2 Organizational and Managerial Wisdom

Brad C. Anderson

Learning Objectives

In this chapter, you will learn the following.

  • What an organization is
  • Individual aspects of wisdom
  • Group aspects of wisdom
  • Organizational elements of wisdom
  • Strategic elements of wisdom

 

This chapter will first define what organizations are. Then, it delves into specific characteristics of organizational wisdom. Organizations are composed of individuals, so it initially focuses on the attributes of individual wisdom. In organizations, individuals seldom work alone, but rather in groups. The subsequent section, therefore, explores wisdom in groups. Following that, this chapter explores wisdom at the level of the organization. Then, since organizations are embedded in society with multiple stakeholder groups, this section explores wisdom at this strategic level.  As you read these following sections, look for the threads of the three structures identified above (values, knowledge, and action).

What is an Organization?

Before we get too deep into the study of organizational wisdom, let us first establish what organizations are. An organization is a collection of people who collectively work towards a common purpose. Generally, organizations possess some form of hierarchy and division of labor–that is, it has some form of structure. This structure may be formal, such as in a publicly-traded company where policies and procedures define who does what and how they do it. Alternatively, the structure might be informal, such as a student-team you join as part of a group project for a course where you agree amongst yourselves who does what and how they do it. Importantly, organizations are what we call “open systems.” An open system means the organization has an effect on and is affected by the outside world.[1]

It is the group’s structure–hierarchy and division of labor–that separates an organization from, say, a group of friends hanging out. Thus, a sports team, with coaches, team captains, and players who play specific positions, is an organization. You and your buddies watching movies on Friday night, however, lack a hierarchy and division of labor and thus are not an organization.

Organizations come in many sizes, ranging from small teams with just a couple of members to massive corporations with thousands of employees. Note, large organizations are often composed of many smaller sub-groups. For example, a single business may consist of several departments, such as accounting, manufacturing, marketing, and human resources. Each of these departments will have their hierarchy and division of labor, and so are organizations in their own right. In such situations, the business would be the primary organization while the departments are sub-organizations. If those departments are large enough, they may have sub-organizations of their own.

The concepts in this textbook apply to any size and type of organization, though it will emphasize larger organizations that consist of several sub-organizations. When this textbook uses the word “group,” it is referring to sub-organizations. When it uses the word “organization,” it is referring to the primary organization.

 

Key Takeaways

An organization:

  • Consists of a group of people collectively working towards a common purpose
  • Has structure–hierarchy and division of labor
  • Can be big or small
  • May consist of multiple sub-organizations

Individual Aspects of Wisdom

Organizations are often competitive environments where self-interest can undermine good intentions.[2][3] Despite this, human nature is complex, and there are many instances where desires other than self-interest influence behavior, such as punishing those who act unfairly, helping those in need, and living by a code of conduct.[4] Wisdom helps individuals navigate this landscape through three dimensions: human affairs (the ability to lead others), relationships (the ability to deal with others’ emotions), and self-control.[5]

Many of our toughest problems involve moral dilemmas.[6] Navigating these morally charged environments is best accomplished through developing phronesis.[7]

 

Phronesis (Ancient Greek: φρόνησῐς, romanized: phrónēsis) is an Ancient Greek word for a type of wisdom or intelligence. It is more specifically a type of wisdom relevant to practical action, implying both good judgement (sic) and excellence of character and habits, or practical virtue …

The word was used in Greek philosophy, and such discussions are still influential today … Because of its practical character, when it is not simply translated by words meaning wisdom or intelligence, it is often translated as “practical wisdom“, and sometimes (more traditionally) as “prudence“, from Latin prudentia. Thomas McEvilley has proposed that the best translation is “mindfulness.”

 

“Phronesis” by Wikipedia is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

 

Attributes of individuals exhibiting phronesis include the following:

  • They learn from experience and help others understand their situation in a way that leads to practical action.[8]
  • They exhibit a mix of humility and open-mindedness that allows them to make sound judgments in situations of complexity and ambiguity over the short- and long-term. They recognize the limitations of their knowledge and are willing to learn and experiment.[9]
  • They focus on the needs of specific situations rather than general laws. They assess a situation and judge whether they should apply general rules or make an exception.[10]
  • They can operate in complex environments where there are different issues and no apparent ‘right answer’ to the problems they face.[11]
  • When engaging with complex situations, they bring their whole person to bear–their emotions, character, intelligence, and creativity. They also, however, recognize how the unique strengths of other individuals involved in the situation can help address the problems faced.[12]

The absence of wisdom leads to five cognitive fallacies:[13]

  1. The fallacy of egocentrism (the belief one should be the center of attention),
  2. The fallacy of omnipotence (the belief that one can make others follow your every wish),
  3. The fallacy of omniscience (the assumption that one knows everything they need to know),
  4. The fallacy of invulnerability (the belief that no harm will come to you), and
  5. The fallacy of unrealistic optimism (the idea that everything will work out all right).

 

Exercises

The above description of the qualities of people exhibiting phronesis often refers to situations of complexity. These situations may involve many different people with different perspectives and desires. There may be contradictory issues (e.g., some information may suggest one course of action is best; other information may argue against it). There may be no single ‘right answer’ to the problem people face–that is, every option has good and bad trade-offs.

  1. Can you think of an example of this type of situation? Think about your own experiences. Perhaps you and your group of friends or family experienced a problem like this. Maybe your school or workplace experienced a situation like this. Are there social issues in the world today that fit this description. Once you have this example in mind, describe it. What makes it complex? What are the conflicting issues? Why is there no clear ‘right answer’ to the problem?
  2. Describe how a person exhibiting phronesis might approach the situation you have described.
  3. Consider the Five Cognitive Fallacies listed above. How would each of those fallacies make it harder to resolve the situation you have described?

Key Takeaways

Group Aspects of Wisdom

Though the above describes the characteristics of individuals exhibiting phronesis, organizations often require groups of individuals to work together. Working in groups adds to the complexity individuals encounter–for example, people in the same group may differ in their goals, morals, and knowledge. These differences may lead to negotiations where self-interest, lack of trust, and desperation may undermine the ability of the group to act wisely.[14] Moreover, teams may face different tensions and stresses than individuals. These tensions include:[15]

  • Individuals’ needs may conflict with the group’s needs
  • External requirements placed on the team may conflict with the team’s internal demands
  • Short-term goals may conflict with long-term goals
  • Multiple priorities may conflict with each other

What a mess! Consequently, attributes that lead to individual wisdom may be insufficient to translate into group wisdom.[16] What additional attributes must individuals within groups exhibit to allow groups to act wisely?

To manage these tensions well, individuals within a group must possess an awareness of their own emotions and how those emotions impact their behavior. They further need the ability to read the emotions of others and understand how that influences their behavior. Armed with this awareness, individuals must demonstrate an ability to manage these emotions productively.[17] That is, they must possess social and emotional intelligence.[18] In addition to social and emotional intelligence, we must recognize that group wisdom is context-dependent–different teams in different situations experience different tensions. Thus, in addition to social and emotional intelligence, individuals in wise teams must also exhibit flexibility and adaptability.[19]

Diverse cultural backgrounds among group members may further exacerbate these difficulties. As described above, different cultures perceive wisdom differently. Cultures may prioritize different values, may possess different knowledge and different ways of understanding the world, and may possess a different view of how to take effective action. In these circumstances, individuals must also possess cultural intelligence to facilitate wise group action.[20] Cultural intelligence is an individual’s ability to adapt to different cultural settings.[21] Individuals can develop their cultural intelligence as follows.[22]

  • Understand how your culture influences your biases and values
  • Understand how other cultures influence other people’s biases and values
  • Learn how to match your behaviors to people’s expectations when working in cross-cultural environments

 

Exercises

Consider some challenging group experiences you have experienced. These could include sports teams, workgroups, student project teams, or similar. Depending on your experiences, these may or may not include inter-cultural teams.

  1. Consider the tensions that groups face, as described above. Which of these tensions did the group you are thinking of experience? How did those tensions affect group performance? How did those tensions make you feel? How did you respond? Why did you react that way?
  2. Reflect on the attributes of social and emotional intelligence and, if appropriate, cultural intelligence. If someone in the group exhibited these attributes, describe how they affected the group dynamic. If you feel no one exhibited these attributes, consider how social, emotional, and cultural intelligence may have improved the group dynamic.

Key Takeaways

Organizational Aspects of Wisdom

If you thought that managing the dynamics of a team was difficult, it gets even more challenging when you look at the whole organization. Organizations involve the coordinated activity between many groups, thus magnifying the challenges. Not only do you have a multiplicity of groups that need to manage themselves, but now you also have to manage the dynamics between groups.

This added complexity makes for a chaotic and high-pressure life for members of an organization.[23] Peter Vaill described the chaos of organizational life as “… the nonstop cascade of surprising, novel, obtrusive events that pepper (and sometimes bombard) all managers, events that often cannot be foreseen or planned away.”[24] The immense time pressures that exist in organizations compound this problem. These time pressures prevent managers from reflecting on unfolding events and learning from experience. Consequently, managers think and act on the fly. This is hardly a recipe for wise action.

These challenges can cause a myriad of problems for organizations, which the table below summarizes:[25][26][27]

Dysfunctions of values Dysfunctions of rationality Dysfunctions of power
Unwise companies

  • Impose their values on employees
  • Lack of appropriate checks and balances, leading to abuse of staff, small stakeholders, consumers, suppliers, and the environment
 Unwise companies

  • Focus on addressing the symptom rather than the cause of problems
  • Ignore data and theory
  • Fail to connect the changes they implement to business issues they face
 Unwise companies

  • Tolerate the arbitrary use of power
  • Ignore the impact of power and politics on decision-making
  • Pursue change to create the illusion of managerial action, which in turn leads to promotions and stock market returns
  • Pursue change not because it is needed, but because other firms in the industry are doing it, and managers want to follow the pack.

Exercises

Reflect on the challenges members of an organization face as described above: chaos and time pressure. Then, review the dysfunctions caused by unwise organizational action listed in the previous table.

  1. How might those challenges of chaos and time pressure lead to those dysfunctional actions? How might those pressures lead people to make dysfunctional choices?
  2. Perhaps you have your own experience working in this type of environment. Are any of the organizations you have worked for guilty of partaking in these dysfunctional actions? What are the pressures that led you and your co-workers to take those actions?

For inspiration, the example directly below describes a situation where managers mimicked what other companies did, even though they believed those actions were detrimental in the long-term.

An Example of Why Managers Follow The Pack

In his book, A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation, the author described the forces that led bankers to make investments in high-risk assets before the 2008 financial crisis. Despite short-term gains, most bankers knew these assets would ultimately result in losses, yet they still invested. Why?

Initially, when one bank makes a high-risk investment, they earn significant profits for a while. Their superior performance makes other banks look bad. Clients begin saying, “Bank A is earning a 15% return on investment; you are only earning 10%. Why should I invest my money with you?”

Bankers can try to explain to their clients that Bank A’s investment strategy is highly risky and will eventually result in losses. These losses, however, may take a long time to occur, and investors want to earn profits now. When another bank, say, Bank B, makes the same investment, they, too, get a 15% return. Then Bank C joins the game. Ultimately, if you and your bank do not make the same high-risk investment, then you end up looking like you are a worse-than-average bank. Customers leave, and bankers get fired. If you want to stay in the game, you need to follow the pack and make similar high-risk investments.

Then, when the high-risk investment ultimately goes bust, it goes bust for every bank at the same time. When clients say, “You’re losing my money!” the bank can reply, “Everyone is losing money. The economy is in a downturn, and everyone is suffering.”

Thus, if you fail to take the high-risk investment, you end up looking like you are performing worse then average when the investment is doing well. Then, when the high-risk investment ultimately fails, it fails for everyone, so you can claim that this calamity is beyond your control. This dynamic creates immense pressure on bankers to follow the lead of other banks, even if they believe the strategy is ultimately doomed to failure.

 

The challenges described above make wise action difficult. Organizational wisdom, however, is possible. The following table summarizes attributes of companies that foster wisdom:[28][29][30]

 

Strength in Values Strength in Rationality Strength in Use of Power
Wise companies foster employees who

  • Maintain fundamental values and priorities
  • Live a value system, rather than paying lip service to one
  • Do not sacrifice values for the sake of processes, but rather design processes that achieve their values
  • Continually reflect on the meaning and importance of key values
  • Recognize that multiple values are always at play rather than a single, overriding value
  • Weave values and organizational priorities together to create insights about what actions to take
 Wise companies foster systems and employees who

  • Identify and frame problems in a productive way
  • Facilitate effective communication between groups within the organization
  • Identify and develop multiple possibilities for action
  • Find time to reflect on fostering an awareness of the paradigm through which they are viewing problems
  • Help their co-workers to see problems in a new way
  • Continually learn
  • Honor the past by understanding how the organization historically addressed problems that it can then apply to current and future challenges
 Wise companies foster

  • Employees who understand no one has absolute control and so bad things may happen that no one can prevent.
  • Employees who understand how they use power to disempower others in their organization
  • Continuity of leadership. Developing organizational competency takes years of consistent effort, which requires continuity of management

An Example of How Employees Use Their Power to Disempower Others

A university department consisted of several faculty members. A few of these members had founded the department decades ago. Other members were recent hires and had only worked for a period of several months to a couple of years. Though the older, founding members of the department had no formal authority, the department held these individuals in high esteem. As a result of the respect and seniority these senior members had, they possessed informal power within the department.

In itself, there was nothing wrong with this. These founding members had significant experience and a deep interest in the department’s success. Their authority, even though it was informal, did manage to “disempower” others, though. During meetings, faculty would often debate different solutions to the problems they had. When one of these founding members spoke, however, the department considered the issue closed. If a newer faculty member was dissatisfied with the resolution and sought to re-open the debate, they were met with resistance from the department. Debate was tolerated only so long as the founding members tolerated it.

As newer faculty chafed under this dynamic, morale dropped, and several people felt bullied.  The department risked sliding into dysfunction until the university intervened and moderated a negotiation over how department members treated one another.

The key takeaway here is if you have power, whether formal or informal, you may inadvertently silence those with less power. Not only can this erode morale and create a toxic work environment, but it can also close avenues of good ideas and needed change. To counter this, organizations that aspire to act wisely will foster awareness among its employees of how people might use power to disempower others. They further create systems that allow all voices to be heard.

Key Takeaways

  • At the level of the organization, acting wisely requires individuals who:
    • Emphasize and honor fundamental values
    • Inspire others to solve problems creatively
    • Use power constructively.

Strategic Aspects of Wisdom

So far, we have looked at the complexity of an organization. We started by contemplating wisdom expressed in the individual, then the group, and later by collections of interacting groups. Organizations, however, do not operate in isolation, but rather in vast networks of organizations that include unions, competitors, suppliers, governments, consumers, communities, and so on. Therefore, individuals within an organization must manage the internal dynamics within their organization while also dealing with external pressures exerted by other organizations. Fun times. This textbook uses the word ‘strategic’ to refer to this high level of complexity as many of the decisions at this level involve strategically positioning the company in this network of stakeholders to achieve the organization’s goals.

As you might imagine, acting wisely in this sea of complexity is challenging. In the absence of wisdom, firms fall back to utilitarianism. This, in turn, leads firms to reduce their decision-making to simple cost-benefit and return-on-investment analyses. This reliance on utilitarianism is problematic on three fronts:[31]

  1. Not everything valuable can be measured. These analyses tend to ignore or undervalue these intangible benefits.
  2. Such utilitarian approaches lead individuals to focus on what is measured rather than what is valuable.
  3. Different stakeholders pursue different benefits, so one organization’s cost-benefit analysis may be irrelevant to other stakeholders.

Through utilitarianism, the multiple purposes of an organization become reduced to profit maximization. Focusing solely on profits benefits some stakeholder groups, such as investors, but may negatively impact others. Employees, for example, generally find the pursuit of profit maximization to the exclusion of all else lacks meaning.[32] Exclusive focus on profit maximization further ignores the firm’s impact on society.[33] The following example demonstrates this.

 

An Extreme Example of a Utilitarian Approach to Decision-Making

The following video presents a well-known case of the Ford Motor Company. In the 1970s, it sold a vehicle it knew had severe safety issues. It justified this action after determining that the costs of fixing the problem were higher than the costs they attributed to the deaths and injuries caused by the safety issue.

 

 

Organizations that aspire to act wisely do not ignore profit maximization, but rather focus on harmonizing multiple values.[34] Its leaders use knowledge and experience to make choices that appeal to multiple stakeholders.[35] Achieving this requires leaders to embody the virtue of phronesis.

Phronesis is the capacity to do what is realistic. Those in possession of phronesis are adaptive, understand the ethics of a given situation, and commit to act.[36] They focus on doing the ethically practical in a given situation. They can work in conditions of uncertainty and develop skills to manage incompatible and incommensurate values between stakeholder groups.[37][38][39]

Rather than succumb to utilitarianism, leaders exhibiting phronesis recognize that the goals organizations strive to achieve cannot be separated from the means used to achieve them. They recognize that even though a goal may be highly valued, if the means needed to achieve it are undesirable, then perhaps the pursuit of that goal is unjustified. Operating wisely at this strategic level requires leaders who consider which goals are valuable in light of the means they and other stakeholders use to achieve them.[40]

Achieving this level of insight requires leaders who combine knowledge, experience, and spirituality. Knowledge refers to knowing about things and knowing how to do something. Though this is a critical attribute, it is insufficient because our knowledge is often limited and flawed. Experience gives individuals a broader understanding of specific situational environments and facilitates the integration of new knowledge into existing knowledge. Experience gives individuals the confidence to make decisions with incomplete information and hones their intuition. Spirituality refers to an individual’s moral maturity and ability to use universal principles such as integrity, compassion, honesty, and justice to justify their actions.[41]

 

Key Takeaways

  • At the strategic level, acting wisely requires leaders who recognize their organization is embedded in a network of stakeholders, each of whom pursues their values.
  • Rather than undermining the value-positions of others, wise leaders harmonize the values of all stakeholders as much as possible.
  • Wise leaders do the ethically practical given their situation and are capable of operating in environments of complexity and uncertainty.

All This Sounds Great, But How do we Achieve it?

The preceding sections explored wisdom at the individual, group, inter-group, and strategic levels. We introduced the many challenges individuals in organizations face to acting wisely. We further explored how wisdom manifests at each of these levels and the impact of wisdom’s absence. In the course of this discussion, this chapter introduced many ideas that probably sound nice to many people. How do we implement these ideas, though?

If it were easy, wisdom would be commonplace. The complexity and competing pressures in organizational environments are real. In the face of these challenges, the ideas that sound insightful in texts seem hopelessly naive. How do we overcome these challenges? How do we imbue people with the skills they need to act wisely in the ‘real world?’

It is these questions that the remainder of this text seeks to answer. For now, let us quickly summarize the three themes of wisdom.

  1. Values: Values guide wise action
  2. Rationality: Knowledge is required but insufficient for wise action
  3. Power: Wisdom is action-oriented

Our first step along this path is the introduction of a framework this text will use to understand organizational life. This framework, which the next chapter describes in detail, is called critical realism. After that, we will dive into the three structures of wisdom. First, we will explore values and how they operate in organizations. Then, we will consider rationality. Rationality is related to knowledge in that it considers how we come to understand and learn about the world and rationalize our actions. In this chapter, we will discuss the many different forms rationality can take in organizations. Following that, we will discuss power. Power is related to action, for one must exercise their power to act in an organization.

With that background, this textbook turns to explore how people put values, rationality, and power into practice in an organization. Later chapters will explore how power and values influence each other as well as power and rationality. We will consider how individuals in organizations can build alliances that support desired actions as well as means of managing resistance. The textbook will then tie all these pieces together to address how to develop organizational wisdom purposefully. The final section of this textbook then looks at the road ahead. Chapters will discuss what actions you can take to develop your wisdom. This textbook then closes with a discussion of how you can find the courage to act to create a better and stronger world.

We have an exciting road of discovery ahead of us. Let’s get into it.

 

In this chapter, you learned:

What an organization is

  • Organizations are groups of people possessing a hierarchy and division of labor who collectively work to achieve a common purpose

Individual aspects of wisdom

Group aspects of wisdom

Organizational elements of wisdom

  • At the level of the organization, acting wisely requires individuals who emphasize and honor fundamental values, who inspire others to solve problems creatively, and who use power constructively.

Strategic elements of wisdom

  • At the strategic level, acting wisely requires leaders who recognize their organization is embedded in a network of stakeholders, each of whom pursues their values. Rather than undermining the value-positions of others, wise leaders harmonize the values of all stakeholders as much as possible. They do the ethically practice given their situation and are capable of operating in environments of complexity and uncertainty.
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