[bestbits] [governance] Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, elected co-chairman of Global Internet Governance Alliance

[Norbert Bollow]

On Thu, 2 Jul 2015 14:54:38 +0100
Sonigitu Ekpe <soekpe at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello Nobert,
> 
> It is great to have an opinion but it is wrong to request for an
> explanation from one who is not your subordinate. If am wrong correct
> me.

I strongly disagree. [Or maybe you simply understood the word
"explanation" in "I'd be interested in an explanation of what you see as
awesome about this. (Or was the remark intended to be an expression of
irony???)" differently from how I meant it?]

In fact there are various kinds of situations where requesting an
explanation is not only not wrong, but the appropriate step to take.

For example, my recent request for an explanation was in a context of
intercultural communications, where it was not totally clear to me
whether a remark was meant as irony or not. So I think that there was
nothing wrong with requesting an explanation. The alternative would
have been to simply make an assumption of my own on how I think that
the remark was meant. 

More generally, there are many kinds of situations where communication
is not likely to achieve its objectives when requests for explanations
are not made or not honored. On the other hand, it is also possible for
requests for explanations to hinder rather than help the objectives
which the communication process is intended to achieve or help achieve.
That will depend very much on many aspects of the situation, but I
don't see how whether someone is my subordinate or not would enter into
it, except that for a subordinate I would in regard to some topic areas
have the right to not only request but in fact demand an explanation.

Greetings,
Norbert