Hybrid Network Governance - Ideal Political Structure?
A political campaign is a highly unstable environment with constant need to identify and respond to rising issues, while coordinating a medley of professional staffers with volunteers. The apparatus to handle such uncertainty must, by selective pressure, be highly effective.
President Bill Clinton's campaign, as displayed in The War Room, uses a flat hierarchy with two, strong symbolic leaders on top, a hybrid of network governance and traditional leadership that meets environmental demands excellently.
Mintzberg proposed five basic components of an organization: the operating core, middle management, support staff, technostructure and strategic apex. A classical Mintzberg organization, then, relies on a set pattern of these elements with somewhat formalized communication between them. Clinton's campaign staff, however, melds components together and defies the traditional organizational definition.
The strategic apex, for instance, is arguably George Stephanopoulos and James Carville, not Clinton. Further, while there is some middle management in the form of organizers and such, we see Stephanopoulos and Carville working directly with subordinates, providing minute instructions and seemingly circumventing middle management. A generalized sense of informality exists inside the Clinton campaign, further eroding clear lines of authority. These factors show a reduced hierarchy in Clinton's staff.
Such a structure is an appropriate milieu for leadership according to theory developed by Follett that emphasizes the context of orders. Follett discusses in her The Giving of Orders how orders should be given similarly to sales pitches. One must first build up a need, then provide for a release for the need that works to meet a larger goal.
Further, directions are best received, Follett argues, in an environment that is less formal with a greater degree of "face-to-face suggestion." Such proximity promotes a process of "joint study" of issues. George Stephanopoulos certainly provides a great deal of face to face suggestion, albeit mostly over the phone and perhaps more forcefully than Follett may have intended. But generally reduced amounts of hierarchy and informality in the Clinton campaign allow rapid development of ideas, while reducing resistance to implementation orders.
Fiedler's contingency model of leadership also supports Stephanopoulos and Carville as being in an extremely effective leadership position, supporting structural decisions made by the campaign. Fiedler analyzes leadership effectiveness by three factors: leader-member relations, task structure, and position power. Stephanopoulos and Carville are in excellent position for all those.
They have cordial relations with staff alongside what appears to be respect, they have reduced hierarchical levels to increase task relevance, and a formal mandate from above. As Fiedler notes, levels of direction increase ambiguity and reduce motivation when the task is complex and not easily measured. This may be reflected in somewhat greater levels of interaction between Stephanopoulos and staff members dealing with more complex issues such as marketing development.
Analysis so far has provided a general framework supporting reduced hierarchy, but has not mentioned the inevitable downsides of such structure. The most obvious issue is cost, and political campaigns are specially positioned to take advantage of free labor in the form of volunteers. Furthermore, while theorists continue to develop sophisticated network governance models, such models appear more relevant to, ironically enough, permanent organizations that deal with extreme impermanence whether in talent, demand or technology.
Fields where such theory has been developed include biotechnology, consulting, film production and investing. The political field, however, despite its constant nature does not even allow for such structures to form as each campaign uses its own talent. Therefore, at least in Clinton's case, it uses a hybrid form that maximizes the benefit of both approaches, with the lessons of reduced hierarchy coming from network governance, and the benefits of stability coming from traditional leadership.
Stephanopoulos and Carville show effective leadership for many reasons, including meeting attributes discussed above, but also due to their effective use of symbolic framing. This ability to frame issues with symbolic meaning appears automatic, starting from the very first references to an attack machine to the end, telling Clinton what messages to emphasize as the campaign reaches the end.
Such ability to frame things symbolically fits well with Schein's proposed model of leaders as needing to blaze forward a path for the organization and then stick with it. Most importantly, in addition to providing staffers with a vocabulary to work with, it provides them a grander sense of meaning, and is consistent with sociological predictions of motivational factors.
The political campaign avoids "midlife" anxieties and other emergent leadership problems Schein develops simply by dying young - its short life span allows for charismatic and symbolic leadership that could otherwise lead to diminishing results over time. Schein specifically discusses insecurities and assumptive failures that stem from leadership, where the dictates of a particular culture fail to respond to environmental turbulence.
Such a result is catastrophic for an organization dealing with the variance a political campaign faces. Harvard Business Review articles on leadership also note possible cultural biases that arise over a protracted leadership, also stifling creativity, dissent and reactivity to variance. Due to its short existence however, again as contrasted to network governance, political campaigns can allow an explicit leadership to emerge as long as its brand of leadership is an appropriate response to the set of issues at hand.
The little observed Bush campaign does not seem to follow a similar structure, although such an observation could be invalidated by further investigation. As far as the War Room presents, however, a solitary woman stands to the press core, rather sharply responding and critiquing various Clinton attributes.
We are not shown a dynamic, flattened structure that uses charismatic and symbolic leadership to produce excellence. Rather, consistent with Kanter's theory of developed powerlessness, the Bush spokeswoman has formal authority that is recognized by the press, but does not seem to possess efficient communication with her team. Such analysis, however, is again dependent on presented information, but is supported by general lackluster performance on the Bush campaign and an ultimate loss.
Clinton's campaign was well organized, effective and brutally responsive to its opponent. Classic attack and framing tactics such as "It's the economy, stupid," arose from it. The socio-dynamic factors that led to such success must, of necessity, fail when analyzing any individual staffer such as the brilliant George Stephanopoulos.
But as the organization is a larger unit, the lessons of its flattened structure combined with effective leadership, a hybrid of network governance and traditional leadership, remain very pertinent. Perhaps the current candidate Mrs. Clinton should return and review the lessons of her husband's successful bid for office.