Abstract
Companies are living systems of values. These systems are constituted by three dimensions: the intended value proposition, the applied corporate culture, and the organizational form. At owner-managed companies, a fourth dimension completes this picture: the system of the family’s and the entrepreneur’s values. If the active family and company values are lined up with the company’s stated purpose, its values will form a double helix that gives the company durability, stability, direction, momentum, and impact. If they are misaligned, what used to be focused will become blurred, and what used to be tightly toned will fray at the edges. Before any ethical-normative concerns about humanistic management or leadership processes, this puts the functional relevance of the company’s values back in focus.
When we see the functional role of values while fully accepting the fact that many, if not most, companies today are more or less far removed from any values-oriented management practice that would be ethically sustainable, it will change our perception of the conditions for and potential of a functionally positive corporate culture that holds up to ethical standards. Not corporate ethics, but questions of upbringing and individual ethical convictions reveal themselves as the true drivers of functional corporate cultures. This tells us that common debates about CSR or business ethics, however worthy their intentions might be, might be shooting past their mark in not one, but two ways: first, they mistake their relevant targets for their claims, and second, there is no need for business ethical arguments to create a corporate culture that is actually ethically sustainable. The value of values does not come from their ethical potential or any primacy of ethics, but from their functional potential for greater effectiveness in enterprise.
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Notes
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Family firms account for roughly two-thirds of all businesses around the world, create an estimated 70–90% of global GDP and between 50–80% of jobs in the majority of countries worldwide (http://www.ffi.org/page/globaldatapoints). In Germany these numbers are even higher. The Family Business Foundation (Stiftung Familienunternehmen) suggests that family-owned companies make up 91% of enterprises in Germany and owner-managed companies constitute 87% of all active companies (excluding the public sector). They give jobs to 57% or 50% of all workers and contribute approx. 55% or 47% to the total economic output (http://www.familienunternehmen.de/de/daten-fakten-zahlen).
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Cf. H.
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Principal values are all those values that express how and why a person or a company creates new value. The value proposition expressed in them should have a pull effect and create a want. People are attracted by the principal values by being attracted by the value proposition expressed through them.
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Procedural values , that is, the operational values guiding the behavioural conduct and corporate culture are those values that govern practice and interactions at a company. They are the norms with which the people in companies regulate their behaviour towards each other and all other stakeholders and managing and shape the interactions between different areas and processes of the business. The applied procedural values form the backbone of the corporate culture.
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The Global Ethos canon consists of the two principles and four basic dimensions of human action. The first is the principle of humanity that states that every human being has absolute and inviolable dignity and deserves to be treated humanely. The second principle of reciprocity follows the golden rule or, on a more philosophical level, Kant’s categorical imperative to express the idea of mutuality: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” These two basic principles are translated into the four basic dimensions of the Global Ethos : first, the values of nonviolence and respect for all life; second, the values of justice and solidarity; third, the values of honesty and tolerance; and fourth, the values of mutual respect and partnership.
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The following definitions reveal leadership as a field function:
Leading means taking decisions in situations without full access to information. It is a process of using a choice of means and ends (factual focus) and organizing and motivating people (people focus) to structure complex circumstances in such a way that the intended solutions are pursued by the actors involved out of their own will.
Leadership means the ability to inspire people for a cause in such a way as to make them pursue it out of their own volition. Good leadership aims for voluntary commitment and an active handling of the assignments, not the blind and obedient execution of orders. Leadership works by activating shared values on the interpersonal level. It assumes that people are driven by meaning.
Leadership styles are concrete approaches for activating the inherent motivation of the people being led to find, coordinate and implement solutions for the given complex conditions.
Leadership systems are systems of values that organize the situational interplay between leading and following. They are an expression of the socio-culturally specific assumptions and belief systems that inform the understanding of people and the different roles of leaders and followers.
Leadership responsibility means the complete responsibility the leader has for the people being led (note: the follower’s mistakes are the mistakes of the leader).
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Glauner, F. (2021). Vices, Virtues, and Values: A Business Case on Family Enterprise and Its Philosophical Implications Implementing Humanistic Management Practices. In: von Kimakowitz, E., Schirovsky, H., Largacha-Martínez, C., Dierksmeier, C. (eds) Humanistic Management in Practice. Humanism in Business Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51545-4_5
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