Conflicting goals in the company: Unity through ambiguity?
Unambiguous, clear formulations of goals and mission statements are not always the only path to corporate success. Especially in very diverse teams, with people from different cultural and religious backgrounds, other strategies can also make sense. This is shown by a recent study conducted by the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration in cooperation with the University of Oxford.
Traditionally, leadership theories emphasize the importance of a clear, central and strong vision as well as a unified goal for employees. However, in addition to pure sales goals, goals are increasingly being formulated to help solve societal challenges - the risk of conflicting goals arising within the company is great. In order to do justice to different goals, the literature has so far recommended either separating them (e.g. by founding a new department), or developing a common identity within the company. But what if this is not possible because they are too opposed or too many? This is exactly what the researchers Ali Aslan Gümüsay from the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration and his colleagues investigated with a 2-year case study based on the foundation of the first Islamic bank in Germany and find an answer in the just published article in the Academy of Management Journal.
A question of interpretation
As the study authors make clear in their paper "God at work: engaging central and incompatible institutional logics through elastic hybridity," the incompatibility of religion, the teachings of Islam, and Western, conventional forms of banking seems particularly great in the case of the Islamic bank at first glance. "A major challenge for an Islamic bank is certainly the multicultural and different religious backgrounds of its employees. The preferences and attitudes on how an Islamic bank should position itself can vary greatly," says study author Gümüsay. To avoid conflicting goals, new ways were sought and found. The study reveals that leadership uses ambiguity and ambiguity for goal formulation, strategic positioning and mission statements, as well as in internal and external communications. "Ambiguity is not only used linguistically, but affects the entire identity," Gümüsay said. This should give employees the flexibility to better identify with the bank through appropriate personal interpretation. Instead of a clear balance between religion and market logic, the bank allowed employees to develop and work with a personal balance.
Set a sign
Gümüsay and his colleagues name two mechanisms for this that the bank took advantage of. Polysemy, literally "multiple signs," describes how managers deliberately cultivated ambiguity around the organizational goal and also used ambiguous visual and literal signs - be they symbols, images or terms. Slogans such as "Islamic. Meaningful. Handeln." specifically worked with the double meaning of the word 'handeln' for 'to do' on the one hand as well as 'to trade' on the other. The latter is a core element of Islamic banking due to the prohibition of interest.
The second mechanism is polyphony, literally "multiple voices," which allowed employees, through the use of different physical locations, flexible work schedules, and multilingualism, to be individually more or less religious and thus experience the bank differently in terms of religion and profit focus.
Bending without breaking
"The interplay of these two mechanisms makes it possible for very different attitudes, opinions, values and practices to be lived out in the bank at the same time, but for the bank to still create unity in diversity," explains Gümüsay. The authors call this dynamic balance elastic hybridity. The organization represents a hybrid with different goals, achieving resilience and being able to "bend without breaking" in its vision and practices, creating unity through ambiguity. "The study also has policy implications about the extent to which societies can create and maintain unity in diversity. When neither fragmentation of society into 'divisions' nor homogeneous identity is possible, polysemy and polyphony offer the possibility of including diversity. Societies thus become elastic and can better deal with diversity without giving up their unity," according to the authors.
The results of the study are based on a more than 24-month study for which the authors analyzed 60 days of ethnographic observations, 73 interviews, and 1350 documents.
Source: Vienna University of Economics and Business
