A Plea for Honorable Administrators
ATHERTON 19, JOHN
A Plea for Honorable Administrators The Philosophy of Leadership By Christopher Hodgkinson St. Martin's. 247pp. $27.50. Reviewed by John Atherton In this abused year much has been written for...
...Moreover, it is the responsibility of administrators to apply an understanding of moral diversity in their work and strive to avoid value conflicts...
...But ultimately he finds passion for his convictions...
...Hodgkinson through most of his book is at pains to avoid seeming sentimental...
...Reviewed by John Atherton In this abused year much has been written for the Winston Smiths of the world, less for their Big Brothers...
...Elegant analysis thus obtrudes where eloquence would work better...
...Hodgkinson never mentions the source of his own values—deliberately, I think...
...That is a recondite way of putting it...
...Its basis is the desirability of freedom, Hodgkinson's first "credo": "I believe in the potentiality of individual free will, in partial determinism and degrees of freedom, and in the possibility of enhancing human autonomy, for ourselves and others...
...Government is beholden to citizens: It is charged with, at the very least, ensuring their security...
...Although there is a sense of consecration in all this, Hodgkinson is not dogmatic...
...In organized modern life that assumption is under attack...
...Christopher Hodgkinson, who teaches philosophy at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and at Cambridge University, somewhat redresses the imbalance with The Philosophy of Leadership...
...At the same time, Hodgkinson realizes that there are many religions...
...Marcus Aurelius wrote that "flux and change are forever renewing the fabric of the universe...
...The question that remains for him, that he poses to today's overlords, the administrators, is this: In a post-Christian age, when the only power most of us look to is other men and women, can those with power nevertheless be good...
...Hodgkinson refuses to adopt the pos-itivist world view...
...He may be a Christian...
...Administrators need not be good...
...Neither seems likely...
...In discussing the last Hodgkinson is wistful yet cautious...
...But the idea of corruption presupposes a pristine state, a possible or former goodness...
...Indeed, as the Japanese have shown, kindness may also be profitable...
...Both face competition, often akin to, if not in fact, war...
...Positiv-ist philosophers claim morality is at best a habitual delusion, at worst hypocrisy...
...The book is about morality...
...Still, the honorable man, like the emperor, works as if life were otherwise: He knows his duty...
...Perhaps he is simply a humanist...
...Humanism is no small thing to encourage in administration, potentially the noblest or basest calling...
...He distrusts the ecstatic and fears leaps into faith, forward or otherwise...
...Better to accept this and proceed toward the satisfaction of true goals with steely determination than to lose everything to illusions...
...Or so argue Hodgkinson's rivals for the allegiance of the powerful...
...Leaders, rewarded by commitment, strive to achieve consensus, a "time-consuming endeavor of heroic proportions which would be alien to even the most participatory and democratic organizations cast in the Western bureaucratic mold...
...Probably the majority of organizations, public and private alike, have rather insular agendas...
...There, the excesses of egoistic careerism and quasireligious "trans-rationality" are avoided...
...The endless corridors of corporate society, and Machiavelli's role in having helped to construct them, are respectfully described here...
...There are principles which "transcend and subsume the positivist position within an encompassing value paradigm...
...He may be an existentialist...
...A variety of values beyond the threshold concern of maximizing freedom may be held by different men and women in different settings...
...Hodgkinson may have a simple belief in good and evil but his book, perhaps in an effort to be fair, covers all bets...
...Stoicism is not easy, empathy still less...
...Contemporary Japan in many respects exemplifies the author's administrative ideals...
...Organizations can be prisons...
...He is candid—some would say to a fault—in admitting that the positivists' logic, "within the boundaries of argument established by [them...
...The value paradigm it posits consists of four "value types," ranging from the emotional preferences of positivism to the clearly transcendent imperatives of religion...
...let it suffice that they be "honorable," a quality for him grounded in doubt...
...Hitler had one...
...He can have a secret agenda: Beyond seeking profits, it is possible to be kind...
...The last World War was almost won not by Hitler, with his charisma, but by the all too capable Albert Speer...
...Is this too soft a philosophy for bottom-liners...
...Allying himself finally with Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic, not Machiavelli, the author answers that if they will not be good, they should at least be "honorable...
...would seem to me to be irrefutable...
...Yearning for Platonic guardians but fearing them (as Plato did), Hodgkinson is content to compromise...
...Hodgkinson accepts the bureaucracies that have asserted a feudal dominance over our lives as being the inevitable successors to God...
...This is desirable because, however wrong the positivists may be about metaphysics, the majority of us are selfish...
...Logic, though, is not all...
...In Hodgkinson, they have an honorable guide...
...the administrator' s duty is to humanize them...
...Perhaps there is no truth we can know...
...And as runs another familiar saying, in war as in love, all's fair...
...Men, they say, and particularly administrators, are ruled by desire...
...It is possible to be both selfless and monstrous...
...Leaders who believe in something beyond themselves often can inspire their followers to offer selfless commitment...
...The business corporation is beholden to shareholders: It is charged with earning them a profit...
...Yet more than at any previous time, responsibility for the quality of life rests with administrators: If there is any good to be done, they must begin doing it...
...Power tends to corrupt, Lord Acton said, and for many his axiom is as obvious as it is familiar...
...Charisma, as noted, can be dangerous, and professionalism is not enough...
Vol. 67 • May 1984 • No. 69
