Self-Leadership in Purpose-Driven Organizations

Abstract

Productive decision-making requires appropriate perception of the facts relevant to the decision. It may be necessary to perceive and integrate diverse and conflicting perspectives appearing inside and outside of the decision-maker. This paper scrutinizes theoretical and empirical findings on individual human perception as a basis for decision-making and behavior. Special attention is paid to the role of the unconscious (e.g. Bargh, 2006), dual-system approaches (e.g. Kahneman & Frederick, 2002), self-regulation (e.g. Muraven, Baumeister & Tice, 1999, Moffitt et al., 2011), and self-leadership (e.g. Manz, 2013). Guiding self-leadership principles are derived for more sustainable internal balancing and more comprehensive integration of external stimuli. Such self-leadership guidelines allow leaders and organizations to identify blind spots more easily and to improve the perception of the inside and the environment. In purpose-driven organizations with distributed authority, the power to decide is distributed among those employees who appear to be competent for the specific topic. Therefore especially within such self-organization this self-leadership competency appears to be crucial for success. Three conclusions of this paper may be applied: Firstly, it provides a basis for both individuals and “conventional” organizations to develop their own decision-making abilities and processes further. Secondly, it points out ways traditional hierarchical organizations could increase their flexibility and adaptivity through self-organization. Finally, organizations which apply self-organization already may find insights for the improvement of their internal decision-making processes.