Carman, Thank you for another exceptional post. Yes, all the thinkers you mention shape the lens through which we perceive our environment and the implicit assumptions we have about leadership and organizations. I look forward to continuing this invigorating conversation, as our time allows. Have a great day! – Lisa
Hi Lisa, Proceeding on the assumption that a sub-theme of the cave allegory is the search for the ideal leader I would like to explore two dimensions of the cave allegory:
• The prisoners: who are bound to the floor and unable to turn their heads to see what goes on behind them.
• The puppeteers: who above and behind them are casting the shadows on the wall in which the prisoners are perceiving “reality”
The cave is diagrammed at the following site:
http://normanrschultz.org/Courses/graphics/Platocave.JPG
Your blog’s Mission Statement says:
“According to Montuori, the bureaucratic structure and the modern management style, still used by many organizations, is an historical creation, developed and adapted by men for a particular purpose and environment. As a historical creation, it reflects the assumptions its creators held about about the nature of the world, and us as human beings.” Too true!
I see both leaders and led chained to the floor of the cave. Behind them are pupeteers Democritus and Leucippus, and Aristotle who posited that –the Natural world can be understood as mechanical interaction, Rene Descartes—the separation of mind and body, Isaac Newton—who understood the universe as a celestial machine, and more recently, Adam Smith (mass production) Charles Babbage (line of authority) and Frederick Taylor (Management).
I believe Taylor’s Scientific Management has been most influential in shaping our conception of “leadership” (which is, in itself a metaphor).
As we know, Taylor posited:
• Separation of task conception and execution
• shifting responsibility for organization of work to management
• scientific methods for efficiency and precision
• training
• matching job and person
Perhaps we can discuss the above when we find some time Lisa.
Hi Lisa,
Two elements that strike me about the Cave allegory are:
1) Dehumanization
2) Degradation
Interestingly, The Free Dictionary links dehumanization with mechanization:
1. To deprive of human qualities such as individuality, compassion, or civility: slaves who had been dehumanized by their abysmal condition.
2. To render mechanical and routine.
Given the resurgence of Scientific Management with its systematic reduction of the human being to the status of automaton I would agree with Morgan’s characterization of most organizations:
“it may seem more appropriate to talk about organizations as prisons rather than as psychic prisons, since the exploitation and domination of people is often grounded as much in control over the material basis of life as in control over ideas, thoughts, and feelings” (p.248)
I believe Morgan referring to a state of bondage or control from which people cannot easily escape—especially with families to feed. However, I would characterize most organizations as both psychic and literal prisons. We routinely hear about “minimum” wage, and union and legal “protection.”
It thereupon occurred to me that a pre-occupation of the Ideal Cave Leader would be human rights and freedom. Interestingly, The Fifth Discipline calls for “a new organization…that is more consistent with human nature” (p.351). The implication being most organizations are not “consistent with human nature.”
In Plato’s allegory the Leader strives to enlighten and emancipate those immured in the Cave. As the aegis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ( http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html) I believe Eleanor Roosevelt exemplifies Plato’s Ideal Leader.
Article 23 (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
Article 26 (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Mrs. Roosevelt declared: Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world.
Yet they are the world of the individual person: the neighborhood s/he lives in; the school or college s/he attends; the factory, farm or office where s/he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. (pronominal changes mine)
How beautiful! However, it seems to me that many of the chained prisoners are more captivated by the shadows cast by puppeteers like Frederick Taylor (“You are not supposed to think. There are other people paid for thinking around here.”—Morgan p. 25) since they “are in the habit of conferring honors among themselves” (to quote Socrates) and derive material benefit within such self-sealing environments.
What do you see when you peer into the “Cave” Lisa?
Bye for now!
References
Morgan, G. (1997). Images of Organization. Second Edition. Sage Publications. London.
Senge, Peter. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: the art and practice of the Learning Organization. Doubleday: New York.
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