Research Concept Paper for Leading Organizations of the Future This prĂŠcis presents a research concept paper for Leading Organizations of the Future: it specifies the primary reasons for undertaking the proposed study, states the problem to be examined, particularizes the research question, articulates the conceptual framework for the expanded literature review while flagging one key text, and justifies what methods of data collection and analysis would underpin next steps. Olivier Serrat 04/08/2018
1 Primary Reasons for Undertaking the Study I became interested in the metagovernance of organizational forms while working in Asia and the Pacific, a region that is home to 4.5 billion people (or nearly 60% of the world's population). There, across sectors in more than a dozen different countries including the People's Republic of China, I experienced at first hand the rapidly changing—and, at times, excessively complex— nature of development and the myriad positive and negative impacts of globalization: I saw that organizations, including the individuals and groups who staff them, must quickly learn to lead with greater relevance, coherence, efficiency, effectiveness, impact, and sustainability in new ways of organizing if they are survive (but preferably thrive) amidst the mounting economic, environmental, political, and social challenges that undertakings such as the Sustainable Development Goals insist on (UN General Assembly, 2015). (The Sustainable Development Goals are an intergovernmental set of 17 aspirational goals and 169 targets that the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted on 25 September 2015 to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.) Statement of the Problem Information and communication technology is reshaping the world we live in: ever more, interactions take place online. Organizations, taken to mean goal-oriented, boundarymaintaining, activity systems—have consequently morphed in such ways that our turbulent world seems a jumble of undertakings struggling in their environments (Aldrich, 1979). Six dimensions delineate organizational forms: size of labor force, object of labor, means of labor, division of labor, management of labor, and ownership and control of labor (Heydebrand, 1989). Governance—defined as the totality of interactions by which private, public, and civil society configurations along these six dimensions solve problems and create opportunity—was until the late 2000s framed by three "ideal types": hierarchy, market, and network (or community). With information and communication technology, however, increasingly kaleidoscopic (or hybrid) combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing have appeared. As a result, what autocratic, bureaucratic, charismatic, situational, transactional, and transformational styles of leadership and associated management systems found favor in the closed systems of yesteryear are (all the time more) consumed by fire-fighting and contribute less and less to the success of collective effort. Given the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, aka VUCA, of operating environments over the last 20 years, grasping what forms and combinations of "leadership management systems" best serve metagovernance of hierarchies, markets, and networks is both important and urgent to societies, economies, and governments worldwide. (Here, metagovernance is defined as coordinated governance of hierarchy, market, and network forms to achieve best outcomes.) Yet, what little discourse takes place about metagovernance generates little direction from scant literature about and limited understanding of the need for management innovation in what has been labeled the Age of Complexity. Organizations must learn to apply situation-specific intervention strategies based on combining, switching, or maintaining hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing; for sure, single modes of governance that are not suited to a situation bring high tangible, intangible, and opportunity costs. The purpose of the proposed research would be to close the gap in knowledge of what situation-specific modes—not styles—of leadership can support metagovernance in organizations of the future. (By modes, I refer to administrative, adaptive, and enabling leadership—or combinations thereof.) In a VUCA world, organizational effectiveness is
2 contingent on knowing how tensions and conflicts between hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing can be alleviated and—why not?—where, when, and how the three forms can be combined to generate synergistic outcomes. Research Question The research question that the proposed research will answer is: What modes and combinations of leadership and associated management systems for sense- and decisionmaking can most effectively address simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic problems? Conceptual Framework The research method for the proposed research will be qualitative. The purpose of qualitative research is to solve problems by studying everyday life, exploring lived experiences, taking on participants' points of view, and discovering patterns in behaviors or phenomena. (In so doing, it can also build theory.) As in this case, research questions in qualitative research are broad, seek to explore, may not include variables, accept that relationships can emerge throughout the research process, and do not necessarily rest on hypotheses. Ergo, inductive reasoning (e.g., observation, pattern, tentative hypothesis, theory) will be of the essence. Pending confirmation, social constructivism (often described as interpretivism) may be the best theoretical perspective from which to present what would be a world view on organizations of the future and how they might be led. (Of course, the ontology, epistemology, axiology, rhetoric, and methodology of social constructivism would be associated with the research paradigm.) Among emerging theories of leadership, it is those that are not conditioned by organizational boundaries and most pertinently enable actors to locate themselves in a VUCA world that are germane to the topic. I expect that, nested in the research paradigm of social constructivism, complexity leadership theory will inform the proposed research more than any other. Borrowing from complexity science, complexity leadership theory looks to (a) study an organization's systems of interactions; (b) make out dynamic, complex systems and processes in organizing; (c) distinguish leadership from managerial positions; (d) recognize three broad genres of leadership: administrative, adaptive, and enabling; and (e) foster the dynamics of complex adaptive systems while at the same time enabling control structures for coordinating formal organization and producing outcomes appropriate to the vision and mission of an organization (Uhl-Bien, Marion, & McKelvey, 2007). This said, complexity leadership theory alone cannot entirely frame the proposed research: I expect that knowledge management will also find traction. The proposed research will leverage grounded theory, one of the main qualitative inquiry traditions. The language of grounded theory resonates with that of the proposed research, which will sundrily "develop", "generate", "propose", or "theorize": this is because the latter aims to "conceive" a theory about optimum combinations of situationally-determined and time-specific governance styles (e.g., hierarchies, markets, and networks) for problem-solving. ("Discover" might be a better word: if the language of grounded theory research rings the clearest bell, there are no examples of constructs that I might elaborate on, even in "high-performance" organizations such as those that Fortune 500 lists: all is "in the making"; the idea will not be to prove but to suggest a unified theoretical explanation.) A first cut of the conceptual framework for the proposed research is in the figure below.
3 Figure: Conceptual Framework for the Proposed Research
Complexity Leadership
•Adaptive •Administrative •Enabling
Knowledge Management
•Ecological •Organizational •Technocentric
Metagovernance
Social Constructivism
•Hierarchy •Market •Network •Grounded Theory
Leading Organizations of the Future
Note. In association with the expanded literature review on metagovernance, I would leverage Google Trends to chronicle interest in the primary and secondary keywords. To ground theory from a social constructivism perspective, the primary method of data collection and analysis is expected to be expert interviews. (Text analyses of literature on metagovernance may be carried out to ground-truth information from the expert interviews.) In turn, ResearchGate would be used to ground-truth emerging outcomes of the proposed research by uploading successive drafts on ResearchGate, inviting comments, and posting questions there. Preliminary Literature Review Serrat (2017) presented the results of a quick literature search that highlighted 30 subjectrelated peer-reviewed articles, using two keywords; 30 is not a large number but the exercise gave confidence that the topic can be studied. Serrat (2017) also included appreciations of the three articles deemed most closely connected to the proposed research. Because complexity leadership theory is likely to underpin investigations under the proposed research, Serrat (2018a) assembled an annotated bibliography of 20 references—specifically, 15 peer-reviewed articles as well as five books—on that very topic. Additionally, Serrat (2018b) reviewed and critiqued the early chapters of Public Management and the Metagovernance of Hierarchies, Networks, and Markets: The Feasibility of Designing and Managing Governance Style Combinations (Meuleman, 2008). I hope to carry on from where Meuleman (2008) stopped, this to articulate what leadership management systems are needed depending on both situationallydetermined and time-specific combinations of the three governance styles. Of course, the proposed research calls for wider and deeper investigation of literature. The primary keywords of "complexity leadership", "management innovation", "leadership modes",
4 "organizational ecology", and "postmodern organizations" have been selected. (I have also identified a dozen secondary keywords.) In association with the expanded literature review, I would leverage Google Trends to chronicle interest in the primary and secondary keywords. This said, Serrat (2017, 2018a, 2018b) confirmed the relative paucity to date of material on the topic: hence, there ought to be considerable, cross-disciplinary demand for more contributions to the small pool of knowledge. Preliminary Methods To both offset the limitations of available literature and ground-truth what is at hand, the proposed research looks to hold expert interviews with four or five authorities in complexity leadership theory, metagovernance, and knowledge management; most likely, the participants will comprise academics and civil servants. (The recruitment of four or five authorities is considered sufficient given the newness of complexity leadership theory and the art of metagovernance.) The selection criteria will be conditioned by the research question, which suggests that expertise in interpretative–evaluative and process-related knowledge will drive recruitment. (I have drawn a short-list of the candidates.) Most likely, the expert interviews will be explorative, systemizing, and theory-generating; during their course, I will take field notes to further serve member-checking and discussion and what coding, categorizing, and reflecting will be carried out during data analysis. NVivo seems suited to gaining rich insights from unstructured data; it may help me make patterns visible and understandable from the expert interviews. If possible, I may also conduct text analyses of some of the literature on metagovernance, this to ground-truth of sorts what insights the expert interviews may produce. I would upload successive drafts on ResearchGate, invite comments, and post questions there. A theory is a spotlight: "[I]t draws your attention to particular events or phenomena, and sheds light on relationships that might otherwise go unnoticed or misunderstood" (Maxwell, 2013, p. 49–50). A theory being exactly what the proposed research aims to generate, I expect that the conceptual framework, expanded literature review, and methods referred to will deliver what is needed. References Aldrich, H. (1979). Organizations and environments. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc. Heydebrand, W. (1989). New organizational forms. Work and Occupations, 16(3), 323–357. Maxwell, J. (2013). Qualitative research design: An interactive approach (3rd Ed.). Applied Social Research Methods Series No. 41. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Meuleman, L. (2008). Public management and the metagovernance of hierarchies, networks, and markets: the feasibility of designing and managing governance style combinations. Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag. Serrat, O. (2017). Literature search paper on leading organizations of the future. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Serrat, O. (2018a). Annotated bibliography on complexity leadership. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Serrat, O. (2018b). Dissertation critique of public management and the metagovernance of hierarchies, networks, and markets: The feasibility of designing and managing governance style combinations (Meuleman, 2008). Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
5 Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R., & McKelvey, B. (2007). Complexity leadership theory: Shifting leadership from the industrial age to the knowledge era. The Leadership Quarterly, 18 (4), 298–318. UN General Assembly. (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. A/RES/70/1.