| dc.description.abstract | All executives strive for better results in their organisations. They are always
dependent on others to achieve these results and this dependency is particularly
evident in large organisations. This thesis is concerned with the ways in which
these better results might be achieved and the role senior executives might play in
this process. The traditional view is that senior executives design and control the
way their organisations function and better results therefore depend upon getting
the design and the controls ‘right’. My personal experience, supported by many
authors, is that this view is often far from reality. In this thesis I therefore draw on
an alternative view of how organisations function, namely, the theory of complex
responsive processes, in order to explore how senior executives can be more
effective given their very limited ability to design and control their organisations.
From a complex responsive processes perspective (Stacey, Griffin and Shaw,
2000; Stacey, 2003a), an organisation is understood, by analogy with the
complexity sciences, to be processes of self-organising interaction between
agents. The abstract analogy from the complexity sciences is interpreted in the
case of human interaction according to the thinking of the American pragmatist G.
H. Mead (1934). Mead explains the simultaneous emergence of mind and society
in terms of the social act in which one person gestures to another and in doing so
calls forth a response from that other in ongoing conversational processes in
which patterns of communication (meaning) emerge across the organisational
population. Work in organisations is accomplished in these conversational
processes. In their conscious, self-conscious and responsive interaction, human
agents depend on each other; according to the process sociologist N. Elias (1978),
this means that all human relating is simultaneously constraining and enabling.
Elias defines power as these enabling constraints between people, so that power is
an aspect of all human relating. According to Elias, values, norms and ideology
are the basis of power. Human choice and intention influence the shifting of
power balances in which conflict, as a normal aspect of human interaction, plays
an important role. Power, ideology and identity are then seen as central aspects of
organisations.
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People only interact locally with a small proportion of the total population they
are part of, and do so on the basis of their own local organising principles
(communication, power and choice) rather than simply obeying centrally set rules.
This can be understood as self-organisation. The global patterns of communicative
interaction and power relations across the organisation emerge in these local
interactions rather than following a specific plan, programme or blueprint. The
global patterns are unpredictable and are not under the control of any member of
the organisation. Global – that is, company-wide – results are thus not directly
determined by global design or control, but emerge in this local interaction. This
approach means re-thinking what is involved in leadership and the roles of senior
executives. From this perspective, senior executives are paradoxically in control
and not in control at the same time (Streatfield, 2001).
In this thesis I draw on my own personal experience over the past three years as a
senior executive in a large services and transport company to identify the role a
senior executive can actively play in potentially achieving better results despite
not being fully in control. I emphasise the active contribution of senior executives
in many local interactions in which global company-wide results emerge. Through
the manner in which they participate in, and inspire, the development of local
conversational interaction, senior executives can actively encourage front-line
staff to take local responsibility for contributing to global, company-wide
improvement of results. During these local interactions a chain reaction of local
responsibilities can emerge that can contribute to the improvement of global
company-wide performance. It is the responsibility of senior executives to
communicate clearly in the organisation about demands on performance and
results by customers and stakeholders in the market, and to encourage the taking
of local responsibility for them. From a complexity view, the impact of leaders on
the organisation is not less but different, with potentially better results. | en |
