Will
to Serve and Will to Power in Disney
David
M. Boje New
Mexico State University
ABSTRACT
Leadership theory is discursively policing the Will
to Power (WTP) in order to erect Will to Serve (WTS). Nietzsche and
Machiavelli theories are considered too power wielding in leadership
disciplines that restrict the transaction and transformation to WTS. The
purpose of this essay is to restore WTP to leadership theory in a brief sketch
of Disney and its battle with the moral fundamentalists. As Disney migrated
from Walt's G-rated fundamentalism to Eisner's more erotic trade, the moral
majority has become the Discursive Police.
I
present Will to Serve (WTS) and Will to Power (WTP) as one of three dualities
I call X, Y, and Z (Boje, 2000a) in the first half of this essay, followed by
some Disney examples. I apply will the work of Jean-Paul Sartre (1963, 1956)
to the problem of why and how leadership theory has exorcised not only
Nietzsche, but Machiavelli. Scholarship has gone down a road too polite and
static to capture the existential being and nothingness of dynamic
leadership (Boje, 2000c). I propose an existential theory of leadership to
focus on the individual's struggle with inner enemies (will and servant) and
their manifest practical action and movement (by transaction and
transformation) within a living collective (family, organization, society,
global economy) where I have a voice and I entertain others' voices (mono and
poly). I assume leadership is discursive struggle, a transformation of
transactions of the living world, an internal struggle of the WTS and the
WTP and the conflict over whose voices to include.
X
dimension (Transaction - Transformation) - Max Weber (1947), distinguished between the bureaucratic
and the heroic charismatic leader, as well as the traditional (feudal) leader.
For James MacGregor Burns, Weber's charismatic heroic leader was the epitome
of transformational behaviors and transcendent moral values (ends over means).
But, Burns (1978: 4) reduced Weber's model to just the moral-value leader
(WTS) in both transaction or transformation, both must always return to the
fundamental wants and needs, aspirations, and values of the followers. Burns
relied on Kohlberg's levels of moral thinking to differentiate between transactional
and transformational leadership. Burns' project was to "deal with leadership
as distinct from mere power-holding and as the opposite of brute power"
(p. 4). The transactional leader according to Burns, approaches followers
with an eye to exchanging one thing for another: jobs for votes, or subsidies
for campaign contributions. The means are valued over the ends. Their
transaction behaviors stem from modal thinking (means over ends reasoning).
There is so little power in Burns' (1978:169) transactional leader who "requires
a shrewd eye for opportunity, a good hand at bargaining, persuading, reciprocating."
More benign still is the transformational leader who "recognizes and
exploits an existing need or demand of a potential follower... (and) looks
for potential motives in followers, seeks to satisfy higher needs, and engages
the full person of the follower" (p. 4). Burns did banish WTP (both Nietzsche
and Machiavelli) as inappropriate leader theory, declaring it fascist and
dictatorial, but not moral enough to be leadership.
Figure
One: Profiles of Leaders in Three Dimensions
Y
dimension (Will to POWER - Will to SERVE) - I say reunite the two halves that Burns did
separate in a Y Dimension that extends from Will to Serve (WTS) to Will to
Power (WTP). Eugene Jennings (1960) resisted turning leadership study into an
empirical WTS science and lingered to take one last look at WTP leaders. He
developed a typology of leaders: as mixtures of superman/ superwoman, prince
and hero. I add a fourth category, that can easily be missed: the Weberian
bureaucrat. For Nietzsche (in WTP notebooks from1883 to 1888) and
Machiavelli (1610), the leader is driven by much ambition, and acts beyond
simplistic dualities of good not evil. WTP has to do with the will to initiate
and implement a goal as well as the more macro construct of Darwin's theory of
natural section, the power to transform the inherited advantages from
generation to generation (WTP #362). And WTP is also Will to Truth (TSZ, pp.
28, 113), for the world revolves around the inventor of new social and
cultural values (TSZ, p. 52). The contemporary superman/ woman leader extends
power from cultural transformation through celebrity and star power to the
factories and sweatshops of the Third World nations. The WTP is a will to
overcome the small people, "they are the superman's greatest danger"
(TSZ, p. 287). And the superman/ woman is not satisfied with the happiness of
the greatest number of workers or consumers (TSZ, p. 287). The Superman/ woman
leaders sees the abyss with the eyes of an eagle and grasps at poverty and
misery with its talons (TSZ, p. 288).
Z
dimension (MONO-phonic to POLY-phonic) - In the Z dimension, I am theorize an inner
dialogue of conscious leaderly voices and the concrete and living
actualization of leader behavior within some collective of voices (Boje,
2000b, c). Participative management is supposedly more polyphonic (including
many more voices) than the mono-voice of the figurehead, perched atop the iron
pyramid. The political (opinion) and revolutionary leader (even
government and reform leaders) are among leaders listening and participating
with many voices (polyphonic). In bureaucratic leadership, however, there
is mostly monologue; other voices are there on the stage but forbidden to
speak. Even the heroic transformational leader has a single voice
(monophonic). As Kirkeby (2000: 232) argues it is the right of power to
narrate events, to declare them romantic, tragic, comedic, or ironic, and then
of course make them all into a romantic narratives that fits the bureaucratic
pension for monophonic (single voiced) influence.
The
Bureaucrat
was one of three ideal type authorities posited by Max Weber. Weber argued
that the capitalist entrepreneur has the choice of charismatic, feudal, and
bureaucratic authority. Bureaucracy dethroned the Prince, Hero and
Superman/Superwoman Leader by tending to transactions. The CEO knows full well
that he does not "run" or "rule" the corporation, but is a
member of an impersonal team, a network of committees managing transaction
costs.
The
Hero archetype
is being reborn in leadership theory in the rediscovery of Weberian
charismatic authority. For Jennings (1960: 96), the hero type of leader
acts as though possessed by a destiny that requires his being the center of
attention, and having arrived there, he never willingly retires from the
center until he feels no longer needed.
The
Prince is a
power seeker (The lion and the fox archetypes) with WTP and transactional
focus. Superficial readings of Machiavelli (The Prince and Discourses
books) focus on the cruel and tyrannical Princes, ignoring Machiavelli's
Prince of Peace (Jesus) and other positive princes.
The
Superman/ Superwoman is
a power-wielder who is transformational. In 1873, Frederich Nietzsche
crafted the superwoman/ superman leader theory. The (Will to Power #875) great
men/ women, "individuals, princes, statesmen, geniuses, generals are the
levers and causes of all great movements." And we have many movements of
late. Whereas today many of today's corporate and political leaders fear the
"opinion" of the masses, and pretend to have WTS of bureaucrats and
heroes. What impedes their development is abhorred by Nietzsche.
Other
Types - Burns
(1978) and most leadership theory since, restricts itself to the lower
half of Figure One, to the WTS others, and not serve the ambition of power,
the evil WTP. Burns posited other leader types in Figure One, the
transactional leader as either opinion leader, group leader, party,
legislative, or bureaucrat. The transaction leader "requires a
shrewd eye for opportunity, a good hand at bargaining, persuading,
reciprocating" (p. 169). Burns' transformational leader can be an
intellectual, reform, revolutionary, or (charismatic) hero. The
transformational leader "recognizes and exploits an existing need or
demand of a potential follower... (and) looks for potential motives in
followers, seeks to satisfy higher needs, and engages the full person of the
follower" (Burns, 1978: 4).
Deconstructing
this box -
The leader wears many masks in Figure One and is never just one modality.
A leader is able to move from concrete to abstract and from global to
local, from past to future in affecting change of self, by desiring what it is
not. As Sartre says, I am aware of my nothingness (Boje, 2000c). I nihilate my
being any one mode, by being aware that I am not fully that mode I desire to
be.
Part II - How Disney Leadership
Is Nihilated
Disney
presents itself as WTS in official narratives by masking stories of WTP (Boje,
1995). Disney Corporate to use Foucault's (1970:331) words "is
surrounded on all sides by an immense region of shadow in which labor, life,
and language conceal their truth from those very beings." The
fundamentalists have been boycotting Disney, acting as discursive police in
pointing out the darer side of Disney movies and theme park events. Walt
was the Princely ruler of the Magic Kingdom, but in official narratives,
Disney Corporate presents him as a mild, gentle grandfather, with WTS.
Mickey
Mouse is in Hot Water with Protest Groups - Besides the fundamentalist Christian right, labor
and anti-sweatshop activists from the left are attempting to police Disney
Corporate behavior. Disney has a reputation for being anti-union that goes
back to Walt Disney (Boje, 1995) and has in the last decade move into more
sweatshop forms of supply chain contracts (Boje, 2000d). For example Haitian
sweatshop workers make the Pocahontas Disney-doll for eleven cents an hour.
And this combined pressure has had a negative effect on Disney share prices.
In protest narratives, Eisner's $576 million salary is juxtaposed against
paying poverty wages to 17-year-old girls who get 17 cents an hour in Vietnam,
making for much bad press. And it is the fundamentalists and
anti-sweatshop activists who seek to unmask Disney's WTP. Some unveil secrets
in frame-by-frame analysis of Disney films, making each sexual image
transparent and others conduct raids on Third World Disney sweatshops. They
are nihilistic and ironic, using WTP to discipline, embarrass, and punish
Disney into WTS.
Letiche
2000) theorizes that phenomenal complexity theory (PCT) includes intuition and
relativism, such that multiple perspectives contest and deny one another.
Disney and fundamentalist's regimes of truth are colliding; the discursive
police are imposing their WTP and not "everything goes" at Disney. I
contend that as Disney, under Eisner's leadership moved to diversify its
holdings and synergize its offerings and the result is emergent higher orders
of phenomenal complexity and chaos. Disney is under the panoptic gaze of
postmodern protest networks of fragmented and diverse interest groups.
Disney is getting trapped inside its own synergy strategy and hyperreality
story machine, and may spin out of leaderly control into a whirlpool of
phenomenal complexity.
Disney
operates in what I call "Tamara," the theatrics of dozens of protest
groups networking and chasing Disney stories across the global stage (Boje,
1995). Michael Eisner resists the fundamentalist straightjacket, just as he
resisted the ghost of Walt Disney, and his pension for G-rated Disney films,
theme park exhibits and merchandise. Disney has become the fundamentalist's
scapegoat, punished for giving movie and theme park goes exposure to erotica
and the gay life style. And Disney just moves it factories to quieter
countries to off-set the sweaty protests. I also view this struggle between
Disney and the fundamentalist right networked to the labor-left as a
manifestation of conflicting Jungian archetypes (Boje, 2001a). What has been
lost in Jung's (1921/1971) work in the dualities of Myers-Briggs dimensions
(Thinking-Feeling; Sensing-Intuitive) is how any one archetype is constituted
by its relationship to all the others.
Disney
archetypes present themselves as WTS heroic, bureaucratic, and reformer
archetypes, while the boycott network paints the picture of WTP with supermen/
superwomen, Princes, intellectual-opinion tinkers, and revolutionaries. In
short the hero's journey of Walt Disney's rise from rags to riches, and his
successor Michael Eisner's growth of the empire is being retold as a Price's
and Superman journey in an overt WTP, its corporate veil of strategic
concealment is being rendered transparent and impotent by the fundamentalist
and labor rights spotlights.
Walt
Disney is rated by most archetype experts as ENTP (Extrovert - iNtuitive,
Thinking, & Perceiving, See Boje, 2001a for a review). Walt is the Dark
Prince, the social engineer who applied Taylorism to animation (Boje, 1995).
Yet, from an existentialist view, Walt is not just one type. Now the mask of
Michael Eisner must be crafted by the PR machine to be acceptable to the moral
majority and the anti-sweatshop movement left-thinking minority, or at least
camouflage the unusable moral traits with heavy makeup.
Conclusions - Machiavelli's strategic advice to Prince, the types of power Burns finds amoral, and therefore outside his definition of leadership, is still, I think, very much in evidence today. And so is the Superman, the WTP of Nietzsche. Real leaders wield power, while they aim to serve. If leadership academics assume power away as outside real leader theory, wishing does not make it so. My hypothesis is that if we lay the various editions of Stogdill, then Bass' (1981, 1990) Handbook side by side, we can trace the editing out of WTP. For Disney, the net of protesters conspires to insure their executive exhibits the WTS.