Beyond Leadership: Balancing Economics, Ethics and Ecology, Revised Edition

Conclusion

In conclusion, we maintain that political systems, governmental structures, and forms of management, as we know them today, were constructed long ago in societies which were far simpler than our current complex information-based world. As new-paradigm managers, therefore, the challenges facing us are exciting ones, for we are going to be charged with helping to design organizations to cope with changing expectations in the future. We will have to be preemptive in all our dealings within the communities we serve, and carefully balance values with governance.

With reference to culture, we are being forced to take account of the aspirations, expectations, and relationships amongst people within a particular society rooted in its own value systems, rather than simply superimpose our value system on to theirs. We are also being forced to recognize the difference between free enterprise, as an ideology, and the freedom to be enterprising, as a spiritual human value manifested in the nature of work within communities.

We will have to review our basis of reward systems within our enterprise and ask whether it is compatible with the expectations of local communities. In other words, should it be individual reward for individual effort, or group reward for group effort? We will have to reevaluate the use of power and authority within the organization, and its acceptability by the local ethos, and maybe change the way that we do things inside our organizations.

The challenge facing ...