Session Information
32 SES 01, Leadership and Organizational Development
Paper Session
Contribution
The level of societal complexity in digital modernity has reached an unseen pinnacle. The reason for this are not at least organizations und their need to build structures. Organizational building of structures replaces the principle of sequence through the principle of parallelism. Thus, modern organizations enable the coordination of different actions at the same time. Due to the prominence of organizations, the modern organizational society is therefore a society of concurrency (Wendt 2019). The lack of transparency resulting from this concurrency has consequences on the different levels of society and organization. Complexity-reducing interpretations get a remarkable boost on the societal level (Nassehi 2015). This is shown in the dissemination of right- or left-wing populism and a wide spread dissatisfaction with political institutions. On the organizational level software-solutions are increasingly used to enable management and controlling to avoid the well-known pathologies of organizational rationality (Mormann 2016; Messner et al. 2007). The increasing degree of organizational automation of structure entails consequences (Hörning 2017) for organizational management and leadership. While software-solutions minimize the scope of opportunities and decision-making, the focus on people becomes more important at the same time. Due to processes of digitization, the organizational pairing of structure and person shifts towards remodeling structural parameters, because interfaces as the visible surfaces of processing algorithms offer only limited input options. Thus, digitization and reorganization imply new challenges and tasks (Büchner 2018) for responsible leadership and sustainable organizational development. Increasing automation of organizational structure requires a new mode of leadership practice. Leadership and management are challenged by digitization and reorganization in a new way, because societal developments affecting organizations are regularly detected by procedures of technical information processing (e. g. by Big Data Analysis).
The paper presents Digital Leadership as contemporary leadership practice, which consciously focuses on the remaining scope of decision-making and opportunities by using collaborative methods. Digital Leadership faces the special task of providing spaces of opportunities while standardized technical procedures minimize the human scope of decision-making on a numerical basis. Thus, the social requirements for successful leadership practice are increasing. To function as a counterpart to the technical-numerical building of organizational structures, Digital Leadership has to create spaces of opportunity beyond standardized technical procedures. Sustainable organizational development (Rückert-John 2013) requires the active participation of organization members. Participation options for organization members methodically help to avoid blind spots (Schröer/Wendt 2018) that are typical for directional leadership (Schröer 2016). Thus, digital leadership takes a rather facilitating role. As a counterbalance to digitization and the organizational automation of structures, Digital Leadership uses unpredictable dynamics of social interactions (Wendt 2019) as a resource. Since Digital Leadership is not aiming at a one-to-one correspondence of input and output, it is therefore not unidirectional. Using the situation dynamic logic of sociality offers opportunities for a sense of togetherness, and can update the classic hierarchical top-down-logic in organizations as a result. Furthermore, participation options enable the self-efficacy of individuals, which cannot be granted on the societal level due to its degree of complexity.
Method
A brief view at organizational and time theory assumptions reveals that digital modernity reinforces the complexity level of the society of concurrency. Consequently, the paper integrates organizational and time theory assumptions to draw a picture of the emergence of modern complexity. The paper applies a proposal on a theoretical framework to illustrate the dynamics and trends of organizational and societal change caused by digitization, and comments on their reciprocity. Document analysis of descriptions of leadership concepts illustrates the relevance of social interaction.
Expected Outcomes
The paper results in reflections on the reciprocity of organizational and societal change and proposes a theoretical framework to analyze this interrelation. Thus, digital modernity is a consequence of organizational society, leading to the demand of new forms of cooperation, which require new forms of leadership and management as well. During the process, Digital Leadership uses the unpredictable dynamic of social interaction.
References
Büchner, S. (2018): Zum Verhältnis von Digitalisierung und Organisation. In: Zeitschrift für Soziologie 47 (5), S. 322-348. Hörning, K. H. (2017): Wissen in digitalen Zeiten. In: Allert, H./Asmussen, M./Richter, C. (Hg.): Digitalität und Selbst. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf Subjektivierungs- und Bildungsprozesse. Bielefeld, S. 69-85. Messner, M./Scheytt, T./Becker, A. (2007): Messen und Managen: Controlling und die (Un-)Berechenbarkeit des Managements. In: Mennicken, A./Vollmer, H. (Hg.): Zahlenwerk. Kalkulation, Organisation und Gesellschaft. Wiesbaden, S. 87-104. Mormann, Hannah (2016): Das Projekt SAP. Zur Organisationssoziologie betriebwirtschaftlicher Standardsoftware. Bielefeld. Nassehi, A. (2015): Die letzte Stunde der Wahrheit. Warum rechts und links keine Alternativen mehr sind und Gesellschaft ganz anders beschrieben werden muss. Hamburg. Rückert-John, J. (Hg.) (2013): Soziale Innovation und Nachhaltigkeit. Perspektiven sozialen Wandels. Wiesbaden. Schröer, A. (2016): Führung als organisationspädagogische Kategorie. Eine praxistheoretische Rekonstruktion von Führung in organisationalen Lernprozessen. In: Schröer, A, Göhlich, M., Weber, S. M./Pätzold, H. (Hg.): Organisation und Theorie. Beiträge der Kommission für Organisationspädagogik. Wiesbaden, S. 221-234. Schröer, A./Wendt, T. (2018): Partizipationsorientierung als Forschungsstrategie der Organisationspädagogik. In: Göhlich, M./Schröer, A./Weber, S. M. (Hg.): Handbuch Organisationspädagogik. Wiesbaden, S. 331-342. Wendt, T. (2019): Die moderne Suche nach Gelegenheiten. Plädoyer für eine zeitgemäße Beratung. In: VPP - Verhaltenstherapie & Psychosoziale Praxis 51 (in Press).
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