index Theory(ies), 3, 4, 8, 11–13, 15, 16, 21, 22, 25, 27, 29, 33–38, 41–43, 52, 94, 101, 103, 106, 129–134, 136, 138, 139, 144–149, 151–153, 168, 178, 185, 194, 196, 197, 199, 201, 207, 208, 215, 217, 218, 222, 223, 225, 227, 228, 232, 233, 239, 241, 263, 264, 276, 285, 289–291, 297–299, 312, 331, 336, 337, 339, 346, 354 Training, 5, 61, 63, 95, 102, 104, 109, 139, 144, 151, 154–156, 186, 189, 200, 205, 213, 226, 232–234, 240, 241, 247, 275, 298, 302, 322

U United Nations, 250, 257–259, 263, 267, 276, 277, 287, 295

V Values, 3, 4, 7, 8, 22, 23, 29, 33–36, 38, 41, 49, 50, 55, 56, 72, 78, 79, 82, 86, 87, 94–97, 104, 110, 118, 123, 124, 133, 138–140, 144, 146, 162, 165, 173, 174, 179, 185, 205, 208, 209, 214, 219, 220, 262, 268, 276, 299, 302, 316, 321, 335, 336, 344, 346, 365, 367 Virtual teams, 73, 80, 83, 86, 103, 132, 167, 255, 322–327, 366 Vocational guidance, 184

W Well-being, 51, 61, 94, 133, 183, 189, 196, 255, 256, 258, 259, 262, 267, 270, 275–277 Work experience, 33, 197, 205, 222, 228

Y Yin–yang, 14, 24, 53, 167, 215, 339