Modelling leadership—Implicit leadership theories in Sweden

This paper investigates Swedish data on implicit leadership theories in comparison with data from 61 other nationalities, testing the identification of a Swedish leadership style in light of globalization and possible converging value-formation processes. Global questionnaire data from 17,310 (900 Swedish) middle-managers constitute the basis for our analyses, using both a within-country perspective and a between-country perspective. While acknowledging the presence of almost universally endorsed leadership attributes, such as being inspirational and visionary, “typical” Swedish leadership attributes are possible to identify. Thus we challenge the simplified version of global convergence regarding leadership ideals and management ideology. On a basis of this study, we conclude that the notion of a Swedish leadership style is still meaningful and valid as a device for a better understanding of leadership efforts and cross-cultural interaction.     

E-Leadership and Virtual Teams

In this paper we have identified some key challenges for E-leaders of virtual teams. Among the most salient of these are the following:

• The difficulty of keeping tight and loose controls on intermediate progress toward goals

• Promoting close cooperation among teams and team members in order to integrate deliverables

• Encouraging and recognizing emergent leaders in virtual teams

• Establishing explicit processes for archiving important written documentation

• Establishing and maintaining norms and procedures early in a team’s formation and development

• Establishing proper boundaries between home and work

Virtual team environments magnify the differences between good and bad projects, organizations, teams, and leaders. The nature of such projects is that there is little tolerance for ineffective leadership. There are some specific issues and techniques for mitigating the negative effects of more dispersed employees, but these are merely extensions of good leadership—they cannot make up for the lack of it.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

An excellent reference for research on teams is M. E. Shaw, R. M. McIntyre, and E. Salas, “Measuring and Managing for Team Performance: Emerging Principles from Complex Environments,” in R. A. Guzzo and E. Salas, eds., Team Effectiveness and Decision Making in Organizations (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995). For a fuller discussion of teleworking and performance-management issues in virtual teams, see W. F. Cascio, “Managing a Virtual Workplace,” Academy of Management Executive, 2000, 14(3), 81–90, and also C. Joinson, “Managing Virtual Teams,” HRMagazine, June 2002, 69–73. Several sources discuss the issue of trust in virtual teams: D. Coutu, “Trust in Virtual Teams,” Harvard Business Review, May–June 1998, 20–21; S. L. Jarvenpaa, K. Knoll, and D. E. Leidner, “Is Anybody Out There? Antecedents of Trust in Global Virtual Teams,” Journal of Management Information Systems, 1998, 14(4), 29–64. See also Knoll and Jarvenpaa, “Working Together in Global Virtual Teams,” in M. Igbaria and M. Tan, eds., The Virtual Workplace (Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing, 1998).Estimates of the number of teleworkers vary. For examples, see Gartner Group, Report R-06-6639, November 18, 1998, and also Telework America survey, news release, October 23, 2001. We learned about CPP’s approach to managing virtual work arrangements through David Krantz, personal communication, August 20, 2002, Palo Alto, CA.There are several excellent references on emergent leaders. For example, see G. Lumsden and D. Lumsden, Communicating in Groups and Teams: Sharing Leadership (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1993); Lumsden and Lumsden, Groups: Theory and Experience, 4th ed. (Boston: Houghton, 1993); R. W. Napier and M. K. Gershenfeld, Groups: Theory and Experience, 4th ed. (Boston: Houghton, 1989); and M. E. Shaw, Group Dynamics: The Psychology of Small Group Behavior, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981).An excellent source for e-mail style is D. Angell and B. Heslop, The Elements of E-mail Style: Communicate Effectively via Electronic Mail (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994). To read more on the growing demand for flexible work arrangements, see “The New World of Work: Flexibility is the Watchword,” Business Week, 10 January 2000, 36.For more on individualism and collectivism, see H. C. Triandis, “Cross-cultural Industrial and Organizational Psychology,” in H. C. Triandis, M. D. Dunnette, and L. M. Hough, eds., Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2nd ed., vol. 4 (Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, 1994, 103–172).Executive SummaryAs the wired world brings us all closer together, at the same time as we are separated by time and distance, leadership in virtual teams becomes ever more important. Information technology makes it possible to build far-flung networks of organizational contributors, although unique leadership challenges accompany their formation and operation. This paper describes the growth of virtual teams, the various forms they assume, the kinds of information and support they need to function effectively, and the leadership challenges inherent in each form. We then provide workable, practical solutions to each of the leadership challenges identified.     

Increasing human and social capital by applying job embeddedness theory

Most modern lives are complicated. When employees feel that their organization values the complexity of their entire lives and tries to do something about making it a little easier for them to balance all the conflicting demands, the employees tend to be more productive and stay with those organizations longer. Job embeddedness captures some of this complexity by measuring both the on-the-job and off-the-job components that most contribute to a person's staying. Research evidence as well as ample anecdotal evidence (discussed here and other places) supports the value of using the job embeddedness framework for developing a world-class retention strategy based on corporate strengths and employee preferences.To execute effectively their corporate strategy, different organizations require different knowledge, skills and abilities from their people. And because of occupational, geographic, demographic or other differences, these people will have needs that are different from other organizations. For that reason, the retention program of the week from international consultants won’t always work. Instead, organizations need to carefully assess the needs/desires of their unique employee base. Then, these organizations need to determine which of these needs/desires they can address in a cost effective fashion (confer more benefits than the cost of the program). Many times this requires an investment that will pay off over a longer term – not just a quarter or even year. Put differently, executives will need to carefully understand the fully loaded costs of turnover (loss of tacit knowledge, reduced customer service, slowed production, lost contracts, lack of internal candidates to lead the organization in the future, etc., in addition to the obvious costs like recruiting, selecting and training new people). Then, these executives need to recognize the expected benefits of various retention practices. Only then can leaders make informed decisions about strategic investments in human and social capital.

Selected bibliography

A number of articles have influenced our thinking about the importance of connecting employee retention strategies to business strategies:

• R. W. Beatty, M. A. Huselid, and C. E. Schneier. “New HR Metrics: Scoring on the Business Scorecard,” Organizational Dynamics, 2003, 32 (2), 107–121.

• Bradach. “Organizational Alignment: The 7-S Model,” Harvard Business Review, 1998.

• J. Pfeffer. “Producing Sustainable Competitive Advantage Through the Effective Management of People,” Academy of Management Executive, 1995 (9), 1–13.

• C. J. Collins, and K. D. Clark. “Strategic Human Resources Practices and Top Management Team Social Networks: An Examination of the Role of HR Practices in Creating Organizational Competitive Advantage,” Academy of Management Journal, 2003, 46, 740–752.

The theoretical development and empirical support for the Unfolding Model of turnover are captured in the following articles:

• T. Lee, and T. Mitchell. “An Alternative Approach: The Unfolding Model of Voluntary Employee Turnover,” Academy of Management Review, 1994, 19, 57–89.

• B. Holtom, T. Mitchell, T. Lee, and E.Inderrieden. “Shocks as Causes of Turnover: What They Are and How Organizations Can Manage Them,” Human Resource Management, 2005, 44(3), 337–352.

The development of job embeddedness theory is captured in the following articles:

• T. Mitchell, B. Holtom, T. Lee, C. Sablynski, and M. Erez. “Why People Stay: Using Job Embeddedness to Predict Voluntary Turnover,” Academy of Management Journal, 2001, 44, 1102–1121.

• T. Mitchell, B. Holtom, and T. Lee. “How To Keep Your Best employees: The Development Of An Effective Retention Policy,” Academy of Management Executive, 2001, 15(4), 96–108.

• B. Holtom, and E. Inderrieden. “Integrating the Unfolding Model and Job Embeddedness To Better Understand Voluntary Turnover,” Journal of Managerial Issues, in press.

• D.G. Allen. “Do Organizational Socialization Tactics Influence Newcomer Embeddedness and Turnover?” Journal of Management, 2006, 32, 237–257.

Executive SummaryEmployee turnover is costly to organizations. Some of the costs are obvious (e.g., recruiting, selecting, and training expenses) and others are not so obvious (e.g., diminished customer service ability, lack of continuity on key projects, and loss of future leadership talent). Understanding the value inherent in attracting and keeping excellent employees is the first step toward investing systematically to build the human and social capital in an organization. The second step is to identify retention practices that align with the organization's strategy and culture. Through extensive research, we have developed a framework for creating this alignment. We call this theory job embeddedness. Across multiple industries, we have found that job embeddedness is a stronger predictor of important organizational outcomes, such as employee attendance, retention and performance than the best, well-known and accepted psychological explanations (e.g., job satisfaction and organizational commitment). The third step is to implement the ideas. Throughout this article we discuss examples from the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For and many others to demonstrate how job embeddedness theory can be used to build human and social capital by increasing employee retention.     

A fuzzy-QFD approach to supplier selection

This article suggests a new method that transfers the house of quality (HOQ) approach typical of quality function deployment (QFD) problems to the supplier selection process. To test its efficacy, the method is applied to a supplier selection process for a medium-to-large industry that manufactures complete clutch couplings.The study starts by identifying the features that the purchased product should have (internal variables “WHAT”) in order to satisfy the company's needs, then it seeks to establish the relevant supplier assessment criteria (external variables “HOW”) in order to come up with a final ranking based on the fuzzy suitability index (FSI). The whole procedure was implemented using fuzzy numbers; the application of a fuzzy algorithm allowed the company to define by means of linguistic variables the relative importance of the “WHAT”, the “HOW”–“WHAT” correlation scores, the resulting weights of the “HOW” and the impact of each potential supplier.Special attention is paid to the various subjective assessments in the HOQ process, and symmetrical triangular fuzzy numbers are suggested to capture the vagueness in people's verbal assessments.     

The impact of personal and organisational variables on the leadership styles of managers

While several studies have examined only one dimension of the leadership styles of managers this study has investigated several variables for their possible individual and joint impact on the managerial practices of organisational leaders. The rationale for the study was to obtain a more complete and accurate picture of the variables related to leadership practice. Collecting data from more than 400 managers from UK industries, it finds that age is directly related to the consultative, participative and delegative leadership styles of managers. The older a manager, ceteris paribus, the more consultative, participative and delegative leadership processes s/he engages in, preferring more of collective decisions in contrast with younger managers who appear happy to take decisions that may not necessarily get the approval of the majority of workers. It was interesting to find that hierarchy is directly related to consultative and participative leadership style, but not to directive or delegative leadership. While gender alone does not appear to affect the result in any significant and systematic way, a number of multiple variables, including gender and hierarchy, for example, proved to be useful in explaining the complex styles of managers.     

Innovation in NTBFs: Does leadership really matter?

Innovation is considered to be a key contributor to both the long-term survival and development of superior competitiveness in New Technology-based Firms [NTBFs]. Many factors contribute to a firm’s differential innovation performance. According to the resource-based view of the firm, leadership is one of the key contributory resources. In this article, the relationship between innovation, leadership and performance is examined through a study of 194 NTBFs. The results suggest that the level of innovation, the likelihood of success and the development of the competences needed for effective innovation are influenced by the firm’s leadership style. In particular, it was found that the transformational/human resources leadership style is more conducive to innovation and the introduction of new products, whereas transactional leadership tends to be associated with the modification of existing products. The findings outline the attributes of each leadership style associated with innovation and provide practical guidelines to enable senior managers to consider leadership in the formulation and deployment of their innovation plan. Finally, the analysis indicates the need to consider and align leadership and approaches to innovation in order to achieve sustainable competitive performance.     

Arbitrage and price revelation with asymmetric information and incomplete markets

This paper deals with the issue of arbitrage with differential information and incomplete financial markets, with a focus on information that no-arbitrage asset prices can reveal. Time and uncertainty are represented by two periods and a finite set S of states of nature, one of which will prevail at the second period. Agents may operate limited financial transfers across periods and states via finitely many nominal assets. Each agent i has a private information about which state will prevail at the second period; this information is represented by a subset S_i of S. Agents receive no wrong information in the sense that the “true state” belongs to the “pooled information” set ∩_iS_i, hence assumed to be non-empty.Our analysis is two-fold. We first extend the classical symmetric information analysis to the asymmetric setting, via a concept of no-arbitrage price. Second, we study how such no-arbitrage prices convey information to agents in a decentralized way. The main difference between the symmetric and the asymmetric settings stems from the fact that a classical no-arbitrage asset price (common to every agent) always exists in the first case, but no longer in the asymmetric one, thus allowing arbitrage opportunities. This is the main reason why agents may need to refine their information up to an information structure which precludes arbitrage.     

Discourse as the means of community creation

The concept of “discourse communities” has wide use in education and linguistics, but has not yet been incorporated into studies of organizing. We would like to propagate the term in the context of organizing, as it extends the commonly accepted Foucault's insight that discourses tend to create their objects. One could add that discourses also create the identities of their participants. The concept is used in this paper as an analytical tool for three cases. We begin with the case of an attempt to create a new discourse community to replace an existing one. Following the logic of grounded theory, the analysis moves to a similar case—the creation of a discourse community around a product development project. The third case, although portraying a different process—an international acquisition—reveals a pattern similar to the second one. These cases demonstrate that discourses can both create and dissolve boundaries around a discourse community, and that although discourse is often used to create inclusion, it may also recreate the traditional patterns of exclusion.     

Shifts in autonomy, responsibility and control from centre to periphery in public administration: the case of the ministry of finance in Italy

In tackling administrative reform and in the hope of improving the effective allocation of resources, most European governments have shown a growing interest in adopting private sector management models in the public administration. The assumption underlying this paper is that the decisive variables in the different national contexts have to do with the relationships between the central and the peripheral administrative levels, and the way in which administrative actors at the two levels interpret their roles and participate in the reform process. The paper examines the case of the reform of the Italian Ministry of Finance. In seeking to improve its performance and the services it provides, the ministry reform is intended to introduce a management system in which the key concepts are the planning, programming and control of administrative action and results. According to reform rhetoric, shaping a new class of administrative managers at the local level is the crux of the question. However, research results hint that the “creation” of this new local executive staff is yet to be completed. The working hypothesis advanced is that this is due to local executives’ lack of confidence in the “system”, inasmuch as the reform process has so far been characterised by a tendency to give them responsibility without autonomy and autonomy without control. The greater their lack of trust, the lesser their willingness to risk the consequences of failure and the greater their tendency to stick to defensive positions and to return to previous “bureaucratic” conceptions and ways of operating.     

Climate control? The relationship between leadership,climate for change,and work outcomes

Transformational leadership is seen as one of the most effective leadership styles from which the dynamic context of temporary work agencies may benefit. The current paper presents a theoretical framework that introduces participative leadership as an additional appropriate leadership style. The prediction is that transformational leadership and participative leadership both impact work outcomes via a climate for change. Data from 258 employees working for a large Dutch employment agency support these hypotheses. Results show that transformational leadership and participative leadership are both independently related to work outcomes. Moreover, results support an indirect process from participative leadership to work outcomes, via a climate for change.     

The role of transformational leadership,emotional intelligence,and group cohesiveness on leadership emergence

The concept of emotional intelligence and its connections with other important psychological constructs have been the focus of a wide range of current research (see Mestre & Fernández‐Berrocal, 2007, and Salovey, Woolery, & Mayer, 2001, for reviews). Yet the relationship between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership, a leadership style that is highly correlated with efficiency and satisfaction of the leaders' followers, has scarcely been analyzed. We hypothesize that individuals who score high in emotional intelligence emerge as leaders more easily than low‐emotional‐intelligence individuals due to the fact that they are more transformational in their leadership style. We further suggest that this is especially the case in highly cohesive groups. In this study, we test these ideas and find empirical support for our hypotheses.     

Subordinates' perception of managers' transformational leadership style and satisfaction: a comparison of electronic manufacturing companies in Mainland China and Taiwan

Rapid economic growth has made leadership studies a significant subject in Asia. The present research compared subordinates' different perceptions of managers' transformational leadership style in Mainland China and Taiwan. Quantitative methodology was used in collecting 250 random samples from Shanghai and Taipei. Subordinates in Taiwan perceived that more managers had a transformational leadership style and also employees had higher satisfaction with managers' leadership style than those in Mainland China. The results of the present research would provide suggestions and directions for industrial managers seeking to display appropriate management behavior for an effective business environment.     

Towards an holistic understanding of disruptions in Operations Management

The paper reviews the literature on maintenance management, integrates key dimensions of maintenance within a taxonomy of maintenance configurations, and explores the impact of differing configurations on contextual factors and operational performance. “Prevention”, “hard maintenance integration” and “soft maintenance integration” were identified as key maintenance variables. Data were collected from 253 Swedish manufacturing companies, and three distinct clusters were identified. “Proactive Maintainers” emphasized preventive maintenance policies. “IT Maintainers” relied on computerized and company-wide integrated information systems for maintenance. “Maintenance Laggers” emphasized all maintenance dimensions to lesser extent than the others. The importance of maintenance prevention and integration differ between contexts. There were subtle performance differences across identified configurations, but preventive and integrated maintenance were more important for companies seeking competitive process control and flexibility. There existed no group with any great emphasis on all three maintenance dimensions, but attaining truly high performance may require a rare mix of the three dimensions. This mix of variables could constitute a hypothesized “World Class Maintenance” group.     

Multivariate Prediction with Nonlinear Principal Components Analysis: Application

Gower and Blasius (Quality and Quantity, 39, 2005) proposed the notion of multivariate predictability as a measure of goodness-of-fit in data reduction techniques which is useful for visualizing and screening data. For quantitative variables this leads to the usual sums-of-squares and variance accounted for criteria. For categorical variables, and in particular for ordered categorical variables, they showed how to predict the levels of all variables associated with every point (case). The proportion of predictions which agree with the true category-levels gives the measure of fit. The ideas are very general; as an illustration they used nonlinear principal components analysis. An example of the method is described in this paper using data drawn from 23 countries participating in the International Social Survey Program (1995), paying special attention to two sets of variables concerned with Regional and National Identity. It turns out that the predictability criterion suggests that the fits are rather better than is indicated by “percentage of variance accounted for”.     

Overlapping operations in material requirements planning

Material requirements planning (MRP) is a planning and information system that has widespread application in discrete-parts manufacturing. The purpose of this article is to introduce ideas that can improve the flow of material through complex manufacturing systems operating under MRP, and that can increase the applicability of MRP within diverse manufacturing environments.MRP models the flow of material by assuming that items flow from work station to work station in the same batches that are used in production. That is, once work starts on a batch of a certain item at a certain work station, the entire batch will be produced before any part of the batch will be transported to the next work station on its routing plan. Clearly, efficiency can be increased if some parallelism can be introduced. The form of parallelism investigated here is overlapping operations.Overlapping operations occurs when the transportation of partial batches to a downstream work station is allowed while work proceeds to complete the batch at the upstream work station. The potential efficiencies to be gained are the following:

• Reduced work-in-process inventory

• Reduced floor space requirements

• Reduced size of transfer vehicles

Additional costs may accrue through additional cost of transportation of partial batches and through additional costs of control.Some MRP software vendors provide the data processing capability for overlapping operations. However, the user is given little or no guidance on overlapping percentages or amounts. It is our intent to provide a simple, robust technique to MRP users who would like to overlap operations and gain some or all of the above efficiencies.An optimal lot-sizing technique is derived by considering a generic two work station segment of a manufacturing system. Under the assumptions of constant demand and identical production rates, a cost function that considers setup costs, inventory holding costs and transportation costs is derived. This cost function is minimized subject to the constraint that the production batch is an integer multiple of the transfer batch. We solve for the optimal production batch, the optimal transfer batch, and the integer number relating them. Solutions are obtained as closed form, easy to-evaluate formulas.By introducing more parallelism, overlapping operations can reduce lead time. However, this will not happen without modification of MRP logic to accommodate such reduced lead time. We derive a formula that shows how a significant lead time compression can easily be obtained and implemented in MRP.We consider an example to illustrate the application of the technique on typical data from the electronics industry. The outcome showed a cost savings of approximately 22.5% over the standard MRP approach.Overlapping operations allows the applicability of MRP to an increasing number of situations that are not modeled faithfully by conventional MRP logic. Three such situations that occur often are the following:

• Limited size of transfer vehicles dictate that several transfers should be planned.

• Lead time requirements prohibit nonoverlapped operations.

Our analysis suggests how to accommodate these difficult practical situations into MRP.Overlapping operations in material requirements planning provides an enhancement that allows wider applicability, shortened lead times, and lower total costs. It may be applied selectively to any two work stations where it is deemed appropriate. Due to the structure of the cost function, it is possible to make the transfer lot-sizing decisions independent of the production lot-sizing decisions. Therefore, significant improvements can be made through overlapping with minimum disruption to the existing MRP system machinery. It is our conviction that overlapping operations is an important concept that can and will impact MRP. We suggest the approach presented here as a systematic way to implement overlapping.     

One-stage structural models to explain city size

Several papers have estimated the parameters of Pareto distributions for city sizes in different countries, but only one has attempted to explain the differing magnitudes of these parameters with a set of country-specific explanatory variables. While it is reassuring that there has been some research which advances beyond simple “curve-fitting” to explore the determinants of city size distributions, the existing research uses a two-stage OLS method which yields invalid second-stage standard errors (and, consequently, questionable hypothesis tests). In this paper, we develop candidate one-stage structural models with normal and non-normal errors which accommodate truncated size distributions, potentially Pareto-like shapes, and city-level variables. In general, these new models are nonlinear in parameters. We illustrate with data on U.S. urban areas.     

Business formation — a network approach

This article suggests that the key to entrepreneurial success is to be found in the ability to develop and maintain a personal network. In elaborating this proposition I regard the environment of the business venture as “enacted”. The inexperienced new entrepreneur needs support to create a personal network and to manage the enacted environment. The concept of the “organizing context”, defined as a clustered sociocentric network, is introduced to provide a tool with which the entrepreneur can deal more efficiently with the different subprocesses that create his or her reality. The approach supplies a framework within which various forms of entrepreneurship — indigenous, corporate, etc. — can be compared and analysed beyond their institutional differences. The interaction between various forms of entrepreneurship and organizing contexts is empirically illustrated from case studies.     

“Why did I do this?”: Understanding leadership behavior through a dynamic five‐factor model of leadership

Leadership theories referring to complex adaptive system theory (CAS) describe leadership as a dynamic process of interdependent, cooperating agents. However, research on leadership behavior focuses mainly on the leader as an influencing, active agent. This article offers a different perspective by focusing on factors that influence leadership behavior. A dynamic five‐factor model of leadership is introduced, which identifies (1) the leader's individual competence, (2) the group, (3) the organization, (4) the context, and (5) the immediate situation as all influencing factors on leadership behavior. To address the problem of the procedural nature of leadership behavior, the dynamic five‐factor model is combined with a scenario‐based approach. The scenario approach focuses on situational developments in a given context, whereby a previous situation influences a leader's behavior in the subsequent situation. By integrating the dynamic five‐factor model into a scenario approach, one can understand a leader's behavior in its procedural nature. The practical usability of the dynamic five‐factor model and the scenario approach was assessed in a leadership development program with 81 military officers. Structured feedback from participants indicated that the model and the approach were perceived as helpful and relevant for understanding leadership behavior.     

Emotional and interpersonal competencies and leader development

A variety of recent leader development programs have focused on improving leaders' emotional and interpersonal competencies. Decades of leadership research suggest that these “people skills” are crucial for leader effectiveness. This paper reviews the history of these leader development programs as well as research on emotional and interpersonal competencies. Suggestions for grounding leader development programs in sound research on emotional and social competencies, as well as an agenda for future research on the development of leader emotional and interpersonal skills, are provided.     

Limits to effective leadership style and tactics in critical incident interventions

Leadership effectiveness takes many forms. Its impact on performance can be critical, but by no means does it stand alone, and hence cannot truly be evaluated in isolation. Nor can it be assumed that more of any one effective style is necessarily a good thing. In project management contexts, these issues are particularly salient. Here we study the impact of multiple leadership styles on project performance, as well as the joint role that intervention tactics in general play. Our empirical study demonstrates the benefit of moderate mixes of leadership style and the declining returns on active interventions in these settings.