The subject that the authors of this book have made the topic of their reflections is extremely challenging and complex, but very pertinent.

Managing Authentic Relationships; A few preliminary considerations

From an ethical perspective to relationships

To build a solid network of relations to support its activities, an organization or company must undertake a series of actions and interventions to achieve this and, in so doing realize from the start that ultimately every human action is determined by three conscious ambitions or motives.1 Those motives cannot be reduced to each other and there is always a tension in the relationship among them.

The first is a manipulative, strategic-instrumental motive whereby relations are regarded exclusively as tools for gaining a dominant position in the world. This may be a full position of power, a dominant market position, or the elimination of as many competing networks as possible.

The second is the cognitive motive. If you wish to influence your surroundings through networking, you need to establish reliable knowledge of that social environment, of the implicit patterns that are in place, but also of the behavioral strategies and effects of interventions. The manipulative and cognitive dimension of our actions may not be reduced to each other, but they do complement each other.

Finally, the third motive is the most complex one and therefore the hardest to define. It entails what we might call the meaningful dimension of our actions. Here the focus lies on the ethical dimension of networking, precisely that aspect that is essential when the authenticity of relations needs not only to be respected but also to be sustained and further enhanced. After all, involving people in a network of relations involves those same people in a shared normative set of values that gives their commonality an ethical contour despite their mutual contradictions or interests. It is not about bringing everybody into alignment with a simple and exclusive set of norms and values. It is about the values that, in a pluralistic society characterized by different and often even mutually conflicting views, have to be held high if that society or the established network is not to disintegrate.

In this context, the legal sociologist Kees Schuyt talks about “counter connections.”