The lion and fox animal spirits of Machiavelli and Pareto: a framework for studying organisational micro-politics

In seeking a nuanced grasp of affective “animal spirits” that shape micro-political management behaviours viscerally, while locating their emergence within broad socio-cultural contexts, the present paper draws on the “lion” and “fox” animal spirits, whose inspiration for Pareto’s psychologistic sociological project we clarify from Chapter XVIII of Machiavelli’s The Prince. Our corresponding managerial ideal-types are initially explored for their heuristic allegorical potential, considering also how particular organisational risk conditions may inculcate and challenge them. These contextualised psycho-affective tendencies are then refined and grounded within recent behavioural-psychology research, through which their suitability for various socio-organisational risk contexts is further elaborated. The resulting framework, connecting emotional dispositions of leaders to longer term contexts, is held up as viable for focusing academic management and organisational research towards practice-related interventions, while also highlighting the Machiavellian-Paretian realist tradition as a source of living theory for social science.