Does Moral Leadership Conflict With Organizational Innovation?

The current article explores the concept of moral leadership and the potential for conflict with organizational innovation. After exploring the organizational prioritization of profitability with the exclusion of moral and ethical implications, the article asserts that moral leadership need not be the center of conflict with organizational innovation. Instead, research reveals that moral leadership can serve to enhance, inspire, and provide the foundation needed for innovation. For this reason, organizations must strive to make the identification of ethical leadership as a priority and stakeholders must remain flexible while upholding ethical standards. Through enhanced moral leadership, organizations can achieve greater levels of innovative excellence and competitive advantage in the global economy.     

Is It Only Good? The Dark Side of Leadership for Creativity and Innovation

It is assumed that leaders are essential in shaping and facilitating successful innovation and creativity in organizations. Both through direct leadership behaviors (e.g., by vision formulation) and through more indirect leadership behaviors (e.g., by role modeling). While these leadership behaviors seem both positive and productive, they may also hold risks of unintended, adverse results. In the current article, two ways are proposed in which this may occur: through contradictory leadership behaviors and a too‐much‐of‐a‐good‐thing effect. Future research in and awareness of the potential dark sides to leadership for creativity and innovation are warranted.     

Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Base of the Pyramid: A Recipe for Inclusive Growth or Social Exclusion?

Policy makers often see entrepreneurship as a panacea for inclusive growth in underdeveloped ‘Base of the Pyramid’ (BOP) regions, but it may also lead to unanticipated negative outcomes such as crime and social exclusion. Our objective is to improve the understanding of how entrepreneurship policies can lead to socially inclusive growth at the BOP. Drawing on data collected from Brazilian tourism destinations with varying entrepreneurship, innovation, and social inclusion policies, we argue that weak institutions coupled with alert entrepreneurs encourage destructive outcomes, especially if entrepreneurship policies are based solely on economic indicators. Policies addressing both economic and social perspectives may foster more productive entrepreneurial outcomes, albeit at a more constrained economic pace. The study extends the related BOP, entrepreneurship, global value chain, and sustainable tourism literatures by examining the poor as entrepreneurs, the role of local innovation, and how entrepreneurship policies generate different social impacts within poor communities.     

How Does a Covenantal Approach to Developing Organizational Leadership Affect Innovation?

As organizations grow, they become more hierarchical and less adaptive; thus, innovation and intrapreneurship suffer. A covenantal approach to organizational behavior and leadership can facilitate organizational flexibility and adaptability to foster further innovation by engendering empowerment and deeper, more meaningful engagement among leadership and followers. A covenant is a morally informed agreement among two or more parties who commit to care for one another and protect one another's rights. Noncentralization, participative decision making, active dialog and big picture thinking are all encouraged by a covenantal approach, which in turn helps to foster innovation.     

Is Leadership in Creativity and Innovative Technology the Cure for Quality Affordable Healthcare?

Disruptive innovation is necessary in healthcare if we are to solve America's healthcare crisis. Patients need access to high quality, convenient, cost‐effective healthcare. Industry leadership and the government together need to facilitate the transformation of the healthcare industry through innovative multidisciplinary models that will improve health outcomes, decrease costs, and improve access to care. Such a transformation can be realized by embracing the concept of precision medicine, where outcomes are managed and government facilities advancements through effective regulation.     

What Factors Affect the Persistence of an Innovation Advantage?

Factors that affect a firm's ability to achieve an advantage may differ from those that affect its ability to sustain that advantage. Moreover, if advantage is a relative concept then studies that relate resource stocks to ‘absolute’ outcomes say little about how resources contribute to enduring differences among firms. We explore these issues in the global semiconductor industry by analyzing how a firm's resource stocks contribute to the persistence of an innovation advantage (a relative outcome). The findings demonstrate that a firm's own production experience and the experience held by its partners contribute to temporary innovation advantages. The results also show that a firm's own production experience yields a more durable innovation advantage as compared to the experience held by a firm's partners and that the experience held by a firm's partners provides a more enduring advantage than a firm's patent stock.     

Feeling Vulnerable? Disclosure of Vulnerability in the Charismatic Leadership Relationship

The current conceptual paper explores the role of vulnerability in the charismatic leadership relationship. “Sharing vulnerability” is defined as communicating an experience to followers, in which the leader was hurt emotionally, physically, or spiritually. We argue that sharing vulnerability may be an important mechanism through which leaders develop relationships with their followers and increase attributions of charisma. We also note several likely preconditions for sharing vulnerability, including humility, self‐awareness, and the courage to acknowledge imperfections. Further, we highlight that when leaders disclose emotions, it creates opportunities for followers to connect with leaders at an emotional level. Followers, in turn, may perceive increased psychological safety, be more willing to trust the leader, and be more motivated to engage in building a more egalitarian leader–follower relationship. Therefore, we propose sharing vulnerability as a potential avenue for building more compassionate and caring leader–follower relationships.     

Is the customer always right?

This article begins with a brief review of the early days of production and inventory control (where it started), describes the present state of the art (what it is like today), and ends with a forecast of what the future looks like (where it is going). Recognizing the importance of the customer today, it focuses on the changes in supplier-customer relations in the past as well as those to come.     

Breaking the mould? Innovation as a strategy for corporate renewal

In contrast to studies of HRM and innovation within hi-tech industries or greenfield sites, this paper uses longitudinal data to analyse the attempts of two mature corporations to shift from business strategies of 'cost reduction' and 'growth by acquisition' towards organizations that compete through innovation. The case studies describe how human resource management interventions and the structure of the HR function itself are used as change levers to support the shift in business strategies. By analysing the different organizational contexts, the paper identifies the complex microprocesses that either facilitate or constrain such organizational change. Its contribution lies in considering strategies concerned with innovation in both product and sales and marketing; in tracking these change processes over time using in depth case studies; and in considering innovation as a strategic trigger for corporate renewal.     

Is the tax administration just a money machine? Empirical evidence on redistributive politics

Personal income tax represents the main source of tax revenue in any developed country. In this paper, we analyse how efficiently this tax is administered in the Spanish case. While we find that the managerial (or net) efficiency of the tax administration was very high for the period 1993–2002 (95.9%), our main aim here is to identify the determinants of this. Interestingly, political factors are found to play a role. Specifically, the fear of losing a parliamentary seat in a region forces the tax authorities to reduce their efficiency in ensuring tax compliance in that region (“swing voter model”). Additionally, in those electoral districts where the central government obtains higher electoral support the efforts to collect taxes diminish (“core voter model”). However, the former political effect tends to disappear when the central government holds a sufficient majority in the central parliament. Thus, we find empirical evidence on redistributive politics in tax administration.     

Is the Stock Exchange a Casino?

'Primary investment' is the permanent addition to productive capacity which follows abstinence or saving. It is risky but the effects of uncertainty operate around the risk-free interest rate, not around an average of nil or worse as in a slot machine. Investment, as opposed to gambling, implies that the investor 'does his homework.' Gambling via the stock exchange has increased, especially because of the expanding role of institutional investors as agents for savers.     

Is the Emperor In His Underwear?

This paper assesses our state of knowledge concerning the ‘New Public Management’ (NPM) reforms which seem to have been launched in so many countries. In the first section it appraises the types of materials available as a basis for such an assessment. It then considers, and rejects, the thesis that, because of the improved performance they bring, these reforms are global in reach and inevitable in nature. Subsequently, the main part of the paper assesses the available evidence with respect to a number of key dimensions of reform impacts. It concludes that, while there is evidence of specific improvements in particular instances, the general case for NPM as a solution to diverse problems of governance in many different countries is far less firmly established than is commonly supposed.     

The Effect of Import Competition on Firm Productivity and Innovation: Does the Distance to Technology Frontier Matter?

How does foreign competition affect growth and innovation in China? Using our unique measures of proximity of Chinese firms and industries to the world technology frontier, we find that despite vast sectoral heterogeneity, Chinese manufacturing industries have undergone rapid technological upgrading over the period of 2000–06. The distance to the world production frontier of firms and industries plays an important role in shaping the nexus between the competition pressure from foreign imports and domestic firms' growth and innovation behaviour. Our results support the theoretical predictions of Aghion et al. (2005, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, pp. 701–728) that import competition stimulates the domestic firms' productivity growth and R&D expenditure if firms and their industries are close to the world frontier, but discourages such incentives for laggard firms and industries. The two forces highlighted by the model operate for imports under the ordinary‐trade regime, for collective and private firms, and for imports originated from high‐income countries. Our findings are robust after controlling the influence of foreign investment, the reverse causality of regressors and the short‐term business cycle fluctuations.