15 - Humanism at work: crucial organizational cultures and leadership principles

Summary

Globalization, technological developments, and insecurity regarding the stock market pose considerable challenges for today's organizations. In light of these challenges many managers argue that, in principle, they would like to give employees more room for development and creativity, but must focus on efficiency and cost-cutting. But do humanistic principles and superior business performance really contradict each other? This chapter presents organization cultures that are based on humanistic principles and have been implemented by numerous successful organizations.

In the first part of this chapter we briefly present the philosophical foundations of our approach. Subsequently, we describe how the philosophers' claims can be met in modern organizations. Specifically, we present organizational cultures – the center of excellence cultures – that can be used to implement humanistic principles and have been realized by many exceptional organizations. To illustrate these organizational cultures we provide examples of ways in which well-known business organizations have implemented these organizational cultures. Finally, we present guidelines for managers on how to create the center of excellence cultures in their own organizations, i.e. the principle-based model of leadership.

Philosophical foundations

Fundamental for creating humane organizations are the philosophies of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81), and Karl Popper (1902–94).

Kant, a major philosopher of the Enlightenment, stressed man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. He emphasized that humans have to “dare to know” (Latin: sapere aude), to think autonomously, i.e. free of the dictates of external authority, to free themselves from immaturity and dependence.