Culture and Leadership: a Lewinian Perspective of Organizational Problem Solving

Abstract

Leadership is inherently social. Being grounded in the Lewinian framework of field theory, I am instancing the diverse understanding of social leadership: Uncertainty reduction, making choices, assuming responsibility, and contributing to an orchestral interplay between followers are important functions of social leadership. But this is not sufficient. Organizations are built by concrete agents with concrete needs and overreaching goals. These needs and goals structure the environment (personal culture) of various employees including the leader. Drawing on an empirical case from a bakery as well as on Lewinian cases from the past, I am showing how group atmosphere alone is not able to cover the full range of the follower’s reactions: Here, we need to rely on basic concepts of culture: Employees live and work in their related life spaces. Complexity arises in organizations if the goal pursuit between followers themselves is contradictory, thus if their life spaces are a barrier for each other. The leader needs to realize here that this is not a disadvantage; his role is neither to solve these contradictions nor to present a potential solution. The leader needs to emphasize the interdependence of his followers; s/he can do so by letting them experience the issues and difficulties of the social other encountered in their respective life spaces. Here, followers are getting a glimpse into the life space (personal culture) of a colleague. Such border experiences play a key role for the following democratic exchange of how two previously contradictory life spaces are turned into conciliatory ones.