Why you want what you want

strategy+business, August 12, 2021

by Theodore Kinni



Photograph by Catherine Falls Commercial

In the new book Wanting, Luke Burgis, entrepreneur-in-residence and director of programs at the Catholic University of America’s Busch School of Business, takes readers down the rabbit hole of mimetic theory. Developed by French social scientist and philosopher René Girard in the 1960s and 1970s, mimetic theory seeks to explain human relations and culture in terms of desire. Girard’s theory and Burgis’s book are worthy of executive attention because they offer leaders insights into their own behavior and careers, as well as the behavior of the many stakeholders they are charged with understanding and influencing.

Our desires—above and beyond our innate human needs—are the driving force of mimetic theory. Girard’s analysis starts out, innocently enough, by suggesting that desire, which shapes every aspect of our lives, stems from observing other people and adopting them as models in an often-unconscious manner.

In short, what we want is what someone else has. The 1957 film Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? offers a satirical example that may hit uncomfortably close to home for some leaders. Tony Randall plays a lowly ad man who desires an executive’s salary and prestige. But when he hits upon a scheme to promote a client’s lipstick using Jayne Mansfield’s lips and then rockets to the top spot in his Madison Avenue agency, he wonders why he wanted to get there in the first place. He leaves to raise chickens.

Girard’s theory isn’t as humorous. He argued that mimetic desires spawn rivalries as people vie to realize their ambitions. Sometimes, when the resources desired are limited, the competition intensifies into conflict. And because most people don’t understand or admit the true nature of the resulting conflicts, they scapegoat others. Girard believed these innocents are unjustly sacrificed in a kind of relief valve for societal pressure. Witness the Holocaust and Nazi Germany’s demonization of Jews.

Girard went on to identify Judeo-Christianity as a historical aberration that subverted the scapegoat process. With the crucifixion of Jesus, the sacrifice of scapegoats was revealed as an unjust mechanism, writes Burgis, and “a veil was lifted on the recurring cycle of violence in human history.” (Unfortunately, lifting the veil has eliminated neither the scapegoating nor the violence.)

Like Girard, Burgis sees mimetic desire everywhere, and he interprets all sorts of events through its prism, including his own entrepreneurial ambitions. Read the rest here.

Becoming a leader of conscience

strategy+business, August 2, 2021

by Theodore Kinni



Photograph by phototechno

Say what you will about economist Milton Friedman’s position on the responsibility of business, the idea that increasing profit within the rules of the game was the sole and righteous goal of executives clearly simplified leadership values and ethics. I suspect that is one less-recognized reason that so many CEOs avidly embraced Friedman’s monolithic view for so long. But now as more and more leaders are expanding the scope of their responsibilities and companies are adopting—and compensating leaders on—ESG (environmental, social, and governance) metrics, an increasing number of thorny ethical dilemmas are sure to come along with it.

G. Richard Shell, chair of Wharton School’s Legal Studies and Business Ethics department, pointed out during a recent interview for this column two generic types of ethical problems that leaders face. One type involves a personal problem in which the leader is aware of an ethical lapse—perhaps a colleague’s conflict of interest or behavior that puts the company at risk. “Class one ethical dilemmas are ones in which executives feel the burden of their own conscience,” explains Shell. “These problems have an emotional quality to them. You feel the tug of conflicting loyalties, or you feel guilty if you don’t do something.”

The second type of dilemma is organizational in nature. “Class two involves values that relate to the firm and its relationship to society,” Shell says. “They more often have to do with your responsibilities to the firm, its brand and stakeholders, and its code of conduct in terms of the firm’s social role. They are more cognitive than emotional because you have to process costs and benefits.” Coca-Cola’s response to Georgia’s voting rights bill is an example of this kind of dilemma.

Although the two kinds of ethical dilemmas have different dimensions, they can be assessed using the same framework, according to Shell. He calls the framework CLIP—consequences, loyalties, identity, and principles—and describes it in his new book, The Conscience Code: Lead with Your Values, Advance Your Career. Read the rest here.