Article

Lessons for leaders: Positiveorganization studies meetsNiccolo Machiavelli

Miguel Pina e CunhaNova School of Business and Economics, Portugal

Stewart CleggUniversity of Technology Sydney, Australia and Nova School of Business and Economics, Portugal

Armenio RegoUniversidade de Aveiro, Portugal

Abstract

Machiavelli should be a central and canonical text for management education, even in the age of

positive organizational literatures. We give it this role by considering the case of the virtuous

leader. Our proposition is simple: virtuous leaders live and act, like anybody else, in the power

circuits that are constitutive of reality. Therefore, they participate in power dynamics that some-

times make them face the need to decide in ways that do not correspond to normative positive

precepts. Machiavelli shows that even virtuous leaders must do what needs to be done, while

trying to preserve one’s values and move in the direction of noble, high purpose goals.

Keywords

Machiavelli, power, virtues, leadership, virtuous leaders

Introduction

Machiavelli has had a walk-on role in several contributions to this journal (Acevedo, 2011;Barisione, 2009; Burns, 2005; Fairhurst and Cooren, 2009; Gronn, 2005; Gaunder, 2007;Morrell, 2006; Tourish and Vatcha, 2005). We propose to give him a feature role. To do so,we draw on what may seem, initially, to be an unlikely context. The context is that ofPositive Organization Scholarship (POS; Cameron and Spreitzer, 2011). We shall developa script from the resources that POS provides to create a frame within which Machiavelli’scontribution to leadership can be reassessed. To do so one needs to depart from simplisticinterpretations of Machiavelli as Machiavellian; when one does so, it is possible to agree with

Corresponding author:

Miguel Pina e Cunha, Nova School of Business and Economics, Campus de Campolide, 1099-032 Lisbon, Portugal.

Email: mpc@novasbe.pt

Leadership

9(4) 450–465

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DOI: 10.1177/1742715012455355

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Benner’s (2009) interpretation that Machiavelli educates readers on how to avoid deceptivepolitical rhetoric and appearances, and how to read reality. In this sense, Machiavelli isneither perverse nor outdated. It is thinking about Machiavellianism that is in error.

Machiavelli has been a persistent and popular trope offered to managers and leaders (Jay,1967, 1994; McGuire and Hutchings, 2006). Machiavelli is usually seen as having referred tothe effectiveness of power without making reference to ethical and moral standards. The termMachiavellianism, used to describe individuals who behave immorally to achieve their owndesired ends, has entered into popular discourse as a word with a heavy and pejorative bag-gage. As a dark disposition (Judge et al., 2009: 867), it has been ‘used to define a personalitytrait characterized by cunning, manipulation, and the use of any means necessary to achieveone’s political ends’. The adjective, thus, compresses all that is negative about those in powerand chimes with fashionably cynical perspectives on management (Kellaway, 2010: 12).

There is more in Machiavelli, however, than what is normally called Machiavellianism.Berridge (2001: 539) argues that ‘Machiavelli does not deserve the charge . . . of corruptingthe art of diplomacy’. Mansfield (1996) considers that Aristotle (one of the fathers of theoriesof virtues) ‘anticipated the political realism of Machiavelli without being captured by it’(Fuller, 1997: 945). Jackson (2000: 433) states ‘The Prince has deceived many readers overthe ages. Coming to it with prejudices derived from Machiavelli’s reputation, they note onlythe crudest of his arguments. They read the book quickly and superficially (. . .)’. Accordingto Jackson (2000: 434), ‘Because of the difficulty of knowing who is virtuous and who isvicious, Machiavelli tells a prince to act as if most people are vicious [‘‘A man who wants toact virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous’’:Machiavelli, 1961: 50]’. Such an attitude is but prudence in the face of ‘the many who are notvirtuous’. Machiavelli, referring to more than ‘dark traits’ or cold-blooded agents in ignor-able situations, is neither outdated nor irrelevant (Calhoon, 1969). In fact, some contingen-cies (e.g. situations characterized by strain and dissatisfaction) seem particularly open toMachiavellian approaches (Gemmill and Heisler, 1972).

Machiavelli is, above all, a realist, not a utopian who assumes the best of everyone. Webelieve familiarity with Machiavelli’s work to be of great value for any politically competentperson, especially those who are managers. Moreover, politically incompetent managers(Baddeley and James, 1987), those who cannot practice ‘power steering’ (Buchanan andBadham, 1999), need especially to study his lessons. Machiavelli should be mandatory read-ing for the educated manager. When combined with virtues such as courage, wisdom, andtemperance, the reflections advanced by the Florentine may sometimes be necessary forpursuing noble aims and making a positive difference in the world.

In this article we discuss Machiavelli in relation to POS (see e.g. Cameron, 2006; Cameronand Spreizter, 2011) and suggest that dialogue between Machiavelli and POS acts as a triggerfor synthesis between idealism and realism in management thinking. The notions of realismand idealism are both open to interpretation (Moberg, 2006) but in a way they are combinedin The Prince (Il Principe) as an exercise aiming to help leaders create more progressiverepublics. Leaders need both to be idealistic and to strive for the positive, the latter requiringbeing pragmatic (Locke, 2006). Educating managers therefore implies more than merelyaccumulating knowledge of technique, a point raised by Nitin Nohria, Dean of theHarvard Business School: ‘We needed to focus on cultivating judgment not basic analytictools’ (in Middleton and Light, 2011: 27). We cannot imagine a better thinker to cultivatejudgment in the field of leadership and power than Niccolo Machiavelli. As we will discussthroughout the article, Machiavelli’s writings are rich and ambiguous. They allow a

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multiplicity of interpretations, and their equivocality will help students understand thesubtleties involved in the management of ethics in dense power circuits.

The article is organized around the following sections. First, we offer a brief introduction toMachiavelli and relate his ideas to POS. Second, we discuss why Machiavellian leaders needvirtues, and also suggest that practicing virtues may sometimes require a Machiavellian attitude.Third, we discuss why not all virtues make virtuous leaders, particularly if virtues are not com-plemented with realism. Fourth, we advance seven Machiavelli-based observations for the virtu-ous leader. We contribute to the management literature by suggesting that virtuous leadershipmay involve a combination of virtue and realism rather than simply the accumulation of virtues.This is aligned with the idea that virtues express themselves better in the golden mean and that ameasure of realism may be necessary to temper idealized virtuousness and to protect the lessvirtuous from the ‘pure’. Leaders, in summary, necessarily have to act as virtuosi in the context ofcomplex and dynamic relational systems constituted by power relations (Clegg et al., 2006).

Machiavelli’s power

Niccolo Machiavelli was a theorist who understood power and who still remains an invalu-able guide to modern politics. He was a Florentine diplomat and author who lived from 1469to 1527, and is often credited with being one of the founding fathers of strategy.Machiavelli’s book The Prince (written around 1513) describes the forms and practices ofgoverning a state. The fascination of The Prince resides in the fact that Machiavelli did notdescribe how government should work (as many authors before him did) but how it actuallyworks. He had little time for noble and normative theories and focused instead on howstrategy should be done. Machiavelli, with his concerns with the strategic use of power is, asseveral authors have suggested, an ‘anthropologist of power’ (Clegg, 1989; Kuper, 1995;Latour, 1988; von Vacano, 2006). Rather than viewing power normatively or stipulatively heregards it much as an ethnographer would: as defined by situated action.

Machiavelli wrote The Prince in a situation of great political turmoil, when Italy wasdivided into many City States that either were conquered or were conquering one another,with shifting support (and success) from the German, the Spanish and the French kings, aswell as from the Vatican. Being involved in negotiations between senior state officials,Machiavelli was less interested in the ceremony of governing than in the reality of politics.As he puts it (1961: 40), ‘the main foundations of every state . . . are good laws and goodarms; and because you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are goodarms, good laws inevitably follow, I shall not discuss laws but give my attention to arms’.Implicitly, Machiavelli criticizes theories on governance that are based on contracts, lawsand static notions of virtue. For him, it is the power to be able to implement a law thatmakes the law in the first place: policy follows power.

Machiavelli develops a deep critique of many of the established ‘statecraft’ texts byancient philosophers such as Cicero and Seneca (see e.g. Bragues, 2010). Both of thesewriters were hugely influential and espoused that a leader should rule virtuously. Theirinfluence was found in the advice manuals produced by some of Machiavelli’s contempor-aries, who again emphasized virtuous and civilized behaviour. Machiavelli points to a seriesof paradoxes around virtue. For instance, he points out the difficulties of a ruler beinggenerous: ‘There is nothing so self-defeating as generosity: in the act of practicing it, youlose the ability to do so, and you become either poor and despised or, seeking to escape pov-erty, rapacious and hated; and generosity results in your being both’ (Machiavelli, 1961: 53).

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Statements such as these, one might think, neglect the power of reciprocation (Gouldner,1960). But one can easily accept that this Machiavelli perspective is of great value at least forleaders who need to be prudent not to be napping in contexts where the bon sauvage is notthe best way to represent humans.

Machiavelli developed a practical manual of strategic and tactical advice that allows leadersto govern their states effectively. He wrote that sensing troubles is the key to successful strat-egy: ‘as the doctors say of a wasting disease, to start with it is easy to cure but difficult todiagnose; after a time . . . it becomes easy to diagnose but difficult to cure’ (Machiavelli, 1961:12). Hence, one has to take counter-measures as soon as troubles are visible on the horizon.Machiavelli uses the Romans as example: they never avoided war ‘because they knew thatthere is no avoiding of war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others’ (1961: 12).For Machiavelli, power, conflict and war are at the centre of strategy.

Machiavelli portrays Cesare Borgia, son of the Pope and feared prince of his times, as anexampleof extraordinarystrategic foresight.Cesarewasextremely successful inacquiring resourcesfor and enlarging his state through wars. His major ally was his father, Pope Alexander VI. Todemonstrate the strategic thinking of Cesare, Machiavelli explains how he guarded against thepossibility of a hostile successor to the papacy that would not support him. First, he destroyed allthe families of the rulers he had despoiled so that the new Pope could not develop allianceswith themagainst him; second, hemade friendswith all the patricians inRome; third, he controlledthe College of Cardinals as far as he could (because it controlled the Pope); finally, he acquiredenough power to withstand a direct attack. Machiavelli praises Cesare as strategic mind whofocused on exactly those things that allowed him to enlarge and strengthen his empire.

Even though he was no sentimentalist, Machiavelli realized that what strategy dictated,prudence might counsel against; yet, Realpolitik does not allow for too much pondering. Hebelieved that cruelty could be used well or badly: if it is employed fast, used once and for all,and one’s safety depends on it, it is used well. Machiavelli argued in favour of the ‘economy ofviolence’, advocating violence ‘to end, not to widen or to open, new conflicts’ and ‘only toprevent and deter more violence in the interest of political security’ (Jackson, 2000: 433). In asimilar vein, he argues that it is far better to be feared than loved: ‘love is secured by a bond ofgratitude which men, wretched creatures that they are, break when it is to their advantage todo so; but fear is strengthened by a dread of punishment which is always effective’ (1961: 54).

A last example of the pragmatic stance that Machiavelli takes towards strategy is hisperspective on how a leader should honour their word. He acknowledged that it is praise-worthy to honour one’s word; he continues ‘nonetheless contemporary experience showsthat princes who have achieved great things have been those who have given their wordlightly, who have known how to trick men with their cunning, and who, in the end, haveovercome those abiding by honest principles’ (1961: 56). Therefore he concludes that a rulercannot, and must not, honour his word when it places him at a disadvantage and whenthe reasons for which he made his promise no longer exist’ (1961: 57). Think of modernpoliticians – how true is Machiavelli’s description!

Machiavelli knew how important it is to display good qualities and hide others. ForMachiavelli, the ruler must not let good qualities hinder successful rule. In fact, ethicalitycan be harmful. A prince should appear to have good qualities, however: ‘men in generaljudge by their eyes rather than by their hands; because everyone is in a position to watch, feware in a position to come in close touch with you. Everyone sees what you appear to be,few experience what you really are’ (1961: 58). Hence representation of what a ruler is doing(in modern terms, press coverage, strategic plans, annual reports, mission statements, spin

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doctoring, etc.) is more important than reality. Rhetoric creates reality; appearance is moreimportant than action. For Machiavelli, power games are the reality of leadership; hence,idle philosophizing about how we ought to act is in vain.

Machiavelli’s narrative poses the all-important dilemma of ‘dirty hands’. Machiavelli’sprince, if he wants to maintain power, needs to learn how to do good and how to do evil –and make a decision about which action, regardless of its moral consequences, will enhancehis position. In other words, sometimes leaders have to accommodate a little evil in order tomaintain a position of leadership – from which position they can foster their conception ofthe good. Think of politicians who order the invasion of countries, accepting the civiliancasualties that will ensue, using as their rationale the necessity of removing a dictator inorder to bring about ‘regime change’. Or think about the CEO who sacks employees in thename of a brighter future for those remaining with the firm. Both cases are examples of the‘dirty hand’ problematic: in order to achieve what is promulgated and rationalized as ahigher good, some ethically questionable activities in the here-and-now are legitimizedand authorized. Machiavelli’s answer to the dilemma was an amoral one: to remain powerfulis the highest priority; doing what others may see as good or evil has to be determined bythat over-arching objective. Outside of power one can do very little; therefore maintainingthose power relations that sustain one’s leadership is the central issue. One can readily doneither good nor harm without being at the centre of these power relations.

Machiavelli has been counterpointed to Hobbes as one of two classical theorists of powerwho prefigure distinct approaches. Hobbes prefigures a concern with power as a source ofprime motion and an essentially causal mechanism. Much of post-war political sciencescholarship, which had a decisive influence on organization theory conceptualizations,stressed a causal conception of power that amounted to Hobbes’ (1651) metaphors beingfiltered through Dahl (1957). By contrast, Clegg (1989) argues, Machiavelli’s concern withpower as strategy in the form of situated actions prefigures themes that have emerged afterFoucault (1979), themes that stress strategies of power irrespective of a concern for precisecasual mechanisms. The bias in contemporary scholarship has shifted from the Hobbesian/Dahlian axis to that of the Machiavellian/Foucauldian axis, as the debates collected inThe Handbook of Power (Clegg and Haugaard, 2009) largely demonstrate.

Power and positive organizational scholarship

We seek to derive some ideas from Machiavelli that may be considered by those advocatingPOS. Such a seemingly improbable dialogue aims to rescue both Machiavelli and POS frommischaracterization. On the part of POS, it has been accused of naivete (Fineman, 2006)while Machiavelli suffers from being the poster-boy caricature of the master of evil (Jackson,2000). POS scholars, of course, recognize the world of competition and conflict aroundthem. They decided, however, to distance themselves from this, by shifting their attentionto the ‘best’ of humans, as pointed out by Cameron et al. (2003: 3) in the introduction totheir seminal book. Focusing only on the extraordinary is, however, as one-sided as focusingonly on the deviant, the standard critique by POS of non-positive psychology.

Being positive is not enough in itself to make the world a better place. Positive approachesneed to be realistic and thus have to consider the role of power relations in the constructionand destruction of positivity. Power needs to be firmly on the POS agenda rather thanignoring it in the interest of positivity. It is for this reason that we see the inclusion ofMachiavelli as critical for positive organization scholarship because few authors discussed

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the nature of power so vigorously and realistically. Non-specialists invariably think of poweras a negative and prohibitive phenomenon, a tendency encouraged analytically by a stress oncausal negation or limiting by one of the other as the essence of power (Dahl, 1957; see thediscussion in Clegg, 1989). The classical case of this is the power vested in monarchy,captured in the right to demand execution with the phrase ‘off with his head’; it is thisallusion that Foucault (1979) reverses when he says it is time to chop off the head of thesovereign in political theory, in order to free power as a concept from the constraints of itsgenealogical conception on the Hobbesian axis.

The sovereign concept of power as a form of prohibition and nay saying should be abandonedalong with the notion that power is always opposed to legitimate authority. The virtuosity ofpower needs to be acknowledged. While power is most often thought of in prohibitive andnegative ways, there is a consistent tendency shared by theorists, including Machiavelli, Follett,Parsons andFoucault, to study the positive elements of power alongside the negative (Clegg et al.,2006). Power can (and is frequently necessary to) do things andmake (both bad and good) thingshappen. Pfeffer (2010: 177) argues: ‘If you are going to do good – for educational systems, publicworks, breast cancer, or shareholders – you are going to need to be in power’, by which we thinkhe should mean in a determinate position in power relations. Power can be creative, generativeand dynamic: it can be shared, distributed, used to attain goals shared with others.

Machiavelli can be deployed to contest three simplistic ideas. First, Machiavelli was notan example of Machiavellianism, and it is possible to see in several passages of The Prince atreatise on prudence and practical wisdom for statesmen (Jackson, 2000). In The Prince,Machiavelli offered a work that can be read as pragmatically concerned with the leadershipof one of the two major enterprises of the day: the state. (The other major enterprise, ofcourse, was the church, which in Florentine politics had a history of being mixed up with thestate, in any case.) Machiavelli provides a careful combination of ethics with realism thatmay be described, in the contemporary language of political correctness, as a combination ofhard and soft power (Courpasson, 2000; Nye, 2008).

Second, neither virtue nor virtuosity is at odds with Machiavelli’s thinking. On the con-trary: virtu was a core concept in Machiavelli’s theorizing. Virtu should not be equated withmoral virtue but with the ability to cope with a given circumstance with raison d’etat. Virtuesare contextual, learned habits that reflect and involve discriminating moral judgment anddeliberation, activities that form part of an interdependent narrative of what it is to be virtu-ous. Meinecke (1957: 41) argued that Machiavelli was ‘the first person to discover the realnature of raison d’etat’. The statement may be questionable, in view of Aristotle’s (350 BC)account in the Politics and in The Athenian Constitution, as a reviewer for the journal thought-fully pointed out. Aristotle sets out in great detail the nature of different kinds of governmentand their propensity to different forms of tyranny, which underpins his argument for consti-tutionalism. Aristotle’s political project is to try to outline a form of government where theinterests of the ruling class and what is good per se cohere and the fact that he outlines an idealversion should not discount the empirical basis for that argument.What is good for the state isnot necessarily aligned with what is ordinarily seen as morally good.

Politically astute leaders need to practice a number of virtues, amongst which would befollowing advice offered by Machiavelli when he recognized ‘how praiseworthy it is for aprince to honor his word and to be straightforward rather than crafty in his dealings’ (1961:54). The idea that virtuous leaders are the opposite of Machiavellian leaders is, thus, an unrea-sonable simplification. The good, the bad and the ugly are, as Sergio Leone (1966) was wellaware, shifting categories: the bad sometimes do great and wonderful things; in darkness and in

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anguish, the good sometimes do ugly things, and sometimes the bad can rescue truth frombeauty and meaning from belief (poetically in Browne, 2002; prosaically in Pfeffer, 1992).

Third, Machiavelli’s recommendations may be read in multiple ways, situating contradictoryinterpretations of his texts in an indexicality that sounds irresistiblyMachiavellian. As beautifullyobserved by Geerken (1976: 351), ‘He is Machiavelli the atheist, positivist, naturalist, realist,existentialist, pragmatist and scientist; he is Machiavelli the Christian, the proto-Jesuit, proto-fascist, proto-Marxist; Machiavelli the Jacobin, the Jansenist, the bourgeois, the revolutionary.’‘He’, the same author concluded (1976: 351), ‘is Machiavelli the radical enigma’. Linear interpret-ations are limited interpretations; literal interpretations represent death – all attempts to stipulatemeaning in one way only are death to the imagination and its possibilities, so let us not be literal.

Virtuous leadership

Machiavelli argued that it is far better to be feared than loved. The bond of love is one thatcan be broken for one’s advantage, but the bond of fear is strengthened by a dread ofpunishment ‘which is always effective’ (1961: 54). But Machiavelli’s princes thrive onvirtu, a combination of inner strength, resoluteness, decisiveness, and boldness. The rulershould use virtu. Fear wrapped in a layer of virtues describes a prince’s path to power:tyrants who rule in fear tend to present and justify their deeds with some virtuous vision.Everything Machiavelli ‘writes turns around a set of values that he makes luminously clear:the welfare of the citizens, the independence and stability of the political order (especially itsenduring stability) and above all glory – for the political leader and his country’ (McIntosh,1984: 185). In this sense, his writings included a strong moral element, one that did notpreclude the need to take drastic remedies to counter the forces that corrupt society andrender the social body less vital and healthy (Galie and Bopst, 2006). As change managementscholars advise (Kotter, 1996), the achievement of a positive/bright future may involveimmediate danger and hardship. In this sense, the goodness of the future justifies the harsh-ness of the present – a recommendation with some Machiavellian influence that finds con-temporary echo in those political leaders who, post global financial crisis (GFC), arepromoting the politics of austerity today in the greater interest of some future tomorrow.

Extreme cases of leading through fear, such as, for example, Pol Pot (who was repeatedlydescribed as a quiet and gentle man, two social virtues), were motivated by ethical concerns.Pol Pot’s evildoing was fuelled by a vision of an egalitarian, classless society that implied theelimination of all traces of bourgeoisie from Cambodia/Kampuchea, including the bourgeoisthemselves (Cunha et al., 2010; Kiernan, 2008). As history shows, revolutions and revolution-aries in different times and places demand ‘a world reborn into innocence through a final,apocalyptic massacre’ (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998: 992). In other words, the good virtuousfuture often involves a bleak present – again, an idea of which Machiavelli would not havedisapproved. Machiavelli’s leaders rule by fear but speak in the name of virtue: they requiremodesty and prudence. As suggested by Pfeffer (1992: 315), ‘if you were Machiavelli . . . youwould have been modest in your own bonus and stock’, a prescription that would have workedto the benefit of many finance executives involved in the production of the GFC of 2008.Unlike Gordon Gekko, from the movieWall Street (Stone, 1987), Machiavelli would considerthat greed makes princes appear less virtuous to citizens, which is a potential danger.

Machiavelli observed that men are more sensible to appearance than to substance, which iseasy to explain: many are familiar with representations of the prince but only a few know himas he really is. Machiavelli’s observation has since been confirmed by modern science. People

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trust eloquence more than honesty (Rogers and Norton, 2010): it is not enough to be virtuous;one needs to display virtues but too much virtue can be threatening. Cooperate with otherswho want to compete and your virtue will not stop your defeat – as game theorists explain. AsMachiavelli pointed out, princes should be viewed as rich in piety, not in brutality, but mustmake sure that piousness is not misinterpreted as a license for others to abuse. Hence theimportance of actions whose indexical meaning leaves them open to question: situations tendto be too complex to be interpreted in excessively linear ways, andmore virtues will not alwayslead to greater virtuosity. An excess of prudence may be read as a sign of cowardice. Tolerancetowards the bad deeds of a totalitarian or fanatical power may actually reinforce totalitar-ianism and fanaticism. Authenticity is positive but companies with strong media exposureneed leaders with good acting skills. In summary, the accumulation of virtues will not neces-sarily lead to greater amounts of virtuosity. Virtuous leaders know that they need to stay at agolden mean, distant from either absence or excess.

Seven observations on Machiavelli and leadership

‘Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.’‘Oscar Wilde’

It is now possible to draw several lessons from Machiavelli for the leader schooled in politicalrealism. A positive approach to organizations and management should not cloud the fact thatorganizations breed both positive and negative relations – hence the criticism it attracted(Fineman, 2006; Hackman, 2008). Leaders who innocently ignore the negative and only accen-tuate the positive do so at their own risk. AsMachiavelli wrote inThe Prince, any person who inevery situation acts as a good personwill be destroyed by themanywho are not good. Therefore,unless a leader is sure about the good character of those who surround him, there is a need to actprudently and consider the following observations, inspired by Machiavelli’s view of power.

Policy follows power

AsMachiavelli observed, policy is made in the context of already existing power relations, in thesame sense that strategizing is done inside existing structures. Ignoring power dynamics andtheir consequences, therefore, is simply inadvisable when one is a participant in the shaping oforganizing. As Clegg (2011: 194) put it, ‘power is embedded in the relational shaping of theworld’. Even if one does not want to engage with politics, politics will engage with one.

Don’t be evil – but remember that negativity is inescapable

Even virtuous, healing leaders have to deal with toxicity (Frost, 2003). Toxicity is inevitable,whether leaders like it or not. When decisions are made, expected and unexpected, positiveand negative implications arise. Not all those affected will like what has been decided. Assuch, there is opportunity for dislikes to turn relations toxic and every possibility that thepositive may become negative as relationships unfold (Cunha et al., 2009). What positive/virtuous leaders can do is to create mechanisms to make toxicity less poisonous. They mayact as toxin handlers.

Negativity may be inevitable but it has detrimental consequences for the leader if notmanaged appropriately. From this, two implications can be drawn: (1) do all the harm thatneeds to be done as quickly as possible, and (2) keep in mind that generosity only benefits the

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leader when it is noticed. With regards to the first aspect, actions that will make the leadervulnerable should be done speedily and once and for all. Such actions may include anythingthat stimulates politicking and ferments uncertainty, especially major change programs suchas downsizing, top management team recomposition, and the like. It is not in the interest ofthe leader to delay such interventions more than is strictly necessary; they may be painfulbut can be brief. In the second case, the leader must make sure that people will perceivegenerosity as a benefit derived from their leadership rather than from some contextual,governmental, or other pressure.

Virtues are not always virtuous

Machiavelli is often criticized as amoral and silent with regard to ethics in less than adequatereadings of his writings. However, in fact, as McIntosh (1984: 184) observed, his writings hingeon a set of values. On the other hand, ‘virtues’ are not always virtuous. Consider the case ofreligious fundamentalists. Their behaviour is often motivated by higher values, articulated inthe name of the purity of the text(s) that define them. But purity, the whitest of virtues, may beextremely dangerous (Douglas, 1966). Purity abhors the impure. In the name of values and theassociated practical ethics, the pure claim the right to kill in the name of purity, border control,and the elimination of contaminants. Maintaining purity may often be lethal because it has tobe protected from the dirt and impurities that endanger and pollute it. In the sphere of socialrelations this leads readily to genocide, ethnic cleansing and organizational border control.

One needs to consider that the consequences or pure virtuous acts are not always positiveand that leaders need to make sure that discourses that transpire virtue are not actuallycreating less than virtuous organizations. Fuller (1997: 945) argued: ‘At any rate, the merelygood do not understand the necessities of the political life and try to behave as if necessitywere either absent or only temporarily there. The truly virtuous are not merely good is thissense; they keep their eye on both true virtue and the actual necessities of their time andplace’. As Brenkert (2009) suggested, referring to Google’s decision to self-censor its pres-ence on the Internet in order to remain in China, companies do not infringe the integrityprinciple when they adopt moral compromises, when they are compelled to violate import-ant values or principles for prosecuting higher values or principles. In his view:

violating a human right, under the circumstances Google faces, does not mean that wrong is notdone. It does mean that Google is not pure. It has compromised . . . [T]hough its integrity has been

sullied, it is mistaken to contend that one’s integrity demands purity. Rather, the integrity of thoseinvolved in business, political, and social action must be focused on an inner core of values overthe long run. Consequently, Google might well better view its mantra, ‘Do not be evil’, more as anideal, rather than a directive that can never be violated. Only the moral saint may be able to realize

this ideal in all his or her activities. However, the integrity of ordinary humans and businesses doesnot require that they act only at the ideal (or supererogatory) level. (Brenkert, 2009: 471)

The negative is essential to the positive

As the saying goes, there can be too much of a good thing. More and more positivity doesnot translate into greater leadership or better organization. In a dialectical perspective, toomuch positivity will lead to negativity. Sometimes negative decisions and deeds are necessaryto protect the positive, a paradox confronting every manager (see Hill and Lineback, 2011:19). As Bragues (2008) put it, leaders who act according to normative precepts, without

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understanding reality as it is, may end up being perceived by others as ‘suckers and victims’,which is neither virtuous nor positive.

Consider the work of Fredrickson and Losada (2005). These authors suggested that to pro-mote flourishing behaviour, experiences of positivity should outnumber experiences of negativ-ity. They also found that a positivity ratio (i.e. the proportion of positive versus negativeexperiences) of 2.9 or above characterizes individuals classified as flourishing, and that the posi-tive effects of the positivity ratio do not increase indefinitely. Flourishing may actually decreaseafter an upper limit has been reached. The implication is clear: after a certain point, more posi-tivity may become negative. Punishment of the deviant may thus be necessary to protect thevirtuous. For example, tolerance may lead to the normalization of corruption; cohesion maystimulate self-censorship, and psychological safety may lead to idleness. Positive affect withoutsome degree of negativity may lead to ‘ultrahappy’ (Oishi et al., 2007; Rego et al., 2011) indi-viduals caught up in a kind of ‘Pollyanna’ effect (i.e. a thinking pattern which leads people topredict that ‘everything will be alright’, even in the face of contradictory evidence; Goodhart,1985), thus facing organizational problems and opportunities with a lack of realism.

The ideology of the positive may be intoxicating

Proponents present the positive turn in organization studies as a source of new and refreshingunderstanding of organizational life. However, an ideology of positivity may become intoxicat-ing and debilitating (Ehrenreich [2009]elaborates this point). The pressure for organizationalcitizenship and organizational virtuousness may actually lead to cynicism (Andersson andBateman, 1997). The creation of positive spaces by design may stimulate the inauthentic.When crises knock at organizational doors, organizational members working in positive com-panies may suffer more and react more adversely than those who work in less positive contextsand, thus, are not surprised by bad news.Moreover, the creation of positive cultures of inclusionbuilt around the notion of an enlarged family may in reality stimulate the alienation of peopleand decrease the vitality of the organization. The assumption that families are a good thing fliesin the face of much evidence to the contrary; dysfunctional families framemany people’s experi-ences of the trope and thus are not a secure frame for organizational meaning. People may be asalienated by the existentially artificial as intoxicated by desire (Frost, 2003).

Don’t be naıf: virtuous leaders lead in the ‘real’ world

As pointed out before, the fascination of The Prince comes from the fact that Machiavelli didnot describe how government should work but how it actually works. The management lit-erature is rich in positive prescriptions that most well-intentioned people will certainly agreewith (e.g. Giacalone, 2007). Positive leaders may (and should) pursue noble and normativetheories but they also need to focus on how strategy is done in practice. And it may not beimprudent to consider that ‘we are not always the most noble of creatures’ (Leach et al., 2003).

The real world of organizations involves substantial doses of the negative – hence thequalification of Machiavelli by his admirers as realistic (Miesing and Preble, 1985; for aconfirmation see Margolis and Walsh’s [2003] analysis of the ‘combat’ discourse adopted bythe business press, in the case of their study by the Wall Street Journal). Ghoshal vocallywarned against ‘bad’ management theories and denounced the negative assumptions abouthuman nature present in the dominant theorizing in management and economics (Ghoshal,2005; Ghoshal and Moran, 2005).

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It is not from piety or goodness that better management flourishes in dangerous times.Machiavelli wrote The Prince for a political leader in a time of war. Claims that his lessonsare impious should consider two points. First, he does not invite leaders to act in a cruel or evilway unless it is not possible to do otherwise. Second, one should note that there is Heaven andthere is Earth: ‘the Kingdom of Caesar is graceless, the Kingdom of God is a realm of grace;what is Caesar’s is impersonal, concerned with appearances and publicity, whereas what isGod’s is intensely private, personal and interior. The former cultivates pride and competitionfor power over men; the latter celebrates humility and community among men’ (Geerken, 1976:366). Machiavelli was writing for those in the Kingdom of Caesar. Statesman and managersmust deal with what they find here-and-now, not what they wish for in theKingdom ofHeaven.

Avoid confusing Machiavelli with Machiavellianism

Machiavelli can be interpreted in many different ways but some of the meanings of theadjective ‘Machiavellian’ have become a caricature. ‘Machiavellian’ leaders have becomealmost synonymous with corporate psychopaths, practicing ruthless manipulation andenjoying the pain they inflict on others (Boddy, 2011; Kellerman, 2004), an equivalencethat is obviously misapplied. As summarized by Judge et al. (2009: 870), ‘most 20th centurydescriptions of Machiavelli describe a method of management that is cunning, manipulative,immoral, and comfortable with the use of brute force’; however, the original discussions ofpower contained in The Prince are far less evil than commonly described.

The popular understanding of Machiavelli’s advice as an invitation to the use of force andcruelty should be replaced by the original’s subtlety and contingency. Brute force may helpto achieve one’s goals but it also may lead to ruin. Machiavelli praises virtu but offers thecondemnation of Remirro de Orco as an example (Chapter VII): sent by Cesare Borgia torestore order to Romagna, de Orco rapidly achieves his goal using brute force withouthesitation, gaining a detested reputation. Solving two problems at once, Borgia hacks himinto two pieces and shows his body in a public square. This saves Borgia from the threat of apotential and already feared rival, and relieves the populace from the brutality of theoppressor. As Machiavelli (1961: 25) remarks, ‘The brutality of this spectacle kept thepeople at the Romagna at once appeased and stupefied.’

It is this type of example that justified the creation of the adjective ‘Machiavellian’. ButMachiavelli is never unilaterally explicit in the defence of force. He was too sensible to thepower of fortuna – the extrinsic forces that act upon human beings, partly external partlyconstructed (Balaban, 1990), that today we call ‘contingency’. No one will defend cruelty inthe application of sanctions, but rigor and impartiality are certainly something to applaud –a reading that some might argue is actually unMachiavellian (Sullivan, 2010). DismissingMachiavelli as immoral and ignoring his theorizing is not recommended for those interestedin leading: leading well and pursuing virtuous goals entails developing knowledge about howpower operates and about the conflicts that it sometimes involves. Virtuous leaders will bebetter leaders if they know that they have been used, as well as how to use others.

Conclusion

The recent attraction of organization studies for positivity comes with a price: a lack ofemphasis on what is not positive and the risk of nurturing Prozac leadership styles(Collinson, 2012). Accentuating the positive is all very well but does not negate dialectics:

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what is positive only gains its meaning from that which is negative. The negative is necessaryfor any conception of the positive. Hence, to stress only the positive, in a positive scholar-ship, is to risk a Panglossian view of the world, in which all that is for the best is accented inorder to produce the best of all possible worlds. The risk is that all those phenomena thatmight be considered nasty, evil, pernicious, and vile will be overlooked in favour of the good.To counter this risk, there is a need to explore the positive in contexts that pay attention toboth positive and negative dialectics of power (Adorno 1990). All dialectics are inherentlyrelational, suggesting that any realistic approach to positivity should consider the role ofpower as both positive and negative. To contribute to a power-informed approach to posi-tivity we explored possible lessons from Machiavelli to the POS domain. Our message forPOS, in a nutshell, is clear: more Machiavelli, less Prozac.

Jackson (2000) remarked on the complexity of Machiavelli’s thinking when discussingMachiavelli’s condemnation of Agathocles of Syracuse for his ‘brutal cruelty, inhumanity,his countless crimes, which altogether forbid his being honoured among eminent men’(Machiavelli, 1961: 30). According to Jackson (2000: 433) ‘Agathocles illustrates the courageand ruthlessness that Machiavelli commends, but he also exceeded the necessity that marksthe moral upper limit of the logic of diplomacy. Not everything is permitted by raison d’etat.What is permitted is what is necessary and in proportion.’ That is to say, Machiavelli is, fromseveral angles, less Machiavellian than a superficial reading of his writings would suggest.

The fact that the ideas of a sixteenth-century Renaissance thinker are still so lively and beingdebated today suggests that hemust have touched some chord central to the functioning of humansocieties. Machiavelli is said to have influenced management practices in many corporations indifferent parts of the world – including the non-Western world where his ideas originated (Cyriacand Dharmaraj, 1994). Machiavelli’s project, i.e. ‘the conquest of fortuna by virtu’ (McIntosh,1984: 192), sounds indeed very modern and anticipates the crucial role of uncertainty reduction inmodern organization theory (Tsoukas, 2005).We argued that managers should not simply ignorewhat he wrote. Familiarity with the classics, especially those whose thinking crosses centurieswithout losing vigor, is a part of the educational canon whose absence management can ill-affordto shed. The education of judgment, once considered essential to diplomatic, political, and admin-istrative leadership, used to be central to the curriculum of the classics.

Machiavelli advanced important knowledge relating to leadership. A first point resultingfrom our discussion is that the adoption of a Machiavelli-based approach by leaders does notnecessarily guarantee best results (research evidence offers mixed results; see e.g. Gable andTopol, 1991).We do not seeMachiavelli as a source of ‘best practice’. But, through the study ofMachiavelli, students as well as actual and potential leaders may better understand the nature ofpower as a complex social process. We suggest that it is more important to focus on what worksin practice rather than on what should work in a given theoretical system, a frequent criticism ofthe business ethics literature (Locke, 2006). Second, Machiavelli warned princes against thedangers of fortuna: power is sustained with virtu and threatened by fortuna. As such, princesshould invest in virtu, and be careful with the desires of fortune. Princes should have strongpersonal foundations rather than rely on superficial power bases such as networking.

Third, Machiavelli’s lessons suggest the importance of being flexible in behaviour: respectthe ordinary moral values and identify the fundamental rights that must be considered in alldecisions (Cavanagh et al., 1981). Stick to these values but be ready to change priorities withregards to the rest. And be aware that others, the ‘truly’ Machiavellian, may not be doing thesame. As one manages with power, one manages others who manage one’s managing withpower also in an endless circle of autopoiesis.

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One cautionary note is needed here: most managers are not rule makers, unlike princes.As such, they must negotiate the existing social order and occasionally have to counter itspreferences; for example, sacrifices may have to be made for the greater good. Even the bestintentioned and most POS influenced manager will have to make hard choices when (s)hefaces difficult moral dilemmas and/or pursuing noble aims requires less than noble ways.That being the case, from a Machiavellian perspective it is better to make them at once,rather than to execute them in small doses, prolonging the suffering.

Before closing, we consider two aspects that introduce a need for caution. First,Machiavelli’s ideas emerged in a particular context in a distant time. They were impregnatedby the circumstances as well as by a notion of virtue that was closer to the arete of Homer’sheroes, i.e. their courage and strength in face of adversity in order to properly conduct thecity’s affairs (Kieffer, 1942), than to contemporary understandings of virtues. Such virtuoperante clearly resonates with the lessons learned from Odysseus. Today, we have differentunderstandings of virtue – and this mutability of moral concepts is a theme rarely explored byboth philosophers (Ball, 1984) and organization theorists. The translation of Machiavelli’sideas for contemporary debatemay thus combine discourses that belong to different languages

We expect some readers will find our marriage of Machiavelli and POS tooMachiavellian. Others may rightly claim that some of our recommendations are fundamen-tally unMachiavellian. They may both be right. In any case, a gap needs to be filled in thePOS literature, and this gap refers to the lack of real(istic) power in positive theorizing.Power is constituted and constitutive of social relations, and POS is fundamentally aboutrelations. Therefore power must play a part in the creation of positive organizations, andmaybe positive leaders will have to deal with the fact that the implications of power arenot/cannot always be positive for everybody. As Fineman (2006) pointed out, there is moreto lose than gain from the positive–negative divorce. We considered that even the best andmost positive leaders, managers and organizations might benefit from being familiar with thewritings of the Florentine. After all, prudence is a virtue.

Machiavelli (1961: 50) considered ‘the gulf between how one should live and how one doeslive is so wide that the man who neglects what is done for what should be done learns the way toself-destruction’. However, following Machiavelli’s advice does not imply that the gulf betweenhow we should live and how we do live is fixed (Jackson, 2000). Pursuing noble aims andnarrowing the gulf is virtuous – but requires adopting a degree of realism that Machiavellimay help to understand. As Machiavelli suggested, the road to Paradise requires knowingand avoiding the road toHell. But avoiding the road toHell will not necessarily lead to Paradise.

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Miguel Pina e Cunha is Professor of Organization Studies at Nova School of Business andEconomics. His research interests include: process-based views of organizations; the para-doxes of organizing; virtuous and toxic leadership; and the unfolding of positive and geno-cidal forms of organization.

Stewart Clegg is Research Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney, and Directorof the Centre for Management and Organization Studies Research, and a Visiting Professorat Nova School of Business and Economics. His research is driven by a fascination withpower and theorizing.

Armenio Rego is Assistant Professor at the Universidade de Aveiro. He has a PhD fromISCTE and published in journals such as Applied Psychology: An International Review,Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research, and Journal of OccupationalHealth Psychology. His research deals with positive organizational behavior.

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