Abstract

Purpose – Recent debates within the literature and amongst practitioners of coaching have been focussed on defining the scope and practice of coaching as a form of organizational intervention that can facilitate organizational and individual change. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the debate about what coaching is by reviewing an emerging comparative conceptual framework of coaching as a form of practice for management and organizational development. Design/methodology/approach – The framework was developed through an exploratory study involving a focus group of practitioners in coaching and management. The overall approach to this study blends a conceptual consideration of the practice of coaching with the results gained from a focus group. The study uses cognitive mapping, thematic grouping and content analysis to seek to define the key characteristics of coaching in comparison to other forms of management practice. Findings – A framework of “meta-categories” of management practice are identified and the role and processes of coaching is compared in relation to these. Results from the study suggest that coaching adopts a holistic approach to management and organizational development and that certain key characteristics can be identified that differentiate it from other forms of management and organizational development. Results also open the way for research into forms of coaching required to facilitate and support whole systems change. Originality/value – The framework could be of use to managers in assessing whether a coaching-based approach to promoting and managing change is appropriate and what processes it involves.
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Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of self as applied to leadership and propose an understanding of how a leader should form conceptions of self, and use these in his or her own development. Design/methodology/approach – Based on self-, personality- and developmental psychology, the paper examines a variety of theoretical foundations, and ties these into the context of leadership and self-development. Findings – The paper concludes that the self is core, consciousness, and action. The particular characteristics and qualities of the self determine the leader’s comprehension of him or herself as a human entity, and is a leader’s gateway to self-confidence and self-esteem. Leaders therefore need to cultivate an understanding of self by engaging in formative processes which are related to their ability to learn from defining situations, thus raising awareness of points of convergence in a leader’s career.

Research limitations/implications – The paper is limited to a conceptual discussion, and further research is needed to verify the proposed hypothesis. Future research should concentrate on empirical work. Practical implications – The practical outcome is concrete advice, that leaders must engage in processes where their own willpower, beliefs, assumptions, values, principles, needs, relational patterns and social strategies are subject to feedback and testing if their aim is to develop themselves. Self-development is not the training of skills, nor solely dependent on cognitive strategies.

Originality/value – Most leaders face pressure to develop themselves. The recommendations herein clarify what is a self concept applicable for leaders, and assist in identifying domains, processes and schemata applicable for leadership self-development.
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	Leadership Under Construction: Creating Paths Toward Transformation :: Amazon Every construction project requires both contractors (concepts) and sub-contractors (applications). Leadership Under Construction assumes th
	The Leader in You: Developing Your Leadership Potential :: Amazon Leadership research demonstrates that there are serious shortcomings in the quality and competence of leaders in our organizations. The rece

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Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how teams work and learn in Web 2.0 environments. Web 2.0 technologies enable geographically dispersed teams to work in synchronous and nonsynchronous modes of interaction in dynamic, self-directed ways, within and across team boundaries, thereby avoiding some of the limitations of earlier generations of electronic communication.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper explores how Web 2.0 technologies that are user-controlled and team-driven allow multiple modes of communication and team member active learning. Cases and an examination of team web-based work processes and learning outcomes are examined. Findings – Web 2.0 functionality differs from traditional, primarily face-to-face modes of work and learning. Web 2.0 technologies can promote generative learning processes in which team members are open to new ideas, explore new ways of interacting, and apply their learning. Practical implications – Potential outcomes are the emergence of emotional intelligence in on-line settings, virtual communities of practice, and innovative results. Originality/value – The paper offers directions for research as well as ways to lead productive virtual teams and support continuous learning, at the individual and team level.
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When should you let your employees embrace entrepreneurial behaviors and initiative? You shouldn’t, counsels Stefan Lindegaard. A large majority needs to just focus on their job and keep the corporate engine running. However, every employee should be given the opportunity to work with innovation via idea generating campaigns and other initiatives.
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Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to clarify the concept of self applied to leadership, and propose an understanding of how a leader should form conceptions of self, and use these in his or her own development.Design/methodology/approach – Based on self-, personality- and developmental psychology, the article examines a variety of theoretical foundations, and ties these into the context of leadership and self-development.Findings – The article concludes that the self is core, consciousness, and action. The particular characteristics and qualities of the self determine the leader’s comprehension of him or herself as a human entity, and is a leader’s gateway to self-confidence and self-esteem. Leaders therefore need to cultivate an understanding of self by engaging in formative processes which are related to their ability to learn from defining situations, thus raising awareness of points of convergence in a leader’s career.

Research limitations/implications – The article is limited to a conceptual discussion, and further research is needed to verify the proposed hypothesis. Future research should concentrate on empirical work.

Practical implications – The practical outcome is concrete advice that leaders must engage in processes where their own willpower, beliefs, assumptions, values, principles, needs, relational patterns and social strategies are subject to feedback and testing if their aim is to develop themselves. Self-development is not the training of skills, nor solely dependent on cognitive strategies.

Originality/value – Most leaders face pressure to develop themselves. The recommendations herein clarify what is a self concept applicable for leaders, and assist in identifying domains, processes and schemata applicable for leadership self-development.
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Youth Leadership: A Guide to Understanding Leadership Development in Adolescents (Jossey-Bass Education Series) :: Amazon Based on fifteen years of work with teens and the adults in their lives, Youth Leadership identifies the three major stages of adolescent le

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Absorptive capacity (ACAP) refers to a firm’s ability to acquire, assimilate, transform, and exploit new knowledge. Research has yet to acknowledge the possibility of limits to the financial returns of this important strategic construct. This study suggests an inverted-U shaped relationship between ACAP and financial performance. Based on data from 285 technology-based small and medium enterprises, we observe gains within three prospective, secondary measures of growth to diminish beyond lower levels of ACAP, even turning negative and becoming harmful beyond intermediate levels. We find that entrepreneurial orientation (EO) moderates the ACAP-performance relationship, enhancing financial gains at lower levels of ACAP and mitigating the decline in financial performance at higher levels of ACAP. Further, with higher EO, higher ACAP can be achieved before financial returns diminish. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Original post: Too Much Of A Good Thing? Absorptive Capacity, Firm Performance, And The Moderating Role Of Entrepreneurial Orientation

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Because of the importance of human capital, a firm’s choice of diversification targets will depend on whether these targets offer opportunities for leveraging existing human resources. We propose to quantify the similarity of different industries’ human capital or skill requirements, that is, the industries’ skill relatedness, by using information on cross-industry labor flows. Labor flows among industries can be used to identify skill relatedness, because individuals changing jobs will likely remain in industries that value the skills associated with their previous work. Estimates show that firms are far more likely to diversify into industries that have ties to the firms’ core activities in terms of our skill-relatedness measure than into industries without such ties or into industries that are linked by value chain linkages or by classification-based relatedness. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

See original here: Skill relatedness and firm diversification

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We examine how leadership transition affects firm performance in emerging economies. Building upon the social embeddedness and neo-institutional perspectives, we argue for the importance of alignment between successor origin and social context for firm performance. We suggest that as a baseline outside successors enhance firm profitability because of the large-scale and rapid changes in emerging markets. However, this outsider premium is reduced in firms embedded in family and business group relationships, where family and inside successors can better access network resources. But the outsider premium is amplified in firms embedded in a mature market-based logic, such as high tech or foreign invested firms, because the perceived legitimacy of outsiders facilitates resource acquisition. Our arguments are supported through the analysis of Taiwanese listed firms between 1996 and 2005. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Read more from the original source: Leadership succession and firm performance in an emerging economy: Successor origin, relational embeddedness, and legitimacy

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Moving On and Moving Up From Succession to Significance: Practical Principles for Legacy Management & Leadership Transition :: Amazon Readers will learn that God has new assignments waiting for to be fulfilled, but before moving to the next level one has to have a replaceme

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How to CiteLourdes Sosa, M. (2012), Decoupling market incumbency from organizational prehistory: locating the real sources of competitive advantage in r&d for radical innovation. Strat. Mgmt. J.. doi: 10.1002/smj.2012Author InformationLondon Business School, London, UKEmail: M. Lourdes Sosa (lsosa@london.edu)*London Business School, Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Sussex Place, Regent’s Park, London NW1 4SA, UK.

See the original post: Decoupling market incumbency from organizational prehistory: locating the real sources of competitive advantage in r&d for radical innovation

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Global Innovation in Emerging Economies (Routledge Studies in Innovation, Organizations and Technology) :: Amazon In recent decades, there have been significant changes in the way corporate innovation activities are performed. They include changes in the

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Author Information1Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.2Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.Email: Feng Zhu (fzhu@marshall.usc.edu)*Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0808, U.S.A.

Originally posted here: Business model innovation and competitive imitation: The case of sponsor-based business models

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The connection between leadership and art has been made many times over, usually as a way to single out certain properties of the arts that carry over to leadership, such as a jazz musician’s ability to create through improvisation. These analogies can be compelling, but my point is more ambitious: leadership is an actual art, not metaphorically an art.

The same attributes that distinguish great from mediocre artists distinguish exceptional leaders from their ordinary counterparts. The best leaders and artists give us perspective on our social condition (good or bad) and greater appreciation of our world, ourselves, and our choices. Moreover, they challenge, excite, comfort, and motivate. They bring us closer together by providing a forum for shared experiences and by forging a sense of community. Leadership and art both animate social encounters. They can change our lives in ways that are as invigorating and real as being hit by a wave.

While people may disagree about the quality of a given work of art, we generally know how to communicate our experience of what we’ve seen or heard. And the same criteria that govern how people respond to particular artworks apply to this other art form, leadership. On the positive side, for example, leadership may be described as inspiring, consistent, creative, unique, passionate, and engaging. Alternatively, leadership may be perceived as unpleasant, phony, inept, unfocused, and pedestrian. Evaluative terms like these serve as the bases for some consensus about what constitutes greatness.

So let me suggest 12 artistic criteria for judging the art of particular leaders. To appreciate their leadership, we should ask about its …

1. Intent. Do they make an express commitment to achieve certain exceptional ends?
2. Focus. Do they highlight certain features of the business environment over others to separate the important from the trivial?
3. Skill. Do they demonstrate mastery or virtuosity in critical aspects of business; do they possess a foundation for understanding people, organizations, and the way work is accomplished?
4. Form. Do they combine their communications, structures, policies, etc. into a unified, coherent whole?
5. Representation. Do they convey meanings, in nonobvious and captivating ways, as opposed to giving simple directives and making straightforward declarations of fact?
6. Imagination. Do they make surprising and unconventional departures from the ordinary that create a new sense of awareness or understanding?
7. Authenticity. Do they present a stylistic distinctiveness that is an honest expression of their individuality and personal beliefs?
8. Engagement. Do they offer complex and challenging information that stimulates intellectual effort and imaginative contemplation?
9. Pleasure. Do they provide emotionally rewarding experiences that are shared among members of a group, promoting stronger bonds and fostering personal fulfillment?
10. Human significance. Do they facilitate personal reflection about who one is, what is most important, what is culturally valuable, and what is possible?
11. Context. Do they take actions that are commensurate with institutional practices, customs, demands, and norms, and communicate in a style that is understandable and appropriate?
12. Criticism. Do they welcome discourse and evaluation from others regarding how well they have performed and the amount of appreciation they should be afforded?

Succeeding on all these criteria is difficult, and not even the best leaders do so routinely. All have their strengths and stand out in unique ways. Leadership deficits become apparent when a person resembles a leadership caricature: when they possess only a couple of criteria to the exclusion of all others. For example, there are the humanistic types who never miss a birthday, who sponsor team dinners at the house, who go out of their way to make the workplace pleasurable, enriching, and fun. There are the traditionalists who only do what is prescribed by “the book” and would never contemplate deviating from what a businessperson is supposed to wear, say, or do. There are the skilled and bureaucratic technicians who manage numbers and sheets of paper, and who attempt to orchestrate every conceivable employee behavior through a carefully planned and rigid set of rules, compensation designs, policies, and organizational structures. There are the wildly imaginative but non-directive shape-shifters who hop from one idea and initiative to the next, dragging befuddled employees along in their wake. Great leaders are immensely more complex.

Notably absent from the list of criteria is results. My point is that while, yes, we expect good leaders to win against rivals and have a tangible product to show for their efforts, we wouldn’t appreciate them as leaders unless their process had some identifiable quality that made them and their work worthy of our admiration. To succeed as an artist, a leader must orchestrate the company’s activities and create a relationship with its people in ways that demand respect for the skill involved. That is, there has to be some evidence that the results were achieved through genuine strengths attributable to the leader.

The 12 criteria I’ve outlined would allow us to differentiate the relentless cost cutter whose exploits over a three-year span dramatically increase earnings from the leader who prudently and artistically reshapes a company while minimizing the detrimental effects on its future—and makes money doing so. Where the former creates a wasteland bereft of focused, forward energy and employee engagement, the latter, the leader, shepherds people through the trials of a troubled organization while enlarging their interests and their capacities to perform.

Corporate managers will always worry about results—and especially short-term results. What is important is that we do not demote the concept of good leadership to the simple question of their attainment. The market doesn’t care how leaders get results as long as they are achieved legally. Meanwhile, making money doesn’t require the same skills as leadership does. It is possible to be a successful businessperson, excellent financier, and marvelous deal-maker without being a very good leader. The connection often made between leadership and bottom-line results is too facile. Making money is not an art. Leading an organization is.

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Recall the terrorist attack in Oslo, Norway, a year ago, when a lone terrorist first bombed a government building (killing eight people), then drove to an island where he murdered 69 mostly young people on a summer camp. The newly released report analyzing that day slams the police and the government for ineptitude, much like the infamous 9/11 report in the U.S.

How do you lead in a world full of crises, shocks, terror and disruptions? This question is relevant for CEOs and government leaders alike.

Jim Collins and I studied this question in our book Great by Choice in which we analyzed CEOs and companies that led successfully in such a world. From this and other research we know a few things that ought to be in place for leaders to successfully anticipate and respond to crises, turbulence, and disruptive change.

1. Leaders need to be productively paranoid. The successful CEOs in our study displayed an odd behavior that we labeled “productive paranoia.” Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines predicted eleven out of the last three recessions. As Bill Gates said, “Fear should guide you.” The successful CEOs in our study were hyper-vigilant about threats around them (the paranoia part) and also took action to mitigate those threats, whether in the form of building buffers or hedging (the productive part).

Prior to the Oslo terrorist attack, we saw the exact opposite of productive paranoia — a leisurely attitude. The government was supposed to build a security perimeter around the building, but just didn’t get around to it. It did have a fast-response helicopter stationed in case of a terrorist attack, but this could not be used, because the staff was on vacation in July, like most Norwegians. (Did they believe that terrorists too take vacation in July?) The key here is for leaders to be hyper-vigilant, and especially when things are calm — because it could be the calm before the storm.

2. The system must connect the dots horizontally. After the bomb went off in Oslo, at 3:26pm, the terrorist jumped into a van. At 3:35pm, someone called the police with a tip that a man in a (fake) police uniform had acted weirdly when he got into the car. The tipster even reported the license plate number, a possible break in the case! But alas, the junior person on the police phone line wrote down the tip on a note and took it to a senior officer, and then the note somehow got lost sitting on a desk. This mishandling of vital information is eerily similar to the findings in the 9/11 commission report.

As I write in my book Collaboration, several barriers get in the way of effective information sharing. In this case, hierarchy got in the way — a critical piece of information got lost in the handoff from a junior to a senior person. A system cannot respond effectively when information has to flow up and down hierarchical lines: it is slow, and superiors often suppress the information because they do not see its importance or relevance or don’t have time to respond.

We have seen this happen before. At Pearl Harbor, at 7:02 am on December 9, 1941, two U.S. soldiers operating a radar station saw something that looked like an incoming airplane; they telephoned an officer, who told them to forget it (the attack occurred 53 minutes later). In the Columbia shuttle disaster, junior engineers knew that there was critical foam damage on the shuttle, but they did not dare to speak up to more senior managers in a meeting on January 24, 2003.

Two management tactics could resolve this: First, junior people ought to be able to pass on information horizontally across units (and not just to their immediate superiors). Second, they also need to be authorized to follow through to see that the information is really acted upon (vs. just passed on), and if not, to act themselves. This requires that hierarchy is flattened, that people build rich networks across units, and that information technology systems cascade data across units.

3. The system must be able to handle information overload. The senior officer in Oslo who received the note with the license plate number was busy in the chaos that followed the bombing, which explains how the note got lost on the desk. Similarly, at Pearl Harbor, recall Roberta Wohlstetter’s famous line: “We failed to anticipate Pearl Harbor not for want of the relevant materials, but because of the plethora of irrelevant ones.” 9/11, too, was not anticipated in part because critical information was lost in a sea of data.

When a crisis strikes, in business or in government, the flow and speed of information go way up, and now more than ever. The ratio of noise to helpful information goes way up too, making it difficult to interpret and manage. As Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon said, “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” This means leaders have to increase the attention capacity in an organization. Do we have enough managers who can interpret the information rapidly and collaborate to establish a common understanding? Do our CEO and senior leaders get the information quickly enough and it is sufficiently unfiltered so that they can really see what is going on? Sadly, in hard times, leaders cut they very resources — people and systems — that increase the attention capacity.

The implication for every leader in business and government: you are judged by how well you prepare in advance for a crisis, not just by what you do when it hits.

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Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical picture of the concept of knowledge creation and then investigate the effects on it of such variables as social capital and organizational culture.

Design/methodology/approach – The population of this study includes faculty members of the University of Isfahan (Iran) in 2008 (476 cases). From among these cases, 142 cases were selected based on the Cochran formula. Survey was used as the research method and a questionnaire was used for data collection. Pearson correlation “r” and multi-variable regression were employed, and in the next stage, through drawing the model of structural equations, the direct effects, indirect effects and total effects of independent variables on the dependent variable were investigated, based on path analysis model. SPSS and LISREL were employed for statistical analysis.

Findings – The results revealed that social capital and organizational culture had meaningful effect on knowledge creation. The analysis showed that the independent variables mentioned above could determine 36 percent of the effects of the dependent variable. Research limitations/implications – The findings are based, in the main, on an extensive, single university study; therefore it is necessary to be cautious about generalizing the result of this study to other universities in Iran.

Originality/value – The paper can contribute to organizations through providing a holistic picture of the role of knowledge creation in organizations (especially universities).
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Investigating Social Capital :: Amazon Current interest in the concept of social capital stems largely from empirical studies of civil society, voluntary organizations and democra

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Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess effectiveness of management development (MD) programs in the Pakistani corporate sector and investigate relationship among various factors that affect MD practices in Pakistan.

Design/methodology/approach – The research employed a blend of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. D’Netto’s model of “MD effectiveness” provided a framework for measuring MD effectiveness. The sample consisted of managers from 55 corporate branches of 20 banks and three telecom organizations using a “self-reported rating” survey questionnaire and interviews, which resulted in 102 completed responses and ten in-depth interviews.

Findings – Although Pakistani managers have a positive attitude towards MD, yet little attention has been paid to create a strong link between corporate strategy and MD. Properly planned MD programs and relevant course contents are necessary for the effectiveness of MD. D’Netto’s model of “management development effectiveness” has a good fit and is applicable to the corporate sector in Pakistan. Research limitations/implications – As a qualitative study, there are limitations on account of generalization of findings. Further research is recommended. Practical implications – Top management should assign higher priority to MD. MD programs should be properly planned, executed, monitored and evaluated. Utilization of newly learned skills, risk taking and new ideas should be encouraged. The reward system needs revising and a continuous learning environment ought to be established for effective MD in Pakistan. Originality/value – This study, for the first time, assessed the current state of MD in Pakistan and contributes to the present stock of knowledge and understanding of the subject by contextualising the concept of “management development effectiveness” in the Pakistani corporate sector.
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