Abstract
D.Comm.
In the South African context leading multinational companies within mining, automotive,
financial and other sectors are faced with the complexity of: uncertain political policies,
fluid market dynamics, and market follower status in global relations. In addition,
emerging markets are directly affected by capital and structural adjustments in first
world economies, as currency flows direct to safe-haven markets under uncertainty.
Thus, additional complexities of: currency fluctuations, energy cost increases, implied
inflationary spikes, and pending recession become a reality, and have an enormous
impact on how organisations manage within the unforeseen complexity that this brings
to the local economy. As complex environmental factors beyond organisational
boundaries and management’s ability to predict and control, start impacting on an
organisation’s material capital flows, this uncertainty will drive leadership to review their
current worldview. This researcher argues that this new worldview must be a shift away
from a Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm, that through its cause-and-effect scientific base
has modelled the world and its structures around a rigid linear approach, that cannot
cope within the complexities exerted on the system. It is suggested therefore, by the
researcher that the shift in leadership thinking should be towards a different paradigm,
built on complexity based models using quantum Einsteinian-Quantum physics as a
metaphor.
The impact of this shift in paradigm, towards an Einsteinian-Quantum worldview, has an
has an implicative effect for organisations in terms of; mental models, subsequent
organisational design, the values that support this, the leadership behaviours that are a
response to these value sets and the resultant directional quantum leap outcome within
a multi-dimensional range of examples including; material (financial), social and spiritual
capital aspects of the organisation.
This research set out to review the paradigm shift between the Newtonian-Cartesian
and Einsteinian-Quantum worldviews with respect to leadership within a South African
context.