Conceptualizing and Contextualizing “Executive Wisdom” as a Framework for Business Leadership: A Grounded Theory Approach

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Ali Intezari contextualizes business leaders’ perspectives on business-society interaction through the theoretical lens of wisdom.

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Institution: University of Queensland

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Ali Intezari contextualizes business leaders’ perspectives on business-society interaction through the theoretical lens of wisdom.

Image courtesy of interviewee. September 12, 2024

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The study investigates the perspectives of business leaders on the relationship between business and society, focusing on the concept of wisdom as defined within leadership practices. It replicates an earlier research conducted in Australia and New Zealand, aiming to analyze wisdom in a non-Western context, specifically in the Middle East, to understand how business leaders there conceptualize and enact wisdom.

Utilizing grounded theory methodology, the researchers engaged in a cycle of data collection and analysis until reaching theoretical saturation, thereby developing an executive wisdom model. This video model examines how business leaders balance rational and non-rational aspects in their decision-making processes, particularly in relation to ethical considerations.

Unexpectedly, findings revealed that Middle Eastern business leaders emphasized rationality and technical competence more than ethical considerations, contrasting with the original study's conclusions where emotional intelligence was deemed vital. In Middle Eastern contexts, showing emotions was sometimes perceived as weakness, indicating a cultural divergence from Western ideals of wisdom, where emotional engagement is often encouraged.

The study implies that wisdom can serve as practical guidance in uncharted business territories, particularly when navigating complex socio-business environments. The findings highlight the importance of integrating technical competence, ethical considerations, and wise decision-making in leadership training, suggesting that wisdom encompasses more than just moral decision-making—it demands an understanding of technical nuances within a broader context. Overall, the study underscores the variances in the perception of wisdom across different cultures, revealing both similarities and differences in leaders' approaches to wise decision-making.

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Here are five key points derived from the video:

1. **Study Focus and Background**: The study aims to convideoualize the perspectives of business leaders regarding the interaction between business and society, particularly examining how wisdom is enacted in leadership practices. It replicates a prior study conducted in Australia and New Zealand, seeking to compare results from a non-Western convideo, specifically in the Middle East.

2. **Research Methodology**: The research employs grounded theory methodology, characterized by an inductive approach that involves collecting and analyzing data through iterative processes until reaching theoretical saturation—where no new data is discovered. This method enables the researchers to develop a model of wisdom in the business convideo.

3. **Findings on Wisdom**: The study reveals that while wisdom in leadership traditionally integrates rational decision-making and intuitive processes, Iranian business leaders place more emphasis on rationality and technical competence. Ethics, surprisingly, are prioritized less than expected, challenging earlier assumptions about the importance of moral frameworks in strictly regulated environments.

4. **Cultural Insights and Comparisons**: The findings indicate significant differences in how wisdom is conceptualized across cultures. For instance, while Western business leaders advocate for balancing emotions with rationality in decision-making, Iranian leaders tend to emphasize cognitive ability and often view emotional expression as a weakness.

5. **Practical Implications for Leadership**: The study suggests that wisdom can guide business leaders in navigating complex social and organizational challenges. Practical guidelines emerged from the research that indicate wise decision-making should consider technical competence, ethical considerations, and the importance of being timely and effective in decisions involving multiple stakeholders. This insight aims to enhance training programs for leaders in managing uncertain situations while considering various perspectives and practices within their fields.

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Here are some key quotes from the video related to the study on the interaction between business and society, with a focus on wisdom in leadership:

1. **Convideoualization of Perspectives**:
- "This study, uh, actually convideoualizes the perspectives of, uh, business leaders on the interaction between business and society."

2. **Theoretical Framework**:
- "I'm looking at the theoretical framework of wisdom, which I adopted from psychology and gerontology."

3. **Replication of Previous Study**:
- "This study is actually a replication of another study that my colleague and I, uh, did about 15 years ago in Australia, New Zealand."

4. **Methodology**:
- "We used a grounded theory methodology... to inductively develop a model of, um, wisdom, uh, in the business convideo."
- "We repeated that process until we got to the point that which grounded theorists call it... theoretical saturation."

5. **Components of Wisdom**:
- "Wisdom is commonly defined as an integration of cognitive ability and affect emotions and coordination."
- "Morality, cognition, and emotion are the three key components that almost all the, uh, wisdom researchers agree upon."

6. **Surprising Findings**:
- "The emphasis they put on ethics was minimum and ethics was, uh, relatively moderately ranked."
- "If you show some level of, uh, emotions and empathy in your decisions, you may be seen as a weak leader."

7. **Cultural Perspectives on Wisdom**:
- "The Iranian business leaders... said that it is all about... achieving the common goods while ensuring... the well-being of self and others."
- "For the Iranian, it was more about your cognitive ability... the difference is mainly about the process, but the end is still the same."

8. **Wisdom in Decision Making**:
- "The findings say that based on the leader's competence or technical competencies... you can predict whether or not and to what extent they are able to make wise decisions."

9. **Training Implications**:
- "The implications of this study can be used as a training, uh, for, uh, leaders to show them how to handle uncertain situations, especially where... multiple stakeholders are involved."

These quotes encapsulate the core themes of the study, highlighting the methodology, findings, and implications regarding wisdom in leadership within different cultural convideos.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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This study, actually contextualizes the perspectives

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of, business leaders on the interaction

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between business and society.

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And, and I'm looking at the theoretical framework

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of wisdom, which I adopted from psychology and gerontology.

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And, this study is actually a replication

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of another study that my colleague

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and I, did about 15 years ago in Australia, New Zealand.

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And we wanted to replicate this study in,

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in a non-Western, country, to be able

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to do a comparative analysis to see how business leaders in,

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a society perceive

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or enact wisdom in their, leadership practices.

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So we, used a grounded theory methodology, a, a cla,

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the classic variant of grounded theory,

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which is very difficult to conduct, to be able

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to inductively develop a model of, wisdom,

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in the business context.

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And, so, which required us to go through a, a series

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of reation in terms of gathering data, analyzing data,

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and then getting back to the field to gather more data.

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And we repeated that process until we got to the point

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that which grounded theorists call it

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as theoretical saturation.

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We reached to the point that we,

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the model was theoretically saturated.

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We didn't, find any new data

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or information about the model.

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And then that at that point, we stopped gathering data

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and we finalized the model, the executive wisdom model,

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which explains how, business leaders,

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enact wisdom in their practices system has been at the topic

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of philosophical discourses, for millennia, right?

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And it was until, just, 1975 that,

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gerontologists started looking at the concept.

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So wisdom appeared in modern studies,

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and gerontologists were the first people

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who started looking at that.

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And in the eighties, three groups of psychologists,

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one group in, in Germany, Paul Es

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and colleagues and, two, researchers in the us,

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Monica Del

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and Robert Sternberg at the same time,

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started looking at the concept of wisdom.

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They have a common view about the nature of wisdom,

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but they, they have some slightly different, different,

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Dion of it, which, I can explain that later.

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Um, then, it was about 2005

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that other disciplines like management, leadership,

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education, they started looking at the concept of wisdom.

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And, so they commonly, defined wisdom

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as an integration of cognitive ability

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and affect emotions and coordination

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or the way that we act, this wisdom.

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So, morality, cognition, and

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Emotion are the three key components that almost all the,

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wisdom researchers agree upon in terms

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of these are the pillars of, wisdom.

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And my work,

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actually builds on this foundation methodology is

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called grounded theory.

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And it, was, introduced my,

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to, researchers back in 1967, GLA

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and Esau Glazer, was active till late two years ago.

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He, he passed away,

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and, Esau passed away about 10 years or

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or so away, ago.

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And so they introduced this concept this way

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of developing all developing models or concept

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or a study, a context specific phenomena.

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And it offers a, an inductive way of, a study,

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topics under study or phenomenon.

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And it is, as opposed to the deductive,

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methodology, which you come up with a model,

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and then you go to the field, gather data,

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quantitative data, for example, through surveys,

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and then you test whether or not your hypothesis holds

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or they fail, or inductive is about asserting,

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analyzing the data without having any preconceived

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theory in mind.

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So you, go to the field with the sort of, blank,

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mind about it, it is impossible to be completely blank,

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but you try not to,

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influence your analysis of the data by,

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existing theories.

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You just let the data talk about itself,

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and then you analyze data.

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And in grounded theory, we, you do that in, through a,

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recursive process.

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You collect some interviews, which we did.

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We interviewed, senior, lead business leaders

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and about 35 business leaders.

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And we interviewed four or five of them at the beginning.

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And we analyzed the data to see how these four,

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five business leaders, conceptualize with them

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or in inact wisdom.

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And we try to identify a common theme

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across these four, five.

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And then we adjusted our interview protocol based on this

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emerging themes from the first round of the interviews.

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And then we went back to the field,

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we interviewed another group of business leaders

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and our questions in this round,

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we were more focused on those emerging themes

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that we had identified in the first round.

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And then we gathered data, we analyzed the data,

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and we made our, interview questions even more focused,

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which is, in grand theory,

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we call it theoretical sensitivity.

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We became more theoretically sensitive to the topic,

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to the emerging themes.

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We, we repeated this process multiple times

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until we reached the theoretical saturation point,

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and then we identified

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The key aspects of wisdom

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and of how these business leaders conceptualize and

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or enact with them.

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We were particularly interested in, the Middle East

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because of all these conflicts

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and challenges going on in, in that region.

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And we had the opportunity to collect data from,

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for example, African or South American

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or, east Asian countries.

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But we decided to focus on Middle East at, at,

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at least at this stage.

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We may look at the Eastern Asian countries

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and African countries later on,

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but at this stage, we, we thought it is better

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to look at the Middle Eastern, business leaders,

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because of all these things

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that are going on in the Middle East,

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to gain an understanding of how they define wisdom

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or wise leadership in the, in the business context.

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It would have, it would give us a good understanding

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of the similarities and differences between Western approach

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and non-Western approach.

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We, we try to a approach some, business leaders in,

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Arab countries.

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So they initially agreed to participate,

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but later on they, refused to participate

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for the personal reasons.

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And, but so we ended up having,

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done all these interviews with 35 Iranians who, agreed

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to participate and they committed.

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And, and, we are very appreciative of

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that when we were analyzing data

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and we realized some surprising findings.

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Um, so let me explain,

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the findings from the previous study, the original study

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that we did in Australia and New Zealand.

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So we found that, business leaders conceptualize wisdom

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as an integration of rationality

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and non rationality, all right, to define it

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as a combination

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or a balance between your rational decision making

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and your intuitive decision making.

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And they put more emphasis on emotions

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and intuitive decision making than on rationality

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or rational decision making.

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So when we, started gathering data from,

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the Middle East from Iran, we thought that

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because, in, this region, a states are religious

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and they have very strict moral codes,

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and they are the, theoretical, the,

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not they are Republican by govern.

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The governance is, informed by religion.

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Uh, so they are religious estate in almost all

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the countries in the region.

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They, they have religious states.

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So we thought that because of this strict moral codes,

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that they follow, based on their religious,

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we should see, a even a stronger,

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more emphasis on ethics

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and non rationality when it comes to,

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business practices.

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But we found some, something completely different.

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We, we did, they,

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the emphasis they put on ethics was minimum and ethics was,

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Uh, relatively moderately ranked.

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And it, and what they emphasized more was,

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rationality and technic.

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So, it was knowledge and,

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and, technical competence that they emphasized more.

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And another surprising, finding was that if you,

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show some level of, emotions

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and empathy in your decisions, you may be seen

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as a weak leader.

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So you need to show that, prove

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that you are technically high

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and you have a high level of knowledge

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and expertise if you want to be seen as an a wise leader.

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And it was very surprising enough to, to us as well.

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So we thought that, whoa, that's interesting

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that ethics didn't come up that much.

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And also they, these business leaders, unlike,

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defining strong western societies,

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these business leaders believe that if you want

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to make wise decisions in business context,

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you should not let your emotions influence your decisions.

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Whereas our funding from Australia

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and New Zealand said that you always need to leave room

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for your emotions in your decisions.

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From the Western perspective, it is, as I said,

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a wisdom is seen as a decision making capacity to,

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seek the common good,

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by achieving the wellbeing of self and others.

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So far, so good. So far they are similar.

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So the Iranian business leaders, they came on with, they,

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they had a similar, perception

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of wisdom in the business context.

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They said that, it is all about,

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achieving the common goods while ensuring,

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the assuring the wellbeing of self and others.

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But the process to get to that end was different.

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So, as I said from the western perspective, it is about

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how you balance your emotions

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and your, cognition or cognitive ability.

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But for the irania,

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it was more about your cognitive ability.

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That's, the difference is mainly about the process,

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but the end is still the same.

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So that, my PhD, which I did back in 2009

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and 2014, was among the first empirical studies

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that looked at wisdom within the business context.

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And, so it informed, a business practices

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and leadership practices by providing empirical evidence of

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how wisdom can be enacted

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or embodied in, in the business context.

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So the main find, the main implications of that is that,

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so for business people, wisdom can,

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provide guidance

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or practical guideline about how

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to handle uncertain situations,

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especially when you are dealing with,

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business society complexities and, or socially complex

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Issues.

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So when you apply, wisdom, which,

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integrates three aspects based on the findings from this

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study, which is technique

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or, technical competence, we choose disposition

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and wise decision making.

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So you, you, you mainly the finding say

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that based on leader's competence

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or technic technical competencies or technique

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and, reach your disposition, you can predict whether

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or not and to what extent they are able

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to make wise decisions.

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And wise decision is characterized as to being timely,

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comprehensive, effective, and ethical.

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Alright, so this, the implications of this study is,

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can be used as a training, for, leaders

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to show them how to handle uncertain situation, especially

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where, in the decision situation

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where there are more than one stakeholder is involved.

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So it's about, it gives them an idea

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or some measures about how to take into account

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multiple perspectives while you are making the decision,

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while you are taking into account they, they,

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the rules, accepted practices within

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that particular field.

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So the findings I finding show

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that wisdom is not just conceptual moral decision making,

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it's about how you take into account those bits and pieces

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and technical aspects

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of the field while you are looking at the get bigger

13:22.415 --> 13:22.695
picture.

"Exploring the Intersection of Wisdom and Leadership: A Comparative Study of Business Leaders' Perspectives Across Cultures"

00:00:00 - This study, actually contextualizes the perspectives of, business leaders on the interaction between business and society. And, and I'm looking at the theoretical framework of wisdom, which I adopted from psychology and gerontology. And, this study is actually a replication of another study that my colleague and I, did about 15 years ago in Australia, New Zealand. And we wanted to replicate this study in, in a non-Western, country, to be able to do a comparative analysis to see how business leaders in, a society perceive or enact wisdom in their, leadership practices.
00:00:48 - the classic variant of grounded theory, which is very difficult to conduct, to be able to inductively develop a model of, wisdom, in the business context. And, so, which required us to go through a, a series of reation in terms of gathering data, analyzing data, and then getting back to the field to gather more data. And we repeated that process until we got to the point that which grounded theorists call it as theoretical saturation. We reached to the point that we, the model was theoretically saturated.
00:01:27 - or information about the model. And then that at that point, we stopped gathering data and we finalized the model, the executive wisdom model, which explains how, business leaders, enact wisdom in their practices system has been at the topic of philosophical discourses, for millennia, right? And it was until, just, 1975 that, gerontologists started looking at the concept. So wisdom appeared in modern studies, and gerontologists were the first people who started looking at that. And in the eighties, three groups of psychologists,
00:02:11 - and colleagues and, two, researchers in the us, Monica Del and Robert Sternberg at the same time, started looking at the concept of wisdom. They have a common view about the nature of wisdom, but they, they have some slightly different, different, Dion of it, which, I can explain that later. then, it was about 2005 that other disciplines like management, leadership, education, they started looking at the concept of wisdom. And, so they commonly, defined wisdom as an integration of cognitive ability
00:02:53 - or the way that we act, this wisdom. So, morality, cognition, and Emotion are the three key components that almost all the, wisdom researchers agree upon in terms of these are the pillars of, wisdom. And my work, actually builds on this foundation methodology is called grounded theory. And it, was, introduced my, to, researchers back in 1967, GLA and Esau Glazer, was active till late two years ago. He, he passed away,
00:03:34 - or so away, ago. And so they introduced this concept this way of developing all developing models or concept or a study, a context specific phenomena. And it offers a, an inductive way of, a study, topics under study or phenomenon. And it is, as opposed to the deductive, methodology, which you come up with a model, and then you go to the field, gather data, quantitative data, for example, through surveys, and then you test whether or not your hypothesis holds or they fail, or inductive is about asserting,

"Methodological Insights: Employing Grounded Theory to Explore Business Leadership and Wisdom in the Middle East"

00:04:19 - theory in mind. So you, go to the field with the sort of, blank, mind about it, it is impossible to be completely blank, but you try not to, influence your analysis of the data by, existing theories. You just let the data talk about itself, and then you analyze data. And in grounded theory, we, you do that in, through a, recursive process. You collect some interviews, which we did. We interviewed, senior, lead business leaders and about 35 business leaders.
00:05:00 - And we analyzed the data to see how these four, five business leaders, conceptualize with them or in inact wisdom. And we try to identify a common theme across these four, five. And then we adjusted our interview protocol based on this emerging themes from the first round of the interviews. And then we went back to the field, we interviewed another group of business leaders and our questions in this round, we were more focused on those emerging themes that we had identified in the first round. And then we gathered data, we analyzed the data, and we made our, interview questions even more focused,
00:05:42 - we call it theoretical sensitivity. We became more theoretically sensitive to the topic, to the emerging themes. We, we repeated this process multiple times until we reached the theoretical saturation point, and then we identified The key aspects of wisdom and of how these business leaders conceptualize and or enact with them. We were particularly interested in, the Middle East because of all these conflicts and challenges going on in, in that region. And we had the opportunity to collect data from, for example, African or South American or, east Asian countries.
00:06:24 - at least at this stage. We may look at the Eastern Asian countries and African countries later on, but at this stage, we, we thought it is better to look at the Middle Eastern, business leaders, because of all these things that are going on in the Middle East, to gain an understanding of how they define wisdom or wise leadership in the, in the business context. It would have, it would give us a good understanding of the similarities and differences between Western approach and non-Western approach. We, we try to a approach some, business leaders in, Arab countries.
00:07:04 - but later on they, refused to participate for the personal reasons. And, but so we ended up having, done all these interviews with 35 Iranians who, agreed to participate and they committed. And, and, we are very appreciative of that when we were analyzing data and we realized some surprising findings. so let me explain, the findings from the previous study, the original study that we did in Australia and New Zealand. So we found that, business leaders conceptualize wisdom as an integration of rationality and non rationality, all right, to define it
00:07:43 - or a balance between your rational decision making and your intuitive decision making. And they put more emphasis on emotions and intuitive decision making than on rationality or rational decision making. So when we, started gathering data from, the Middle East from Iran, we thought that because, in, this region, a states are religious and they have very strict moral codes, and they are the, theoretical, the, not they are Republican by govern. The governance is, informed by religion. so they are religious estate in almost all

"Understanding Wisdom in Business: Contrasting Perspectives Between Western and Middle Eastern Leadership"

00:08:27 - They, they have religious states. So we thought that because of this strict moral codes, that they follow, based on their religious, we should see, a even a stronger, more emphasis on ethics and non rationality when it comes to, business practices. But we found some, something completely different. We, we did, they, the emphasis they put on ethics was minimum and ethics was, relatively moderately ranked. And it, and what they emphasized more was, rationality and technic. So, it was knowledge and,
00:09:11 - And another surprising, finding was that if you, show some level of, emotions and empathy in your decisions, you may be seen as a weak leader. So you need to show that, prove that you are technically high and you have a high level of knowledge and expertise if you want to be seen as an a wise leader. And it was very surprising enough to, to us as well. So we thought that, whoa, that's interesting that ethics didn't come up that much. And also they, these business leaders, unlike, defining strong western societies,
00:09:50 - to make wise decisions in business context, you should not let your emotions influence your decisions. Whereas our funding from Australia and New Zealand said that you always need to leave room for your emotions in your decisions. From the Western perspective, it is, as I said, a wisdom is seen as a decision making capacity to, seek the common good, by achieving the wellbeing of self and others. So far, so good. So far they are similar. So the Iranian business leaders, they came on with, they, they had a similar, perception of wisdom in the business context.
00:10:32 - achieving the common goods while ensuring, the assuring the wellbeing of self and others. But the process to get to that end was different. So, as I said from the western perspective, it is about how you balance your emotions and your, cognition or cognitive ability. But for the irania, it was more about your cognitive ability. That's, the difference is mainly about the process, but the end is still the same. So that, my PhD, which I did back in 2009 and 2014, was among the first empirical studies
00:11:14 - And, so it informed, a business practices and leadership practices by providing empirical evidence of how wisdom can be enacted or embodied in, in the business context. So the main find, the main implications of that is that, so for business people, wisdom can, provide guidance or practical guideline about how to handle uncertain situations, especially when you are dealing with, business society complexities and, or socially complex
00:11:53 - So when you apply, wisdom, which, integrates three aspects based on the findings from this study, which is technique or, technical competence, we choose disposition and wise decision making. So you, you, you mainly the finding say that based on leader's competence or technic technical competencies or technique and, reach your disposition, you can predict whether or not and to what extent they are able to make wise decisions. And wise decision is characterized as to being timely, comprehensive, effective, and ethical. Alright, so this, the implications of this study is,

"Navigating Complex Decisions: The Role of Wisdom in Stakeholder Engagement"

00:12:40 - to show them how to handle uncertain situation, especially where, in the decision situation where there are more than one stakeholder is involved. So it's about, it gives them an idea or some measures about how to take into account multiple perspectives while you are making the decision, while you are taking into account they, they, the rules, accepted practices within that particular field. So the findings I finding show that wisdom is not just conceptual moral decision making, it's about how you take into account those bits and pieces
00:13:22 - of the field while you are looking at the get bigger picture.

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Conceptualizing and Contextualizing “Executive Wisdom” as a Framework for Business Leadership: A Grounded Theory Approach

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