Introduction and Research Questions
Who leads and who manages between the beginning and final whistles of the referee in soccer? Does the coach lead and the captain manage? Or, does the coach manage and the captain lead? Is it simple to discern the two roles during a match? If there is complexity, can we clearly define and understand the roles of leadership and management sufficiently to make it simple or simpler to establish who is leader or manager during a soccer match?
The questions imply that leadership and management play different roles in successful organizations. In this essay, we will use orgtology to answer these questions. Orgtology, or the science of the organization, is a new approach proposed by Derek Hendrikz, on how to study successful organizations. It is a new insight on age-old questions on the nature and essence of organizations, and on how they are founded, managed and led to success.
We will compare how orgtology would answer the questions to a 'traditional' approach. What is characterized as traditional is a compendium of all theories of organizations that precede orgtology. We will look at what the traditional theories say about how to lead and manage organizations and and compare it to orgtology. Specifically, we will answer three questions about leadership and management in successful organizations:
- What roles that leaders and managers play in successful organizations?
- Do managers and leaders play different roles in successful organizations? Or, are leadership and management different in theory and in practice?
- Is leadership more important than management in successful organizations?
We encounter the constructs of leadership and management in all social contexts, including organizations. If we think, albeit in very simplistic terms, of families as organizations, then organizations are as old as man. However, the study of the modern and more complex entities that we associate with the term today is relatively new. According to Starbuck (2005), "although people have been creating organizations for thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years, generalizations about organizations – contributions to organization theory – are almost entirely the product of the last half of the twentieth century. People proposed very few generalizations about organizations before 1850, when a trickle of propositions began (Starbuck, 2005 p.143)."
On the other hand, the study of management dates longer. According to Starbuck (2005), "When people began to compose texts about organized activities, between 2,000 and 3,000 years before the Christian era (BCE), they focused on managerial practices rather than on organizations as such. Several writers proposed general principles for managerial practices before 1,000 BCE, so one can say that theories about managing have existed for at least 3,000 years (Starbuck, 2005 p.143)." Today, when we study organizations, we inevitably look to understand how they are led and managed; and, at the same time, when we study management or leadership we do so in the context of organizations.
Considering that orgtology is by definition a scientific study of the organization, and given the symbiotic relationship alluded to previously between the constructs and organizations, it is imperative to start a study of management and leadership with an understanding of the construct of organizations as context for understanding leadership or management. To that end, we will first review some of the theories about organizations and then look at the concepts of management and leadership in the context of organizations. We will end with our main purpose or mission of analyzing management and leadership in the specific context of a soccer match.
What are Organizations?
What immediately comes to mind when we think of organizations today? If you display an iPhone or a Galaxy android phone in even remote parts of the world, it would come as no surprise that they are easily recognized as products of Apple and Samsung. It would also not surprise anyone that the two companies are identified and understood as organizations by most people. Such that it might seem unnecessary to ask: What is an organization? This is nonetheless where we must start. Inevitably, we would then ask: Why should we learn about organizations? Finally, we would be remiss if we did not ask: How do we study and make sense of these entities that we encounter in every facet of our lives.
The scholars studying organizations present disparate views, sometimes significantly so, in attempts to answer the question of what organizations are. Today it is easy to associate the term 'organization' with General Electric, Google, Boeing, Anglo Gold Ashanti, etc., entities that dominate the lives of people in every part of the globe as the producer of the goods and services that influence how we live. Each of them conjures an image of thousands of people going to work in mammoth structures in a coordinated pursuit of tangible outcomes, such as writing millions of lines of code that power our computers, offices and assembly lines that manufacture our cell phones or 747 jetliners, and a less obvious but no less important outcome of making a profit.
Beyond what is a popular and prevalent view of organizations as behemoths in pursuit of profits, they span a much broader perspective than size and motive of profit. Organizations can be one person, or a small group of people, and may exclude the profit motive. What is more common than size or explicit profit motive is purpose and the use of human, financial and natural resources to pursue purpose. As such, whether it is sole pottery proprietors or gargantuan entities such as GE or Ashanti Gold, private or public such as Anglo American and Sanlam, seeking profits or nonprofit such as the IKEA Foundation and United Nations, organizations pursue purpose and use resources directed at achieving the purpose.
Sims et al (1996) define organizations in a way most would, or would understand. "What is an organization? Everyone knows: universities, airlines, chemical plants, supermarkets, government departments. These are all organizations. Some have been around for a long time, employing numerous people across many continents – Microsoft, Shell, McDonald's, Toyota. Others are smaller, locally based – a school, a family-owned restaurant, a small consulting firm, a pottery (Sims et al. 1996 p.1)." McAuley et al (2014) present an arguably more scholarly view and definition. They view organizations as social entities or a group of people and systems employed and engaged in activities aimed at achieving a measurable outcome. They adopt EH Schein's (1970) definition to formally define an organization: "An organization is the rational coordination of the activities of a number of people for the achievement of some common explicit purpose or goal, through division of labor or function, and through a hierarchy of authority and responsibility (McAuley et al, p. 9)."
Schein's definition is challenged on a critical issue of whose purpose organizations serve. It is relatively easy to accept coordination of activities and the division of labor. However, a perennial question of organization theory and practice arises around the question of whose purpose is advanced by the existence of organizations. Put in another way, for whom does the bell of organizations toll? Silverman (1970) argues that we cannot talk of common goals or purposes for an organization in the same way we can for individuals. If we are to do so, then everyone, or most, must agree to the goal or purpose. Otherwise, we face the danger of prioritizing the goals of a few individuals in the organization. Gardner (1959) argues that such goals are more likely to be those of the top administrators (McAuley et al. 2014).
On the surface, the issues raised by Silver and Gardner seem pointless. However, it is not so, as it goes to the heart of why we study organizations. Organizations as we perceive or know them today influence much of our lives that it is in the best interest of any individual or social group to learn how they work and influence our lives, and to even ensure that their existence serves a purpose commensurate with the stakeholder cost of their existence. Sims et al (1996) underscore the critical role organizations play in our lives: "Organizations enter our lives in different ways: we work for them, we consume their products, we see buildings which house their offices, we read about them in the newspapers and absorb their advertisements" (Sims et al. 1996 p.1). It is easy to see why scholars study the theory and practice of organizations and why even ordinary people must learn about them: they have a direct impact on modern life and living.
How do we study organizations? Starbuck (2005) asserts that it took organization theory more than a millennium to catch up to management theory. However, there has been a lot of scholarship devoted to studying them since the last half of the twentieth century which Starbuck (2005) identifies as the beginning of generalization or theory about organizations. Much of the scholarship on organizations aims for a scientific approach and relies on theory to derive generalizations about organizations. It would thus be necessary to briefly discuss organization theory, to gain insight or understand how the scholars who have given time to learning organizations have approached the task.
Given so, it is inevitable that we at least take a cursory look at some of the major theoretical approaches to organizations that preceded orgtology. We will briefly review the literature, which will help us in two ways. Firstly, it will help us to locate where orgtology falls in the continuum of theories about organizations, which will help us gauge the value the orgtology brings to understanding and making generalizations about how successful organizations function. Also, we will not necessarily attempt to answer them, but two questions are worth keeping in mind as we try to place orgtology in the pantheon of understanding and building better organizations. Firstly, is orgtology a scientific theory of organizations that it claims to be? If yes, does it offer a new and better way to generalize about how all organizations can function better, or has it simply used new bottles for old wine?
How we Study Organizations
One of the enduring ways in which we study human and other world phenomena is by using theory. Theories are a sophisticated way of looking at the world that help us to better understand concepts and phenomena that occur in the world, and even perhaps the world itself. They may also help us to improve it. Theory is often distinguished from practice. However, the distinction, according to McAuley et al (2014) is only skin deep. They argue that theories are not divorced from our everyday lives and behavior, that we regularly deploy them in the form of 'common sense' to make sense of our experiences and guide our actions, except that the latter process is tacit because using theory in this way goes unnoticed. More formally, they define theories as linguistic, conceptual devices that attempt to tell us things about the world by representing phenomena we observe in cause-and-effect relationships. So scholars use observations, facts, definitions and assumptions and connect them in a causal way in developing theories. They set boundaries on the causal relationships and use the results to predict the behavior of phenomena of interest. (McAuley et al. 2014).
Theory is part of the quest to understand organizations and make more general statements about how they function in the hope of making them work better. From the classical to modern theories of organizations, scholars seek to make generalizations that explain how all organizations function or to make predictions about outcomes for all organizations given decisions they make in attempts to achieve their purpose, mission or vision. Or, put another way, theory is a tool to be used to prescribe how all organizations could function better or best, given the result of the generalizations from theories about them.
How do we approach organization theory? And does organization theory hold all or useful answers to better functioning organizations? These questions do not have easy answers. As noted by McAuley et al (2005), theory in social science has limitations. In the first place, it suffers from a 'contamination effect' of the subject by the subject matter; that is, the subject of theorists, organizations themselves, "are also causal forces that can act upon and shape that which they are trying to explain". Also, the strict standards set by peer review in academia, which is the incubator of most organization theories, often leave the fruits of theory of limited use for a major audience of theory: managers and leaders who are charged with deriving value from the purpose of organizations. However, it is still useful to consider the contribution of theory to our understanding of organizations (McAuley et al. 2005).
There are many ways scholars have approached organization theory. Such that Laegaard (2006) notes that the analyses of organizations tend to become too extensive. To help us understand the analyses from the approaches, he suggests viewing organizations from three angles: the social-psychological, that focuses on the individual and interpersonal relations within organizations; the structural, that focuses on the organization in general and the subdivisions and its subdivision into entities containing departments, teams, etc.; and the macro, that focuses on the organization as a role player in the space it which it operates, and in the society (Laegaard 2006). Our review of literature on organization theory will focus on the socio-psychological and structural angles; and we will consider, in particular, how the theories or approaches analyze the enduring tension between formal structure and function, and the informal, centered on the human aspect.
The earliest theory of organizations is the Classical Theory. It is recognized as prominent through the industrial revolution to the 1930s. The major figures were Fredrick Taylor and Max Weber (Gorth, n.d.). According to Groth (n.d.), the classical approach was driven by a belief in science and reason, which spawned a belief that there is "one best way to organize" (Groth, p.2). Classical organization structure was top-down hierarchically with clear roles and rules of behavior among the workers based on rational principles of management. Managers based decisions on measured inputs from scientific analyses and experiments, and workers executed them as determined by their individual work process, for improved productivity or output (Laegard & Bindslev 2006).
Taylor's major contribution, characterized as "scientific management" said almost all that needs to be said about his idea of successful organizations: apply the division of labor; scientifically determine the "one best way" to perform each task or job; are hierarchically structured with managers responsible for planning work, train and monitor workers, and workers executing the tasks managers assign them. Weber's contribution gave rise to the concept of bureaucracy, one still used today. Weber views bureaucracy as an administrative structure or system based on legal and rules oriented authority (Laegaard & Bindslev 2006). Weber thought that the system – the organizational structure, and the relationships in them, such as that between superiors and their employees – ran on rationality. There is no room for emotions because emotions occupied a lower degree of rationality (Laegaard & Bindslev, 2006).
Groth (n.d.) notes that both Taylor and Weber strongly believed that the organizational models they proposed would prevail and eventually supplant all others because they were the most efficient. This belief was founded on the scientific principles they employed and the belief that science and reason or rationality are sufficient to solve all human problems. On the wings of this abiding faith in science and reason, there was little room in Classical theory for individual attributes such as personality traits, attitudes, and motivation towards work. These attributes would have meant dealing with human factors such as emotions. The Classical School thus assigns a minor to nonexistent role for human factors in how best organizations function.
It is important to note, however, that the human factor was not completely absent in the Classicals' views. Rather, it is more of an overwhelming emphasis on reason and science in an age that understandably leaned heavily on science to explain and understand the world, including human beings. Taylor spoke, for example, of managers and workers working in the best interests of organizations, fighting less about how the pie would be shared and rather working together on expanding the pie. But the view was a macro view of individuals and relationships because it did not address the individual worker's feelings, motivation or reaction to his environment that is organizations in which they work.
The Classical view was challenged in time by the Neoclassical School, dated around 1945. Herbert Simon and the Human Relations Movement are two notorious Neoclassicists. Simon's view is that rationality is only possible in theory, in models of economics combined with probability where one could obtain the "one best way". In practice, people generally operate with limited information and exceedingly more complexity and, as such, only achieve the rational outcomes of theory by chance (Groth, n.d.). While Simon's view did not deal directly with the individual human factors in how organizations operate, it seriously questioned the classicists' overreliance on reason and opened the door for factors such as emotions, attributable to individual human nature that were relegated below reason in the Classical view, to be considered in nature and essence of organizations and how they are led and managed to become successful.
Another view that challenged the skewered rational view of the Classicists was the Human Relations Movement or Theory (HRM) which scholars date circa 1957. It was even more direct in addressing the overemphasis on rationality and neglect of individual and collective human characteristics in studies of entities that in fact brought Men – and it was mostly men at that time - together. The HRM argues that organizations are first and foremost a collection of human beings, much like other social units such as families, neighborhoods and societies. Any rational goals, they say, are undermined by personal or group goals. These personal or group goals emerge from informal structures and unofficial contacts between people in organizations; and these, they thought, are at least as important as the formal ones, or even more, for how decisions are made and how well organizations fare. They argued that formal structures were façade for the informal ones. The Movement also stresses the importance of individual and grouping characteristics such as class and race in studying and understanding organizations (Pindur et al. 1996).
Beyond the Human Relations Theory, the study of organizations, the goal of which remains to establish "generalizations about organizations" or about how best all organizations can or should work to achieve their goals or objectives, has continued into the latter part of the twentieth century and beyond. Later theories or schools of thought drew from the wells of those before them or stood on their shoulders as summarized by Shafritz (Shafritz et al 2011). Two that interest us are the Modern Structural Organization Theory, which they date in the post WWII era and the Power and Politics Organization Theory, which they date from 1970s to the beginning of the recent decade.
The Modern Structural Organization Theory leans heavily on Classical theory with the view that "organizations are rational institutions", or are primarily so. It views specialization and division of labor as the keys to the quantity and quality of productivity and organizational structure as critical to the health and functioning of the organization. However, it is not wedded to Classical theory: It makes allowance that the structure of an organization may be influenced by its "environment and by the nature of the organization itself", how stable or dynamic it is with respect to its structure and the environment in which it operates. As a result, its proponents argue that there is a "best structure for any organization", which is a slight but significant departure from the Classical view that there is a best structure for all organizations.
The Power and Politics Organization Theory, also placed in the second half of the 20th century, is, as the name suggests, a theory of power and politics in organizations. It views organizations as complex systems of individuals and coalitions, with divergent "interests, beliefs, values, preferences and perspectives" in competition for power and influence that they use to shape or decide the goals and objectives of each organization. They argue that organizational behavior, contrary to the view of Classicists and the Schools of thought they influenced, is not rational or directed towards the accomplishment of clearly established goals. Rather, it is based on how power accumulated from formal and informal authority is wielded by the individuals and coalitions and used in allocating organizations' resources. The Power and Politics Theory leans more on the Human Relations Theory in how to view or analyze organizations to create generalizations about how best they should function with its emphasis on the individual and groups or coalitions, power, negotiation, authority and non-rationality.
Orgtology as a Theory of Organizations
Where does orgtology fit in this constellation of the quest to find general principles about how all efficient or effective organizations should operate? To answer, we will describe orgtology in the context of the main challenges that preceding theories confronted in a bid to make valid and enduring generalizations about organizations. From the Classical to the Power and Politics Organization theories, theorists and practitioners faced the enduring hurdle of how to characterize organizations. What is their nature or essence, their raison d'être? Are they more of an embodiment of human reason, subsuming human or emotional elements in rationality as the Classists claim? Or, are they rather more reflective of the irrational part of human nature with reason being merely a facade? This question(s) has a direct bearing on their purpose and strategy and, ultimately, on structure, the role that technology plays, and how decisions are made by those vested with the authority. Together, all of these factors affect how successful or effective they are likely to be.
To place orgtology in the constellation, we must frame its view on successful organizations on a pertinent question: Is orgtology more in the tradition of a Classical, or neoclassical, theory of organizations? Or is it more Human Relations or Power and Politics? Beyond a binary outcome, is it possible it is both, or even neither? Orgtolgy is a bold new approach to addressing the enduring issues of what in essence organizations are, and to how successful organizations should operate. To grasp its contribution to generalizations about organizations, we must start with understanding the concept of duality and Hypothesis 2x. Dualities are human constructs that help us to understand the world. They occur in nature or the universe, in religion, science and philosophy. In a duality, two opposite ideas exist simultaneously in a person, an idea or entity. Darkness and light are an example of a duality in nature. Belief in two supreme opposed powers or gods, such as the divine God and demonic Satan is a religious duality. Finally, the well-known concept of the Yin and Yang in Chinese or Eastern thought is a philosophical duality.
Orgtolgy's central claim is that all organizations exist as a duality of two elements that is critical to their success. The '2' in the hypothesis represents the duality: one element is physical, the other abstract. The abstract element is projective while the physical is receptive. Projectivity represents change and disruption and receptivity order. The success of organizations depends on how well they navigate this dynamic of duality. A key claim of orgtology is the nature of the duality. Orgtology considers the duality inverse because the projective and receptive elements, while opposed to each other and cannot live without the other, draw from the same pool of organizations' human and capital resources: as such, and an increase in resource use on the projective element implies a reduction in that of the receptive element and vice versa. It means that organizations that successfully achieve their purpose constantly seek and achieve balance or equilibrium in the use of their limited resources on the projective and receptive elements.
An example of the two elements is organizations' use of strategy and operations in pursuit and achievement of their purpose or mission, and their intent or vision. Orgtology views strategy as projective because it is disruptive: new organizations can use it to enter and disrupt a business environment; existing organizations can call upon it when operations break down or they can use it when it is time to move organizations in a new or different direction. Operations is receptive because it looks to repeat itself from year to year, to keep the status quo, albeit with improvement or incremental change from year to year focused on efficiency. Strategy and operation are inversely dual because they both draw from the well of an organization's limited resources. Given the universal economic problem of scarcity, an increase in expenditure on strategy means less resources for operations and vice-versa. The dynamic extends beyond strategy and operations to subsets of all projective and receptive elements in the organization.
The 'x' in Hypothesis 2x in orgtology deals with the human factor, which the approach views as dynamic and unpredictable. The human element is collectively the people, leaders and managers of organizations. According to Hypothesis 2x, the human factor makes organisations unique; that is, because of it, organizations that are similar or even the same can yield different results. How the human factor handles the duality in the physical and algorithmic elements is a key to how each organization succeeds in its purpose and why other organizations with the same resource base and circumstances would fail in their purpose or mission.
Hypothesis 2x expands on the duality in the physical and algorithmic elements through four theories and three constructs; and it expands on the human factor with four theories and three dynamics. The first set of the four theories are explored as orgamatics, and make predictions about intelligence systems, work, and results. The theories on intelligence systems, work and results embody the projective and receptive essences of the reverse dual nature that orgtology ascribes to organizations. Theory 2P on work, for example, defines work activities as either process or project. Processes are cyclical, repetitive and are the receptive part of the duality, while projects are sporadic or noncyclical and are the projective or disruptive part of the duality. Together the three predict the relevant and performing organizations (RPOs).
The second set of theories, studied as organamics, expand on the human element. The first is on human intellect which looks at six different manifestations of human intellect. The second is identity deals with how people view themselves and how it might affect the roles that they play in organizations. Finally there is paradigm, which examines the window through which individuals view the world - their values, beliefs, perception, etc. Finally, Together, these three theories determine a fourth that describes the relevant and performing individuals (RPOs).
In orgtology, relevant and performing organizations are those that successfully navigate inverse duality in intelligence systems, work and results to achieve efficiency and combine this with the effectiveness from the organamics factors of intellect, paradigm and identity to become and stay relevant. It is important to note that orgtology identifies two distinct, albeit interlocking, conditions for successful organizations: they must optimally combine intelligence systems, work and results and be efficient, and must similarly mold human intellect, paradigm and identity and be effective. For example, they must be efficient in their processes, and be effective in their projects, such as building the relations required to navigate or negotiate the business terrain. Efficiency or effectiveness, on their own, are each necessary but not sufficient for organizations to perform and be relevant; to be both, it is necessary for efficient organizations to be effective and for efficient organizations to be effective. As such, a generalization principle of orgtology about successful organizations is that they strive to perform and be relevant.
Is orgtology a Classical theory of the organization? Or, is it rather more of a Human Relations or Power and Politics theory? Is it both? Or neither, and rather a radical new theory? To my mind, it carries seeds of both the Classical and more recent theories. The first three theories of organamics would have pleased Fredrick Taylor, with their logical approach that includes scientific assumptions and formulae on work and results. However, while the theories of organamics present a very scientific and logical view of organizations, the 'dynamic and unpredictable' human factor is given a central role. This is a tacit acknowledgement that the human and 'irrational' elements play very important roles in successful organizations which would have brought a smile to faces of the Human Relations School or Movement. In fact, the central pillar of orgtology is its claim that the human factor is what makes organizations unique, in success or failure. As such, orgtology has paved a middle path, a 'third way', on how to view and design successful organizations.
Management and Leadership
We noted earlier organizations provide a context in which the constructs of management and leadership occur in practice. As such, and given that orgtology is a study of organizations, we gave thought to what organizations are, why scholars and practitioners have interest in them or study them, and also how they have studied them. We will now discuss management and leadership as concepts and apply what we learn to the research questions in this essay. Let us summarily reiterate the three research questions. The first two ask whether management and leadership are different in theory and in practice, and the third asks if leadership is more important than management. We first focus on a brief normative distinction of the two roles by scholars and practitioners, and use it to answer the questions in the context of the 90+ minutes of a soccer match.
The practice of management in the business affairs of bureaucracies or organizations is recognized as having started long ago, much longer than leadership. According to Pindur et al (1995), the concept of management goes back more than five thousand years: "Basic management techniques have been traced to the city of Ur (Iraq), in 3000 BC where Samarian priests were the first to keep written records as means of recording transactions (Pindur et. al 1995, p. 59)". Management was also recognized in ancient Egypt, in the First Testament when Moses hired his father-in-law Jethro as a consultant on management. Similarly, in ancient China, and in the writings of Socrates and Plato around 400 BC - the same time the latter were writing about organizations (Pindur et. al 1995).
According to Burke et al (2010), "management or managing has four main elements. It is (1) a process comprised of interrelated social and technical functions and activities (2) that accomplishes organizational objectives, (3) achieves these objectives through use of people and other resources, and (4) does so in a formal organizational setting (Darr 2010, p. 8)". Darr identifies five functions he attributes to theory and practice of management: "The five management functions of planning, organizing, controlling, directing and staffing … and connected by decision making" (Darr 2010, p. 8). [italics by the author]. One should note that the five functions are among those identified as far back as the latter 19th century by Henri Fayol.
Is leadership different from management in nature, role and function? If it is so, do leaders then play different roles from managers? Much of the literature on management and leadership, including orgtology, supports the view that the two constructs are indeed different, in theory and in practice. Kotter (1990) makes a case it is so. He asserts: "Management is about coping with complexity, it brings order and predictability to a situation. Leadership is about how to cope with rapid change (Kotter 1990, p 37)". In order to manage complexity and achieve order and predictability, managers plan and budget, organize and staff, control activities and solve problems. To cope with rapid change, leaders set direction, align people, and motivate and inspire. Planning and management activities tend to be deductive, using facts, rules and definitions to arrive at a conclusion; direction setting, on the other hand, is more inductive and uses patterns in data and conjecture. The end result of planning and staffing is operational blueprints, while that of direction setting is vision and strategy (Kotter 1990).
The view of managers and management techniques as suited, or developed as a response, to complexity in organizations is supported by Pindur et al (1995) in their study of the history of management. They note that the complexity that arose from having to rule over vast territories persuaded Diocletian, a Roman emperor around AD 284, and Atila, leader of the Hunnic Empire around AD 433, to adopt methods of administration that delegated authority and relied on managers and management techniques. They also observed that the Roman Catholic Church used practices such as hierarchical chain of command and delegation of responsibilities, which are ideas and practices attributable to management, to administer the vast and very complex institution over which it presided (Pindur et al 1995).
The basis of the distinction between management and leadership in orgtology is broadly similar to the one previously described. In orgtology, of course, all flights take off from the Hypothesis 2x hub. Orgtology views management and leadership through a dynamic that is governed by the inversely dual interaction of projective and receptive elements. The dynamic is explored in detail in Theory Dx. "The "x" shows the unpredictability that the projective part of Org holds. Theory Dx aligns with Hypothesis 2x in that it creates an inverse relationship between management and leadership. Thus, the two create a ratio between what we do to run Org (management), and what we do to change Org (leadership)" (Hendrikz 2020, n.pag.). In the dynamic, leadership is the projective element and management the receptive. Managers run processes whilst leaders take responsibility for change with projects. Managers empower, whilst leaders influence. We should note that this occurs in the container of the organization, in the shadow of the inverse or scarcity element of the Hypothesis 2x duality: more resources on management means less on leadership and vice-versa.
In practical terms, managers and leaders conceptually play different roles or responsibilities in organizations. "Managers govern performance whilst leaders drive relevance (Hendrikz 2020, n.pag.)." Managers give life to performance through efficiency, which depends on a focus, containment and empowerment of the resources of the organization: they delegate authority, set targets, monitor KPIs, reward, automate, and integrate, among others, to accomplish this. Leaders make organizations relevant through negotiation, which they accomplish through a flow of understanding, innovation and influence. One of the weapons or skills in a pursuit of influence is mastery of risk and uncertainty: as 'managers' of change, leaders are often called upon to deal with risk and uncertainty in abundance in, for example, negotiations. (Hendrikz, 2020)
A discussion of management and leadership is incomplete without an important observation that answers our third research question on whether leadership is more important than management. Such is the overemphasis on leadership that it is easy to feel that it is always important to have more and more leadership relative to management, in all organizations. However, leadership is not more, or less, important than management or vice-versa. Rather, as Kotter (1990), argues: "Leadership is different from management, but not for reasons most people think. Nor is leadership necessarily better than management or a replacement for it. Rather, leadership and management are two distinctive and complementary systems of action. Both are necessary for success in an increasingly complex and volatile business environment" (Kotter 1990, p. 37).
This view is similar to that in orgtology, which recognizes interdependence in the constructs. Hendrizk (2020) says this of the "Performance / Relevance" conundrum related to the major roles the two play: "They give meaning to each other, and in so, existence of one depends on existence of the other. Both roles are vital to the survival of Org" (Hendrikz 2020, n.pag.). The point is, organizations may need or use more management than leadership and vice-versa, but this is more of a function of the business challenge they face. New organizations, for example, may initially need more leadership while those that have brokered a sound strategy or have successfully negotiated relevance may require more management. In equilibrium, successful organizations balance efficiency and performance to achieve effectiveness and relevance: they consistently achieve the purpose and intent of their existence.
Who Leads and Who Manages a Soccer Match?
We have addressed the three research questions in the previous section. Managers and leaders play different, albeit complementary, roles in successful organizations. In fact, there are some who argue that leadership is simply a subset of management. But even this does not change the view that the two constructs play different roles since it tacitly acknowledges that the two roles are not exactly the same. Beyond this, we established that leaders, or leadership, are not more important than managers, or management, in successful organizations. Rather our need for more management or leadership is situational or contextual: the equilibrium level of 'demand' for either is different for organizations working to achieve their purpose and intent.
It is easier to think of the coach in soccer as manager or leader. Even at the lowest levels of the game, the coach is responsible for many aspects of the outcome, including practice, discipline, starters, substitutions and tactics. Although the perception of the captain is that of a leader, it is less clear what role the soccer captain leader should play. Goal (2019), a very popular soccer publication says this: "In soccer, a captain is the player who is supposed to act as the leader of the team, acting as mediators between their team-mates, the manager and the referee [bold font and italics by this author]. Good leadership qualities are vital in a captain ... and they are the person that players in the team look up to for inspiration, guidance and motivation" (Goal 2019, n. pag.). The FIFA Laws of the Game (FIFA LOTG) takes this view: "The team captain has no special status or privileges but has a degree of responsibility for the behaviour of the team" (FIFA LOTG 2020/1, pp. 28).
Does 'responsibility' in the LOTG suggest that the captain is not an ordinary figure in the game, or in a match? Even if it is so, does it imply a leadership role, as somewhat suggested by Goal Magazine above? For our purposes, does it perhaps imply a management role in the game and especially during a match? Let us remind ourselves our task has two boundaries. The first limits us to the role of leadership and management in orgtology, and the second limits us to the 90+ minutes of a soccer match. To reiterate, orgtology views leaders as responsible for change, working through projects and with uncertainty to negotiate change in order to become or stay effective and relevant. Managers, on the other hand, are responsible for stability as they deal with complexity. They preside over processes which are cyclical in nature, and they set targets and KPI's, reward, and delegate authority, among others, the outcomes of which are judged by performance and efficiency.
During a soccer season, wins, loses or draws depends on many factors. In general, however, teams that nurture or acquire more talent, that are better coached and managed, that is, teams that have better organizations, are more likely to accumulate wins and draws in a consequential way over a series of matches in various competitions. In the big soccer leagues, teams that have allocated resources optimally and acquired a balance of more talent, and of better management and coaching than competitors, have more often than not accumulated wins, draws and losses in a consequential way in the domestic and international competitions. In a single match, execution of game plan and tactical nous or flexibility, are two major factors in a win, lose or draw outcome, given talent, management, coaching, and all other factors.
What roles, then, do a coach and a captain play in executing the game plan and in tactical nous or flexibility? On the one hand, executing a game plan in the context of the 90+ minutes soccer match is more of a process. It involves repeating a lot of the activities such as defending, attacking, maintaining the shape of the tactical formation, consistently executing fundamentals such as throw-ins, free kicks, and so on. On the other hand, tactical flexibility is more about change and dealing with uncertainty, requires taking risks with the game plan and is a tacit 'negotiation' with the opposing coaches and team during the 90+ minutes, for effectiveness and relevance.
My contention is that the captain is more responsible for executing the game plan on the field, which is about process and management. He is more likely, or he is in a better position on the field, than the coach to influence the processes involved with executing the game plan during the 90+ minutes of the match. The coach, however, is more responsible for tactical flexibility. It is the coach who assesses the plan and tactics of the opponents as it unfolds during the match, and it is he or she that, ultimately, decides on, or must approve, any changes in the tactics to affect the change in the execution of the game plan. For example, soccer coaches use substitutes or substitution to change or affect the game plan. At the highest level of soccer, given the limit on the number of substitutes, substitution to affect a match is more of a project if viewed from the point of orgtology, used to change the process embodied in the game plan and its execution.
It is worth emphasizing that the two roles, usually defined and analyzed in static to facilitate learning and understanding them, are often more dynamic in practice. A coach no doubt affects the activities in the game plan for the duration of the match, and may look to the captain for signals to change tactics. The captains may be the one to signal the need for a tactical change to coach. However, it is the coach in whom both the ceremonial and actual responsibilities are vested to deal with tactical changes. In orgtology terms, this is the domain of the leader. It is worth reemphasizing here, too, that scholars and practitioners of management and leadership, including orgtologists, do not ascribe greater absolute value to the skills and competencies of leaders to those of management or vice-versa. They are instead viewed as complements and it simply helps to understand that each plays so that organizations may match the characteristics, training and experience when conferring authority on those who play those roles.
Conclusion
Successful organizations need good managers and leaders, or they require the competencies and skills associated with both, in differing degrees at different times, to successfully pursue purpose and intent. Our conclusion, using execution of the game plan and tactical flexibility as major variables responsible for the outcomes in a soccer match, and holding all other variables equal or constant, is that the coach is more of the leader and the captain the manager during the 90+ minutes of a soccer match if we analyze a match outcome using the orgtology view of leadership and management. This is said with the caveats that the roles are dynamic in many organizations and the observation by both traditional theorists and orgtologists that one role is not necessarily more important than the other.
Of interest to us is the fact that there are differences in the leadership and management roles of the captain and coach in other sports. In cricket, for example, the captain, at the very least, plays more of a leadership role, and even perhaps a very significant management role, during a test match. He or she is responsible for executing the game plan as he has a hand in all the processes of a test; and she or he is also responsible for assessing risk and uncertainty as they unfold during the test, and making the changes required to obtain the desired outcome.
Wikipedia (2020) notes the following about the cricket captain: "The captain of a cricket team is the appointed leader. The captain decides where the fielders will stand. The fielding positions will usually be dictated by the type of bowler, the batsman's batting style, and the captain's assessment of the state of the match (and hence whether to set an attacking or a defensive field). The captain decides when each bowler will bowl. If a batsman is seeking to dominate the current bowler, the captain may ask someone else to bowl; alternatively, keeping the bowler on may be deemed the best chance of getting the batsman out or restricting the scoring rate. If the regular bowlers are not achieving the desired results, the captain may decide to use non-regular bowlers to attempt to unsettle the batsmen. The captain may also change the bowlers around to introduce variation, and to prevent the batsmen getting "set"" (Wikipedia 2020, n.pag.).
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