EDOS 2022 week 26
Authoritarian leadership is actually hard to do well; Norway is an AI laggard; pragmatic social innovation of public services + the nature of problems, psychological safety in your own home (office)
Autoritarian leadership, a summary of the research
WHAT? Systematic review of the research on authoritarian leadership to understand how it affects performance, how research has evolved through the years, and suggests a research agenda going forward.
It’s INTERESTING that:
Authoritarian leadership manifests in several forms, e.g., depending on the range of motion afforded followers and the situation at hand
It would appear that authoritarian leadership is effective under situations with high stress, and when the hierarchical style is accepted. “Milder” forms also turn out to be useful under certain limited circumstances when solving highly technical problems.
The phenomenon has received more interest from researchers in Asia, widening the cultural context for the work
AND SO?
It is folly to categorically reject authoritarian leadership, but it is likely appropriate in only under limited circumstances, and probably by leaders who know how to apply it in the correct way
For digital development efforts, it is hard to imagine authoritarian leadership is appropriate, though it may be for infrastructure operations. But with great care.
If I may: authoritarian leadership may be most prevalent among leaders who use it as a preferred style rather than as a deliberate approach, which is where it is least appropriate.
Norway is last in building AI competence
WHAT? Research on what kind of talent that a country needs to effectively and ethically use artificial intelligence, and how to measure such talent.
It’s INTERESTING that:
Several data sources are used to measure the prevalance of AI-skills, including Linkedin profiles, patent applications, as well as Github and Kaggle achievements.
There are also useful indicators on how well positioned countries are to build further AI skills, including educational capacity within engineering science, computer science, mathematics, etc., and also available infrastructure, national strategies, etc.
Norway is dead last among countries that we would compare ourselves with, even though we invest above average in relevant research development and STEM education
AND SO?
This adds to several findings that indicate a significant shortfall in digital competencies in Norway, by any measure
Even conservative use of AI requires deep understanding of how it works
The productivity improvements we need to sustain our welfare model will require significant AI-based solutions
Our problem may be that our otherwise good centers of expertise are too small to grow and can’t find people fast enough.
Social innovation, pretty pragmatically
WHAT? From Venice and Bologna, a proposed and already tested framework to initiate social innovation in the public sector. This piece is useful also because it clarifies some terms that often get used in ambiguous ways.
It’s INTERESTING that:
Much of the need for social innovation as a “magical concept” emerges as important services that require coordination among many and often quite diverse actors
The authors point out that public agencies are essential to realizeing social innovation, and emphasize the notion of “co-production” to this end
They propose a three-step program to accomplish this: 1) understand the context for the need for social innovation, 2) find out what actually works, og 3) facilitate co-production and co-creation of innovative public services
AND SO?
This article makes a commendable and credible attempt at connecting the idealism of social innovation with the hard and unglamorous work of improving public services. I hope people read and discuss this.
In keeping with “design thinking” the proposed approach advocates a deep understanding of what the services are meant to accomplish, independently of their previous form
With time, I hope this evolves into something even more iterative, i.e., that explores what actually works when co-creation and co-production are tightly integrated
Bonus
On self management and psychological safety for remote offices
The importance of local hidden heroes in regional digital development
Next week: Automating Devops; public service leaders in a squeeze; EU citizens and digitalization + learning complexity with Lego and Raspberry, technical debt, teams adapt