The Athenian model

Citation

Leavy, B. (2004), "The Athenian model", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 32 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/sl.2004.26132aae.002

The Athenian model

Brian Leavy is AIB Professor of Strategic Management and former dean at Dublin City University Business School (brian.leavy@dcu.ie). His research is focused on strategic leadership, competitive analysis and supply chain strategy. The author of more than 40 articles on these topics, he has also published three books: Strategy and Leadership (co-authored with David Wilson, Routledge, 1994), Strategy and General Management (co-edited with James S. Walsh, Oaktree Press, 1995) and Key Processes in Strategy (International Thomson, 1996 and reprinted in 2001).

A Company of CitizensBrook Manville and Josiah OberPublished by Harvard Business School Press, 2003, 176 pp.

Just over a decade ago, CEO Max de Pree, in Leadership is an Art, wrote that, "we who invest our lives in Herman Miller are neither the grist of a corporate mill not the hired guns of distant, mysterious stockholders", but "as a faculty and staff are a university, so we are Herman Miller". This belief that "the company is the people" is the central polemic of A Company of Citizens by Brook Manville and Josiah Ober. More specifically, the book sets out to examine "the most fundamental and urgent paradox" for today's knowledge-based organizations: how to "reconcile the idea of the organization as a sharply focused and aligned community with the idea of the organization as a mass of freedom-seeking, entrepreneurial individuals".

Can individual freedom be fostered within an institutional framework that also aims for strong social cohesion? Not in the traditional business corporation, say the authors, but if we are prepared to look further back in time, we might find some insights in the high-performance democratic community which evolved in ancient Athens and flourished during the period 600-400 BC. The authors of A Company of Citizens believe that "the key to Athens' success was a breakthrough in ideas about government by citizens", and they set out to offer "specific ideas about how to develop a self-governing organization on the principles of ancient citizenship" that have much contemporary relevance.

The notion that the world of antiquity might have interesting insights to offer modern business organizations is not new. Charles Handy, a management expert with a strong affinity for the classics, pointed the way in The Gods of Management (1978). He used Greek mythology to characterize four different organizational cultures and personality types. In later writings, he also pointed to the history of ancient Athens and the notion of "citizenship" as relevant templates for modern business organizations striving to reach their potential. The authors of A Company of Citizens have set out to develop these ideas more fully, and examine how they might apply to knowledge-based firms competing in very dynamic markets. As a combination, they seem well qualified to do so. Brook Manville is Chief Learning Officer of Saba Software, a firm that specializes in human capital development and management solutions, and Josiah Ober is David Magie Professor of Classics at Princeton University.

The authors draw us in at the outset by highlighting one of the most remarkable feats of ancient Athenian society, the building of the Parthenon. The Parthenon, a wonder for its grace, scale, and refinement, took nine years to build and cost nearly half a billion dollars in today's terms. It is a monument to a community that was operating at the height of its powers, at a level seen only two or three times in the history of the Western world. Great civilizations, according to Kenneth Clarke, in Civilization (1969), are marked by "confidence in the society in which one lives, belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws, and confidence in one's own mental powers". They also had "a sense of permanence", the feeling that one truly "belongs somewhere in space and time". This was the Athens of 600-400 BC, the home of Sophocles and Plato.

The Parthenon was built by the world's first democratic society, a wonder in itself, which "ranks among the greatest accomplishments of Greek civilization". As the authors point out, the Parthenon honors a people "who created a unique system to enable thousands to work together, to build great and beautiful things, to find answers to age-old dilemmas, and to address daunting challenges over a period of two centuries". For those who, like the authors, believe that further democratization of the workplace offers the most promising way to meet the twin challenges of "scaling human capability" while also "nurturing human individuality", the spectacular success of the Athenian model can offer many valuable pointers.

The Athenian model was built on three core values – individuality, community and moral reciprocity – encapsulated in the concept of citizenship. The value of moral reciprocity was "based on the conviction that every citizen had a mission and duty to participate in promoting the common good of the organization, and by the same token, the organization had a mission and duty to educate and fulfill each individual's full potential". Since moral reciprocity is realized in action through "learning by doing" or "development through engagement", it becomes the basis for a virtuous cycle, blending individual fulfillment with community purpose.

At first sight, all this might seem to be not too far removed from the "employability for commitment" reciprocity emerging in many knowledge-based organizations today. However, the Athenian model is radical in the structures and practices through which its core values were made more tangible. In the view of the authors, participatory practices were "the single most important governance discovery of the ancient Athenians".

Manville and Ober see the key structures of Athenian model of self-government falling into three main categories – decision-making, judgment and execution. They also identify ten key practices of citizenship under the four core themes of access (engagement, networking and rotation), process (deliberation, transparency, and closure), consequence (merit, accountability and challenge) and jurisdiction. The practices of access ensure "that the right people will be involved in decision making, judgment and execution", those of process ensure that decisions are made quickly and fairly "so that they gain widespread acceptance", those of consequence support a performance-driven ethic, while those of jurisdiction ensure that the right decisions are made by the right people, generally those closest to the action. Leadership did matter in the Athenian model, and successful leaders were duly honored, but never lionized or rewarded too richly. In promoting widespread access, engagement and personal development through learning-by-doing and frequent rotation, the model also helped to shape the entire "political community into a leadership school".

Few business leaders will read this book without some profit, and it is one to be read for perspective as much as prescription. It is short and accessible, and the history lesson itself is valuable, given the importance of Athenian civilization to the subsequent development of the Western mind. The Athenian system was not perfect, and eventually declined. According to Kenneth Clarke, all great civilizations fail eventually from fear and exhaustion, and Athens was no exception. However, it did last 200 years (how many companies today would say no to a 200-year run?), and while the status of citizenship did not apply to all of the inhabitants, it did apply to 30,000 of them. It was a community of citizens model that operated successfully at scale for over two centuries.

Some skeptics might recoil a little at the hagiographic presentation of democratic Athens – for example, the seven deadly sins are almost nowhere to be found – but this is just a minor quibble. How effectively the Athenian "architecture of citizenship" might translate into modern business organizations remains open to conjecture, but the authors are convinced that it has much to offer. The implications drawn for practice are in keeping with a long line of similar insights stretching back to Peters and Waterman's In Search of Excellence (1982), to Senge's The Fifth Discipline (1990), to the Collins and Porras opus, Built to Last (1994), and several others, along the way. In this respect they seem closely in tune with current requirements.

Manville and Ober anticipate two major obstacles to the adoption of their template, the expected reluctance of many shareholders and CEOs to accept the more dispersed and transient forms of leadership implied in the model, and the challenge of defining which stakeholders should have what kinds of "citizen" status. In addition to these, I wonder how realistic or wise it is to try to foster a depth of identification in business corporations more akin to faith or country. Yet, I also wonder if the "company of citizens" template can really work without it.