Title: Russ Marion Clemson University
1Complexity v. Transformation
The New Leadership Revisited
- Russ MarionClemson University
- Mary Uhl-Bien
- Univ. of Central Florida
2The Key Question
- What is leadership?
- Answer
- It depends upon your premise.
Is your premise related to control? Tasks? Human
relations? Growth? Innovation? Fitness?
Productivity?
3Three Definitions of Leadership
- Management of Influence
- Management of Meaning
- Management of Emergence
4Management of Influence
The act of influencing others toward a common
purpose or the process (act) of influencing the
activities of an organized group in its efforts
toward goal setting and goal achieving
(Stogdill, 1950, p. 3).
5Management of Meaning-The New Leadership
- The act of shaping organizational cultures and
the meaning that workers ascribe to their work
roles. The defining characteristic of true
leadership is the active promotion of values
which provide shared meanings about the nature of
the organization (Bryman, 1996, p. 277).
6Management of Emergence-New, New Leadership
- Complexity the study of how self-reinforcing
interdependent interaction create evolution,
fitness, and surprise. - Complex leaders foster conditions that enable
productive, but largely unspecified, futures.
They encourage bottom-up dynamics. They
manipulate the conditions of fitness and
innovation more than its results.
7Complexity Theory
- Views organizing as a bottom-up dynamic that is
generated through interactive bonding among
interdependent, need-seeking individuals, each of
which are driven by their local (bounded)
assessments of social and organizational events.
This interactive process is recursive.
8The Challenge
- Complex recursive systems are difficult to
control but are desirable for their ability to
foster growth and innovation - They may be influenced, however, by leaders who
influence the nature of, or enable, the emergence
of complex networks
9Complex Leaders
- Complex leaders are unifying symbols of a
movement, they articulate its goals and embody
its meaning. - Complex leaders foster a general mission for the
organization but treat that mission as a
changing, organic entity and avoid using it to
limit innovation. Moreover, they dont allow
their authority to be a limiting force.
10Complex Leaders
- Foster conditions that enable productive, but
largely unspecified, future states - Feed the natural bottom-up dynamics of emergence,
innovation, and fitness - Think in terms of systems, nonlinear effects, and
of network forces - Manipulate the situations of complexity more than
its results
11Micro-Level Leadership
- Facilitates the process of correlation,
aggregation and emergence - Correlation interacting and interdependent units
compromise a measure of their individualistic
need-preferences to the needs of others - Correlation is a bottom up process
- Micro-level Complex Leadership behaviors involve
negotiating conflicting constraints
12Macro-Level Leadership
- About structures and behaviors that emerge
unbidden out of an interactive network of
ensembles, through the process of aggregation. - Aggregation the structuring of agents into forms
and ideas it is the result of recursive
interaction, correlation, and catalysis.
13Macro-Level Behavior
- Structure and behavior at the macro-level emerge
from the uncertainty, unpredictability, and
nonlinearity that characterize micro-dynamics
thus these dynamics also elude control and
prediction
14Macro-level Complex Leadership
- Creates conditions that enable the interactions
through which the behaviors and direction of
organizational systems emerge - Does not determine/direct rather seeks to
influence organizational behavior through
managing networks and interactions
15Direct v Indirect Leadership Behaviors
- Direct deliberate efforts to influence controls
behaviors of workers - Indirect fosters innovation and fitness by
stimulating conditions that simultaneously create
conflicting constraints and enable their
resolution, and by providing unifying symbolic
meaning that sparks bottom-up activity.
16Direct Leadership
- Impacts local activities and creates conflicting
constraints at a higher level of interaction,
leading to a macro-level mesh of conflicting
constraints - Higher-order resolution requires indirect,
macro-level leadership behaviors
17Indirect Leadership Behavior
- Fosters network structures that present complexly
interactive challenges - Create atmospheres that empower workers to deal
with constraints - Enable network relationships that work through
constraints and use them as springboards for
creativity.
18Catalysts and Tags
- Catalysts enable and speed emergent events
- Tags are emergent catalytic things as opposed
to events - Tags provide symbolic meaning, identity, and
cohesion - Tags perform leadership functions by sparking
bottom-up activity
19Traditional Leadership v Complex Leadership
- Leaders are products of interactive dynamic
- Not hierarchical bureaucracy and leadership is
not embedded in managerial roles - Considers indirect leadership
- Direct behaviors at micro level negotiate
conflicting constraints and create linkages
20Traditional Leadership v Complex Leadership
- Tempers control preferences and instead fosters
connectivity among diverse agents - Enables effective coupling of structures, ideas,
and innovations to ensure they are neither too
loose nor too tightly interdependent - Stimulates systems toward emergent surprises
21Transformational Theory
- Transactional leaders manage the commerce of
exchange (Systemsworlds) - Transformational leaders seek to empower workers
around a core vision. The transforming leader
is one who raises the aspirations of followers
such that the leaders and followers aspirations
are fused. (Lifeworld)
22Transformational Strategies
- Top-down approach to leadership influence
- Controls with emphasis on vision and getting
people to buy into the vision - Macro-level leaders are managers of meaning,
providing a strong link between the leaders
behavior and organizational culture - Micro-level emphasis on emotional reactions to
leaders vision
23Three Primary Goals
- Heighten followers awareness about the
importance and value of goals and the means to
achieve them - Induce followers to transcend their
self-interests for the good of the collective and
its goals - Stimulate and meet followers higher order needs
24Four Macro Behaviors
- Charisma, or idealized influence
- Inspiration
- Intellectual stimulation
- Individualized consideration
- The communication of high expectations is a
central activity of the leader, and aims to
empower and to promote high task accomplishment.
25The Differences (1) Control
- Complex leadership control resides in bottom-up
interactive dynamics - Transformational leadership purports to do so but
the impetus for control still lies with the
leaders top-down vision
26Control and Critical Theory
- Transformational behaviors advance leaders
control agendas by empowering workers around
leaders vision - Subtly control workers minds/actions by
structuring in ways that forces them to act out
on the elites goals - Manipulate language, structure, and goals of
commerce workers deluded into thinking they have
freely bought-in to the company line
27- Organizations need defenses against their
charismatic leaders. Otherwise such individuals
can too readily bully or seduce others into
supporting their vainglorious illusions. - --Holman Jenkins
- (Column in Business World, Aug. 19,
1998, p. A19)
28Complex Leadership and Control
- Leaders are sensitive to control agendas and to
the subtle influence of their authority - Recognize that fitness, emergence, and innovation
are limited when controlled by a central
personality - Control focused on resolving conflicting
constraints, collecting resources, building
networks, discouraging power fiefdoms
29The Differences (2) Transformation
- Transformational leadership induces followers to
transcend self-interests for the good of the
collective and its goals - Complexity Theory emergent commitment to
innovation and bottom-up productivity from
diverse goals and skills
30The Differences (2) Transformation
- Transformational Leaders generate a common
purpose and a sense of unity based on leaders
vision - Complex Leaders also generate a common purpose,
but focus on interdependence of diversity rather
than unity of vision--a neural network of
diverse, adapting agents
31The Differences (2) Transformation
- Transformational leaders convert people into
replicas of themselves - Complex Leaders (e.g., tags) convert people into
diverse but interdependent Complex Adaptive
Agents
32The Differences (3) Causality
- Transformational Leadership structural or
process perspectives - Complex Leadership recursion perspective.
33The Differences (4) Managers of Emergence
- Transformational leaders manage meaning Complex
Leaders manage emergence, a term which is
inclusive of meaning - Complex Leaders manage networks, diversity,
interdependency within unity (meaning),
correlation, conflicting constraints, complex
transformation, autocatalysis, and recursion - Manage does not mean control better defined as
enable.
34The Differences(5) Leadership Specificity
- Transformational theory fails to specify how
leadership helps organizations adapt to
environment and acquire resources - Complex Leadership explains leaders role in the
Complexity processes of emergence, innovation,
and fitness
35The Differences(6) Influence Flow
- Transformational leadership suggests that
influence flows from leader to follower - Complex Leadership suggests a more shared
perspective of leadership and recursive chains of
influence
36Tags Lessons from transformational Leadership
- Charismatic leadership, through its emphasis on
inspiring and motivating leadership behavior, may
help Complexity theorists understand how the role
of tags work in complex systems, and how they
relate to Complex Leadership
37Conclusions
- Transformational leadership top-down,
leader-controlled model leaders identify a
vision and mobilize followers - Complex Leadership bottom-up model of emergence,
with Complex leaders bonding (direct) and
enabling (indirect) interactive dynamics that
lead to creativity and fitness
38Conclusions
- Transformational leadership stifles
creativity/emergence with leader control - Complex leadership enables creativity and
emergence with dynamic networks, diversity of
purpose and skill, and bottom-up creativity
39Conclusions
- Transformational leadership may fit within a
broader theory of Complex Leadership. - Transformational leadership, with its emphasis on
leader and lack of attention to organizational
processes, could benefit from integration with a
recursive-oriented model - The leaders transformational role would be that
of a tag, not hierarchical and authoritative but
catalytic and nurturing