Capetian corporate qualities: the administration of the Auvergne under Count Alphonse of Poitiers 1241-1270

Abstract

My thesis analyzes the structure and culture of the thirteenth century Capetian administration, and deals with issues of authority, power and stability in high medieval France, with an emphasis on the dynamics of great feudal agglomerations. The work focuses on the reign of Louis IX of France, 1241 - 1270, a period of transformation during which private organizations gave rise to the early state. It examines the challenges of organizational leadership, in particular the need to find an appropriate equilibrium between uniformity and diversity, stability and innovation, reliability and flexibility. The work emphasizes the role organizational identity and organizational culture played in enabling value-based transformation, as well as the manner in which overlapping organizational identities aided or hindered it.

In 1254, King Louis IX launched an anti-corruption reform, aimed at correcting abuses in the royal administration. An important element of this reform was a change in the culture of the royal administartion, mediated by a new pattern of recruitment. Previously, administartors were drawn from the ranks of the warrior aristocracy. Hence, employess were recruited primarily from within church organizations, namely the universities and the monastic and mendicant orders. Organizational values are distinct from the values of the external environment, but influenced by them. This influence is thought to be mediated, in part, by recruitment practices. Value congruence, the degree to which personal values are consistent with organizational values, is predictive of employee misbehavior, the reduction of which was the key objective of Louis IX's reform.

In analyzing the incongruence of values between the Capetian administration and its knightly employees, I employed cultural dimensions identified in studies of organizational behavior and leadership, in particular in the 2004 GLOBE study, the largest of its kind to date. I have adopted several of these dimensions as heuristic devices for determining the degree of value congruence between knightly culture and the culture of the Capetian administration in the 13th century . I found that Louis and Alfonse's organizational values marked a distinct departure from knightly values, particularly in assertiveness, power distance and performance orientation