Special issue on the shift from human capital to human being: developing partnership and care in the era of embedded global economy

Citation

Marin Kawamura, K. and Eisler, R. (2013), "Special issue on the shift from human capital to human being: developing partnership and care in the era of embedded global economy", Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, Vol. 20 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ccm.2013.13620baa.002

Special issue on the shift from human capital to human being: developing partnership and care in the era of embedded global economy

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Cross Cultural Management, Volume 20, Issue 2

Perhaps never before have we needed care in leadership, management, organizations, and societies more than today. As the forces of globalization, new technologies, virtual communities, and mobility intersect with economic recession, poverty, and environmental threats, we humans are under enormous pressure. In business organizations, we are being asked to perform and produce at increasing levels and rates. We are stressed by unprecedented information overload and technologies that demand our constant attention. While new technologies of communication and transportation connect people across borders, cultures, and value chains, they also depersonalize human contact and intensify the level of detachment between people and organizations. Our environmental challenges are unprecedented, as is the pace of economic and social change.

Many scholars, leaders, and managers realize that in our ever-changing world the systems, traditions, and practices that have fueled expansive economic growth in developed, emerging, and developing economies are not working – and are actually at the root of many problems that challenge the sustainability, health, and wealth of people and organizations across the globe. There is growing recognition that human beings are the real source of creativity, innovation, and wealth; as we move into the knowledge-service era, the incorporation of this recognition into both theory and practice is essential.

We, the editors of this special edition, believe we need new theories and mindsets, along with new strategies and practices, to create new foundations for organizational, economic, and societal life. We believe that care offers scholars, leaders, and managers an essential component, a new lens, by which to transform their work and world, freeing people and organizations so that they may flourish.

Research and practice

While the incorporation of care in both academic and organizational thinking is still in an early stage of development, research on the value of care is starting to burgeon, as illustrated in this special issue, which we hope will inspire others to contribute to this emerging field. In recent years, a growing body of studies has focused on the economic value of care in business organizations, indicating that caring policies and practices positively impact both the productivity of employees and a company’s profitability. In addition, CEOs of such different philosophical and political persuasions as James Sinegal of Cosco and John Mackey of Whole Foods speak of care as a core component of their companies’ success.

Yet much more attention to this area is needed. Care is a complex, multi-dimensional, multi-faceted construct that encompasses not only human feelings and ethics, but actions and policies.

In this special edition, we have asked: What is care? Why do we need care? How do we bring care into cross-cultural management, leadership, and scholarship?

Our approach

In seeking answers to these questions, we used an innovative approach that combines both papers and interviews – the latter because they provide a more human understanding of care within the context of the interviewees’ research and/or practice as well as their lives.

We also added a new feature to this issue in recognition of the fact that national and international policies play an important part in either supporting or limiting how organizations, managers, and their larger communities function. We call this feature the Policy Perspective.

In our call for papers, we conducted an intensive process to elicit peer-reviewed articles that offer provocative or insightful perspectives on care. For our interviews, we selected scholars who have been pioneers in research on care, integrated the concept of care into current work, or shifted their research in a meaningful way because of care. We also interviewed a former head of state who is currently a prominent international leader.

These are all people that we believe can inspire others to embrace care as a new field of study and further both care research and practice.

The contents

This special issue includes six peer-reviewed articles, six interviews, including the interview for the Policy Perspective, and a Scholars Corner.

For the Policy Perspective we are honored to feature an interview with a prominent leader renowned for caring policies and forward thinking: Madame Michele Bachelet – the former President of Chile and currently United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women. This interview focuses on how public leaders can play an important role in building caring institutions and organizations. Bachelet found that leaders can do this by being inclusive, listening to people, and advancing the status, education, and health of women and children. Inviting us to look at matters still not generally included in policy, economic, or business discussions, she points to studies showing that the countries with the highest levels of gender equality – where women have the best health and education standards, economic opportunities, and political participation – are the countries that perform well and rank the highest in human development. She also notes that this higher level of success is true not only for countries but also for companies.

For the core of this special issue, we organized the papers and interviews into four subsets:

1. 1.

   definitions of care;

2. 2.

   systems and models of care;

3. 3.

   leadership with care; and

4. 4.

   organizational implementation of care.

1. The first section consists of one paper and two interviews that provide a backdrop for defining care

In “Understanding the concept of care in cross-cultural settings: toward a resource definition of care in work organizations,” Dr Kristine Marin Kawamura provides an extant literature review of care and builds a definition of care according to four tenets:

1. 1.

   care is a universal construct and is inherent in all human beings;

2. 2.

   care is the core foundation, the core energy, of all human activity, work, and interaction;

3. 3.

   care may be seen as a socioeconomic resource that acts similar to the knowledge resource; and

4. 4.

   care comprises identifiable qualities in individual, relational, and managerial decision-making categories.

Kawamura suggests that, when defined this way, care may be seen as a resource for leaders and managers of work organizations to drive economic success and human well-being by igniting the full potential of human beings, and connecting human wealth with social progress and economic wealth. Leaders in individual businesses may be able to lead the way in solving problems arising from exploitative practices and decisions of the past and creating a more responsible, sustainable, and healthy world. This definition also reveals cross-cultural management challenges, illuminating differences – in social policy as well as economic, political, religious, and social systems of tribes, firms, nations, and regions – whose recognition may be key to solving seemingly intractable problems.

Next, an interview with a pioneer in the study of care, Dr Nel Noddings, incorporates a definition of the ethics of care – a form of relational ethics that differs from individually-oriented and principle-based ethical traditions. Noddings notes that care is often associated with women and the “feminine,” but that care is primal and part of all humanity because the desire to be cared for is universal. Furthermore, if people emphasized cooperation over competition and responsibility over accountability, they would want to protect those for whom they are responsible rather than protecting and defending themselves. Healthy competition is possible when people enjoy what they are doing, improve because of their competitors, and admire and appreciate their competitors’ performance. Noddings extends her discussion on ethics of care to joy, saying that real joy, resulting from the development of human relations, may help to reduce anxiety and anguish.

An interview with Dr Jane Dutton then incorporates a definition of compassion (which she describes as a subset of care) as “the heart’s response to suffering.” As a pioneer in the study of the organizational effects of compassion, Dutton shares experiences from her own life and her studies showing how compassion not only comforts but also energizes people, and how care is a key component of the growing body of positive organizational scholarship. She observes that suffering, tragedy, and compassion are all natural aspects of human existence. Citing neuroscience research as well as her own organizational studies, Dutton argues that we are as hardwired to be other-serving as we are to be self-serving and that we seem to be prone to cooperate. Dr Dutton suggests that the impulse, biology, instinct, and responding of compassion are all universal, but that the ways in which compassion expresses itself will be different in different cultures. More work is needed, she says, to understand compassion and caring in organizational and cross-cultural management environments.

All three scholars, in some fashion, suggest that care and/or compassion are universal, but that the ways in which they are expressed may be different in different cultures.

2. The next subset includes two papers that approach care from a systems or theoretical model perspective

In “Economics and business as if caring matters: investing in our future,” Dr Riane Eisler provides a system-level perspective on care, especially the work of caring and caregiving, and proposes new ways of thinking that can help us more effectively address urgent societal, economic, and environmental challenges. Eisler introduces a new economic map that includes the three life-sustaining sectors of the natural, household, and community economies as a basis for more accurate and inclusive metrics of national economic success and quality of life. She shows that the failure to recognize the economic value of the work of caring for people and nature has been a major obstacle to a more equitable and sustainable world. Using the lenses of two new social categories (the partnership system and domination system), she reveals the imbalanced gendered values in the latter (where anything stereotypically associated with the “feminine” such as caring and caregiving is devalued); shows the financial value of caring; and proposes economic inventions that support caring for people, starting in early childhood, and caring for our natural environment.

In “Meaning, authority, rationality and care as MARCs of sustainable organizations,” Drs Tomas Brytting, Alf Westelius, and Ann-Sofie Westelius present the MARC theoretical model which may be used to assess and improve the health of organizations from a humanistic point of view. The model has four dimensions: meaning, authority, rationality, and care. The authors argue that these four important aspects need to be attended to in a balanced fashion if cooperation between the individuals in the organization is to be sustainable from a human-centered perspective. The authors have found no statistically significant differences between men and women in applying the model – which indicates that MARC concepts are general in nature rather than gender-specific. Applications of the model also make it possible to identify sources of imbalance between its different aspects, providing a guide to building healthier organizations.

3. The following section includes two interviews that focus on care with regards to leadership

First, Dr Nancy Adler describes the concepts of artistry and beauty that can help leaders and managers “lead beautifully” – to see the beauty in everyday, often ugly, situations and to create new possibilities while simultaneously achieving financial, social, and human benefits. Dr Adler shares her mother’s experiences as a child in Austria, both before and after the Nazis invaded, and discusses the influences it has had on her as a woman, leader, and scholar. In addition, she reflects on how the insights she has gained from her mother’s life story can affect the theory and praxis of leadership. She describes why leaders and scholars need to understand how courage, compassion, and civility impact global society and the global economy, and why that cannot be accomplished without understanding cross-cultural dynamics, including multinational relationship-networks and the role of high-context cultures. Ultimately, according to Dr Adler, we each need to ask the questions that we care most about and pursue them passionately, for the benefit of the world’s peoples and the planet itself.

In the next interview, Dr Jean Lipman-Blumen describes a model for leadership called connective leadership that shows the connective and inclusive qualities needed for leaders to perform optimally and effectively in the connective era. In this era, people across the globe realize that they are leading in a time pulled apart by two contradictory forces, interdependence and diversity. Connective leaders use direct, instrumental, and relational sets of achieving styles when leading others – all of which may be practiced and improved. Connective leaders may also be called ennobling leaders, she says, when they identify and orchestrate noble enterprises in which others can participate so their lives and work have meaning. Dr Lipman-Blumen presents an ennobling vision for global and local peace, and she asks for individual, sectoral, and national commitments to make this happen.

4. The final subset of care research provides four different perspectives for implementing care in organizations

First, Dr Preeta M. Banerjee’s paper, “Sustainable human capital: production innovation and employee partnerships in technology firms,” extends concepts in innovation management to build a holistic model of employees as sustainable human capital. Bridging theory and practice, Banerjee provides a framework for knowledge-building partnerships and, thus, relational wealth, i.e. the value created by, and for, a firm through its internal relations among, and with, employees. The six-stage model includes: pre-hiring processes (raw materials), on-boarding (design stage), training and development (production stage), developing external partnerships and integrating individual employees with the ecosystem (distribution stage), building internal relationships through mentoring (use and maintenance stage), and employee’s exit through succession planning (recovery stage).

In “Recognizing employees: reification, dignity, and promoting care in management,” Dr Gazi Islam develops the idea of recognition as a way to promote organizational perspectives on care in order to promote workplace dignity, which he considers a key element of cultural respect. Islam suggests that traditional economic views of human capital and human resources are particularly apt to dis-recognize employees by viewing them as commodities – units to be strategically managed, and not actors to be recognized. He argues that this can both deteriorate the quality of their work and cause a series of psychological and interpersonal dysfunctions in the workplace. Recognition views are contrasted with reifying views of workers and applied to managerial practice to imagine the workplace in a way that combines practical action with the valuation of diverse individual and cultural experiences.

In “Human resource performance metrics: methods and processes that demonstrate you care,” Drs Neil Boyd and Brooke Gessner show that, although corporate social responsibility ideations have increased in recent years in management and human resources, there are important areas of practice where fairness and social justice toward employees is not manifested. In particular, their analysis shows that most performance metric systems are designed with a singular focus on organizational goals rather than on the well-being of employees, even though this is critical for employee performance. The authors describe how procedural, distributive, and social justice problems continue to permeate the culture of performance metric systems. They highlight how popular systems of performance metrics fall squarely into a domination system, with top management often developing, evaluating, and showing the results of performance metrics to lower level employees. The authors propose that in order to show they care, companies need to move to a more partnership-based system that includes all employees in the development and use of performance metrics. Numerous examples are provided to human resource managers who are interested in designing socially responsible, performance metric systems.

In this section’s last interview, Dr Richard N. Knowles’ describes the foundation and use of the Process Enneagram to create more energized, committed, and creative work environments and results. The Process Enneagram is an organizational change model that is based on a philosophical and scientific approach to understanding living systems and the living patterns and processes of work. Knowles suggests that when we treat organizations as living systems, people at every level of the organization become more leaderful; they build trusting and committed relationships, perform better and find more meaning in their work and lives. Leaders may also follow self-organizing leadership, strategic leadership, and operational management processes – built upon the steps of the Process Enneagram – to transform themselves and their organizations.

The Scholars Corner

For the final selection of this special issue, the Scholars Corner, we are honored to feature the work of a renowned international scholar, Dr Anne S. Tsui, PhD (Arizona State University), whose presidential address at the Academy of Management meeting in Boston, August 5, 2012 has the title of “On compassion: why should we care?” She conducts phenomenon-based research in managerial effectiveness, employment relationships, guanxi in the Chinese context, cross-cultural management, and Chinese management. Dr Tsui founded the International Association for Chinese Management Research to encourage high-quality and high-impact research on China. She observes that Chinese firms succeed because their CEOs are keen learners, global in perspective, and open to new views; many caring leaders have also begun to see the value of culture in human and organizational life. She says scholars need to study leadership the way it is practiced in China – not the way it is practiced in the West. She encourages cross-cultural management scholars to contextualize their scholarship by embedding themselves in the geographies and cultures of their work and to work in international collaborative teams. Dr Tsui calls scholars and managers to care more – to ask big questions and conduct research that expands knowledge and makes a difference in society.

Closing words

We want to thank all the contributors to this special issue for their important contributions. We should add that, as we conducted the interviews that follow, we were inspired – and hope readers may also find inspiration in them. We also want to thank Dr Simon Dolan, the Editor-in-Chief of this journal, and Mark Wade, Managing Editor for the Emerald Publishing Group, for their invaluable support and assistance.

As final thoughts, we want to encourage all readers of Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal – whether leaders, managers, scholars, practitioners, or others – to ask themselves what they deeply care about and how they may bring that into their families, organizations, and communities. We also hope that you will incorporate care into your research and practice. If the world is to be transformed, if care is to infiltrate our work and our lives, empowering all of us to be the best we can be, we all must play our unique part.

Kristine Marin Kawamura, Riane EislerGuest Editors