Leading Higher Purpose

Abstract

This chapter describes the leadership features at Buurtzorg, how the common purpose resonates in the organization and operates as a higher purpose. Leadership is an area in management studies that has received much attention for decades, leading to several perspectives of leader’s motivational approaches and governance. In this chapter a brief overview of the relevant literature will be presented with the aim to explain how at Buurtzorg leading a higher purpose is the central view of leadership in respect to the main concern of this study.The literature review will be presented after the three concepts that were induced from the research data. These concepts are expressions of the three principles of the Integrating Simplification Theory: needing, rethinking and common sensing. The first one represents expressions of the belief system of humanity over bureaucracy, stressing humane needs of clients and how this relates to the higher purpose of serving the client. The second concept refers to the various roles of the founders and the ability to integrate thinking processes and generate rethinking for realizing innovative approaches. The third concept is the communication style and how using common sense and pragmatic approaches help in reaching out to all employees.