Leading When You’re Not the Boss: How to Get Th ings Done in Complex Corporate Cultures

CHAPTER 1

Change, As Planned and As Happens: A Plea for Human Values

We want to approach our topic of leadership in complex business organizations by first looking at the economy as a whole. In widening our view to an environment which is infinitely more complex than even the biggest corporation, we hope to gain insights that can inform our later discussion of business interactions in more confined contexts.

Economic Rationality

Economy can be defined as the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services through money as a medium. Within the constraints of national and international law, today’s economic processes happen quasi naturally, driven by autonomous actions of many different players such as companies, consumers, investors, ...