Leading Organizations of the Future: A New Framework 9819981980, 9789819981984

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Olivier Serrat

Leading Organizations of the Future A New Framework

Leading Organizations of the Future

Olivier Serrat

Leading Organizations of the Future A New Framework

Olivier Serrat School of Continuing Studies Georgetown University Washington, DC, USA

ISBN 978-981-99-8198-4 ISBN 978-981-99-8199-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8199-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Paper in this product is recyclable.

Foreword

In the fast-changing landscape of the twenty-first century, the paradigms that once governed organizations have become increasingly inadequate. Our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world demands a more adaptive and responsive approach to organizing: therefore, leaders are searching for new ways to meet the demands of their unique situations. It is against this backdrop that Dr. Serrat’s exploratory study was conceived. The author uses a constructivist lens and draws on his expertise in governance, knowledge management, organizational leadership, and systems theory to develop a paradigm for current and future leaders. This research begins to bridge the gap in our understanding of what context-specific modes of leadership are essential for effective organizational management. Rooted in the principles of social constructivism, Dr. Serrat’s research anchors a series of in-depth interviews with distinguished subject matter experts to generate a comprehensive and thorough mastery of decision-making by key stakeholders in organizational systems. The acumen of the subject matter experts is profound: it makes clear that the leadership styles of the twentieth century can no longer be counted on to address the multifaceted challenges of today’s environment. Instead, metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making must be recognized as vital practices that can collectively help organizations perform better in their operational settings. Dr. Serrat sees that context should play a pivotal role in shaping the

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Foreword

processes of sense-making and decision-making and articulates a leadership management framework to support the metagovernance of organizations. In a VUCA world, Dr. Serrat’s work provides a beacon of insight, guiding leaders as they make vital decisions. Dr. Ann Romosz Associate Research Faculty IO/Business Psychology, Organization Leadership, Behavioral Economics The Chicago School of Professional Psychology Washington, DC, USA

Preface

Drucker, Handy, Maslow, McGregor, Mayo, Mintzberg, Schein, Senge, Taylor, Weber ... The influential management theorists of the last hundred years drew from economics and philosophy, human relations and behavioral science, organization theory and strategic management, and quantitative methods and engineering. To wit, many management theories were anchored in human relations and behavioral science, suggesting that psychology played an important role in their development. Be that as it may, the management theories that spoke to the closed systems of yesteryear contribute little to the success of collective effort in open systems. In the age of turbulence, organizations need fundamental innovation in management if they are to do more than cling precariously to life, let alone address the daunting economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal, and technological challenges of the twentyfirst century. This study adds to the corpus of management theories in the area of organization theory and strategic management by evolving a new logic with which to lead organizations of the future. The study sheds new light on a new age: amidst the quickening hybridization of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing, it shows how organizations can configure to requisite order with greater collective intelligence in an increasingly complex world. Washington, DC, USA

Olivier Serrat

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Acknowledgements

With a few clarifications and revisions, this study reproduces the dissertation that I submitted in 2023 to the faculty of The Chicago School of Professional Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in organizational leadership. I would like to offer sincere thanks to Dr. Michael Beyerlein, Dr. Edward Hoffman, Dr. Susan Mohrman, Dr. Jamie Muskopf, Dr. William Pasmore, Dr. Katrina Pugh, Dr. Steven Taylor, Dr. Jacob Torfing, Dr. Mary Uhl-Bien, Dr. Sharon Varney, Dr. Stuart Winby, and Dr. Christian Wolfe, who gave their time and shared their experiences, insights, and perspectives in expert interviews. Dr. Margo Bailey was the first chairperson of the dissertation committee, and Dr. Renee Roman was the second. Together with Dr. Ann Romosz and Dr. Vincent Ribière, who served as committee members, they guided the process of proposing, writing, and revising the dissertation.

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About This Book

Until the late 2000s, it was conventional to frame organizations as ideal types: hierarchy, market, and network. In the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world of the twenty-first century, however, organizations increasingly engage in triadic forms of organizing so that they might match the requirements of a situation. Therefore, the purpose of this exploratory study was to close the gap in knowledge of what context-specific modes of leadership can help manage organizations. A vital research question relates to what leadership management framework for sense-making and decision-making can help organizations meet challenges and reap opportunities in simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts. With social constructivism, the research question was grounded by interviews with 12 subject matter experts. The participants of the study queried and qualified the relevance of traditional (twentieth century) styles of leadership in a VUCA world; volunteered that metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making can help to jointly characterize the new operating environment for organizations; determined that context should bear on sense-making and decision-making; and considered that a context-specific leadership management framework can support metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing. The study articulated a knowledge claim, vis-à-vis organizations of the future and a framework for how they might be led, with extensive and topical ramifications for theory, practice, and follow-on research.

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Contents

1 Nature of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Challenges of the 21st Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Rise of Hybrid Forms of Organizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Impact of Information and Communication Technology . . . . . . . . Leading Organizational Resilience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . My Interest in the Subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Purpose of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conceptual Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scope of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Definitions of Key Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Significance of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 1 2 5 7 9 10 10 11 11 14 14 17 18 19

2 Literature Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Metagovernance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Complexity Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sense-Making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Locating Sense-Making: Knowledge Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Compass of Sense-Making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Cynefin Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

25 25 26 30 33 33 36 38 40 41

3 Research Design and Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Population and Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

47 47 47 49 xiii

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Contents

Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Instrumentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Data Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ethical Assurances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

50 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

4 Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pilot Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Demographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Key Observations and Takeaways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Upshot of VUCA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making for VUCA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Primacy of Context in VUCA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Member Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5 Summary, Conclusions, and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation of Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Upshot of VUCA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making for VUCA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Primacy of Context in VUCA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Limitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Using the Leadership Management Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Value of the Leadership Management Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

85 85 85

Appendix A: What? So What? Now What? A Note on Organizational Ecology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

70 75 82 82 83

86 88 90 93 94 94 95 96 97

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Appendix B: The Search for Heroic Leaders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Appendix C: Epistemological Perspectives on Qualitative Research . . . . 105 Appendix D: Three Articles on Organization Theory and Postmodernism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

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Appendix E: The Rationale for the Research Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Appendix F: Annotated Bibliography on Complexity Leadership. Unpublished Manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology Serrat (2018b) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Appendix G: The Case for Grounded Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Appendix H: Research Sub-questions and Corresponding Interview Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Appendix I: Informed Consent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Appendix J: Open, Axial, and Selective Coding for the Interview Transcripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Appendix K: Summary of Subject Matter Expert Responses to the 12 Interview Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Name Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1

Fig. 1.2

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.2

Characterizing VUCA. Note Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) challenge traditional approaches to leadership, management, and working. Antithetically, the properties formulated in Fig. 1.1 make the case for vision (cf. volatility), understanding (cf. uncertainty), clarity (cf. complexity), and agility (cf. ambiguity) in a positive reading of the acronym (Johansen, 2012) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Addressing VUCA: conceptual framework for the study. Note In this figure, the intersection symbol (∩) denotes the common elements in the three given sets (viz., metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making). VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity . . . . . . . . . . . . Locating metagovernance. Note In Fig. 2.1, strategy, structure, process, people, and technology schematize for illustrative purposes the principal dimensions of an operating model for agile organizations according to McKinsey & Company (Brosseau et al., 2019). Earlier models, each with strengths and limitations, include the Burke–Litwin Causal Model, Galbraith’s Star Model, the McKinsey 7-S Model, the Nadler–Tushman Congruence Model, and Weisbord’s Six Box Model (Burke & Litwin, 1992; Galbraith, 1977; Nadler & Tushman, 1980; Waterman et al., 1980; Weisbord, 1976). Most operating models for organizations were developed in the 1970s–1980s and connect to brick-and-mortar hierarchy and market forms of organizing more readily than to networks . . . . The complexity leadership framework. Note From Uhl-Bien (2012). Complexity leadership in healthcare organizations [PowerPoint slides]. University of Nebraska. (https://www.doc slides.com/jane-oiler/dr-mary-uhl-bien). In the public domain . . . .

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Fig. 2.3

Fig. 2.4

Fig. 3.1

Fig. 4.1

Fig. 4.2

Fig. 4.3

Fig. 5.1

Fig. 5.2

Fig. 5.3

List of Figures

Five approaches to sense-making. Note Adapted from Hayward Jones (2015, April 6). Sensemaking methodology: A liberation theory of communicative agency. EPIC. (https://www.epicpe ople.org/sensemaking-methodology/). In the public domain . . . . . . The Cynefin framework. Note In Fig. 2.4, the domain of disorder (or confusion) depicted in black represents the state of not knowing what type of causality exists. Adapted from Cognitive Edge (2023). The Cynefin® framework (https://www.cognitive-edge.com/the-cynefin-framework/). In the public domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research sub-questions. Note Early versions of the four research sub-questions listed in this figure were posted on ResearchGate in May 2019 for pretesting (Mikuska, 2014). The four research sub-questions elicited interest and generated insight. An early version of the research question was likewise posted on ResearchGate in June 2019 for pretesting . . . . . . . . . . . . Overarching categories in interview transcripts. Note VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. The four overarching categories listed in this figure were elicited by expert opinion in response to IQ1–IQ12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overarching categories and core themes in interview transcripts. Note VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Principles for leading organizations of the future. Note The principles listed in this figure were elicited by IQ12: a few are reproduced verbatim or near-verbatim; the others paraphrase closely related insights of the subject matter experts. One subject matter expert pointed to servant leadership: however, servant leadership is more commonly thought about and practiced as a leadership style that rests on character values (Spears, 2010) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A leadership management framework. Note In this figure, the domain of disorder (or confusion) depicted in black represents the state of not knowing what type of causality exists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Customizing the principles for leading organizations of the future. Note The principles listed in this figure were elicited by IQ12. In this figure underscores the preponderance of principles that have to do with people and process despite the quickening of information and communication technology over the last 20 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Using the leadership management framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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List of Tables

Table 1.1 Table 3.1 Table 4.1

Stylized features of organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary research design and method for the study . . . . . . . . . . . Demographic characteristics of the sample population . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 1

Nature of the Study

Background The Challenges of the 21st Century The challenges of the twenty-first century are daunting and interventions are called for across a rapidly evolving economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal, and technological landscape (United Nations General Assembly, 2015; World Economic Forum, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023). The 17 Sustainable Development Goals that the General Assembly of the United Nations endorsed on September 15, 2015 to create a better world by 2030 aim to inspire action in the five critical areas of people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership (United Nations General Assembly, 2015). There can be no doubt that the challenges humanity confronts are increasingly worldwide: looking at the next 10 years in 2023 the World Economic Forum ranked the top 10 global risks in descending order of impact (severity) as (a) failure to mitigate climate change, (b) failure of climate-change adaption, (c) natural disasters and extreme weather events, (d) biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, (e) largescale involuntary migration, (f) natural resource crises, (g) erosion of social cohesion and societal polarization, (h) widespread cybercrime and cyber insecurity, (i) geoeconomic confrontation, and (j) large-scale environmental damage incidents (World Economic Forum, 2023). The categories for the top 10 long-term (10 years) global risks identified in World Economic Forum (2023) are a cocktail of economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal, and technological risks, with a preponderance of environmental risks. In 2021, the National Intelligence Council, which publishes every four years mid- and long-term strategic analysis to the United States Intelligence Community, affirmed that “The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come” (National Intelligence Council, 2021, p. 2). Throughout the five scenarios that it constructed for alternative worlds in the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 O. Serrat, Leading Organizations of the Future, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8199-1_1

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1 Nature of the Study

year 2040 (i.e., Renaissance of Democracies, A World Adrift, Competitive Coexistence, Separate Silos, Tragedy and Mobilization), the National Intelligence Council foresaw a more contested world (National Intelligence Council, 2021). Challenging as things are, they will become more problematic if the concerns of the General Assembly of the United Nations, the forebodings of the World Economic Forum, and the scenarios of the National Intelligence Council become realized (National Intelligence Council, 2021; United Nations General Assembly, 2015; World Economic Forum, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023): dealing with these will require far greater knowledge of how to manage complexity (Wood, 2001). Roubini (2022) identified 10 disturbingly plausible calamities, referred to as “megathreats.“ Popularized by Tooze (2022), a “polycrisis” is “not just a situation where you face multiple crises, [but] a situation … where the whole is even more dangerous than the sum of the parts” (para. 30). In 2023, the International Telecommunication Union estimated that about 5.3 billion people (or about 66% of the world’s population) were using the Internet in 2022, representing an increase of about 24% since 2019, with 1.1 billion people estimated to have come online over that short period (International Telecommunication Union, 2023). However, that still leaves about 2.7 billion people offline, the global human population having surpassed 8.0 billion in mid-November 2022 (United Nations Population Fund, 2023a). Without doubt, the lockdowns and workfrom-home orders associated with the COVID-19 pandemic intensified our dependence on information and communication technology (Yang et al., 2020). But there is more: compounded by shifting demographics (e.g., aging, feminization of the labor force, migration, the preponderance of Millennials at work, population decline, urban living) and globalization, the quickening of information and communication technology over the last 20 years has ushered a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), whereby a dynamic environment born of a multiplicity of interconnected and interdependent variables makes a situation difficult to analyze, respond to, and plan for (Bennett & Lemoine, 2014; Mühleisen, 2018; Varney, 2021; World Bank & International Monetary Fund, 2016). Kotler and Caslione (2009) substantiated that “Globalization and [information and communication] technology are the two main forces that helped create a new level of interlocking fragility in the world economy,” ushering a new age of heightened turbulence in which stability and predictability vanish (p. ix). Figure 1.1 characterizes the four phenomena of the VUCA framework.

The Rise of Hybrid Forms of Organizing Hierarchy, market, and network are the primary forms of social organization and each has its own characteristics (Powell, 1990). Authority, prices, and trust are, respectively, the main agents of governance of each of the forms of organizing. Until the 1980s, hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing were by and large treated as mutually exclusive modes of governance (Bradach & Eccles, 1989; Powell,

Background

3

• The tendency to change frequently, quickly, and significantly

• The haziness of reality and potential for misreading a situation

• The difficulty to confidently predict events and outcomes

Volatility

Uncertainty

Ambiguity

Complexity

• The multiplicity and intricate interconnectedness of issues and factors one must take into account

Fig. 1.1 Characterizing VUCA. Note Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) challenge traditional approaches to leadership, management, and working. Antithetically, the properties formulated in Fig. 1.1 make the case for vision (cf. volatility), understanding (cf. uncertainty), clarity (cf. complexity), and agility (cf. ambiguity) in a positive reading of the acronym (Johansen, 2012)

1990; Serrat, 2021a; Williamson, 1975, 1985). However, in consequence of shifting demographics, accelerating technological change, and greater global connections over the last 20–30 years, hybrid (or mixed or plural) forms (or ways) of organizing have materialized. The major advantage of hybrid forms of organizing is high flexibility, which buoys up adaptive and enabling responses to VUCA environments; however, hybrid forms of organizing can present complex governance challenges having to do with structuring, including communication, coordination (e.g., allocating, scheduling, reporting), (social) connection, creativity, and culture (Haas, 2022; Smith, 2010). Therefore, in the 21st century, organizational leadership connects increasingly with metagovernance—the organization of the conditions for governance—in the sense that interactive governance to combine, switch, or maintain hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing is called for (Meuleman, 2008). However, no framework exists to underpin sense-making and decision-making in hybrid forms of organizing. Serrat (2016a) defined a framework as “A set of assumptions, definitions, concepts, ideas, practices, principles, and values that describes a complex concept; a way of perceiving reality” (slide 3). Given the challenges the world confronts, how hybrid organizations might be led is something to care about. Contemplating the changing environment for the company of the future, Bailey et al. (2019) remarked that “Today’s organizations were designed for stability. Tomorrow’s must accommodate change and uncertainty by accelerating learning, combining people and machines, leveraging ecosystems, and continually evolving” (para. 1). Inspired by systems thinking, the ideal of the learning organization and the practices of knowledge management that became manifest in the

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early 1990s emblematized realization of the requirement for new organizational dynamics (Davenport & Prusak, 1998; Senge, 2006). In a world driven ever faster by information and communication technology and hyper-competition, that D’Aveni and Gunther (1994) associated with the use of tactics to disrupt the competitive advantage of rivals, two other big ideas to overcome inertia and implement innovation and change included business process management and organizational ambidexterity (Hammer & Champy, 1993; Tushman & O’Reilly, 1996). Hammer and Champy (1993) saw business process management as the end-to-end organization of tasks around outcomes. Tushman and O’Reilly (1996) portrayed organizational ambidexterity as the ability to concurrently exploit old certainties and explore new opportunities. As with previous technological revolutions, maximizing the potential of organizations requires fundamental innovation in management (Hamel, 2002, 2007; Hamel & Zanini, 2020; Perez, 2002; Serrat, 2017a). To Hamel (2007), management was an aging technology that has delivered fewer and fewer breakthroughs since Taylor and Weber established the general rules a century ago (Serrat, 2017a). To face up to the challenges of the 21st century, paraphrasing Hamel (2007), organizations must abandon old-style management principles, processes, and practices including customary organizational forms so they might improve the function of management (Serrat, 2017a). In direct response to VUCA, Bennett and Lemoine (2014) likewise advised organizations to severally (a) build in slack and allocate resources to boost up preparedness (cf. volatility); (b) increase business intelligence activities (cf. uncertainty); (c) restructure, consult or develop specialists, and adequately increase resources (cf. complexity); and (d) experiment, evaluate outcomes, and progressively apply lessons learned (cf. ambiguity). Toward this, leading organizations of the future calls for new leadership, meaning, leadership-as-practice, and correspondingly less emphasis on followers (Crevani et al., 2010; Hagel & Brown, 2010; Lichtenstein et al., 2006; Raelin, 2011; Sargut & McGrath, 2011; Thompson et al., 1991). Bartlett and Ghoshal, Chandler, Handy, Heydebrand, Mintzberg, Powell, Weber, and Williamson are eminent names one associates with early work on the structure of organizations and more recent investigations on the subject. Weber’s (1930, 1947) principal contribution related to authority structures hence to hierarchy (or bureaucracy) which—so long as it adhered to his exhaustive definition—Weber deemed to be the most efficient form of organization possible technically. Chandler (1977) shined a historical perspective on the rise and role of the big business enterprise and emphasized that the structure of an organization must follow from what strategy is adopted. Mintzberg (1979) idealized configurations to help organizations design structures in tune with what they were trying to accomplish. The operating environment of the 1980s was still relatively static but Heydebrand (1989) recognized that new organizational forms do emerge in response to socioeconomic changes, even if not necessarily in an evolutionary manner. Heydebrand (1989) also foresaw the emergence of informal, flexible work systems in the 21st century. The same year, Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989) postulated that a transnational form of organization was superseding multinational, global, and international companies. Alluding to—but not formally discussing—the impact of information and communication technology on

Background

5

the evolution of organizational forms, Powell (1990) then stylized a coherent set of features to add (social) networks as a distinctive form of activity for the coordination of social life (including economies and polities) alongside hierarchies and markets. From a cultural theory perspective, Thompson et al. (1990) declared that the social construction of nature permits just five viable ways of life: that is, hierarchy, individualism (that later literature about organizations connoted with the market form), and egalitarianism (see the network form), to which for completeness Thompson et al. (1990) added fatalism (or undesired marginalization from other ways of life) and autonomy (or resolute withdrawal from coercive social involvement). Revisiting Thompson et al. (1990) in the new millennium, Thompson (2008) proclaimed presciently that “There are no such things as organizations; there are only ways of organizing and ways of disorganizing” (p. 68). The study of organizations calls attention to organizational governance. Comparing the rationality of the three main forms of organizing (i.e., hierarchy, market, network) in connection with Thompson (2008), Serrat (2017b) clarified that the purpose of a hierarchy was to “[r]ealize the mission of a central executive”; the purpose of a market was to “[p]rovide a forum for transactions”; and the purpose of a network was to “[a]dvance the interests of a cooperative” (p. 7). Besides noting fundamental differences concerning the core institutional property of purpose, Serrat (2017b) underscored particularities across the value systems, action logics, resources, and coordinating arrangements of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing. Table 1.1 contrasts the logics of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing. Informed by Powell (1990), Serrat (2017b) considered the evolution of bazaar-like combinations of coordinating activities. Additionally, Serrat (2017b) was mindful of Thompson et al. (1990), who drew attention to the instability of the parts but the coherence of the whole. Serrat (2017b) reasoned that the need for flexibility, intelligence, resilience, and speed in the 21st century summons requisite expression of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing in individual organizations depending on circumstances. As said by Thompson (2008), “No change, no stability” (p. 78).

The Impact of Information and Communication Technology The impact of information and communication technology on forms of organizing cannot be exaggerated. At the operational level, Vijayakumar (2021) distinguished five themes in the ways people work and interact and organizations operate these days: (a) work from anywhere, (b) work for all, (c) work at will, (d) work smarter, and (e) work for planet. Casting an evolutionary perspective on the role of information and communication technology in organizations, Serrat (2023a) referenced Skyrme’s (1995) categorization of first-order, intra-organizational results across (a) organizational configuration, (b) organizational culture, (c) business strategy, (d) management processes, (e) work, and (f) workplace. Beyond the immediate dynamism that

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Table 1.1 Stylized features of organization Key feature

Hierarchy

Purpose

Realize the mission of Provide a forum for a central executive transactions

Market

Network Advance the interests of a cooperative

Agent of governance

Authority

Prices

Trust

Locus of decision-making

Top–down

Relatively autonomous Joint or negotiated

Type of product and service

Mass-produced from economies of scale

Highly varied by virtue Customized from of spot contracts economies of scale and scope

Basis of control

Status and rules-based Price-based

Basis of relations

Employment

Contracts and property Exchange of resources

Basis of transactions

Routines

Prices

Relations

Nature of transactions

Long-term

Short-term

Medium-to long-term

Basis of tasks

Function

Unitary

Project

Degree of dependence among parties

Dependent

Independent

Interdependent

Degree of vertical integration

High and centralized

Low and decentralized Variable

Degree of commitment of parties

Low

High

Moderate to high

Assets and resources

Highly specific, largely tangible, and not easily traded

Moderately specific, tangible and intangible, and easily traded

Highly specific, largely intangible, and shared

Expertise- and reputation-based

Nature of organizational Fixed and rigid boundaries

Flexible and permeable Discrete and atomic

Approach to conflict resolution

Administrative fiat

Negotiation and legal

Diplomacy and reciprocity

Culture

Subordination

Competition

Reciprocity

Tone

Formal

Precise and suspicious

Friendly and open-ended

Nature of incentives

Prespecified

High-powered

Reputational

Approach to information gathering

Cursory, through specialized offices

Information conveyed by prices

Distributed

Note From Serrat (2017b). In the public domain

Background

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information and communication technology has imparted to organizations, Serrat (2023b) then considered second-level impacts on economy, society, work, and the act of organizing and contended that organizations must now learn to leverage information and communication technology for organizational agility with implications for individual and collective leadership. Serrat (2023c) distinguished core concepts of agility, promulgated new ways to lead the agile organization, and underscored that information and communication technology for agility is best leveraged with a human touch. Serrat (2023d) showcased emerging leadership behaviors and mindsets in the form of a leader’s playbook for the Digital Age. Lastly, Serrat (2023e) specified the good practices necessary to plan and lead digital strategies. Information and communication technology helps organizations adapt to new realities and take opportunities: it will become ever more important in a turbulent environment (Perez, 2002). And yet, with ever more hybrid forms of organizing in hierarchy, market, and network and the ensuing necessity for coordinated governance, leaders are increasingly challenged by sense-making and decision-making despite—or because of—advances in information and communication technology.

Leading Organizational Resilience How much declining corporate longevity owes to shorter business cycles and the quickening frequency of financial crises that globalization has brought forth deserves open-ended investigation (The Economist, 2011; Deutsche Bank, 2017). Statistics are at hand. In the United States, for instance, the average age of the large companies listed on the Standard and Poor’s 500 (or S&P 500) was recently 18 years, down from 90 years in the 1930s, 60 years in the 1950s, and 25 years in the 1980s (Anthony et al., 2018). Anthony et al. (2018) forecast that the corporate longevity of S&P 500 companies will be just 12 years by 2027 and that 50.0% of the S&P 500 will be replaced by others over the next 10 years if the churn rate holds. Schumpeterian gales of creative destruction are intensifying with new products, services, processes, markets, inputs, as well as organizational and business model innovations providing continuous impulse for change (Schumpeter, 1942; Serrat, 2017c). What styles of leadership, if they still hold explanatory power in a VUCA world, might account for ever shorter organizational lifespans? Unsurprisingly, a shorter median tenure of just five years for chief executive officers in the world’s 2,500 largest public companies has become the norm, one year less than it was in 2013, because of board impatience (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2019). Then again, what of the impact of leadership at the other end of the scale? Statistics from the United States Census Bureau and the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal that 51.2% of small businesses are 10 years old or less, 32.5% of small businesses are 5 years old or less, 31.4% of new small businesses exit within their first two years, and that 48.9% of new small businesses close within their first five years (JPMorgan Chase & Co., 2021). In a VUCA world, the idea of organizational resilience has gained traction: Google Trends (https://trends.google.com/; retrieved September 27, 2023), a website by

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Google that analyzes the popularity of top search queries in Google Search, revealed that worldwide interest in resilience as a topic scored the maximum interest of 100 points as recently as April 2020 from 9 in January 2004, the first date for which that website makes results available for what is on the public’s collective mind. (According to Google, a topic is a group of terms that share the same concept in any language, while a search term only includes data for that language). Google Trends (https://trends.google.com/; retrieved September 27, 2023) confirmed a continuing high worldwide preoccupation with leadership as a topic, with a recent maximum interest of 100 points in March 2022 from 62 in January 2004, but revealingly documented that worldwide interest in leaders as a search term has languished: the maximum interest of 100 points was reached as long ago as March 2004. Similarly, worldwide interest in VUCA as a topic scored the maximum interest of 100 points as recently as January 2022 from 0 in January 2004. However, short of new ways of knowing and acting for organizational resilience, the literature only underscores leadership and culture, networks, and change readiness (Serrat, 2017d). Thus, globally and in real time, Google Trends (https://trends.google.com/; retrieved September 27, 2023) logged intense preoccupation with the search terms or topics of leadership, resilience, and VUCA. Conversely, Google Trends (https://trends.goo gle.com/; retrieved September 27, 2023) registered disaffection apropos leaders and particularly knowledge management and knowledge sharing, three search terms or topics that attracted interest in the last decade of comparative organizational stability, meaning, the 2000s. To wit, Google Trends (https://trends.google.com/; retrieved September 27, 2023) indicated that the maximum worldwide interest of 100 points for knowledge management as a topic was recorded as long ago as April 2004; interest has declined steadily since then and stood at only 8 in September 2023. Relatedly, Google Trends (https://trends.google.com/; retrieved September 27, 2023) recorded the decline and stagnation of interest in knowledge sharing from the maximum worldwide interest of 100 points as a topic in April 2004 to 33 in September 2023. With continuing interest in leadership but languishing interest in leaders, as evidenced by Google Trends (https://trends.google.com/; retrieved September 27, 2023), there ought to be more interest in how organizations might be designed and led using 21st century approaches (Burton et al., 2008). Appendix A submits that the development of literature on new organizational forms has not been paralleled by growing interest in fit-for-purpose leadership. To move leadership from the Industrial Age to the Knowledge Era, Uhl-Bien et al. (2007) volunteered that adaptive (of late labelled entrepreneurial), administrative (of late labelled operational), and enabling modes of leadership are more suited to the dynamic nature of complex adaptive systems (Uhl-Bien, 2021a). The appointment of leaders may be linked to humanity’s natural inclination to organize, be it for security, purpose, or achievement (van Vugt & Anjana, 2011). Appendix B explicates the prevalent predilection for heroic leaders. Notwithstanding, this study reasons based on the foregoing that leading organizations of the future is about configuring to requisite order in an increasingly complex world, for which organizations must deploy greater collective intelligence: correspondingly,

Background

9

metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making with the Cynefin framework’s multiple ontologies can make valuable contributions to steering organizations provided their narratives connect and are actionable (Amin & Hausner, 1997; Jessop, 2003; Kurtz & Snowden, 2003; Meuleman, 2008; Serrat, 2021a; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007).

My Interest in the Subject I was drawn to the subject of organizational forms when working for a multilateral development bank in Asia and the Pacific, a region that is home to 4.7 billion people or almost 60.0% of the total world population of 8.0 billion people (Serrat, 2021a; United Nations Population Fund, 2023b). Across multiple sectors in more than a dozen countries, I was challenged to help advance prosperity, inclusiveness, resilience, and sustainability through policy and programmatic interventions for environmental management (Serrat, 2021a). My other contributions were in external relations, independent evaluation, information and communication technology, knowledge management, and strategic planning, among others (Serrat, 2021a). I witnessed the surge of globalization from the mid-1990s: over the last 20–30 years, the world has experienced continuing shifts in production and labor markets (calling for new jobs and skillsets); rapid advances in technology (with repercussions on production, distribution, and consumption as well as the generation, manipulation, and dissemination of information); and accelerating environmental degradation and climate change (United Nations General Assembly, 2017). I came to appreciate that the individuals and groups who staff our organizations, and the leaders who manage them, must use collective intelligence (viz., knowledge that grows out of a group) to operate with more relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability in new modes of triadic organizing and not in single (or unitary) modes of governance (Johanson & Vakkuri, 2018; Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development, n.d.; Serrat, 2021a). Else, our organizations may not be able to deal with the threats that wide-reaching undertakings such as the Sustainable Development Goals call attention to; others may not stay in business (United Nations General Assembly, 2015). In the connected economy, organizing for the future demands that new logics, including modes of leadership and related sense-making and decision-making, be found. In a world of mounting performance pressure, only then will agile organizations meet global, regional, national, sectoral, or local challenges with management innovation; only then will they solve problems and create opportunity (Galbraith & Lawler, 1993; Hagel, 2019; Hamel, 2007).

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Problem Statement Organizing is fundamental to human endeavor and organizations are ubiquitous manifestations of that. Until the 1990s, organizing in hierarchies or markets or networks were par for the course; in a VUCA world, however, organizations must anticipate or respond as fast-changing circumstances make necessary, and it is vital that they should choose the right mix of organizational configurations to deliver wanted agility. Ratcheting up the concept of VUCA to touch upon the quickening consequences of the ongoing phase change in our reality, Cascio (2020) proposed an intentional parallel of brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible (BANI) situations. Rephrasing Bennis (1999), the general problem is that organizations and their leaders must learn to dance to forms of music they are yet to hear, meaning that organizations and their leaders must learn to combine, switch, or maintain hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing based on context-specific intervention strategies. To configure to requisite order in an increasingly complex world, organizations must deploy greater collective intelligence; therefore, the parameters of organizational change have to do with metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making. The specific problem that prompted this study is that the discourses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making reflect different conceptual interests and do not connect. Without a common, actionable narrative, these three lenses cannot advise how organizations of the future should be led. The absence of common, actionable narrative in metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making in the form of an analytical tool for managing modes of leadership for metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing—is the gap in the literature that this study endeavors to fill (Serrat, 2021a).

Purpose of the Study Building on Robinson et al. (2011) as well as Müller-Bloch and Kranz (2014), Miles (2017) identified and defined seven core research gaps: (a) evidence gap, (b) knowledge gap, (c) practical-knowledge gap, (d) methodological gap, (e) empirical gap, (f) theoretical gap, and (g) population gap. The purpose of this study, to be delivered by means of grounded theory (constructivist) involving synergetic interviews of subject matter experts in metagovernance, complexity leadership, and/or sense-making, was to close the gap in knowledge of what context-specific modes—not styles—of leadership can help manage organizations of the future (Serrat, 2021a). A knowledge gap occurs when desired research findings do not exist (Jacobs, 2011; Miles, 2017; Müller-Bloch & Kranz, 2014). In a VUCA world, accomplishing organizational purpose hangs on knowing how tensions and conflicts between hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing can be alleviated and when and how the three forms can be combined for better sense-making and decision-making (Meuleman, 2008,

Conceptual Framework

11

2011, 2013; Meuleman & Niestroy, 2015; Serrat, 2021a). However, as stated by Antonacopoulou (2018), realizing that volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity typify the 21st century is one thing but developing a new way of knowing (sense-making) and acting in response (decision-making) is another.

Research Question In a strong nexus with the conceptual framework and research design and method for this study, the open-ended and exploratory research question is: What leadership management framework for sense-making and decision-making can help organizations meet challenges and reap opportunities in simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts? Because the discourses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sensemaking reflect different conceptual (or disciplinary) interests and do not connect, the research question responds to the specific problem that prompted this study by developing an analytical tool for managing modes of leadership for metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing (Serrat, 2021a). The research question was grounded by four narrower research sub-questions, the first of which sought rich description while the others invited instruction: • SQ1. What is the relevance of traditional (20th century) styles of leadership in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world? • SQ2. How might metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making help to jointly characterize the operating environment for organizations in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world? • SQ3. How might context bear on sense-making and decision-making? • SQ4. How might a context-specific leadership management framework support metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing?

Conceptual Framework Merriam and Tisdell (2016) made out critical, interpretive/constructivist, positivist/ postpositivist, and postmodern/poststructural perspectives on qualitative research, each distinguished by what purpose it serves, what type of research are associated with it, and what view of reality it holds. Appendix C elucidates conceivable epistemological perspectives on qualitative research. To be clear, the research question does not mean to “change, emancipate, empower” (critical perspective); “predict, control, generalize” (positivism/ postpositivism perspective); or “deconstruct, problematize, question, interrupt” (postmodern/poststructural perspective) (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 12). Rather,

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the research question means to “describe, understand, interpret” (interpretive/ constructivist perspective) (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 12). How one might lead organizations of the future is best considered from the worldview of social constructivism, a sociological theory of knowledge that helps understand social phenomena from context-specific perspectives (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Social constructivism posits that social worlds and knowledge thereof develop out of interactions with other people and are primarily influenced by culture, history, and society (Burr, 1995). Rosenberg clarified: Unlike natural phenomena, social institutions like money, private property, marriage, and political elections exist only owing to the beliefs and desires of human agents. The explanation for this fact about social institutions is that their existence consists in our having thoughts about them and acting upon these thoughts. (2012, p. 130)

In view of that, I consider social constructivism to be the best philosophical standpoint from which to articulate a knowledge claim vis-à-vis organizations of the future and a framework for how they might be led. For the same reason, the ontology, epistemology, axiology, rhetoric, and methodology of social constructivism is associated with the research paradigm for this study (Serrat, 2021a). From the philosophy of science of social constructivism, how one might lead organizations of the future is best researched by means of grounded theory, this to transcend description and generate and discover a theory of a process (or action or interaction) that is grounded in the multiple realities of the participants (or key agents) to a study (Lincoln & Guba, 2005; Lincoln et al., 2018; Neuman, 2009; Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Foley et al. (2021) confirmed the potential of interviewing as a vehicle for theoretical sampling in grounded theory. The boundaries that condition organizational effectiveness have conventionally been deemed to be (a) vertical, (b) horizontal, (c) stakeholder-based, (d) demographic, and (e) geographic (Ernst & Chrobot-Mason, 2011). However, the theories of leadership that presuppose organizational boundaries, taken to mean all that emerged from the 1840s to the 1990s, can no longer enable actors to make sense of hybrid forms of organizing born of a VUCA world. For that reason, complexity leadership—which emerged in the 2000s to selfavowedly shift leadership from the Industrial Age to the Knowledge Era—instructed this study (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). Nevertheless, complexity leadership per se cannot frame the entire scope of this study. Because of the related urgency to leverage thinking on the sociology of organizations and the creation of reality, it is expected that metagovernance—which aims to successfully combine ideas and practices from different modes of governance (Jessop, 2003)—and sense-making can also inform decision-making. The literature on VUCA offers no practicable approaches to operating in a VUCA world beyond calls for agile organizations: it is a problem this study addresses.

Conceptual Framework

13

Social Constructivism Metagovernance

∩ Complexity Leadership

Sense-Making

VUCA

Grounded Theory

Fig. 1.2 Addressing VUCA: conceptual framework for the study. Note In this figure, the intersection symbol (∩) denotes the common elements in the three given sets (viz., metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making). VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity

In this study, metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making are the three lenses that help make out the operating environment of organizations in a VUCA world. Figure 1.2 designates the three lenses that can help steer organizations in a VUCA world. The smaller circles in Fig. 1.2 allude to the fact that other lenses (e.g., artificial intelligence, Big Data) have explanatory power but that they are deemed less immediately relevant to the purpose of this study: notwithstanding, the field of Big Data, for example, treats ways to extract and analyze information from cumulative and diverse structured and unstructured data sets and could illuminate follow-on research upon this study’s completion. This study means to fuse the lenses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making for epistemological holism. The literature review in Chap. 2 assimilates, summarizes, and synthesizes published scholarly research to justify the proposed perspective. By fusing the lenses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making, this study preoccupies itself with meaning and understanding of deep, rich, individualized, and contextualized data; therefore, the research is qualitative, with the researcher acting as primary instrument (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). With higher-order, open, and divergent questioning that challenges learning (i.e., why, what, how), qualitative inquiry seeks to discover patterns in behaviors or phenomena from qualitative data (i.e., data in the form of words), and so helps develop ideas or hypotheses for subsequent quantitative research (Schwandt, 2007).

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Scope of the Study To counterweigh the relative scarcity of literature, this study leveraged interviews with subject matter experts in metagovernance, complexity leadership, and/or sensemaking. The participants to this study comprised scholars and practitioners (Serrat, 2021a). The research design and method for this study considered focus group interviews but ruled them out: focus groups are purposely sampled for demographic homogeneity to shed social psychological light on group dynamics; however, that was not the object of this study (Babbie, 2013; Cyr, 2019; Stewart & Shamdasani, 2014). For the expert interviews that were envisaged, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology Institutional Review Board recommended recruitment of 15 subject matter experts, accepting that the final number might be lower on account of saturation (or redundancy) and the unavailability of experts. Qualitative research methods that are focused on meaning and heterogeneities in meaning do not aim to generalize to a larger population of interest based on hypothesis testing: they are more abductive and emergent (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). For that reason, Dworkin (2012) advised that the sample size for in-depth expert interviews could be as low as five. Expertise in metagovernance and complexity leadership is thus far comparatively uncommon. Conversely, pace the genuine challenges that Davenport (2015) identified, tools, methods, and approaches for knowledge management are now well-established and diversity of views on the discipline is not indispensable (International Organization for Standardization, 2018; Stankosky, 2005). Notwithstanding, Lincoln and Guba (1985) rationalized that, where the object is to maximize information, then sampling should be discontinued when new information is no longer forthcoming; therefore, this study aimed for saturation. Lastly, the nature of this study is such that the age, ethnicity, gender, race, and socioeconomic standing of the participants was not important. The selection of the participants was determined by the research question. This implied that expertise in process-related and interpretative–evaluative knowledge of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and/or sense-making should condition recruitment. Recruitment was enriched also by snowball (or chain, chain-referral, or referral) sampling (Serrat, 2021a). The expert interviews were explorative, systemizing, and theory-generating to elicit a mix of process-related and interpretative–evaluative knowledge from responses to the four research sub-questions via 12 corresponding interview questions (to be precise, three per research sub-question) (Bogner et al., 2009; Döringer, 2020; Seidman, 2013; Serrat, 2021a).

Definitions of Key Terms Constitutive definitions or interpretations of specific terms that are central to this study and are used throughout—expressly those that have multiple definitions in the literature, might be considered vague, or have a contextually related meaning—are

Definitions of Key Terms

15

listed below with reference to specific authors. The definition of the key term on what is to be understood by a leadership management framework is mine as this is a new concept and terminology that has no representation in the literature to date. The key terms were shared with scholars and practitioners in January–February 2022 for pretesting, with invitation to revise the definitions of key terms should there be lack of clarity about—or even disagreement over—their meaning. Suggestions to improve the definitions of the key terms, for instance by expanding them, were acted upon. Agile Organization. “[An organization characterized by] an aligned set of attributes that enable [it] to (a) adapt proactively and intelligently to situational changes; (b) create or find, select, and responsibly exploit sufficient numbers of promising opportunities to gain comparative or competitive advantage; (c) robustly avoid or mitigate threats; and (d) acquire the full range of assets, resources, and competences needed to thrive in a different future” (Francis, 2020, p. 15). “[An organization that is able] to develop and quickly apply flexible, nimble, and dynamic capabilities” (Holbeche, 2015, p. 9). Artificial Intelligence [T]he science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but [artificial intelligence] does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable. (McCarthy, 2004, p. 2)

“[A] cross-disciplinary approach to understanding, modeling, and replicating intelligence and cognitive processes by invoking various computational, mathematical, logical, mechanical, and even biological principles and devices” (Frankish & Ramsey, 2014, p. 1). Big Data. “The massive amounts of data created by our online activities” (Surdak, 2014, p. 2); “The application of statistical analyses to the mountains of information that we have at our disposal” (Surdak, 2014, p. 3); “[A] collection of large, complex data sets, including structured and unstructured data, that cannot be analyzed using traditional database methods and tools” (Baltzan, 2017, p. 131). Complex Adaptive Systems. “Open, evolutionary aggregates whose components (or agents) are dynamically interrelated and who are cooperatively bonded by common purpose or outlook” (Uhl-Bien et al., p. 302). A system of independent agents that can act in parallel, develop ‘models’ as to how things work in their environment, and most importantly, refine those models through learning and adaptation. The human immune system is a complex adaptive system. So is a rain forest, a termite colony, and a business. (Pascale et al., 2000, p. 5)

Complexity Leadership. “[A] framework for leadership that enables the learning, creative, and adaptive capacity of complex adaptive systems in knowledge-producing organizations or organizational units” (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007, p. 304).

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Governance. “[A]ll processes of governing, whether undertaken by a government, market, or network, whether over a family, tribe, formal or informal organization, or territory, and whether through laws, norms, power, or language” (Bevir, 2012, p. 1). “[T]he processes of interaction and decision-making among the actors involved in a collective problem that lead to the creation, reinforcement, or reproduction of social norms and institutions” (Hufty, 2011, p. 405). Globalization. “[T]he growing integration of trade and financial markets, the spread of technological advancements, the receding geographical constraints on social, cultural, and migratory movements, and the increased dissemination of ideas and technologies” (United Nations General Assembly, 2017, p. 3). Hybrid Organization. An organization that—temporarily or permanently—mixes value systems, action logics, resources, and coordinating arrangements from hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing (Borys & Jemison, 1989). Examples include cooperatives, an early network form of organizing that aims to earn profits for member-owners and meet common cultural, environmental, and social needs and aspirations; bazaar organizations (e.g., Wikipedia), another network form with market characteristics; chain management, a network form with hierarchy characteristics; oligopolies, a market form with network characteristics; and public– private partnerships, contractual agreements between bureaucracies and private sector entities (Hynes et al., 2000; Johanson & Vakkuri, 2018). Knowledge Management. “[T]he process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge” (Davenport & Prusak, 1998, p. 25); “[K]nowing what we know, capturing and organizing it, and using it to produce returns” (Stewart, 2002, p. 112); “[T]he systematic, explicit, and deliberate building, renewal, and application of knowledge to maximize an enterprise’s knowledge-related effectiveness and returns from its knowledge and intellectual capital assets” (Wiig, 2004, p. 338). Leadership Management Framework. An analytical tool for managing modes of leadership for metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing (Serrat, 2021a). • Leadership Modes. Administrative (e.g., top–down, based on alignment and control), adaptive (e.g., emergent, interactive), and enabling (e.g., catalytic) leadership—or combinations thereof, distinct from styles of leadership (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). • Leadership Style(s). “The pattern of attitudes that leaders hold and behaviors they exhibit” (Anderson & Sun, 2017); “A person’s way of governing, directing, and motivating followers” (Cherry, 2018). Examples include autocratic, charismatic, laissez-faire (passive–avoidant), situational (i.e., telling, selling, participating, delegating), transactional, and transformational leadership. Metagovernance. “The organization of the conditions for governance” involving “the judicious mixing of market, hierarchy, and networks to achieve the best possible outcomes from the viewpoint of those engaged in metagovernance” (Jessop, 2003, p. 148); “[A] practice … that entails the coordination of one or more governance modes by using different instruments, methods, and strategies to overcome governance failures” (Gjaltema et al., 2020, p. 1772).

Significance of the Study

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• Hierarchy. “An orderly arrangement of positions in an organization on the basis of increasing responsibility and authority as one moves towards the top. This provides the basis for the classical pyramidal structure of many organizations” (Lamming & Bessant, 1988). • Market. “[A] place where parties can gather to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. The parties involved are usually buyers and sellers” (Investopedia, 2023). “[A] metaphor, which refers to market mechanisms and market thinking, not to be confused with the economic market” (Meuleman, 2008, p. 26). • Network (Social). “[M]odes of resource allocation [in which] transactions occur neither through discrete exchanges nor by administrative fiat, but through networks of individuals engaged in reciprocal, preferential, mutually supportive actions” (Powell, 1990, p. 303). Organization(s). “[G]oal-directed, boundary-maintaining, activity systems” (Aldrich, 1979, p. 4); “A social arrangement for achieving controlled performance in pursuit of collective goals” (Buchanan & Huczynski, 2017, p. 8); “A relatively durable, reliable, and accountable social structure …” (Stanford, 2007); “A group of people who have common goals and who follow a set of operating procedures to develop products and services” (Landy & Conte, 2010, p. 619). “A company, firm, enterprise, association or other legal entity, whether incorporated or not, or a public body” (Law Insider, 2022, para. 2). Sense-Making. “[T]he way we make sense of the world in order for us to act on it” (Snowden & Friends, 2021, p. 30).

Significance of the Study At the theoretical level, this study is all-encompassing considering it generically examined hybrid forms of organizing. Excepting tribalism, this study did not filter out any form of organizing. The leadership management framework will be applicable to all forms of organizing and intended, where there is interest, to encourage fit and fitness; adaptability, survivability, and organizational health will take care of themselves by virtue of its adoption. According to Rimita (2019), volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity call for leader readiness and larger endowments of, say, clarity, cognitive readiness, and reframing ability. However, different levels of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity convoke different understandings of the world, different approaches to sense-making and decision-making, and different modes of leadership (and attendant organizational configurations). Where, with management innovation, organizations must be agile, there are high tangible and intangible costs as well as irremediable opportunity costs to operating a single mode of governance, say, hierarchy, that is not suited to what the situation demands (Hamel, 2007; Hubbard & Paquet, 2015). With respect to scholars, this study complements and extends what sparse literature can be found on metagovernance and opens ground for follow-on research on metapolicy,

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1 Nature of the Study

meaning, guidelines (or frameworks) that “provid[e] a structured approach to policymaking […] to help ensure consistency in decision-making” (Collaboris, n.d., para. 1). With respect to practitioners, eschewing linear and mechanistic thinking, the study specifies the new approaches organizations need to meet challenges and reap opportunities in increasingly interconnected ecosystems (Serrat, 2021a). Concluding, this study has extensive and topical ramifications for theory, practice, and follow-on research: it will make significant and original contributions to the scholarly literature, leadership and its profession, and the fields of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making.

Summary This chapter introduced the study, made a compelling case for why the topic is important, and framed an appropriate researchable question and associated conceptual framework. Summarizing, the interactions by which organizations meet challenges and create opportunity was at the onset of the twenty-first century construed in mutually exclusive, ideal forms: hierarchy, market, and network (Serrat, 2021a). Today, triadic forms of organizing have appeared in many organizations (Johanson & Vakkuri, 2018; Serrat, 2021a). If organizational leadership in closed systems is about ascertaining what should be done, articulating vision, setting direction, and guiding people toward that, we must question the extent to which the styles of leadership associated with such functions can ensure the long-term success of collective effort in increasingly open systems. In a VUCA world, organizations must know how to apply context-specific intervention strategies based on combining, switching, or maintaining hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing (Meuleman, 2008). The research question pertains to what leadership management framework for sense-making and decision-making can help organizations meet challenges and reap opportunities in simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts. Social constructivism is an appropriate perspective from which to articulate a knowledge claim vis-à-vis organizations of the future and a framework for how they might be led (Serrat, 2021a). To ground theory, the primary method of data collection and generation was to be explorative, systemizing, and theory-generating expert interviews (Döringer, 2020): subject matter experts in metagovernance, complexity leadership, and/or sense-making were interviewed. Qualitative coding of the interview transcripts was expected to help reveal patterns and make them readily understandable (Saldaña, 2016). The next chapters particularize the literature review (Chap. 2), including details of the research strategy (or approach) and findings apropos the three lenses, viz., metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making; the research design and method (Chap. 3), including details of the research question and its rationale, the research design, the population and sample, procedures, validity, instrumentation, data processing, assumptions, limitations, and ethical assurances; findings (Chap. 4),

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including details of the pilot study, the setting, demographics, and results; discussion and conclusions (Chap. 5), including interpretation of findings, recommendations, implications, and conclusion(s); references; and appendices.

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Chapter 2

Literature Review

Research Strategy This study invited reference to a wide and interdisciplinary body of work, much of which relates to the recent past as research on the so-called postmodern organization is rarely older than 10–15 years. In alphabetical order, the primary keywords— that were used in combination and in conjunction with Boolean operators—were complexity leadership, knowledge management (from whence sense-making originated), and metagovernance. In alphabetical order also, the secondary keywords that were used in combination and in conjunction with Boolean operators included artificial intelligence, chaordic, complex adaptive systems, e-leadership, hierarchies AND markets AND networks, holacracy, leadership modes, management innovation, organizational ecology, organizational forms, postmodern organizations, and sense-making. The quick literature search tested keywords to refine the primary and secondary keywords listed above and generated 10 peer-reviewed articles on the topic of this study (Serrat, 2017e). To illustrate, the search revealed that organization 4.0 fetches few results even though it seemed relevant at first. Using the relatively broad search terms of organization theory and postmodernism combined with the Boolean operator AND, I explored ProQuest for peer-reviewed articles published in the English language over the period 2000–2017, that last date marking the beginning of my investigations (Serrat, 2017e). ProQuest searches across fewer databases than the EBSCO platform or SAGE and so was selected to test the performance of the two keywords selected (Serrat, 2017e). Creswell (2014) emphasized that such stress tests help determine whether a topic is worth studying and how one might scope a dissertation. In toto, Serrat (2017e) generated 30 results of both general and particular interest on the topic of this study and gave confidence that the subject is significant. All the same, 30 is not a large number, which suggested this study would contribute to the pool of knowledge. In alphabetical order, the three articles that a priori seemed highly

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relevant on account of their decided postmodern stance (including preoccupation with the impact of complexity on organizational forms and leadership theory) were: (a) Green (2007); Leading a postmodern workforce. Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 6, 15–26; (b) Styhre (2001); The nomadic organization: The postmodern organization of becoming. Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science, 1(4), 1–12; and (c) van Uden et al. (2001). Postmodernism revisited? Complexity science and the study of organizations. Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science, 1(3), 53–67 (Serrat, 2017e). The articles were, respectively, the tenth, fourth, and third articles in ProQuest’s list of results. Appendix D reproduces the titles and abstracts of the three aforementioned articles, summarizes the main points that each article presented, and appreciates each article’s relevance to this study. The three articles the quick literature search led to, viz., Green (2007),Styhre (2001), and van Uden et al. (2001), are relevant to this study but share the same shortcoming. They did not discuss hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing, that any discussion of postmodernism must consider given the snowballing multiplicity. Consequently, none of the three articles referred to hybrid forms of organizing, let alone considered what divergent circumstances might need to condition occurrence and extent. None of the three articles made out what combinations of tools, methods, and approaches—having to do with metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making—must be identified, developed, rolled out, and used to drive organizational performance. The quick literature search in Serrat (2017e) suggested this study breaks new ground. Appendix E elucidates the rationale for the research strategy. Because of the exploratory design, a traditional review cannot advance the purpose of this study. For each of the three lenses, there must be a scoping review, a conceptual review, a stateof-the-art review, and particularized critiques of pioneering texts (to be cross-checked in Chap. 4 in a living literature review framed by expert interviews).

Metagovernance The process of governing is as old as humanity, but the term governance became ubiquitous in the 1980s owing to neoliberalist shifts impacting public administration under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (Steger & Roy, 2010). The term new public management was coined to represent attempts to make the public sector more businesslike by borrowing ideas and management models from the private sector (la Cour & Andersen, 2016). The world of government has since changed, with for instance actors in the private and civil society sectors being known to manage or deliver public services (Bevir, 2012). And so, the meaning of governance has broadened. Beyond the arrangements of governing, governance is now seen to comprise all the systems and associated processes of interaction and decision-making that regulate form of organizing (Bevir, 2012; Hufty, 2011). Besides public governance,

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the literature also categorizes organizational governance—the focus of this study— as well as corporate governance, global governance, and good governance (Bevir, 2012; Gjaltema et al., 2020; la Cour & Andersen, 2016). Metagovernance, viz., the coordinated governance of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing to achieve best outcomes, is a new beyond government approach originating from new public management (Gjaltema et al., 2020; Meuleman, 2008; Serrat, 2021a). The beyond government intent of metagovernance is implicit in the use of the prefix, “meta,” signifying “more than” or “beyond.” The term metagovernance was introduced in the mid-1990s by scholars researching problems of complexity, governance, and governance failure (Jessop, 1997a, 1997b, 2011; Serrat, 2021a). Jessop (1997a), an early advocate, contended that the three forms of organizing can be mutually undermining and that each has typical failures. Jessop (1997a) proposed metagovernance (or the governance of governance) as a coordination mechanism that might help design and manage sound combinations. Figure 2.1 emphasizes the dedicated role metagovernance in the careful mixing of market, hierarchy, and network forms of organizing and, thereby, its central contribution to the organization of the conditions for governance in the broadest sense. Davis and Rhodes (2000) observed that creating effective mixtures of forms of organizing is a challenge: each is so value-laden (e.g., corporate profit versus

Hierarchy (Strategy, Structure, Process, People, Technology)

Market (Strategy, Structure, Process, People, Technology)

Network (Strategy, Structure, Process, People, Technology)

Metagovernance

Fig. 2.1 Locating metagovernance. Note In Fig. 2.1, strategy, structure, process, people, and technology schematize for illustrative purposes the principal dimensions of an operating model for agile organizations according to McKinsey & Company (Brosseau et al., 2019). Earlier models, each with strengths and limitations, include the Burke–Litwin Causal Model, Galbraith’s Star Model, the McKinsey 7-S Model, the Nadler–Tushman Congruence Model, and Weisbord’s Six Box Model (Burke & Litwin, 1992; Galbraith, 1977; Nadler & Tushman, 1980; Waterman et al., 1980; Weisbord, 1976). Most operating models for organizations were developed in the 1970s–1980s and connect to brick-and-mortar hierarchy and market forms of organizing more readily than to networks

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common good) and has such internal logic that most managers deem their form of organizing a panacea and disregard both its inherent constraints and the mitigating qualities of the others. With the materialization of networks from the mid-1990s on account of rapid developments in information and communication technology, it goes without saying that the difficulty of combining the first two forms of organizing (viz., hierarchy and market) has been compounded. Apropos public governance, for instance, Hubbard and Paquet (2015) lauded what they termed irregular governance to deal with complexity but regretted administrative conservatorship that prioritizes political interest over the good functioning of institutions. Notwithstanding, the public sector is vast, which underscores the need for better metagovernance. In 2021, for example, government spending in the United States accounted for 44.9% of gross domestic product; in the European Union, the average was 45.7%, with France highest at 59.0% and Ireland lowest at 24.8% (Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development, 2021). Meuleman (2011) determined that three strategies have emerged in support of a metagovernor’s rationale for meeting challenges and reaping opportunities: • Combining. This prevents conflicts among forms of organizing and creates synergy: a hierarchy, for instance, will bring structure to a venture (or project), while a market will promote entrepreneurship, and a network will secure it goodwill. • Switching. This allows a venture (or project) to, say, start off as a network to crowdsource contributions, turn into a hierarchy to stabilize business processes with the establishment of rules, but then be subjected to a market form of organizing to promote entrepreneurship. • Maintaining. This complements combining and switching by preventing one form of organizing from being unduly undermined by the qualities of the others (Meuleman, 2011). Meuleman (2008) was a singular text that bears directly on this study: it was reviewed in Serrat (2018a). To Meuleman (2008), “Governance is the totality of interactions, in which government, other public bodies, [the] private sector, and civil society participate, aiming at solving societal problems or creating societal opportunities” (p. 11). Meuleman (2008) noted that hitherto prevalent hierarchies were being partly replaced by markets from the 1980s and that a third style of governing based on networks further expanded the range of possibilities for organizing from the 1990s. Meuleman (2008) recognized that the multiplication of hybrid forms of organizing had brought problems; to wit, each form of organizing has a particular logic that is in many ways incompatible with that of the others, which entices proponents to consider each a panacea. This led Meuleman (2008) to ponder how internal conflicts and synergies in hybrid forms of organizing might be managed. As defined by Meuleman (2008), who elaborated from Jessop (2003), Metagovernance is a means by which to produce some degree of coordinated governance, by designing and managing sound combinations of hierarchical, market, and network governance, to achieve the best possible outcomes from the viewpoint of those responsible for the performance of public-sector organizations: public managers as ‘metagovernors.’ (p. 68)

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And so, metagovernance is not a battle against hierarchy, the maximizing of benefits from market thinking in the public sector, or the optimizing of network management (Meuleman, 2008). The future will not lie with hierarchies, markets, or networks but with all three. Therefore, the why of metagovernance is about the need to combine the three governance modes not just between societal actors but also and specifically within their organization (Meuleman, 2008). This study subscribes to Meuleman’s (2008) modern definition of metagovernance—and so with Jessop’s (2003) original formulation—but does not restrict its application to public managers because any resourceful actor can potentially exercise it (Sørensen, 2006). Ambitiously, Meuleman and Niestroy (2015) argued the case for a metagovernance approach to the Sustainable Development Goals, dubbed transgovernance in Meuleman (2013). The how of metagovernance, in practice, refers to the way in which metagovernors design and manage combinations of governance: that is to say, how (and by what rationale) do they apply metagovernance? To articulate hybrid forms of organizing, Meuleman (2008) drew a multidimensional model comprising five interconnected organizational features, namely, vision and strategy, orientation, structure (including systems), people, and results (comprising 36 dimensions in toto, or 11, 4, 11, 7, and 3, respectively), across each of which the three governance modes are depicted as competing forces seeking influence or trade-off. Meuleman (2008) did not specify how the number of features (5) and dimensions (36) was arrived at. Additionally, Meuleman (2008) assumed that his multidimensional model alone would address the constraints and opportunities offered by the metagovernance environment and help situationally apply specific interventions strategies based on combining, switching, or maintaining hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing. Toward that, Meuleman (2008) reduced the key qualifiers of a metagovernor to willingness (wanting to), discretion (being allowed to), and capability (being capable of) (Meuleman, 2008). Summing up, metagovernance is a subject that invites substantial reading, discussion, and reflection, and so, the multidimensional model presented and tested in Meuleman (2008) was a signal contribution of interest to scholars and practitioners. Meuleman (2008) dispensed with a research paradigm and implicitly assumed that audiences share its worldview; this may have constrained outreach and application of otherwise significant research. In contrast, social constructivism was declared relevant to this study upfront, and conditioned the choice of the research strategy associated with it. The five main strategies of qualitative research are case study, ethnography, grounded theory, narrative research, and phenomenology (Creswell, 2013). Meuleman (2008) used case studies but these are not the best way to turn a story for metagovernance if trustworthiness—assessed in naturalistic inquiries through the criteria of credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability— is sought after (Guba, 1981; Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Also, Meuleman (2008) did not substantiate the appropriateness of its chosen research strategy. Meuleman (2011) perceived that five conditions influence the feasibility of metagovernance:

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• Tradition. Underlying preferences for one form of organizing (e.g., hierarchy in France and Germany, market in the United Kingdom, and network in the Netherlands) bear on the mode of governance, without necessarily predicting specific combinations; in the main, other forms of organizing are usually applied when the preferred mode proves inappropriate. • Personal Affinity. From personal experience, metagovernors may prefer one of the three forms of organizing. • Societal Expectations. Civil society organizations may, for example, lobby for a combination of hierarchy and market forms of organizing. • Organizational Culture. Illustrating with reference to Cameron and Quinn (2011), organizations may prefer adhocracy, clan, hierarchy, or market cultures (or combinations thereof). The dominant style of leadership may be, say, autocratic, charismatic, laissez-faire, situational, transactional, or transformational. Etzioni (1975), Handy (1978), Harrison (1979),Goffee and Jones (1998), and Schein (2017) portrayed other typologies of organizational culture. • Type of Problem. A priori, this should be the foremost determinant of forms of organizing. For instance, an urgent matter might invite a hierarchical approach; a routine matter might be dealt with by market governance; and a wicked problem might initially be addressed by network governance. The five conditions to feasibility of metagovernance that Meuleman (2011) recognized would affect the metagovernor’s rationale by impacting strategies to combine, switch, or maintain hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing (Serrat, 2021a). To conclude, therefore, the lens of metagovernance is necessary but not sufficient as part of a leadership management framework as it advances the configureto-order process but neither positions people and organizations for adaptability nor serves the deployment of greater collective intelligence.

Complexity Leadership Lichtenstein et al. (2006) asserted that top-down theories of leadership are simplistic. Sargut and McGrath (2011) concurred, adding that the level of complexity people must now cope with makes business management today a fundamentally different proposition from what it was 30 years ago. If on account of globalization and the revolution in information and communication technology, organizations of the 21st century must live on the edge of chaos, they had better with systems thinking be reframed as complex responsive processes of relating, not as machines; if this were accomplished, adaptive challenges would not repeatedly be confused with technical challenges (Stacey et al., 2000). The term edge of chaos refers to a transition space, located between order and disorder, which engenders a constant dynamic interplay between the two situations (Marion, 1999). Adaptation to the edge of chaos depends on feedback loops: in organizations, according to Senge (2006), this calls for personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and—above

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all—system thinking, the discipline that integrates the first four (Serrat, 2021a). Paraphrasing Liechtenstein et al. (2006), what if real leadership were not actually in a leader or done by a leader acting on organizations exogenously to achieve certain objectives? What if leadership were instead “a dynamic that transcends the capabilities of individuals alone,” “the product of interaction, tension, and exchange rules governing changes in perceptions and understanding,” lying in the interactive “spaces between”people and ideas (Lichtenstein et al., 2006, p. 2)? Complexity leadership is a relatively new, rapidly evolving, and more and more popular view of leadership that investigates what modes of leadership, not controlled by an individual but empowered by many, are required to address complex challenges (Lichtenstein et al, 2006; Marion & Uhl-Bien, 2001; Surie & Hazy, 2006; Uhl-Bien, 2012; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007; Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2017; Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2008). To describe the state of the art in complexity leadership, Serrat (2018b) compiled an annotated bibliography of 20 references—to be precise, 15 peer-reviewed articles and five books. Appendix F reproduces Serrat (2018b). Summarizing, the annotated bibliography in Serrat (2018b) ranges widely owing to the emerging state of the art: the largely theoretical literature mixed references to complex adaptive systems, dissipative structures, knowledge and flow, organizational design, social network approaches, social entrepreneurship, swarm intelligence, and value-chain perspectives. Without displaying commonalities across the themes it touched on, the annotated bibliography in Serrat (2018b) suggested that complexity leadership contributes strategic insights for operational accomplishments in nonlinear environments; however, none of the 20 references offered specific guidance on how organizations might gear up for that. Complexity science has antecedents in systems theory and system dynamics, which posit that the components (or agents) of a system are better understood if one examines internal and external interrelationships rather than the component parts themselves (Forrester, 1961; von Bertalanffy, 1969). From the mid-1980s, complexity science began to examine the characteristics of complex systems, a distinct property of which is emergence (or unintended order), and expressly those of complex adaptive systems (Holland, 2014). Markets are complex adaptive systems, Holland (2014) noted, the components of which learn or adapt depending on their interactions with others. Riding the wave of interest in complexity science, early texts on the intersection of complexity and management advertised complexity thinking as a means to understand better the management of organizational processes (Stacey, 1995; Wheatley, 1994). Without drawing explicitly from complexity thinking, Mintzberg and Waters (1985) mobilized its vocabulary, linking emergence with strategic learning. Before long, notwithstanding related but differently named approaches (e.g., complex adaptive leadership, complexity leadership theory, the Cynefin framework, emergent leadership), the literature then used complexity thinking to guide to the practice of organizational leadership (Heifetz & Laurie, 1997; Meadows & Wright, 2008; Pascale, 1999; Senge, 2006). Today, complexity leadership has progressed as a framework emphasizing administrative, adaptive, and enabling aspects of leadership (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007; Waldrop, 1992). Expressly, complexity leadership looks to:

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• • • •

Study an organization’s systems of interactions. Make out dynamic, complex systems and processes in organizing. Distinguish leadership from managerial positions. Recognize administrative, adaptive, and enabling functions as three modes of leadership. • 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 (Serrat, 2021a; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). Uhl-Bien et al. (2007) first introduced complexity leadership theory and is ahead of Marion and Uhl-Bien (2001) the most cited text on complexity leadership. With 14 chapters on the conceptual foundations of complexity leadership, Uhl-Bien and Marion (2008), an edited volume, subsequently added substantially to the corpus (a second volume on methodological issues is planned). To wit, Uhl-Bien et al. (2007) distinguished three modes of leadership: • Administrative Leadership. The managerial approach followed by individuals and groups in formal roles as they plan and coordinate activities in standardized business processes to accomplish organizationally-prescribed outcomes efficiently and effectively. • Adaptive Leadership. The informal process that emerges as organizations generate and advance ideas to solve problems and create opportunity; unlike administrative leadership, it is not an act of authority and takes place in informal emergent dynamic among interactive agents. • Enabling Leadership. The sum of actions to facilitate the flow of creativity (e.g., adaptability, innovation, and learning) from adaptive structures into administrative structures; like adaptive leadership, it can take place at all levels of an organization but its nature will vary by hierarchical level and position. (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007) Uhl-Bien et al. (2007) explained that administrative leadership focuses on alignment and control: change efforts are exerted top–down and rely on leader vision and inspiration. Administrative leadership is appropriate in simple contexts but cannot help when there is swelling variety in (and pressure from) the environment because it produces routine decisions and responses that do not meet the needs of complexity (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). In contrast, complexity leadership responds to complexity with complexity. Complexity leadership is synonymous with interaction and adaptability: change is emergent, meaning, in context, and leaders must seed the organization with generative (i.e., adaptive) properties for everyday performance (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). Figure 2.2 intuits that the key to complexity leadership is to recognize and appreciate adaptive dynamics (e.g., ideas, innovations, prosocial rule-breaking, pushback, voice, workarounds) and both interact with and enable them with loosening behaviors (viz., exploration) and tightening behaviors (viz., exploitation). Summing up, complexity leadership postulates that new ways of thinking, born of the need to respond to complexity, should be fostered in organizations so they might address the challenges of contextual factors (Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2017). Toward

Sense-Making

33 Adaptive Leadership Administrative Leadership

Entrepreneurial System

Administrative System Emergence

Generative Leadership

Fig. 2.2 The complexity leadership framework. Note From Uhl-Bien (2012). Complexity leadership in healthcare organizations [PowerPoint slides]. University of Nebraska. (https://www.docsli des.com/jane-oiler/dr-mary-uhl-bien). In the public domain

this, complexity leadership offers principles, processes, and practices as heuristics to enable people and organization for adaptability: despite that, much as all theories do, this theory rests on the proposition that desired organizational results will ensue if its prescriptions are followed with intentional capability. Because early enthusiasm for complexity leadership as a conceptual framework for enriching organizational practice has seemingly not endured, Rosenhead et al. (2019) volunteered that rationalization is in a way the enemy of creativity; even so, Rosenhead et al. (2019) judged that complexity leadership theory can at least serve as constructive provocation. To conclude, therefore, the lens of complexity leadership is necessary but not sufficient as part of a leadership management framework as it positions people and organizations for adaptability but neither advances the configure-to-order process nor serves the deployment of greater collective intelligence.

Sense-Making Locating Sense-Making: Knowledge Management Sense-making is inextricably linked with knowledge management: necessarily, the latter undertaking requires a joint understanding of how to make sense of the local, organizational world of interactive work. Compared to metagovernance and complexity leadership, literature on which is respectively scant, nascent, and still largely confined to academia, much has been written about knowledge management, viz. the process of identifying, creating, storing, sharing, and using individual

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and collective knowledge resources for benefit (Davenport & Prusak, 1998; Serrat, 2017f). Serrat (2017g) traced the roots of the discipline to the knowledge-based economies that emerged in the mid-to late 1990s: in early vindication of the purpose of this study, key texts underscored that organizing for knowledge management demands new structures and new attitudes (Clegg et al., 1996). And yet, a state-of-the-art review of knowledge management is made difficult by the sheer variety of purposes toward which technocentric, organizational, and ecological approaches can be applied, alone or in combination, but also by the discipline’s close connections with information and communication, innovation, intellectual capital, management, the learning organization, and organizational learning among others (Chawla & Renesch, 1995; Collison & Parcell, 2004; Leonard-Barton, 1995; Senge, 2006; Stewart, 1997). The literature review in Anand and Singh (2011) recognized the plurality of theoretical perspectives and listed a dozen different definitions of knowledge management (having to do with to a state of knowing, know-how, and capacity for action); drew conventional attention to tacit, implicit, and explicit types of knowledge with implication for mediation and storage; underscored the distinctness of knowledge management processes for identifying, creating, storing, sharing, and using knowledge; and listed the broad range of factors that can influence the success of knowledge management initiatives (e.g., culture, leadership, information and communication technology, organizational adjustments, employee motivation, external factors) (Serrat, 2016b). Serrat (2016b) discerned eight different motivations behind knowledge management initiatives: • Achieve shorter product or service development cycles. • Increase knowledge content in the development and provision of products and services. • Harness intellectual capital. • Leverage the expertise of people across an organization. • Boost internal and external network connectivity. • Manage business environments so personnel can access insight that is appropriate to its work. • Promote creativity, innovation, and organizational learning. • Solve intractable problems (Serrat, 2016b, pp. 3–4). Notwithstanding the multiplicity of motives and applications, the fact that the International Organization for Standardization has recently published guidelines for setting up, implementing, maintaining, reviewing, and improving an effective management system for knowledge management in organizations proves that the discipline of knowledge management has matured (International Organization for Standardization, 2018). Certainly, the International Organization for Standardization (2018) ascribed such importance to knowledge management that the rationale for the new standard is reproduced below in extenso: • The aim of work is to produce valuable results. Valuable results are derived from applied knowledge. Organizational knowledge is becoming a key differentiator for effectiveness, increased collaboration, and competition.

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• Knowledge work is increasingly important in many societies and organizations. Many economies aspire to become knowledge economies, where knowledge is the main source of wealth. In this context, knowledge becomes a core asset for organizations. Knowledge is especially important in many areas: it allows effective decisions to be made, supports the efficiency of processes and contributes to their enhancement, creates resilience and adaptability, creates competitive advantage, and may even become a product in its own right. • An increased access to knowledge will create opportunities for the professional development of people in the organization through learning, practices, and exchanges. • Organizations can no longer rely on the spontaneous diffusion of knowledge to keep up with the pace of change. Instead, knowledge must be deliberately created, consolidated, applied, and reused faster than the rate of change. • Geographically dispersed and decentralized organizations, conducting the same processes and delivering the same services in multiple locations, can gain tremendous advantage through sharing practices, expertise, and learning across organizational boundaries. • Workforce attrition and turnover in society has implications for knowledge management. In many organizations, critical knowledge is often siloed and/or retained by experts, at the risk of being lost when the organization changes or these experts leave. • Effective knowledge management supports collaboration between different organizations to achieve shared objectives (International Organization for Standardization, 2018, p. v). Through the emergence of digital documents over the last 10 years, the contributions of technocentric approaches to knowledge management have surpassed those of organizational and ecological undertakings (Taherdoost & Madanchian, 2023). Boldly, Davenport (2015) contended that the rise of Google, the new focus on Big Data, and numerous cultural and organizational challenges have left the discipline gasping for breath (Serrat, 2021b). In support of Davenport (2015), Google Trends (https://trends.google.com/; retrieved September 27, 2023) revealed that worldwide interest in Big Data as a topic scored the maximum interest of 100 points in March 2017 from 3 in January 2004. Notwithstanding, knowledge is the strategic resource of the 21st century and organizations (and of course societies and economies) obviously cannot function without it (Serrat, 2021b). It is reasonable to contend that knowledge management—by virtue of its manifold and likely eternal motivations—may in fact be evolving in the vanguard of even more profound organizational change, that more recent developments such as Big Data—thence artificial intelligence—will advance (Serrat, 2021b). Commenting on Davenport (2015), O’Leary (2016) rejoined that if knowledge management is dead (or dying) a similar idea is needed and would add value. At any rate, continuing interest in knowledge management can be evidenced if one searches using allied terminology, such as artificial intelligence or predictive analytics. Google Trends (https://trends.google.com/; September 27, 2023) signaled that worldwide interest in artificial intelligence as a search term scored the highest

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interest of 100 points as recently as May 2023 from 52 in January 2004 and that worldwide interest in predictive analytics as a topic scored the maximum interest of 100 points in October 2017 from 64 in January 2004. What is more, advances in mining of collective intelligence, for instance, provide additional capabilities that can be deployed for new knowledge management (Behme & Becker, 2021).

The Compass of Sense-Making The word sense carries common understanding: it refers to the results of human sensory activity—driven by hearing, sight, smell, touch, and taste—and the awareness and appreciation transmitted via the five senses. Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s (2023a) primary definitions interpreted sense as a meaning conveyed or intended, or the faculty of perceiving by means of sense organs. But, the word sense-making (or sensemaking) has such altogether new dimensions that Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2023b) defined it merely as an adjective connoting the quality of making practicable, reasonable, and sensible sense (e.g., a sense-making proposal). Recent understandings of sense-making are broader, with some authors referring to cognitive processes in socially-based activity (Dervin & Naumer, 2009). Dervin and Naumer (2009) and Golob (2018) showed that five theories of sense-making have come to the fore. With origins in social psychology, the notion of sense-making was introduced by Weick in the early 1970s to designate “the ongoing retrospective development of plausible images that rationalize what people are doing” (Weick et al., 2005, p. 409). From an interest in organizational communications, Weick meant to shift the focus from organizations (as entities) to organizing (as an activity) by drawing attention to the collaborative processes that construct meaning and beget decisions for enactment. To Weick (1995), sense-making is grounded in identity construction; therefore, it is retrospective, enactive of sensible environments, ongoing, preoccupied with and accomplished by extracted cues, and concerned with plausibility more readily than with accuracy (Golob, 2018). Thanks to Weick’s (1995) pioneering work, one now finds references to sense-making in many fields. Four other theories of sense-making predominate, each proposing different ways for sense-makers to navigate internal worlds and external circumstances. From a background in library and information science, Dervin developed an actor-based, question-asking metaphor with which to tap situations, gaps, bridges, and outcomes sought and/or obtained and dig deeper into gaps and struggles, what led to an evaluation, and how things helped (Dervin & Foreman-Wernet, 2003; Dervin & Naumer, 2009; Golob, 2018). In cognitive systems engineering, Klein aimed to build intelligent systems and reinterpreted sense-making as the backward- and forward-looking investigation of emerging connections and trajectories between events, people, and places: frames determine what date is acceptable and how data is profiled for mental processing, but data can equally dictate changes to frames, the reinterpretation of which then enables more effective action (Dervin & Naumer, 2009; Golob, 2018;

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Klein et al., 2006). Focusing on human-computer interaction to solve problems associated with large amounts of information, Russell depicted sense-making as a search, whereby the data encoded in a representation helps formulate answers to task-specific questions. Here, sense-making is about selecting, exploiting, and trading between cognitive and external resources to cut the cost of information processing (Dervin & Naumer, 2009; Golob, 2018; Russell et al., 1993). Lastly, working out of knowledge management, specifically knowledge production, Snowden articulated a multiontological framework, called Cynefin, with which to move on from old molds of thinking (e.g., top–down hierarchies); make sense of simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic problems; and undertake decision-making in new ways (Dervin & Naumer, 2009; Golob, 2018; Snowden, 2002). Compared to Dervin’s hermeneutic process, Klein’s mental models, Russel’s human–computer interaction, and Weick’s collective approach, the Cynefin framework is a more evolutionary methodology that aims to instill diversity in interpretations of the world so that organizations might develop a cognitive edge using data and progress with shared understanding through right actions (Hayward Jones, 2015; Snowden & Friends, 2021). This justifies the Cynefin framework as the most pertinent sense-making lens for the purpose of this study. Figure 2.3 shows that each of the five theories of sense-making locates its units of analysis differently in terms of individual or collective interpretations of meaning and internal or external representations of observed meaning.

Collective Russell (Human–Computer Interaction: Information Processing)

Weick (Organizational Communication: Organizing)

Internal

Snowden (Knowledge Management: Understanding)

Dervin (Library and Information Science: Communicating)

External

Klein (Cognitive System Engineering: Decision-Making)

Individual

Fig. 2.3 Five approaches to sense-making. Note Adapted from Hayward Jones (2015, April 6). Sensemaking methodology: A liberation theory of communicative agency. EPIC. (https://www.epi cpeople.org/sensemaking-methodology/). In the public domain

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The Cynefin Framework With the Cynefin framework, Snowden and associates articulated a practicable organizational sense-making device to aid decision-making in simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic situations (Kurtz & Snowden, 2003; Snowden, 2002, 2008; Snowden and Boone, 2007). Much as complexity leadership, but predating it, the Cynefin framework applies the concepts of complexity theory to match decisionmaking to context (Serrat, 2017h). Cynefin, pronounced kun-ev’in, is a Welsh word for habitat. To wit, Snowden conceptualized the Cynefin framework in 1999 “to help executives sense which context they are in so that they can not only make better decisions but also avoid the problems that arise when their preferred management style causes them to make mistakes” (Snowden & Boone, 2007, p. 68; Berger & Johnston, 2015). Initially designed to capture intellectual capital in IBM Global Services, the Cynefin framework has since been presented as a problem-solving tool that sheds light on relationships between causes and effects to enable prompt responses in different situations. Dahlberg (2015), Elford (2012), Nachbagauer (2021), Vasilescu (2011), and others praised the Cynefin framework for inspiring research in various fields, including project management, and deemed it a guide to useful epistemological and managerial tools. Gardner (2013) matched the Cynefin framework to the tool sets of Enterprise 2.0, that McAfee (2009) defined ahead of others as the use of software in pursuit of organizational goals. In the Cynefin framework, the terrain for sense-making and decision-making can be mapped out in four contexts (i.e., simple, complicated, complex, chaotic) with a fifth representing disorder (confusion). Over the years, the names of the four contexts have changed: Kurtz and Snowden (2003) first called them known, knowable, complex, and chaotic; Snowden and Boone (2007) then changed known and knowable to simple and complicated, respectively; and from 2014 Snowden used obvious in place of simple (Berger & Johnston, 2015). More recently, known, simple, and obvious have been termed clear (Snowden, 2019). Graphic representations of the four contexts have amalgamated the changing terminology to offset confusion; in so doing, they have also enriched its meaning (Snowden & Friends, 2021). Drawing from systems theory, complexity science, network theory, and learning theories, the Cynefin framework advocates responses depending on five situations: • Simple Contexts. The domain of best practice (with known knowns). Cause-andeffect relationships are repeatable, perceivable, and predictable. There are fixed constraints (viz., no degrees of freedom). Standard operating procedures apply. With coordination, the approach is to Sense–Categorize–Respond. • Complicated Contexts. The domain of good practices (with known unknowns that are probably knowable). Cause-and-effect relationships are separated over time and space. There are governing (viz., tightly coupled) constraints. Scenario planning applies. With cooperation, the approach is to Sense–Analyze–Respond. • Complex Contexts. The domain of emergent (or exaptive) practices (with unknown unknowns that are possibly knowable). Cause-and-effect relationships are only coherent in retrospect and do not repeat. There are enabling (viz., loosely coupled)

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constraints. Pattern management is called for. With collaboration, the approach is to Probe–Sense–Respond. • Chaotic Contexts. The domain of novel practices (with unknowns and unknowables that are possibly manageable). No cause-and-effect relationships are perceivable. There are no effective constraints. Stability-focused interventions are called for. The approach is to Act–Sense–Respond. • Disorder. The middle space, or the state of not knowing what type of causality exists. Confusion reigns. The approach is to identify the problem and move it to one of the other domains. (Kurtz & Snowden, 2003) Simple and complicated contexts assume an ordered universe; complex and chaotic contexts are unordered (Kurtz & Snowden, 2003). The ordered world is the world of fact-management; the un-ordered world calls for pattern-based management (Kurtz & Snowden, 2003). The Cynefin framework helps diagnose situations and act in appropriate ways by distinguishing the contexts of operations and the constraints of the system associated with each. Figure 2.4 demarcates the Cynefin framework and, for each context, signifies the cause-and-effect relationship, specifies the leader’s job, and identifies the nature of required practice. For each of the four contextual characteristics, Snowden and Boone (2007) itemized danger signals, responses to danger signals, and executive decisions. For instance, danger signals in a simple context include complacency and comfort; a desire to make complex problems simple; entrained thinking; no challenge of received wisdom; and over-reliance on good practices when the context shifts (Snowden and Boone 2007). In a simple context, responses to danger signals would

• Enabling Constraints • Emergent (or Exaptive) Practices • Probe–Sense–Respond

• No Effectice Constraints • Novel Practices • Act–Sense–Respond

• Governing Constraints • Good Practices • Sense–Analyse–Respond

Complex

Complicated

Chaotic

Simple (Obvious, Clear) • Fixed Constraints • Best Practices • Sense–Categorize–Respond

Fig. 2.4 The Cynefin framework. Note In Fig. 2.4, the domain of disorder (or confusion) depicted in black represents the state of not knowing what type of causality exists. Adapted from Cognitive Edge (2023). The Cynefin® framework (https://www.cognitive-edge.com/the-cynefin-framework/). In the public domain

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be to create communication channels to challenge orthodoxy; stay connected without micromanaging; abstain from assuming things are simple; and recognize both the value and the limitations of good practices (Snowden & Boone, 2007). In a simple context, executive decisions would be to ensure that appropriate processes are in place; delegate; use good practices; communicate in clear, direct ways; and understand that extensive interactive communication may not be necessary (Snowden & Boone, 2007). The Cynefin framework challenges the established assumptions of order, rational choice, and intentional capability that “pervade the practice and to a lesser degree the theory of decision-making and policy formulation in organizations” (Kurtz & Snowden, 2003, p. 462). The assumption of order is that the relationships between cause and effect in human interactions and markets can be discovered and verified; the assumption of rational choice is that given a choice between alternatives people will make a rational decision based solely on minimizing pain or maximizing pleasure; and the assumption of intentional capability is that the acquisition of capability correlates with intent to use it (Kurtz & Snowden, 2003). Vitally, Kurtz and Snowden (2003) contended that the three assumptions of order, rational choice, and intentional capability are not universally true even if they are true in some contexts; and yet, the tools, methods, and approaches at our disposal commonly available assume they are. Osborn, Hunt, and Jauch (2002), who submitted a contextual theory of leadership that parallels the Cynefin framework with stability, crisis, dynamic equilibrium, and edge-of-chaos contexts and bears also on complexity leadership, agreed. “[H[uman agency is not to be replaced with mechanistic prescription” (Osborn et al., 2002, p. 797). But then again, neither the work of Snowden and associates nor of those that follow its logic specify what differing forms of organizing best match context: how, for example, might an organization facing chaos act-sense-respond with novel practices when it is organized as a hierarchy, that being a form of organizing intended, designed, and equipped to address simple problems? Put differently, in a hark back to complexity leadership, how could enabling leadership possibly emerge out of such an organizational configuration? To conclude, therefore, the lens of sense-making is necessary but not sufficient as part of a leadership management framework as it serves the deployment of greater collective intelligence but neither positions people and organizations for adaptability nor advances the configure-to-order process.

Summary This chapter appraised the scope, concepts, and state-of-the-art of the nascent literature on metagovernance and complexity leadership and particularized the contribution that sense-making has made to knowledge management. With respect to the three lenses, this chapter acknowledged the explanatory power of pioneering texts but exposed limitations: the three lenses stand alone, in the sense that each focuses on a subset of the larger problématique, and the literature review discerned opportunities for synergy. This study breaks new ground: to date, no peer-reviewed literature

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or proposal regarding a leadership management framework for organizations of the future have emerged; for that reason, investigations must be exploratory. Explicitly, the research design and method for this study—involving secondary research, informal qualitative approaches, and formal qualitative research—aimed to palliate the dearth of information and spring synergistically from what is at hand. Consistent with the goals, products, standards of rigor, and criteria for contributions-toknowledge of exploratory research; therefore, the study aimed to formulate a picture of the situation now developing; afford greater familiarity with basic settings, details, and concerns; advance new ideas and assumptions; suggest a leadership management framework; and posit an assessment of the desirability of (and directions for) future research (Stebbins, 2001). The findings of this study will not lead to definitive conclusions that can be made easily generalizable to organizational populations at large. Even so, while recognizing that related action lies entirely outside the researcher’s control, the findings of this study offer potential for application if the conditions to feasibility of metagovernance that Meuleman (2011) spelled out can be dealt with by interested parties. Summarizing, the literature review located the context of this study, firmed up the statement of the problem in relation to the academic and professional fields, circumscribed the gap in our knowledge of the topic of this study, and confirmed the significance and importance of closing this gap through research. The literature review substantiated that this study is the first attempt in the literature to fuse the three lenses to help lead organizations of the future.

References Anand, A., & Singh, M. (2011). Understanding knowledge management: A literature review. International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology, 3(2), 926–939. Behme, F., & Becker, S. (2021, January 29). The new knowledge management: Mining the collective intelligence. Deloitte Insights. https://www2.deloitte.com/xe/en/insights/focus/technology-andthe-future-of-work/organizational-knowledge-management.html Berger, J., & Johnston, K. (2015). Simple habits for complex times: Powerful practices for leaders. Stanford University Press. Bevir, M. (2012). Governance: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press. Brosseau, D., Ebrahim, S., Handscomb, C., & Thaker, S. (2019, May 10). The journey to an agile organization. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organizat ion/our-insights/the-journey-to-an-agile-organization Burke, W., & Litwin, G. (1992). A causal model of organizational performance and change. Journal of Management, 18(3), 523–545. Cameron, K., & Quinn, R. (2011). Diagnosing and change organizational culture: Based on the competing values framework. Jossey-Bass. Chawla, S., & Renesch, J. (Eds). (1995). Learning organizations: Developing cultures for tomorrow’s workplace. Productivity Press. Clegg, S., Barrett, M., Clarke, T., Dwyer, L., Gray, J., Kemp, S., & Marceau, J. (1996). Management knowledge for the future: Innovation, embryos, and new paradigms. In S. Clegg & G. Palmer (Eds.), The politics of management knowledge (pp. 190–236). Sage.

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Collison, C., & Parcell, G. (2004). Learning to fly: Practical knowledge management from leading and learning organizations. Capstone Publishing. Cognitive Edge. (2023). The Cynefin® framework. https://www.cognitive-edge.com/the-cynefin-fra mework/ Creswell, J. (2013). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (3rd ed.) Sage. Creswell, J. (2014). Chapter 2: Review of the literature. In J. Creswell (Ed.), Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.) (pp. 25–50). Sage. Dahlberg, R. (2015). Resilience and complexity: Conjoining the discourses of two contested concepts. Culture Unbound, 7(3), 541–557. Davenport, T., & Prusak, L. (1998). Working knowledge: How organizations manage what they know. Harvard Business School Press. Davenport, T. (2015, June 24). Whatever happened to knowledge management? The Wall Street Journal. Davis, G., & Rhodes, R. (2000). From hierarchy to contracts and back again: Reforming the Australian public service. In J. Keating, J. Wanna, & P. Weller (Eds.), Institutions on the edge? Capacity for governance (pp. 74–98). Allen & Unwin. Dervin, B., & Foreman-Wernet, L. (with Lauterbach, E.) (Eds.). (2003). Sense-making methodology reader: Selected writings of Brenda Dervin. Hampton Press. Dervin, B., & Naumer, C. (2009). Sense-making. In S. Littlejohn & K. Foss (Eds.), Encyclopedia of communication theory (pp. 876–880). Sage. Elford, W. (2012). A multi-ontology view of ergonomics: Applying the Cynefin framework to improve theory and practice. Work, 41, 812–817. Etzioni, A. (1975). A comparative analysis of complex organizations. Free Press. Forrester, J. (1961). Industrial dynamics. MIT Press. Galbraith, J. (1977). Organization design. Addison-Wesley. Gardner, B. (2013). Making sense of enterprise 2.0. Very Informal Newsletter on Library Automation, 43(2), 149–160. Gjaltema, J., Biesbroek, R., & Termeer, K. (2020). From government to governance … to metagovernance: A systematic literature review. Public Management Review, 22(12), 1760–1780. Goffee, R., & Jones, G. (1998). The character of a corporation. Harper Business. Golob, U. (2018). Sense-making. In R. Heath & W. Johansen (Eds.), The international encyclopedia of strategic communication (pp. 1–9). Wiley. Green, D. (2007). Leading a postmodern workforce. Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 6, 15–26. Guba, E. (1981). Criteria for assessing the trustworthiness of naturalistic inquiries. Educational Communication and Technology, 29(2), 75–91. Handy, C. (1978). The gods of management. Pan Books. Harrison, R. (1979). Understanding your organization’s character. Harvard Business Review, 57(5), 119–128. Hayward Jones, P. (2015, April 6). Sensemaking methodology: A liberation theory of communicative agency. EPIC. https://www.epicpeople.org/sensemaking-methodology/ Heifetz, R., & Laurie, D. (1997). The work of leadership. Harvard Business Review, 75(1), 124–134. Holland, J. (2014). Complexity: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press. Hubbard, R., & Paquet, G. (2015). Irregular governance: A plea for bold organizational experimentation. Invenire. Hufty, M., et al. (2011). Investigating policy processes: The governance analytical framework (GAF). In U. Wiesmann (Ed.), Research for sustainable development: Foundations, experiences, and perspectives (pp. 403–424). Geographica Bernensia. International Organization for Standardization. (2018). ISO 30401:2018 Knowledge management systems—Requirements. https://www.iso.org/standard/68683.html Jessop, B. (1997a). Capitalism and its future: Remarks on regulation, government, and governance. Review of International Political Economy, 4(3), 561–581.

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Jessop, B. (1997b). The governance of complexity and the complexity of governance. In A. Amin & J. Hausner (Eds.), Beyond markets and hierarchy: Interactive governance and social complexity (pp. 111–147). Edward Elgar. Jessop, B. (2003). Governance and metagovernance: On reflexivity, requisite variety, and requisite irony. In H. Bang (Ed.), Governance as social and political communication (pp. 142–172). Manchester University Press. Jessop, B. (2011). Metagovernance. In M. Bevir (Ed.), The SAGE handbook of governance (pp. 106– 123). Sage. Klein, G., Moon, B., & Hoffman, R. (2006). Making sense of sense-making 1: Alternative perspectives. IEE Intelligent Systems, 21(4), 70–73. Kurtz, C., & Snowden, D. (2003). The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world. IBM Systems Journal, 42(3), 462–483. la Cour, A., & Andersen, N. (2016). Metagovernance as strategic supervision. Public Performance & Management Review, 39(4), 905–925. Leonard-Barton, D. (1995). Wellsprings of knowledge: Building and sustaining the sources of innovation. Harvard Business School Press. Lichtenstein, B., Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R., Seers, A., Orton, J., & Schreiber, C. (2006). Complexity leadership theory: An interactive perspective on leading in complex adaptive systems. Emergence: Complexity and Organization, 8(4), 2–12. Lincoln, Y., & Guba, E. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Sage. Marion, R., & Uhl-Bien, M. (2001). Leadership in complex organizations. The Leadership Quarterly, 12(4), 389–418. Marion, R. (1999). The edge of organization: Chaos and complexity theories of formal social systems. Sage. McAfee, A. (2009). Enterprise 2.0: New collaborative tools for your organization’s toughest challenges. Harvard Business School Press. Meadows, D., & Wright, D. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. Chelsea Green Pub. Meuleman, L. (2008). Public management and the metagovernance of hierarchies, networks, and markets: The feasibility of designing and managing governance style combinations. PhysicaVerlag. Meuleman, L. (2011). Metagovernance. In B. Badie, D. Berg-Schlosser, & L. Morlino (Eds.), International encyclopedia of political science (pp. 1554–1557). Sage. Meuleman, L. (Ed.). (2013). Transgovernance: Advancing sustainability governance. Springer. Meuleman, L., & Niestroy, I. (2015). Common but differentiated governance: A metagovernance approach to make the SDGs work. Sustainability, 7, 12295–12321. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. (2023a). Sense. In merriam-webster.com. https://www.merriam-web ster.com/dictionary/sense Merriam-Webster Dictionary. (2023b). Sensemaking. In merriam-webster.com. https://www.mer riam-webster.com/dictionary/sensemaking Mintzberg, H., & Waters, J. (1985). Of strategies: Deliberate and emergent. Strategic Management Journal, 6(3), 257–272. Nachbagauer, A. (2021). Managing complexity in projects: Extending the Cynefin framework. Project Leadership and Society, 2, 1–10. Nadler, D., & Tushman, M. (1980). A model for diagnosing organizational behavior. Organizational Dynamics, 9(2), 35–51. O’Leary, D. (2016). Is knowledge management dead (or dying)? Journal of Decision Systems, 25(S1), 512–526. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2021). General government spending. https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-spending.htm Osborns, R., Hunt, J., & Jauch, L. (2002). Toward a contextual theory of leadership. The Lesadership Quarterly, 13(6), 797–837. Pascale, R. (1999). Surfing the edge of chaos. Sloan Management Review, 40(3), 83–94.

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Rosenhead, J., Franco, L., Grint, K., & Friedlande, B. (2019). Complexity theory and leadership practice: A review, a critique, and some recommendations. The Leadership Quarterly, 30, 1–25. Russell, D., Stefik, M., Pirolli, P., & Card, S. (1993). The cost structure of sense-making. In Proceedings of the INTERACT’93 and CHI’93 conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 269–276). IOS Press. Sargut, G., & McGrath, R. (2011). Learning to live with complexity. Harvard Business Review, 89(9), 68–76. Schein, E. (2017). Organizational culture and leadership. Jossey-Bass. Senge, P. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. Doubleday/ Currency. Serrat, O. (2016b, February 18). The why and how of knowledge management: Some applications in teaching and learning [Paper presentation]. Global Online Association for Learning: Learning Summit 2016, Metro Manila, Philippines. Serrat, O. (2017e). Literature search paper on leading organizations of the future. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Serrat, O. (2017f). Glossary of knowledge management. In Knowledge solutions: Tools, methods, and approaches to drive organizational performance (pp. 1055–1061). Springer. Serrat, O. (2017g). The roots of an emerging discipline. In Knowledge solutions: Tools, methods, and approaches to drive organizational performance (pp. 341–344). Springer. Serrat, O. (2017h). Understanding complexity. In Knowledge solutions: Tools, methods, and approaches to drive organizational performance (pp. 345–353). Springer. Serrat, O. (2018a). 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. Serrat, O. (2018b). Annotated bibliography on complexity leadership. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Serrat, O. (2021a). Research concept paper for leading organizations of the future. In Leading solutions: Essays in business psychology (pp. 287–292). Springer. Serrat, O. (2021b). The learning organization needs no apology. In Leading solutions: Essays in business psychology (pp. 341–348). Springer. Snowden, D. (2002). Complex acts of knowing: Paradox and descriptive self-awareness. Journal of Knowledge Management, 6(2), 100–111. Snowden, D., & Boone, M. (2007). A leader’s framework for decision making. Harvard Business Review, 85(11), 68–76. Snowden, D. (2008, June 7). What is sense-making? Cognitive Edge. https://cognitive-edge.com/ blog/what-is-sense-making/ Snowden, D. (2019, April 18). Cynefin St David’s Day 2019. Cognitive Edge. https://www.cognit ive-edge.com/cynefin-st-davids-day-2019-4-of-5/ Snowden, D., & Friends. (2021). Cynefin® : Weaving sense-making into the fabric of our world. Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd. Sørensen, E. (2006). Metagovernance: The changing role of politicians in processes of democratic governance. American Review of Public Administration, 36(1), 98–114. Stacey, R. (1995). The science of complexity: An alternative perspective for strategic change processes. Strategic Management Journal, 16(6), 477–495. Stacey, R., Griffin, D., & Shaw, P. (2000). Complexity and management: Fad or radical challenge. Routledge. Stebbins, R. (2001). Exploratory research in the social sciences. Sage. Steger, M., & Roy, R. (2010). Neoliberalism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press. Stewart, T. (1997). Intellectual capital: The new wealth of organizations. Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Styhre, A. (2001). The nomadic organization: The postmodern organization of becoming. Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science, 1(4), 1–12.

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Chapter 3

Research Design and Method

Research Question The research question is: What leadership management framework for sense-making and decision-making can help organizations meet challenges and reap opportunities in simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts? The substance and form of the research question—which seeks to gather deep, rich, individualized, and contextualized data—spring from the need to develop a grand, synthetic theory about organizational design.

Research Design Research paradigms afford comprehensive and sometimes complex understandings of phenomena such as how people interact, how organizations operate, and how societies work (Maxwell, 2013). Their lenses focus attention on different aspects of a topic and a framework within which to conduct analysis and allow readers to grasp the ideas that underpin the work (Maxwell, 2013). Flowing from the research question and its rationale, social constructivism is an appropriate research paradigm with which to articulate a knowledge claim vis-àvis organizations of the future and a framework for how they might be led (Kukla, 2010; Serrat, 2021a). Accordingly, the ontology, epistemology, axiology, rhetoric, and methodology of social constructivism was associated with the research paradigm (Crotty, 1998). Ontology relates to the nature of reality and its characteristics: with social constructivism, I was able to embrace the idea of multiple realities and report on these multiple realities by exploring multiple and value-laden forms of evidence from different individuals’ perspectives and experiences (Rosenberg, 2012). Epistemology relates to how researchers know what they know: under social constructivism, the

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knower and the known are cocreated based on each researcher’s individual perceptions, and it would be important to sound out the subject matter experts to establish subjective knowledge in the form of what meaning they attach to the phenomenon studied (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Axiology relates to the role of values in research. With social constructivism, I was to make my values known and actively report what biases I might become aware of, including the value-laden nature of information collected through the expert interviews (Creswell, 2013). Rhetoric relates to the persuasive function of language in research: under social constructivism, I would have seen the greatest opportunity for the use of rhetoric in this study if the latter were to contain elements of narrative research, which was not the case; otherwise, the use of rhetoric would show that I am not truth-seeking or omniscient but, rather, reporting—by means of a clear, yet abstract analytic story specifying relations, variations, and the relevant conditions, consequences, and so forth—on what reality the participants and I see (Shank, 2006). Methodology relates to the methods used in the process of research: under social constructivism, my methods were abductive, comparative, emergent, open-ended, and shaped by my experience in collecting, generating, and analyzing data (Charmaz, 2014). The research method for this study was qualitative (Maxwell, 2013). 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 behavior or phenomena; by so doing, qualitative research can also build theory (Schwandt, 2007; Serrat, 2021a). Hence, the research questions in qualitative research are broad, seek to explore, do not automatically include variables, accept that relations can be formed throughout the research process, and do not necessarily rest on hypotheses (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016; Schwandt, 2007). Abductive reasoning, which springs from an incomplete set of observations to propose the likeliest possible explanation for a larger set, underpinned this study (Creswell, 2013). However, inductive and—to a far lesser extent—deductive reasoning also helped infer or derive generalized conclusions from instances (Creswell, 2013). Mainstream perspectives on leadership treat organizations as closed systems but it is those that are not hemmed by organizational boundaries that are most relevant to this study (Griffin & Stacey, 2005; Wheatley, 1994, 2006). Anchored in the research paradigm of social constructivism, complexity leadership did much to inform my thinking (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). Borrowing from complexity science, by means of the particular thrusts mentioned earlier, “[complexity leadership theory] frames leadership as a complex interactive dynamic from which adaptive outcomes (e.g., learning, innovation, and adaptability) emerge” (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007, p. 298). Even so, complexity leadership cannot frame this study entirely: therefore, metagovernance and sense-making were also leveraged for the explanatory power they assuredly contribute. Next, this study espoused grounded theory, one of the five main qualitative inquiry traditions (Maxwell, 2013). The language of grounded theory resonates with that of this study because it develops a theory about optimum combinations of situationallydetermined modes of governance (e.g., hierarchy, market, and network) for problemsolving (Charmaz, 2014; Serrat, 2021a).

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Lastly, the research design projected that the research question would be grounded in data gathered through expert interviews. I am aware that Glaser and Strauss (1967), who pioneered grounded theory research in the late-1960s, later disagreed over the meaning and procedures of the approach. More recently, noting that grounded theorists treat their interviewees’ stories analytically but do not necessarily take them into theory construction, Charmaz (2014)submitted that carefully framed questions generate richer data and allow theoretical concerns to take precedence over the collection of stories: this advances theoretical plausibility (that is, the extent to which individual accounts are credible within the larger frame of meaning), direction (achieved when the conceptual framework begins to coalesce), centrality (meaning, the generation of a critical mass of interrelated ideas), and adequacy. Appendix G particularizes the case for the use of grounded theory under this study in contrast with other research designs.

Population and Sample Because it was framed by a sociological theory of knowledge and invited abductive reasoning, the study entailed interviews with subject matter experts in metagovernance, complexity leadership, and/or sense-making (Bogner et al., 2009). As stated by Meuser and Nagel (2009), experts are persons who have privileged access to information and can plan and provide solutions to problems. By expert, expanding on Meuser and Nagel (2009), I refer to individuals holding technical knowledge (e.g., specialized knowledge, administrative competences), process-related knowledge (e.g., interactions, decision-making, organizational constellations), and/or interpretative–evaluative knowledge (e.g.,everyday theories) (Döringer, 2020; Serrat, 2021c). This study looked to purposive interviews of 15 subject matter experts in the afore-mentioned fields, aiming for saturation. The two basic types of sampling are probability and nonprobability (aka purposive or theoretical) sampling: probability sampling strives to generalize the findings of a study to a larger population, and so has to do with quantitative research; nonprobability sampling is justified by the assumption that a researcher means to study situations in their uniqueness and so must select a sample from which the most can be learned, not to predict the future but to understand the nature of settings from a qualitative perspective (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016; Schwandt, 2007). For qualitative studies, van Rijnsoever (2017) confirmed the higher efficiency of purposive sampling relative to random sampling. Vasileiou et al. (2018)underscored that purposive sampling is about selecting participants based on their capacity to provide textured information of relevance to the phenomenon under investigation. Patton (1990) affirmed that no rules can determine sample size in qualitative inquiry. Given the paucity of expertise in metagovernance and complexity leadership, the recruitment of 15 subject matter experts was deemed sufficient bearing also in mind Dworkin’s (2012) conclusions regarding the sample size for expert interviews, cited earlier. The need for triangulation was also felt to be less exigent in the case of what Goldman (2011) termed an expert/expert problem in contrast to a

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novice/expert problem in the case of expertise and testimony. Notwithstanding, this study aimed for saturation, as mentioned earlier. The selection of participants was driven by the research question, which suggested that process-related and interpretative–evaluative knowledge were the most important factors for recruitment. By means of purposive sampling, drawing from professional and personal contacts to whom I have access, I refined a short list of senior candidates across the private, public, and civil society sectors who have knowledge and skill gained over time. Authority, associated with high professional or scholastic achievement and validated by engagement in policy formulation, scholarly accomplishments (e.g., publications and associated citations), senior executive work in the private sector, social media presence, or reputation in international organizations, underpinned criterion-based selection irrespective of ethnicity, gender, race, or socioeconomic standing. The participants were invited to nominate other participants, a snowball sampling approach that can be used where potential subjects are hard to locate—or are not forthcoming—and that helps isolate expertise by means of peer recognition (Sadler et al., 2010; Schwandt, 2007). Summing up, the inclusion criterion for the sample were that individuals should hold authority associated with high professional and/or scholastic accomplishments and the only exclusion criterion applied to individuals of less than 21 years of age, owing to presumed lack of experience.

Procedures Expert interviews are not standardized interviews: their forms include conceptual interviews, confrontational interviews, dilemma interviews, discursive interviews, explorative interviews, factual interviews, focused interviews, group interviews, and narrative interviews, with each type serving a different purpose, hence different types of interview questions (Brinkmann & Kvale, 2015). The expert interviews conducted under this study were explorative: that is, applied in a little investigated field; they were systemizing, meaning that they aimed at the reconstruction of an expert’s objective (or factual) knowledge in a particular field, and they were theorygenerating, meaning, not limited to the analysis of an expert’s objective knowledge but involving also the reconstruction of hard-to-codify implicit or tacit knowledge from past experiences (Bogner et al., 2009; Döringer, 2020; Seidman, 2013). During the expert interviews, I took notes and speedily returned the data to the participants so they might quickly check for accuracy and resonance with their experiences. Member checks (or informant feedback) buttressed the qualitative coding, categorizing, and reflecting carried out during data analysis. Toward the expert interviews, inspired by the concepts and ideas in Seidman (2013), four research sub-questions were formulated to underpin sequential conversations and make the research less daunting. The four research sub-questions provided the skeleton around which the expert interviews helped address the main research

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SQ1. What is the relevance of traditional (20th century) styles of leadership in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world?

SQ2. How might metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making help to jointly characterize the operating environment for organizations in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world?

SQ3. How might context bear on sense-making and decision-making?

SQ4. How might a context-specific leadership management framework support metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing?

Fig. 3.1 Research sub-questions. Note Early versions of the four research sub-questions listed in this figure were posted on ResearchGate in May 2019 for pretesting (Mikuska, 2014). The four research sub-questions elicited interest and generated insight. An early version of the research question was likewise posted on ResearchGate in June 2019 for pretesting

question. Figure 3.1 specifies the four research sub-questions. Appendix H reproduces the four research sub-questions and matches them to the 12 interview questions, all of them couched in the form of probes to ease comprehension and facilitate answerability. The conversations with the subject matter experts investigated in critical ways their experiences and beliefs (Serrat, 2021a). Seidman (2013) made clear that that meaningfulness, sooner than a check-and-balance additive, underpins qualitative research. Seidman imparted: What are needed are not formulaic approaches to enhancing either validity or trustworthiness but understanding of and respect for the issues that underlie those terms. We must grapple with them, doing our best to increase our ways of knowing and of avoiding ignorance, realizing that our efforts are quite small in the larger scale of things. (2013, p. 30)

I expected one limitation in relation to the availability of experts: the higher the authority (or relative professional, social, or other standing) of an expert the more difficult the access for researchers. I anticipated also that the availability of subject matter experts might be constrained by restrictions associated with group-specific language (specialized terminology) as well as sensitivity (or dislike) about being a participant in research. However, I am connected to several subject matter experts in metagovernance, complexity leadership, and/or sense-making via Academia.edu and ResearchGate—two academic social networks—as well as LinkedIn—a social network for professionals to connect, share, and learn; I privileged these contacts for recruitment. I ran a pilot study ahead of the expert interview. Specifically, the pilot study enjoined three scholars and practitioners to (a) consider the definitions of key

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terms and advise where meaning was not sufficiently clear, and (b) judge how well each of the 12 interview questions contributed to addressing the research.

Validity Maxwell (2013) observed that no social construction of the world can claim absolute truth because all understanding is subjective. Because no social construction equates with the institutionalization of perceived reality, Maxwell (2013) deemed it essential to connect different perspectives and divergent mental models so one might expand and deepen, not confirm, understanding. To verify the findings, particularly themes, that emerged from qualitative coding of the interview transcripts, I revisited the notes I took toward member checking (Birt et al., 2016). Further, I contrasted and compared interview data with other sources and collected relevant artifacts (e.g., more recent publications and other works of the subject matter experts) throughout this study. To deal with reactivity, I made clear to each subject matter expert, before each expert interview, that I was keen on learning about their views and experiences. To deal with any eventuality of bias when drafting the summaries of subject matter expert responses to the 12 interview questions, I exercised reflection and reflexivity: this involved returning to experience, attending to feelings, and evaluating experience (Britton & Serrat, 2013). The purpose of this study being to close the gap in knowledge of what contextspecific modes of leadership can help manage organizations of the future, I aspired to ensure credibility by means of the three-tiered literature review; the quality of the research design; as well as the review by the subject matter experts of the essential points that each had submitted in response to the 12 interview questions, this to verify not only the data but my interpretation of it (Calabrese, 2006). The leadership management framework aims to improve organizational relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, n.d.): it is applicable to all organizational forms and intended to encourage fit and fitness where there is interest as a result of its adoption. Matters of trustworthiness—meaning credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability—were tested by responses to the 12 interview questions; they would need to be proved or disproved by subsequent quantitative research should the leadership management framework be the object of uptake, in which case interested parties could develop enterprise-wide leadership management systems and subsystems to operationalize the said framework.

Instrumentation

53

Instrumentation “Instrumentation refers to the tools or means by which investigators attempt to measure variables or items of interest in the data-collection process [and relates] also to the conditions under which the designated instruments are administered” (Salkind, 2010, p. 607). Flowing from the conceptual framework, research paradigm, and method for this study, expert interviews were the instrument (or device) I used to collect data for this study. In this chapter, the section on procedures listed the forms that expert interviews can take: furthermore, interviews can also be distinguished in terms of the amount of structure that is required (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Interviews vary from highly structured, questionnaire-driven interviews to unstructured, open-ended, conversational formats (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Highly structured interviews are used primarily for surveys, and from preconceived notions and assumptions that respondents share a common vocabulary, do not elicit perspectives or understandings of the world; then again, unstructured interviews are when the researcher does not know enough about a phenomenon to ask relevant questions (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Conversely, semi-structured interviews acknowledge that participants define the world in unique ways and allow the researcher to engage with emerging perspectives and new ideas on a topic. Under this study, this necessitated a mix of research sub-questions and corresponding interview questions, asked flexibly but purposively to elicit deep, rich, individualized, and contextualized data from participants (Brinkmann & Kvale, 2015; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016; Seidman, 2013; Serrat, 2017i). Semi-structured expert interviews lasting about 45–60 min each to minimize fatigue and held via the Zoom video conferencing service were the primary instrument by which the research question was grounded. Ahead of the process of data collection, I made sure that the calibration of the measuring instrument––meaning, the four research sub-questions––did not lead to biased results and so constitute a threat to internal validity: I formulated objective and sequential queries that do not overlap but, together, produce an integrated body of knowledge. Pilot testing confirmed the objectivity and sequentiality of the four research sub-questions and helped refine the 12 interview questions before their finalization. The 12 interview questions were conducted conversationally with one subject matter expert at a time: they were open-ended for maximum latitude and often accompanied by follow-on why or how questions. During the expert interviews, I took notes and wrote down observations but the audio and video recordings made it possible to take a second look at the data. Follow-on expert interviews were not requested. To secure the data and protect the confidentiality of the subject matter experts, the audio and video recordings on my laptop are password-protected. The guidelines of the American Psychological Association are that data must be kept for a minimum of 5 years. Immediately thereafter, all audio and/or video recordings and all links between the data and identifying information about the participants will be destroyed. The subject matter experts were given the right to decline recording but none exercised it.

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Data Processing Each of the transcripts of the expert interviews was reviewed for accuracy and anonymized. Then, summaries of subject matter expert responses to the 12 interview questions were returned to the participants for member checking. When summarizing subject matter expert responses to the 12 interview questions, I did not pronounce on which set of perceptions was right or more true or more real. Subsequent data processing of findings entailed quoting, paraphrasing, identifying concepts and themes, thematic comparison, scientific conceptualization, possible typology establishment, explanation development, and generalizing to wider theory (Serrat, 2021a). A code is “a researcher-generated word or short-phrase that symbolically assigns a summative, salient, essence-capturing, and/or evocative attribute for a portion of language-based of visual data” (Saldaña, 2016, p. 292). Qualitative coding is suited to gaining insight from unstructured data; it helped make patterns visible and understandable from the expert interviews (Bazeley & Jackson, 2013). At first, I considered using a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software program (i.e., Dedoose, NVivo); eventually, having gained some familiarity with these software programs, I opted out of concern for depth and meaning rather than volume and breadth to code manually using MS Word. I believe that helped me avoid deterministic and somewhat rigid processes that privilege reification and retrieval of data (QSR International, 2021; St John & Johnson, 2000). The most appropriate coding method for this study was the exploratory method, which seeks to investigate underlying sociological, psychological, and cultural constructs (Saldaña, 2016). From among the range of possible exploratory methods, I deemed hypothesis coding most relevant: “Hypothesis coding is appropriate for hypothesis testing, content analysis, and analytic induction of the qualitative data set, particularly the search for rules, causes, and explanations in the data” (Saldaña, 2016, p. 171). Open (or initial), axial, and selective coding was called for (Bazeley & Jackson, 2013; Saldaña, 2016). As explained by Evans (2007), open coding serves “to develop conceptual categories, known as substantive codes,” axial coding serves “to find relationships between conceptual categories, known as theoretical codes,” and selective coding serves “to account for relationships at a higher level of abstraction, known as propositions or core codes” (p. 198). The choice of code is specific to the research material; for open coding under this study, a foundation principle for which was reliance on “emergent, data-driven (inductive) coding choices” (Saldaña, 2016, p. 75), I pilot-tested and adopted in-vivo coding (also known as verbatim coding, literal coding, or natural coding). In-vivo coding gives pride of place to a participant’s words “to encapsulate a broader concept in the data” (Birks & Mills, 2015, p. 179). Unlike narrower, templated concepts that might have been determined beforehand deductively, in-vivo codes most pertinently captured the process-related and interpretative–evaluative knowledge needed to address the research question. I coursed slowly through the interview transcripts and extracted with short sequences of words or declarative quotes what different categories were in the data. All the while, I engaged in memoing, viz., wrote memos to myself about how the categories threw

Assumptions

55

light and how they might construct a theory. Open coding ended when no significant categories arose from the data. Axial coding, the next step, took place when I used the open codes and memos to show in a couple of words how the categories related to one another. Expressly, I sought categories that embodied a core phenomenon (or causal condition, strategy, and consequence). Selective coding, the final step, took place when I etched the storyline about how the theory explicates the process. Throughout data processing, I bore in mind that “[t]he excellence of the research rest in large part on the excellence of the coding” (Strauss, 1987, p. 27). Interviews can lend themselves to content analysis (to identify significant words, paragraphs, or themes); discourse analysis (to identify principal themes and examine the way they are expressed); and relational analysis (to identify vital concepts, much as under content analysis, but also explore relations between concepts) (Seidman, 2013). I expected to conduct a mix of content and relational analyses. In this respect, I looked for similarity, difference, sequencing, and frequency as indicative of patterns that can lead to theory but was mindful also that if one knows the high-priority subjects and the key questions before one starts interviewing then one has de facto already started coding (before data collection). Needless to say, I always listened with an open mind (Serrat, 2021a). I strove to be honest, reliable, valid, and transparent about the coding process—for example by taking notes about the process so I might describe it; I bore in mind also that coding is the process of moving from observation to saturation with intellectual rigor.

Assumptions “Assumptions are so basic that, without them, the research problem itself could not exist,” Leedy and Ormrod (2010, p. 44) averred. Certain assumptions—such that people will continue to organize to secure, say, cultural, economic, political, and social benefits from cooperation—are somewhat out of a researcher’s control. I assumed that rigorous qualitative research can help understand social phenomena. Assuming also that the research design and method for this study is the most appropriate, I trusted that the subject matter experts would be able to answer the four research sub-questions and corresponding 12 interview questions, with each set of responses informing the next, and thereby shed light on what leadership management framework can be articulated (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). A related assumption, alluded to in this chapter in the section on validity where related actions are itemized, was that the pluralized perspectives of the subject matter experts would advance the trustworthiness of inquiries by demonstrating (a) confidence in the veracity of the findings of the subject matter experts in the context in which the expert interviews would be conducted (credibility); (b) the applicability of the findings of the subject matter experts in other contexts or with other respondents (transferability); (c) consistent repeatability of the findings of the subject matter experts if the expert interviews were replicated with similar respondents in a similar context (dependability); and (d) the degree to which the findings of the subject matter experts are a function solely of

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the subject matter experts and conditions of the inquiry and not of my (unconscious) biases, interests, motivations, or perspectives (confirmability) (Guba, 1981). Delineations are characteristics that mark out the boundaries of a study. Delineations are within the researcher’s control and include, say, the choice of a research problem (which implies that other problems, perhaps related, might have been selected but were rejected or screened off), the purpose of this study, the research question, the conceptual framework, and the population one chooses to investigate. All known delineations were itemized in this chapter. This study was to conceptualize and articulate a leadership management framework for metagovernance of hierarchies, markets, and networks in hybrid forms of organizing. The deliverable of this study was thus delineated; conversely, the nature of the deliverable is such that its applicability is not limited to, say, a specific geographic region, a profession, or an organization, as mentioned earlier.

Limitations Limitations are conditions that restrict or constrain a study’s scope, may affect its outcome, but lie outside the researcher’s control (Rossman & Rallis, 2017). Exploratory research has several inherent methodological limitations: the first is that this type of research leans on small sample sizes and that findings do not automatically extend to the population at large; the second is that it provides insight but does not permit definitive conclusions; the third is that the method is flexible but less structured than quantitative research, perhaps leading to tentative results of lesser value to decision-makers; the fourth is that the absence of rigorous standards for data gathering and analysis curtails understanding of what methods might best fit future research (University of Southern California Libraries, 2016). I cannot control for the limitations of exploratory research, that together rein in conclusiveness and generalizability (Stebbins, 2001). The purpose of the present is to remind readers that this study was located in a specific context so they might then make decisions about its usefulness in other settings and, where shared causal mechanisms are present (or partially present), perhaps transfer this study’s findings to other contexts, situations, times, and populations. Clearly, however, even if the results of this study can potentially be applied to a large population of organizations, the topic of this study is not the kind that can rest on quantitative research or even mixed methods. The idea, explained earlier, was to generate or discover a conceptual model shaped by the views of participants; it will be up to subsequent quantitative research to prove or disprove the generalizability of (some of) this study’s findings. That said, past the four methodological constraints listed above, I considered that three real limitations might perturb investigations. The first real limitation related to the difficulty of identifying 15 subject matter experts in metagovernance and complexity leadership who might be willing to take part in interviews; because this

Ethical Assurances

57

could curtail the breadth and depth of this study, I invited snowball sampling. Fortuitously, remote interviewing via video conferencing service eliminates many issues associated with accessing participants who are not proximate to the researcher. The second real limitation pertained to possible disagreement over the definitions of key terms. However, most key terms are technical and were agreed upon. Lesser known and more challenging terminology (e.g., complexity leadership, metagovernance, sense-making) of pivotal importance to this study was tagged to the principal authors with whom the terminology was associated to attribute each operational definition. Furthermore, pilot testing for this study provided the opportunity to revise the definitions of key terms. The third real limitation was that the data collected by means of the expert interviews would represent perceptions, not objective measurements. Notwithstanding, expert opinion is taken to mean a position or view expressed by a person with a high degree of technical, process-related, and interpretative–evaluative knowledge in a particular field, based on the most widely accepted scientific information available, and the downside of that limitation was both expected and revealed to be minimal.

Ethical Assurances Maxwell (2013) reasoned that, notwithstanding their intrinsic value, ethics must be integral to qualitative research. Specifically, because the research design and method for this study involved people, I aimed to abide by the ethical principles and guidelines for the protection of human subjects of research, with adherence to the basic ethical principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical & Behavioral Research, 1979). Toward this, before embarking on any research, I interfaced with The Chicago School of Professional Psychology Institutional Review Board, created an application, and submitted all necessary forms. On April 7, 2022, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology Institutional Review Board deemed that the proposed study met the requirements for exemption under Category (Bogner et al., 2009). The expert interviews were expected to contribute valuable data. Because symmetrical and reciprocal relations generate richer data and make for better social science, my primary ethical obligation was to understand how the subject matter experts might perceive my proposed actions and respond to them (Serrat, 2021a). Therefore, my interactions with subject matter experts were governed by consideration of the following requirements: informed consent, risk/benefit assessment, and the selection of subjects of research, in line with the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (1979) and in keeping with the instructions of The Chicago School of Professional Psychology Institutional Review Board. Informed consent meant that full details of the research procedure,

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including its purpose and anticipated benefits, were shared with prospective interviewees. The consent form is reproduced in Appendix I. To note, what questions prospective participants might have had regarding informed consent were to be addressed and resolved prior to the commencement of the expert interviews; ultimately, none eventuated. Breach of confidentiality was a risk. In view of that, identities were hidden by a descriptor and data has been reported in aggregate form. Moreover, the prospective interviewees were given the opportunity to both raise questions ahead of and during the expert interviews and to withdraw at any time should they wish to. The expert interviews did not involve vulnerable populations or parties who were unable to give informed consent, such as children or people with learning difficulties or disabilities. The interview recordings were deleted immediately after transcription had occurred. All data is protected and will be deleted upon completion of this study.

Summary This chapter reiterated the research question and underscored its rationale, marked out the philosophical and theoretical elements of the research design, and particularized the various components of the methodology for this study. Table 3.1 summarizes the research design and method for this study.

Table 3.1 Summary research design and method for the study Level of decision

Choice

Research question What leadership management framework for sense-making and decision-making can help organizations meet challenges and reap opportunities in simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts? Worldview

Social constructivism

Conceptual framework

Metagovernance, complexity leadership, sense-making

Research method

Grounded theory (constructivist)

Procedure

Expert interviews

Population and sample

15 subject matter experts

Data processing

Qualitative data analysis

Timeline

May 2022–June 2023

References

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References Bazeley, P., & Jackson, K. (2013). Qualitative data analysis with NVivo. Sage. Bogner, A., Littig, B., & Menz, W. (Eds.). (2009). Interviewing experts. Palgrave Macmillan. Birks, M., & Mills, J. (2015). Grounded theory: A practical guide (2nd ed.). Sage. Birt, L., Scott, S., Cavers, D., Campbell, C., & Walter, F. (2016). Member checking: A tool to enhance trustworthiness or merely a nod to validation? Qualitative Health Research, 26(13), 1802–1811. Brinkmann, S., & Kvale, S. (2015). InterViews: Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing (3rd ed.). Sage. Britton, B., & Serrat, O. (2013). Reflective practice [PowerPoint slides]. Asian Development Bank. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275953248_Reflective_Practice Calabrese, R. (2006). The elements of an effective dissertation and thesis: A step-by-step guide to getting it right the first time. Rowan & Littlefield Education. Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Sage. Creswell, J. (2013). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (3rd ed.) Sage. Crotty, M. (1998). The foundations of social research: Meaning and perspective in the research process. Sage. Döringer, S. (2020). “The problem-centred expert interview”. Combining qualitative interviewing approaches for investigating implicit expert knowledge. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 24(4), 1–14. Dworkin, S. (2012). Sample size policy for qualitative studies using in-depth interviews. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 41, 1319–1320. Evans, J. (2007). Your psychology project: The essential guide. Sage. Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Adeline. Goldman, A. (2011). Experts: Which ones should you trust? In A. Goldman & D. Whitcomb (Eds.), Social epistemology: Essential readings (pp. 109–133). Oxford University Press. Griffin, D., & Stacey, R. (Eds.). (2005). Complexity and the experience of leading organizations. Routledge. Guba, E. (1981). Criteria for assessing the trustworthiness of naturalistic inquiries. Educational Communication and Technology, 29(2), 75–91. Kukla, A. (2010). Social constructivism and the philosophy of science. Routledge. Leedy, P., & Ormrod, J. (2010). Practical research: Planning and design (9th ed.). Merrill. Maxwell, J. (2013). Qualitative research design: An interactive approach (3rd ed.). Applied Social Research Methods Series No. 41. Sage. Merriam, S., & Tisdell, E. (2016). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation. Jossey-Bass. Meuser, M., & Nagel, U. (2009). The expert interview and changes in knowledge production. In A. Bogner, B. Littig, & W. Menz (Eds.), Interviewing experts (pp. 17–42). Palgrave Macmillan. Mikuska, E. (2014). The importance of piloting or pretesting semi-structured interviews and narratives. In SAGE Research Methods Cases Part 2. Sage. National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. (1979). The Belmont report: Ethical principles and guidelines for the protection of human subjects of research. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Patton, M. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods. Sage. QSR International. (2021). Technology that empowers real world change. https://www.qsrinternati onal.com/ Rosenberg, A. (2012). Philosophy of social science (4th ed.). Westview Press. Rossman, G., & Rallis, S. (2017). An introduction to qualitative research: Learning in the field (4th ed.). Sage.

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Sadler, G., Lee, H., Lim, R., & Fullerton, J. (2010). Recruiting hard-to-reach United States population sub-groups via adaptations of snowball sampling strategy. Nursing & Health Sciences, 12(3), 369–374. Saldaña, J. (2016). The coding manual for qualitative researchers (3rd ed.). Sage. Salkind, N. (Ed.). (2010). Encyclopedia of research design. Sage. Schwandt, T. (2007). The SAGE dictionary of qualitative inquiry (3rd ed.). Sage. Seidman, I. (2013). Interviewing as qualitative research: A guide for researchers in education and the social sciences. Sage. Serrat, O. (2017i). Asking effective questions. In Knowledge solutions: Tools, methods, and approaches to drive organizational performance (pp. 889–895). Springer. Serrat, O. (2021a). Research concept paper for leading organizations of the future. In Leading solutions: Essays in business psychology (pp. 287–292). Springer. Serrat, O. (2021c). Book analysis of interviewing as qualitative research (Seidman, 2013). In: Leading solutions: Essays in business psychology (pp. 281–286). Springer. Shank, G. (2006). Qualitative research: A personal skills approach (2nd ed.). Pearson. St John, W., & Johnson, P. (2000). The pros and cons of data analysis software for qualitative research. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 32(4), 393–397. Stebbins, R. (2001). Exploratory research in the social sciences. Sage. Strauss, A. (1987). Qualitative analysis for social scientists. Cambridge University Press. 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. University of Southern California Libraries. (2016). Organizing your social sciences research paper. https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide van Rijnsoever, F. (2017). (I can’t get no) saturation: A simulation and guidelines for sample sizes in qualitative research. Plos One, 12(7), 1–17. Vasileiou, K., Barnett, J., Thorpe, S., & Young, T. (2018). Characterizing and justifying sample size sufficiency in interview-based studies: Systematic analysis of qualitative health research over a 15-year period. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 18, 1–18. Wheatley, M. (1994). Leadership and the new science: Learning about organization from an orderly universe. Berrett-Koehler. Wheatley, M. (2006). Leadership and the new science: Discovering order in a chaotic world. Berrett-Koehler.

Chapter 4

Findings

Pilot Testing In January–February 2022, two scholars and one practitioner were invited to suggest ways to (a) revise the definitions of key terms should there be lack of clarity about— or even disagreement over—their meaning; (b) modify, remove, or add to the 12 interview questions to enhance validity and the accomplishment of desired results; and (c) improve the procedures for the expert interviews. The key terms were judged relevant and well-formulated. Nonetheless, in half a dozen instances (i.e., artificial intelligence, Big Data, governance, metagovernance, market, organization), I added one or two formulations that also spoke the language of the study. All three scholars and practitioners recommended that the definitions of key terms should be shared with participants ahead of the expert interviews so they might be fully conversant and clarify as needed their personal interpretations; I confirmed that this would indeed underpin the procedure. Acting on suggestions from the small-scale preliminary test, I reversed the order of the first two interview questions to better set the scene and, here and there, modified the language so the questions might be made more effective (Serrat, 2017i). Echoing the reaction of one reader during dissertation proposal defense, two of the three scholars and practitioners made the point that the erstwhile reference to a leadership management system might more appropriately be replaced by leadership management framework: the rationale, with which I concurred, was that if there is uptake interested parties would presumably take it upon themselves to operationalize the said framework with desired outputs (or key results) to be achieved based on specific inputs. The three scholars and practitioners made no suggestions to improve the procedures for the expert interviews but the importance of including a few senior executives from the private sector, to the extent possible, was underscored.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 O. Serrat, Leading Organizations of the Future, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8199-1_4

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Setting The geographical spread of the interview sample was wide—with the subject matter experts joining the expert interviews from Europe, North America, and the Pacific. Accordingly, all expert interviews were held via a video conferencing service, viz., Zoom. The date and time of each expert interview were decided by the interviewees. The expert interviews were conducted in comfortable and quiet spaces, apparently in the privacy of the interviewees’ home setting. The internet connections were stable. Not counting introductory and closing remarks, the expert interviews lasted 60 min on average, in the upper range of what I had planned (e.g., 45–60 min). The longest lasted 97 min and the shortest took 34 min.

Demographics To collect the data for this study, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 subject matter experts across different industries and disciplines in Europe (two subject matter experts, of whom one woman and one man) as well as North America and the Pacific (10 subject matter experts, of whom four women and six men). I am connected to several subject matter experts in metagovernance, complexity leadership, and/or sense-making via Academia.edu, LinkedIn, and ResearchGate and privileged these contacts. Characteristically, I initiated contact with subject matter experts with short text via LinkedIn and, subject to expressions of interest in attending the expert interviews, followed up with electronic mail detailing the study, to which I attached the definitions of key terms, the 12 interview questions, and the informed consent form. Between May 2022 and September 2022, I asked 35 subject matter experts to participate in the study: 12 subject matter experts replied in the affirmative, seven declined, three expressed initial interest but never committed themselves, and 13 did not respond. Snowball sampling led to the identification of seven (or about 58%) of the 12 subject matter experts I eventually interviewed. Consonant with Dworkin (2012), similar ideas, opinions, patterns, and themes began to appear after about five interviews, suggesting early saturation. Even so, I continued to seek, arrange, and conduct expert interviews to make certain that saturation would be based on the widest possible range of data in the circumstances (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Compared with sense-making, the relative paucity of dedicated expertise in metagovernance and, to a lesser extent, of dedicated expertise in complexity leadership was confirmed; however, most of the interviewees had working knowledge of the other two areas of interest and held their ground expertly. During the interviews, I shared what few disciplinary clarifications were needed based on the definitions of key terms, shared ahead of the expert interviews. The subject matter experts were selected in accordance with the criteria itemized in Chap. 3 as well as their willingness and availability to participate in this study. The only exclusion criterion applied to individuals of less than 21 years of age but the

Results

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requirement for authority associated with high professional or scholastic achievement meant that the subject matter experts were all, with one possible exception, Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964); all had risen to senior positions in academia and the private sector on account of highly specialized knowledge and accomplishments in their specific areas. An even mix of scholars and practitioners was arrived at, which was less difficult to achieve than I had presumed because many subject matter experts double up on occupations across academia and the private sector. Gender balance was not a research concern, nor was it flagged by The Chicago School of Professional Psychology Institutional Review Board, but I endeavored to accomplish that: the sample is characterized by approximately equal representation (i.e., 5 women to 7 men), meaning that 42% of the subject matter experts were women and 58% were men. Five (or about 42%) of the subject matter experts were scholars, five (or about 42%) were scholar–practitioners, and two (or about 16%) were practitioners. Eleven of the 12 subject matter experts (or about 92%) held a doctorate. Table 4.1 individualizes selected demographic characteristics of the sample, taking care to protect the confidentiality of the subject matter experts.

Results Key Observations and Takeaways Figure 4.1 reveals that four overarching categories showed through the expert interviews: (a) the upshot of VUCA (cf. SQ1); (b) metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making for VUCA (cf. SQ2); (c) the primacy of context in VUCA (cf. SQ3); and (d) a leadership management framework for VUCA (cf. SQ4). To evidence the expert opinion that surfaced the four overarching categories, I extracted illustrative, succinct, and representative quotes from the interview transcripts (Creswell, 2013): the quotes convey complex understandings, illuminate experience, point up ideas, and reveal relationships (Richardson, 1990). Figure 4.2 represents across SQ1–SQ4 the four overarching categories and 22 core themes that arose in response to IQ1–IQ12. Appendix J collates all open, axial, and selective coding used to analyze the qualitative data in the interview transcripts.

The Upshot of VUCA The subject matter experts were asked three interview questions to surface rich description and help address SQ1: • IQ1. In what circumstances are traditional (twentieth century) styles of leadership (e.g., autocratic, charismatic, laissez-faire, situational, transactional, transformational) continuingly relevant in the 21st century?

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Table 4.1 Demographic characteristics of the sample population Subject matter expert

Occupation

Educational Achievement

Gender

Expert No. 1 (Sense-making)

Scholar and practitioner

Ph.D.

Female

Areas of expertise include knowledge strategy, knowledge transfer, and organizational networks Expert No. 2 (Sense-making)

Scholar and practitioner

Ph.D.

Male

Areas of expertise include knowledge management, organizational psychology, social psychology Expert No. 3 (Sense-making)

Scholar and practitioner

Ph.D.

Female

Areas of expertise include knowledge management, knowledge strategy, information and communication technology, social innovation, and social work Expert No. 4 (Metagovernance)

Scholar

Ph.D.

Male

Areas of expertise include collaborative innovation, innovation management, interactive political leadership, network governance, metagovernance, and public sector reform Expert No. 5 (Complexity leadership)

Scholar and practitioner

Ph.D.

Female

Areas of expertise include organizational complexity, organizational development, and organizational leadership Expert No. 6 (Sense-making)

Scholar

Ph.D.

Male

Areas of expertise include collaborative organizations, industrial/organizational psychology, and organizational leadership Expert No. 7 (Complexity leadership)

Scholar

Ph.D.

Female

Areas of expertise include business ethics, complexity leadership, and management Expert No. 8 (Sense-making)

Scholar

Ph.D.

Male

Areas of expertise include management, organizational aesthetics, organizational studies, and reflective practice Expert No. 9 (Sense-making)

Scholar and practitioner

Ph.D.

Male

Areas of expertise include board effectiveness, chief executive officer succession, collaborative action research, digital transformation, the future of organizations, leadership development, organizational change, organizational design, and team dynamics Expert No. 10 (Sense-making)

Scholar

Ph.D.

Female

Areas of expertise include collaborative learning, knowledge management, organizational change, organizational design, organizational effectiveness, professional development, research methodologies, and technology management (continued)

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Table 4.1 (continued) Subject matter expert

Occupation

Educational Achievement

Gender

Expert No. 11 (Sense-making)

Practitioner

MA/M.Sc

Male

Areas of expertise include healthcare innovation and transformation, healthcare and technology, innovation management, networks, organization design, and strategy Expert No. 12 (Complexity leadership)

Practitioner

Ph.D.

Male

Areas of expertise include business intelligence, business strategy, corporate development, go-to-market strategy, product management, software design, software development, solution selling, strategic partnerships, strategy, SaaS (software as a service), and telecommunications Note The areas of expertise listed are reproduced in alphabetical order from the web pages of each subject matter expert

The Primacy of Context in VUCA

The Upshot of VUCA

A Leadership Management Framework for VUCA

Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making for VUCA

Fig. 4.1 Overarching categories in interview transcripts. Note VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. The four overarching categories listed in this figure were elicited by expert opinion in response to IQ1–IQ12

• IQ2. How does hybridization of the three main forms of organizing (i.e., hierarchy, market, network) affect organizational boundaries and the erstwhile, narrowlyfocused relationship between leaders, followers, and context? • IQ3. With the increasing prevalence of flatter organization management structures, why might organizations of the future choose to moderate traditional (20th century) styles of leadership and adopt modes of leadership (i.e., administrative, adaptive, enabling)? The following showcases the key observations and takeaways that the subject matter experts shared in response to IQ1–IQ3: they are grouped, alphabetically, in line with the six core themes that surfaced from the interview transcripts.

66 The Upshot of VUCA (SQ1) • Context— Conditions and Situations • Flat Organizations • Hybrid Forms of Organizing • Modes of Leadership • Styles of Leadership • VUCA

4 Findings Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making for VUCA (SQ2) • Complexity Leadership • Knowledge Management • Metagovernance • Operating Environment • Organizational Governance • Organizational Leadership • Organizational Purpose • Sense-Making • Synergies from Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making

The Primacy of Context in VUCA (SQ3) • Forms of Organizing • Pros and Cons of Modes and Styles of Leadership • The Cynefin Framework

A Leadership Management Framework for VUCA (SQ4) • Fusing Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making • Leadership Management Framework • Leading Organizations of the Future— Principles • Leading Organizations of the Future— Processes and Practices

Fig. 4.2 Overarching categories and core themes in interview transcripts. Note VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity

Context—Conditions and Situations The expert interviews emphasized that context is the magic word. The subject matter experts acknowledged that different contexts summon different speeds of operation but agreed that how to shape-shift in complex situations is the new leadership challenge. “There may be situations that look simple but, these days, the whole world impacts,” Expert No. 6 commented. In fact, “Are there any simple contexts anymore?” Expert No. 6 inquired. And yet, too many organizations think they are doing as well as they can, even as their world is being upended by change. “There is not enough adaptivity for the complexity we are in,” Expert No. 5 asserted, because we are witnessing a lead–lag phenomenon: the rate of change is accelerating but the social system including leadership lags. Unsurprisingly, in today’s world, the average tenure of a chief executive officer is very short, Expert No. 10 said. “Digital technology is making organizations work as open systems,” Expert No. 11 explained. The new traditional pushes heavily on results with adaptation and innovation, Expert No. 7 added. Hence, problem-solving systems must reflect the environment, where they are trying to do the work. “In today’s market environment customer experience is the absolute, most important thing,” Expert No. 12 advised. Elaborating, Expert No. 12 underscored that customer experience is the product of multiple functions that must jive in one motion together: they cannot be out of whack and an organization’s metrics must therefore align with conditions and situations.

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Flat Organizations The consensus among the subject matter experts was that flatter management structures characterized by self-management are indeed a reality and that the market form of organizing does much to define the boundaries of the new age of leadership. In short, as stated by Expert No. 6, knowledge is now more critical than the power hierarchy. “We are moving towards flatter organizations characterized by more self-management and more self-managing teams, but that are also more open […] and constantly working with external parties, which blurs the boundaries between the organization and its environment,” Expert No. 4 made out. Hierarchies slow decision-making, Expert No. 6 charged, whereas networks let things happen quickly. Accordingly, here and there, hierarchies now mean to empower the frontline and create space for self-organizing, Expert No. 4 added: these days, organizations including hierarchies need to convene, facilitate, build trust, mediate, communicate, and ensure progress. Expert No. 4 added that horizontal, distributive, integrative, and facilitative approaches to leadership are needed, with leaders and followers becoming entangled and intertwined as a result. The new, predominant way of working is about people collaborating in particularized areas to develop and implement solutions, Expert No. 9 pointed out. Expert No. 10 agreed: to mix and match people with various orientations and capabilities to changing situations leadership must focus on the lateral, not the vertical; however, lateral connections and interstices are not yet fully in our traditional mental models of leadership. Because the span of control widens as organizations flatten, Expert No. 8 specified, leadership must change to potentially work. But there is more. Notwithstanding their flatter management structures, Expert No. 12 advised, organizations must continuingly face and align with their constituencies; specifically, so they might enhance customer experience, Expert No. 12, argued that flat organizations need to cast themselves as brokerage networks with lead and lag metrics that effectively broker their behavior and deliver results.

Hybrid Forms of Organizing The expert interviews affirmed that organizational linkages to the ecosystem are multiplying dramatically because of globalization and the quickening of information and communication technology: hybridization of the forms of organizing is a response. “Today’s world is by necessity hierarchy, market, and network,” Expert No. 10 declared. All consequential organizations are hybridizing and it is all in play; hybridizing is inherent to the organizing challenges that are faced today. “No one anticipated Uber-type organizations,” Expert No. 6 remarked. We are witnessing a quickening shift from hierarchy to market to network forms of organizing, Expert No. 4 continued, with network-based organizations on the leading edge of creation per Expert No. 9. Hybridization of the forms of organizing is a sign that an organization has recognized the context and means to respond appropriately, Expert No. 2 noted. Hybridization makes eminent sense: “Hybridization creates a whole new

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way to leverage the talent in organizations,” Expert No. 6 elucidated further. Expert No. 8 agreed: temporary teams assembled to execute complex operations have the best record for hybridizing in VUCA environments. Networks are penetrating organizational structures and coming together for shorter periods of time, Expert No. 11 concluded. Even so, the subject matter experts notified that hybridization does away with boundaries and demands new leadership: it requires leaders to lead outside their organization, where they cannot use transactional and transformational leadership. Hierarchy will move from the foreground to the background as market and network forms of organizing become more and more prominent, Expert No. 9 foresaw. But hierarchy is what people are most familiar with, and Expert No. 9 charged that human resource divisions have long been roadblocks to innovative organizational designs. So, how does one prepare leaders to lead in hybridized forms? “Hybridization changes what the tasks of leadership are,” Expert No. 8 affirmed. For one, hybridization of the forms of organizing requires leadership to be very adaptive to different contexts, Expert No. 3 intoned.

Modes of Leadership The expert interviews established that contexts demand speed or invite exploration, depending on which interaction can defer to hierarchy or vice-versa. “You discover in the moment,” Expert No. 1 particularized; this intuits that styles and modes of leadership must coexist. Paraphrasing Expert No. 3, even the military has come to realize that hierarchical structures are not the best way to organize in complex situation. Expert No. 4 advised that the function of the public sector is not to deliver authority or standardized services or commodities but to solve problems, and so, administrative leadership must be complemented by adaptive and enabling leadership so that organizations might more proactively orchestrate open innovation. The modern-day tradeoff is between the pressure for performance and the need for ideation, creativity, innovation, and change, Expert No. 7 charged, which has led to leadership being characterized into components. Oppositely, Expert No. 9 made clear, leadership must be understood in its entirety; it must talk adaptive and enabling at the same time it talks administrative or it will design systems at cross-purposes. What is more, leadership can only be collective and transitory when you must reconfigure an organization over and over again, Expert No. 10 shared. “There is, now, a need for modes of leadership in almost any organizational setting,” Expert No. 10 added: organizations have become complex and one needs to have all kinds of leadership. Thus, leadership is no longer something organizations can nurture and develop. It must move more decidedly to self-organizing leadership models to be as agile as organizations need to be. “Distributing leadership takes the hierarchical model and turns it into a process,” Expert No. 12 affirmed, “At times, the leader needs to step back and be led by the people that know better.” “Management is there to enable and facilitate the success of their people and thereby drive the success of the organization,” Expert No. 12

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continued: “Leadership in the new world needs to be a process, not a person. Hiring leaders and giving them the ability to lead delivers organizational agility and market speed.”

Styles of Leadership The expert interviews settled that control works best when things do not change. “For sure, in difficult times, the cost of inaction can be very high and time pressure can justify hierarchy,” Expert No. 1 observed. For sure also, “Hierarchy is especially relevant to life-or-death situations, where one wants to minimize the likelihood of mistakes and rely on control,” Expert No. 2 replied. And yet, even if emergencies can warrant top–down decisions, “the traditional styles of leadership associated with hierarchy are less and less relevant and more and more of a problem in the 21st century,” Expert No. 2 remarked. Different contexts require different information sets: narrowing leadership to particular styles is not complex enough for the world we live in, Expert No. 5 explained. The world is too complex to rely on linear motion, Expert No. 2 also felt. “‘Follow and do as I say’ no longer works very well,” Expert No. 3 continued: traditional styles of leadership maintain the structures of the Industrial Revolution, and yet, even in the military, junior personnel want to be considered in the choices that are made. Both transactional and transformational leadership are tied to hierarchy, Expert No. 4 opined: transactional leadership is about carrots and sticks and transformational leadership is about sermons; but “You can’t really use sticks and carrots and sermons any longer.” To what extent is somebody’s charisma relevant in leadership, Expert No. 5 queried. As said by Expert No. 4, traditional styles of leadership assume a principal–agent relation. In hierarchies, leaders focus inwardly on their organization, resources, goals, targets, and employees. In VUCA environments, this seems simple if not simplistic. Many styles of leadership were based on fairly closed systems and are outdated, Expert No. 11 concurred. “Does leadership happen in a way that leaves data traces in the world?” Expert No. 8 challenged, before suggesting that 20th century scholarship had not looked at the best but at the second-best, those that on the word of Lao Tzu people honor and praise. Compared to industrial engineering, or even finance and accounting, organizational leadership studies have contributed little, Expert No. 8 continued. The subject matter experts suggested that emerging leadership theories such as complexity leadership are more interesting. A leader’s job is not to know everything and to tell people what to do but that is still the predominant conception of what they are all about, Expert No. 9 conceded: but, “When we stop controlling everybody’s time and thought present them with compelling purposes we unleash energy, intellect, capability, and relationships.” Administrative leadership makes organizations run for results and is continuingly relevant, Expert No. 7 noted, but styles of leadership are persona-based and personas do not work in the prevailing environment, on the word of Expert No.

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12. “There is a place for hierarchy […] but you need to flatten out the decisionmaking structure [and prevent] stove piping,” Expert No. 12 recommended. Moving forward, the agenda should not just be about styles: the bigger picture has to do with configuring leadership in organizations, Expert No. 10 concluded.

VUCA All the subject matter experts characterized our world as VUCA. A VUCA environment will not get calm, Expert No. 2 cautioned: VUCA means that things are going to change, say, geopolitically, socially, or technically. Of course, parts of organizations are less susceptible to the influence of change than others, Expert No. 9 recognized; but, in the age of turbulence, single organizational perspectives cannot begin to address the challenges the world faces. The ultimate bloodline is knowledge from collective intelligence and learnings, Expert No. 2 settled.

Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making for VUCA The subject matter experts were asked three interview questions to surface rich description and help address SQ2: • IQ4. What, in relation to organizational governance, organizational leadership, and knowledge management, have been traditional approaches to the accomplishment of organizational purpose? • IQ5. What, individually, do metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sensemaking contribute to the accomplishment of organizational purpose? • IQ6. What combinational synergies might there exist between metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making? The following showcases the key observations and takeaways that the subject matter experts shared in response to IQ4–IQ6. They are grouped, alphabetically, in line with the nine core themes that surfaced from the interview transcripts.

Complexity Leadership The expert interviews particularized the need for complexity leadership. “There’s nothing that’s not complex anymore. That’s going to be synonymous with complexity leadership,” Expert No. 12 proclaimed. “There’s incontrovertible evidence that self-organization is much more effective than top–down leadership,” Expert No. 9 continued. We live in an age of projects, which is how people come together to deal with complexity, Expert No. 2 added. Complexity leadership helps us work

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more interactively at solving problems, Expert No. 4 affirmed. Complexity leadership makes sense and more should be written about it, Expert No. 6 chipped in. Complexity leadership is happening without people being aware of it, Expert No. 7 commented. “We want leaders who continuously question, test, learn, and then update what they think they know,” Expert No. 9 called out. “We [now] operate at a metagovernance level, but it is within complexity leadership theory, which is a lot of knowledge brokering,” Expert No. 12 rejoined.

Knowledge Management The subject matter experts did not enthuse about knowledge management in the past. Referring to Dixon, Expert No. 3 discerned three eras in knowledge management: information management, experience management, and idea management. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, knowledge management had much to do with information systems, Expert No. 3 and Expert No. 8 agreed. There may have been subsequent attempts at experience management and idea management but knowledge management never attracted the attention of board of directors, Expert No. 7 returned. More peremptorily, Expert No. 9 asserted that, to this day, knowledge management systems are nonexistent in most organizations. Knowledge per se is not enough: we need to understand how it comes about, Expert No. 9 settled.

Metagovernance The subject matter experts were galvanized by metagovernance. Metagovernance has come of age; it is the reality of how organizations blend with increasingly interconnected ecosystems, Expert No. 7 heralded. Metagovernance is the governance of governance, Expert No. 4 explained: it creates the arena and shapes the framework for sense-making and complexity leadership to take place, and gives space to people so they might mobilize their ideas, skills, and resources. Thus, Expert No. 4 continued, a metagovernor reflects on the challenge and context and decides how to best combine forms of organizing; it follows that leadership is integral to metagovernance, Expert No. 4 concluded. “Metagovernance is about having frameworks with which to understand things,” Expert No. 2 opined in like fashion: it represents how we work together and make decisions for adaptive responses, and helps agree with what norms and behaviors will maximize the likelihood of success. Metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making allow an organization to be more adaptive, Expert No. 3 continued. Put differently, per Expert No. 5, metagovernance creates conditions, complexity leadership takes up those conditions, and sense-making elucidates the dynamic patterns we cocreate. Metagovernance clarifies organizational purpose at fractal and multiple levels, Expert No. 6 pronounced.

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Operating Environment With one voice, the subject matter experts judged that change pervades the operating environment of the 21st century. “A world in constant motion: that is exactly correct,” Expert No. 12 confirmed. Commenting on the operating environment in the enterprise software industry, for one, Expert No. 12 shared that “It is moving so quickly in software: it is all chaos”; “Platform competition has changed the game.” An organization’s structure must enable it to operate differently in response to change, Expert No. 9 submitted. And, in a world in constant motion, organizational design must change in tune with the context, Expert No. 11 rejoined. Amazon Web Services exemplifies the blurring of organizational boundaries: it provides on-demand cloud computing on a pay-as-you-go basis, Expert No. 7 went on. The subject matter experts found complexity everywhere. Complicated problems can be decomposed: complex problems cannot, Expert No. 8 said, but “We tend to train people for complicated problems.” Old approaches to organizational governance, organizational leadership, and knowledge management included boards of directors, styles of leadership, and codifying knowledge, Expert No. 12 summarized, but cannot accommodate emergence. Emergence builds new context that is best addressed by metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making, Expert No. 10 volunteered. Indeed, with metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making, organizations can build context, Expert No. 10 advised. Ideas that bubble up drive organizational success in the new environment; therein lies the individual role of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making in the new operating environment, Expert No. 12 concluded.

Organizational Governance The subject matter experts accurately located organizational governance approaches in time. “Most organizations and leaders understand the importance of governance: that was not the case 20 years ago,” Expert No. 2 professed. Even so, old governance models need to be updated for flexibility and adaptability in response to constant change, Expert No. 2 clarified, before adding that governance of the formalized and prescriptive kind cannot work in a world of change. Governance used to be static. From guide rails, it is now about organizational density, Expert No. 3 reckoned. Too many hierarchies still say to frontline personnel: “You both have to abide by the rules and look at your performance,” Expert No. 4 verbalized. In contrast, Expert No. 11 referred to Silicon Valley, where governance structures are being developed at lower levels of the organization and wrapped around markets and products: these decentralized governance models receive information from the environment and constantly readjust in response.

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Organizational Leadership Much as they did for organizational governance, the subject matter experts cast retrospective looks at organizational leadership approaches. Leadership was once synonymous with strategy, Expert No. 7 said. But, in a VUCA world the last thing one wants are leaders who are convinced they know exactly what to do, Expert No. 9 pronounced: “Between the really smart board and the hero leader, what could possibly go wrong?” Continuing, Expert No. 9 wondered how much of a leader’s agenda is spent on understanding the world rather than day-to-day stuff, before suggesting that executives need to spend at least 10% of their time thinking five years out. And yet, individual, power-driven, advancement-driven mentalities feeding off vested interests among those in positions of power often work against change, Expert No. 9 pointed out. To move forward, Expert No. 11 intimated that organizational leadership should be recast as the ability to recognize, predict, allocate, and adjust.

Organizational Purpose The expert interviews provided fertile ground for observations regarding organizational purpose. For sure, intentionality, alignment, and coherence must underpin any organizational arrangement, Expert No. 1 stressed. But, the VUCA world puts the old certainties to the test: nowadays, an organization’s purpose can no longer be decreed hierarchically, Expert No. 10 recognized. “What we see is the collapsing of the capability to have a common purpose,” Expert No. 10 added before querying who determines an organization’s purpose these days. Expert No. 7 agreed that organizational purpose has become harder to define. As said by Expert No. 3, for example, people no longer look at an organization’s vision, mission, goals, etc.; instead, they look at its value statement. And, employees too now expect much more of an organization. “Your organization is your people: it is a very deep sentiment,” Expert No. 3 continued. Expert No. 4 advanced that we are witnessing an organizational revolution within traditional hierarchies; away from the principal–agent model, hierarchies are increasingly concerned with stewardship theory. One important reason why it is becoming harder to define organizational purpose, according to Expert No. 5, is that much of it is now emergent. Therefore, on the advice of Expert No. 6, we must consider how strategic thinking, systems thinking, and design thinking can help clarify organizational purpose, which on the word of Expert No. 10 means that organizations may need to form around flow, not just purpose. Successful companies such as Patagonia determine organizational purpose collectively by connecting the various parts of their lateral world, Expert No. 10 clarified. So, what are the implications for leadership? The challenge of leadership is to create a population of people who agree to a way of determining purpose, Expert No. 10 intimated. Hitherto, we have structured organizations in terms of how we choose to think about leadership and then narrowed our choices of ideas and behaviors, Expert No. 5 said. Conversely, the Teal organization is characterized by self-management, wholeness, and a deeper sense of purpose, Expert No. 4 noted.

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Sense-Making The subject matter experts were energized by sense-making. Organizations need more independent and objective ways of making sense of what they have learned and what is happening in the world, Expert No. 9 pronounced. Expert No. 7 recalled that old-school sense-making was the prerogative of a higher-up individual who would drill it down through. However, context-independent rules for organizing and managing have become quite problematic, Expert No. 8 acknowledged, while Expert No. 9 argued we cannot rely on our interpretation of experience to be an accurate representation of how the world works. “We should be cautious about having something to say on really complex, tricky things without some real depth of thought,” Expert No. 8 pitched in. That, Expert No. 2 declared, is because people can no longer make sense of our rapidly changing world; inability to make sense leads to frustration, anxiety, and failure. Therefore, sense-making should not be something that takes place at the top of an organization, Expert No. 4 advised: people must be involved at all levels. Because sense-making is affected by the templates we create, Expert No. 6 asked how we might do a better job of it. Organizations must build space and practices for looking at things, Expert No. 1 urged: sense-making must ladder up into an organization’s intent; it can be established as a norm but hinges on psychological safety; and, even if comes from individuals who put themselves out there, it best fostered by rules of engagement. All the same, the subject matter experts accepted that there may still be a need for top–down sense-making depending on pressure or the need to move quickly.

Synergies from Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making The subject matter experts discerned inherent synergies between metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making. Expert No. 10 observed that metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making were conceptualized separately and made the case that they need to be superimposed; Expert No. 7 likewise stressed there is no question that combinational synergies exist. Specifically, Expert No. 3 recognized that the three lenses enable organizations to close the value–action gap and deliver impact; Expert No. 5 saw that they help notice, interpret, and respond; Expert No. 7 judged that they have to do with the intensification of joint processes; Expert No. 10 claimed they are functionally important attributes of a framework to determine and accomplish organizational purpose; and Expert No. 12 made out that they equate with recognition, choice, and alignment, respectively, and that synergies are therefore inherent. Expert No. 9 advised that concern with metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making is strongest in the high-tech industries.

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The Primacy of Context in VUCA The subject matter experts were asked three interview questions to surface rich description and help address SQ3: • IQ7. What dimensions of context (i.e., known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns, unknowns and unknowables) does a world in constant motion invite closer attention to? • IQ8. How might the characteristics of simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts suggest what forms of organizing could be adopted? • IQ9. Contingent on context, what are the comparative advantages and disadvantages of modes and styles of leadership on sense-making and decision-making? The following showcases the key observations and takeaways that the subject matter experts shared in response to IQ7–IQ9: they are grouped, alphabetically, in line with the three core themes that surfaced from the interview transcripts.

Forms of Organizing The expert interviews upheld that context should suggest what forms of organizing should be adopted. Straightforwardly, Expert No. 1 said that we can be smarter together. Still, as said by Expert No. 2, forms of organizing require technical, social, or global capability depending on context. All the while, however, “The complex world pushes us into needing to grasp the whole more than the individual parts,” Expert No. 8 intimated. “If the world is getting more complex, we need to differentiate organizations to match the complexity,” Expert No. 9 said, because “What is actually coming down the hierarchy in a complex world is [but] a fractal image of the whole,” as Expert No. 8, recognized. Hierarchies must push decision-making capability downward, Expert No. 11 averred, in consonance with Expert No. 10’s argument that organizing contingent on context hinges on agility; this intuits more lateral, more dynamism, and less commitment to staticity. Enter metagovernance, that Expert No. 9 vouched allows people to come together, share knowledge, and make decisions based on that. “We are going to move from a structured hierarchy to a reconfigurable network model,” Expert No. 11 foresaw. As said by Expert No. 12, flat decision-making, leadership as a process, and pulling in people who really know what is going on delivers blockbuster products.

Pros and Cons of Modes and Styles of Leadership The expert interviews brought out clear-cut takes on the pros and cons of modes and styles of leadership. “I do not think that styles of leadership are useful in addressing the problems that organizations and organizing initiatives face in today’s world,” Expert No. 10 stated, to which Expert No. 12 added that “Persona-based leadership is

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entirely constraining.” To be successful, organizations can no longer rely on controloriented management, Expert No. 2 concurred. Leadership is the responsibility of all, not just leaders, Expert No. 3 explained, and so inclusive styles of leadership procure more intelligence and promote enjoyment, willingness, and self-development, on the word of Expert No. 1. For sure, Expert No. 1 conceded, a leadership style may be more declarative where the expectation and the required skill set are limited. “Administrative leadership clearly has some advantages in a simple world: the better you are it the more efficient you are going to be,” Expert No. 8 concurred. But, styles of leadership that allow and value the hearing of other voices more helpful than those that concentrate authority, Expert No. 5 confirmed. In unison with Expert No. 7, the subject matter experts agreed that irrespective of context, decisions still need to be made: but, the modes and styles in which they are made must be adaptive. Leadership is the ultimate driver but it must adapt to different situations, Expert No. 2 underscored. Vitally, “Leadership happens when people come to conclusions about things through conversation,” Expert No. 3 continued. That said, people do not engage in sense-making together in hierarchies, Expert No. 3 recognized, and so “We need to know how to educate decisions.” Moving forward, all the subject matter experts accepted that, as expressed by Expert No. 4, the type of problem should define the mode of governance and the type of organization one wants to build. Toward this, per Expert No. 6, we must value the qualitative as much as the quantitative: conceiving organizations as flows (e.g., energy, information, people, raw materials) helps determine appropriate modes and styles of leadership depending on context, Expert No. 6 continued. Expanding, Expert No. 6 remarked that 21st century modes and styles of leadership should be about the synergies of knowledge as the basis for innovation and execution. Some problems are not decomposable, Expert No. 8 pointed out, and the more one needs to know the harder hierarchy becomes to run. “Anytime we are adaptive we probably also have to be generative to actually propagate that,” Expert No. 8 volunteered. And yet, decision-making cannot just be pushed down: information, knowledge, skills, and reward structures must be pushed down too, Expert No. 11 cautioned. “The same leader should not be in power on every decision,” Expert No. 9 recommended: “The more chaotic the world gets, the more we need advanced forms of leadership that do not depend on individuals” and so, “We are being forced into new forms of leadership.” “Modes of leadership allow you to take a configurationally dynamic approach and that styles of leadership really tie you to particular individuals,” Expert No. 10 clarified: “When I look at modes, I immediately go to the aggregate. When I look at styles, I immediately go to the individual level.” Concluding, Expert No. 11 suggested that leaders must now design the ability to reconfigure.

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The Cynefin Framework The subject matter experts indicated that the Cynefin framework can help weave sense-making into the fabric of our world. “Sense-making is a completely optimistic practice,” Expert No. 1 claimed; organizations must learn to better understand unknowns and unknowables. Simple phenomena are generally linear and even networks can find reason to adopt simple hierarchical processes, Expert No. 1 acknowledged: for instance, organizations have “copy exactly” modes when there is a safety concern or lack of variability in the process; lack of variability can also be a precondition for safety. In complex environments, however, one needs to work within the realms of probability. Complex problems demand that organizations invest in sense-making to find ways to absorb the risk of failure, Expert No. 1 reckoned. We can plan for known unknowns, Expert No. 2 rejoined, but the threat we worry about are the unknown unknowns, and so, we need mindsets that can anticipate the unknown unknowns and the unknowables; a world in constant motion puts a premium on creative and critical thinking and on conversations that help us understand. Expert No. 3 agreed: organizations obsess over known knowns but a world in constant motion unleashes unknown unknowns; simple contexts only require a decision to be made but complicated or complex contexts summon a wider variety of thoughts. “The world feels very out of control,” Expert No. 3 continued: faced with unknown unknowns, people make up known knowns to invent context; and so, we have got to become more comfortable with discerning complex and sometimes even chaotic contexts. “Understanding the context ought to suggest modes of organizing that should help make better decisions, together,” Expert No. 3 concluded. Echoing the general opinion of the subject matter experts, Expert No. 4 stated that we now live in a turbulent world and that there is no stability. The modern challenge is about how to deal with turbulence, Expert No. 4 specified, because in a turbulent environment there are only “good-enough” solutions that occasion tradeoffs in terms of societal, political, and administrative goals. “‘Robust’ solutions emerge from ‘goodenough’ solutions that have been kept open to learning and constantly adapted,” Expert No. 4 explained: “[They] help organizations bounce forward to a new state.” Chiming in, Expert No. 5 signified that our choices are more than ever conditioned by context, social norms, behavioral norms, physical limitations, etc., but that we can still push boundaries and make decisions. A world in constant motion assuredly invites closer attention to unknown unknowns, Expert No. 5 continued. Looking ahead, Expert No. 6 explained that the Cynefin framework characterizes increasing degrees of agent interdependence and interrelatedness, and that awareness of context determines the meaning one derives and drives sense-making. “We don’t know what we don’t know and that is really dangerous,” Expert No. 6 cautioned, and approaches to leadership must adapt to context. To particularize the sense-making construct of the Cynefin framework, Expert No. 7 remarked that, using slightly different terminology, Boisot and McKelvey (2011) had identified three regimes: chaos, complexity, and order. In their parlance, chaos might be represented as dots, complexity as dots connected to some lines, and order as interconnected lines. In any case, no longer could people presuppose the existence of simple environments, the subject matter

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experts warned: “Complexity is rich interconnectivity,” Expert No. 7, rationalized: “We have more complexity now because we have a greater amount of interconnectivity.” Some people experience complexity as chaos because they are not prepared, Expert No. 7, explained: “It takes complexity to beat complexity.” “The big question is always about unknown unknowns,” Expert No. 8 restated: “In a complex world we should perhaps be learning more from the arts.” “We know there are unknown unknowns and unknowable unknowns […] [but] believe we already have the answers we need for the most part,” Expert No. 9 admitted: we focus on known knowns 90% of the time; the rest of the time, we discover as we go; and so, we must increasingly question known knowns. All the same, “[t]he real potential for growth, for effectiveness, for contribution to the world, for societal change, is in leaning into the unknowns and the unknowables,” Expert No. 9 suggested. “It is obvious that unknown unknowns are more prevalent,” Expert No. 10 recapitulated, before making the point that in a complex system we do not know what individual agents will do that may change that system. “Most of [the operating environment] is unknown,” Expert No. 12 echoed. That said, Expert No. 12 emphasized that context suggests what form of organizing should be adopted: a simple context can mean organizing a team; a complex context can mean organizing a market motion. To boot, machine learning and artificial intelligence now enable us to deal with unknowns and unknowables, Expert No. 11 ventured: with machine learning and artificial intelligence, decision-makers can make more sophisticated sense of context. Paradoxically, as said by Expert No. 7, the edge of chaos calls for bureaucratic command and control; initially, so one might be able to respond. The challenge is that one does not want to stay there.

A Leadership Management Framework for VUCA The subject matter experts were asked three interview questions to surface rich description and help address SQ4: • IQ10. From the foregoing, what grounds might there be to fuse the lenses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making for organizational performance? • IQ11. How might a leadership management framework for sense-making and decision-making help organizations meet challenges and reap opportunities in simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts? • IQ12. What might be principles for selecting and processes and practices for managing modes of leadership for metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing? The following showcases the key observations and takeaways that the subject matter experts shared in response to IQ10–IQ12: they are grouped, alphabetically, in line with the four core themes that surfaced from the interview transcripts.

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Fusing Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making The subject matter experts grasped the rationale for fusing metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making in support of organizational performance. Lucidly, Expert No. 1 made out that different situations, viz., simple, complicated, complex, or chaotic, summon requisite structures and scales in organizations, for instance at conversation, team, and network levels, to be enables by requisite forms of organizing. Therefore, Expert No. 1 continued, a logic model should help frame metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making for, say, every minute or once a day or under certain conditions, leading in turn choices around organizing. With vision, Expert No. 1 figured out the need to instrument complexity so one might say, “It’s this kind of unknown and unknowable and if this kind of complexity presents itself, then this is the kind of sense-making you need to do, and then you ….” Metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making is the only way to deliver the solutions needed to be successful, Expert No. 2 declared. If you want your organization to attract great talent and perform well you will fuse the lenses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making, Expert No. 3 rejoined: one should consider stacking the three lenses on top of one another to give organizations and their leaders an advantage in a future that is increasingly complex and calls for adaptive and agile organizations. Metagovernance makes us think about forms of organizing, complexity leadership makes us think about adapting, and sense-making gives meaning to our collective experiences, Expert No. 5 specified. Metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making leverage one another, Expert No. 6 said. Referring to Fig. 2 in Chap. 1, Expert No. 6 imparted that where metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making come together enables a real focus: each lens assuredly contributes something to organizational effectiveness but it is in combination that they work best. Metagovernance must replace corporate board, complexity leadership fits the prevailing ecosystems, and sense-making is core to all this, Expert No. 7 went on. On their own, metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making do not quite address everything we need, Expert No. 8 determined: each lens is lacking in some way and that would be the biggest ground for fusing them. “We have to change the way we govern nations; we have to change the way we interact with society; and we have to change the way we lead our organizations,” Expert No. 9 generalized in support: we must quickly learn to fuse the lenses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making, and fuse them well, or we will not address the plethora of economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal, and technological problems facing us. There is—as yet—no Planet B, Expert No. 9 made clear. “Complexity leadership and metagovernance are inherently compatible. And, sense-making is the inherent capability that any part of a system must have if it is going to be able to operate to accomplish any performance,” Expert No. 10 emphasized. Everything considered, “The metagovernance of picking modes and styles of leadership comes from the task that needs to be done,” Expert No. 10 affirmed. Fusing

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the lenses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making has everything to do with organizational performance, Expert No. 11 declared: learning at a faster rate is what changes organizational performance. In a word, “There needs to be that fusion,” Expert No. 12 said in closing, so we might evolve methodology for organizational performance that requisitely matches the characteristics of contexts.

Leadership Management Framework The expert interviews surfaced a desire for a leadership management framework for sense-making and decision-making to help organizations meet challenges and reap opportunities in simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts. Superimposing metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making, Expert No. 1 had speculated in response to IQ10 that “It would be nice to be able to say: ‘It’s this kind of unknown and unknowable and if this kind of he complexity presents itself this is the kind of sense-making you need to do and then you …’”. Instrumenting complexity would serve organizations; even so, Expert No. 1 continued, we should put a little “l” on the word leadership because leadership in times of unknowns and unknowables, for example, should be distributed in mode and style, which implies it should also be adaptive and enabling. Traditional approaches based on hierarchy and administrative leadership work effectively in simple environments, Expert No. 2 acknowledged. However, Expert No. 2 underscored that complex environments demand social intelligence; and, social intelligence is best advanced by market and network forms of organizing in association with adaptive and enabling modes of leadership. We need governance systems that recognize the human element as much as, if not more than, the technology and the process, Expert No. 2 continued: the capability of empathy, adaptive thinking, and critical thinking is more important than ever before. A leadership management framework is very metagovernance, Expert No. 3 made out: instead of saying “Here’s the framework,” it says “Here’s the framework for making your own framework around these lenses.” A leadership management framework fusing metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making delivers the advantages of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing, Expert No. 5 appreciated: an organization ought not mechanically want to be—say—a hierarchy or a network; it would want the advantages that both forms of organizing deliver. How sense-making and decision-making happen is vital. A framework that helps consider alternatives (e.g., top–down, emergence) is of the essence, Expert No. 7 intoned. Moving from simple to complicated only requires a bigger tool bag; the big shift is from complicated to complex, which calls for “second-order” or “meta” leadership, Expert No. 8 added in support: “There might need to be some sort of stage theory about organizational development in relation to the ability to deal with complexity”; action logics that are framed by consideration of situations, viz., simple, complicated, complex, or chaotic, suggest a path for organizations. Organizations need a metagovernance process to constantly look at what parts of the organization must be rethought and redirected, Expert No. 9 chimed in. We must create models of organizing that are compelling in terms of outcomes

Results

Principles for Leading Organizations of the Future

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• Adapt where you are most exposed to risk and least capable of responding to threats • Be more flexible than your environment • Blend intentionality, alignment, and coherence right • Buoy up empathy, logical skills, and personal and situational awareness • Celebrate value creation • Clarify organizational purpose • Follow the fear • Involve stakeholders • Look for disconfirming data • Pay attention to context • Promote culture, global collaboration, knowledge, learning, stories, and teaming • Push capability, information, knowledge, and rewards to where value is created • Reconfigure for minimal critical specs • Recruit or train people with complexity mindsets • Stimulate conversational leadership, radical accountability, radical candor, and radical self-compassion • Treat organizational structures as way stations on the path to accomplishing dynamic tasks

Fig. 4.3 Principles for leading organizations of the future. Note The principles listed in this figure were elicited by IQ12: a few are reproduced verbatim or near-verbatim; the others paraphrase closely related insights of the subject matter experts. One subject matter expert pointed to servant leadership: however, servant leadership is more commonly thought about and practiced as a leadership style that rests on character values (Spears, 2010)

for stakeholders, Expert No. 10 professed, to be designed from the perspective of ecosystem governance. “Sense-making and decision-making are the key capabilities in making an organization adaptable,” Expert No. 11 stated in support of the need for a leadership management framework.

Leading Organizations of the Future—Principles Figure 4.3 showcases in alphabetical order the 16 principles that the subject matter experts volunteered for metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing.

Leading Organizations of the Future—Processes and Practices IQ12 invited the subject matter experts to volunteer principles for selecting and processes and practices for managing modes of leadership for metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing but they concentrated on principles. The 12 interview questions were assuredly challenging and the duration of the expert interviews was unavoidably short; seeking both principles and associated processes and practices for managing modes of leadership was overambitious and few subject matter experts found time to address the second part of IQ12. Notwithstanding, Expert No. 2 suggested that

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processes and practices to advance principles for metagovernance should elicit appreciation, gratitude, and respect, while Expert No. 12 advanced that “You need people deeper and deeper in the organization to reduce the risk of situationally-determined challenges.”

Member Checks In qualitative research, a member check is a technique that researchers use to help improve the trustworthiness (viz., credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability) of findings. To wit, data or results are returned to a study participant so he or she might review these for accuracy and resonance and remove what personal biases might have swayed the researcher’s interpretation of the data. Based on the interview transcripts, I summarized the key observations and takeaways that each subject matter expert shared. Before finalizing, I submitted the draft of each member check to the corresponding subject matter expert and requested clarification or correction directly in the text. By heightening transparency and accurately representing participants, the member checks promoted the trustworthiness of the data and guaranteed thorough grounding. For good measure, the transcript of each interview was also shared with the corresponding subject matter expert together with the audio and video recordings. Appendix K summarizes the essential points that each subject matter expert submitted in response to the 12 interview questions.

Summary This chapter described how, after pilot testing of the measuring instrument, the study’s qualitative data was gathered and analyzed. Specifically, open and axial coding of interview transcripts surfaced key concepts and core themes that fit neatly in four overarching categories: (a) the upshot of VUCA (cf. SQ1); (b) metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making for VUCA (cf. SQ2); (c) the primacy of context in VUCA (cf. SQ3); and (d) a leadership management framework for VUCA (cf. SQ4). From deep scholarly and practitioner understanding of the topic of this study, shared in especially rich observations and takeaways that answered the research question, the participants unanimously found important and urgent reason to fuse metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making for organizational performance in VUCA environments. Additionally, the participants spelled out an ambitious set of principles to underpin a leadership management framework and guide developmental initiatives in organizations of the future.

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References Boisot, M., & McKelvey, B. (2011). Connectivity, extremes, and adaptation: A power-law perspective of organizational effectiveness. Journal of Management Inquiry, 20(2), 119–133. Creswell, J. (2013). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (3rd ed.) Sage. Dworkin, S. (2012). Sample size policy for qualitative studies using in-depth interviews. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 41, 1319–1320. Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Adeline. Richardson, L. (1990). Writing strategies: Reaching diverse audiences. Sage. Serrat, O. (2017i). Asking effective questions. In: Knowledge solutions: Tools, methods, and approaches to drive organizational performance (pp. 889–895). Springer. Spears, L. (2010). Character and servant leadership: The ten characteristics of effective, caring leaders. The Journal of Virtues & Leadership, 1(1), 25–30.

Chapter 5

Summary, Conclusions, and Recommendations

Interpretation of Findings To establish the general and specific problems that prompted this study, Chap. 2 reviewed the scope, concepts, and state-of-the-art of the literature on metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making. Chap. 2 demonstrated that, despite their distinct contributions to organizational performance, the discourses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making reflect different conceptual interests: without a common, actionable narrative, Chap. 2 made out, these three lenses cannot advise how organizations of the future should be led. Therefore, from the worldview of social constructivism and through the research method of grounded theory (constructivist), this study requested 12 subject matter experts in metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making to consider what leadership management framework for sense-making and decision-making can help organizations meet challenges and reap opportunities in simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts. The expert interviews generated particularly rich data that Chap. 4 collated across four overarching categories. This interpretation of findings reduces the data to identify what lies beneath and to generate knowledge for sharing and use (Rossman & Rallis, 2017; Serrat, 2017f).

The Upshot of VUCA By way of their responses to IQ1–IQ3, the sub-question that the subject matter experts addressed was: What is the relevance of traditional (20th century) styles of leadership in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (cf. SQ1)? The expert interviews generated rich data on (a) context—conditions and situations, (b) flat organizations, (c) hybrid forms of organizing, (d) modes of leadership, (e) styles

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 O. Serrat, Leading Organizations of the Future, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8199-1_5

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of leadership, and (f) VUCA. From open and axial coding of the data, the overarching theme connected to The Upshot of VUCA. The participants to the study highlighted the overriding importance of context in our time: in contrast with most other countries, for example, the People’s Republic of China’s “zero-COVID policy” aimed to eliminate, not mitigate, the spread of COVID-19; it curtailed adaptive space with strict and protracted lockdowns but could not prevent the spread of the Omicron variant. As one, the participants to the study upheld that, in consequence of globalization and the quickening of information and communication technology, organizations must learn to adapt and innovate faster and better in open systems because simple contexts are increasingly hard to find. Relatedly, management structures are flattening, the boundaries between organizations and their environment are blurring, and knowledge trumps the power hierarchy. Shape-shifting is the new leadership challenge. It summons horizontal, distributive, integrative, and facilitative approaches to leadership and collaboration. Relatedly also, hybridization of the forms of organizing responds to the new conditions and situations. Indeed, several participants declared that today’s world is by necessity hierarchy, market, and network because hybridization creates a whole new way to leverage talent in organizations. However, hybridization requires leaders to lead outside their organization, which also changes what the tasks of leadership are. To be clear, there is still a role for administrative leadership that styles have traditionally been associated with, but, such leadership must be complemented by adaptive and enabling leadership in modes of leadership. Pithily, one participant explained that leadership in the new world ought to be a process, not a person. And so, traditional styles of leadership associated with hierarchy are less and less relevant and more and more of a problem in the 21st century, the data suggested. Moving forward, one participant advocated that the agenda should not be about styles but about how leadership might be configuring for VUCA environments. Why? Because single perspectives underpinned by styles of leadership cannot begin to address the challenges that modern-day organizations face. To sum up, the participants questioned the relevance of traditional (20th century) styles of leadership in a VUCA world, admitting however that crises can, for a while at least, summon autocratic, charismatic, situational, or transformational leadership. Two compelling quotes that illustrate this finding are: “You can’t really use sticks and carrots and sermons any longer” (Expert No. 4), and “Leadership in the new world needs to be a process, not a person” (Expert No. 12).

Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making for VUCA By way of their responses to IQ4–IQ6, the sub-question that the subject matter experts addressed was: How might metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sensemaking help to jointly characterize the operating environment for organizations in a

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volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (cf. SQ2)? The expert interviews generated rich data on (a) complexity leadership, (b) knowledge management, (c) metagovernance, (d) operating environment, (e) organizational governance, (f) organizational leadership, (g) organizational purpose, (h) sense-making, and (i) synergies from metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making. From open and axial coding of the data, the overarching theme connected to Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making for VUCA. The participants to the study settled that nothing is simple anymore. The participants reflected that governance used to be static but formalized and prescriptive models cannot work in a world of change, the data affirmed they need to be updated for flexibility and adaptability in response to environmental turbulence. From guide rails, the data implied further, governance is now about organizational density. To wit, one participant explained that governance structures in Silicon Valley are located at lower levels and are wrapped around markets and products to feed information from the environment so organizations might ongoingly readjust. Consistent with the corresponding literature review in Chap. 2, the participants asserted that metagovernance––aka the governance of governance––has come of age. It is the reality of how organizations blend with increasingly interconnected ecosystems (Jessop, 2003; Meuleman, 2008, 2011). In the same vein, the participants noted that leadership was once synonymous with strategy but that this could no longer do. One participant rationalized that the last thing a VUCA world needs are heroic leaders who think they know precisely what to do; instead, organizational leadership should be recast as the ability to recognize, predict, allocate, and continuingly adjust. Our contemporary world summons complexity leadership, the data evidenced, because organizations must now operate in context through process-oriented and interactive approaches. In accord, the participants sought leadership that continuously questions, tests, learns, and then updates what organizations think they know. Complexity leadership theory rest on knowledge brokering, one participant explained, but that cannot equate with old-style knowledge management, viz., information, experience, and idea management, which in any case never truly engaged boards of directors. Knowledge per se is not enough, one participant intoned: organizations ought to appreciate how it comes about. The data substantiated across-the-board interest in sense-making that would involve people at all levels to ladder up into multiparty intent. Summing up, the data signified that old approaches to organizational governance, organizational leadership, and knowledge management cannot accommodate the emergence that pervades a world in constant motion. The data underscored also that a world in constant motion also has implications for organizational purpose. Previously, an organization’s purpose was verbalized and enacted top–down. Nowadays, the data revealed, people scrutinize value statements and look forward to determining an organization’s raison d’être cooperatively; hence, the challenge of leadership is to cultivate self-management, wholeness, and a deeper sense of purpose. However, several participants observed that the lenses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making were intellectualized separately. They made the case that the three lenses should be superimposed, seeing they equate with recognition (sensemaking), choice (complexity leadership), and alignment (metagovernance) and so

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jointly help organizations notice, interpret, and respond better. To sum up, the participants established that metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making can help to jointly characterize the operating environment for organizations in a VUCA world and furnished practicable insights into how that might be effected. One compelling quote and one open code that illustrate this finding are: “Individual humans have five senses, with which they derive sensory data: organizations have denuded data” (Expert No. 8); and “In synergy, metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making help notice, interpret, and respond.”

The Primacy of Context in VUCA By way of their responses to IQ7–IQ9, the sub-question that the subject matter experts addressed was: How might context bear on sense-making and decision-making (cf. SQ3)? The expert interviews generated rich data on (a) forms of organizing, (b) pros and cons of modes and styles of leadership, and (c) the Cynefin Framework. From open and axial coding of the data, the overarching theme connected to The Primacy of Context in VUCA. Every participant to the study upheld that context should govern what forms of organizing are adopted. Because the world is more complex, the implication is that we need to differentiate to match the complexity; this intuits less commitment to staticity and more dynamism from structured hierarchy to reconfigurable, à la carte arrangements. Informed by the upshot of VUCA and insights about metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making for VUCA, the participants shared decided views on the pros and cons of modes and styles of leadership. The data reflected unalloyed doubt about the usefulness of styles of leadership in today’s world. For sure, administrative leadership has some advantages in simple contexts, several participants reflected. The better you are it the more efficient you are going to be, but most problems are no longer decomposable, the data made clear, and the more organizations need to know the less relevant hierarchy becomes. In short, modes of leadership let organizations take a configurationally dynamic approaches to manage complexity whereas styles of leadership tie them to individuals. Sense-making struck a chord with every participant, one of whom deemed it a completely optimistic practice. The participants recognized the continuing existence of simple context, characterized by lack of variability in the process, in which case even networks find reason to heed hierarchical processes, but the data exhibited collective concern about rising instances of unknowns and unknowables, born of greater interconnectivity, which puts a premium on creative and critical thinking and on conversations. Hence, the participants found value in the Cynefin framework, which characterizes increasing degrees of agent interdependence and interrelatedness. With machine learning and artificial intelligence, another participant ventured, decision-makers will soon make even more sophisticated sense of context. To sum up, the participants corroborated that context bears strongly on sense-making and decision-making and singled out the Cynefin framework for its contribution to weaving sense-making into the fabric

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of our world. Two compelling quotes that illustrate this finding are: “Sense-making is a completely optimistic practice” (Expert No. 1); and “If the world is getting more complex, we need to differentiate organizations to match the complexity” (Expert No. 9).

A Leadership Management Framework for VUCA By way of their responses to IQ10–IQ12, the sub-question that the subject matter experts addressed was: How might a context-specific leadership management framework support metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing (cf. SQ4)? The expert interviews generated rich data on (a) fusing metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making; (b) a leadership management framework; (c) principles for leading organizations of the future; and (d) processes and practices for leading organizations of the future. From open and axial coding of the data, the overarching theme connected to A Leadership Management Framework for VUCA. The participants to the study recognized that, on their own, metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making do not address everything organizations need: they fully grasped the logic of fusing the three lenses in favor of organizational performance and offered categorical support. Straightforwardly, one participant saw the fusion of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making as the only way to deliver the solutions that organizations need; a second saw it as the premier means to attract great talent and perform well; a third considered that metagovernance makes us think about forms of organizing, complexity leadership makes us think about adapting, and sense-making gives meaning to our collective experiences, hence the plain need to ally the three; a fourth deemed that metagovernance and complexity leadership are inherently compatible, while sense-making is the inherent capability that any part of a system must have if it is going to be able to perform; a fifth affirmed that fusing the three lenses had everything to do with organizational performance; a sixth called for a leadership management framework to instrument complexity; a seventh judged a leadership management framework to be very metagovernance, equivalent to a framework with which organizations might construct their frameworks around the three lenses; an eighth foresaw that a leadership management framework would deliver the advantages of all forms of organizing; a ninth opined that a leadership management framework with which to consider alternatives (e.g., top–down, emergence) is of the essence; a tenth drew a parallel between a leadership management framework and a stage theory of organizational development that would enhance the ability of organizations to deal with complexity. The data showcased 16 principles for metagovernance of situationallydetermined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing: the principles lend themselves to clear organizational strategy, corporate social responsibility, discipline and commitment, effective risk management, fairness to employees and customers, regular self-evaluation, and transparency and information sharing.

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These are seven pillars of good corporate governance for organizations irrespective of size (Mack, 2019). The design of the study also called for the definition of processes and practices for managing modes of leadership based on the identified principles but the fullness of formulation and number of the principles put paid to that plan owing to time constraints; notwithstanding, oner participant suggested that processes and practices should elicit appreciation, gratitude, and respect, a worthy aspiration moving forward. To sum up, the participants substantiated that on their own metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making do not quite address everything organizations need: the three lenses should be fused because they are inherently compatible and leverage one another; the participants formulated 16 principles with which to power a supporting leadership management framework. Two compelling quotes that illustrate this finding are: “It would be nice to be able to say: ‘It’s this kind of unknown and unknowable and if this kind of complexity presents itself this is the kind of sense-making you need to do and then you …’” (Expert No. 1); and “There might need to be some sort of stage theory about organizational development in relation to the ability to deal with complexity” (Expert No. 8).

Recommendations Organizations and their leaders must learn to combine, switch, or maintain hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing based on context-specific intervention strategies: that general problem prompted this study. However, the discourses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making reflect different conceptual interests and do not connect; the study addressed that specific problem. Hence, the research question related to what leadership management framework for sense-making and decision-making can help organizations meet challenges and reap opportunities in simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts. Informed by the literature review in Chap. 2 and calibrated by the research design and method in Chap. 3, the research question was grounded by interviews of 12 subject matter experts in metagovernance, complexity leadership, and/or sense-making. Over the span of 45–60 min, the subject matter experts addressed four research sub-questions, matched to 12 interview questions, all of them couched as probes to ease comprehension and facilitate answerability. Open, axial, and selective coding of the rich data in the interview transcripts uncovered four overarching categories and 22 core themes leading to the construction of a leadership management framework and the formulation of 16 principles for leading organizations of the future. Cumulatively, the results from the study shaped a comprehensive and holistic analytical tool for managing modes of leadership for metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing. Figure 5.1 depicts the leadership management framework. The leadership management framework fuses metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making and for each context (viz., simple, complicated, complex, chaotic)

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characterizes the situation; associates the practices best suited to the domain; specifies the approach to sense-making; frames the governance; and recommends the appropriate mode(s) of leadership. At first glance, the layout of Fig. 5.1 may suggest the Cynefin framework should be given pride of place: that should not be the case. “The chicken or the egg” causality conundrum purports to question which, of the egg or the chicken, came first. In an ideal but unlikely world, an organization would emerge ab ovo to meet challenges and reap opportunities in context. However, the idea of the emergent organization, which would have it that organizations spontaneously arise to find their niche in dynamic environments, may have been overstated (Taylor & Van Every, 2000): the reality is that organizations exist around us more often than they emerge, which is not to say they never try to adapt or never emerge. Figure 5.1 conceptualizes and articulates a leadership management framework that ascribes joint—and equal—importance to metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making. The findings from the study give credence to the need for a leadership management framework. To help address the general problem and the specific problem that gave the rationale for this study, I recommend that organizations—including the custodians and sponsors of leadership development programs therein—adopt the leadership management framework to fuse metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making for organizational performance and, as a result, navigate better the age of turbulence. In theory at least, pending follow-on quantitative research, the advantages that organizations might derive should they adopt the leadership management framework can be surmised by examining its likely effects across the principal dimensions of operating models such as the Burke–Litwin Causal Model, Galbraith’s Star Model, the McKinsey 7-S Model, the Nadler–Tushman Congruence Model, and Weisbord’s Six Box Model (Burke & Litwin, 1992; Galbraith, 1977;

• Situation: Unknown Unknowns • Domain: Emergent (or Exaptive) Practices • Approach: Probe–Sense–Respond • Governance: Market–Network • Mode of Leadership: Adaptive– Enabling

• Situation: Unknowable Unknowns • Domain: Novel Practices • Approach: Act–Sense–Respond • Governance: Network • Mode of Leadership: Enabling

• Situation: Known Unknowns • Domain: Good Practices • Approach: Sense–Analyze–Respond • Governance: Hierarchy–Market • Mode of Leadership: Administrative– Adaptive

Complex

Complicated

Chaotic

Simple (Obvious, Clear) • Situation: Known Knowns • Domain: Best Practices • Approach: Sense–Categorize–Respond • Governance: Hierarchy • Mode of Leadership: Administrative

Fig. 5.1 A leadership management framework. Note In this figure, the domain of disorder (or confusion) depicted in black represents the state of not knowing what type of causality exists

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Nadler & Tushman, 1980; Waterman et al., 1980; Weisbord, 1976). Using Weisbord’s Six Box Model as an example, I would expect the leadership management framework to severally clarify or firm up at no cost (a) purposes (viz., the mission and goals of an organization); (b) structure (viz., the way work is organized); (c) relationships (viz., the way people interact); (d) rewards (viz., the way intrinsic and extrinsic rewards link to work); (e) leadership (viz., the styles and modes of leadership and how well they keep business elements aligned); and (f) helpful mechanisms (viz., planning, budgeting controlling, and other systems that help an organization meet its goals) (Weisbord, 1976). What is more, the leadership management framework would significantly elucidate the external environment (viz., “forces difficult to control from inside hat demand a response”) that Weisbord’s Six Box Model acknowledged but shed no light on (Weisbord, 1976, p. 433). To illustrate further, the leadership management framework would likewise be expected to enrich interactions across the seven key elements of organizational design of the McKinsey 7-S Model (i.e., structure, strategy, skill, system, shared values, style, staff) and to enhance the fit of work, people, structure, and culture in agreement with the Nadler–Tushman Congruence Model (Nadler & Tushman, 1980; Waterman et al., 1980). In conclusion, the leadership management framework raises the prospect of leading smarter, driving change, and winning at innovation. From a theoretical perspective, I foresee no negative effects from the adoption of the leadership management framework by organizations. Notwithstanding, where there is uptake, organizations should not underestimate the first four of the conditions—listed in Chap. 2— that influence the feasibility of metagovernance according to Meuleman (2011) (cf., tradition, personal affinity, societal expectations, organizational culture). Because of the leadership management framework, the fifth condition that Meuleman (2011) identified (cf. type of problem) ceases to be a putative if–then argument: it is now integral to metagovernance. If the leadership management framework is the subject of uptake, I also recommend that interested parties review the 16 principles for metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing; detect what may be missing; and adopt what combinations best frame their business. Four or five principles should suffice: any more would be difficult to remember or manage. A refined list of principles should capture, say, what brought the organization together in the first place, what helps guide it through turbulent times, what people (e.g., personnel, audiences, partners) think is important, what people like about its culture, and what people like about the way it does things. Toward a customized list of principles, it might be initially possible to group the principles depending on whether they pertain to people, process, or technology. Interested parties might then identify associated (sub)processes and practices. Figure 5.2 groups the 16 principles for metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing to suggest how interested parties could begin to customize them, in this instance according to the straightforward People, Process, Technology framework (Leavitt, 1965). Additionally, there is opportunity for follow-on research into how artificial intelligence might augment the leadership management framework to help humans work

Limitation

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People

• Buoy up empathy, logical skills, and personal and situational awareness • Celebrate value creation • Involve stakeholders • Promote culture, global collaboration, knowledge, learning, stories, and teaming • Recruit or train people with complexity mindsets • Stimulate conversational leadership, radical accountability, radical candor, and radical self-compassion

Process

• Adapt where you are most exposed to risk and least capable of responding to threats • Blend intentionality, alignment, and coherence right • Clarify organizational purpose • Follow the fear • Pay attention to context • Push capability, information, knowledge, and rewards to where value is created • Reconfigure for minimal critical specs • Treat organizational structures as way stations on the path to accomplishing dynamic tasks

Technology

• Be more flexible than your environment • Look for disconfirming data

Fig. 5.2 Customizing the principles for leading organizations of the future. Note The principles listed in this figure were elicited by IQ12. In this figure underscores the preponderance of principles that have to do with people and process despite the quickening of information and communication technology over the last 20 years

better, smarter, and faster (Davenport & Kirby, 2016). “Artificial intelligence stirs our highest ambitions and deepest fears like few other technologies,” Marchese (2022) reported (para. 1). However, “[i]t’s up to us, individually and collectively, to strike new, positive relationships with the machines we have made so capable,” Davenport and Kirby (2016, p. 251) concluded.

Limitation The foremost limitation of this study was the small sample size (viz., 12 subject matter experts), so that the findings do not automatically extend to the population at large. The study was ambitious in scope and range and summons additional inquiry. If the study were replicated as a quantitative design addressing a larger population, preferably across a broad cross-section of industries, the findings might render greater generalizability and their validity and reliability might likewise increase thanks to quantification. Quantitative research would test the usefulness of the leadership management framework, help gauge if it does in fact lead to better sense-making and decision-making, and generate suggestions to increase the overall effectiveness of the research effort.

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Implications Chapter 1 established that the general problem and the specific problem that motivated this study are clear and present: in a VUCA world, they impact organizations across the public, private, and civil society sectors, best illustrated by shortening organizational lifespans. Chapter 2 reviewed relevant scholarly research on the topic of this study and concluded that the study breaks new ground, with extensive and topical ramifications for theory, practice, and follow-on research.

Using the Leadership Management Framework Grounded in responses to 12 interview questions, the study provides a leadership management framework to support metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing. Concisely, the leadership management framework spells out what dedicated approaches, governance, and mode(s) of leadership are most appropriate depending in simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic situations: • Simple Contexts. In the “known knowns” situation of simple contexts, the leadership management framework recommends the application of best practices in Sense–Categorize–Respond approaches governed by the hierarchy form of organizing and powered by administrative leadership. In the field of development assistance, for instance, managing a road construction project is a simple endeavor. • Complicated Contexts. In the “known unknowns” situation of complicated contexts, the leadership management framework recommends the application of good practices in Sense–Analyze–Respond approaches governed by a combination of hierarchy and market forms of organizing and powered by administrative and adaptive leadership, respectively. In the field of development assistance, for instance, managing an urban regeneration project is complicated. • Complex Contexts. In the “unknown unknowns” situation of complex contexts, the leadership management framework recommends the application of emergent (or exaptive) practices in Probe–Sense–Respond approaches governed by a combination of market and network forms of organizing and powered by adaptive and enabling leadership, respectively. In the field of development assistance, to use a real-life example, promoting pro-poor, sustainable economic growth; access to assets; and management of natural resources and the environment in the Tonle Sap basin of Cambodia is complex (Serrat & Moffatt, 2006; Serrat et al., 2004). • Chaotic Contexts. In the “unknowable unknowns” situation of chaotic contexts, the leadership management framework recommends the application of novel practices in Act–Sense–Respond approaches governed by the network form of organizing and powered by enabling leadership. In the field of development assistance,

Implications

Simple Context ∴ Hierarchy & Administrative Leadership

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Complicated Context ∴ Hierarchy–Market & Administrative–Adaptive Leadership

Complex Context ∴ Market–Network & Adaptive–Enabling Leadership

Chaotic Context ∴ Network & Enabling Leadership

VUCA

Fig. 5.3 Using the leadership management framework

for instance, acting on phenomena as diverse as climate change, food price escalation, and pandemics demands that organizations operate on the edge of chaos (Ramalingam, 2013). The leadership management framework fuses the lenses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making to help organizations meet challenges and reap opportunities in simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts. Condensing, Fig. 5.3 proposes how, contingent on context, organizations can manage modes of leadership for metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing.

The Value of the Leadership Management Framework The leadership management framework is of manifest value to scholars and practitioners. The leadership management framework advances academic dialogue: it adds to the literature on metagovernance; it clarifies concepts; it introduces new terms; and it opens ground for follow-on research on metapolicy by encouraging the development of more precise research problems and the generation of formal hypotheses. With respect to practitioners, the leadership management framework helps recognize what administrative, adaptive, and enabling leadership (and combinations thereof) is needed to meet challenges and reap opportunities and draws attention to priorities for further investigation and resource allocation. Singling out and paraphrasing from Heynen (2022) in relation to tangible practice, this study will—where there is uptake—help:

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• Pluralize perspectives and enrich reflection on organizational design. • Shape and steer the whole governing process of organizations. • Smooth development and implementation of richer sets of policies, strategies, programs, projects, and partnerships in organizations, including their design, implementation, results, and business processes. • Manage the entanglement of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing and coordinate the interdependences of actors, leading to higher efficiency and effectiveness (also from conflict reduction). • Broaden access to the panoply of tools, methods, and approaches from hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing needed to anticipate or respond to complexity in systems, agency, and change. The choice of tools, methods, and approaches would be well-informed by the stylized features of organization spelled out in Serrat (2017b) and reproduced in Table 1 in Chap. 1. The leadership management framework is timely, practical, and compelling. In the age of turbulence, where organizations cling precariously to life, the leadership management framework helps rethink organizational leadership to minimize vulnerability and exploit opportunities in the real world; it should enable organizations to frame and better manage contexts without obligatory recourse to cost cutting, price discounts, slashed investments, and staff layoffs. By accomplishing the purpose of the study, viz., to close the gap in knowledge of what context-specific modes—not styles—of leadership can help manage organizations of the future, the leadership management framework adds to the corpus of management theories in the area of organization theory and strategic management (Serrat, 2021d).

Conclusion The age of turbulence that globalization and information and communication technology ushered demands that organizations transform themselves to meet the challenges of the 21st century, armed with the right cultures, information and communication technology, governance, management and business processes, leaders, organizational structures, personnel, policies, practices, relationships, rewards, strategies, systems, and values. Toward that, what leadership organizations now requires bears no resemblance to what it was in the 20th century, when styles of leadership (e.g., autocratic, charismatic, laissez-faire, situational, transactional, transformational) were in vogue. The purpose of this study was to close the gap in knowledge of what contextspecific modes—not styles—of leadership can help manage organizations of the future. Achieving the purpose of the study led to the exploration of how one might fuse the lenses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making to articulate a leadership management framework for sense-making and decision-making in simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts. The findings from the study addressed the research question.

References

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“I have no interest in forecasting the future, only in creating it by acting appropriately in the present,” said Ackoff (1999, p. 1). By way of the leadership management framework and its eventual upgrades, the findings from the study should enable organizations of the future to better act in their present by “making decisions systematically with the greatest intelligence of their futurity, organizing the resources and efforts needed to carry them out, and measuring outcomes against expectations with feedback and self-control” (Serrat, 2017j, p. 11). The leadership management framework is but one innovative step forward. Even so, small steps in the right direction are without doubt better than big steps in the wrong direction. Continued research on the topic of this study and, especially, the advent of artificial intelligence should help actualize the leadership management framework and apply it to beneficial effect in our VUCA world, conceivably by way of a leadership management system.

References Ackoff, R. (1999). A lifetime of systems thinking. The Systems Thinker, 5(10), 1–5. Burke, W., & Litwin, G. (1992). A causal model of organizational performance and change. Journal of Management, 18(3), 523–545. Davenport, T. & Kirby, J. (2016). Only humans need apply: Winners and losers in the age of smart machines. Harper Business. Galbraith, J. (1977). Organization design. Addison-Wesley. Heynen, J. (2022, October 14). Metapolity and metagovernance: Definition and function. MetaGovernance and MetaGoverning. http://metagovernance.blogspot.com/ Jessop, B. (2003). Governance and metagovernance: On reflexivity, requisite variety, and requisite irony. In H. Bang (Ed.), Governance as social and political communication (pp. 142–172). Manchester University Press. Leavitt, H. (1965). Applied organizational change in industry: Structural, technological, and humanistic approaches. In J. March (Ed.), Handbook of organization (pp. 1144–1170). Rand McNally. Mack, S. (2019, March 8). Seven characteristics of good corporate governance. Chron. https://sma llbusiness.chron.com/seven-characteristics-good-corporate-governance-57207.html Marchese, D. (2022, December 21). An A.I. pioneer on what we should really fear. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/26/magazine/yejin-choi-interview.html Meuleman, L. (2011). Metagovernance. In B. Badie, D. Berg-Schlosser, & L. Morlino (Eds.), International encyclopedia of political science (pp. 1554–1557). Sage. Meuleman, L. (2008). Public management and the metagovernance of hierarchies, networks, and markets: The feasibility of designing and managing governance style combinations. PhysicaVerlag. Nadler, D., & Tushman, M. (1980). A model for diagnosing organizational behavior. Organizational Dynamics, 9(2), 35–51. Ramalingam, B. (2013). Aid on the edge of chaos: Rethinking international cooperation in a complex world. Oxford University Press. Rossman, G., & Rallis, S. (2017). An introduction to qualitative research: Learning in the field (4th ed.). Sage. Serrat, O., & Moffatt, D. (2006). From strategy to practice: The Tonle Sap initiative. Asian Development Bank.

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Serrat, O., Gallego-Lizon, T., & Moffatt, D. (2004). The Tonle Sap basin strategy. Asian Development Bank. Serrat, O. (2017b). On networked organizations. In: Knowledge solutions: Tools, methods, and approaches to drive organizational performance (pp. 781–796). Springer. Serrat, O. (2017f). Glossary of knowledge management. In: Knowledge solutions: Tools, methods, and approaches to drive organizational performance (pp. 1055–1061). Springer. Serrat, O. (2017j). Reading the future. In: Knowledge solutions: Tools, methods, and approaches to drive organizational performance (pp. 11–14). Springer. Serrat, O. (2021d). A taxonomy of management theories. In: Leading solutions: Essays in business psychology (pp. 129–150). Springer. Taylor, J., & Van Every, E. (2000). The emergent organization: Communication as its site and surface. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Waterman, R., Peters, T., & Phillips, J. (1980). Structure is not organization. Business Horizons, 23(3), 14–26. Weisbord, M. (1976). Organizational diagnosis: Six places to look for trouble with or without a theory. Group and Organization Studies, 1(4), 430–447.

Appendix A

What? So What? Now What? A Note on Organizational Ecology

Aldrich (1979) typified organizations as “goal-directed, boundary-maintaining, activity systems” (p. 4). Aldrich’s (1979) assertion was the product of its time: until the late 2000s, it was conventional to frame organizations in the sharply delineated ideal types of hierarchy (authority), market (prices), and network (trust) and to treat these as mutually exclusive alternatives for conducting transactions (Bradach & Eccles, 1989; Powell, 1990; Serrat, 2021a; Williamson, 1975, 1985). However, Powell (1987) detected that hybrid forms of organizing were emerging in response to changes in situations, limits to the size of organizations, the growing need for speed and information, and the development of networks and generalized reciprocity; even so, Powell (1987) questioned the permanence of any new arrangement. Presently, having perceived the signs of an era when change would be constant, random, and discontinuous, Handy (1989) foresaw a shamrock organization that would outsource noncore functions to outside contractors and part-time help. The same year, Heydebrand (1989) began to question the erstwhile distinction between hierarchies and markets in Williamson (1975, 1985) and teased out dimensions in terms of which new organizational forms might appear. Morgan (2014) pointed out that even hierarchies now comprise flatter organizations, flat organizations, flatarchies (neither flat nor hierarchical), and holacratic (or decentralized) organizations. These days, in continuing refutation of Aldrich (1979), hybrid forms of organizing are now common at micro, meso, and macro levels of societal activity in the public, private, and civil society (or third) sectors (Johanson & Vakkuri, 2018). The private sector is a jumble of undertakings vying for transient advantages in fast-moving environments (McGrath, 2013; Schwab, 2017). In the public sector, as reported by Stern et al. (2018), work is underway toward Government 4.0 (including the digitization of administration, the automation of workflows, and the resolution of issues such as structural changes to the job market and cybersecurity) in consequence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (ca. 2000–), aka Industry 4.0, that is automating traditional manufacturing and industrial practices with information and communication

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technology (Serrat, 2023a). And, throughout the world, civil society organizations (including nongovernment or voluntary organizations) play a prominent role in the provision of public services in public–private partnerships, assorted collaborations, and networks (Billis, 2010). Schildt and Perkmann (2017) introduced the metaphor of organizational settlements to depict the ways in which organizations can durably incorporate multiple logics. Relatedly, the autocratic, charismatic, laissez-faire, situational, transactional, and transformational styles of leadership and associated management systems that spoke to the closed systems of yesteryear are charged with contributing little to the success of collective effort in open systems, with correspondingly more frequent references to myths of leaderships; calls for chaordic (viz., self-governing), leaderless, or leaderful organizations; and new logics for the management of complex organizations (Bohn, 2000; Galbraith & Lawler, 1993; Hock, 1999; Laloux, 2014; Nielsen, 2011; Owen, 2018; Raelin, 2011; Serrat, 2021a; Sinclair, 2007). For that reason, more recent literature advocates a plethora of other styles of leadership including coaching, democratic, cross-cultural, ethical, global, innovative, neuroscience, paradox, relational, and servant leadership (Bratton et al., 2005). Considering the vicissitudes of the 21st century, notably the cultural evolution that owing to information and communication technology evened out the balance of power between leaders and followers, Kellerman (2012) faulted the countless leadership centers, institutes, and associations offering to teach people how to lead. In the words of biologist E. O. Wilson, speaking on the 150th anniversary of the Harvard Museum of Natural History on September 9, 2009, there is reason to wonder how humans might cope effectively with far-reaching changes if they must function with “[p]aleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology” (Harvard Magazine, 2009). Similarly, in a TED talk on renewable energy, Lovins (2012) regretted that 21st-century technology is on a collision course with 20th-or even 19th-century cultures, institutions, and rules. In other words, complexity is the New Normal and leadership that aspires to predict and control outcomes delivers less and less: instead, the situation requires approaches that are conditioned by and respectful of emergence (Boulton et al., 2015; Griffin & Stacey, 2005; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). VUCA, mentioned earlier, is an acronym that describes “the accelerating rate of change (volatility), the lack of predictability (uncertainty), the interconnectedness of cause-and-effect forces (complexity), and the strong potential for misreads (ambiguity)” in operating environments (Forsythe et al., 2018, para. 2). The term VUCA was introduced in the curriculum of the United States Army War College in 1987 to describe the multilateral world in the final years of the Cold War (1985–1991): it was popularized by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from 1990 (Stiehm, 2002). The launch of the World Wide Web in the public domain in 1993, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 served to further popularize the acronym and made it integral to the business lexicon. It is important to highlight that there are high tangible, intangible, and opportunity costs to single modes of governance that do not match the requirements of a situation

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(Bennett & Lemoine, 2014; Hubbard & Paquet, 2015; Serrat, 2021a; Wheatley & Frieze, 2011). Borys and Jemison (1989) noted that “[u]nitary organizations often suffer from, among other things, operational inefficiency, resource scarcity, lack of facilities to take advantage of economies of scale, or risks that are more appropriately spread across several business units” (p. 235). Therefore, grasping what forms, combinations, and contents of a leadership management framework might serve metagovernance of hybrid forms of organizing in a VUCA world is both important and urgent (Serrat, 2021a). The premise of this study is that a potential solution to the problem that prompted it can be found if the discourses on metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making synergize each other.

Appendix B

The Search for Heroic Leaders

The world is undergoing profound systemic change but discussions of leadership still all too commonly call for more supernatural leaders (Rimita, 2019; Schwab, 2017). A case in point is that Johansen (2017) recast the leadership skills for an uncertain world that Johansen (2012) proposed (viz., maker instinct, clarity, dilemma flipping, immersive learning ability, bio-empathy, constructive depolarizing, quiet transparency, rapid prototyping, smart-mob organizing, and commons creating) into leadership literacies. Johansen’s (2012, 2017) concentration on leaders signifies implicit acceptance of trait-based approaches to leadership, which contend that integrated patterns of individual differences and personal attributes give reasons for leader role occupancy and leadership effectiveness (Zaccaro et al., 2018). Now widely discredited, the main reason trait leadership appeals is that it absolves us of responsibility for developing leadership capabilities more broadly (Kofman & Senge, 1995). The Shifting the Burden archetype applies: a perceived need for leadership can be met by developing capacities throughout an organization or by relying on a heroic leader; finding a heroic leader reinforces beliefs in a group’s powerlessness and makes the fundamental solution more elusive (Kofman & Senge, 1995). On the same theme, Wheatley and Frieze (2011) said we assume: • Leaders have the answers. They know what to do. • People do what they’re told. They just have to be given good plans and instructions. • High risk requires high control. As situations grow more complex and challenging, power needs to shift to the top (with the leaders who know what to do). (Wheatley & Frieze, 2011, p. 1) “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them,” Einstein is alleged to have said. Preoccupation with leaders focuses attention on the rear-view mirror: leading organizations of the future calls for looking past leaders and theoretically sophisticated styles of leadership to shine a less dramatic but more discerning light on the real parameters of

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 O. Serrat, Leading Organizations of the Future, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8199-1

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organizational change in a VUCA world. Organizations are and will remain specialized arrangements for getting things done but managing them in the age of turbulence demands that new logics be found (Malone et al., 2003; Wheatley & Frieze, 2011).

Appendix C

Epistemological Perspectives on Qualitative Research

Research paradigms, also known as knowledge claims, philosophy of science, or worldviews, are basic sets of assumptions and beliefs that guide action (Rosenberg, 2012). Based on what philosophy of science they hold and—especially—the purpose at hand, researchers make rhetorical assertions about the nature of reality (ontology), what counts as knowledge (epistemology), what role values play (axiology), and the process (or language) of research (methodology) (Creswell, 2013; Pascale, 2011). Major research paradigms include critical theory and Marxist models; cultural studies models; feminism; hermeneutics, interpretivism, and social constructivism; positivism and postpositivism; postcolonialism; queer theory; and racialized discourses (Schwandt, 2007). Condensing qualitative research paradigms into four groups, Merriam and Tisdell (2016) clarified that: • Critical perspectives, including critical ethnography, critical race theory, feminism, neo-Marxism, and participatory action research, are used to “Change, emancipate, empower” from the theory of knowledge that there are “Multiple realities, situated in political, social, [and] cultural contexts (one reality is privileged).” • Interpretive/constructivist perspectives, including ethnography, grounded theory, hermeneutics, and phenomenology, are used to “Describe, understand, interpret” from the theory of knowledge that there are “Multiple realities, context-bound.” • Positivist/postpositivist perspectives, including experimental, quasiexperimental, and survey perspectives, are used to “Predict, control, generalize” from the theory of knowledge that reality is “Objective, external, out there.” • Postmodern/poststructural perspectives, including postcolonialism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, and queer theory, are used to “Deconstruct, problematize, question, interrupt” from the theory of knowledge that one should “Question [the] assumption that there is a place where reality resides; ‘Is there a there?’” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 12)

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Merriam and Tisdell (2016) established that research paradigms afford comprehensive, sometimes complex, and possibly conflicting conceptual understandings of phenomena such as how people interact, how organizations operate, and how societies work. By concentrating attention on different aspects of a topic and elucidating the framework within which to conduct analysis, the lenses of research paradigms let readers grasp the ideas that underpin the work (Crotty, 1998). Research paradigms also limit the scope of a study and inform readers of the boundaries that have been set for a study (Creswell, 2013).

Appendix D

Three Articles on Organization Theory and Postmodernism

Title

Abstract

Leading a Postmodern Workforce (Green, 2007)

This article explores contemporary leadership theory within a postmodernism society in the public sector. The article investigates leadership theory by comparing and contrasting bureaucratic theory, transactional leadership theory, and transformational leadership theory in the ever-changing workforce of federal employees. The study is significant because there are government-wide human capital problems, and this is highly relevant to anyone who must lead in the public sector. The article concludes with a set of five strategic implications for researchers and practitioners. This effort contributes to further exploration into understanding leadership and organizational culture in the public sector

Appreciation. This article identified a leadership challenge in the public sector of the United States as Baby Boomers exit the workforce en masse. (On demographics, the same conclusions can be drawn for Europe, the People’s Republic of China, Japan, the Russian Federation, and the Republic of Korea.) In the past, corporate cultures had been able to stabilize such influences and give blueprints for understanding organizational values and beliefs. But, the article made the point that the leader–follower paradigm that pervades contemporary bureaucratic theory, transactional leadership theory, and transformational leadership theory cannot deliver what leadership applications are required in the postmodern era. The central message of the article, in fact the only message, was that the cultural values of the Matures, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y—all of whom will coexist in the workplace for a while before the Matures and Baby Boomers depart—will soon clash. Against this background, the article provided a useful depiction of what cultural values will predominate in the postmodern era. The article also made (rather generic) recommendations vis-à-vis communication, corporate values, and generational traits of the Emergent Workforce but passed no comment on organizational forms even though the article is relatively recent (i.e., 2007) (continued)

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(continued) Title

Abstract

The Nomadic Organization: The Postmodern Organization of Becoming (Styhre, 2001)

From contingency theory, resource-dependency theory, evolutionary theory, and institutional theory, it is learned that organizations respond to their external environment. In a postmodern, fluid, and continuously changing capitalism, there are few stable, fixed, and determined positions that can be taken by an organization

Appreciation. This article reminded the reader that organizations are dependent on, interrelated with, and continuously interacting with their surrounding environment. “When the organization’s environment become more turbulent, elusive, unpredictable, or complex, the organization’s activities, structures, and processes are affected” (p. 1). The article drew a provocative parallel with our ancient roots: “Prior to modernity, the organization of social formations was fragmentary, partial, temporal, indeed self-organizing” (p. 2). In like fashion, “… postmodern society, with its emphasis on continuous, ongoing change and its inability to provide stable, predicable meaning-creating structures of necessity, creates nomadic organizations. The nomadic organization is an organization that is always on the move, that always is linking itself with other organizations through alliances, joint ventures, mergers, and acquisitions; an organization whose boundaries disappear when it becomes complicated to distinguish between inside and outside, between employee and temporal workers and consultants; an organization whose output is merely one component in the entire product chain, and is thus interrelated with other organizations in networks” (p. 2). The article concluded that the need to reflect and make sense grows as complexity intensifies; toward this “storytelling in organizations is an important managerial competence that needs to be used” (p. 9). The article recommended the articulation of “ … a new model, and new vocabulary, a new image of the organization” (p. 9). To note in particular, the article made no allusion to organizations, such as Apple Inc. and Pixar Animation Studios, that actually created their environment (as opposed to merely existing within it). To note further, the article made sparse reference to hierarchies, markets, and networks: it is almost as if the future was already upon us, albeit in yet-to-be-determined form Postmodernism revisited? complexity science and the study of organizations (van Uden et al., 2001)

van Uden et al. assert that the world is best described as being a complex system, and, through the use of the “complexity” discourse, students of organizations—organizations being regarded as complex sub-systems of the whole—can benefit from the various complexity science research programs. They argue that complexity theory in this respect is reminiscent of postmodern organization theory

Appreciation. Remarking on continual calls to “… distribute decision-making, encourage individual autonomy, and strive to innovate in the rapidly changing environment that characterize the apparent New World Order” (p. 53), this article supported a complexity-based perspective of the world that warrants pragmatic pluralism and boundary exploration. The article defined complex systems, with an unusual and welcome aside on their incompressibility, meaning that “it is impossible to have a total account of a complex system that is less complex than the system itself without losing some of its aspects” (p. 57), and cautioned that mainstream organization theory’s insistence on boundaries—read, partial systems—can no longer serve in the postmodern world’s maze of interactions. But the article stopped there, having circumvented discussion of, say, organizational forms, leadership, workforces, networks, or knowledge management Serrat (2017e)

Appendix E

The Rationale for the Research Strategy

In the social sciences, research can be exploratory, descriptive, or explanatory (Babbie, 2013). This study is exploratory. Exploratory research is used when a topic is new, or when problems are at a preliminary stage, and so data is difficult to collect or generate; therefore, the emphasis must be on gaining insight and familiarity to test the feasibility of undertaking a more extensive study and establish an understanding of how to subsequently proceed in future (Babbie, 2013). So that it might answer questions such as what, why, when, and how, exploratory research must be flexible to better circumscribe problems, unearth meaning from scant data, and suggest hypotheses that provide insight into situations and pave the ground for more definite, future investigation (Stebbins, 2001). Comparing, quantitative research seeks to prove or disprove hypotheses so one might generalize the population at large with answers to research questions such as how often or how many (Creswell & Creswell, 2017). Undoubtedly, the type of literature review must match the type of proposed study. In basic terms, “The literature review assimilates, summarizes, and synthesizes published scholarly research through the researcher’s choice of theoretical [or conceptual] perspective” (Calabrese, 2006). However, Snyder (2019), made a case that “Traditional literature reviews often lack thoroughness and rigor and are conducted ad hoc, rather than following a specific methodology,” thereby raising questions about quality and trustworthiness (p. 333). In view of the acceleration of knowledge production from research, Snyder (2019) opined that the literature review as a research method is more relevant than ever and offered an overview of systematic (quantitative), semi-systematic (qualitative/quantitative), and integrative (qualitative) approaches to conducting reviews. The rationale for the research strategy is framed by the exploratory design of this study and guided by the need to make its literature review the most relevant research method (Babbie, 2013; Snyder, 2019). Using Jesson et al. (2011) as a reference, I considered the following approaches to a literature review to select which was most germane to the topic of this study, provide an organization of the review, and state the criteria to evaluate the scholarly literature: © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 O. Serrat, Leading Organizations of the Future, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8199-1

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• Conceptual Reviews. Conceptual reviews synthesize and critically assess literature to see how a particular topic is understood. The purpose of conceptual reviews is to produce a greater understanding of the issue. • Expert Reviews. Expert reviews, much like state-of-the-art reviews, are undertaken by experts in a particular field and so partial to their interests and contributions. The purpose of expert reviews is to move an agenda forward. • Scoping Reviews. Scoping reviews document what is known about a topic (e.g., key concepts, theories, questions) and make out gaps, disputes, niches, and (less often) blind spots. The purpose of scoping reviews is to underpin a research question and justify an approach to it. • State-of-the-Art Reviews. State-of-the-art reviews examine the most recent contributions to a field in light of the history of its research. The purpose of state-of-the-art reviews is to look for trends, agreements, debates, and future directions. • Traditional Reviews. Traditional reviews resemble scoping reviews but do not mean to create space for research projects. The purpose of traditional reviews is merely to position or locate a study within the corpus. The exploratory design of this study ruled out a traditional review but warranted scoping, conceptual, and state-of-the-art reviews to generate better understanding of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making. Then, from the perspective of an expert review, a particularized critique of pioneering texts across each of the three lenses was offered to move the agenda forward.

Appendix F

Annotated Bibliography on Complexity Leadership. Unpublished Manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology Serrat (2018b)

Abstract This paper presents an annotated bibliography of 20 references—that is, 15 peerreviewed articles and five books—on complexity leadership. For each document, the first part of the bibliography lists essential information about the author, year of publication, title, place of publication (if known and relevant), and name of publisher; drawing in extenso from the original manuscripts, the second part abstracts contents and provides evaluative, indicative, and/or informative analyses of the texts. Peer-Reviewed Articles Anderson, P. (1999). Complexity theory and organization science. Organization Science, 10(3), 216–232. This article explains that complex adaptive systems are characterized by four key elements: agents with schemata, self-organizing networks sustained by importing energy, coevolution to the edge of chaos, and system evolution based on recombination. Applying models of complex adaptive systems to strategic management underscores the need to build systems that can evolve rapidly. Hence, the article recommends that setting strategic direction in complex organizations should entail establishing and modifying environments in which effective improvised solutions can evolve; therefore, managers should influence strategic behavior by altering the fitness landscape for local agents and reconfiguring the organizational architecture within which agents adapt. The article is an early example of work on complexity leadership (but does not serve as a how-to) (Anderson, 1999). Bonabeau, E., & Meyer, C. (2001). Swarm intelligence: A whole new way to think about business. Harvard Business Review, 79(5), 107–114.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 O. Serrat, Leading Organizations of the Future, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8199-1

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This article argues, rhetorically, that ants and bees have much to do with business: they are minimally intelligent and their work is entirely self-organized (and unsupervised) but, collectively, these insects find solutions to difficult problems and adapt to changing environments. The article explains that, over the past 20 years, research on swarm intelligence has helped organizations develop efficient ways to, say, plot strategy, organize people, and divide tasks among workers; and so, the authors speculate that, in the future, an organization might restructure its business using related principles. The result, they believe, would be a self-organizing enterprise that can adapt instinctively to fast-changing markets. The article offers a purposely provocative view of the future but the reader’s interest in the supposed relevance of different species wears off before the authors press home their advantage; in the final analysis, the solutions they proffer but fail to articulate are an empty shell (Bonabeau & Meyer, 2001). Balkundi, P., & Kilduff, M. (2006). The ties that lead: A social network approach to leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 17, 419–439. This article investigates promising directions in social network theory that interpret such entities as cognitive structures (in the minds of organizational members) and opportunity structures (that facilitate and constrain action). To begin, the article introduces four core ideas about social networks: the importance of relations, the embeddedness of actors, the social utility of connections, and the structural patterning of social life; thence, the article draws implications for how leaders might affect the performance of the said networks by means of the direct ties surrounding leaders, the pattern of direct and indirect ties within which leaders are embedded in the organization, and the interorganizational ties formed by leaders. The authors suggest that these patterns of ties can contribute to leader effectiveness. Undoubtedly, social network theory has much to contribute to leadership theories; but the vision that the authors present remains, paradoxically, leader-centric: a take me to your leader approach is rather incongruous in the context of social networks (Balkundi & Kilduff, 2006). Brown, S., & Eisenhardt, K. (1997). The art of continuous change: Linking complexity theory and time-based evolution in relentlessly shifting organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42, 1–34. Based on a study of multiple-product innovation in six companies in the computer industry, this article examines how organizations engage in continuous change. First, the article shows that successful multiple-product innovation blends limited structure around responsibilities and priorities with extensive communication and design freedom. “This combination is neither so rigid as to control the process nor so chaotic that the process falls apart” (p. 2). Second, successful companies launch a wide variety of low-cost probes into the future (such as experimental products, futurists, and strategic alliances). Third, the same successful companies bind both present and future together through rhythmic, time-paced transition processes. Notwithstanding the art, the semistructures, links in time, and sequenced steps that the article claims crystallize the (undefined) key properties of these continuously changing organizations are more reminiscent of ballet than real-life and smack of solutions that have found a problem (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1997).

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MacGillivray, A. (2018). Leadership as practice meets knowledge as flow: Emerging perspectives for leaders in knowledge-intensive organizations. Journal of Public Affairs, 18(1). This article aims to “help leaders in knowledge-intensive organizations rethink leadership and knowledge to enhance creative potential” (p. 1); specifically, the article argues they can enhance creativity and agility “by reframing leadership and knowledge generation and sharing as natural parts of knowledge-intensive practices” (p. 1). The article makes the important point that leadership is best seen as the distributed or emergent property of collaborative knowledge work: “Embedded in this more dynamic and fluid view of knowledge-intensive work is the assumption that governance needs to focus on networks––communication, and trust” (p. 1). To scholars and practitioners of knowledge management, much of the article’s views on say, information, knowledge, and management have for long been par for the course (and substantiated in numerous publications over the last 20–25 years): this reviewer can find no reason to believe that the article, written in 2018, presents new ideas to guide leadership in knowledge-intensive organizations (MacGillivray, 2018). MacIntosh, R., & MacLean, D. (1999). Conditioned emergence: A dissipative structures approach to transformation. Strategic Management Journal, 20, 297–316. This article advertises a novel framework for the management of organizational transformation, which it sees as a relatively rapid transition from one archetype to another. From the field of complexity theory, the article uses the concept of dissipative structures to develop and explain a specific sequence of activities to underpin effective transformation. Conditioned emergence, that the authors see as the generic solutions to all ills, can be staged by conditioning, creating far-from equilibrium conditions, and p i the feedback processes. The theory appeals: but, somehow, the quite specific and orderly stages that the article advocates run counter-intuitive to the nature of complex systems and problems (which are characterized by nonlinearity) (MacIntosh & MacLean, 1999). McKelvey, B. (1999). Avoiding complexity catastrophe in coevolutionary pockets: Strategies for rugged landscapes. Organization Science, 10(3), 294–321. Pushing the conceptual envelop to the limit, this article argues that complexity effects may thwart desired selectionist effects under some circumstances. To understand strategic choices and strategy implementation/organization design options available to firms in coevolutionary pockets, the article makes the obvious point that a value-chain perspective would be a useful tool for exploring many questions (McKelvey, 1999). Plowman, D., Baker, L., Beck, T., Kulkarni, M., Solansky, S., & Travis, D. (2007). The role of leadership in emergent, self-organization. The Leadership Quarterly, 18, 341–356 Traditional views of leadership have focused on the leader’s role in determining and directing the future; this article queries “What … is the role of leadership in systems where change often emerges in unexpected ways” (p. 341). And so, the

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authors advocate a different view of leadership showing how, as enablers, leaders can disrupt existing patterns of behavior, encourage novelty, and make sense of unfolding events for others (p. 344). The article is in the tradition of complexity leadership: but it suffers from lack of clarity over what patterns leaders should disrupt: in instances, the article refers to behaviors; in others, it ambitiously refers to emergent futures to be impacted “through the use of conflict and uncertainty” (p. 347), which is a tall if not scary order (Plowman et al., 2007). Schreiber, C., & Carley, K. (2006). Leadership style as an enabler of organizational complex functioning. Emergence: Complexity and Organization, 8(4). This article remarks apropos on the design paradox of supposedly postmodern organizations, in which a single, heroic leader remain “concerned with efficiency and control as well as complex functioning” (p. 1). Conversely, the article explains, complexity leadership theory posits leaders as enablers of complex functioning, in support of which the authors introduce dynamic network analysis. The bulk of the article is given over to the results of a computer model and associated virtual experiment that demonstrated coevolution of human and social capital under distinct styles of leadership. These days, if anyone actually did 20 years ago, no one doubts that “The needs of organizations are now centered on knowledge work to produce faster learning and adaptive responses in an environment that is characterized by highvelocity change. Standard leadership practices are less effective in the new era as they have traditionally focused on efficiency and control whereas learning and adaptation are vital to survival in this new volatile economy” (p. 9). But, to this reviewer at least, proponents of complexity leadership should explain why in 2006 they still needed computer models to make that simple point (Schreiber & Carley, 2006). Siggelkow, N., & Rivkin, J. (2005). Speed and search: Designing organizations for turbulence and complexity. Organization Science, 16, 101–122. This article examines an enduring but neglected question: “How do environmental turbulence and complexity affect the appropriate formal design of organizations?” (p. 101). To this end, the article produces two testable hypotheses: one pinpoints formal designs that cope well with three different environments, namely, turbulent settings, complex environments, and settings with both turbulence and complexity; the other argues what should be obvious, namely, that “the impact of individual design elements on speed and search depends on specific powers granted to department heads, creating effects that run contrary to conventional wisdom and intuition” (p. 101). Having run their investigations, the authors make the important conclusion that “The problem of finding appropriate organizational designs for different environmental conditions remains a steep challenge for practicing managers. What makes the choice of appropriate organizational design difficult is, in part, the interdependencies among the various aspects of design. Interdependencies can create surprising and subtle effects that, without systematic analysis, can lead intuition astray … ” (p. 119). An import explanatory factor is “the power of department heads to take unilateral action, screen out departmental options, control agendas, and veto firmlevel alternatives” (p. 119). The authors might have achieved more mileage if they

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were not, it transpires, still attached to traditional roles of leadership: these days, not every operation needs old-style leaders wielding varying degrees of authority (Siggelkow & Rivkin, 2005). Stacey, R. (1995). The science of complexity: An alternative perspective for strategic change processes. Strategic Management Journal, 16, 477–495. This article, one of the earliest on the science of complexity as applied to organizations, remarks that the two perspectives on strategic change that are most firmly established in the literature—namely, strategic choice and ecology—share the same assumptions about system dynamics: both assume that negative feedback drives successful systems (meaning, individual organizations or groups thereof) toward predictable equilibrium states of adaptation to the environment (p. 477). The article offers a third perspective, that of complex adaptive systems. Accordingly, the article presents an interpretation of system dynamics characterized by both positive and negative feedback, which makes systems coevolve far from equilibrium, in a selforganizing manner, toward essentially unpredictable long-term outcomes. The article is lucid and pithy: written in 1995, it still says more about, say, the need to understand the nature of the boundaries around a conflict or the requirement for leadership to shift from one person to another depending on task needs or the emotional states of groups of people, than many articles written in 2018 (Stacey, 1995). Surie, G., & Hazy, J. (2006). Generative leadership: Nurturing innovation in complex systems. Emergence: Complexity and Organization, 8(4), 13–26. This article contributes a theoretical framework for generative leadership, viz., a form of leadership that creates a context to stimulates innovation in complex systems. “By focusing on how generative leaders create conditions that nurture innovation, rather than on individual traits or creativity per se, the framework provides new directions for leadership research and bears policy implications for managers” (p. 13). Much of what the article argues is by now taken for granted; this said, a signal contribution is the table on page 16, which links leadership, innovation, and complexity depending on the nature of leadership and identifies the specific tasks that generative leadership can deliver to nurture innovation (Surie & Hazy, 2006). Uhl-Bien, M., & Marion, R. (2009). Complexity leadership in bureaucratic forms of organizing: A meso model. The Leadership Quarterly, 20, 631–650. This article by two respected founding figures in the field of complexity leadership describes how adaptive dynamics can work in combination with administrative functions to generate emergence and change in organizations. The article makes the important point that “Despite … recognition [of] … the fact that the informal organization is well accepted in organization studies, leadership research has, until recently, focused almost entirely on the formal side of the organization (i.e., leadership activities of individuals in hierarchical or formal managerial roles) and largely ignored the informal side of organizational leadership” (p. 646). Recognizing that bureaucratic forms of organizing remain influential, the article makes much of the need to amplify adaptive functions to generate emergent outcomes (e.g., innovation, learning,

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adaptability) in such organizations. A more prosaic look at the political economy of bureaucratic structures, which explains why they often buck the obvious, would have benefited the reader (Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2009). 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, 298–318. This article underscores the fact that the leadership models of the 19th century were the products of top-down, bureaucratic paradigms: they were eminently effective for economies that are premised on physical production but are not wellsuited for knowledge-oriented economies (p. 298). Therefore, the article draws from complexity science to develop a leadership paradigm bent on enabling the learning, creative, and adaptive capacity of complex adaptive systems within a context of knowledge-producing organizations. The conceptual framework comprises three entangled leadership roles, namely, administrative leadership, adaptive leadership, and enabling leadership, that the authors believe better reflect the need for dynamic relationships between the bureaucratic, administrative functions of organizations and the emergent, informal dynamics of complex adaptive systems. The authors do not answer but thankfully raise pertinent questions: “[W]hat patterns of behavior do organizational complex adaptive systems [CAS] gravitate to and are there ‘patterns to those patterns’ across systems? What is the specific generative nature of asymmetry and how does it function within a network dynamic? What enabling functions emerge from a complex network dynamic? What psycho-social dynamic occurs in the spaces between agents emergent dynamic? What are the mechanisms by which a social system moves from one stable pattern to another? What contexts are conducive to given patterns of interaction and how do enabling and administrative leaders help foster or stifle those contexts?” (p. 314) (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). Woodman, R., Sawyer, J., & Griffin, R. (1993). Toward a theory of organizational creativity. Academy of Management Review, 18(2), 293–321. This early article defines organizational creativity as “the creation of a valuable, useful new product, service, idea, procedure, or process by individuals working together in a complex social system” (p. 293): it does so by defining the drivers of individual, group, and organizational creativity. (The first is argued to be a function of antecedent conditions, creative behavior, cognitive style/abilities, and personality; the second is claimed to be a function of knowledge, intrinsic motivation, social influences, and contextual influences; and the third is identified to be a function of group composition, group characteristics, and group processes). Noting that the concept of organizational creativity was at the time of writing a relatively unexplored area of organizational change and innovation, the authors posited that their model had potential for further research and then left the argument at that. Notwithstanding the linear relationships inherent to the individual–group–organization flow toward creative outcomes (and omissions including motive, means, and opportunity at every level), many of the arguments the article made have been superseded if not contradicted by other research (Woodman et al., 1993).

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Books Goldstein, J., Hazy, J., & Lichtenstein, B. (2010). Complexity and the nexus of leadership: Leveraging nonlinear science to create ecologies of innovation. Palgrave Macmillan. In the 21st century, leadership that generates greater innovation, connectivity, and organizational transformation is crucial for success. Drawing from complexity science, this 213-page book advocates a new approach to leadership: “[E]very single employee is responsible for generative leadership on an hour-by-hour, dayby-year basis. … [L]eadership is not in the senior managers; instead, leadership is in every interaction throughout the organization” (p. 195). It follows that leadership entails managing relations throughout an organization (as well as relationships with other organizations) and always searching for synergistic and symbiotic ecologies that underscore the adaptive potential of complexity. Combining case studies with research results, the book explores the challenges that now face fast-paced organizations and provides tools for creating ecologies of innovation, leading in the cusp of change, leading emergence, experimenting with novelty, exercising positive deviance, leading through smart networks, and applying generative leadership (Goldstein et al., 2010). Goldstein, J., Hazy, J., & Silberstang, J. (2009). Complexity science and social entrepreneurship: Adding social value through systems thinking. ISCE Publishing. This 650-page book explores social entrepreneurship from the perspective of complexity science and systems thinking. Written by complexity theorists, international development practitioners, and experts in a variety of disciplines, the 27 articles that comprise the book are exploratory, multi-disciplinary, and international: they are eclectic but advance both theory and practice, providing an innovative and comprehensive look at the topics they deal with without pressing the reader into a single perspective. The sections on economic impact and special value creation, social networks and cross-sector alliances, and social change and collective identity are of special interest (Goldstein et al., 2009). Hazy, J., Goldstein, J., & Lichtenstein, B. (Eds.). (2007) Complex systems leadership theory: New perspectives from complexity science on social and organizational effectiveness. ISCE Publishing. This 496-page book makes the point that leadership theory must transition to new perspectives that account for the complexity of today’s highly interconnected organizations. Leadership (as distinct from leaders) must be seen as a complex dynamic process that emerges in the interactive spaces between people and ideas. The book eschews simple answers to difficult questions; rather, it offers up insights and tools from complexity science, such as the intricate dynamics of emergent leadership simulated through agent-based modeling (Hazy et al., 2007). Obolensky, N. (2014) Complex adaptive leadership: Embracing paradox and uncertainty (2nd ed.). Routledge. This 274-page book makes the increasingly obvious point that authority, influence, and initiative are being challenged in in contemporary organizations; we all know that

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leadership isn’t what it used to be but we continue to cling to old assumptions. The author argues that leadership should not be considered something that is exercised by nominated leaders: it is a complex dynamic process involving all those engaged in an enterprise, hence reference to the term polyarchy (from poly “many” and arkhe “rule”)—a form of governance in which power is invested in multiple people)—and the dynamics of it. The book means to help practitioners understand and react to increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous times (or VUCA as the acronym has it) (Obolensky, 2014). Uhl-Bien, M., & Marion, R. (Eds.). (2008). Complexity leadership: Part I: Conceptual foundations. Information Age Publishing. This 448-page book introduces readers to the potential that complexity science holds for shifting the study of leadership beyond its focus on leaders’ actions and influence to consideration of it as a broader, dynamically interactive organizing process; that form of leadership is deemed more appropriate to knowledge-oriented economies. The book offers a primer on complexity science and its applications to organization studies: it compares the logics of complexity science with those underlying traditional leadership approaches; it describes methodological approaches for studying leadership from a complexity perspective; and it provides examples of applications of complexity science to leadership theory. The book’s chapters are written by established scholars in the emerging field of complexity leadership. Sadly, this ten years after publication of the first volume, there are no news of Part II (Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2008).

References Anderson, P. (1999). Complexity theory and organization science. Organization Science, 10(3), 216–232. Bonabeau, E., & Meyer, C. (2001). Swarm intelligence: A whole new way to think about business. Harvard Business Review, 79(5), 107–114. Balkundi, P., & Kilduff, M. (2006). The ties that lead: A social network approach to leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 17, 419–439. Brown, S., & Eisenhardt, K. (1997). The art of continuous change: Linking complexity theory and time-based evolution in relentlessly shifting organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42, 1–34. Goldstein, J., Hazy, J., & Lichtenstein, B. (2010). Complexity and the nexus of leadership: Leveraging nonlinear science to create ecologies of innovation. Palgrave Macmillan. Goldstein, J., Hazy, J., & Silberstang, J. (2009). Complexity science and social entrepreneurship: Adding social value through systems thinking. ISCE Publishing. Hazy, J., Goldstein, J., & Lichtenstein, B. (Eds.). (2007). Complex systems leadership theory: New perspectives from complexity science on social and organizational effectiveness. ISCE Publishing. MacGillivray, A. (2018). Leadership as practice meets knowledge as flow: Emerging perspectives for leaders in knowledge-intensive organizations. Journal of Public Affairs, 18(1). MacIntosh, R., & MacLean, D. (1999). Conditioned emergence: A dissipative structures approach to transformation. Strategic Management Journal, 20, 297–316.

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McCarthy, J. (2004). What is artificial intelligence? http://jmc.stanford.edu/artificial-intelligence/ what-is-ai/index.html McKelvey, B. (1999). Avoiding complexity catastrophe in coevolutionary pockets: Strategies for rugged landscapes. Organization Science, 10(3), 294–321. Obolensky, N. (2014) Complex adaptive leadership: Embracing paradox and uncertainty (2nd ed.). Routledge. Plowman, D., Baker, L., Beck, T., Kulkarni, M., Solansky, S., & Travis, D. (2007). The role of leadership in emergent, self-organization. The Leadership Quarterly, 18, 341–356. Schreiber, C., & Carley, K. (2006). Leadership style as an enabler of organizational complex functioning. Emergence: Complexity and Organization, 8(4). Siggelkow, N., & Rivkin, J. (2005). Speed and search: Designing organizations for turbulence and complexity. Organization Science, 16, 101–122. Stacey, R. (1995). The science of complexity: An alternative perspective for strategic change processes. Strategic Management Journal, 16, 477–495. Surie, G., & Hazy, J. (2006). Generative leadership: Nurturing innovation in complex systems. Emergence: Complexity and Organization, 8(4), 13–26. Uhl-Bien, M., & Marion, R. (Eds.). (2008). Complexity leadership: Part I: Conceptual foundations. Information Age Publishing. Uhl-Bien, M., & Marion, R. (2009). Complexity leadership in bureaucratic forms of organizing: A meso model. The Leadership Quarterly, 20, 631–650. 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, 298–318. Woodman, R., Sawyer, J., & Griffin, R. (1993). Toward a theory of organizational creativity. Academy of Management Review, 18(2), 293–321.

Appendix G

The Case for Grounded Theory

Within the ambit of qualitative research, exploratory (or formulative or pilot) studies, often profitably small-scale, are conducted when the topic is new and there is little or no prior research to refer to; in such instances, confirmatory research (or hypothesis testing) is initially out of the question (Maxwell, 2013). Exploratory studies help gain familiarity with phenomena, or acquire insight into these, so one might later formulate more precise problems and develop hypotheses (Stebbins, 2001). In exploratory studies, one can design pilot studies to gain familiarity with the setting and concerns of a state of affairs; present a well-grounded picture of a situation; generate new ideas and associated assumptions; test methods and explore their implications; refine issues for more methodical investigation and formulation of research questions; develop directions for future research; ascertain whether a study is practicable in the future; or abductively, deductively, and inductively develop theory (Maxwell, 2013). The type of theory to be developed in the present case is substantive, contrasted with formal (or grand) theory, and this study leveraged grounded theory with the help of participants (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Charmaz, 2014). Substantive theory addresses everyday situations and embodies a specificity—thence usefulness to practice—that higher level speculations about global concerns often lack (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The other common research designs that I considered were case study, ethnography, narrative research, and phenomenology (Creswell, 2013; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Contrasting the five approaches, Creswell (2013) made clear that: • Case study is suited to “Developing an in-depth description and analysis of a case or multiple cases”, drawing from law, medicine, political science, and psychology. • Ethnography is suited to “Describing and interpreting a culture-sharing group”, drawing from anthropology and sociology. • Grounded theory is suited to “Developing a theory grounded in data from the field”, drawing from sociology. • Narrative research is suited to “Exploring the life of an individual”, drawing mostly from the humanities.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 O. Serrat, Leading Organizations of the Future, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8199-1

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• Phenomenology is suited to “Understanding the essence of the experience”, drawing from education, philosophy, psychology (Creswell, 2013, p. 104). It follows that case study, ethnography, narrative research, and phenomenology were not suitable research designs for the kind of problem this study considered. With applications in the social sciences, action research is another, less common qualitative approach to problem-solving, that might have suited the study; however, action research is a disciplined process of inquiry conducted by and for coresearchers under a cyclic process of action and critical reflection in a practice-based setting, which is not that of this study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Even so, action research delivers practical, effective, and sustainable answers to real-world problems and, contingent on the availability of a practice-based setting, coresearchers, and associated resources, could conceivably power follow-on research upon this study’s completion (Stringer & Ortiz Aragón, 2020). Anchored in sociology, what grounded theory stands for and can help deliver is the exploration of the experience that people have of a process, meaning, how something alters over time, and the creation of a theoretical idea of how the process work (Schwandt, 2007). Then again, beyond the study of a single process (or core category) per Strauss and Corbin (1998), Charmaz (2014) recommended that, to highlight the flexibility of grounded theory and eschew mechanical applications of it, a constructivist perspective should promote the theory as a constellation of methods and shred notions of a neutral observer and value-free expert; accordingly, therefore, categories and theory can be coconstructed by the researcher and the respondents in a constructivist frame of mind. Enriched by the constructivist perspective of Charmaz (2014), the language of grounded theory spoke to this study, which sundrily aimed to conceptualize, develop, generate, and propose optimum combinations of situationally-determined modes of governance (e.g.,hierarchy, market, and network) for problem-solving (Serrat, 2021a). However, if the language of grounded theory research rings the clearest bell, there are no examples of constructs that I might elaborate on, even in highperformance organizations such as those that S&P 500 lists: all is in the making (or perpetual beta); the idea was not to prove but to submit a unified explanation, grounded by interviews of subject matter experts (or authorities) in metagovernance, complexity leadership, and/or sense-making (Serrat, 2021a).

Appendix H

Research Sub-questions and Corresponding Interview Questions

Research sub-question

Interview question

SQ1. What is the relevance of traditional (20th century) styles of leadership in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world?

IQ1. In what circumstances are traditional (20th century) styles of leadership (e.g., autocratic, charismatic, laissez-faire, situational, transactional, transformational) continuingly relevant in the 21st century? IQ2. How does hybridization of the three main forms of organizing (i.e.,hierarchy, market, network) affect organizational boundaries and the erstwhile, narrowly-focused relationship between leaders, followers, and context? IQ3. With the increasing prevalence of flatter organization management structures, why might organizations of the future choose to moderate traditional (20th century) styles of leadership and adopt modes of leadership (i.e., administrative, adaptive, enabling)?

SQ2. How might metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making help to jointly characterize the operating environment for organizations in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world?

IQ4. What, in relation to organizational governance, organizational leadership, and knowledge management, have been traditional approaches to the accomplishment of organizational purpose? IQ5. What, individually, do metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making contribute to the accomplishment of organizational purpose? IQ6. What combinational synergies might there exist between metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making? (continued)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 O. Serrat, Leading Organizations of the Future, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8199-1

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(continued) Research sub-question

Interview question

SQ3. How might context bear on sense-making IQ7. What dimensions of context (i.e., known and decision-making? knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns, unknowns and unknowables) does a world in constant motion invite closer attention to? IQ8. How might the characteristics of simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts suggest what forms of organizing could be adopted? IQ9. Contingent on context, what are the comparative advantages and disadvantages of modes and styles of leadership on sense-making and decision-making? SQ4. How might a context-specific leadership management framework support metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing?

IQ10. From the foregoing, what grounds might there be to fuse the lenses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making for organizational performance? IQ11. How might a leadership management framework for sense-making and decision-making help organizations meet challenges and reap opportunities in simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts? IQ12. What might be principles for selecting and processes and practices for managing modes of leadership for metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing?

Note The 12 interview questions were shared with three scholars and practitioners in January– February 2022 for pretesting, with invitation to modify, remove, or add to the questions to enhance validity and the accomplishment of desired results. Suggestions to improve the effectiveness of the 12 interview questions were acted upon

Appendix I

Informed Consent

Investigator: Olivier Serrat Study Title: Leading Organizations of the Future: An Exploratory Study to Fuse Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making for Organizational Performance [Original Dissertation Title]. I am a student at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. This research study is being conducted as a part of my dissertation requirement for the PhD Program in Organizational Leadership. I am asking you to participate in a study on leading organizations of the future. The open-ended and exploratory research question the study means to address is: What leadership management framework for sense-making and decision-making can help organizations meet challenges and reap opportunities in simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts? Specifically, you would be asked to take part in an interview. Although you may not benefit, your participation would help generate a knowledge claim vis-à-vis organizations of the future and a framework for how they might be led, with extensive and topical ramifications for theory, practice, and follow-on research. Breach of confidentiality is a risk. Loss of time is another risk. Please take your time to read the entire document and feel free to ask any questions before signing this document. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to close the gap in knowledge of what contextspecific modes—not styles—of leadership can help manage organizations of the future. Procedures: The study will be framed by constructivist grounded theory: specifically, it will rest on open-ended and exploratory interviews of subject matter experts in metagovernance, complexity leadership, and/or sense-making. The interviews will be held via a video conferencing service such as Microsoft Teams, Webex, or Zoom. The interviews will aim to reconstruct objective (or factual) knowledge for theorygeneration. The interviews will be recorded. I will take field notes to serve member

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 O. Serrat, Leading Organizations of the Future, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8199-1

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checking and what coding, categorizing, and reflecting will be carried out. Four research sub-questions and 12 interview questions have been couched in the form of probes to ease comprehension and facilitate answerability. If you volunteer to participate in the study you will be given the opportunity to review the research sub-questions and interview questions as well as the definitions of key terms to be employed in the study before the interview. The interview questions have been pilottested: this helped refine them and provided the opportunity to adjust the definitions of key terms. Each interview will take 45–60 min. Risks to Participants: Breach of confidentiality is a risk. This risk will be minimized by using descriptors or pseudonyms during and after the study and by reporting data in aggregate form. Loss of time is another risk that will be minimized by keeping the interviews short. Benefits to Participants: You will not benefit from the study. However, I hope the information learned from the study will benefit the field of study by promoting understanding of how to manage modes of leadership for metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing. Alternatives to Participation: Participation in this study is voluntary. You can also withdraw from participation at any time without any penalty. Confidentiality: During this study, information will be collected about you for the purpose of this research: this includes only your name and email address. Identities will be hidden by descriptors or pseudonyms if it is necessary to share them. The informed consent forms will be kept on my laptop. To secure the data and protect the confidentiality of the participants, the audio and/or video recordings will be password-protected. The interview recordings will be deleted immediately following transcription. The guidelines of the American Psychological Association are that data must be kept for a minimum of 5 years: immediately thereafter, all audio and/or video recordings and all links between the data and identifying information about the participants will be destroyed. The data gathered during the interview will be kept on my laptop. The participants will have the right to decline recording, in which case I will jot down the key points of the interview, subsequently couch them in sentences, and then revisit the participants to confirm the points. It is possible that your data may be used for future research or distributed to another researcher without your consent. However, information that could identify you will be removed. Your research records may be reviewed by federal agencies whose responsibility is to protect human subjects participating in research, including the Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP) and by representatives from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology Institutional Review Board, a committee that oversees research.

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Questions/Concerns: If you have questions or concerns related to the procedures described in this document, please reach me by calling Tel. No. (+1) 202-306-8878 or writing to [email protected]. You may also contact Dr. Renee L. Roman, Ph.D.; Department Chair for IO/Business Psychology, Organization Leadership, and Behavioral Economics; The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, DC Campus; 1015 15th St NW, Washington, DC 20005; Tel. No. (+1) 202-706-5064. Dr. Roman is the Chair of my Dissertation Committee. If you have questions concerning your rights in this research study you may contact the Institutional Review Board (IRB), which is concerned with the protection of subjects in research project. You may reach the IRB office Monday–Friday by calling Tel. No. (+1) 312-467-2335 or writing to: Institutional Review Board, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, 325 N. Wells, Chicago, Illinois, 60654. Consent to Participate in Research. Participant: I have read the above information and have received satisfactory answers to my questions. I understand the research project and the procedures involved have been explained to me. I agree to participate in this study. My participation is voluntary and I do not have to sign this form if I do not want to be part of this research project. I will receive a copy of this consent form for my records. ________________________________________ Name of Participant (print) ________________________________________ Signature of Participant Date: __________ ________________________________________ Name of the Person Obtaining Consent (print) ________________________________________ Signature of the Person Obtaining Consent Date: __________

Appendix J

Open, Axial, and Selective Coding for the Interview Transcripts

Table J1 The Upshot of VUCA: Context—Conditions and Situations “Are there any simple contexts anymore?” (Expert No. 6) “Digital technology is making organizations work as open systems” (Expert No. 11) “In today’s market environment customer experience is the absolute, most important thing” (Expert No. 12) “There is not enough adaptivity for the complexity we are in” (Expert No. 5) “There may be situations that look simple but, these days, the whole world impacts” (Expert No. 6) An organization’s metrics must be aligned Context is the magic word Customer experience is the product of multiple functions that must jive in one motion together: they cannot be out of whack Different contexts summon different speeds of operation In today’s world, the average tenure of a chief executive officer is very short Leadership springs from empathy Problem-solving systems must reflect the environment, where they are trying to do the work The new traditional pushes heavily on results with adaptation and innovation The world of complacent organizations will be upended by change Too many organizations think they are doing as well as they can Understanding how to shape-shift in complex situations is the new leadership challenge We are witnessing a lead–lag phenomenon: the rate of change is accelerating but the social system including leadership lags

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 O. Serrat, Leading Organizations of the Future, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8199-1

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Table J2 The Upshot of VUCA: Flat Organizations “We are moving towards flatter organizations characterized by more self-management and more self-managing teams, but that are also more open […] and constantly working with external parties, which blurs the boundaries between the organization and its environment” (Expert No. 4) Complexity leadership is a function of circumstances Flatter organization management structures are a reality today Here and there, hierarchies now mean to empower the frontline and create space for self-organizing Hierarchies slow decision-making; networks let things happen quickly Horizontal, distributive, integrative, and facilitative approaches to leadership are needed when you combine forms of organizing Knowledge is more critical than the power hierarchy Lateral connections and interstices are not in our traditional mental models of leadership Leaders and followers are now entangled and intertwined Organizational adaptation is the response to conflict: this adaptation rests on a suitable mix of styles and modes of leadership Organizations must face and align with their constituencies Organizations need both lead and lag metrics to effectively broker their behavior and deliver results Public sector organizations are among the few remaining hierarchies Sociocracy seeks to create psychologically safe environments and productive organizations The market form of organizing does much to define the boundaries of the new age of leadership The predominant way of working will be about people collaborating in particularized areas to develop and implement solutions The span of control widens as organizations flatten: to potentially work, leadership must change These days, you need to convene, facilitate, build trust, mediate, communicate, and ensure progress To enhance customer experience, organizations need to cast themselves as brokerage networks that tie knowledge to metrics To mix and match people with various orientations and capabilities to changing situations leadership must focus on the lateral, not the vertical Tushman’s ambidextrous organization intuited that different parts of an organization need different styles and modes of leadership

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Table J3 The Upshot of VUCA: Hybrid Forms of Organizing “Hybridization changes what the tasks of leadership are” (Expert No. 8) “Hybridization creates a whole new way to leverage the talent in organizations” (Expert No. 6) “No one anticipated Uber-type organizations” (Expert No. 6) “Today’s world is by necessity hierarchy, market, and network” (Expert No. 10) All consequential organizations are hybridizing Hierarchy is what people are most familiar with Hierarchy will move from the foreground to the background as market and network forms of organizing become more and more prominent Hierarchy, market, and network are organization design decisions that condition leadership Hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing are now intertwined and entangled How does one prepare leaders to lead in hybridized forms? Human resource divisions are roadblocks to innovative organizational designs Hybridization of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing has done away with boundaries Hybridization of the forms of organizing is a sign that an organization has recognized the context and means to respond appropriately Hybridization of the forms of organizing requires leaders to be very adaptive to different contexts Hybridization of the three main forms of organizing makes eminent sense It is all in play: hybridizing is inherent to the organizing challenges that are faced today Market and network forms of organizing require leaders to lead outside their organization, where they cannot use transactional and transformational leadership Navigating environments through different forms of organizing has a lot to do with the skill level of leaders Network-based organizations are on the leading edge of creation Networks are penetrating organizational structures and coming together for shorter periods of time Organizational linkages to the ecosystem are multiplying dramatically: hybridization is a response Temporary teams assembled to execute complex operations have the best record for hybridizing in VUCA environments We are witnessing a quickening shift from hierarchy to market to network forms of organizing

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Table J4 The Upshot of VUCA: Modes of Leadership “At times, the leader needs to step back and be led by the people that know better” (Expert No. 12) “Distributing leadership takes the hierarchical model and turns it into a process” (Expert No. 12) “Leadership in the new world needs to be a process, not a person” (Expert No. 12) “Management is there to enable and facilitate the success of their people and thereby drive the success of the organization” (Expert No. 12) “People, people, people” (Expert No. 2) “There is, now, a need for modes of leadership in almost any organizational setting” (Expert No. 10) “You discover in the moment” (Expert No. 1) Different contexts invite exploration or demand speed Even the military has come to realize that hierarchical structures are not the best way to organize in complex situations Hiring leaders and giving them the ability to lead delivers organizational agility and market speed Interaction can defer to hierarchy and vice-versa Leadership can only be collective and transitory when you must reconfigure an organization over and over again Leadership can only be collective and transitory when you must reconfigure an organization over and over again Leadership is no longer something organizations can nurture and develop: today, leadership must be characterized by temporality Leadership must be as agile as organizations need to be Leadership must move more decidedly to self-organizing leadership models Leadership must talk adaptive and enabling at the same time it talks administrative or it will design systems at cross-purposes Leadership should not be characterized into components: it must be understood in its entirety Modes of governance must coexist Operational leadership must be complemented by entrepreneurial (aka adaptive) and enabling leadership Organizations can proactively orchestrate open innovation Organizations have become complex: one needs to have all kinds of leadership The function of the public sector is not to deliver authority or standardized services or commodities but to solve problems The modern-day tradeoff is between the pressure for performance and the need for ideation, creativity, innovation, and change

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Table J5 The Upshot of VUCA: Styles of Leadership “Does leadership happen in a way that leaves data traces in the world?” (Expert No. 8) “‘Follow and do as I say’ no longer works very well” (Expert No. 6) “For sure, in difficult times, the cost of inaction can be very high” (Expert No. 1) “Hierarchy is especially relevant to life-or-death situations, where one wants to minimize the likelihood of mistakes and rely on control” (Expert No. 2) “The traditional styles of leadership associated with hierarchy are less and less relevant and more and more of a problem in the 21st century” (Expert No. 2) “There is a place for hierarchy […] but you need to flatten out the decision-making structure [and prevent] stove piping” (Expert No. 6) “When we stop controlling everybody’s time and thought present them with compelling purposes we unleash energy, intellect, capability, and relationships” (Expert No. 9) “You can’t really use sticks and carrots and sermons any longer” (Expert No. 4) A leader’s job is not to know everything and to tell people what to do but that is still the predominant conception of what they are all about Administrative leadership makes organizations run for results: it is continuingly relevant Both transactional and transformational leadership are tied to hierarchy Compared to industrial engineering, or even finance and accounting, organizational leadership studies have contributed little Control works best when things don’t change Different contexts require different information sets Emergencies can warrant top–down decisions but are usually a sign of underlying problems Emerging leadership theories such as complexity leadership are more interesting than traditional styles of leadership Even in the military, junior personnel want to be considered in the choices that are made In hierarchies, leaders focus inwardly on their organization, resources, goals, targets, and employees It is not just about styles; it is about configuring leadership in organizations Many styles of leadership were based on fairly closed systems Narrowing leadership to particular styles is not complex enough for the world we live in Servant leadership came out of the 20th century but seems continually relevant Servant leadership may be the only traditional style of leadership of continuing relevance in the 21st century Styles of leadership are mere descriptors: they are not very helpful from an analytical perspective Styles of leadership are outdated Styles of leadership are persona-based; personas do not work in the prevailing environment The world is too complex to rely on linear motion Time pressure can justify hierarchy To what extent is somebody’s charisma relevant in leadership? Traditional styles of leadership are no longer useful (continued)

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(continued) Traditional styles of leadership assume a principal–agent relation Traditional styles of leadership maintain the structures of the Industrial Revolution Transactional leadership is about carrots and sticks and transformational leadership is about sermons Twentieth century leadership theories seem simple, simplistic, and linear Twentieth century scholarship suggests we have not looked at the best but at the second-best, those that on the word of Lao Tzu people honor and praise

Table J6 The Upshot of VUCA: VUCA A VUCA environment will not get calm In the age of complexity, the ultimate bloodline is knowledge from collective intelligence and learning Parts of organizations are less susceptible to the influence of change than others Single organizational perspectives cannot address the challenges the world faces VUCA means that things are going to change, say, geopolitically, socially, or technically

Table J7 Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making for VUCA: Complexity Leadership “There’s incontrovertible evidence that self-organization is much more effective than top–down leadership” (Expert No. 9) “There’s nothing that’s not complex anymore. That’s going to be synonymous with complexity leadership” (Expert No. 12) “We [now] operate at a metagovernance level, but it is within complexity leadership theory, which is a lot of knowledge brokering” (Expert No. 12) “We want leaders who continuously question, test, learn, and then update what they think they know” (Expert No. 9) Complexity leadership helps us work more interactively at solving problems Complexity leadership is happening without people being aware of it Complexity leadership makes sense: more should be written about it We live in an age of projects, which is how people come together to deal with complexity We operate in a complexity leadership environment but must have metagovernance over it: otherwise, everybody comes up with their own ideas

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Table J8 Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making for VUCA: Knowledge Management Dixon sees three eras in knowledge management: information management, experience management, and idea management In most organizations knowledge management systems are nonexistent In the late 1980s and early 1990s, knowledge management had much to do with information systems Knowledge management never attracted the attention of board of directors Knowledge management used to be about organizing information Knowledge per se is not enough: we need to understand how it comes about T-shaped managers share knowledge freely

Table J9 Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making for VUCA: Matagovernance “Metagovernance is about having frameworks with which to understand things” (Expert No. 2) A metagovernor reflects on the challenge and context and decides how to best combine forms of organizing Even when it seems ambiguous, metagovernance can combine effective and pragmatic actions Leadership is integral to metagovernance Metagovernance clarifies organizational purpose at fractal and multiple levels Metagovernance creates conditions, complexity leadership takes up those conditions, and sense-making elucidates the dynamic patterns we cocreate Metagovernance creates the arena and shapes the framework for sense-making and complexity leadership to take place Metagovernance gives space to people so they might mobilize their ideas, skills, and resources Metagovernance has come of age Metagovernance helps agree with what norms and behaviors will maximize the likelihood of success Metagovernance is the governance of governance Metagovernance is the reality of how organizations blend with increasingly interconnected ecosystems Metagovernance must represent how we work together and make decisions for adaptive responses Metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making allow an organization to be more adaptive

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Table J10 Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making for VUCA: Operating Environment “A world in constant motion: that is exactly correct” (Expert No. 12) “It is moving so quickly in software: it is all chaos” (Expert No. 12) “Platform competition has changed the game” (Expert No. 12) “We tend to train people for complicated problems” (Expert No. 8) Amazon Web Services exemplifies the blurring of organizational boundaries: it provides on-demand cloud computing on a pay-as-you-go basis An organization’s structure must enable it to operate differently in response to change Complicated problems can be decomposed: complex problems cannot Context impinges on activities; with metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making organizations can actually build context Emergence synergizes metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making Ideas that bubble up drive organizational success in the new environment: therein lies the individual role of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making Lack of collaboration can be willful but also owes to blind spots Old approaches to organizational governance, organizational leadership, and knowledge management included boards of directors, styles of leadership, and codifying knowledge Organizational design must change in tune with the context

Table J11 Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making for VUCA: Organizational Governance “Most organizations and leaders understand the importance of governance: that was not the case 20 years ago” (Expert No. 2) Boards of directors limit their understanding of the future to strategy and the choice of chief executive officer Governance should involve rewards for both individual work and collaborative work Governance that is formalized and prescriptive cannot work in a world of change Governance used to be static: from guide rails, it is now about organizational density Governance was once the preserve of boards of directors Hierarchy enables natural divisions of differences in timeframes and scopes of work but this does not imply that everything should be controlled Hierarchy stifles innovation In Silicon Valley, decentralized governance models receive information from the environment and constantly readjust in response In Silicon Valley, governance structures are being developed at lower levels of the organization and are wrapped around markets and products (continued)

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(continued) In the United States, organizational governance is overly driven by fear of litigation Old governance models need to be updated for flexibility, for adaptability, in response to constant change People need to have lots of relationships Too many hierarchies still say to frontline personnel: “You both have to abide by the rules and look at your performance”

Table J12 Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making for VUCA: Organizational Leadership “Between the really smart board and the hero leader, what could possibly go wrong?” (Expert No. 9) Executives need to spend at least 10% of their time thinking five years out How much of a leader’s agenda is spent on understanding the world rather than day-to-day stuff? In a VUCA world, the last thing one wants are leaders who are convinced they know exactly what to do Individual, power-driven, advancement-driven mentalities often work against change Leadership was once synonymous with strategy The ability to recognize, predict, allocate, and adjust has become a critical skill of leadership Vested interests among those in positions of power militate against change

Table J13 Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making for VUCA: Organizational Purpose “Humans are not neat: they don’t fit into frameworks” (Expert No. 3) “We make up a reason for everything that happens” (Expert No. 8) “What we see is the collapsing of the capability to have a common purpose” (Expert No. 10) “Your organization is your people: it is a very deep sentiment” (Expert No. 3) Away from the principal–agent model, hierarchies are increasingly concerned with stewardship theory Employees now expect much more of an organization: its purpose is central to that In the 21st century, we must how consider strategic thinking, systems thinking, and design thinking can help clarify organizational purpose In today’s world, organizations may need to form around flow, not just purpose In today’s world, organizations may need to form around flow, not just purpose Intentionality, alignment, and coherence must underpin any organizational arrangement It is becoming harder to define organizational purpose, much of which ends up being emergent (continued)

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(continued) Nowadays, an organization’s purpose can no longer be decreed hierarchically Organizational purpose has become harder to define People no longer look at an organization’s vision, mission, goals, etc.: they look at its value statement Successful companies such as Patagonia determine organizational purpose collectively by connecting the various parts of their lateral world The challenge of leadership is to create a population of people who agree to a way of determining purpose The Teal organization is characterized by self-management, wholeness, and a deeper sense of purpose There is growing pressure from society for more social We are witnessing an organizational revolution within traditional hierarchies We structure organizations in terms of how we choose to think about leadership and then narrow our choices of ideas and behaviors Who determines an organization’s purpose these days?

Table J14 Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making for VUCA: SenseMaking “Individual humans have five senses, with which they derive sensory data: organizations have denuded data” (Expert No. 8) “We should be cautious about having something to say on really complex, tricky things without some real depth of thought” (Expert No. 8) “What artistic forms try to do is get at the essences, the most important pieces that are useful, and bring those into greater relief while still maintaining the essence of the whole” (Expert No. 8) Context-independent rules for organizing and managing are quite problematic Depending on pressure, or the need to move quickly, there may still be a need for top–down sense-making Inability to make sense leads to frustration, anxiety, and failure Old-school sense-making was the prerogative of a higher-up individual who would drill it down through Organizations must build space and practices for looking at things Organizations need more independent and objective ways of making sense of what they have learned and what is happening in the world Originally, sense-making took place in the operating model: it has begun to happen in the leadership space People can no longer make sense of our rapidly changing world Sense-making can be established as a norm but hinges on psychological safety Sense-making either comes from individuals who put themselves out there or from rules of engagement (continued)

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(continued) Sense-making is affected by the templates we create: how could we do a better job of it? Sense-making must ladder up into an organization’s intent Sense-making should not be something that takes place at the top of an organization: people must be involved at all levels The greatest leverage and power is in working with the particular We cannot rely on our interpretation of experience to be an accurate representation of how the world works: we need sense-making

Table J15 Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making for VUCA: Synergies from Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making Concern with metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making is strongest in the high-tech industries In synergy, metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making help notice, interpret, and respond Metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making are functionally important attributes of a framework to determine and accomplish organizational purpose Metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making enable organizations to close the value–action gap and deliver impact Metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making inject empathy into organizations Metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making were conceptualized separately: they need to be superimposed Sense-making, metagovernance, and complexity leadership equate with recognition, choice, and alignment, respectively: the combinational synergies are inherent Synergy lies at the intersection of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making The combinational synergies between metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making have to do with the intensification of joint processes The combinational synergies between metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making are huge There is no question synergies exist between metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making

Table J16 The Primacy of Context in VUCA: Forms of Organizing “Had we understood that, what would we have done differently?” (Expert No. 10) “If the world is getting more complex, we need to differentiate organizations to match the complexity” (Expert No. 9) “The complex world pushes us into needing to grasp the whole more than the individual parts” (Expert No. 8) (continued)

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(continued) “We are going to move from a structured hierarchy to a reconfigurable network model” (Expert No. 11) “What is actually coming down the hierarchy in a complex world is a fractal image of the whole” (Expert No. 8) Collectively, we can be smarter Depending on context, forms of organizing require technical, social, or global capability Flat decision-making, leadership as a process, and pulling in people who really know what is going on delivers blockbuster products Good work in pockets of an organization must happen across the organization Hierarchies must push decision-making capability downward In a complex world, you need to capture the whole in some important way Metagovernance is a three-dimensional construct of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing Metagovernance must allow people to come together, share knowledge, and make decisions based on that Organizing contingent on context hinges on agility; this intuits more lateral, more dynamism, and less commitment to staticity Parts of an organization might be simple but others might be complex

Table J17 The Primacy of Context in VUCA: Pros and Cons of Modes and Styles of Leadership “Administrative leadership clearly has some advantages in a simple world: the better you are it the more efficient you are going to be” (Expert No. 8) “Anytime we are adaptive we probably also have to be generative to actually propagate that” (Expert No. 8) “I do not think that styles of leadership are useful in addressing the problems that organizations and organizing initiatives face in today’s world” (Expert No. 10) “Leadership happens when people come to conclusions about things through conversation” (Expert No. 3) “Modes of leadership allow you to take a configurationally dynamic approach and that styles of leadership really tie you to particular individuals” (Expert No. 10) “Persona-based leadership is entirely constraining” (Expert No. 12) “The more chaotic the world gets, the more we need advanced forms of leadership that do not depend on individuals” (Expert No. 9) “The same leader should not be in power on every decision” (Expert No. 9) “We are being forced into new forms of leadership” (Expert No. 9) “We need to know how to educate decisions” (Expert No. 3) “When I look at modes I immediately go to the aggregate. When I look at styles I immediately go to the individual level” (Expert No. 10) A leadership style may be more declarative where the expectation and the required skill set are limited (continued)

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(continued) Conceiving organizations as flows (e.g., energy, information, people, raw materials) helps determine appropriate modes and styles of leadership depending on context Decision-making cannot just be pushed down: information, knowledge, skills, and reward structures must be pushed down too In hierarchies, people do not engage in sense-making together Inclusive styles of leadership procure more intelligence and promote enjoyment, willingness, and self-development Irrespective of context, decisions still need to be made: but, the modes and styles in which they are made must be adaptive Leaders must now design the ability to reconfigure Leadership is the responsibility of all, not just leaders Leadership is the ultimate driver but it must adapt to different situations Some problems are not decomposable Styles of leadership that allow and value the hearing of other voices more helpful than those that concentrate authority The more one needs to know the harder hierarchy becomes to run The type of problem should define the mode of governance and the type of organization one wants to build To be successful, organizations can no longer rely on control-oriented management Twenty-first century modes and styles of leadership should be about the synergies of knowledge as the basis for innovation and execution We must value the qualitative as much as the quantitative

Table J18 The Primacy of Context in VUCA: The Cynefin Framework “Complexity is rich interconnectivity. We have more complexity now because we have a greater amount of interconnectivity” (Expert No. 7) “In a complex world we should perhaps be learning more from the arts” (Expert No. 8) “It is obvious that unknown unknowns are more prevalent” (Expert No. 10) “It takes complexity to beat complexity” (Expert No. 7) “Most of [the operating environment] is unknown” (Expert No. 12) “‘Robust’ solutions emerge from ‘good-enough’ solutions that have been kept open to learning and constantly adapted. [They] help organizations bounce forward to a new state.” (Expert No. 4) “Sense-making is a completely optimistic practice” (Expert No. 1) “The big question is always about unknown unknowns” (Expert No. 8) “The real potential for growth, for effectiveness, for contribution to the world, for societal change, is in leaning into the unknowns and the unknowables” (Expert No. 9) (continued)

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(continued) “The world feels very out of control” (Expert No. 3) “Understanding the context ought to suggest modes of organizing that should help make better decisions, together” (Expert No. 3) “We don’t know what we don’t know and that is really dangerous” (Expert No. 6) “We know there are unknown unknowns and unknowable unknowns […] [but] believe we already have the answers we need for the most part” (Expert No. 9) A world in constant motion assuredly invites closer attention to unknown unknowns A world in constant motion puts a premium on creative and critical thinking and on conversations that help us understand Approaches to leadership must adapt to context Awareness of context determines the meaning one derives and drives sense-making Chaos might be represented as dots, complexity as dots connected to some lines, and order as interconnected lines Complex problems demand that organizations invest in sense-making to find ways to absorb the risk of failure Context conditions what form of organizing should be adopted: a simple context can mean organizing a team; a complex context can mean organizing a market motion Context occasions tradeoffs in terms of societal, political, and administrative goals Even networks can find reason to adopt simple hierarchical processes Faced with unknown unknowns, people make up known knowns to invent context In a complex system we do not know what individual agents will do that may change that system In a turbulent environment, there are only “good-enough” solutions In complex environments one needs to work within the realms of probability Lack of variability can be a precondition for safety Machine learning and artificial intelligence now enable us to deal with unknowns and unknowables Organizations have “copy exactly” modes when there is a safety concern or lack of variability in the process Organizations must learn to better understand unknowns and unknowables Organizations obsess over known knowns but a world in constant motion unleashes unknown unknowns Our choices are conditioned by context, social norms, behavioral norms, physical limitations, etc. but we can still push boundaries and make decisions Paradoxically, the edge of chaos calls for bureaucratic command and control, initially, so one might be able to respond: the challenge is that one does not want to stay there Simple contexts only require a decision to be made; complicated or complex contexts summon a wider variety of thoughts Simple phenomena are generally linear Some people experience complexity as chaos because they are not prepared The Cynefin framework characterizes increasing degrees of agent interdependence and interrelatedness (continued)

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(continued) The modern challenge is about how to deal with turbulence The threat we worry about are the unknown unknowns There is definitely more complexity Using slightly different terminology, Boisot and McKelvey identified three regimes: chaos, complexity, and order We can plan for known unknowns We focus on known knowns 90% of the time; the rest of the time, we discover as we go We have got to become more comfortable with discerning complex and sometimes even chaotic contexts We must increasingly question known knowns We need mindsets that can anticipate the unknown unknowns and the unknowables We now live in a turbulent world: there is no stability Wicked problems are temporal: they change over time With machine learning and artificial intelligence, decision-makers can make more sophisticated sense of context

Table J19 A Leadership Management Framework for VUCA: Fusing Metagovernance, Complexity Leadership, and Sense-Making “Complexity leadership and metagovernance are inherently compatible. And, sense-making is the inherent capability that any part of a system must have if it is going to be able to operate to accomplish any performance” (Expert No. 10) “It would be nice to be able to say: ‘It’s this kind of unknown and unknowable and if this kind of complexity presents itself this is the kind of sense-making you need to do and then you …’” (Expert No. 1) “The metagovernance of picking modes and styles of leadership comes from the task that needs to be done” (Expert No. 10) “There needs to be that fusion” (Expert No. 12) “We have to change the way we govern nations; we have to change the way we interact with society; and we have to change the way we lead our organizations” (Expert No. 9) Complexity leadership is a methodology: it enables sense-making and organizing Complexity leadership underscores decision-making as a process Conversations must set the stage for sense-making Fusing the lenses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making has everything to do with organizational performance If you want your organization to attract great talent and perform well you will fuse the lenses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making Learning at a faster rate is what changes organizational performance Metagovernance makes us think about forms of organizing, complexity leadership makes us think about adapting, and sense-making gives meaning to our collective experiences (continued)

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(continued) Metagovernance must replace corporate board, complexity leadership fits the prevailing ecosystems, and sense-making is core to all this Metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making is the only way to deliver the solutions needed to be successful Metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making leverage one another Networks have more flexibility because their commanding resources are not necessarily economically tied On their own, metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making do not quite address everything we need

Table J20 A Leadership Management Framework for VUCA: Leadership Management Framework “Metagovernance must be about requisite change” (Expert No. 9) “Sense-making and decision-making are the key capabilities in making an organization adaptable” (Expert No. 11) “There might need to be some sort of stage theory about organizational development in relation to the ability to deal with complexity” (Expert No. 8) A leadership management framework delivers the advantages of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing A leadership management framework is very metagovernance: instead of saying “Here’s the framework,” it says “Here’s the framework for making your own framework around these lenses” Complex environments demand social intelligence How sense-making and decision-making happen is vital: a framework that helps consider alternatives (e.g., top–down, emergence) is of the essence Leadership in times of unknowns and unknowables can be distributed Moving from simple to complicated only requires a bigger tool bag; the big shift is from complicated to complex, which calls for “second-order” or “meta” leadership Organizations need a metagovernance process to constantly look at what parts of the organization must be rethought and redirected The capability of empathy, adaptive thinking, and critical thinking is more important than ever before Traditional approaches can work in simple environments We must create models of organizing that are compelling in terms of outcomes for stakeholders We must put a little “l” on the word leadership We need governance systems that recognize the human element as much as, if not more than, the technology and the process

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Table J21 A Leadership Management Framework for VUCA: Leading Organizations of the Future—Principles “Follow the fear” (Expert No. 8) “Look for disconfirming data” (Expert No. 8) “You have got to be open. Typically, you do not have the best ideas on how to execute” (Expert No. 12) A principle for metagovernance is to push capability down to where value is created A principle for metagovernance is to reconfigure for minimal critical specs A principle for metagovernance ought to be that one should intentionally adapt most rapidly to change in the areas where one is: (a) most exposed to risk; and (b) least capable of responding to the threat should it happen A principle for metagovernance relates to the need to clarify organizational purpose A related principle for metagovernance is to push down information, knowledge, and reward structures to empower decision where value is created Because the world is more process-driven, not structure-driven, structures should be treated as way stations on the path to accomplishing dynamic tasks Knowledge, learning, culture, teaming, stories, and global collaboration are among the principles that organizations need for metagovernance Learning and adapting, both of which are linked to sense-making, are principles that organizations need for metagovernance Learning is a principle for metagovernance, in the design thinking, learn-as-you-go way of moving forward as an organization Only variety can absorb variety: Ashby’s law of requisite variety says that one cannot adapt unless one already has the capability of doing things Organizations must blend intentionality, alignment, and coherence right Paying close attention to context, meaning what one faces (viz., a technical or adaptive challenge), is a principle that organizations need for metagovernance Radical accountability, radical candor, radical self-compassion, and conversational leadership are among the principles that organizations need for metagovernance Recruiting (or potentially training) people with complexity mindsets is a principle that organizations need for metagovernance Servant leadership is a principle for metagovernance Shared governance that opens up conversation is a principle for metagovernance Stakeholder inclusion is a principle for metagovernance The person (or persons) in the moment must have personal awareness, situational awareness, logical skills, and empathy The principles that organizations need for metagovernance should capture what is not going to change over the next 20 years Value production is a principle that organizations need for metagovernance

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Table J22 A Leadership Management Framework for VUCA: Leading Organizations of the Future—Processes and Practices “You need people deeper and deeper in the organization to reduce the risk of situationally-determined challenges” (Expert No. 12) Processes and practices to advance principles for metagovernance should elicit appreciation, gratitude, and respect

Appendix K

Summary of Subject Matter Expert Responses to the 12 Interview Questions

IQ1. In what circumstances are traditional (20th century) styles of leadership (e.g., autocratic, charismatic, laissez-faire, situational, transactional, transformational) continuingly relevant in the 21st century? Expert No. 1 remarked that there are costs to traditional (20th century) leadership approaches. Traditional (20th century) styles of leadership speed information sets and certain things need to be accomplished rapidly; else, the cost of inaction may be very high. In such cases, the need for engagement and solidarity is minimal. However, traditional (20th century) styles of leadership do not necessarily conduce the exploration of ways that the 21st century demands. Expert No. 2 contended that traditional (20th century) styles of leadership are less and less relevant and, in reality, more and more of a problem. Managers are selected and trained to try to create control in a situation: that worked in slowmoving circumstances, which was the case up to, say, 2000. Nowadays, things are VUCA: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Expert No. 2 saw VUCA as a reality that is not going to calm or get normalized; we are not going back to where things were. In a world of change, hierarchical management that gives direction and controls creates problems: it helps in emergencies, when a rapid response is needed, but that is usually the sign of an underlying problem. Expert No. 3 reflected that traditional leadership styles find an echo in organizations that still maintain the processes and practices pioneered and refined from the time of the Industrial Revolution. People were moving out of agriculture to work in factories. How would manufacturing be conducted? How would workers have to be managed? Expert No. 3 remarked that many organizations continue to use traditional styles of leadership but are very quickly coming to realize that the structures and approaches associated with these, however important some may still be, are not the best way to organize and lead in the 21st century. An increasingly powerful driver of change has to do with what employees expect from organizations.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 O. Serrat, Leading Organizations of the Future, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8199-1

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Expert No. 4 verbalized in a preamble that metagovernance stands for the governance of governance. The first task of a metagovernor, Expert No. 4 specified, is to make a choice between different modes of governance, or combinations thereof: this demands that the metagovernor be very reflective about the situation to make a call about what different modes of governance best govern a particular problem, challenge, or ambition. After that choice has been made, Expert No. 4 explained, the second task of a metagovernor is to optimize, that is to say, reap the fruits of each selected mode of governance. This might entail, say, improving hierarchy, for instance by delegating and devolving power, or enhancing market governance, or boosting collaborative forms of governance. Expert No. 4 referenced Peters et al. (2022) for a thorough explanation about the choice or the combinations of governance modes to be utilized and how the three might be profitably metagoverned. To note, Expert No. 4 pursued, metagovernance should both comprise an element of institutional design and a stipulation of what hand-on or hands-off leadership ought to be integral to each design. Expert No. 4 took traditional styles of leadership to mean, for example, transactional leadership and transformational leadership. Expert No. 4 surmised that, at heart, transactional leadership is about carrots and sticks transformational leadership is about sermons. Notwithstanding, the two styles are tied to hierarchy in the sense that both presume a principal–agent relationship between leaders and the led. Notwithstanding, Expert No. 4 clarified that such traditional styles are not what one needs when moving into market-based or network-based governance where principal–agent relationships are not the issue; instead, one must bring people together and leadership need not be formal. Under market-based or network-based governance, Expert No. 4 went on, it is of the essence to convene, build trust, facilitate collaboration, ensure high-intensity communications, mediate conflict, ensure there is progress in the process, and catalyze innovation. Expert No. 4 discerned that there has been a general development from hierarchical to other forms of governance, whereby the three governance modes can on occasion compete with another but also coexist. A simple rule of thumb, according to Expert 4, is that hierarchy works best if one wants to deliver a standardized service while a market form of organizing comes in handy if one wants to get the cheapest deal. And yet, Expert No. 4 contended that the task of the public sector was no longer to deliver standardized services or cheap products: it is about solving problems. Assuredly, the public sector now confronts complex and wicked problems and must deal with turbulence, which requires the kinds of collaborative approach that networks are best positioned to deliver. Expert No. 5 contended that styles of leadership are only ever partly relevant to a given situation and that narrowing leadership to particular styles is never going to address the real-world complexity that 21st century organizations operate in. Traditional (20th century) styles of leadership made heavy use of autocratic leadership, which springs from hierarchy; charisma, which has to do with individuals, charmed many. More willingly, Expert No. 5 considered leadership to be relational and therefore about the space between people. If leadership is relational, as Expert No. 5 argued, then being charismatic must be deemed nonsense because there can be no such thing as a charismatic relationship. Attaching labels to different parts

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of leadership narrowed its function, Expert No. 5 said, and that is a problem for complex contexts. There might be laissez-faire leadership going on in timid reaction to complexity. On the whole, Expert No. 5 considered leadership styles to be insufficiently complex for the twenty-first century. Possibly, however, this in preference to boiling leadership styles down to appropriate or inappropriate, managers might exercise reflective practice and contemplate how they are acting in a particular context. Expert No. 6’s short answer to this question was: “Not very much.” Servant leadership is a 20th century style of leadership, or rather mind-set, that seems continually relevant but Expert No. 6 confessed more interest in 21st century leadership theories such as authentic leadership and complexity leadership. Complexity leadership demonstrates contemporary pertinence because the 21st century is a byword for complex adaptive systems: that theory articulates an informative framework for organizations. Expert No. 5 noted that complex adaptive systems (e.g., cities, ecosystems, governments, markets, industries) are dynamic, emergent, interactive, and nonlinear—and so very difficult to comprehend and manage—whereas 20th century leadership theories look simple—if not simplistic—in comparison. Expert No. 5 surmised that situational leadership might have found applications but that theory’s dated styles (i.e., delegating, participating, selling, telling) fall short of what multi-level complex adaptive systems demand in terms of behaviors, decisions, and relationships. Expert No. 7 observed that styles of leadership characterized by top-down, command and control approaches are no longer relevant; conversely, complexity leadership theory is truly appropriate for the times we live in. Complexity leadership theory accepts that organizations still need administrative modes of leadership, with the caveat that they must be made more flexible, but also calls for adaptive and enabling modes of leadership in response to 21st century requirements. Expert No. 7 conceded that there might still be a role for transformational and suchlike styles of leadership depending on circumstances. Expert No. 8 taught leadership to undergraduates and MBA students for 20 years, concluded that leadership theories do not offer much help, and shared that many colleagues had reasoned likewise. Expert No. 8 declaimed the oft-cited words of Lao Tzu, an ancient Chinese philosopher and founder of Taoism: “To lead people, walk beside them … As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate … When the best leader’s work is done the people say: ‘We did it ourselves!’” To Expert No. 8, Lao Tzu’s primordial insight suggested the scholarship of the last 100 years had not been interested in the best leaders, not knowing if they existed or where they might be: rather, Expert No. 8 averred, scholarship had focused on second-best leaders, those we honor and praise. Expert No. 8 remarked that servant leadership had hit on the idea of leadership being about the growth and well-being of people leaders serve and that the Level 5 leadership of Jim Collins sits on the same idea of leadership as personal humility. Notwithstanding, Expert No. 8 clarified, both theories intuit it might be difficult to study servant leadership and Level 5 leadership because one might not necessarily witness if it were done really well. Hence, Expert

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No. 8 and such as Mats Alvesson charged, leadership as a scholarly field had largely failed to produce actionable insights. To Expert No. 8, lack of attention to followership and how leadership is constructed in the field called for greater self-knowledge, which called attention to Chris Argyris’s action science, Donald Schon’s reflective practitioner, and Bill Torbert’s action inquiry. In the same vein, Expert No. 8 added, researchers such as Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey have offered the change immunity map to help us look at how we construct the world, learn about ourselves, and resolve problematic interactions. In short, Expert No. 8 doubted that any of the 20th century styles of leadership had ever been relevant, or particularly useful. In contrast, Expert No. 8 declared that the progress of say, accounting and finance, industrial engineering, information systems (e.g., management information systems), and marketing since World War II had been huge. Expert No. 8 surmised that leadership does not have measurable outcomes that can be linked to specific leadership behaviors. That said, Expert No. 8 pointed out that periods of crisis can bring out the best: people step up and erstwhile recalcitrance is won over by togetherness. Expert No. 9 pointed out that a good many organizations continue to operate by tradition despite ever-increasing complexity in parts of the economy, segments of society, and in the world at large. Presaging that there will for sure come a time when their worlds are upended by change, Expert No. 9 remarked that these organizations still do not find cause for alarm regarding how they are organized or led owing to the routine, well-understood nature of their business. And so, Expert No. 9 inferred that parts of organizations, or certain organizations, or even industries may be less susceptible to the influence of change than others and will be on the tail end of upheaval whereas others—for example in the technology sector—are very much on the leading edge. Typically, Expert No. 9 explained, vanguard organizations are more network-based, less formal, and less structured to tap what knowledge, resources, and partnerships enable them to respond to change. Expert No. 9 cited the case of Procter & Gamble’s “Connect + Develop” platform, which with 90,000 scientists around the world has helped Procter & Gamble invent things for the last 20 years and revolutionized that organization’s one-time “not invented here” culture. And so, the move away from traditional styles of leadership is not exactly a new idea but, rather, indicative of what is all the time more required to operate in the years ahead. Single organizational perspectives will come up increasingly short, Expert No. 9 cautioned, and new approaches are needed to connect brains, people, and resources. Expert No. 10 adjudged that styles of leadership were of continuing interest to scholars, who categorize to more systematically examine; but, Expert No. 10 doubted they were relevant to people in organizations. Expert No. 10 clarified that there might be a need to look at styles of leadership from a contingency theory perspective, this to find out when they work or do not; then again, Expert No. 10 observed that organizations are becoming so complex one may need to have the full panoply of styles of leadership at play at any one time. The real issue, according to Expert No. 10, was for leaders to figure out the fit between action and context, which was always the case from the very beginning of leadership theory. That said, Expert No. 10 continued, the increasing complexity of situations means we should go to the next and concentrate instead on configuring leadership. Styles of leadership, Expert

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No. 10 continued, are mere descriptors of distinct behaviors that may—or may not— work in particular circumstances; from an analytical perspective, they are not helpful when trying to work out what leadership really looks like in today’s organizations. Detecting a correlation between leadership and the rate of change, Expert No. 11 affirmed that traditional styles of leadership are less and less relevant in the 21st century, a phenomenon that Expert No. 11 associated with the lead–lag effect. Continuing, Expert No. 11 proclaimed that the lead–lag effect was also being felt in organizational design. In terms of how they were originally defined, styles of leadership were appropriate when the environment was stable, Expert No. 11 explained: some styles of leadership are more adaptive but most are outdated, Expert 11 concluded. From among traditional leadership constructs, Expert No. 12 advanced that servant leadership might best fit a fast-moving private sector environment typified by market developments and external challenges, where customer experience is the most important thing. Management’s role, Expert No. 12 continued, ought to be to enable and facilitate the leadership of people, thereby driving organizational success. Expert No. 12 added that traditional styles of leadership are persona-based and cautioned that personas do not work well in the contemporary environment. Of course, Expert No. 12 illustrated, an autocratic leader might still conduce a great product or service, but there is better overall value from servant leadership that gets the right people involved, gives them clear direction, and lets them go at it. Expert No. 12 surmised that leaders can be led by people who, in given circumstances, know better. Distributed leadership coopts key stakeholders, motivates people, enriches processes, identifies areas of conflict, sharpens problem statements, facilitates cross-decisions, tightens and aligns metrics, and helps deliver against key performance indicators, Expert No. 12 confirmed. IQ2. How does hybridization of the three main forms of organizing (i.e., hierarchy, market, network) affect organizational boundaries and the erstwhile, narrowly-focused relationship between leaders, followers, and context? Referencing work with Proctor and Gamble, Expert No. 1 flagged the advantages of combining hierarchy and network forms of organizing right, for example through open innovation. Open innovation, Expert No. 1 explained, is a business management model that promotes collaboration with people and organizations outside the company: it represents a true break from the silo mentality and secrecy that one associates with research and development. And so, different forms of organizing can coexist. Expert No. 2 agreed that there might be situations, or contexts, where hierarchy can probably play things right, specifically where there is consistency in a relationship, and so where people know things. In simple contexts, leadership approaches need to be more disciplined, sequential, linear, with requirement definitions. But, Expert No. 2 pointed out that organizations can find themselves in quite different situations. In complex situations, adaptive, agile, changing, swirling, networked approaches are about constantly finding the talent, the expertise, the solutions, and responding iteratively. Developing requisite hybrid variety in leadership puts more pressure on

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organizations. How does one recognize the context and how does one respond appropriately? In certain cases, failure is not an option and one wants to minimize the likelihood of mistakes; therefore, there is more controls. In other cases, it is not that failure is not an option: one can learn from failure and it is a good thing. How to prepare leaders in the face of hybridization of the three main forms of organizing is of the essence. Expert No. 3 remarked that hybridization requires much more from those entrusted with formal leadership titles and roles. Specifically, hybridization requires people to be very adaptive to whatever context they operate in. No longer can one assume that a position of seniority evidences one is capable of certain things and possesses certain leadership abilities. Leaders may need more help, more training, to expand their practice of leadership in general. Especially in hierarchic organization, a leader does not have to be the most important person all the time. To navigate environments with hybrid forms of organizing and make things work best for everyone, Expert No. 3 opined that leaders need to expand their skillsets. Expert No. 4 referenced Torfing et al. (2020), which discussed the historical layering and more recent hybridization of modes of governance. Expert No. 4 deemed the hybridization of governance to have extensive ramifications. Typically, leaders in hierarchical organizations focus inwardly; however, market and network forms of organizing extended organizational boundaries and multiply audiences. In such cases, leadership that is more horizontal, distributive, integrative, and facilitative is called for. Whole new styles and modes of leadership must come into play when one combines hierarchies with markets and networks. Expert No. 5 equated hierarchy, market, network with organizational design decisions. From that perspective, a hierarchy might be a set of design criteria with which to clarify decision-making and a network might be a statement about, say, the need for local connections that disseminate information quickly. The essential point is that any design is a trade-off. Design decisions, Expert No. 5 made clear, condition leadership: they enable certain actions but constrain others. Expert No. 5 remarked that not many people treat leadership in terms of what organizational design choices have been made and what might, potentially, be gained or lost as a result of that. In this regard, Expert No. 5 pointed out that academia treats organizational leadership, organizational development, and organizational behavior as separate streams, which arguably ought not be the case. Expert No. 6 recognized there had been developments apropos organizational design. Practical experiments take place all the time, with academics meaning to capture what is being achieved to seed theories. Expert No. 6 noted that, sooner than conducting their own, academics prefer to observe the success or failure of practitioner experiments to generate theory, and so, practice drives theory development rather than the other way round. An exciting new development, that academia did not anticipate, are Uber-type organizations. Uber was an experiment by practitioners that turned out to work; a lot of experiments do not. Anyhow, Expert No. 6 found much sense in hybridization. Expert No. 6 traced attempts to flatten organizations to the 1980s–1990s: patently, the hierarchy form of organizing perdures but the other

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forms are here to stay, and progressively more so in combinations. Even in hierarchies, knowledge has become more critical than power; at a minimum, Expert No. 6 contended, knowledge and power intermingle. To Expert No. 6, the market form of organizing corresponds ever more to the environment: an organization that can understand the market, or create a new one, is going to lead in its sector. Continuing, Expert No. 6 pointed to the existence of the network form of organizing in both the micro and the macro. As regards the micro, for instance, Expert No. 6 shared that small interpersonal networks within an organization are very important and noted parenthetically that mapping in-house social networks against the formal organizational hierarchy is revealing. Because the siloed nature forced by hierarchy slows down decision-making, individuals often leverage informal networks to speed it. For that reason, such networks can be found at every organizational level. As said by Expert No. 6, hybridization has created a whole new way to leverage talent in organizations and helped change how we define knowledge and diversify the means by which we can promote it. Expert No. 7 considered that the three main forms of organizing are now intertwined and entangled and contended that hierarchy and network forms of organizing, for sure, can no longer be disentangled. Expert No. 7 volunteered also that that the notion of organizational boundaries had been replaced by that of ecosystem and that discussions of the former only pertained to how individuals and groups in organizations chose the context in which they operate. Everything, including leadership, was now embedded in context. Because leadership is relational, context now also permeates the relationship between leaders and followers. To Expert No. 8, hybridization brought to mind the ability of special operations people to eschew rank hierarchy when the situation demands it, and to treat one another as complete equals on such occasions, before reverting to rank and hierarchy once a decision has been taken. Johnstone (1979) rationalized that every interaction is a status game, Expert No. 8 added. Continuing, Expert No. 8 explained that what we can learn from hybridization is that different parts of organizations need to act differently in different times, even if that is never easy. Such shifts are particularly called for in VUCA environments, Expert No. 8 affirmed. Hybridization changes what the tasks of leadership are, Expert No. 8 particularized: in such instances, one’s tasks are no longer to make every decision, and control people to have them do things, but to create an environment, a culture, in which people can decide on their own. Thus, hybridization both demands and hinges on what might be termed “second-order” hierarchy, Expert No. 8 established. Expert No. 9 contended that hierarchy is still the predominant form of organizing: it remains the state of affairs that people are most familiar—but not necessarily comfortable—with. Hierarchy, Expert No. 9 continued, is also what many people aspire to as they ponder career paths and conceivable moves to more powerful positions where they might presumably have more freedom to choose how they and their organization could operate. For that reason, Expert No. 9 concluded, we will continue to see hierarchy in the background, recognizing however that it will no longer be in the foreground as market and network forms of organizing become more prominent. Definitely, Expert No. 9 rationalized, markets will be called upon to address unmet

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and increasingly urgent needs in the technology, environmental, and social sectors. Furthermore, Expert No. 9 inferred, the pull from markets will force organizations to compensate for lack of knowledge or capability. Consolidation will be a feature, with large organizations buying up smaller ones as we have seen happen in the health sector. Simultaneously, Expert No. 9 added, networks will come together to invent and share new ways of doing things that stand-alone organizations are not capable of. Expert No. 9 saw a new role for leaders: it would be to unleash, somehow, the capacity that people have to think and come together to invent solutions and bring them to the world. Organizations, Expert No. 9 emphasized, must of necessity stop controlling the time and thought of people and instead present them with missions and compelling purposes to work towards. Only by unleashing capability, energy, intellect, relationships, and the emotional part of belonging to a group, Expert No. 9 declared, can organizations truly move into the 21st century. Expert No. 10 observed that today’s organizations are by necessity a mix of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing, and declared that there cannot be many organizations where hybridization is not happening, at least among the consequential population. Small and simple organizations, Expert No. 10 went on, are not consequential to hybridization and to leadership. Expert No. 10 considered hybridization to be the manifestation of attempts to leverage collective action across complex sets of activities, characterized by interlacing interests and conflicting preferences: necessarily, such attempts called for deep understanding how to shape-shift and operate, that being the new leadership challenge. From that adaptive perspective, Expert No. 10 deemed outmoded approaches founded in the belief that leadership is something to be nurtured and developed in organizations; instead, that conception has to be replaced by the notion of temporality. In a complex system, Expert No. 10 expanded, leadership itself is a variable that must shift through time with agility; thus, hybridizing is inherent to any solution to the challenges organizations face today. What does that mean for the erstwhile, narrowly-focused relationship between leaders, followers, and context? Expert No. 10 responded by saying that all is in dynamic play, if you put temporality into the formula. Noting that traditional styles of leadership were based on relatively closed systems, Expert No. 11 identified the driver of hybridization to be digital technology, which opens up organizations. With more open systems, Expert No. 11 clarified, linkages to customers and to ecosystems multiply and intensify dramatically; hierarchy, markets, and networks forms of organizing shift in response, and summon in tun hybridization to impact vertical and lateral structures. Expert No. 11 also pointed to the rise in the number of short-lived network structures, with ever more numerous networks coming together for shorter periods of time. And so, Expert No. 11 construed, traditional styles of leadership are giving way to self-organizing leadership models. Expert No. 12 concurred that hybridization defines the boundaries of the new age of leadership and highlighted the role of knowledge brokering in synergizing the three main form of organizing. Brokering, Expert No. 12 advised, is best effected by cross-functional teams in a brokerage network that reflects the functional diversity of stakeholders. Of course, Expert No. 12 stipulated, effective brokering hinged on

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the correct alignment of key performance indicators, comprising both lead metrics (e.g., customer satisfaction) and lag metrics (e.g., financial results). IQ3. With the increasing prevalence of flatter organization management structures, why might organizations of the future choose to moderate traditional (20th century) styles of leadership and adopt modes of leadership (i.e., administrative, adaptive, enabling)? Extending the reference to open innovation, Expert No. 1 spoke of social norms (e.g., authority) and social assets (e.g., networks) and emphasized the need for organizations to be “in the moment” so they might better gauge the need for administrative, adaptive, or enabling leadership. Being “in the moment,” where for example a network has something to offer, equates with a leader abrogating status and deferring to say: “I acknowledge you. I want you to know that what you’re offering is relevant.” Expert No. 2 affirmed that the world has become too complex to rely on linear motion. Things that are predictive, that one can plan for, and that will happen the same way can be taken care of by robots. But, anything that involves change, summons innovation, or involves a human emotion requires a capability for adaption, and this is where most work lies nowadays. Expert No. 2 underscored that new leadership must lean on empathy, relationships, and adaptive communications. To influence situations, leadership must learn to deal with humans who have different ideas, different views, and expect to be respected. “What’s most important for organizational project success is People, People, People.” Expert No. 3 surmised that why organizations might choose to moderate traditional styles of leadership and adopt modes of leadership has to do with changed context. In the military, for instance, young officers appreciate they are in a hierarchical organization but that leaders should nonetheless be open to hearing them: they want to feel considered in the choices that are made. Elsewhere too, people want to feel heard, included, and part of the organization. In Expert No. 3’s opinion, one should not leverage the same style of leadership if you are, say, seeking consensus, or fostering an inclusive culture, or operating in a context characterized by reliance on data and information. To wit, the evidence we rely on to make decisions is not what we use to appraise sentiment: the need to integrate new perspectives provides the rationale for moderating styles of leadership and adopt modes of leadership. Expert No. 3 noted also that an organization that has great and useful ways to use data and information might require less leading of people. Expert No. 4 contended that hierarchies are framed by a principal–agent relationship, whereby one party is able to make decisions and/or take actions in the name of, or that affect, another party. Therefore, Expert No. 4 remarked, principal–agent relationships build on distrust. However, an alternative to principal–agent relationships, namely, stewardship theory, now advances assumptions of goal alignment between the top and the bottom of many organizations. Stewardship theory has powerful implications: as soon as you admit that the top and the bottom of an organization may share the same goal you no longer necessarily need to exercise command and control; instead, you need to empower the frontline and create space for its personnel to self-organize and self-manage. In such instances, leadership must change its mode

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to entail coaching, enabling, and facilitating local teams or communities of practice that bring together different professional competencies and identities or coopt users and citizens so they might cocreate local solutions. Expert No. 4 detected that many organizations are seeing a turn towards sociocracy, hence interest in the Teal organization, that Exert No. 4 deemed to be characterized by self-management, wholeness, and a deeper sense of purpose. Expert No. 5 discerned that flatter organization management structures might be more prevalent in some areas than in others but also detected a tendency to unflatten them and add hierarchy back in at the first sign of trouble. Notwithstanding, Expert No. 5 reckoned that all leadership should be adaptive, which behooves the purpose of the very function. And yet, harking back to the previous interview question, Expert No. 5 questioned the extent to which organizations encourage adaptability in individuals in positions of authority both in what they describe as leadership and in the design choices they make. Expert No. 5 found insufficient adaptivity in 21st century organization. As a result, they design, redesign, and sometimes even destroy with administrative leadership what actually worked. Expert No. 5 inferred that imagination is not highly prized in management and too many leaders still ask “What is best practice?”, “What is leading edge?”, and “What are the leading organizations doing?” before settling for “Let us follow that”. Leaders should be more exploratory, Expert No. 5 affirmed, to match the complexity of situations: they should be less anxious about not being in charge and not being in control. Referring to complexification, Expert No. 6 tendered that a problem-solving system must be as complex as its environment. Concisely, Expert No. 6 explained that the main reason why organizations of the future might want to adopt modes of leadership owed to the poor alignment of forced hierarchy with dynamic environments that demand adaptivity. The singular advantage of modes of leadership, on the word of Expert No. 6, is that they grow the adaptive capacity of organizations. Expert No. 7 championed that organizations must adopt modes of leadership, and clarified that complexity leadership theory now labels the three modes of leadership somewhat differently: “administrative” reads “operational” and “adaptive” reads “entrepreneurial,” with the overall construct described as “The Three-Circle Model” (Uhl-Bien, 2021a). Summarizing the rationale, Expert No. 7 explained that complexity in an environment creates a phase transition, aka a complexity event, that pressures a system to change and presents an organization (or an individual within it) with an adaptive challenge; in response to that, an entrepreneurial leader will activate an ideation process focused on innovation, learning, growth or suchlike novelty that must then be scaled through the system by enabling, next operationalized with what elements of the system focus on results (e.g., productivity, performance, results, state stabilization, status quo). Expert No. 7 concurred that most organizations now have flatter structures, with exceptions in the public sector. The cause of such flattening was increasing complexity in ecosystems, compounded by “The Great Resignation” and ensuing pressure on organizations to attract and retain employees. Expert No. 7 rationalized that the pressure for performance, associated with traditional styles of leadership of the top-down variety was being challenged by the need to allow time for ideation, creativity, innovation, and change in organizations.

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Expert No. 8 stated that spans of control widen as organizations become flatter. For that reason, it becomes impossible to maintain the same sort of hierarchy and have Tayloristic management constantly decide what to do. Leadership must change for flatter organization management structures to potentially work. Expert No. 9 saw reason to moderate traditional styles of leadership but surmised they will never be completely abandoned for fear of chaos. That said, Expert No. 9 recognized that the chief concern will be, ever more, to find better ways to bring people together to develop and implement solutions. Expert No. 9 invited attention to cutting-edge organizations such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), remarking it would be ludicrous for NASA’s administrator to announce he or she can and would make all the decisions, and yet, traditional organizations still believe that the people at the top of the organization are perfectly capable of understanding everything that goes on. Expert No. 9 cautioned against characterizing leadership as a component and recommended instead that we should consider it in its entirety. To Expert No. 9, leadership cannot be reduced to a siloed function, or justified by claiming some individuals have special talents others that do not have and so that those others need not trouble themselves with the practice. Systemic and holistic leadership acknowledges that people exercise acts of leadership throughout the organization every day, many of which are critical to the organization’s existence, Expert No. 9 affirmed. In relation to the question, Expert No. 9 volunteered that leadership cannot be unilateral in terms of its focus: if an organization is not talking “adaptive” and “enabling” at the same time as it is talking “administrative,” then that organization will design systems at cross-purposes. It is not that organizations need experts in each of the three modes of leadership to make decisions on their own, Expert No. 9 maintained, it is that they need people to work together. Expert No. 10 wondered whether organizations ever choose anything. The short life cycle of a chief executive officer owes in large part to the need to reconfigure organizations over and over again, Expert No. 10 declared, which means among others that styles of leadership need to change quickly; and yet, few factor in the fact that chief executive officers may not necessarily be able to radically change their preferred leadership style. Therefore, Expert No. 10 advised organizations to move beyond styles of leadership and instead configure leadership as a collective and transitory endeavor, focusing on the lateral rather than the archetypal hierarchy. Hence, according to Expert No. 10, the question of leadership becomes: How do you mix and match people with various orientations and capabilities to the various changing situations and challenges they face? Focusing on the lateral, Expert No. 10 opined, requires a complete rethinking of how organizations are configured hierarchically, market-wise, and network-wise. Expert No. 10 saw a powerful role for hubs as a dynamic feature of networks: information goes through hubs and resources are distributed by them. For leadership to fit what the task at hand is, hence what configuration an organization (or network of organizations) is going to have, then leadership can no longer be configured in a certain way, Expert No. 10 concluded, leadership has to be as agile as the organization needs to be agile: expressly, where leadership lies has to be agile, which means that the interstices and lateral linkages

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become more important than the collective action itself, hence a requirement for modes of leadership in almost every organizational setting. Expert No. 11 acknowledged that the increasingly prevalent flat organization management structures warrant the moderation of traditional styles of leadership and the adoption of modes of leadership. Referencing Levinthal (2021), Expert No. 1 postulated that organizations must quickly learn how to locate and leverage leadership in shifting organizational structures. Alluding to Tushman’s concept of the ambidextrous organization, Expert No. 11 particularized that while parts of an organization are operational, and so invite administrative leadership, other parts are highly marketfocused, hence adaptive and innovation-oriented: the two cases call for different leadership. Thus, Expert No. 11 concluded, different parts of an organizations summon requisitely different styles and modes of leadership. Expert No. 12 acknowledged that flatter organization management structures allow organizations to move more quickly but nonetheless found good rationale to maintain hierarchy where relevant. “How flat is flat?,” Expert No. 12 queried, remarking that a one to seventeen ratio (of managers to subordinates) tied managers to personnel matters and little else. There is still a place for hierarchy, Expert No. 12 agreed, before volunteering that a one to six (or one to seven) ratio might be preferable. All the same, Expert No. 12 continued, flatter decision-making structures are more important than flatter organization management structures and that is where the true importance of modes of leadership lies. IQ4. What, in relation to organizational governance, organizational leadership, and knowledge management, have been traditional approaches to the accomplishment of organizational purpose? Referencing Hansen (2009), Expert No. 1 remarked on the lack of companywide collaboration that has characterized organizational governance, organizational leadership, and knowledge management. By and large, sought-after synergies from crossunit collaborative efforts have rarely been realized for a host of reasons including blind spots, lack of incentives and rewards, power politics, psychological factors, etc. Expert No. 1 reiterated Hansen’s (2009) call for “T-Shaped Managers” who can gauge when to engage in collaboration, identify and overcome barriers to that, and get people to buy into the bigger picture to achieve goals. Expert No. 1 opined that networks are the key to success and that metagovernance can combine effective and pragmatic actions. Expert No. 2 opined that most organizations and leaders now understand the importance of metagovernance; that was not the case 20 years ago. Increasingly, leaders recognize that complex organizations need to find ways that are understood, that make sense to the people working there, and that they can work toward together; this involves clarifying how decisions are made, how authority flows, and how one can access the knowledge that is in the system. From this perspective, metagovernance can represent the overarching framework for doing work efficiently and effectively. Old models must be updated and they need to be updated for flexibility, adaptability, and constant change. As said by Expert No. 2, governance that is too formalized and too prescriptive will not serve an organization in a world of change.

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Expert No. 3 considered that knowledge management would traditionally have us organize information, create communities of practice, foster collaboration, etc. Expert No. 3 appreciated the new emphasis on sense-making, that Dixon considered the fourth era of knowledge management. (The first three eras were information management, experience management, and idea management.) Previously, knowledge managers could make do or even thrive by being very technically-savvy on the one hand or very organizationally-savvy on the other. These days, they must be much more people-savvy. Employees expect more from an organization: they want to be connected to its purpose; they want their own purpose to be connected to their organization’s in some way. Expert No. 3 reckoned that traditional approaches to organizational leadership must likewise change. Earlier, it was a case of: “We put out our vision, our mission, our strategy, and we’re clear about what we say we stand for, and what we do.” Nowadays, Expert No. 3 continued, you know what a company is not doing by looking at its value statement. Governance too has been static: “Here are the rules by which we must play.” But, more and more, governance is about organizational density. Expert No. 3 detected that organizations now need leaders who can make sense of the realm of possibilities and suggest arrangements for getting there and how. Recapping, Expert No. 4 asserted that public leaders have for long merely tried to ensure compliance through rule governance; they would formulate rules and hold employees to account to ensure goal achievement. Eventually, advocates of new public management charged that focusing on rule compliance in public hierarchies did not conduce results because of goal displacement; what was needed were clear goals, targets, and indicators, to be monitored with transparency and line of sight so the front line might deliver. This new governance orthodoxy, however, places personnel in a double bind: staff must now comply with rules and deliver results, which in Expert No. 4’s opinion deprives personnel of the time and opportunity to use professional skills and competencies to engage in reflective practice and involve more actors and stakeholders in the production of innovative solutions. Expert No. 5 cast doubt on clarity of purpose in organizations and averred that, unexpectedly perhaps, much of it might be emergent. Taking the example of academia, Expert No. 5 wondered whether the purpose of universities was really about education when accents are placed on profit, survival, or world standing. It follows that traditional approaches to the accomplishment of purpose have dated. Knowledge management, for one, may be morphing. Expert No. 5 conceded that it is no longer be a popular term, even if knowledge continues to be important in many sectors. However, new terminology concerning knowledge is emerging. New work in the area explores cross-cutting processes of knowledge, of learning, of innovation, and of change that are diametrically opposed to hierarchical governance structures and enable an organization to find out what it knows, to capture learning from that, and then to adapt. At least in theory, approaches to organizational governance and organizational leadership are changing too. Expert No. 6 forewarned that one should not assume clear organizational purpose. Expert No. 6 proposed that systems thinking, strategic thinking, and design thinking

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might ease the formulation of clear organizational purpose, most importantly in relation to requisite organizational design. Expert No. 7 observed that organizational governance had up till now fallen under the purview of boards of directors tasked with making sure organizations were on track vis-à-vis targets and measures, usually for the benefits of shareholders. Organizational leadership, on the other hand, had been synonym with strategic leadership at the highest level of organizations. Surprisingly, Expert No. 7 averred, knowledge management had never really attracted much interest at board level. What with the continuing drive toward numbers, Expert No. 7 discerned little change over the years in approaches to the accomplishment of organizational purpose. However, conversations between senior management and boards of directors had perhaps become a little more flexible, in recognition of the challenges of meeting corporate goals in increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous times. In addition, pressure had grown to incorporate environmental and social concerns in corporate governance. Expert No. 8 discerned that organizational governance in the 20th century had been, at least in the United States, driven by the litigious nature of American society: too much board action had been driven by fear. Expert No. 8 had a clear sense also that organizational leadership in the 20th century had been characterized by hierarchy and Taylorism. Expert No. 8 concurred with Elliott Jaques that hierarchy enables natural divisions of differences in timeframes and scopes of work but disagreed that hierarchy should imply higher-ups control everything. Referring to theater and the imperative of bringing out the full artistic sensibilities of actors, Expert No. 8 argued that process is a better way to make the marvelous happen. Regarding knowledge management, Expert No. 8 deemed that too much of that had had to do with information systems, certainly in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Put differently, the orthodoxy had been that knowledge could only be worthy of that appellation if one could codify it. On the contrary, from research on organizational aesthetics, Expert No. 8 felt the need to embody tacit knowledge and work on the physicality of leadership. Expert No. 9 associated traditional organizational governance with boards of directors and volunteered that typical boards have been keen on strategy. That, to Expert No. 9’s way of thinking, linked to traditional sense-making: Why are we focused on the things that we’re focused on? Why are we spending money in the areas we’re spending it in? Why are these good choices and what is the relation between what we are doing and what we think the future will bring in terms of organizational performance revenue? What other things are we supposed to pay attention to? Should a strategy not work over several years, Expert No. 9 explained, boards of directors become nervous about the leader’s capability. Thus, Expert No. 9 speculated, board of directors have exercised some governance with regard to the future, with connected attention to possible successors to the chief executive officer, that function being the habitual embodiment of organizational leadership. Notwithstanding, Expert No. 9 avowed that sense-making ought to be more than merely intuitive and, in varying degrees, driven by numbers. It should be reconfigured as a human process, whereby people hold discourse and accept that their interpretations can never be an accurate representation of how the world works. And yet, Expert No. 9 considered, erroneous sense-making happens all the time at every level; what

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organizations of the future need is a more objective way of making sense and this calls for more openness to alternative hypotheses and interpretations of events as well as more experimentation as a way of testing in action what people think they know. In a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, Expert No. 9 underscored that the last thing organizations would want are leaders who claim they know exactly what to do. In such a world, organizations ought to want leaders who are continuously questioning, testing, and updating their knowledge with insights gleaned in new conditions from new experiments; but that, Expert No. 9 lamented, is something we do not find in traditional approaches to the accomplishment of organizational purpose: the people organizations put in charge are supposed to know everything. Paradoxically, Expert No. 9 joked, the few who actually make the cut are then attributed great cognitive capacity and near-magical powers à la Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. Against this background, Expert No. 9 advised, the kind of change in governance that organizations would want to talk about, viz., metagovernance, must be introduced to the world in such ways that people see it as a very positive advance and not a threat to what we believe, such as “Find hero leaders and have a really smart board advise them.” In closing, Expert No. 9 did not detect much interest in knowledge management in a formal sense, alleging that most organizations do not find the practice necessary since chief executive officers and their teams are expected to figure things out on their own. Organizations where the omniscience of leaders is not taken for granted are the exception; Expert No. 9 signposted Schlumberger, an oilfield services company, with the proviso that if knowledge management system can be put together one still needs to explain why: this organizations rarely do. Expert No. 10 questioned the extent to which organizations form around purpose and the general assumption that purpose-driven organizations are more effective than organizations that are formed around flow (or else). Expert No. 10 contended that who determines organizational purpose, and how, is the issue today. To wit, discerning a collapse in the capability to share a common purpose in organizations, sectors, countries, and the world, Expert No. 10 made the point that it could no longer be assumed leadership could deliver organizational purpose. Holding that stakeholder engagement has been almost institutionalized but still does not satisfactorily enrich purpose, Expert No. 10 volunteered a revamp of the notion of purpose, whereby leadership preoccupies itself with getting people together and negotiating with them in differently configured organizations. The idea, Expert No. 10 went on, is to create a population of people who agree to a way of determining purpose; conceivably, new approaches to organizational governance, organizational leadership, and knowledge management could serve that intent. Looking back, Expert No. 11 observed that erstwhile structures of governance, that organizations tended to equate with boards of directors and executive teams, are now being developed at lower levels of the organization. Expect No. 11 added that structures of governance are being wrapped around markets, products, and services. Today, in the private sector, platform structures that serve a particular set of products or services, or a particular market segment, hold governance for P&L (profit and loss). And so, Expert No. 11 explained further, boards of directors and executive teams now make decisions in relation to platform structures, that one might equate

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with decentralized governance models. What is more, Expert No. 11 continued, such decentralized governance models are constantly processing information from customers and ecosystems and reconfiguring themselves in light of changing needs and competitive requirements. Expert No. 11 recognized also that organizational leadership is changing. Hitherto, Expert No. 11 described, executive teams focused on strategy and accountability; however, the particulars of strategy must change so often, and so fast, nowadays that executive teams currently focus on pushing down capability, or creating it as needed. Traditional approaches are becoming passé. The purposes that organizations ascribe to knowledge management too is shifting to new grounds, Expert No. 11 declared: attention to tacit knowledge is still important but the preferred modalities relate to sense-making. In short, according to Expert No. 11, the entire field of organization design is shifting: instead of having processes organized around say, market segments or functional structures, organizations now preoccupy themselves with organizing around processes, driven in large part by digital technology. Expert No. 12 held forth that traditional approaches to the accomplishment of organizational purpose (e.g., boards of directors, styles of leadership, codified knowledge) have, in certain industries, been reined in by the emergence of market platforms (platform ecosystems). In the world of enterprise software, Expert No. 12 pointed out, platform competition has changed the game. Interconnecting digitally via an application programming interface with a unicorn, venture-backed company out of Silicon Valley could all of a sudden present a tremendous competitive advantage over peer companies in the same market space. In certain industries, platform competition breaks apart traditional approaches because things now move very quickly, Expert No. 12 said. IQ5. What, individually, do metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sensemaking contribute to the accomplishment of organizational purpose? Expert No. 1 underscored that being “in the moment” to explore options, notably through the use of networks, is the single-most important way to accomplish organizational purpose with implications for the conduct of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making. Expert No. 2 discerned that we are living in an age of projects, for which people come together. Organizations need to set up systems whereby people agree to what norms and behaviors will maximize the likelihood of success. Metagovernance, complexity, and sense-making must come together so organizations might become more efficient and effective. Knowledge and learning, the two sides of a coin for sense-making, can with metagovernance and complexity thinking power new systems for organizational purpose. One sign of the need for change is that personnel may need to eschew old-fashioned university degrees and invest in short-term certificates to continuously expand their skillsets and deliver solutions in the 21st century. Expert No. 3 considered that metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sensemaking allow an organization to be more adaptive to the environment, be that in relation to market fluctuations or in consideration of, say, the way people look at work, expect to do, and want to be. Expert No. 3 surmised that metagovernance, complexity

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leadership, and sense-making can inject empathy into the work environment, in a manner akin to emotional intelligence. Metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making, on the word of Expert No. 3, help develop understanding of organizations as living, breathing beings, not collections of stovepipes that produce X, Y and Z. Organizations that do not take advantage of the diversity of thought and knowledge and experience and understanding that makes them unique will not succeed as much as they could, Expert Mo. 3 asserted: people will not want to work for them. On the word of Expert No. 4, metagovernance is a way of governing that is less based on command and control and gives small space to people, inside the organization and across others, so they might mobilize their ideas, skills, and resources to govern. Metagovernance engenders the creative solutions the world needs to solve the tough problems that sense-making has helped identify. If personnel at all levels of an organization has engaged in it, sense-making produces ownership of solutions, which is paramount to implementation and goal achievement. In turn, complexity leadership help organizations work interactively in new ways that involve more actors. Expert No. 5 explained that metagovernance creates conditions by structuring relationships in formalized ways: it enables some aspects of organizational purpose but probably also stops other aspects of that. Potentially, complexity leadership also creates conditions; but the more interesting aspect is that it also takes them up, albeit in different ways. In that regard, Expert No. 5 emphasized that “Human beings acting in the world change the world”: it is not the case that preexisting conditions can never be changed. With dynamic patterning, Expert No. 5 elucidated, we recreate design decisions—metagovernance decisions—every day in the little tweaks we make in how we work within formalized structures. Complexity leadership brings informal patterns and dynamics into play as well. To what extent do we interact? To what extent do we learn? To what extent do we adapt? And so, complexity leadership reinstate the focus on individuals and the relationships between individuals. Sense-making, in Expert No. 5’s view of sense-making, is about making sense of the dynamic patterns we cocreate that are shaped partly by the landscape: to wit, what patterns are we creating that are perhaps going to a purpose we had not pondered before? Thus, in Expert No. 5’s opinion, sense-making brings the formal and the informal together, potentially, even if it is not often leveraged to that intent in organizations. There is individual sense-making, and sense-making in small groups, but rarely do we connect those different perspectives together. Expert No. 6 raised the question of where metagovernance should occur. Specifically, who should decide what form of organizing, not forgetting mode of leadership, should be applied in situations. Decisions on metagovernance might be fractal or multi-level, Expert No. 6 averred. Of course, none of that detracted from the appeal of metagovernance, Expert No. 6 underscored. Complexity leadership made a lot of sense to Expert No. 6, who expressed surprise not more had been written about it and that academics had not paid it greater attention. In the same vein, Expert No. 6 regretted that organizations were not better at sense-making despite the plentiful availability of tools, methods, and approaches and humankind’s propensity for it.

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Sense-making helps understand the situations that lead us to make decisions and ought to be central to organizational purpose, Expert No. 6 emphasized. Expert No. 7 asserted that complexity leadership theory can help organizations enable adaptive responses and added that joint sense-making is integral to such endeavors. Expert No. 7 welcomed the body of knowledge and practice associated with metagovernance, treating it as evidence that forms of organizing are indeed becoming more blended. Beyond individual contributions, Expert No. 7 found in Amazon Web Services evidence that a greater mix of elements can now contribute to the accomplishment of organizational purpose, with other companies using AWS’s platform to power their business in a blurring of organizational boundaries. Expert No. 7 remarked that such approaches were telltale signs of organizational agility and newfound ability to meet organizational purpose in challenging times. With information and communication technology, Expert No. 7 noted that organizational purpose now hangs on much more. Expert No. 8 admitted to being a fan of doing what is right depending on the situation the social world summons interest in context, in the particular, and one should be wary of generalized solutions. Metagovernance goes well in that sense, Expert No. 8 declared: it invites people to mix things in certain ways. Apropos complexity, Expert No. 8 pointed out the difference with the merely complicated: complicated problems can be decomposed into sub-problems but complex problems cannot. For complexity leadership, therefore, it is necessary to have some idea of what world one lives in and refrain from breaking problems into prefabricated solutions. Sensemaking is a natural friend of metagovernance and complexity leadership, Expert No. 8 added, because it accepts that understanding often comes after the fact, after the action. More often than not, we discover strategy by enacting and seeing what works; and that, Expert No. 8 inferred, is a very sense-making view of strategy and purpose. Expert No. 9 agreed that metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sensemaking can, individually, contribute to the accomplishment of organizational purpose but queried how they might, practically. Referring to Pasmore (2015), Expert No. 9 suggested that executives at the top two or three levels of organizations ought to be spending at least 10% of their time thinking five years out, mindful of what Gersick (1991) termed “punctuated equilibrium,” instead of being continuously caught up in day-to-day operations. Specifying 10%, Expert No. 9 explained, owed to the need for a forcing function. Referring to Jim Whitehurst, who took over Red Hat, now owned by IBM, Expert No. 9 suggested that metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making ought to most readily appeal to organizations such as those in the technology sector that accept they can no longer do what they used to do in the same old way. Jim Whitehurst, Expert No. 9 continued, was a self-described cheerleader and facilitator who was very interested in bringing groups together and listening. Expert No. 10 considered metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sensemaking to be functionally important attributes of a system to determine and accomplish organizational purpose and sought to promote their integration. Expert No. 10 appreciated that complex capabilities will not emerge naturally in organizations and that they must be engineered by means of the three approaches. Harnessing metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making called for metacognition of how

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they fit together, Expert No. 10 reasoned. Metacognitive sense-making of the dimensions of context had to take place from the outset, Expert No. 10 emphasize, and for this is must be systemic. Metagovernance and complexity leadership were vital too, Expert No. 10 agreed, because they can profoundly advance purpose: for these sets of reasons, all three capabilities should be synergized. Expert No. 11 volunteered that metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making were now the province of more and more stakeholders. As an example, Expert No. 11 evoked that the ability to perform design thinking or sense-making was initially entrusted to the operating model space but that related functions were now carried out by an ever-wider leadership space. Sense-making, metagovernance, and complexity leadership, that one might reinterpret severally as the ability to recognize, predict, organize, allocate resources, lead with emergent processes, and ongoingly adjust, have become becoming critical organizational requirements. In the world of enterprise software, Expert No. 12 spotlighted complexity leadership as the prime contributor to the accomplishment of organizational purpose. In the said industry, complexity leadership went hand in hand with talent recruitment, market-facing groups, knowledge-brokering, flat decision-making structures, personnel empowerment, speed of execution, and market agility. In the said industry, metagovernance and sense-making took second place to complexity leadership, per Expert No. 12, because the industry’s market-facing disposition and the fact that chaos characterizes all: platform warfare allows competitors to move very quickly against one another. Even so, the configuration of enterprise software organizations exhibited metagovernance of sorts, Expert No. 12 granted, because knowledge brokers sit across functions, not just within them, and operate at both a strategic and tactical level. IQ6. What combinational synergies might there exist between metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making? Expert No. 1 emphasized the need to consider the scales of conversations toward sense-making. At a basic but nonetheless essential level, one can stimulate sensemaking by giving people psychological safety, with sense-making permissions issuing out of people who make the first move by putting themselves out there and accepting to be vulnerable so they might elicit knowledge from others. At a higher, more holistic level, sense-making can fructify from rules of engagement that establish sense-making norms, in support of which people can be given practical reasons for engaging, and then be equipped with skills so they might participate in translation. There are three drivers of sense-making by networks. Networks can power sense-making but must have intentionality: leadership needs to explain why the organization is building a network and what its purpose is. And then, networks need to have alignment: and so, the design needs to ladder up to the intention. Lastly, networks need coherence: that rests on structures. Summarizing, sense-making calls for purpose, alignment, and coherence. Expert No. 2 intuited that sense-making primes all. At the end of the day, Expert No. 2 concluded, the one thing that people look for is to understand, to make sense of their world, whether this relates to a relationship, a project, an organization, or

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society. Expert No. 2 noted that we are seeing situations where productivity is good but where wellbeing and health are dropping, suicide rates are going up. A driver of this, Expert No. 2 reckoned, was that people are no longer able to make sense of a rapidly changing world. However, people are always going to look to understand, to make sense of what is going on, for themselves in relation to what larger system they operate in. When the level of complexity is such that they cannot accomplish that they become frustrated and anxious: eventually, they fail and grow dangerous. Situations we cannot make sense of lead to schizophrenic environments. On the word of Expert No. 2, metagovernance is about having frameworks with which to understand things: it is, basically, an attempt to say “Look, we know we’re in a rapidly changing environment: here’s how we’re going to reward people; here’s how we’re going to work in teams; here’s how we’re going to share knowledge; here’s how we’re going to build psychological safety.” According to Expert No. 2, one has to have such governance to create the sense of “Okay, I am working here because this makes sense: this is a good team, where we can get to the goal that we have.” Expert No. 3 reasoned that metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sensemaking can, together, translate values into value action and impact. With combinational synergies, an organization will not follow cosmetic paths; it will live its values, such as being more diverse and inclusive. To use the power of diversity and be purposely inclusive of people, Expert No. 3 that contended that organizations must imbed metagovernance and sense-making in their structures and behaviors. The same would apply to complexity leadership, because being simultaneously proactive and responsive to what is happening in an organization—be it about what is happening with the employees or in terms of how the organization is performing—summons the ability to adapt leadership approaches. Expert No. 3 affirmed that synergizing the three lenses would help organizations reach their goal of living their values and delivering on their purpose. Expert No. 4 detected complementarities between metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making. Expert No. 4 averred that sense-making helps people fathom situations. Especially in instances of collaborative governance, sense-making informs problem diagnosis and speeds mutual learning processes that are crucial for devising innovative solutions. Metagovernance, as said by Expert No. 4, is very much what shapes the framework for sense-making to be exercised and for complexity leadership to take place: it establishes the arena in which actors can come together, engage in joint sense-making, explore joint commitments, learn from exchanges with one another, and ultimately solve problems in new ways. Expert No. 5 believed sense-making to a practical way to bring the lenses of metagovernance and complexity leadership together. Referencing Varney (2021), Expert No. 5 advertised sense-making as a continuous loop of noticing, interpreting, and responding. Sense-making that is instructed by the knowledge of conditions and that brings metagovernance and complexity leadership together can be incredibly helpful. Expert No. 5 drew a parallel between sense-making and the learninginformed leadership promulgated by Varney (2021), noting the latter approach also invites people to be more choiceful in the patterns of organizational life they impress.

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Provided organizational purpose is clear, Expert No. 6 considered that metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making would jointly conduce its accomplishment. Purpose might then be translated into goals, milestones, etc., with a consequent sequence of decisions about how to make sense, govern, and lead. Illustrating with a Venn diagram, Expert No. 6 located the synergy of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making where the three lenses overlap, with fruits to be reaped also in the other intersection spaces. Reiterating, Expert No. 7 remarked there is no question metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making are synergistic; Expert No. 7 deemed them all inextricably intertwined. Metagovernance is the expression of organizational blending in highly interconnected ecosystems. On its part, complexity leadership is a way of thinking about how to lead in ecosystems: Expert No.7 saw that complexity leadership is taking place everywhere even if the language of it has not caught up with the mainstream. Lastly, Expert No. 7 pointed out that individual and groups interact with the world through cognition, this to understand the context in which they operate; ergo, everything has to do with sense-making, and being open to other people’s sense-making. Given the growing complexity of our world, Expert No. 7 noted a trend to lead with questions and engage in more dialogue about heterogeneous perspectives as well as more collaboration. With the fusion of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making, Expert No. 7 saw a departure from the old school, where most sense-making was handed down by an individual and drilled through the organization. Expert No. 8 surmised that the combinational synergies between metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making might be considerable, but confessed not having thought hard about how one might mix them. Expert No. 9 underscored that an organization must reassign talent, leverage new resources, bring in ecosystem partners, and work with its customers and suppliers in innovative ways if its structure no longer allows it to integrate change. But, selforganization is often seen as a threat to efficiency, Expert No. 9 noted, even if there has for long been incontrovertible evidence that it is much more effective than top-down leadership. Expert No. 9 conjectured that inertia as well as power- or advancement-driven motivations in the psyche of individuals might impede the adoption of a system based on metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making. Notwithstanding, the case for an adaptive, purpose-driven organization model in which people embrace self-organization and the utilization of the capabilities of all is strong, Expert No. 9 asserted, even if it might be to accomplish in the real world. Expert No. 10 surmised considerable synergies between metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making from emergence. On the word of Expert No. 10, leaders operating in complex situations ought to think in terms of what impact any strategy would have on emergence: What might emerge as a result of a given strategy? What might be unplanned consequences? How might an organization become able to manage unexpected upshots? Intrinsically, metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making were directly supportive of emergence, Expert No. 10 underlined, because each approach accepts that context is not just

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what impinges: context is what one can build by means of the three, which probably calls for a set of principles on how to synergize them. Expert No. 11 drew a parallel with notions of recognition, choice, and alignment, recognition standing for sense-making, choice standing for metagovernance, and alignment standing for complexity leadership. The three practices, Expert No. 11 affirmed, demand propinquity. More sense-making is taking place at both higher and lower levels. Pursuant to sense-making, leadership must then choose: it must make decisions, viz., allocating resources for acting, assigning people. If the agreed upon approach seems promising, Expert No. 11 continued, organizations then ascribe a governance structure and so legitimize it. By this process do the combinational synergies between metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making reveal themselves, Expert No. 11 determined. Expert No. 12 reiterated that complexity leadership is the base in the world of enterprise software: leadership is a process, powered by knowledge-brokering in the face of chaos. In that industry, the secondary but nonetheless complementary roles of metagovernance and sense-making are to elicit, prioritize, and act on the rapid-fire insights of cross-functional teams. IQ7. What dimensions of context (i.e., known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns, unknowns and unknowables) does a world in constant motion invite closer attention to? Expert No. 1 singled out the need for society to better understand unknowns and unknowables, and do itself a service by becoming able to describe what options it has for working with them. Rubrics might help. Right now, 70% of responses to unknowns and unknowables are directed at safety and 30% are directed at what you might call danger. Lack of rubrics summons better sense-making. Sense-making is a completely optimistic practice. Sense-making says that we can be smarter through our collective, not just because we are throwing in different brains and different ways of knowing, but because we are motivated to use such tools, methods, and approaches such as analogy, a cognitive process that compares things for the purpose of explanation or clarification. VUCA means that things are going to change, said Expert No. 2; that change is going to happen geopolitically, or socially, or technically, and present us with situations we have not dealt with before. VUCA places a premium on people in organizations and in projects asking: “What are the things we know? What are the things we do not know? What, for instance, are those known unknowns?” In the past, Expert No. 2 explained, we spent our time understanding what we knew, and building up that capability, and anticipating minor changes: now, we have to really spend time thinking about what it is we know may be changing. We know that technology is going to change. We know that there is a new role for artificial intelligence, for augmented reality, for virtual reality. We do not know what that means for us but we know it is happening. To Expert No. 2, those are known unknowns coming up: we can plan for these, we can talk to futurists. That said, Expert No. 2 continued, the bigger threat we must worry about are the unknown unknowns: where you are, say, running a project that has always happened, with total support from leadership and

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funding, and—all of a sudden—a new leader takes over. What does that mean? Expert No. 2 contended we must develop mindsets that can anticipate the unthinkable, the unknown unknowns, and even the unknowns and unknowables. A world in constant motion, cautioned Expert No. 2, puts a premium on critical thinking, on creative thinking, on conversations that help us anticipate. Expert No. 3 detected omnipresent obsession with known knowns. Recalling the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Expert No. 3 referred to the incessant tally counts on people, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, presumably serving as data points from which people might derive certainty. Expert No. 3 accepted that pushing the known knowns brings comfort to people. However, a world in constant motion generates unknown unknowns, which is where fear exists. In consequence, people transform unknown unknowns into known knowns by concocting artificial context. To be on the right side of wanting things to go well organizations must use collective intelligence to ascertain the known knowns but also to look into the unknown unknowns so they might become known known knowns or at a minimum known unknows, Expert No. 3 avowed. And so, in a world such as the one we live in, organizations must develop the ability to see context for what it is. Simple contexts still abound but organizations must with sense-making become more comfortable with discerning complex and even chaotic contexts, and appreciate that there are metagovernance and complexity leadership implications to all this. Considering the vocabulary associated with dimensions of context, Expert No. 4 volunteered the concept of turbulence. Turbulent problems are continuous disruptions from inconsistent, unpredictable, and uncertain events. Owing to emergence, turbulent problems are hard to understand; they are also difficult to solve because they entail tradeoffs in terms of administrative, political, and societal goals. Hitherto, as stated by Expert No. 4, the literature has been preoccupied with wicked problems and how collaborative governance might solve them; however, the literature on wicked problems ignores the critical dimension of temporality. Expert No. 4 invited reference to Ansell et al. (2017), which reportedly conceptualized the types and degrees of turbulence that certain political institutions typically face and how variations of turbulence can impact governance. Expert No. 4 deemed that turbulence captures an essential trait about modern society and has become the “new normal.” The terms associated with turbulence now include “chronic crises,” “multiple overlaying crises,” “multi-crises,” and “polycrises.” The COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, the environmental crisis, the fiscal crisis, the war in Ukraine … Expert No. 4 declared that all these drivers interact in multiple ways and challenge us to deal with turbulence. When facing turbulence there are no such things as perfect or even optimal solutions: there are only “good-enough” solutions, which are the best one can hope to accomplish in a given situation. And then, there may be “robust” solutions, which would emerge from “good-enough” solutions that have been adapted and innovated because they were kept open to learning in the face of turbulence, in view also of what new directions one might want to take to better solve a problem in the future. Expanding, Expert No. 4 remarked that “robust” solutions are a form of resilience, of sorts, but not of the static kind whereby one merely wishes to bounce back to a pregiven equilibrium. Rather, “robust” solutions are about bouncing forward to a

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new state: they are about dynamic resilience in the face of permanent turbulence. In turbulent times, one will always lag behind but one will fare better if one is constantly looking for opportunities to move in desirable directions. Alluding to the COVID-19 pandemic, Expert No. 4 postulated that we do not want to bounce back to the old economies and old jobs we had before the crisis, least of all in a very fossil-fuel heavy economy such as the United States. Continuing, Expert No. 4 volunteered that, preferably, we ought to want to bounce forward to a green economy with green jobs; and, we might achieve that if we exploit crisis and turbulence to do our best, not merely to cope but also to gradually move towards a more desirable situation. Expert No. 5 stated that “unknown unknowns” are, for sure, the dimensions of context that a world in constant motion invites closer attention to. “Unknowns and unknowables” deserve fulsome consideration too. The two dimensions represent the nonlinear nature of the world. Still, even if the future is not predictable, making sense of patterns creates context, which affects what we choose to say and do. Context, Expert No. 6 opined, is the environment: it is the situation. Awareness of context determines the meaning one derives, which drives decision-making. Much as space and time, Expert No. 6 explained, context and sense-making are hyphenated, which means that the same decision in a different context has a different meaning. With sense-making, assuming decision-making processes are decent, organizations can locate themselves, generate appropriate alternatives, selecting the best among these, and then—most importantly—implement that. Referring to Pinchot (1996), Expert No. 6 paraphrased that that US companies are really good at innovation but terrible at implementing it. Expert No. 6 affirmed that too many organizations do not know what they do not know; that is not a desirable situation. The concept of the learning organization needs promoting but an organization must be in close contact with its environment if it is to adapt, and that requires constant learning. In circular fashion, Expert No. 6 conceded, learning is essential part of the answer to this question. Apropos dimensions of context, Expert No. 7 drew a parallel between the situations characterized in the Cynefin framework (Snowden, 2002) and the three regimes that Boisot and McKelvey (2011) elucidated, namely, chaos, complexity, and order. Expert No. 7 volunteered that, pictorially, chaos might be represented as unconnected dots, complexity as dots that are here and there but not uniformly connected by lines (e.g., a network), and order—which might be the equivalent of known knowns and known unknowns—as an organizational chart. Expert No. 7 deemed chaos a true extreme, with no pattern to it. In the dimension of complexity, however, Expert No. 7 explained that one should formulate a complexity response, which entails developing an adaptive response to beat complexity with complexity by means of a network (or networked) dynamic. Contrasting, Expert No. 7 explained that the dimension of order invites an order response, which entails using systems and structures to leverage technical solutions. The challenge, according to Expert No. 7, is that organizations and individuals are wont to experience complexity differently, this as low-end or highend chaos, which means that reactions can differ. Irrespective, Expert No. 7 made the case that the modern world is characterized by more complexity on account of

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greater interconnectivity. Illustrating, Expert No. 7 shared that Cilliers (1998) defined complexity as rich interconnectivity. Expert No. 8 avowed that the big question is always about unknown unknowns. Known unknowns and, of course, known knowns, one can work at. The assumptions people make about a situation are often wrong, Expert No. 8 explained, because they do not know how to discover their unknown unknowns. Unknowables were a lesser problem, Expert No. 8 declared: one can accept that they are unknowable and put them aside; or, one can find other ways. Expert No. 9 held that people must temper their belief in known knowns, else they will not appreciate the need to change their thinking. Of course, there are unknowns and unknowables, Expert No. 9 realized, but people do not care sufficiently for these because they reckon they have what answers are needed for the most part. Some organizations put stock in innovation, Expert No. 9 clarified, because they really believe they must remain on the cutting edge, be that in the technology sector or elsewhere, to stay competitive; nevertheless, most organizations deal with known knowns for 90% of the time and only 10% of the time discover as they go. And yet, the real potential for growth, effectiveness, and contribution to the world, societal change, and environmental protection lies with the unknowns and the seemingly unknowables: that is where the treasure is, Expert No. 9 declared. General Motors now aims for zero crashes, zero pollution, and zero congestion, Expert No. 9 said: plainly, the first thing General Motors had to do to formulate that ambition was to give up the known knowns. Expert No. 10 mentioned that some known knowns can actually be complex; other known knowns we can also be blind to. Notwithstanding, our world is chockfull with unknowns, both known unknowns and unknown unknowns, so many individual agents now unexpectedly impact systems. One of the largest unknowns, per Expert No. 10, has to do with technology: it may take us where we let it take us. For that reason, Expert No. 10 asserted that leadership’s role is to figure out how to make sure that what emerges is an organizational world where purposes are actually accomplished and reflect the population of actors and interests and perspectives. Organizations, Expert No. 10 continued, must elaborate systems that can determine their own destinies, knowing that human, environmental, resource, and technological knowns and unknowns are part of that. The agenda for leader is made more exigent still by the fact that unknown unknowns are now prevalent, Expert No. 10 declared. Expert No. 11 rejoined that the human ability to deal with context, notably unknowns and unknowables, has been enhanced significantly by machine learning and artificial intelligence. Decision-makers, Expert No. 11 made clear, can now make more sense out of context than they were able to, say, five years ago. And so, Expert No. 11 settled, organizations can now move to unknowns and unknowables with more stability and predictability than ever before. This appeals to humankind’s cognitive rationality, Expert No. 11 recognized, and enables it to make strategic choice regarding hitherto unfathomable issues. The enterprise software industry operates primarily in the realm of unknowns and unknowables, Expert No. 12 declared; organizations get hit with a problem, or see if there is a market opportunity, and just go. In a world in constant motion, most context

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is unknown, some of it is known, and certain things are unknowable, Expert No. 12 specified. Even so, reliance on flat decision-making and leadership as a process enabled enterprise software organizations to pull in subject matter experts and drive unknowns and unknowables down to a minute impact, Expert No. 12 clarified. “Think big. Start small. Scale fast!” Expert No. 12 proclaimed, is the appropriate response, admitting that enterprise software organizations do not necessarily know what the root/core solution to a problem is in the beginning. IQ8. How might the characteristics of simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts suggest what forms of organizing could be adopted? Expert No. 1 drew the image of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing in the shape of a three-dimensional volume; an organization might have elements of each of the three forms. That said, Expert No. 1 noted that one can tighten up the way any one form per se operates. One might, for example, use a simple hierarchical process in a network just for now, not to degrade the beauty of the network but to, say, simply deliver a product or service for which hierarchy works best. Referencing Hoffman, Kohut, and Prusak (2022), Expert No. 2 suggested there may now be three kinds of projects: micro, macro, and global. Micro projects are technical; they are bounded—with clear direction, funding, and a short timeframe—and so relatively simple. Macro projects require both technical capability and social capability (e.g., effective relationships, unexpected need for approvals, dissent); therefore, they are relatively complicated. Global projects, which are becoming more and more commonplace, demand technical expertise, social capability, but also the ability to navigate the cultural and political dimensions of working with people from different countries: therefore, they are complex and sometimes chaotic. In complex situations, Expert No. 2 continued, how does deal with the need for respect, for inclusion, for diversity? How does one collectively, intelligently work together across these boundaries? Expert No. 3 drew a distinction between levels of simplicity and complexity within organizations and the simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts they might face? Focusing on organizational arrangements, Expert No. 3 remarked that any part of an organization is itself going to evolve. Chaos, in that example, might simply be loss of control. By the same token, outside contexts evolve too. To help discern states of affairs, Expert No. 3 drew attention to conversational leadership, a concept that Gurteen (n.d.) has promulgated. Citing Gurteen (n.d.), “Conversational [l]eadership is about appreciating the transformative power of conversation, practicing leadership, and adopting a conversational approach to the way we work together in a complex world” (para. 4). Leadership, Expert No. 3 clarified, happens when people come to conclusions about things through conversation: it is the act of being in conversation that creates the outcome that we would traditionally see as outcomes of leadership. And so, to be in a situation of conversational leadership is to work through the things one knows and also that one has. The sense-making embodied in conversational leadership suggests that no template approach to what forms of organizing might be adopted is necessarily required, even though a template can be very useful in certain circumstances.

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Expert No. 4 contemplated that the world is not only moving towards flatter organizations, characterized by more self-management and more self-managing teams, but that these organizations are also more open and constantly network with external parties; the outcome of that trend is to blur the boundaries between the organization and its environment. Put differently, according to Expert No. 4, we now have more agile organizations. Expert No. 4 also detected a rise in hybrid organizations equipped with traditional structures to deal with traditional tasks and other structures dedicated to reaping the fruits of market and network governance. All the same, Expert No. 4 indicated that transitions from A to B are likely rare: in other words, organizations may introduce B but still have A. Harking back to governance paradigms, Expert No. 4 explained that combining the old and the new, both in governance and in organizations, can be expected to give rise to dilemmas, paradoxes, and tensions, hence necessitate coping strategies. There are implications for leadership. Expert No. 5 found Snowden’s Cynefin framework useful but professed that reality was unadorned “complex.” “As soon as we have people involved there is unpredictability,” Expert No. 5 specified. Of course, people do not have an unlimited range of choices: they are conditioned by context, social norms, behavioral norms, physical limitations … But, people still cocreate patterns in their attempts to be involved, make different decisions, and push boundaries a little further: that very act engenders degrees of complexity. Notwithstanding, Expert No. 5 called upon organizations and their leaders to engage with the dynamic patterning of organization life, with profound implications for the framing of people and relationships. Expert No. 6 suggested that Snowden’s (2002) Cynefin framework could be treated as a 2 × 2 model with simple situations anchoring the left-hand side, complicated then complex situations occupying the middle, and chaotic situations anchoring the right-hand side, this to reveal increasing degrees of agent interdependence and interrelatedness. What sense-making and decision-making must occur across the model is therefore very different, as are the relevant methodologies. The characteristics of different contexts ought to suggest what forms of organizing might be adopted, Expert No. 6 recognized. However, Expert No. 6 pointed out that people may characterize a situation differently at any point along the continuum. Why that should be the case, such as—inter alia—a predilection for quantitative data over qualitative data, deserves investigation. Recapitulating, Expert No. 7 connoted simple contexts with straightforward situations; made the point that complicated is not complex because the pieces may be interconnected—much as the parts of a jumbo jet and the structures we have built over the last century—but they are not rich; and doubted that we ever face true chaos even if we sometimes characterize complex situations as such. In relation to forms of organizing, Expert No. 7 cautioned much of the work on complexity gave the sense that we ought not use order in the form of bureaucratic command and control but suggested that the more complex things were the more one might need to drive a situation down with structure so organizations and people might function a while: the next challenge, Expert No. 7 clarified, was that one ought not then stay there as that stance would deny complexity had ever happened and frustrate adaptive responses, which is more of a networked dynamic, and it’s more of the adaptive

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space that we talked about in our work. Referencing Uhl-Bien (2021b), Expert No. 7 illustrated with the People’s Republic of China’s heavily bureaucratic response to the COVID-19 pandemic which, despite acclaimed initial success curtailed open adaptive space, hampered the ability to respond to complexity, and by so doing exemplified failed leadership and followership. Complex situations call for adaptive operational responses, Expert No. 7 underscored, but not old-school command-and-control orders. Expert No. 8 opined that, the more complex a problem the more one needs to know about the world and the harder hierarchy is to run. Complexity pushes us into needing to grasp the whole more than the individual parts, which is typically something we managed to do through hierarchy, Expert No. 8 continued. In a complex world, hierarchy can only present a fractal image of the whole. Vitally, Expert No. 8 emphasized, different contexts should evoke different ideas about what knowledge is and different relationships with it. Unavoidably, Expert No. 8 reckoned, organizations that operate in a complex world should be framed to make certain their components capture the whole in some important way. The classic studies on organization design explain that organizations must differentiate to match complexity, Expert No. 9 pointed out; but then, they must simultaneously increase integration because specialization calls for coordination. Therefore, Expert No. 9 deduced, work across the organization must be as intense as that in pockets of the organization. Simple or complicated contexts do not require advanced forms of organizing but complex or chaotic contexts do, hence the need for metagovernance, Expert No. 9 determined. To wit, the more complex the environment, the more we need to share leadership. Expert No. 10 called for contingency logic. Of course, Expert No. 10 pointed up, organizations need to study context, then decide; this is what agile organizations are all about. Paying attention to context means being less committed to what is static, being more lateral, and reaching out to include more stakeholders to agree on what forms of organizing could be adopted, Expert No. 10 reiterated. Systems should be built that allow the various organizational parts to see, adapt, and have some impact on where organizations go next. Expert No. 11 visualized the organizational environments as ecosystems and contended that organizational designs must match the surroundings organizations are nested in. Past simple or complicated contexts, Expert No. 11 specified, organizational designs must be less hierarchical and adopt network structure that are intimately linked to customers and other members of the ecosystem. In constantly changing environments, Expert No. 11 continued, organizations require reconfigurable, open systems, platform network structures that can be modularized to learn and respond quickly. Necessarily, Expert No. 11 deduced, what parts of the hierarchies used to control operations must push down capability. Expert No. 12 affirmed that the characteristics of simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts have everything to do with what forms of organizing can be adopted. Illustrating, Expert No. 12 made out that, depending on the objective, two very different forms of organizing in the enterprise software industry might to organize a team or configure for a go-to-market motion.

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IQ9. Contingent on context, what are the comparative advantages and disadvantages of modes and styles of leadership on sense-making and decision-making? Expert No. 1 averred that a comparative advantage of inclusiveness over declarative styles is that inclusion goes beyond access to more intelligence to breed enjoyment and willingness, thence, perhaps, self-development. Inclusiveness intimates one respects others and gives them room; it affords them the psychological safety they need to make a mistake; and it is likely to generate more ideas and also perhaps more execution concerning what next steps are decided upon. Of course, a declarative style may be more relevant to certain contexts, for instance where expectations and skillsets are limited. Also, lack of variability and lack of options, the latter stemming perhaps from lack of resources, may be conditions for safety. Expert No. 2 asserted that leadership, be it a style or a mode, is the ultimate driver. In an environment of constant change, organizations must adapt to different situations, which means they must take care of the human dimension. Only by helping people grow, giving them voice and visibility, showing respect and gratitude for their work, and helping them dream can leadership create the 110% commitment to the accomplishment of organizational purpose. A complex world summons adaptive and enabling leadership that gives talented people the freedom to do what they need to do. “You cannot have control-oriented management anymore, to be successful,” declared Expert No. 2. Expert No. 3 advised that understanding context ought to suggest modes of organizing that should help make better decisions together, which invites reference to Mintzberg’s (2006) idea of “community-ship.” All that Mintzberg (2006) meant is that leadership is the responsibility of all, not just leaders. People in organizations are constantly struggling to decide, Expert No. 3 observed: we have created organizational structures but do not quite know how to function within them; it is not necessarily that their hierarchies are opaque but that the roles and responsibilities are not clear. We need to know how to educate decisions. Having agile models, for example, engenders scrum managers: this helps at one level of decision-making not at others that may be more strategic. And so, what the advantages and disadvantages of modes and styles of leadership on sense-making and decision-making might be is a rich question. Two things need to change. First, people must adapt their behavior so they might make to sense together. Second, the technology that helps jointly engage in sense-making and build a collective picture must also help decision off. In certain contexts, a hierarchy does not work. In complex or chaotic situations, there is no language for what must be done. What tools do we have? What modes of leadership ought we switch to? Above all else, context is what should drive modes and styles of leadership. Referring to the rules of thumb mentioned earlier, Expert No. 4 still saw a need for hierarchy and associated styles of leadership when it comes to the exercise of authority; notwithstanding, Expert No. 4 also saw that market-based forms of governance are beneficial if the objective is to, say, develop more efficient production of services. And yet, Expert No. 4 discerned that the public sector is increasingly preoccupied by turbulence, which invites more collaborative networked approaches

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to governance. Considering the comparative advantages and disadvantages of modes and styles of leadership on sense-making and decision-making, Expert No. 4 reckoned it is most important to let the type of problem define the mode of governance and the type of organization that one wants to have or build. Expert No. 5 envisioned that what styles of leadership allow and value the hearing of other voices are probably going to be more helpful than those which say “The person at the top has the important voice and some privileged position to see more than anybody else.” The more distributed the origin, the richer the perspective, Expert No. 5 intoned. Nevertheless, Expert No. 5 recognized the possibility, even in very hierarchical structures, of a leader saying: “I want to hear from everyone. It is really important that we hear the different voices, that we understand the different perspectives, that we see what everybody is picking up.” In such a situation, hierarchy might be a friend who encourages personnel do things in what different ways they can. That is why Expert No. 5 acknowledged there can be conditions where an autocratic style of leadership is counterintuitively hopeful. Considering context and how it ought to impact sense-making and decisionmaking, Expert No. 6 drew an analogy from Adrian Bejan’s work on constructal theory, wherein Bejan and coauthors had attempted to generalize to social situations the physics of flow as it occurs in heat transfer in microchips. Drawing from complex adaptive systems theory, Expert No. 6 had in a related discussion considered how things happen in organizations. In organizations, Expert No. 6 illustrated, energy, information, people, raw materials, etc. are meant to flow: however, siloed structures and other factors impede or block progress. Therefore, how one might open up channels to optimize knowledge flows in particular ought to be a concern of sense-making and decision-making. “If HP knew what HP knows, we’d be three times more productive,” Expert No. 6 quoted Hewlett-Packard’s former chief executive officer, Lew Platt, as saying. Knowledge flows are a cornerstone of effective organizations, Expert No. 6 emphasized, and that is a strong argument for modes of leadership: modes, not styles, of leadership are really about opening up, collaborating, and working toward synergies of knowledge as the basis for innovation and implementation. Expert No. 7 emphasized that the most important thing for decision-making is that decisions do get made: that is never going to go away because societies, organizations, groups, and individuals we need decisions. However, decisions must be adaptive, which means that the modes and styles of leadership that people adopt must be adaptive. Expert No. 8 recognized that administrative leadership has advantages in a simple world: the more scientific one is at something the more efficient one is going to be. One would then imagine that as context becomes more complicated one would still need to be operational but that periodic adaptation would be called for, Expert No. 8 continued, with complex situations demanding generative leadership to enable more adaptation. In a complex world we should perhaps be learning more from the arts, Expert No. 8 proposed, this to heighten, or bring into relief, the most important aspects of problems. What artistic forms try to do, Expert No. 8 specified, is to get at the essences, the most important pieces that are useful, and bring those into greater

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relief while still maintaining that essence of the whole. Adaptive leadership is a creative process because it does not follow simple heuristics, Expert No. 8 figured out: creativity is involved. Expert No. 9 opined that organizations are being forced into new forms of leadership. Expert No. 9 illustrated with a story about a tribe in South America that did not rely on the tribal leader system; instead, the tribe invited its elders to share their life experiences whenever it was confronted by a new situation. Once everybody’s story had been heard the tribe then turned to the individual who had shared the most relevant story and declared him or her the leader for today; the tribe’s approach to leadership in complex environments also ensured the same leader would not be in power on every decision, Expert No. 9 imparted. Expert No. 10 affirmed that styles of leadership relate to the individual level while modes of leadership pertain to the aggregate. Expert No. 10 did not find styles of leadership helpful in addressing the problems of today: they tie organizations to particular individuals; conversely, modes of leadership enable dynamic configurational approaches. In complex and chaotic contexts, Expert No. 10 added, what organizations need to enhance their capability to adapt and respond. Eschewing silos, agile organizations assign people collectively to what must be done right, Expert No. 10 specified; agile organizations ask: “What is going on out there? What are we facing? What are our capabilities? What is our knowledge base? Who do we need to have do what? What teams do we need to pull together?” Expert No. 10 referred to a case study, as yet unpublished, that recounts the development of one of the vaccines for COVID-19. The case study, according to Expert No. 10, relates how a very hierarchical, market-driven organization delivered in nine months what would otherwise have taken nine years: that organization pulled a set of people into a totally adaptive setting; nobody was a leader, nobody was a department head, nobody was this, and nobody was there; the team tasked with developing the vaccine focused on leveraging collective decision-making capacity, with smaller hubs sensing when to pull people together in continual organizational reconfiguration. Expert No. 11 averred that modes of leadership conduce sense-making. With adaptive and generative leadership, Expert No. 11 asserted, organizations can provide infrastructure and allocate resources to make sense-making more accurate and achievable, this to enhance the ability to reconfigure. As environments become more turbulent, Expert No. 11 recognized that the pressure is on leadership to be push down decision-making, which also implies pushing down information, knowledge, and skills, and developing reward systems. Merely delegating decision-making, Expert No. 11 cautioned, will only frustrate people for the reason that decision-making without the right information, knowledge, and skills cannot work. Recapping, Expert No. 12 replied that persona-based leadership is entirely constraining in the enterprise software industry. Persona-based leadership implies that a leader is omnipotent, which is anathema in the said industry; there, decision-making is a process that complexity leadership enables and facilitates.

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IQ10. From the foregoing, what grounds might there be to fuse the lenses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making for organizational performance? Expert No. 1 argued that different levels of complexity call for requisite structures and scales at conversation, team, and network levels. One could, as one should, have some kind of hierarchy and design that inside teams and networks. The need for hierarchy is probably highest in the case of teams because they are tasked with objectives. Networks have objectives but that form of organization enjoys more flexibility because its commanding resources are not necessarily economically-tied. Therefore, one could imagine having a metagovernance model that also supports network scale. Complexity might be addressed by a set of questions driven by a logic model. Put differently, do we need to engage in sense-making every minute or once a day or under certain conditions, leading in turn to a choice around metagovernance and complexity leadership? Expert No. 1 concluded that it would be very interesting to instrument complexity so one might say “It’s this kind of unknown and unknowable and if this kind of complexity presents itself, then this is the kind of sense-making you need to do, and then you …”. Expert No. 2 averred that sense-making is vital: in complex situations, it is the only way to figure out how are people are going to work together and what metagovernance will conduce the knowledge, learning, and solutions organizations depend on if they are to succeed. Toward this, Expert No. 2 advised that stories can play a very important role: “People do something because a story makes sense to them.” Expert No. 3 declared one must fuse the lenses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making if one wants an organization to perform well, if one wants to attract great talent to it, and if one want to make that organization a place that is more than just the work one does there. One should consider stacking the three lenses on top of one another to give organizations and their leaders an advantage. Fusing the three lenses will help leaders in a future that is increasingly complex and calls for adaptive and agile organizations. [Expert No. 4 could not consider this question for lack of time.] Expert No. 5 agreed that bringing the lenses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making together would be helpful. Even so, Exert No. 5 felt a need to keep them distinct at the same time. Metagovernance, Expert No. 5 pointed up, makes us think about hierarchies, structures, forms, decisions, and processes; complexity leadership encourages us to think about the informal and the need to adapt or generate in requisite relationships and behaviors; sense-making presents the opportunity to create meaning for ourselves, without overdoing it because we are always insufficiently complex. Expert No. 5 detected combinational synergies between metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making but judged also that organizations ought not want to miss the discrete facets that each lens reveals.

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Harking back to the Venn diagram imagery, Expert No. 6 imparted that where metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making come together enables a real focus. The reason? Each lens assuredly contributes something to organizational effectiveness but it is in combination that they become really powerful: in short, they leverage one another. Expert No. 7 hypothesized that metagovernance might provide the overarching framework for organizational performance, that complexity leadership fits very well within that relatively new ecosystem model by acknowledging that there is dynamism in the environment, and that sense-making is core to all of this. Expert No. 8 concurred that, on their own, metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making would not quite address everything we need: each lens feels incomplete in some way and that, to Expert No. 8, would be the biggest ground for fusing them. People like theory to be simple but too simple is not useful, Expert No. 8 asserted. Illustrating, Expert No. 8 referred to Minard’s map of Napoleon’s Russian campaign of 1812: it fused different presentational elements in a brilliant way. Expert No. 9 affirmed that the modern world presents us with great challenges and that we will suffer severe consequences if we do not change the way we organize and the way we lead; there is much extremism in politics, lack of fairness and equity in society is causing people to lose it, and the attack on the environment has been relentless; there are signs that are harder and harder to ignore. Expert No. 9 concluded that we must change the way we interact with society, interface with the environment, govern nations, and lead organizations; therefore, fusing the lenses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making is something we have to learn fairly quickly and do fairly well, or we will not be able to survive. There is as yet no Planet B, Expert No. 9 made clear. Expert No. 10 perceived complexity leadership and metagovernance to be inherently compatible and envisioned sense-making as the capability organizations need to performance. Therefore, Expert No. 10 determined, the metagovernance of picking styles or modes of leadership should be defined by the task at hand, be it in parts of the organization, at the level of the organizational level, or across organizations, this with careful attention to the balancing of exploration and execution. Expert No. 10 treated metagovernance as a design issue but recognized leaders must necessarily play the pieces together; therefore, it is vital that metagovernance and complexity leadership theory should connect, with sense-making associating all around to help circumscribe purpose. Expert No. 11 established that fusing the lenses of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making has everything to do with organizational performance: data—specifically, customer, operational, and environmental data returning to a system—is performance data. And so, Expert No. 11 foresaw, the ability of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making to work together would be the key to performance improvement and to high performance indeed. The three lenses correlate for faster learning, Expert No. 11 ascertained, and learning at a faster rate is what changes organizational performance. Expert No. 12 found eminent sense in fusing the three lenses, specifically to evolve methodology that requisitely matches the characteristics of contexts.

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IQ11. How might a leadership management framework for sense-making and decision-making help organizations meet challenges and reap opportunities in simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts? Expert No. 1 signified that a a leadership management framework for sense-making and decision-making might indeed serve. That said, Expert No. 1 recommended one should put a little “l” on the word “leadership” because such leadership is not going to be in the same body at any given time. Especially in times of unknowns and unknowables, leadership can be distributed. Expert No. 1 hoped for an instrumentation of complexity that would inform the degrees of sense-making and the leadership practices required. Organizations ought to want to know what their teams, or their groups, or their networks can undertake and what metagovernance might be congruent with context. Expert No. 1 concluded that different levels of complexity summon different kinds of sense-making and decision-making and what metagovernance can enable that sounds like a good model. Expert No. 2 recognized that traditional approaches can work in simple environments where relationships are transactional and do not need to be transformational. In simple settings, technical expertise is still the best. However, Expert No. 2 remarked that organizations are increasingly out of context and must all the time more deal with complexity across country lines. The biggest problems that successful organizations such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, etc. have, Expert No. 2 expounded, is that a majority of people do not think these organizations are using data for good; therefore, they do not trust them. On top, these organizations must also come up with different kinds of approaches across different countries. It follows that making sense and making decisions must spring from adaptive governance frameworks that are anchored in respect for people. To wit, Expert No. 2 signaled that organizations must frame governance systems that place as much importance, if not more, on the human element as they do on technology and processes. In complex and chaotic environments, the capability of empathy, of critical thinking, adaptive thinking, and effective communications matter more than they do in simple and complicated contexts. Therefore, the governance framework must take better account of the human element. Expert No. 3 volunteered that frameworks are means with which to run scenarios through a simulator, specifically by examining problems through specific lenses. But, instead of saying “Here’s the framework” Expert No. 3 recommended one should say “Here’s the framework for making your own framework around these lenses.” That, in itself, is very metagovernance. [Expert No. 4 could not consider this question for lack of time.] Expert No. 5 perceived that a leadership management framework for sensemaking and decision-making would help organizations meet challenges and reap opportunities. Expert No. 5 associated such a framework with learning-informed leadership (Varney, 2021) and advanced that tools for transformative thinking offer the opportunity to see a little bit more of the complexity organizations are in than styles of leadership, this to help develop more multifaceted and nuanced responses. Illustrating, Expert No. 5 advocated that an organization ought not, by default, want to be, say, either a hierarchy or a network: it would want the advantages of both.

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Hybrid organizations are coming, Expert No. 5 assured, and tools for transformative thinking are needed to develop better responses to the complexity organizations face. Expert No. 6 questioned whether there still were simple contexts in the 21st century. Expert No. 6 pointed out the example of a very small company in Fort Worth, Texas that had but 27 employees but operated as a global company with customers and suppliers worldwide. Situations may look simple, Expert No. 6 remarked, but the whole world impacts nowadays: the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, to mention but two recent shocks, have impacted everybody in obvious ways. “If I perceive my environment as simple then I have myopia,” Expert No. 6 declared, “I’ve got blinders on. I’m fooling myself in one way or the other, which means my decisions will not be adequate.” Expanding, Expert No. 6 recalled the story of the six blind men and the elephant, whereby not one sees the whole animal or its ecology and none lead the effort to integrate knowledge to build a more comprehensive understanding of the complex reality. Silos need intentional bridge-building links to other silos, Expert No. 6 concluded. Expert No. 6 inferred: Companies fail at all sizes and the COVID-19 pandemic killed off an awful lot. Somebody likened that to natural forest fires that burn off the brush underneath. It’s like we’re getting rid of the deadwood that impedes the growth of trees. Some have compared the COVID-19 pandemic to an evolutionary mechanism for healthier businesses. I don’t know about that but it’s an illustration of how sense-making and decision-making might help organizations meet challenges and reap opportunities.

Expanding, Expert No. 7 granted that metagovernance might be appropriate for the times we live in and so conduce a leadership management framework for sensemaking and decision-making but that joint sense-making had to underlie all. Joint sense-making recognizes the heterogeneity of the perspectives that people bring to help select, case by case, approaches that invite emergence or, conversely, top-down decision-making. Expert No. 8’s instinct was that moving from simple to complicated did not necessarily negate the need for administrative leadership: rather, one had to add to it from a larger tool bag. The big shift was from complicated to complex, Expert No. 8 discerned, because that demanded one should understand the world in fundamentally different ways. Expert No. 8 drew a parallel with Bill Torbert’s action logics (i.e., opportunist, diplomat, expert, achiever, individualist, strategist, alchemist), which offer a framework for considering leadership styles and outcome. Much as adult developmental theory, Expert No. 8 sensed that Bill Torbert’s action logics might suggest a path for organizations. Because organizations are increasingly short-lived and rarely travel very far down such a path, a leadership management framework for sense-making and decision-making could make it easier for them to evolve. Accepting that it is not possible to interrelate, change, integrate, refreeze in a new configuration if all in motion and possibly moving in directions that nobody understands, Expert No. 9 suggested that a metagovernance process or group might be tasked with constantly looking at what parts of an organization stakeholders must

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rethink and redirect and what parts of the organization might need to stay put for the time being. Metagovernance must be about requisite change. Expert No. 10 avowed that organizations no longer operate in a simple world but detected a continuing need for high-reliability systems in much of what they do; concomitant with the need for agility, therefore, Expert No. 10 saw the need to maintain and upgrade the well-defined modes of administration that high-reliability systems require, this at various degrees of magnitude. Expert No. 10 deemed the organizing of responses in an organization to be an organizational design challenge; across organizations, it is a network challenge, to be approached through ecosystem governance. Expert No. 10 concluded that the overarching issue touches on the creation of new models or frameworks for organizing that, in emergent ways, address context, expose alternatives and choices, and help address problems in compelling ways from the perspective of key actors, stakeholders, shareholders, etc. Expert No. 11 opined that a leadership management framework for sense-making and decision-making would be of tremendous help to organizations. Sense-making and decision-making are the key capabilities that drive the health of a system, specifically by aligning it with the requirements of customers and the environment, Expert No. 11 maintained. Because organizations are constantly going out of alignment as the environment evolve, the needs of customers change, and innovation is identified in response, a framework for sense-making and decision-making would be advantageous. Expert No. 12 surmised that this question had been addressed by responses to earlier questions. IQ12. What might be principles for selecting and processes and practices for managing modes of leadership for metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing? Expert No. 1 volunteered that principles for selecting modes of leadership for metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing would have to do with the requirement that the person or the persons “in the moment” have self-awareness, situational awareness, logical skills, and empathetic skills. Apropos processes and practices for managing modes of leadership, Expert No. 1 asserted that organizations must blend intentionality, alignment, and coherence right. Each might need to be negotiated. What do they mean by intent? The meaning of intent might not be perfect but an agreement on would be required. What do they mean by alignment? What would be the operational practices and the protocols? How would they measure how are they are going to create psychological safety? What would coherence look like? What might be coherent for one might be incoherent for someone else. Concluding, Expert No. 1 remarked that when the rubber meets the road processes and practices would probably relate to blocking and tackling. Do we have a charter? Do we have a plan? Do we know what our steps are? But, at a macro level, processes and practices would be about intentionality, alignment, and coherence, mentioned earlier. Expert No. 2 proposed that six principles—articulated in Hoffman, Kohut, and Prusak (2022)—might help manage modes of leadership for metagovernance in the

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21st century. Provided an organization’s purpose is clear, the six principles are knowledge, learning, culture, teams, narrative, and global collaboration. The principle of knowledge signifies that organizations should build governance systems that value knowledge. Relatedly, because learning grows from lack of fear, organizations need to promote and ensure psychological safety. Hence, organizational cultures that capacitate knowledge behaviors will increase the likelihood of success. Additionally, teams must be empowered to function better. Correspondingly, narrative that goes directly to sense-making will inspire teams because people want to understand what is going in times of dramatic change. Lastly, global collaboration that respects different norms and ethics has become a sine qua non in the globalizing world. With regard to processes and practices to “get up the culture,” Expert No. 2 vaunted the benefits of 15-min-long pairing of experts asked to share what they appreciate most about their lives right now, this to underscore the importance of appreciation, gratitude, and respect for the team. Another exercise that Expert No. 2 deemed supportive of the principle of teams was to invite discussion of roles and responsibilities. To wit, what are the roles of each member of the team and what does that mean? By clear about roles and responsibilities a team becomes more effective. A third example of a process or practice that Expert No. 2 highlighted in relation to the principle of knowledge are pause-and-learn or after-action reviews. And, regarding the principle of learning, it would be helpful when setting the scene to consider what budget is ascribed to that. Concluding, Expert No. 2 observed that following policy when the policy does not make sense in a given situation can be explained by inadequate governance and sense-making. Quite the reverse, not following policy when it makes no sense in the said situation is the fitting outcome of judicious metagovernance and sense-making. Expert No. 3 suggested that principles for managing modes of leadership for metagovernance of situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing might need to focus on social dynamics. Metagovernance is what helps establish upfront what kind of environment one should create, what organizational structure is advisable under the conditions, and what modes of leadership people will be encouraged to engage in. Drawing from a forthcoming publication on radical community-ship in knowledge services, Expert No. 3 isolated four specific principles that organizations might need to sound out. The first principle is radical accountability, taken to connote how individuals keep themselves accountable for the decisions and actions they take in their organization. The second principle is radical candor, which is an agreement that everyone should say what needs to be said rather than follow suit because they do not want to take risks or call out problems. The third is radical self-compassion, meaning, compassion for yourself and for others, openness to understanding that sometimes people have a bad day and cannot perform at their best, and so that one should hold space for people. The fourth is conversational leadership, which recognizes that having conversations that are inclusive allow people in the community to have a voice. Concluding, Expert No. 3 surmised that as we continuingly build systems that rely on artificial intelligence and deep learning people will need to get better at understanding themselves or they will be outplayed by the things they have created. The answer is more humanity.

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Expert No. 4 reckoned that organizations must now cultivate more situational leadership. That is, leaders must recognize what situations they face and reflect more carefully on what is expected from them. And so, leaders may in the course of a single day need to move in and out of hierarchy, market, and network governance, all of which demand different styles and modes of leadership. Even so, Expert No. 4 acknowledged that leaders, at least in the public sector, are not currently guided by normative principles in the performance of metagovernance: most simply muddle through and make the best of what situation they are in. Expert No. 4 suggested that it is incumbent on leaders to want to be effective; in the public sector, therefore, a principle for managing situationally-determined combinations of hierarchy, market, and network forms of organizing ought to be to enhance public value production. Enhancing public value production through hierarchy, market, and/or network forms of organizing means leaders must plug into what right exercise of leadership supports metagovernance at any given time. Expert No. 4 recognized that relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability might serve to operationalize public value. Lastly, Expert No. 4 cautioned that public value is contested: what is public value for one person is not the same as what it is for another. Because public value is contested it must be negotiated. Nevertheless, public value is what serves as the regulative idea for public leaders. Expert No. 5 proposed that learning and adapting should be principles for selecting and managing modes of leadership for metagovernance. Most organizations design, redesign, and design again with different structures, subsystems, cultures, skillsets, artificial intelligence, etc., Expert No. 5 commented: these organizations may not appreciate fully that learning and adapting is what they are attempting. For that reason, Expert No. 5 perceived the acute need to build learning and adaptability into the inherent uncertainties and ambiguities of organizational life. Expert No. 5 rationalized that the principles of learning and adapting are linked to sense-making and the corresponding learning-loop practices associated with noticing, interpreting, and responding (Varney, 2021). Noticing, interpreting, and responding can be performed at the individual level; however, the same can be delivered to much greater effect by groups of people. What structures, then, might support learning and adapting? Expert No. 5 settled that this overarching question takes us back to metagovernance. Big Data and artificial intelligence will not fix our dilemmas, Expert No. 5 concluded: we must encourage learning and adapting, and more humanity in the process. Expert No. 6 deemed this question of central importance. Assuming a leadership management framework made sense one would have to find ways to implement it, Expert No. 6 remarked. “A huge question, this,” he continued. The environment is not going to get any simpler, change is not likely to get any slower, and the challenges will not get any simpler, Expert No. 6 prophesized. What is missing in most discussions is adaptivity and capability development, which can only result from learning. In closing, Expert No. 6 recounted the experience of a workshop around the theme of: “In 20 years, what’s still going to be valid in your organization?”. Among the variety of answers, the answer that struck Expert No. 6 had to do with long-lasting principles. And so, Expert No. 6 agreed, having the right principles is tantamount to being able to say “I am stable.” Because is everything else is changing,

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Expert No. 6 resolved that principles are the cornerstones on which organizations can build. In the circumstances this question addresses, learning might be one of the key principles organizations need, Expert No. 6 adjudged. Expert No. 7 signaled that in an order zone, which would be relate to simple or complicated situations according to the Cynefin framework (Snowden, 2002), one can use more technical forms of organizing and technical forms of sense-making and decision-making; conversely, complex situations call for adaptive responses. Referencing Heifetz (1994), Expert No. 7 suggested that an overarching principle for metagovernance ought to be to identify what adaptive or technical challenge one is facing. Technical challenges can be addressed with hierarchy but adaptive challenges call for networked responses that bring the right people together so they might generate adaptive solutions through dialogue, which also involves conflicting and connecting. Complexity thinking might be another term for the said principle, Expert No. 7 added, and might involve hiring for or potentially developing people for complexity. In short, the general idea is to foster highly collaborative engagement and a leadership process to underpin it. Referring to Chris Argyris, Expert No. 8 volunteered that a first principle could be to look for disconfirming data. Expert No. 8 noted that people have a tendency to fall in love with their own ideas and should more often look for things that surprise. Artists look for places where they are uncomfortable, Expert No. 8 remarked. Humans have five senses with which they derive sensory data, Expert No. 8, explained, but organizations lean on denuded data and lose the sense of the felt experience. “Following the fear” would facilitate an organization’s shift from complicated to complex and imply enormous changes in terms of leadership styles, Expert No. 8 concluded. Expert No. 9 volunteered that the overarching principle for metagovernance of forms of organizing would have to be adaptive intent (or intentional adaptation). In support, another principle might be shared leadership, based on the assumption that in order to adapt successfully an organization needs to open the conversation. A third principle might be to learn as you go. Expert No. 10 submitted that strategy determines how one organizes but that one must have purpose in order to formulate strategy; today, multiple purposes need to be taken into account and strategy must reconcile the same. Irrespective, strategy ought to be a key principle of metagovernance. Relatedly, per Expert No. 10, a second principle ought to be agility: organizations must have more surface area, more exposure, and so more connectivity to the outside world. Organizations should become more process-driven, Expert No. 10 advised, with structures serving as way stations on the path to accomplishing dynamic tasks. Expert No. 11 volunteered that a key principle might be to constantly push capability—but also information, knowledge, skills, and reward systems—down to where value is created. Another principle, Expert No. 11 suggested, might be to modularize systems to reduce cycle time and enhance reconfigurability. Another principle, Expert No. 11 continued, might be to design for minimal critical specifications: that entailed only pushing down essential requirements and giving elbow room for reconfiguration. Expert No. 12 asserted that the principle of servant leadership is very important: as defined by Robert Greenleaf, servant leadership is a practical philosophy that supports

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people who choose to serve first, and then lead, to expand service. According to Expert No. 12, complexity in the enterprise software industry demands sense-making and decision-making across the entire organization, not in pockets of it. Sense-making and decision-making begins with getting the right problem statements, Expert No. 12 underscored, and the broadest spectrum of experts must be given permission to bring different lenses toward that. Clarification on Terminology Expert No. 7 advised that the proponents of complexity leadership theory now characterize the complexity leadership framework with different terminology (UhlBien, 2021a). The mode of leadership in the administrative system is now labelled “operational” (not “administrative”) while that in the local system is labelled “entrepreneurial” (not “adaptive”). The mode of leadership that connects entrepreneurial solutions to the operational system and scales it there continues to be labelled “enabling.” The new terminology is recent and does not change the situation. Moreover, the bulk of literature on complexity leadership theory rests on the former labels (i.e., administrative, adaptive, enabling), with which the majority of readers is familiar. The new terminology was alluded to during the expert interviews but the related interview question was not modified to eschew confusion. For the same reason, the former labels are used throughout the text of this dissertation.

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Name Index

A Ackoff, R., 97 Aldrich, H., 17, 99 Allen, P., 100 Amin, A., 9 Anand, A., 34 Andersen, L., 152 Andersen, N, 26, 27 Anderson, M., 16 Anderson, P., 111 Anjana, A., 8 Ansell, C., 169 Anthony, S., 7 Antonacopoulou, E., 11 Arena, M., 31, 32

B Babbie, E., 14, 109 Bailey, A., 3 Baker, L., 113, 114 Balkundi, P., 112 Baltzan, P., 15 Barnett, J., 49 Barrett, M., 34 Bartlett, C., 4 Bazeley, P., 54 Becker, S., 36 Beck, T., 113, 114 Beers, M., 190 Behme, F., 36 Bennett, N., 2, 4, 100 Bennis, W., 10 Berger, J., 38 Bessant, J., 17 Bevir, M., 16, 26, 27

Biesbroek, R., 16, 27 Billis, W., 100 Birks, M., 54 Birt, L., 52 Bogner, A., 14, 49, 50 Bohn, R., 100 Boisot, M., 77, 170 Bonabeau, E., 111, 112 Boone, M., 38–40 Borys, B., 16, 101 Boulton, J., 100 Bowman, C., 100 Bradach, J., 2, 99 Bratton, J., 100 Brinkmann, S., 50, 53 Britton, B., 52 Brosseau, D., 27 Brown, J., 4 Brown, S., 112 Buchanan, D., 17 Burgartz, T., 190 Burke, W., 27, 91 Burr, V., 12 Burton, R., 8

C Calabrese, R., 52, 109 Cameron, K., 30 Campbell, C., 52 Card, S., 37 Carley, K., 114 Cascio, J., 10 Caslione, J., 2 Cavers, D., 52 Champy, J., 4

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 O. Serrat, Leading Organizations of the Future, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8199-1

191

192 Chandler, A., 4 Charmaz, K., 48, 49, 121, 122 Chawla, S., 34 Cherry, K., 16 Chestnut, B., 19 Chrobot-Mason, D., 12 Cilliers, P., 26, 108, 171 Clarke, T., 34 Clegg, S., 34 Collison, C., 34 Conlon, C., 12 Conte, J., 17 Corbin, J., 12, 122 Creswell, D., 109 Creswell, J., 25, 29, 48, 63, 105, 106, 109, 121, 122 Crevani, L., 4 Crotty, M., 47, 106 Cyr, J., 14

D Dahlberg, R., 38 Daub, M., 99 D’Aveni, R., 4 Davenport, T., 4, 14, 16, 34, 35, 93 Davis, G., 27 De Long, D., 190 De Meuse, K., 190 Dervin, B., 36, 37 Dobb, R., 190 Domeyer, A., 99 Döringer, S., 14, 18, 49, 50 Dubrow, S., 103 Dworkin, S., 14, 49, 62 Dwyer, L., 34

E Ebrahim, S., 27 Eccles, R., 2, 99 Eisenhardt, K., 112 Elder, L., 190 Elford, W., 38 Ellis, R., 5 Elsner, W., 190 Eriksen, B., 8 Ernst, C., 12 Etzioni, A., 30 Evans, J., 54

F Fichman, P., 2

Name Index Fleischmann, K., 2 Foley, G., 12 Foreman-Wernet, L., 36 Forrester, J., 31 Forsythe, G., 100 Frances, J., 4 Francis, D., 15 Franco, L., 33 Frankish, K., 15 Friedlande, B., 33 Frieze, D., 101, 103, 104 Fullerton, J., 50

G Galbraith, J., 9, 27, 91, 100 Gallego-Lizon, T., 94 Galvan, J., 190 Galvan, M., 190 Gardner, B., 38 Gersick, C., 164 Ghoshal, S., 4 Gioja, L., 15 Gjaltema, J., 16, 27 Glaser, B., 49, 55, 62, 121 Goffee, R., 30 Goldman, A., 49 Goldstein, J., 117 Golob, U., 36, 37 Gray, J., 34 Green, D., 26, 107 Greve, C., 152 Griffin, D., 30, 48, 100 Griffin, R., 116 Grint, K., 33, 100 Guangrong, D., 190 Guba, E., 12, 14, 29, 56 Gunther, R., 4 Gurteen, D., 172

H Haas, M, 3 Hagel, J., 4, 9 Håkonsson, D., 8 Hallenbeck, G., 190 Hamel, G., 4, 9, 17 Hammer M., 4 Handscomb, C., 27 Handy, C., 4, 30, 99 Hansen, M., 158 Harrison, R., 30 Hausner, J., 9

Name Index Hayward Jones, P., 37 Hazy, J., 31, 115, 117 Heifetz, R., 31, 185 Heydebrand, W., 4, 99 Heynen, J., 95 Hock, D., 100 Hocker, G., 190 Hoffman, E., 172, 182 Hoffman, R., 37 Holbeche, L., 15 Holland, J., 31 Hubbard, R., 17, 28, 101 Huczynski, A., 17 Hufty, M., 16, 26 Hunt, J., 40 Hutchinson, R., 3 Hynes, M., 16

193 Kuhla, K., 100 Kukla, A., 47 Kulkarni, M., 113, 114 Kurtz, C., 9, 38–40 Kvale, S., 50, 53

J Jackson, K., 54 Jacobs, R., 10 Jauch, L., 40 Jemison, D., 16, 101 Jessop, B., 9, 12, 16, 27–29, 87 Johansen, R., 3, 103 Johanson, J., 9, 16, 18, 99 Johnson, P., 54 Johnstone, K., 153 Johnston, K., 38 Jones, G., 30, 37

L la Cour, A., 26, 27 Laloux, F., 100 Lamming, R., 17 Landy, F., 17 Laubacher, R., 104 Laurie, D., 31 Lauterbach, E., 42 Lawler, E., 9, 100 Lazer, D., 21 Leavitt, H., 92 Leedy, P., 55 Lee, H., 50 Lemoine, J., 2, 4, 100 Leonard-Barton, D., 34 Levaˇci´c, R., 4 Levinthal, D., 158 Lichtenstein, B., 4, 30, 31, 117 Lim, R., 50 Lincoln, Y., 12, 14, 29 Lindgren, M., 4 Linham, S., 12 Linstead, S., 190 Li, S., 2 Littig, B., 14, 49, 50 Litwin, G., 27, 91 Lovins, A., 100

K Kellerman, B., 100 Kemp, S., 34 Khare, A., 190 Kilduff, M., 112 Kirby, J., 93 Kirby, S., 16 Klausen, K., 152 Klein, G., 36, 37 Klier, J., 99 Knudsen, T., 8 Kofman, F., 103 Kohut, M., 172, 182 Kolze, M., 103 Kotler, P., 2 Krämer, A., 190 Kranz, J., 10

M MacGillivray, A., 113 MacIntosh, R., 113 Mack, O., 90 Mack, S., 90 MacLean, D., 113 Madanchian, M., 35 Malone, T., 104 Manyika, J., 190 Marceau, J., 34 Marchese, D., 93 Marion, R., 30–32, 115, 116, 118 Maxwell, J., 47, 48, 52, 57, 121 McAfee, A., 38 McCarthy, J., 15 McGrath, R., 4, 30, 99 McKelvey, B., 77, 113, 116, 170

I Isaacs, W., 190

194 McKoy, N., 22 Meadows, D., 31 Ménard, C., 190 Menz, W., 14, 49, 50 Mergel, I., 21 Merriam, S., 11–14, 48, 49, 53, 105, 106, 121, 122 Meuleman, L., 3, 9, 10, 17, 18, 27–30, 41, 87, 92 Meuser, M., 49 Meyer, C., 111, 112 Mikuska, E., 51 Miles, D., 10 Millemann, M., 15 Miller, D., 190 Mills, J., 54 Mintzberg, H., 4, 31, 175 Mitchell, J., 4 Moffatt, D., 94 Moon, B., 36 Morgan, J., 99 Morton, M., 104 Mühleisen, M., 2 Müller-Bloch, C., 10

N Nachbagauer, A., 38 Nadler, D., 27, 91, 92 Nagel, U., 49 Naumer, C., 36, 37 Neblo, M., 21 Nelson, D., 100 Neuman, W., 12 Nielsen, J., 100 Niestroy, I., 11, 29

O Obolensky, N., 117, 118 Obstfeld, D., 36 O’Dare, C., 12 Øgård, M., 169 O’Leary, D., 35 O’Reilly, C., 4 Ormrod, J., 55 Ortiz Aragón, A., 122 Orton, J., 4, 30, 31 Osborn, R., 40 Owen, J., 100

P Packendorff, J., 4

Name Index Paquet, G., 17, 28, 100 Parcell, G., 34 Pascale, C., 105 Pascale, R., 15, 31 Pasmore, W., 164 Patton, M., 49 Paul, R., 190 Perez, C., 4, 7 Perkmann, M., 100 Peters, G., 148 Peters, T., 27, 92 Phillips, J., 27, 92 Pierre, J., 148 Pinchot, G., 170 Pirolli, P., 37 Plowman, D., 113, 114 Powell, W., 2–5, 17, 99 Prusak, L., 4, 16, 34, 172, 182

Q Quinn, R., 30

R Raelin, J., 4, 100 Rallis, S., 56, 85 Ramalingam, B., 95 Ramsey, W., 15 Reeves, M., 3 Renesch, J., 34 Rhodes, R., 27 Rice, D., 100 Richardson, K., 26, 108 Richardson, L, 63 Rimita, K., 17, 103 Rivkin, J., 114, 115 Robinson, K., 10 Rosenberg, A., 12, 47, 105 Rosenhead, J., 33 Rossman, G., 56, 85 Roubini, N., 2 Roy, R., 26 Russell, D., 37

S Sadler, G., 50 Saldaña, J., 18, 54 Saldanha, I., 10 Salkind, N., 53 Sanfilippo M., 2 Sargut, G., 4, 30 Sawyer, J., 116

Name Index Schein, E., 30 Schildt, H., 100 Schreiber, C., 4, 30, 31, 114 Schumpeter, J., 7 Schwab, K., 99, 103 Schwandt, T., 13, 48–50, 105, 122 Schwardt, H., 190 Schwartz, E., 7 Scott, S., 52 Seers, A., 4, 30, 31 Seidman, I., 14, 50, 51, 53, 55 Senge, P., 4, 30, 31, 34, 103 Serrat, O., 1, 3–12, 14, 16, 18, 25–28, 30–32, 34, 35, 38, 47–49, 51–55, 57, 61, 85, 94, 96, 97, 99–101, 108, 122, 125 Shamdasani, P., 14 Shank, G., 48 Shaw, P., 30 Siggelkow, N., 114, 115 Silberstang, J., 117 Sinclair, A., 100 Singh, M., 34 Skyrme, D., 5 Sloan, J., 16 Smith, S., 3 Snow, C., 8 Snowden, D., 9, 17, 37–40, 170, 173, 185 Snyder, H., 109 Solansky, S., 113, 114 Sørensen, E., 29, 148 Spears, L., 81 Stacey, R., 30, 31, 48, 100, 115 Stanford, N., 17 Stankosky, M., 14 Stebbins, R., 41, 56, 109, 121 Stefik, M., 37 Steger, M., 26 Stern, S., 99 Stewart, D., 14 Stewart, T., 16, 34 Stiehm, J., 100 St John, W., 54 Strauss, A., 12, 49, 55, 62, 121, 122 Stringer, E., 122 Styhre, A., 26, 108 Sun, P., 16 Surdak, C., 15 Surie, G., 31, 115 Sutcliffe, K., 36

195 T Taherdoost, H., 35 Taylor, J., 4, 91 Termeer, K., 16, 27 Thaker, S., 27 Thompson, G., 4 Thompson, M., 5 Thorpe, S., 49 Timonen, V., 12 Tisdell, E., 11–14, 48, 49, 53, 105, 106, 121, 122 Tooze, A., 2 Torfing, J., 148, 152 Travis, D., 113, 114 Trondal, J., 169 Tushman, M., 4, 27, 91, 92, 158

U Uhl-Bien, M., 9, 12, 15, 16, 31, 32, 48, 100

V Vakkuri, J., 9, 16, 18, 99 Van Every, E., 91 Van Landeghem, J., 7 van Rijnsoever, F., 49 van Uden, J., 26, 108 van Vugt, M., 8 Varney, S., 2, 166, 180, 184 Vasileiou, K., 49 Vasilescu, C., 38 Viguerie, P., 7 Vijayakumar, C., 5 von Bertalanffy, L., 31

W Waldrop, M., 31 Walter, F., 52 Waterman, R., 27, 92 Waters, J., 31 Weber, M., 4 Weick, K., 36, 37 Weisbord, M., 27, 91, 92 Wenger, E., 190 Wenger-Trayner, B., 190 Wheatley, M., 31, 48, 100, 103, 104 Whitaker, K., 3 Wiesinger, A., 99 Wiig, K., 16 Wildavsky, A., 5

196 Williamson, O., 2, 4, 99 Woetzel, J., 190 Woodman, R., 116 Wood, R., 2 Wright, D., 31 Y Yang S., 2

Name Index Young, T., 49

Z Zaccaro, S., 103 Zanini, M., 4 Zhu X., 2 Ziniel, C., 21

Subject Index

A Adaptation, 15, 30, 66, 176, 185 Adaptive, 3, 8, 16, 30–32, 48, 65, 68, 71, 76, 79, 80, 86, 94, 95, 114–117, 123, 149, 151, 152, 154–158, 162, 164, 167, 170, 173–178, 180, 185, 186 Agility, 3, 7, 10, 69, 75, 113, 154, 164, 165, 182, 185 Ambiguous, 11, 51, 85, 87, 118, 123, 135, 147, 160, 161 Artificial intelligence, 13, 15, 25, 35, 61, 78, 88, 92, 93, 97, 168, 171, 183, 184 Assumption(s), 3, 18, 40, 41, 49, 53, 55, 105, 113, 115, 118, 121, 155, 161, 171, 185

B Baby Boomers, 63, 107 Bias, 48, 52, 56, 82 Big Data, 13, 15, 35, 61, 184

C Challenge, 1, 3, 4, 9, 11, 13, 14, 18, 27, 28, 30–32, 35, 39, 40, 47, 58, 66, 67, 70, 71, 73, 77, 78, 80, 82, 85–87, 90, 91, 95, 96, 107, 124, 125, 148, 151, 154, 156, 157, 160, 169, 170, 173, 179–182, 184, 185 Change(s) climate, 1, 9, 95 effort, 32 organizational, 10, 35, 64, 104, 116 readiness, 8 situational, 15

socioeconomic, 4 technological, 3 Chaos, 30, 40, 72, 77, 78, 95, 111, 157, 165, 168, 170, 172, 173 Coevolution(ary), 111, 113, 114 Collaboration(ve), 34–36, 39, 64, 86, 100, 113, 148, 151, 158, 159, 166, 167, 169, 175, 183, 185 Collective intelligence, 8–10, 30, 33, 36, 40, 70, 169 Communities of practice, 156, 159 Competence(s) administrative, 49 managerial, 108 Competition, 4, 6, 34, 72, 162 Complex adaptive systems, 8, 15, 25, 31, 32, 111, 115, 116, 149, 176 Computer(s), 15, 37, 54, 112, 114 Context chaotic, 11, 18, 38, 39, 47, 58, 75, 77, 78, 80, 85, 90, 94–96, 124, 125, 169, 172, 174, 177, 180 complex, 11, 18, 38, 39, 47, 58, 75, 77, 78, 80, 85, 90, 94–96, 124, 125, 149, 172, 174, 180 complicated, 11, 18, 38, 39, 47, 58, 75, 77, 78, 80, 85, 90, 94–96, 124, 125, 172, 174, 180 simple, 11, 18, 32, 38–40, 47, 58, 66, 75, 77, 78, 85, 86, 88, 90, 94–96, 124, 125, 151, 169, 172–174, 180, 181 COVID-19 pandemic, 1, 2, 169, 170, 174, 181 Creativity, 3, 32–34, 68, 113, 115, 116, 156, 177

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 O. Serrat, Leading Organizations of the Future, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8199-1

197

198 Crisis(es), 40, 100, 150, 169, 170 Cynefin framework, 9, 31, 37–40, 77, 88, 91, 141, 170, 173, 185

D Decision-making, 3, 6, 7, 9–12, 16–18, 26, 37, 38, 40, 47, 49, 58, 67, 70, 75, 76, 78, 80, 81, 85, 88, 90, 93, 96, 108, 124, 125, 152, 153, 158, 165, 170, 172, 173, 175–177, 180–182, 185, 186 Demographic(s), 2, 3, 12, 14, 19, 62–64, 107 Development assistance, 94 Digital, 7, 35, 64, 66, 154, 162 Disorder, 30, 38, 39, 91 Disruption, 1, 169

E Economy, 2, 5–7, 9, 34, 35, 101, 114, 116, 118, 150, 170 Ecosystem(s) collapse, 1 governance, 81, 182 interconnected, 71, 87, 167 Emergence, 4, 31, 35, 72, 80, 87, 89, 100, 113–115, 117, 162, 167, 169, 181 Emergent, 14, 16, 31, 32, 38, 48, 54, 73, 91, 94, 107, 113–117, 149, 159, 165, 182 Evolution(ary), 4, 5, 15, 37, 108, 181

F Flexibility, 3, 5, 72, 87, 122, 158, 178 Follower(s), 4, 16, 65, 67, 100, 107, 123, 151, 153, 154

G Gap empirical evidence, 10 knowledge, 10, 41, 52, 125 methodological, 10 population, 10 research, 10, 41 Generation X, 107 Y, 107 Globalization, 2, 7, 9, 16, 30, 67, 86, 96 Good-enough, 77, 169

Subject Index Governance, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 16, 17, 26–30, 48, 61, 64, 70–73, 76, 80, 87, 90, 91, 94, 96, 100, 113, 118, 122, 148, 152, 158–161, 166, 168, 169, 173, 175, 176, 180, 183 Grounded theory, 10, 12, 29, 48, 49, 58, 85, 105, 121, 122, 125

H Hierarchy, 2–7, 10, 11, 16–18, 25–30, 37, 40, 48, 56, 65, 67–70, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78, 80, 81, 86, 88–90, 92, 94–96, 99, 108, 122–124, 126, 148, 151–160, 172, 174–176, 178, 180, 182–185

I Innovation management, 4, 9, 17, 25, 64, 65 social, 64 Intellectual capital, 16, 34, 38 Internet, 2, 62 Interview expert, 14, 18, 26, 48–51, 53–55, 57, 58, 61–63, 66–70, 73, 75, 80, 81, 85, 87–89, 186 question(s), 14, 50–54, 61–63, 70, 75, 78, 81, 82, 94, 123, 124, 126, 147, 156, 186 sample, 62

K Knowledge claim, 12, 18, 47, 105, 125 evaluative, 14, 49, 50, 54, 57 gap, 10, 41, 52, 96, 125 management, 3, 8, 9, 16, 25, 33–37, 40, 64, 70–72, 87, 108, 113, 123, 158–162 sharing, 8, 34, 85, 113 Known knowns, 38, 75, 77, 78, 94, 124, 168–171 Known unknowns, 38, 75, 77, 94, 124, 168, 170, 171

L Leader(s) heroic, 8, 87, 103, 114 Leadership adaptive, 32, 116, 177

Subject Index administrative, 32, 68, 69, 76, 80, 86, 88, 94, 95, 116, 149, 155, 156, 158, 176, 181 autocratic, 30, 63, 86, 96, 100, 123, 147, 148 charismatic, 30, 63, 86, 96, 100, 123, 147, 148 complexity, 9–15, 18, 25, 26, 30–33, 38, 40, 48, 49, 51, 56–58, 62–65, 69–72, 74, 78–80, 82, 85–91, 95, 96, 101, 110, 111, 114–116, 118, 122–125, 134–139, 143, 149, 156, 162–169, 177–179, 186 distributed, 151, 180 enabling, 16, 32, 40, 68, 86, 94, 95, 116, 175 laissez-faire, 30, 63, 96, 100, 123, 147, 149 mode, 16, 25 situational, 86, 147, 149, 184 style, 16, 76, 81, 114, 147, 149, 157, 181, 185 theory(ies), 26, 33, 48, 69, 71, 87, 107, 112, 117, 118, 149, 150, 179, 186 transactional, 16, 30, 63, 68, 69, 96, 100, 148 transformational, 30, 63, 68, 69, 86, 96, 100, 148, 149 Leadership management framework, 11, 15–18, 30, 33, 40, 41, 47, 52, 55, 56, 58, 61, 63, 78, 80–82, 85, 89–97, 101, 124, 125, 143–146, 180–182, 184 Learning organization, 3, 170 Limitation(s), 18, 27, 40, 51, 56, 57, 77, 93, 173 M Management theory(ies), 96 Manager(s), 28, 29, 111, 114, 115, 117, 147, 149, 158, 175 Managing, 10, 11, 16, 28, 74, 78, 81, 90, 94, 104, 117, 124, 182–184 Market, 2, 3, 5–7, 9–11, 16–18, 25–31, 40, 48, 56, 61, 65–69, 72, 78, 80, 81, 86, 87, 89, 90, 92, 94–96, 99, 108, 112, 122–124, 126, 148, 149, 151–154, 157, 158, 161, 162, 165, 171–175, 177, 182–184 Mental models, 30, 37, 52, 67 processing, 36

199 Metagovernance, 3, 9–14, 16–18, 25–30, 33, 40, 41, 48, 49, 51, 56–58, 61–64, 70–72, 74, 75, 78–82, 85–92, 94–96, 101, 110, 122–126, 134–139, 143, 148, 158, 161–169, 174, 178–185 Metapolicy, 17, 95 Methodology, 12, 37, 47, 48, 58, 64, 80, 105, 109, 173, 179 Metrics, 66, 67, 151, 155 Millennial(s), 2

N Narrative, 9, 10, 29, 48, 50, 85, 121, 122, 183 Network, 2, 3, 5–8, 10, 11, 16–18, 25, 27–31, 34, 38, 48, 51, 56, 64, 65, 67, 68, 75, 77–81, 86, 88–90, 92, 94–96, 99, 100, 108, 111–114, 116, 117, 122–124, 126, 148, 150–155, 157, 158, 162, 165, 170, 172–174, 178, 180, 182–184

O Order alphabetical, 25, 65, 81 requisite, 8, 10 Organization(al) agile, 7, 9, 12, 15, 27, 79, 173, 174, 177, 178 configuration, 5, 10, 17, 40 design, 4, 31, 47, 64, 65, 68, 72, 92, 96, 113, 114, 151, 152, 157, 160, 162, 174, 182, 184 ecology, 25, 99 flat, 67, 85, 99, 130, 158, 173 hybrid, 3, 16, 173, 181 purpose, 10, 70, 71, 73, 74, 87, 123, 137, 158–165, 167, 175, 183

P Pilot study, 19, 51, 121 tested, 54, 126 testing, 53, 57, 61, 82 Policy, 9, 18, 40, 50, 86, 96, 115, 183 Political eco, 1, 42, 79, 116 Population sample, 64 size, 56 Predictive analytics, 35

200 Principle(s), 3, 4, 15, 33, 54, 57, 78, 81, 82, 89, 90, 92, 93, 112, 124, 145, 168, 182–185 Problem(s), 10, 12, 16, 27, 28, 30, 32, 37–41, 48, 49, 55, 56, 66, 68, 69, 71, 72, 75–77, 79, 85, 86, 88, 90–92, 94, 95, 101, 103, 107, 109, 112–114, 121, 122, 147–149, 151, 156, 163, 164, 166, 169, 171, 172, 174, 176, 177, 180, 182, 183, 186 Process(es), 4, 5, 7, 12, 14–16, 26–28, 30–37, 40, 48–50, 53–55, 57, 68, 69, 74, 75, 77, 78, 80–82, 86–90, 92, 93, 96, 105, 108, 112, 113, 115–118, 122, 124, 146–148, 151, 156, 159, 160, 162, 165, 166, 168, 170, 172, 177, 178, 180–185

Q Qualitative analysis, 54 approach, 41, 109 coding, 18, 50, 52, 54 data, 13, 54, 82, 173 inquiry, 13, 48, 49 research, 11, 14, 29, 41, 48, 51, 55, 57, 82, 105, 121

R Research qualitative, 11, 14, 29, 41, 48, 51, 55, 57, 82, 105, 121 question, 11, 14, 18, 47–51, 54, 56, 58, 90, 96, 109, 121, 125 Resilience, 5, 7–9, 35, 169, 170 Robust, 77, 169

S Sense-making, 3, 7, 9–14, 17, 18, 25, 26, 33, 36–38, 40, 47–49, 51, 57, 58, 62–65, 70–72, 74–82, 85–91, 93, 95, 96, 101, 110, 122–125, 134–139, 159, 160, 162–168, 170, 172, 173, 175–184, 186 Silo(ed) function, 157 mentality, 151 nature, 153 structure, 176 Skills, 50, 71, 76, 92, 103, 159, 163, 165, 177, 185

Subject Index Social arrangement, 17 construction, 5, 52 constructivism, 12, 18, 29, 47, 48, 58, 85, 105 entrepreneurship, 31, 117 institutions, 12, 16 involvement, 5 life, 5, 112 media, 50 networks, 31, 51, 112, 117, 153 norms, 16, 77, 155, 173 organization, 2 phenomena, 12, 55 psychology, 14, 36, 64 structure, 17 Society, 7, 12, 35, 47, 79, 106–108, 150, 166, 168, 169, 176, 179 Solution(s), 49, 65, 67, 77, 79, 89, 101, 103, 111–113, 151, 154, 156, 157, 159, 162–164, 166, 169, 170, 172, 178, 185, 186 Strategy business, 5, 65 knowledge, 64 research, 18, 25, 26, 29, 109 Subject matter expert(s), 10, 14, 48, 49, 51–58, 62–79, 81, 82, 85, 86, 88–90, 93, 122, 125, 172 Sustainable development goal(s), 1, 9, 29 System(s) closed, 18, 48, 69, 100, 154 open, 18, 66, 86, 100, 154, 174

T Team(s) cross-functional, 154, 168 dynamics, 64 executive, 161 learning, 30 local, 156 self-managing, 67, 173 temporary, 68 Technology information and communication, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 28, 30, 34, 67, 93, 96, 99, 100, 164 Trend(s), 110, 167, 173 Turbulence, 2, 70, 77, 87, 91, 96, 104, 114, 148, 169, 170, 175

Subject Index

201

U Uncertain, 103, 169 Unknowns and unknowables, 39, 75, 77, 78, 80, 88, 124, 168–172, 180 Unknown unknowns, 38, 75, 77, 78, 94, 124, 168–171

Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA), 2–4, 7, 8, 10–13, 18, 63, 65, 66, 68–70, 73, 75, 78, 82, 85–89, 94, 97, 100, 104, 118, 123, 129–137, 139–141, 143–147, 153, 160, 161, 168

V Volatile, 114

W Workforce, 26, 35, 107, 108 Worldview, 12, 29, 58, 85, 105