Is homo florens a cosmopolitan?

PhD research at the University of Humanistic Studies

Leading culturally diverse teams:
a humanistic perspective

Leading a global team is not easy. It requires intercultural competence to lead such teams effectively, which basically means being able to recognise, understand and appreciate individual and cultural differences and similarities. Add some flexibility and adaptability in the mix for even better results.

Yet what is good leadership in a global context? Is it getting the team to perform, reaching goals, KPI's, increasing company profit? Or could it be more than just being productive, and could global leaders contribute to creating value, for all stakeholders? Could leaders play a role in protecting human dignity and promoting wellbeing?

The humanistic management model offers an alternative to the predominantly economistic management models. Good leadership in the humanistic leadership paradigm is defined as the type of leadership that is directed at well-being through the promoting of dignity. Yet cultural differences in how human dignity is experienced have consequences for what is considered good leadership; leaders can only adequately protect and promote human dignity if they recognize and understand how their team members give meaning to and experience human dignity. My research aims to explore the potential of the humanistic management model to support global leaders in promoting human dignity in such culturally diverse teams.

In cooperation with University of Humanistic Studies

1st promotor Prof. Dr. Patrick Nullens, University of Humanistic Studies

2nd promotor Prof. Dr. Robert-Jan Blomme, Neyenrode Business University

An anatomy of human dignity

Abstract

Human dignity is introduced in the humanistic management school to distinguish humanistic from economistic perspectives on organizational business practices. Placing human dignity at the core of management leads to a different outlook on doing business, organizing and leading. Within the humanistic management literature, there are several distinct paths to ground human dignity in humanistic management. One school views human dignity as a form of motivation, another focuses on its value-laden components, and still others view human dignity as a form of human development. We introduce relational anthropology as a fourth possibility, emphasizing relationality in the notion of human dignity, with love at its core as the essence of human experience. However, as the experience of human dignity is universally human, culturally specific and extremely personal, interpretations of experienced dignity could be very different for different people. We continue to discuss a cosmopolitan view on human dignity, in which we reject both naïve universalism and lazy relativism, pointing to the challenge of leading moral plurality. We close by summarizing the different approaches to human dignity in a conciliatory framework and outline why we believe an explicit emphasis on qualitative, phenomenological research is the best way forward, bringing love to the stage as the potentially unifying principle for humanistic management.

Authors: Danaë Huijser and Patrick Nullens

Published in the June 2024 Special Edition of the Humanistic Management Journal.

Read the full article here