Beyond Rules in Society and Business

This work challenges traditional tenets about behavioural regulation in society as well as business. Verner Petersen asserts that attempts to solve ethical problems by creating explicit guidelines, codes and rules discourage individual reflection and responsibility. Likewise, attempts to put important aspects of human life into tabular form, by devising schemes for counting everything that matters, have serious flaws, leading to further erosion of individual responsiblity and insight. The book stresses the importance of tacit knowledge, ineffable values and a shared social grammar, as the foundation for individual responsiblity and ethical awareness. It shows how the moral fabric of societies may be inculcated, changed and kept alive through individual decisions and actions. Based upon these ideas the author argues that the open-endedness of self-regulation is the only viable alternative to modern bureaucratic attempts to regulate and control behaviour. Instead of explicit regulation from the outside, putting a leash on a straining economic logic, it argues that this logic can be contained by the self-regulation of business and the responsible entrepreneurship of individual decision-makers. To make this possible Petersen presents a new view of leadership. He knows how spirited leadership can give direction, sense and latitude to employees, and asserts the importance of tacit knowledge and ineffable values for achieving coherence and unity of purpose.