Led from the bottom?

An organisational view on Brexit

Dennis West
Nov 5 · 5 min read

With the beginning of the third General Election in four years, voters in Britain are blessed with an advent calendar full of bittersweet surprises. The wider drama of the radical changes in British politics often ignores an important part of decision-making in democracies: organisations. Policy-making is often viewed as high-level and as hierarchical. In this article, we explore how management studies can help us understand the current political crisis in two ways. The process underlying the current paralysis is one of “escalating indecision” (Denis et al, 2011, p. 1). The creative and responsible leadership required to resolve this impasse faces an environment where values are highly contested (Selznick, 1957).

Escalating indecision by utopian leadership? (Own copyright)

The case of Brexit shows that not a hierarchy, but a network of diverse internal sub-organisations and external pressure groups is dominating in the decision-making process. Who are the relevant organisations in the Brexit decision-making process? The obvious answers would be parliament and government. But this simplification would not do justice to the striking fragmentation of the two-party system that may have begun well before the global financial crisis. Regional fragmentation is certainly a long-term trend — expressed in the divergence of voters in rural and urban constituencies, the , the dominance of one party in Scotland or the boycott of the nationalist seats in Northern Ireland. But it is important to highlight the different logics within political organisations. Especially in the era of “hung” parliament, those sub-entities — be it Momentum and Unite on the left or the European Research Group or the Carlton Club on the right — are influential actors in a legislature with volatile majorities.

In a study published in the academic journal Organisation Science, four organisation scholars analyzed how decision-making can go wrong. Common failures occur when our thoughts are limited to the dominant thinking within our own group (groupthink), when we feel unable to say no (entrapment), when we postpone important tasks (procrastination), or when we collect more information than necessary (overload). The researchers found another form of indecision that distinguishes itself by the absence of effective mechanisms for negotiating and setting goals in a pluralistic setting. The widely understimated fact that the EU referendum in 2016 consists of not only one single, but several, cumulative problems, is reflected in its escalation to all branches of the state, including the courts.

Escalating indecision by opportunistic leadership? (Own copyright)

When these mechanisms fail, some look to individuals who are commonly known as “leaders”. When the sociologist Peter Selznick studied the state-owned Tennessee Valley Authority in the United States, the result was a new view of how vulnerable organisations and how precarious values can be (Selznick, 1949). His research makes us think differently about means and ends by differentiating policies from decisions. Goal-setting, he argued, is not about maximisation of efficiency but about infusing organisations “with values beyond the technical requirements of the task at hand” (Selznick, 1957, p. 17).

Hence, in a situation of escalating indecision like Brexit, leaders cannot rely on operational management systems to solve a complex problem. According to Selznick, there are three ways to avoid responsibility: The first type of avoidance is a retreat into some notion of technological solution. While this approach can temporarily cover or delay the real effects of a major decision, it does not deal with the underlying root causes. The second way — “utopian” leadership — is marked by a lack of specificity of goals that are strongly coupled to the organisation. A policy is vague or the entirety of policies are out of balance, but the machinery is pushing it forward nonetheless. The third — “opportunistic” — way is similar to the previous one in terms of a lack of specificity of goals. However, these ends are not linked to the management system of the organisation. Those leaders constantly and easily let their organisations drift.

Irresponsible leaders reaffirm their commitment and impose limits (Denis et al, 2011). “Brexit means Brexit”, “It will be done”, “Get on with it”. At the same time, they mask and maintain divergence through strategic ambiguity. There is always a “last chance”, “every option on the table”, “the final extension”. For them, idealising the future is as important as keeping it vague. Therefore, any assessment of facts is deemed unnecessary or risky in itself. Indeed, it is not a bold claim that the two signed Withdrawal Agreements and Political Declarations consisting of 599 and 549 pages respectively show some degree of specificity. However, their handling demonstrates that the official policy is not aligned with the actual practices of the current UK Government, a process known as “decoupling” in organisation studies (Meyer and Rowan, 1977).

Responsible leaders set goals that are pragmatic enough to avoid wishful thinking and are visionary enough to avoid a survival of the fittest. Selznick would perhaps propose that major policy decisions like exiting the EU require leaders to take three steps: first, the definition of the mission and role, considering the internal situation and external expectations. Second, the embodiment of the purpose of the institution. Third, the defense of its integrity. Those leaders tackle further idealisation and ambiguity. They recognise that, in a referendum, the parliamentary implementation phase is as important as the popular voting phase. They recognise that the “will of the people” includes a hearing of the minority that is proportional to the result (51.89%:48.11%). So it means to actively listen to members in party conferences, if you have them, and it means to protect the constitution — even if it is unwritten. The risk and opportunity of leadership is that the role and the person become one: the leader’s competence influences the character of the organisation.

To conclude, leadership is not about “bottom-up” or “top-down”. To overcome the three-year government shutdown due to Brexit, we can learn from organisation and management studies: leaders would be well-advised to recognise that the most important policy since WW II requires deep engagement with the diverging interests of pluralistic organisations. It, then, requires creativity and responsibility to set goals that are specific enough to avoid opportunism and utopianism, and to end the escalation of indecision in or outside the European Union. Any healing of the paralysed political organisations in Britain depends on institutional leadership. Can the current people in leadership positions recognise that the European Union is a complex constitutional issue, not just another trade deal? As Michelle Obama once said: “Being president doesn’t change who you are — it reveals who you are.”

References:

Denis, J. L., Dompierre, G., Langley, A., & Rouleau, L. (2011). Escalating indecision: Between reification and strategic ambiguity. Organization Science, 22(1), 225–244.

Meyer, J. W., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American journal of sociology, 83(2), 340–363.

Selznick, P. (1949). TVA and the grass roots: A study in the sociology of formal organization (Vol. 3). Univ of California Press.

Selznick, P. (1957). Leadership in administration: A sociological interpretation. Berkeley, University of California Press.

Dennis West

Written by

Researcher/Tutor/PhD Candidate @University of Oxford; previously in start-ups/consulting/policy/law; connects people with organization studies for social impact

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