Strategisk Ledelse

1. Strategisk Ledelse 10. undervisningsgang – 12. november 2012

2. Lectures, Autumn 2012

3. Formalia • Miniprojektet skrives i grupper af 2-5 studerende • Projektet skal fylde: • 25 sider ved to studerende • 30 sider ved tre studerende • 35 sider ved fire studerende • 40 sider ved fem studerende • Projektet kan være baseret på case, teori eller empiri • De studerende skal i særlig grad vise, at de kan anvende de på kurset indlærte teorier • Der afleveres jævnfør universitetets frister for skriftlige arbejder (d. 17. december)

4. Chapter 14

5. Human communication • In order for humans to accomplish complex social acts, we develop the ‘Generalized other’ which enables us to take the attitude of all engaged individuals • These attitudes evolves over time and is always implicated in every human action • We care about what others think of us and about the consequences of their not thinking well of us • Because we care, we are providing a powerful constraint on what we do and so a powerful form of social control • Social control here is expressed as sociallyacquired self-control

6. Taking the attitude • Take attitude, the tendency to act; • Me; The generalized other – becoming an object to one self • I; Subject, a particular person, time and place • No predetermined way that ‘I’ may respond to the ‘me’ • In CRP; the I/me cannot be separated and equal social • Self is understood as an ongoing process, where ‘I’ responding to ‘me’ – No true self! Attitude as ’I’ Subject Attitude as ’me’ Object

7. Taking the attitude • We need, however, to take specific considerations in specific situations. We cannot only generalise. • Conflict arises because we need to continually explore what our differences are • Generalisations through ‘simple rules’ • Particular differences

8. Taking the attitude • No idealisation that human relation is essential good • Mead’s theory of conversation of gestures is more concerned with war, corruption, abuse etc. • In Mead’s perspective, we come to understand organisations as patterns of interaction between people • The strategies of an organisation are the generalisations (of people) and the strategies therefore evolve in the ordinary everyday processes

9. Conflict • The movement of strategy occurs in the negotiations of conflicts; how to interpret generalisations • Polarized conflicts (traditional) is characterised by opposed positions, where one wins • Explorative conflicts are conversational and negotiating processes where people explores how to interpret generalisations • Mental and social activities are processes of generalising and particularising at the same time

10. Social objects • Working in an organisation is a an aspect of peoples identity and represents the ‘we’ aspect • Organisations does not exist as a thing but patterns of interaction in our experience • (Social) object used as a ‘tendency to act’ and refersto what we perceive in taking it up in our acting

11. Social control Social objects are generalised tendencies, common to large numbers of people, to act in similar ways in similar situations • Mead links social objects to social control • Social control is the bringing of the act of the individual person into relation with the social object • Social control depends upon the degree to which the individual takes the attitude of the generalised other: that is, takes the attitude which is the social object • All institutions are social objects and serve to control individuals who find them in their experience

12. Meaningful patterns of interaction between people arise Gesture Response Inseparable phases of one social act Generalising Particularising Inseparable phases of social objects I Me Inseparable phases of the social self Takes the form of iterated, emerging, narrative and propositional themes that organise the experience of being together The reflexive nature of humans means that we have the capacity to reflect imaginatively on these patterns, both local and population-wide, articulating both the habitual and the just emerging transformations and, in doing so, either sustain the habitual or reinforce the transformation of habit

13. Imaginative constructs • In our reflection we generalise the tendencies we experience across many present situations, creating imaginative ‘Wholes’ • The social object emerges from this in one phase is the particularisation of the general we find ourselves in • Laws and rules can only be reflected upon as generalisations and must be made specific by individually particularisation of such

14. Organisations as Social Objects • In CRP, the emergence of long-term, widespread, coherent patterns of relating across a population emerging in the local process of relating • We hereby understands human relating to be inherently pattern forming – it is its own cause! • When treating organisations ‘as if’ being physical we often forget the ‘as if’ nature of our construct • Instead we could think about an organisation as a social object – i.e. the ongoing patterning of the relationships between those who are members of the organisation and other organisations

15. Organisations as Social Objects • The organisation is nothing more or less that the iterated ongoing processes in which people are together particularising the generalisations in terms of which they perceive their organisation • As people interact locally with each other, moment by moment, they form patterns of activity • Organisations are the ongoing patterning of conversations, so that changes in conversations are changes in organisations

16. Organisations as Social Objects • The process of management as particularising are interpretive and conflictual, and it is such local interaction that social objects continue both to be reproduced and to evolve – that is, population-wide patterns are iterated in local interactions as continuity as potential transformation as the same time • The activity of particularising the general cannot be described simply as either formulation (thought) or implementation (action). This is because of making the general particular involves interpretation, conflict and negotiation, all of which are actions that involve thinking

17. Chapter 15

18. Cult Values • People imaginatively construct some kind of unity • They have a tendency to individualise and idealise a collective and treat it ‘as if’ it had overriding motives or values, amounting to processes in which the collective constitutes a ‘Cult’ • Such idelisation can be described as ‘Cult values’ that emerge in the evolution of a society and said that tehy were the most precious part of our heritage • Cults are maintained when leaders present to people’s imaginations an idealised future for the ‘whole’, that is free of conflicts and constraints

19. Cult Values • As well as being generalisations, then, social objects may also take the form of idealisations or cult values. Such values have the effect of including those who adhere to them and excluding those who do not, so establishing collective or ‘we’ identities. • Idealisation of the ‘whole’ which promise a utopian future shorn of all obstacles to its realisation • Cult values can be goo or bad or both • The process of idealisation are far from unproblematic and could easily lead to actions that others outside the cult will come to regard as bad or even evil

20. Cult Values • Idealisation is normally accompanied by function-alisation. Idealisations – or cult values – can become functional values in the everyday interactions between members of an institution rather than being simply applied in a way that enforces the conformity of a cult • As soon as a cult values become functional values in real daily interaction, conflict arises and it is this conflict that must be negotiated by people in their practical interaction with each other as they act on present interpretations of cult values

21. Cult Values • Functionalising of values is the enactment of values in the ordinary, local interactions between people in the living present • When leaders are inspiring with compelling visions of the future, they are actually articulating cult values which may or may not be ‘good’ – lacks the need to functionalise the cult values • Usually visions, missions and value statements are usually simply acknowledged in public while privately people express their cynicism.

22. Desires values and norms First order preferences are: • Fluid and particular bodily impulses expressed as unreflective action • Experienced as compulsive motivations for actions • Lacking in evaluative criteria and so not intrinsically linked to ethics or morals • Humans also have desires that are directed to their desires and could be called second-order desires • They can desire that their desire should be strong enough to influence their will

23. Desires values and norms • Norms are: • Evaluative in that they provide criteria for judging desires and actions • Obligatory and constraining. They therefore restrict opportunities for action. We experience them as compelling in a restrictive sense • Intimately connected with morals in that they provide criteria for what ought to be done, what is right • Norms are constrains arising in social evaluation that act to restrain the actions and even desires of interdependent individuals, so much that the constraints become thematic patterns of individual identities

24. Desires values and norms • In CRP terms, norms are themes organising experience in a constraining way Values / ideals are: • Evaluative in that they provide general and durable criteria for judging desires norms and actions • Attractive and compelling in a voluntary, committed sense. They motivate action and open opportunities for action. Values attract us, giving life meaning and purpose, and so are not experienced as restrictive • Intimately connected with ethics in that they provide criteria for judging what is the good in action, differentiating between god and bad desires, good and bad norms

25. Desires values and norms • Values are essentially concerned with what it is good to desire and they are continually arising in our ongoing negotiation with each other, and ourselves, in our going on together • The communicative interaction in which self is formed is more than a means to coordinating action; it opens human beings up to each other, making possible experience in which values and commitments to them arise • Values are understood as as the ‘imaginative constructs’ of ‘wholes’ which is conceptual very different than systems thinking

26. Desires values and norms • The ‘whole’ here is a feeling involving the experience of value and the co-creation of cult values • Values may be good or bad or both, depending on who is doing the judging • Subjective experience of values arise in specific action contexts and types of intense experience. Values and value commitments arise in the process of self-formation. • Values cannot be prescribed or deliberately chosen by anyone, because they emerge, and continue to be iterated

27. Norms, values and ideology • In Complex Responsive Processes terms, values are themes organising the experience of being together in a voluntary compelling, ethical manner, while norms are themes of being together in a obligatory, restrictive way • When humans interact, they enable and constraint each other at the same time • The evaluative themes forming end being formed by human interaction are norms and values at the same time, together constituting ideology.

28. Norms, values and ideology • Ideology can be thought of as an imaginative ‘whole’ – that is, simultaneously the obligatory restriction of the norm and the voluntary compulsion of the value, constituting the evaluative criteria for the choice of actions • From a CRP perspective, there are no universals outside human interaction, but this does not mean that norms and values are purely relative in an ‘anything goes’ kind of way • This is because generalisations and idealisations can only be found in their particularisations in specific interactive situations. This always involves negotiation of conflict; power relating, in which ‘anything goes’ is impossible

29. Norms, values and ideology • From a Complex Responsive processes perspective, desires, values and norms are all understood to be particular narrative and propositional themes emerging in interaction and at the same time patterning that interaction

30. Ethics and leadership • Participation is the direct interaction of persons with each other, not participation in some whole • Processes of communicative interaction are ones in which we together create what happens to us and they are such that small differences can be amplified to transform population wide patterns • It is impossible to escape the responsibility for one’s own actions by ascribing the causes of what happens to some whole system outside our direct experience of interacting with each other

31. Ethics and leadership • Those who emerge as leaders are those who display a greater spontaneity and have greater ability to deal with the ongoing purpose or task for which others are interacting • The leader is an individual who is able to enter into the attitudes of others, so enhancing connection and interaction between group members • The leader is constructed in the recognition of others

32. Dynamics of inclusion-exclusion • Power is a structural characteristic of all human relationships in that it reflects the fact that we depend on each other and so enable and constrain each other • The basis of power is need • The behaviour of every individual is both enabled and constrained by the expectations and demands of both others and themselves • Communicative interaction is, thus, power relating as the patterning of enabling and conflicting constraints • Power differences establish groupings in which some people are ‘included’ and others are ‘excluded’

33. Dynamics of inclusion-exclusion • Power is felt as the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion • One of the principal ways that power differentials are preserved, then, is the use of even trivial differences to establish different membership categories. • It is not the difference itself but rather an ideological form that stirs up hatred in the interests of sustaining power positions in a dynamic of inclusion and exclusion • As a form of communication, as an aspect of the power relations in the group, ideology is taken up in that private role play, that silent conversation, which is mind in individuals

34. Gossip • Ideology emerges in local interactive processes of gossip • Streams of gossip stigmatise and blame the outsider group while similar streams of gossip praise the insider group • The gossip builds layers upon layer of value-laden binary pairs • Attributes ‘charisma’ to he powerful and ‘stigma’ to the week, so reinforcing power differentials • The stigmatisation only sticks where there is already sufficiently large power differentials

35. Gossip • Gossip is undoubtedly often harmful but it can never be removed from human relating and it is not just harmful, because it serves a purpose in organisations • It is in the activities of gossiping that ideologies and figurations of power relation are sustained but also potentially transformed • Transformation happens when we are making sense of strategising activities and how these play a part in the emergence of population-wide patterns of realised strategy

36. Emotional aspects • Any change in the processes of communicative interaction must at the same time constitute a shift in power relations and, therefore, a change in the pattern of who is ‘included’ and who is ‘excluded’ and so shifts in ideology • Such shifts generate intense anxiety and communicative interaction is recruited in some way to deal with this anxiety • The charismatic group uses language that deeply hurts the members of the disgraced group and this has a paralysing of the disgraced members.