Ethics and Holistic Thinking in Business and Indistry

By Guttorm Floistad

Originally appeared in the International Creativity Network Newsletter, volume 1, number 1, 1996, pages 6-8.

To lead an enterprise is to lead people. The leading of people is the leading of attitudes. It is to develop attitudes. People's attitudes always have a history. Attitudes are formed by actions and experience during childhood and adolescence, through education, and in working and professional life. Attitudes are often formed and altered in a complex field of interaction.

Attitudes are composite and intricate. They are a diverse mixture of habits, needs, meanings, skills, knowledge, interests, preferences, reaction patterns, emotions, together with a physical and mental apparatus of expression, including language. Attitudes converge in a field of vision, a life-world, through which the outer world and other people are apprehended and, once in a while, oneself. Attitudes are fundamentally decisive for who and what one perceives. It is quite possible not to see others. It is seems quite common, even those with whom one works.

Attitudes are not only a matter for the faculties of reason, just as little as experiences, actions and interests are. Attitudes contain and include elements of feeling, will and reason. Attitudes cannot, therefore, be only a product of deliberation and decision, and neither may they be changed by resolve alone. The formation and changing of attitudes are processes which take place, and must take place, over time.

Interplay Between Attitudes

The leadership of an enterprise is the leadership of a community. It means leading and developing an interaction between attitudes. It is the creation of unity from diversity. It is only then that an enterprise culture may be said to exist.

An enterprise constitutes a unity, and has a culture, only in as much as there exists a productive interplay among and between employees attitudes.

The unity of an enterprise is therefore not a given entity. It varies and changes. It may be stronger or weaker. It has its daily ups and downs depending upon employees attitudes, their physical and mental status. Problems in the area of people's private lives tend to weaken cooperational ability and concentration at the machines. And the reverse is also true: a good private life and robust health increase effort. One has greater capacity to be something for others, to be with others.

To lead an enterprise is to lead, develop and strengthen the interplay between employees attitudes, and, thereby, the unity of the enterprise and its culture.

Holistic Thinking and Ethics

An enterprise is many things. First of all, it is a production facility with all that this involves of production systems, product development, marketing, economic planning and guidance, and personnel polity. As an interaction between attitudes, an enterprise is a socio-moral, or an ethical field.

This means, of course, than an enterprise may also be an ethical minefield: poor cooperation can destroy all sorts of systems in an enterprise. It follows that the quality of cooperation ? the quality of the ethical field ? will have a decisive influence on all the other systems of the enterprise. It is of small advantage in having the best technological equipment and the greatest pool of technical knowledge if the ethical climate fails.

It is this ethical climate which to a great degree, decides employees concentration abilities, their will to use their competence, their staying power, their capacity to tolerate temporary difficulties, possible reduction of pay, client relations, etc. One could therefore have predicted the result of that study which reveals that only a slight improvement in the climate of cooperation, of the ethical field, immediately leads to increased productivity and profitability.

What is Enterprise Ethics?

An enterprise has as a rule several culture systems, such as systems of production, product development and marketing, for example. These different systems have their own quality criteria attached to things like technical quality, technical imagination, organization, client relationships, etc. As elements of a human cooperative community, both internally within the enterprise and externally in relation to a market and society, these criteria are, in the last instance, anchored in, and conditioned by, the whole of an enterprise's culture; that is, by the qualities of attitudes which are contained in the community. This, again, is anchored in and conditioned by the socio-ethical values which characterize cooperation.

To be able to understand what these socio-ethical values are founded upon, and how they are developed, it will be necessary to look further than any particular enterprise: the qualities of attitudes and values with which we come to work, are stamped with the traditions of the surrounding society. For the sake of perspective then, we must take a short historic detour.

From an Authoritarian to a Democratic Ethics

Most of us have grown up in a Christian ethical tradition which in the main is guided by two ethical imperative: You shall... and You shall not... Such imperatives are naturally enough not proposed without reason. They emerge from a conception of people as being in need of ethical guidance. Without such guidance, many of us have a tendency to drift into self-destructive attitudes and actions, or such that destroy the community. The two imperatives must be understood as care.

On its own, there is nothing necessarily wrong with this type of authoritarian ethics. But it presupposes a powerful ethics of duty and obedience on the part of the recipients. Otherwise, it would be, itself, powerless.

Accordingly, an authoritarian ethics presupposes an authoritarian style of leadership and a complementary hierarchical organizational structure. This authoritarian, hierarchical structure was traditionally absolute. It was found in the church, in political authority, in the family and in the relations between the sexes, and at places of work.

Especially in the post-war era, this authoritarian, hierarchical structure and style of leadership has more or less evaporated completely. The democratization of institutions of working life, social egalitarianism, the revolt of the younger generations against parent generations, and the liberation of women, are obvious key areas. We no longer wish to be the passive recipients of ready-made values and life qualities. We all wish to be active in the formation of our lives. The question, however, is whether we have been so occupied with the processes of democratization and liberation that we have neglected forming a clear alternative. It is one thing to let ourselves loose upon processes of adminsitration and decision making. It is another thing to master their accomplishment given the amount of knowledge and broad insight which is required. What is more or less apparent to most of us is that we want to be part of what is going on.

These complex problems are well known in philosophy and the history of ideas. "In olden times", according to philosophers and theologians, everybody had a given essence or substance which was supposed to be realized during the course of a lifetime. We were, in a way, pre-programmed for a certain unfolding of life. Modern man no longer has this inborn core. Like Peer Gynt, we lack a stable nucleus. Whatever content life has must be acquired by dint of our own actions and experiences along with others.

Modern philosophy speaks of the importance of a conversational community and a community of action. Our lives are formed in such communities. This also includes values we live by and act in accordance with. Values are created and recreated through our participation in a community.

The highest value becomes therefore to be creative in fellowship with others. We form thereby at one and the same time, both ourselves and the community. This double task forces us to reflect upon our responsibility for, and consequences of, our thoughts and actions in a more radical way than previously.

This naturally has consequences regarding the role of entrepreneurial leadership. Instead of deciding what others must do, the task in this less pyramidal, more organic, organization becomes the creation of circumstances which set the stage for employees active participation in creative processes, first and foremost by organizing the internal milieu and challenges. In addition to traditional technical, and also perhaps, economic and administrative competence, the new learder-role entails social competence as well. This would stand as a model for the development of improved social competence amongst employees. The most important key words here, values in relation to social competence, must therefore be: conversation, acknowledgement and care/consideration. Such values will be creative.

The Individual in Enterprise Culture

In a hierarchical, authoritarian organization, holistic thinking is probably no great problem. The accompanying duty and obedience ethics effectuates coordination. The limits of what is tolerated are narrow. He who does not comply is quickly ostracized.

In a creative caring culture the situation is different. In this type of culture, each person's individual capabilities and talents are underscored. This is a culture oriented towards the individual in accordance with the supposition that each person's contribution is greatest when his or her own abilities are allowed the freedom to be expressed. But here, the question of in what degree this is compatible with the enterprise as a whole raises itself. Each person's contributions must be a contribution to the whole community or fellowship. To lead an enterprise is to lead and coordinate individual attitudes and opinions toward, and in, a unity, a community.

The idea which presses itself forward now is that an autocratic culture ought to be replaced by a "culture of consensus. " But to this we must say: "It all depends?" A group which is agreed upon nearly everything is not likely to be especially productive. It would probably be less than creative, and has no promising future.

Being creative presupposes a minimum of dissent. Lack of agreement forces one, or should force one, to think again. The matter under consideration is viewed from different angles. The group presents itself with several alternative ideas and solutions to decide between. A consensus (or decision) which is based upon preceding dissent and conflicting opinions will undoubtedly have a somewhat longer life than any friction-free consensus.

Ethics and Leadership

This model, which is intended as a model for a more individualistically oriented enterprise culture, is naturally not without its own problems. It places greater demands on the leader, the coordinator. It demands, at least initially, a comprehensive ability to empathize with various opinion/attitudes, at the same time as it demands continual evaluation from the point of view of the greater good of the unity or community.

The role of leader is not made easier in that dissent may be both constructive and destructive. The boundaries between them will be diffuse. Even the aggressive deviant may, on occasion, have illuminating whims. In the normal course of events, though, a debate will be most constructive if it takes place within the parameters of a given enterprise culture - also when this culture is the object of change.

It sounds simple. In practice, this is seldom true. In addition to having broad knowledge of cultural ideas in an enterprise, it presupposes a capacity for, and a training in, community thinking, which few attain as a result of their occupational education.

It demands a good deal of social competence. This is obviously especially necessary when what is involved is a discussion of the climate of cooperation, the ethical values in the community. The difficulties become no less when one realizes that social training during childhood, in family life, and at school, seems to fall short of the mark for greater and greater numbers.

One of the most serious consequences is that many, perhaps most, people are not equipped with the conceptual apparatus for interpersonal relationships and argumentational ability which is a requirement for participation in an enterprise's culture-discussions. These conditions provide a growth-bed for the development of the uninterested on-looker and are an artificial extension of an authoritarian hierarchical organizational and leadership model.

The resemblance to the political sphere in society at large is striking: the notion that public life is increasingly becoming de-politicised is an oft repeated thesis in post-war political and sociological theory. Instead of authentic participation on the part of people in processes of debate and decision, we are being lumped with an increasingly enveloping administrative control apparatus. It is one of the few remaining ways in which the invisible citizen may be recovered.

The Creative Ethic

In an enterprise, where the character of tasks open the way for a potentially greater overview and integration than in society as a whole, it is naturally somewhat easier to achieve active participation within the enterprise culture.

Many organizations and enterprises have already done much to strengthen their employees ability and desire to accept a role involving responsible participation (by means of re-organizing, information, course activity, informal talks, social reforms, etc. ).

But there is one problem an enterprise will never be able to solve once and for all: this is the problem of productive tension between the individual on the one hand and the enterprise's culture on the other. A creative culture presupposes participation of unique individuals at the same time as it necessitates their adjustment and subsumation to an over-arching notional domain. Or, as it is said: a creative entrepreneurial culture presupposes freedom with responsibility.

To be able to evaluate when an individual's freedom is expressed to the detriment or at the expense of the community, and when it serves the community, is, perhaps, one of a leader's most difficult and important tasks. It may probably only be resolved through the participation of all.

No society has, to the present, been able to find a satisfactory balance between freedom and responsibility. One has either a political system which gives the individual too much freedom at the expense of the community (as in the U. S. A. and the West-European democracies), or one has a system which privileges the collective at the expense of the individual (as, previously in the Soviet Union and East-Europe).

Post-war thought on the role of leader and enterprise culture is indicative that the industrial sector has taken up the challenge.

Dr. Guttorm Floistad is Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Oslo, Norway.