Claus Møller
Sergio CareddaMøller, C. (1994). 'Employeeship: The Necessary Prerequisite for Empowerment: The Success or Failure of an Organization Is Not (only) the Manager's Responsibility'. Empowerment in Organizations, 2(2), 4–13. DOI: 10.1108/09684899410061618.
Description
Employeeship is a concept coined by Claus Møller and launched through his consultancy TMI (Time Manager International) in 1992. It addresses a persistent blind spot in management thinking: while there are countless books, programmes, and theories on what it takes to be a good leader, there is almost no comparable body of work on what it takes to be a good employee. Møller argued that this asymmetry reflects — and reinforces — a dangerous organisational assumption: that managers bear total responsibility for success and failure, while employees are passive executors.
The concept was formalised in Møller's 1994 article in Empowerment in Organizations and in his book Employeeship: Mobilising everyone's energy to win. It became one of TMI's signature training programmes and was widely adopted across Scandinavian management practice, where it became synonymous with the idea of participative management.
The Core Argument
Møller's starting premise is that the manager's role is 'highly overrated'. When only managers feel responsible for the success or failure of the organisation, the result is a blame culture: employees stand on the sidelines, do their defined tasks, and attribute failures to management. When everyone — regardless of rank — feels responsible, the organisation develops what Møller calls an Employeeship culture.
This is not empowerment granted from above. Employeeship is a commitment exercised from below: each person choosing to act as a co-owner of the organisation's outcomes.
Three Cornerstones
TMI distilled the attributes of a good employee into three cornerstones:
- Responsibility — Taking ownership and making things happen, for oneself, the team, and the organisation. The opposite is the blame culture: standing back, complaining, and attributing problems to others. A responsible employee follows through without waiting to be asked.
- Loyalty — Being united in public and keeping conflicts private. Loyal employees engage in vigorous internal debate but support team decisions once made. The opposite is back-biting, destructive negativity, and public undermining of colleagues or the organisation.
- Initiative — Converting ideas into action, intention into behaviour. Initiative requires clear goals, tolerance for mistakes, and absence of a fear culture. People with initiative volunteer when others stay silent.
In later developments by Claus Møller Consulting, two additional attributes were added: commitment (personal dedication to the organisation's survival and development) and positive energy (the emotional fuel that drives the other four). The full model thus comprises five Employeeship attributes.
Leadership Excellence = Managerial Behaviour + Employeeship
Within Møller's broader General Business Excellence (GBE) model, Leadership Excellence is explicitly defined as the combination of managerial behaviour and Employeeship. This is a structural redefinition: leadership is not a property of the managerial role but a distributed capacity of the whole organisation. Managers provide direction and support; employees provide responsibility, loyalty, and initiative. Both halves are necessary; neither is sufficient alone.
The Team Employeeship Meter
Møller also developed diagnostic tools — the Personal Energy Meter, Team Employeeship Meter (11 factors), and Organisational Energy Meter — to assess the state of Employeeship culture at individual, team, and organisational levels. These instruments treat Employeeship as measurable and developable, not merely aspirational.
The TMI–Summit Lineage
The Employeeship concept was adopted within Summit IMM, the Italian member firm of the TMI network, founded by Franco d'Egidio. In d'Egidio's La Nuova Bussola del Manager (2003), Employeeship was integrated into the Intellectual Capital Value (ICV) model as a component of Social Capital — the value created by people working together. d'Egidio's adaptation added a fourth pillar (competence) alongside Møller's three, and positioned Employeeship as 'leadership diffusa' (distributed leadership), supported by Kotter's (1992) research demonstrating that organisations with distributed leadership outperform those with concentrated leadership.
→ Claus Møller Consulting – Employeeship
→ Emerald – original 1994 article
Notes
- Møller is one of only 9 Quality Gurus worldwide (UK DTI study) and the only European one. His quality concept, 'The Human Side of Quality', adds a people dimension to traditional quality thinking.
- TMI's most celebrated engagement was the SAS transformation (1981): 13,000 employees trained, leading SAS to become the most punctual European airline within four months. Named one of the 75 greatest management decisions ever made (AMA).
- The concept resonates with but is distinct from several related frameworks: Servant Leadership (Greenleaf) inverts the hierarchy from the leader's side; Employeeship inverts it from the employee's side. Self-Management (Laloux) eliminates the hierarchy altogether; Employeeship works within it. Followership (Kellerman, Chaleff) studies the follower role academically; Employeeship is a practitioner's intervention programme.
- The 'loyalty' pillar is the most dated element for contemporary application. Møller's formulation ('united in public, conflicts in private') sits in tension with current demands for psychological safety, transparency, and the right to constructive dissent. A contemporary adaptation would need to redefine loyalty as commitment to the organisation's purpose rather than to its current leadership.
- In the OEF context, Employeeship connects to Leadership (as the complementary half), Corporate Culture (the Employeeship culture archetype), and Employee Experience (the experience of being trusted to exercise initiative vs. being managed).
Other Sources
Books:
- Møller, C. Employeeship: Mobilising everyone's energy to win. Claus Møller Consulting (Kindle edition: ISBN 978-87-89264-97-4).
- Møller, C. & Barlow, J. (1996). A Complaint is a Gift: Using Customer Feedback as a Strategic Tool. Berrett-Koehler.
- d'Egidio, F. (2003). La Nuova Bussola del Manager: Comprendere, misurare, valutare e gestire il Capitale Intellettuale. Milan: Summit. Ch. 10.2.5: 'L'Organizzazione e la Leadership Diffusa: Employeeship®'.
- Kotter, J. P. (1992). A Force for Change: How Leadership Differs from Management. Free Press.
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