5th UK and Ireland PRME Conference

25-27 June 2018

‘Leaderism’ as a barrier to interorganisational collaboration and the achievement of SDG’s: Are Business Schools perpetuating or critiquing the dominant organising logics?

Andy Brookes

I want us to consider the extent to which Business Schools are irresponsible rather than responsible educators, in that much of what we teach actually serves to inhibit the achievement of SDG’s. Now we clearly need to find better ways to address SDG’s as many of the global trends are not positive. For example, in terms of tackling inequality the world is getting more unequal with the amount of the world’s wealth owned by the top 1% increasing form 42% to 50% over the last 10 years. We need to radically rethink what we are teaching and perhaps we should be engaging more with some of the growing critique of Business Schools. Martin Parker’s recent article certainly caused a stir when he suggested that we should bulldoze the world’s 13,000 business schools and Duff McDonald has written about the moral failure of the MBA elite. I will try to illustrate my argument by exploring what Business Schools do in terms of teaching and research relating to leadership.

The underlying societal problems that we are trying to address with the SDG’s, such as hunger, poverty, pollution etc. are messy and wicked problems. But the problem is that default way of doing organisation and management, i.e. hierarchical corporate bureaucracy, (which represents much of what we teach) is simply an unsuitable methodology for addressing complex problems of this nature. What is required is a much more collaborative mode of doing organisation and there are clear reasons for this being the case. Firstly we must recognise these problems exist at a societal level and that no single organisation has the resources, knowledge or power to solve these problems on their own. These global challenges are also highly uncertain, ambiguous and dynamic so solutions have to be co-created through collaboration – rather than rationally managed. But most importantly these societal problems are highly political in nature, involve significant conflicts of interest and it is difficult in many cases to even achieve agreement over the nature and importance of the problem.

There is a wide acceptance about the need for collaboration, it is one of the sustainable development goals (SDG 17) and there is much collaborative activity but unfortunately much of it is ineffective. Take for example air pollution where a lack of collaboration between government, business and civil society leads to at least 7 million premature deaths a year through air pollution in cities. Collaboration is difficult because it is a complex social phenomenon and hard to accomplish. It may look straightforward on a tangible surface level where we see the activities of projects, partnerships and working groups but meaningful and effective collaboration requires an underlying process of dialogue to be achieved. This dialogue involves a deep conversation where engagement occurs at the level of meaning, it requires listening requires, openness to other perspectives and surface, and challenge, our own assumptions. This dialogue is vital for developing trust in situations of conflict by establishing shared meaning and common understanding. And secondly it enables the creation of new meaning and knowledge that is essential for addressing these complex problems.

So collaboration is a complex human accomplishment but it is made even harder because it takes place within pre-existing structures that are hostile to collaboration. The values of control and competition, which saturate our culture, run counter to the values of trust and cooperation that underpin collaboration. So collaboration runs against the grain. Over the past 30 years an increasing part of the orthodox approach to managing and organising has being an increasing emphasis on the importance of organisational leadership. Writers such as Mats Alvesson have argued that this blind faith in leadership has become an ideology of leaderism. And the two widely held assumptions that underpin this belief are firstly that leadership is a universally good thing and secondly that leadership is a universal solution and that more and better leadership is required to address organisational and societal problems. What is the evidence for this ever-increasing rise in leadership? It is big business and it is estimated that the global leadership industry is worth $45 billion a year; it can also be seen in the way that leadership has colonised Business School curricula and particularly our executive education programmes and MBAs; and it is embedded in the PRME discourse for instance we state ambition to developing future leaders.

An approach that puts leadership central to the solution of societies grand challenges, in other words approaching SDG’s with a leadership mindset, is fundamentally flawed in that it because it prevents or inhibits the process of dialogue. And dialogue, as we have seen, is essential to collaboration and without collaboration we cannot achieve the SDG’s. This is because this construct of leadership is based on hierarchical, asymmetrical relationships, which assumes of leaders and followers; but on the other hand dialogue requires reciprocal relationships based on equality and trust. Dialogue is also about the flowing and creation of meaning whereas leadership is about shaping thinking, and imposing a privileged meaning Leadership aims to produce good followers rather than critical and independent thinkers.

So how can business schools become responsible educators? We might start by teaching and researching alternative forms of organisation beyond the mainstream, market managerialism to include cooperative and democratic forms of organising and recognise the importance of autonomy and professionalism. Are sufficiently critical and reflective about our roles and values as Business Schools are we challenging the received wisdom and orthodoxy or are we simply willing players perpetuating and peddling these myths about leadership and management as universal solutions. Is it our purpose to serve the wider social good? or are we ‘servants of power’ focused on the particular interest of business or even simply focused generating income into our Business Schools. How can we raise the level of critical awareness required to address SDG’s? perhaps we need to expose those we educate to a much broader and richer set of ideas, a more critical curriculum that draw on areas such as philosophy, economics, psychology and politics. But we can’t wait for an overnight revolution to happen in Business School’s but we not powerless as agents within the system. We can exercise agency to shape the curriculum and research agenda and we and we can engage in a meaningful, and leaderless, dialogue about how business schools can become responsible educators.

Primary Sources

Alvesson, M. and Spicer, A. (2011). Metaphors we lead by: understanding leadership in the real world. London: Routledge.

Blom, M. and Alvesson, M. (2015) Less followership, less leadership? An inquiry into the basic but seemingly forgotten downsides of leadership. M@n@gement, 18(3), 266-282.

Blumer, H. (1971) Social problems as collective behaviour. Social problems, 18(3), 298-306.

Gray, B. (1989) Collaborating: Finding Common Ground for Multiparty Problems. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Klikauer, T. (2015) What Is Managerialism? Critical Sociology, 41(7-8), 1103-1119.

Reed, M.I. (2001) Organization, Trust and Control: A Realist Analysis. Organization Studies, 22(2) 201-229.

Rittel, H. and Webber, M. (1973) Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning. Policy Studies, 4(2), 155-169.

‘Why we should bulldoze the business school; There are 13,000 business schools on Earth. That’s 13,000 too many. And I should know — I’ve taught in them for 20 years. By Martin Parker’, 2018, The Guardian (London, England),