Embeddedness: Exploring the Roots of the Eastern idea of Organizing — with Alicia Hennig

Podcast Notes

Today we have the pleasure of introducing a very interesting academic voice, Alicia Hennig, Associate Professor of Business Ethics.

Her research focuses on Chinese philosophy and its application in organisations in the context of values, ethics and innovation. Working with Chinese as well as foreign companies in China, she continues to promote a better understanding of Chinese culture and thinking.

This conversation with Alicia was very crucial to explore the embracing of “embeddedness” (or entanglement). It’s about the critical need for organizations to see themselves as connected to the world they exist within. It turns out that Chinese philosophies, especially Daoism, are very much based on this concept of embeddedness. Daoism can provide Chinese management thinking with mindsets that seem to be rare in most of Western cultural traditions, and that may be more apt for a time of systemic shift.

We also talk about the paradox between globalisation, technological progress and contextual, indigenous approaches to management — in relation with embeddedness. Will China’s next generation of managers resist the universalising power of technology, considering how the country has leap-frogged in recent decades? By not striving for coherence like most Western philosophies, perhaps Chinese thinking really is more resilient to such forces and can more easily provide a platform for evolution in management, as stories like that of Haier seem to demonstrate.

Alicia also talks passionately about the role of education everywhere in the world to showcase the richness of philosophies, wishing that more universities and business schools would diversify their curriculum to include Chinese, but also Indian, African and other philosophical traditions. It’s indeed a shared passion that we want to continue to explore with her in the coming months.

To find out more about Alicia’s work:

• Website: www.newvirtues.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicia-hennig/

Other references and mentions:

• Alicia Henning, Daoism in Management, 2017: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40926-015-0024-4
• Laozi, Tao Te Ching: https://www.amazon.com/Lao-Tzu-Ching-about-Power/dp/1611807247 (here in Ursula K. Le Guin’s edition)
• Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zhuangzi-Essential-Translations-Traditional-Commentaries/dp/0872209113/
• Explore novels by Yu Hua, Mo Yan, Yan Lianke, Liao Yiwu and Zhang Lijia.
• Jia Zhangke’s “Ash is Purest White”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLab19dyAVA
• Wang Xiaoshuai’s “So Long, My Son”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4I88xcwME8
• Zhang Yimou’s “Hero”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh-gwDRjKXA
• Michael Schuman, Superpower Interrupted, 2020: https://www.amazon.com/Superpower-Interrupted-Chinese-History-World/dp/1541788346

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at: https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast/

Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music

Recorded on 18 September 2020.

Key Insights

1. The idea of embeddedness — understanding inter-relationality and interdependency with our external environment — is extremely helpful to understand what ethics and ethical action means. When we really believe in embeddedness, we are forced to think more detailed about the consequences of our action on all our surroundings— something that somehow got lost in much Western philosophy. There is therefore a great potential in looking at Chinese philosophy for inspiration on how to run a company, based on which ethical principles, since it gives me a whole logical system of embeddedness: its three-way system that aims at achieving harmony not just between the human being and the cosmos (or “god”) but also with nature as it encompasses and embeds the human. This system of thought may also contribute to a layered and “networked” thinking, reckoning with the idea that my actions can resonate through two or three nodes in a network.

2. Education will be essential to nurture a wider understanding of diverse philosophical and ethical apporaches. Alicia is not for any convergence, but for an acceptance of differences, believing we can generally learn from each other’s differences. University curricula and management trainings alike need to, first of all, include the paradigm of embeddedness and learning to understand that there are interdependencies, but also put forward other streams of thinking coming from Indian philosophy, Aftrican philosophy, etc.

3. When it comes to shaping organizations, the depth of foundational ideologies and “thinking sytems” should not be underestimated. In Haier for example — a company recognized as pioneering and one we work with since long — there is a foundational ideology inspired by Daoism, infusing a consistent system of thinking. If you just try to copy this approach on the surface, the ideological part is missing that essentially holds the company together and attract people to join and thrive within the system.

? Boundaryless Conversations Podcast is about exploring the future of large scale organizing by leveraging on technology, network effects and shaping narratives. We explore how platforms can help us play with a world in turmoil, change, and transformation: a world that is at the same time more interconnected and interdependent than ever but also more conflictual and rivalrous.