Please note: The following was posted at UoPX as an assignment. While written for an academic audience, this is information many business leaders need right now. Future business leaders need to understand the core principles to shift out of this academic view of leadership and into a functional and practical role.
The following article will, quite frankly, not be popular. Many in the “leadership author” business hold the principles of ‘Collective Leadership’ as a guiding star, when quite frankly the practice is anything but practical and everything but useful. The entire Hickman (2010) article [Ch 18] quoting Allen et al., reads like the Communist Manifesto by Mark and Engels (2013). Including balderdash, academic nuance, and hyperbole wrapped in a shiny wrapper and presenting a chimerical and illusory outlook without any type of practical substance. Yet, those espousing ‘collective leadership’ refuse to understand the core doctrine and recognize it was wrong.
Nowhere in the entire article are the principles of responsibility and accountability mentioned, discussed, or broached. Yet Robinson (1999) makes clear the principles of accountability and responsibility must be honored and, from a bottom-up perspective, the front-line employees need to know who is ultimately in charge, responsible, and will be held accountable. A committee shirks responsibility and accountability, thus collective leadership never works. Consider ENRON, WorldComm, or Solyndra, all of these fantastic failures were caused by committees shirking responsibility, accountability, and this led to fraud, criminal actions, and a workforce in confusion. While facilitating learning and fostering growth are good, they cannot be honored fully without the principles of individual freedom and agency, both of these principles cannot be employed unless accountability and responsibility are honored. Preservation of nature and caring communities remain idealistic and utopian, both are not principles that provide bottom-line performance, the primary role of the senior management team.
Courage, integrity, and authenticity are all excellent attributes to possess, but alone they cannot and should not be a solution. The reason is simple; these are actions, principles, and ideals to be worked towards. But they can never work in a vacuum. Rao (2013) discusses ‘Soft Leadership’ and touches lightly upon people needing others like them to combine to live, elevate, challenge, and change. Kuczmarski (1996 & 2003) combine with Kuhn (1996) and Nibley (1987) to seal the thought patterns here by describing the risk inherent in standing for principles and why less risk taking is being engaged upon and the paradigm adopted by organizational managers to stifle competition and remove opportunities to change.
Taken in proportion, all of the items mentioned in Hickman (2010) article [Ch. 18], can be combined to bring a principled stand and improve an organization, but separate these items and they do not and cannot stand independently. Combined into a strategy that is adopted, supported, and lived by the entire organizational structure, including all members of the organization, the organization can change. Separate these items or combine them in such a manner that one is more relied upon, honored, or held more precious than the others, and disaster, chaos, and destruction are not powerful enough words to describe what the ultimate end product will become. A perfect example of the unfeasible nature of these items when separated can be discovered in the current problems being suffered in the US Department of Veteran Affairs, the US Department of the Treasury, specifically the Internal Revenue Service, and the US Department of Homeland Security. The management styles embraced by these organizations are remarkably similar and can almost be lifted verbatim from the pages of the Hickman (2010) article [Ch. 18]. The impossibly idealist attitudes do not work in reality and the result becomes organizations that fail to do their job, are easily manipulated into the designs of conspiring people, and in the process do more harm than good while costing more money than budgeted.
References
Hickman, G. (2010). Chapter 18: Leadership in the 21st Century. In Leading organizations: Perspectives for a new era (Second ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Kuczmarski, T. (1996). What is innovation? The art of welcoming risk. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 13(5), 7-11.
Kuczmarski, T. (2003). What is innovation? And why aren’t companies doing more of it? What Is Innovation? And Why Aren’t Companies Doing More of It?” 20(6), 536-541.
Kuhn, T. S. (1996). The structure of scientific revolutions. (Third ed., Vol. VIII). Chicago, ILL: The University of Chicago Press.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (2013). The Communist Manifesto (eBook ed.). USA: Start Publishing.
Rao, M. S. (2013). Soft leadership: a new direction to leadership. Industrial and Commercial Training, 45(3), 143-149. doi: 10.1108/00197851311320559
Robinson, G. (1999). Leadership vs management. The British Journal of Administrative Management, 20-21. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/224620071?accountid=458
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