Beyond Rules in Society and Business

In this analysis, Verner Petersen asserts that attempts to solve ethical problems in management and in society by creating explicit guidelines, codes and rules discourage reflection and responsibility. Likewise attempts to put important aspects on human life into tabular form, by devising schemes for counting everything that counts, have serious flaws, leading to further erosion of individual responsibility and insight. This work stresses the importance of tacit knowledge, ineffable values and a shared social grammar, as the foundation for individual responsibility and ethical awareness. It shows how the moral fabric of societies may be inculcated, changed and kept alive through the decisions and actions of individuals. Based upon these ideas it argues that the open-endedness of self-regulation is the only viable alternative to modern bureaucratic attempts to regulate and control behaviour. Instead of explicit regulation from the outside, putting a leash on a straining economic logic, it argues that this logic can be contained by the self-regulation of business and the responsible entrepreneurship of individual decision-makers. To make this possible a new view of leadership is presented, emphasizing that leadership and responsibility disappear when the tool-wielding aspects of management become too strong, showing instead how spirited leadership can give direction, sense and latitude to employees, and asserting the importance of tacit knowledge and ineffable values for achieving coherence and unity of purpose.