The Need for Organisational Resilience Chapter 5

degree of order to Ubers operation. Kalanick stepped aside as the CEO, supposedly for

personal reason.

Uber found itself at a crossroad. Adaptive Leadership is for sure required to maintain a

leading edge in this industry. Shaking up an industry is key to establish a leading role;

notwithstanding stability, transparency, predictability is necessary to stabilise the company. It

is to be seen whether too much order is eroding that competitive lead that Uber has created

through his enigmatic adaptive, if not disruptive leader.

Limitations of Bureaucracy

The entrepreneurial system established by Uber has provided a competitive advantage that

led to a market dominance in several countries around the globe. It is only rational to ‘tame’

the entrepreneurial form of instability, variety of products and services and confusion that

come along with a vastly growing business. A bias to imposing greater order through

bureaucracy, through greater administration is a blessing as well as a curse. A system of

governing provides long-term stability and established a system of rules and procedures that

contain any excessive adaptive leadership. Unfortunately, stifling adaptive leadership also

reduces a companies’ capability to continue adapting to a changing environment. It is not

that administrative workings can be simply put aside, suspended or quickly be dismantled if

adaptive leadership is required. It is well known that is easier to switch from adaptive

leadership towards administrative leadership than vice versa.

Limitations of Automation

As a follow-on criticism towards moving towards administrative leadership, establishing a

rule-book for day-to-day operations might again sound obvious in times of instability and

resulting confusion. The aim is to reduce situated human cognition through consistency in

action. Nevertheless, leadership is a profoundly social endeavour. In particular, commitment

is driven socially. To believe that leadership can be enabled and reinforced by an

administrative system only is fool-hardy, although leadership through the imposition of rules

and procedures provides a compass of how to act; but still needs to be embedded through

social interaction.

Adaptive Response being supported by administration instead of

Administrative Response stifling adaptation

Opposing the view of administrative leadership per se, and adopting a pure entrepreneurial,

adaptive form of leadership is a folly in itself, too. An organisation in it Growth- and Mature-

Stage need to maintain adaptive leadership as well as administrative leadership to provide

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