Archive for February/2008

www.SantiagoIniguez.com, Dean of IE Business School

I believe that management is philosophy in action
and that every management theory has a philosophical background. I do
also believe that every manager has a view of the world, consciously or
inadvertently, explicit or emergent, that conforms to a certain sort of
philosophy. Interestingly, even affirming the contrary is in itself a
philosophical proposition.

The same is applicable to theories on leadership: they can be ascribed to some philosophical movement or trend. In this regard, modern theories of leadership owe a lot to Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher of the 19^th century,
famous for his affirmation that "God is dead", whose contributions have
been both influential and controversial. Nietzsche distinguishes
between two types of morality: the "master morality" and the "slave
morality". The first is applicable to the leaders of society, who
create their own values for themselves. The "slave morality" is
applicable to the herd and according to its standards the behaviour of
masters is accounted as evil. But masters, sustains Nietzsche, stand "beyond good and evil":
they are subject to their own principles, different to the norms
enacted for the herd that favour mediocrity and prevent the development
of higher-level persons: the true leaders.

Curiously, a passage from one of Nietzsche’s books could have been
extracted from the management literature on modern leadership of the
1980’s:

"To
give style to one’s character- a great and rare art! He practises it
who surveys all that his nature presents in strength and weakness and
then moulds it to an artistic plan until everything appears as art and
reason, and even the weakness delight the eye…It will be the strong,
imperious natures which experience their subtlest joy in exercising
such a control, in such a constraint and perfecting under their own
law" (1)

Read more…

Rolf Strom-Olsen

I very much enjoyed reading Miguel’s excellent post this week, all the more so since here in North America we are bombarded constantly by the ongoing campaign for the Democratic nomination between Hillary and Obama. So apologies to Miguel for riding on his coat-tails, but I am going to talk elections.

Miguel observes that "exceptions [to classical rhetorical debate structures] are the absolute rule when the candidate knows that the cameras are filming him [and her!] for the CNN daily news." Interestingly, Barack Obama gave a speech after winning the last round of primaries (notably Wisconsin) to a large – as in twenty-thousand large – gathering of the faithful in Texas. Having been criticised by opponents and pundits alike for delivering little more than honey-tongued  pablum, Obama took to the podium and to the airwaves and delivered a speech that was full of the kind of exordium – narratio – refutatio – argumentatio – peroratio of the pre-soundbite campaign reality. Well, I am not sure how much exordium there was, but it was heavy on the narratio and peroratio. He detailed this on healthcare and that on education and some other stuff about jobs and I can’t remember what about taxes, and something about foreign policy, oh and Iraq, and on and on and on and when it was all over the substantive speech crammed full of nutritious and detailed policy declamations was almost universally criticised for being … dull. As in Finnegan’s Wake or Waterworld dull.

Even the loyal partisans were visibly flagging by the end, their raucous sign-waving rather less spirited and  their willingness to break into chant noticeably reduced. If you have an hour to kill, you can go watch it here (pt 1) and here (pt 2). The interesting thing about this moment is the extraordinary contrast it provides between what the electorate seems to think it wants (substantive and in-depth discussion of the issues) and what deep down it craves (well-delivered sloganeering and honey-tongued pablum). As it happens, most people seem to prefer the snappy, word soufflé of a spirited Obama performance, heavy on uplifting rhetoric, light on the detail-laden plan of bringing 47 million people into a healthcare system run by a private-public consortium of insurance providers based on a voucher system with provisions for penalties for those who opt out based on an articulated principal of universal …. Forget that! Give us more "Yes we can." (Or as the original went: Si se puede!)

How new is this? I am reminded of Cato’s famous declaration, "Carthago delenda est" which he said again. And again. And again. And again. And in the streets of Pompeii, you can still read the sloganeering graffiti of the election campaign that was cut short by Vesuvian impertinence. "Gaius Gavium Rufum audilem oro vos faciatis Granius rogat" (Gravius asks you to vote Gaius Gavium Rufum for Aedile) reads one typical example – a reminder that personal testaments carried the most credibility for would-be office-holders looking to make good with the voters. Heck – one candidate even had his grandmother vouch for him! Not much about the issues though.

Read more…

Julián Montaño

En los siglos XVI y XVII cambia el modelo de saber. Saber, lo que de verdad es saber pasa a ser la astronomía y la física, la aritmética y el álgebra. Los Modernos pretenden que todo el saber siga este modelo. Frente a las interminables quaestiones disputatae medievales y a los debates en escuela sobre disciplinas ingentes y con antecedentes complejísimos comienza a ganar prestigio un saber “claro y distinto”, con fundamentos simples a partir de los cuales se construyen verdades más complejas. Estos fundamentos son o verdades de razón (verdades intuitivamente evidentes o de la lógica) o verdades que vinieran de la experiencia de los sentidos (la observación, el experimento). De tal modo que un solo individuo puede seguir el razonamiento desde las verdades más básicas hasta las menos básicas de modo claro y sin posibilidad de confusión. El saber ha pasado a ser un esfuerzo individual de ir desde lo más básico a lo más complejo y de personal experimentación de lo que se acepta como verdad. Un nuevo tipo de hardware (la imprenta) permitía la difusión de los hallazgos obtenidos individualmente, que se incorporaban de modo acumulativo –si se demostraban ciertas sus tesis- construyendo el edificio del saber, la ciencia. La literatura científica era objeto de intercambio a través de la correspondencia y de la edición de ensayos sobre aspectos concretos. Desaparece la Summa omnicomprensiva y aparece éste, el ensayo, como soporte del saber. Las tesis de un ensayo pueden refutarse por la experimentación o por nuevos descubrimientos, con lo cual este soporte tiene fecha de caducidad. El saber no es acumulativo de modo inmediato, simplemente aquello que está contrastado pasa a ser aceptable, aparece entonces como parte del saber una labor crítica, de criba –normalmente a través de la experimentación- de aquello que se acepta.

Las escuelas, las universidades dejaron de ser el eje de referencia del saber por mucho tiempo y pasaron a ser los individuos, los científicos: personas individuales que no se agrupaban en ninguna institución. Si acaso puede identificarse (hasta la reaparición a finales del XIX de la universidad) la Academia como centro del saber, donde lo importante no es la clase sino la demostración del hallazgo obtenido ante los propios pares -el foro donde se somete a crítica aquello que se descubre.

Read more…

Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui

If we were Rennaissance painters, we would be now painting allegorical frescoes called The Triumph of Electoral Campaign, in which this goddess, daughter of Rhetoric and Power, aims to seduce Triumph. Furthermore, if we were ancient poets we would be singing a theogony which told how from her mating with Triumph sprang the Political Parties, who are protected by Necessity and Order, on the one hand, and Corruption and Tyranny, on the other. We would say that Campaign is a welcome visitor to the House of Fame described by Ovid in Metamorphosis XII (and then by Chaucer), where Rumours and Suspicion dwell. But if ever such a scene should come up in a recently discovered fresco or an unearthed scrap of papyrus, you can be sure that it is a fake, no matter how ancient it seems, because such a thing as an electoral campaign is an extremely modern thing, and no ancient Greek or Roman ever dreamt of anything remotely similar.

In fact, electoral campaign is a genuine American invention, not imported from Europe: it is inevitable to representative democracy and political parties, which of course first came along together with the independence of the USA. It seems that in 1840 General Harrison was very popular but lacked a coherent political program, so his supporters made him win the presidency by creating the first electoral symbol, the “log cabin” which represented his brave soldierly origins. Some decades later, in England, William Gladstone’s Midlothian Campaign, a series of speeches and articles focused on the events in the Ottoman Empire, first made foreign policy the issue of the elections, and made the whigs win unexpectedly against the tories led by Disraeli.

Read more…

Arantza de Areilza

El libro de Mirella Ferrara, "Los Pueblos de la Tierra" me ha llevado hasta la Pustza,  la árida llanura húngara al este del Tisa, cuyo nombre deriva del eslavo pust que significa "tierra desolada" . La Pustza es una región de pastoreo basada en una economía de subsistencia. No tendría gran cosa de particular si no fuese por que ese pastoreo se realiza a caballo. Esos criadores de ganado de etnia húngara, de caracteres nórdicos, orientales, alpinos y turco-mongoles que simbolizan la historia de esas tierras, pasan por ser uno de los pueblos más diestros en el arte ecuestre.

Los jinetes de la Pustza viven en pueblos formados por tanyas, casas construidas de adobe divididas en tres estancias dedicadas respectivamente a los huéspedes , a la cocina y a la vida familiar. Sus pueblos, protegidos por muros circulares, están tradicionalmente dispuestos de forma radial alrededor de una plaza central de la que nacen las calles. Pajares y establos se erigen junto a las casas cuya parte posterior se destina al huerto.

La vida de pastoreo en la Pustza está regida por rígidas normas consuetudinarias basadas en una estricta jerarquía necesaria para la supervivencia del grupo en un medio climático hostil. Los criadores de caballos, maestros jinetes y lanzadores de lazo,ocupan la cima de la pirámide social, y gozan del más alto reconocimiento entre los ganaderos húngaros. En función de las tareas desempeñadas, se establecen subcategorías, como las de los csikós, los que vigilan los caballos; los föszámadó, los pastores;y, los számadó bojitár, los cuidadores de potros. Por debajo de ellos,están los pastores de ovejas, los jahászy; y de cerdos, los kondás.

La feria anual de ganado que celebran en verano es el momento de reunión de los distintos clanes criadores moradores de la estepa de Pustza. En esta celebración estival,  los jinetes lucen trajes ceremoniales consistentes en característicos abrigos de fieltro azul, chaleco negro, botas de monta de cuero y sombrero negro en forma de tricornio. 

Me pregunto que conversación mantendrían un jinete de la Pustza y un gaucho de la Pampa en un frío atardecer en la llanura.