Thorny Glory: Towards Organizational Greatness

It is argued that organizational is worth probing because it may play a significant role in human evolution. Organizational greatness is postulated to require both performance excellence vis-à-vis organization centered, conventional indicators and exalted conduct or contribution of a moral, spiritual, ethical, idealistic, or socially beneficial nature. Five alternative approaches to the design of performance excellence are discussed, namely, environmental determination, organizational attributes, strategic choice, synergy between organization elements, and synergy between contextual variables and organizational variables. A model of performance excellence in a competitive domain is presented, which argues that in such a domain inescapable adaptive responses by the organization to a powerful contingency or a strategic choice do not augment relative performance, unless they are supplemented by uncommon but appropriate discretionary responses. Nine alternative paths of exaltation are discussed, namely, stakeholder orientation, corporate social responsibility, strategic domain development orientation, institution building, organizational ethics, spirituality. Several examples are given of organizations that have excelled both on conventional indicators as well as in terms of exalted conduct or contribution. It is argued that in a competitive context exalted conduct or contribution can be pursued by the organization at three alternative levels. At the lowest level it amounts to compliance with legal requirements or strongly held social expectations about moral, altruistic, or socially responsive conducts. At a modest level it can be pursued to cash any synergy exalted conduct or contribution may have with the pursuit of conventional performance excellence. At still higher level sacrifices may well by required in terms of indicators of conventional performance excellence. The pursuit of the sublime along with the mundane increases the organization’s operating complexity and requires more differentiated strategies, structures, know-hows, and rules. For excellence on both mundane as well as sublime indicators, the organization needs to deploy uncommon and complex forms of integration, and needs to pursue creatively strategies and styles that produce additional slack to cushion initial failures. It is argued that certain kinds of contexts reinforce exalted conduct and contribution, such as times of societal regeneration, of disillusionment with capitalism, and social and political ferment. Increased professionalization of the work force may also reinforce such conduct and contribution. The perspective of organizational greatness offers major challenges to both managers and organizational researchers.