\u201cEnough! Enough of the imbalances that is destroying our democracies, our planet, and ourselves,\u201d writes the Canadian management thinker Henry Mintzberg.\u201c A society out of balance, with power concentrated in a privileged elite, can be ripe for revolution.\u201d – How can that be?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the West it has been our enduring crisis<\/em>: an overleveraged financial economy, huge debts and imbalances, increasing inequalities, and resistant high unemployment rates. At the same time we see stock markets at all-time highs and CEOs earning obscene\u00a0 amounts of money. This is what Henry Mintzberg is referring to and what is threatening to undermine our basic institutions like democracy, market economy, rule of law, and civil society.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A different global society<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Additionally, the crisis in the West together with Asia\u2019s and specifically China\u2019s positive economic track record has led to the replacement of the liberal democratic nation state<\/em> as the role model for the global society<\/em> by the state capitalistic system<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In fact, the new model is a combination of state-capitalism<\/em> \u2013 where the state is seen as an important actor in the otherwise corporate world \u2013 and shareholder value thinking<\/em> \u2013 where the purpose of a business to make money is seen as an overall good for society \u2013 which is highly attractive for elites everywhere in the world. Authoritarian regimes, together with an oligarchic private ownership, patriarchic societies, the rule of elites instead of law, and an oppressed civil society, are again in advance. This has resulted in the rise of an unprecedented rich ruling class from China to Russia, Saudi Arabia to Brazil, and Nigeria to Angola.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hence, the West\u2019s self-inflicted crisis is also backfiring on it from the outside its boundaries and a different form of global society<\/em> is emerging.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Economic and social crisis inside, less influence and reduced power in the rest of the world, what can the West do to not destroy its basic institutions?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Assuming that the emerging global society<\/em> is a self-organizing social system<\/em>, solutions along the political left-right scheme become meaningless. No single government or multinational corporation has enough power to control the system. It is the interplay of decisions and actions taken by governments, supra-national institutions, civil society organizations, national and multinational companies and the like which is shaping the future of our planet.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Looking for high-level parameters capable of influencing the global society, Peter Drucker has given us a hint. Long ago he realized that knowledge societies<\/em> are societies of organizations with the single organization<\/em> as a key element. And behind each of these interdependent organizations are people whose practice is put to work by an \u201coperating system\u201d. And this, of course, is \u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2026 the Art of Management<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n While the choice of the management system<\/em> is independent of the type or the activities of an organization, it is a value-decision<\/em> that articulates fundamental principles, ideas and values of what we think an organization and hence society is all about.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n With the global triumph of mainstream management thinking, principles center almost solely along financial values and financial engineering. To overcome its implicit logic of \u201cwinner takes all\u201d we need a managerial operating system, which helps managers to deal with the increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity of our emerging global society.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We think such a system can only be based on an appreciation of the individual<\/strong> and a sustainable use of our planet<\/strong>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A European Humanistic Management Movement<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Europe has come a long way to arrive at its \u201chumanistic worldview\u201d. From ancient Greece to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Protestant Reformation right up to the modern peace project called the European Union. European Humanism with Kant and Rousseau brought forward the concept of self-responsibility as the<\/em> human trait that determines motivation and meaning.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The appreciation of the self-responsible individual<\/em> as a manager, employee, customer or any other stakeholder is the solution for a higher ability of organizations to act in a turbulent environment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Only a people-centered management<\/strong> based on humanistic values<\/em> allows drawing on the ingenuity and creativity of the human beings.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In any organization values<\/em> are articulated as operational principles<\/em>, which guide its decisions and actions. For a European Humanistic Management Movement<\/em> we think the following constituting principles can be put forward:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Values, routines and tools constitute the operating system<\/em> of an organization. As such, the modern toolbox has a design where principles<\/em> allow for choice, routines<\/em> raise the awareness for what matters most, tools<\/em> help people to remain focused on creating public value and leadership interactions<\/em> build trust. It is this toolbox that simultaneously caters to the humanistic values and at the same time to<\/span> addresses the challenges of a turbulent environment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n With this, the choice on the right design of the operating system becomes one of the most important leadership decisions and at the same time it is the central \u201clever\u201d for shaping the global society. The self-responsible individual is incompatible with a pure shareholder-value driven approach, but is needed to cope with challenges of an emerging global society and disruptions of new technologies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Executives of private and public organizations have the power to transform the operating system of their organizations as a badly needed evolution to prevent yet another revolution. This can help rebalance society in ways to promote value for the common good and not to further undermine the basic institutions of democracy, market economy, rule of law, and civil society.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n About the authors:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Hans Stoisser<\/strong>, entrepreneur, management consultant and author with a longtime experience in emerging countries. His book \u201cDer Schwarze Tiger \u2013 was wir von Afrika lernen k\u00f6nnen<\/em>\u201d will be published in September (K\u00f6sel Verlag).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lukas Michel<\/strong>, author of the two books The Performance Triangle<\/em> and Management Design<\/em>, mentor for executive teams and associate of the European Drucker Society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cEnough! 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