Strategisk ledelse

1. 9. Forelæsning – d. 4. november 2013 Strategisk ledelse

2. Lectures, autumn 2013

3. 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 idealisation can be described as ‘Cult values’ that emerge in the evolution of a society and said that they 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

4. 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

5. Cult Values Idealisation is normally accompanied by functionalization. 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

6. 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.

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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.

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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’

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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.