SUBSIDIARITY BASED MANAGEMENT

AN ESSAY

Presented to the UNIAPAC BOARD

On September 22. 2012

As a base of a common work to be launched

by

Pierre LECOCQ

Chairman

UNIAPAC

1 : SUBSIDIARITY: DEFINITION

Defining clearly the concept of subsidiarity is always difficult. One good way is to compare the two

concepts of “delegation” and “subsidiarity”. Delegation and subsidiarity are two concepts which

indeed resemble each other but which are actually are quite opposite.

In the delegation concept, the leader considers that the information, the capacity, the decision

and the action are between its hands and that, gradually, according to the development of his

interlocutor and of the quality of the relation, it transmits them to lead the other to be more

responsible. But at any time, the leader can take back its decision power.

In subsidiarity, it is exactly the opposite. The leader considers that the individual or the

collective entity which he is responsible for, is able to assume the information, the capacity,

the decision and the action in autonomy and interdependence within the limits of the extend of

the lower level actual field of action. In this concept the leader will take back its decision

power but will take the risk of the lower level autonomous decision.

One could speak about a “reverse delegation”: the lower level, on his initiative, transmits to

the higher level what it considers and decides not to be within its realm of responsibility. It is

thus about a complete reversal of the relation, and responsibility for the two parts.

The concept of subsidiarity takes its roots in the Social Doctrine of the Church as a direct

consequence of its most important principle: the paramount dignity of the person. In its recent

paper on the “Vocation of the Business leader” the Pontifical Council of Justice & Peace has

the following lines on subsidiarity:

Create subsidiary structures: The principle of subsidiarity is rooted in the conviction that, as

images of God, the flourishing of human beings entails the best use of their intelligence and

freedom. Human dignity is never respected by unnecessarily constraining or suppressing that

intelligence and freedom. The principle of subsidiarity recognizes that in human societies,

smaller communities exist within larger ones. For example, a family, as a community, is part

of a city, which in turn is part of a county, a state or province, then a nation, and so on. The

principle insists that the freedom of those closest to the decision to be made should not be

arbitrarily constrained from doing so. A higher authority should never intrude on the

decision-making of a lower authority if the lower authority can make sound decisions that

also respect the common good.

While the principle of subsidiarity was originally applied to the encroaching power of the

state, it is a principle that applies just as well to business organizations. People develop in

their work when they use their intelligence and freedom to achieve shared goals and to create

and sustain right relationships with one another and with those served by the organization.

The more participatory the workplace, the more likely workers will develop. They should have

a voice in the work they do, especially in the work that they do on a day-to-day basis.

Initiative, creativity, and a sense of shared responsibility, should be fostered.

The principle of subsidiarity has multiple implications for business. It calls leaders to use

their power at the service of their collaborators. A key question for all leaders is whether

their authority serves the development of their people. Subsidiarity calls business leaders to

execute three key tasks:

- To clearly define the realm of autonomy and the decisions to be made at lower levels,

leaving these as wide as possible. The limit on them is set where the effect of the

decisions goes beyond the ability of the specific level in question to have access to the

right information to take the decision, and/or where the consequences of the decisions

will have significance outside of the realm of responsibility of that level.

- To choose, train, and inform their employees, making sure that they have the right

tools, training and experience to carry out their tasks.

- To accept that the lower levels will make their decisions in total freedom and, thereby,

to take upon oneself, in full trust, the risks of the lower level’s decisions. Subsidiary

business structures therefore nurture workers’ personal responsibility and allow them to

attribute good results to their sincere engagement.

This last point, taking on the risk of the lower level’s decisions, is what makes subsidiarity

different from delegation. One who delegates confers power, but can take it back at any time.

In such a situation, employees on a lower level may feel more comfortable that in a situation

governed by the principle of subsidiarity, but less likely to grow and accept their full dignity.

Under the principle of subsidiarity, employees on a lower level who are trusted, trained,

experienced, know precisely their responsibilities, and are free to make decisions, can fully

use their freedom and intelligence, and thus are enabled to develop as people; they may be

perceived as “co-entrepreneurs.” For business leadership, this is very demanding. It calls

for restraint, and a humble acceptance of the role of a servant. Christian leaders will

appreciate this role from the witness of Jesus at the Last Supper.

2 : SUBSIDIARITY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Social science has deepen throughout the XXth century the analysis of the person behaviour

in a direction which without using the word is illustrating how much true subsidiarity does

lead the person towards its full inner development. The three following examples are good

illustrations.

Alfred Schutz, the eminent Austro-American sociologist highlighted in the thirties the

conditions for a person to commit itself:

- 1: to be recognized as trusted person, “I am loved”; “I am important”; “I exist” This

gives the sense on ‘Inclusion” (I am IN vs being OUT)

- 2: I have been told the “rules of the games”; “I am competent”; “I am responsible”

This gives the sense of “Control”

These two conditions will lead to the person to engage itself, to act and create

- 3: I am open to the others, I like them, I am conscious of them. The sense of

“openness”

This third condition leads to the ability of problem solving which requires the relationship to

the other persons.

This could be a wonderful presentation of subsidiarity based management. It is indeed about

recognizing fully the person, giving it the feeling of being loved and recognized but at the

same time to give it the “rules of the game” allowing the person to fully engage itself in full

personal responsibility. We will see later how much this does illustrate the attitude of God

towards His people: indeed a wonderful over abundant love leading Him, the Almighty, to

fully respect our freedom (we are loved and trusted; condition 1) but He also tells us “you

shall not eat the fruit of the tree” or the 10 commandments (we are given the “rules of the

game”; condition 2).

Douglas Mac Gregor, the eminent professor of management psychology at the MIT in the

fifties became famous through his X and Y theory to analyze leader behaviours which can be

summarize as follows offering a theoretical background to management behaviours:

Theory X Theory Y

Beliefs of the

leader towards

work

It not natural to

mankind

It is natural to

mankind

Consequences on

motivation

It must be exogenous

Necessity to motivate

from the outside

It can be endogenous

The person is

naturally motivated

Consequences on

management styles

The leader must act

to motivate

He must control and

give sanctions

positive or negative

The leader must

create the conditions

allowing the person

to manifest itself its

motivation

The person is self-

controlling and self-

sanctioning

Theory Y does encompass the key characteristics of subsidiarity but does not refer to the roots

of the belief in the Y behaviours as subsidiarity principle does in the Social Doctrine of the

Church deeply anchored in principle of the paramount dignity of the person, created free by

God and called to share His divine nature.

Vincent Lenhardt, the French specialist of Management coaching in his book “Collective

Intelligence in Action” introduces the notion of “Ressource Oriented Manager” as explained

in the following extracts:

The resource oriented manager

The resource oriented manager does not set aside his/her position as order giver, but

“fulfills” their identity at a higher logical level. Fundamentally, he/she centers on a position

which pays more attention to the interpersonal process and empowering colleagues than

merely to technical content. He/she is positioned in a logic of empowerment of his/her

colleagues. The leader is there to enable his/her colleagues, often more competent than

him/her, to have the means to put their skills to work. The leader’s attitude is more of

someone who listens than someone who provides solutions. He/she is more interested in the

proposals of colleagues and their ideas than his/her own…

In other words, the Ressource Oriented Manager attitude is rooted in the logic of Mc

Gregor’s Theory Y, whereby work is natural to Man and his motivation is mainly

endogenous (“people are naturally motivated, they just need to be allowed to use this

motivation, and management is based on self-control”), much more than McGregor’s Theory

X, whereby work is not natural to Man, motivation must remain exogenous (“people need to

be motivated”) and management must be made of control and positive or negative

reinforcement.

The cursor model illustrated in the figure below, shows the need for a contingent

management. Clearly, the difficulty resides in the fact that the leader responsible for a budget, a

corporate representative, or who simply has a performance obligation must remain a controller to

the end ; but he/she can function in a role and relationship type where he leaves real room for

talking and the other’s initiative, by generating a relationship of parity. It becomes necessary for

the leader to be able to function as a simple participant in a group.

The cursor model illustrates all the complexity of one’s own attitude towards management

responsibility and the necessary ability to also accept the Principle of Reality and adapt one’s

management attitude to the every day context of management.

3 : SUBSIDIARITY IN THE GOSPEL AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

All the Judeo-Christianity is crossed by this vision of the creation in becoming in which Man

is comissionned as Co-creator with God. The Jew which respects Shabbat, like the Christian

Sunday, rests in God and with God, the 7th day after having contributed during the 6 previous

days to the Co-creation of the World.

The revelation of Jesus-Christ which comes true in the multiple scenes of the Gospel, the

transfiguration, the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the sermon on the mountain, the

resurrection … etc offer an unsurpassable model of leadership: the model of the servant

leader through the scene of the washing of the feet.

One could multiply the examples and the references as the Pentecost when around the Virgin

Mary the community of the Apostles receives the Holy Spirit and speaks in languages and

offers a representation of the mystical body. In prolongation, the community of the Apostles

where each one takes part and receives according to its needs, offers a model of human

community, prefiguring the mystical body. This climate of communion is an a living model

for performing teams.

In term of dynamism, the spirituality of the Grace offers an anthropological target where the

passage of the “old man” towards “the new man” is located in the sublime formula of St

Irenee as François Varillon remains us: “Deus homo factus is, ut homo fieret Deus” (God was

made man so that man is made God). But this process is not only a humanistic step. It is not

about an auto-divination for the Christian. The Christian is not alone, it takes part in the

Trinitarian life irradiates him.

From François Varillon:

“Man is essentially made of divisinable, it is a freedom in future of deification”

“What is the difference between a believer and a non believer? … the non believer obeys its

conscience; the Christian while obeying his conscience loves somebody who loves him. For

the Christian the human conscience is inhabited, inhabited by an Other who loves us.”

“When I work as a man, work which consists in humanizing the relations between men, Christ

does work as God. He deifies what I humanize.”

“The result is humano-divine and this is what we call our life and our eternal happiness”.

The Rise of Jesus-Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost also open a view for

the attitude which the leader must take in subsidiarity: by paraphrasing Hölderling, one finds

an invitation there;

“The manager creates leaders like the ocean creates continents: by withdrawing itself”.

4 : SUBSIDIARITY AT THE HEART OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE

COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE IN MANAGEMENT TRENDS

Starting from a global and microeconomic perspective of the two worlds (industrial and

postindustrial), the table below draws the logics which underlie them and the organizations

which represent them

Macroeconomic

levels

Industrial era Transitory era Postindustrial era

Approach planification

targets

constructivism

emergence

Logic Order & obedience Co-responsibility

Organisation Taylorist & mechanical Systemic & complex

Team development

stages

Collection of individuals Groups linked by

solidarity

Performing teams linked

by a sense of mission

Manager

personalities

The order giving manager The resource oriented

manager

Meaning bearing manager

Person stages of

growth

Homo faber

Individuals developing

their talents

Homo Amans

Beings in relation

Homo Patiens

Beings in communion led

by the sense of Common

Good

The Cursor X theory

Delegation

Control

Personal power

to Y theory

Subsidiarity

Trust

Power in the other

Each logical level has its specificity, and, at the same time is in interaction with the others.

The teams and the individual managerial identities which result from this are confronted with

the necessary change of paradigm: to pass from “complicated” to the “complex”, i.e. to live

and assume the paradoxes and contradictions of this space.

It is not only the question to pass from one world to the other, but to permanently manage the

coexistence of these two worlds, with the paradoxes which result from that: the handling of

the cursor and its difficulties represent the “toll” of the crossing of complexity for the

Manager in charge (Order Giving Manager, Resource Oriented Manager and Meaning

Bearing Manager).

We see in the preceding diagram the various logical levels that subsidiarity must treat: An

approach which passes from planning to the constructivism, a logic which passes from order

and obedience to the co-responsibility, and an organization which transforms itself and

assumes the complexity. The teams, the managerial individualities, the entities will have to

pass by a transforming process and the handling of the cursor will oblige the actors to assume

the corollaries of complexity which are permanent ambiguity, (“I control and I trust”),

permanent ambivalence (“I invite to the creativity but I want that my ideas are taken into

account”) and the paradox impossible to circumvent of the relation Manager-collaborator (“I

help you to be alone”, “I offer my competence by subjecting it to the competence of the

other”, “I invite the other to be “spontaneously” creative”… as many paradoxical injunctions

constitutive of complexity.

The central paradox which governs all the others can be expressed as follows: “to keep a

certain control, it is necessary to give up a large part of control”.

With regard to the management teams and the visions, it is a question of passing from:

- A team giving orders to a resource team carrying sense

- A logic of Order and Obedience (adapted to a world of predictable and complicated)

to a logic of co-responsibility (adapted to a world of uncertainty and complexity)

- A top-down vision to a shared and co-developed vision

- A vision made of numbers and targets to a vision of the complexity of the stakes and

of their interactions.

5: THE IDENTITY TRANSFORMATION OF THE ACTORS

In Collective Intelligence the Manager must permanently circulate among the three types of

the managerial identities: Order Giving Manager, Resource Oriented Manager and Meaning

Bearing Manager. The Manager has the heavy task to integrate these three levels of identity

by knowing to remain an Order Giving Manager while accomplishing himself as Resource

Oriented Manager then as Meaning Bearing Manager.

If Collective Intelligence implies stages which the leader must cross, the collaborators also

must permanently adjust to various stages, from the first stage as mainly executants in front of

the Order Giving Manager, to contributors forces of proposition with the Resource Oriented

Manager and then with Meaning Bearing Manager to take the posture of carriers of the stakes

and contributors in the construction of visions in constant reconfiguration.

Development Dimensions Job Content Process and

Relations

Sense and

Vision

The “Important” Professional and

Managerial Order Giving

Manager

Resource

Oriented

Manager

Meaning

Bearing

Manager

The MANAGER

The “Essential”

Psychologic and

existential

Spirituality

Homo Faber Homo Amans Homo Patiens

Talent

developing

Being

Relation Being Communion

Being

Human Being Type Self Centered Centered on

the other

Centered on

the community

In the society, at the regional or national level, and in the political authorities, there is a

tendency when one speaks about the “place of Man in the company”, to think of employment

or of the plague which unemployment represents, while being conscious of the economical,

social and existential stakes for the actors concerned, reducing our vision of the human being

to the” homo economicus”. However, this identity of the” homo economicus” includes other

levels of identity: as identified in the above table… Each one of these levels is intricate and in

interaction with the others.

We also note that the level of the development of the “Important “(the professional,

managerial and organizational aspects) can largely contribute to a development of

the”Essential”(the psychological, existential and spiritual aspects of the person):

- “Homo Faber” which develops his competences, his “talents” by what it does.

- “Homo Amans” which develops its otherness and its dimension as a “relation being”.

- “Homo Patiens” which develops its “oblativity” by putting himself at the service of

Common Good building transcendence at the heart of its immanence.

The identity transformation of the actors supposes the comprehension of the managerial

anthropology to be built. This is true primarily the leader (CEO), but because of his

“modeling”, and of the culture which it generates, it also invites the other actors of the

organization to become in their turn co-responsible and in charge of carrying the Collective

Intelligence.

5. SUBSIDIARITY AS APPLIED IN THE CHURCH

Many examples drawn from the Gospel, Acts of the Apostles and history of the Church even

if many counterexamples remain unfortunately present in the mind, make it possible to see

that the Church, in its everlastingness, knew to grow beyond its function missionary, with

particularly fertile stages by living Subsidiarity Principle in its organization and in the

definition of its member roles.

The overall organization of the Church, from the Pope to the faithful with only two

intermediary levels, the Bishop and the parish priest is by itself a full illustration of a

subsidiarity based organization. If the dogma is collectively set, each diocese, with the Bishop

at its head is from an organizational and management point of view an autonomous church.

To come back on Schutz analysis, the Church takes the risk of the person of the Bishop (he

feels trusted) and has defined the “rules of the game”. He can engage himself fully..

Another example can be taken from the conciliar model present throughout the Church history

and more particularly Vatican II which opened the Church to a very broad dialogue and an

actualization of the tradition as well as to a broad opening to the environment, to the world,

and to other religions. This happened although the Vatican organization was not at all

expecting such a broad evolution. The dogma was there to set the “rules” but for all the other

questions, the trust was put in the bishop assembly.

The monastic model sometimes referred to as the oldest multinational dates from the 5th

century. It radiated in the whole world, made Saint-Benedict owner of Europe and gave to

work its right place (the motto of the Benedictines “Ora et Labora”). One will find there the

place of work as an integral part of the life of the monk, but secondary compared to the sense:

the prayer and the celebration of the divine office “to which nothing must be preferred”

according to Saint-Benedict. The rule to choose the Abbot, his required attitude and the

glance towards the other in the welcome as illustrated in the following abstract of the St

Benedict rule are good examples of a subsidiarity based organization.

THE APPOINTMENT OF THE ABBOT

For the appointment of the abbot, one will always observe this

principle appointing the one which the community inspired by

the fear of God, will have chosen by mutual agreement, or by

even a weak majority of the community, with the healthier

judgment…

Once named, the Abbot will always consider the responsibility he

received and for which he will have to account for his

management. He will know that he must serve and not enslave…

He will always have in his mind his own fragility and will

remember that he should not crush the split reed. In that we do

not say that it must let grow the vices. No, he will cut them off

with prudence and charity, in the manner which seems to him to

most adequate for each one, as we already said: he will seek

more to be liked that to be dreaded. It will not be agitated and

anxious, neither excessive nor stubborn, neither jealous nor

suspicious, because otherwise he would never be in rest.

In the instructions he gives, it will be far-sighted and

circumspect; and in what he prescribes, whether things of God

or things of the world, he will use of understanding and measure,

thinking at the discretion of the Patriarch Saint Jacob who said:

“If I were to make my herds suffer more in walking, they would

all perish in one day”. Attentive with these testimonies and

others still on discretion, the mother of all virtues, he will

balance so well all the things which the forts have to wish and

which the weak ones do not have to flee.