Estimating return on leadership development investment

When making capital investment decisions organizational leaders are trained to consider the financial return on investment. Yet, the same expectation typically does not exist for investments in leadership training. We suggest that decisions regarding leadership training and development ought to use a similar approach as the process leads to organizations incurring cost for an anticipated benefit, like any other investment. In the current paper, we describe how to estimate the return on leadership development investment (RODI) and the implications for measuring organizational effectiveness from such analyses. Using different guiding assumptions, scenarios, length of the intervention, and level of management participating in the leader development program, the expected return on investment from leadership development interventions ranged from a low negative RODI to over 200%.     

The use of constructive-developmental theory to advance the understanding of leadership

Constructive-developmental theory is a stage theory of adult development that focuses on the growth and elaboration of a person's ways of understanding the self and the world. In this article we review how the constructive-developmental frameworks of Kegan [Kegan, R. (1982). The evolving self: Problem and process in human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press], Torbert [Torbert, W. R. (1987). Managing the corporate dream: Restructuring for long-term success. Homewood, IL: Dow Jones-Irwin.], and Kohlberg [Kohlberg, L. (1969). Stage and sequence: The cognitive developmental approach to socialization. In D. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of socialization: Theory and research. New York: Rand McNally] have been applied in the theoretical and empirical literature on leadership and management. Although the literature has produced a number of propositions, the notion that a leader's order of development should impact his or her leadership effectiveness or managerial performance has generated the most research. We found mixed support for this proposition as well as a number of limitations in the research in general. To have a greater impact on the leadership field, constructive-developmental theory needs to generate more robust research, to link more clearly with on-going streams of leadership research, and to explore the contribution of aspects of the theory beyond individual order of development.     

基于投资竞赛的离散模型的动力学行为分析

首先为同类企业的投资竞赛建立了一个离散非线性动力学模型,然后深入研究了该模型 不动点的稳定性及各种分岔与混沌行为,并分析了系统的非线性动力学性质所表现的经济学意 义. 研究结果表明:随着系统参数的增大,该离散非线性模型通过准周期过渡和倍周期分岔两种 途径通向混沌,并能较好地解释同类企业因竞争而导致经济规模此消彼长的社会经济现象     

The effective use of computer resources

The distribution over time of jobs arriving for service at a computer installation will affect the turnaround time experienced by them, as does the sequence of service for jobs having arrived. However, if the pattern of delays due to congestion can be determined in advance, the submission times of jobs may be adjusted to increase the effectiveness of the system.A theoretical model is developed in which users relate the net value of their jobs to submission time and turnaround time and the organization imposes submission and sequencing rules to increase the net gain of the system. A simulation is used to illustrate specific system environments and evaluation methods.     

A simulation tool for modeling the influence of anatomy on information flow using discrete integrate and fire neurons

There are theories on brain functionality that can only be tested in very large models. In this work, a simulation model appropriate for working with large number of neurons was developed, and Information Theory measuring tools were designed to monitor the flow of information in such large networks. The model’s simulator can handle up to one million neurons in its current implementation by using a discretized version of the Lapicque integrate and fire neuron instead of interacting differential equations. A modular structure facilitates the setting of parameters of the neurons, networks, time and most importantly, architectural changes. Applications of this research are demonstrated by testing architectures in terms of mutual information. We present some preliminary architectural results showing that adding a virtual analogue to white matter called “jumps” to a simple representation of cortex results in: (1) an increase in the rate of mutual information flow, corresponding to the “bias” or “priming” hypothesis; thereby giving a possible explanation of the high speed response to stimuli in complex networks. (2) An increase in the stability of response of the network; i.e. a system with “jumps” is a more reliable machine. This also has an effect on the potential speed of response.     

The design of computer based planning and modeling systems

Today there are nearly 2000 corporations in North America and Europe either using, developing, or experimenting with some form of corporate planning model. With the emergence of this new and rather substantial interest in the methodology of corporate planning modeling, there appears to be a definite need for a conceptual framework which can be used to design and implement computer based planning and modeling systems.In this paper the authors describe a collection of elements which they believe to be of critical importance in designing a corporate planning model. Their objective is to develop a set of criteria for not only designing a planning and modeling system, but a set of criteria which can also be used to facilitate the evaluation and comparison of alternative planning and modeling systems.There are over 50 planning and modeling software packages on the market today. These include systems such as BUDPLAN, COMOS and SIMPLAN. This paper attempts to provide the reader with a convenient checklist of possible features to consider in either designing one's own system or selecting an appropriate software package.     

Longitudinal data analysis: Applications of random coefficient modeling to leadership research

Understanding how leaders develop, adapt, and perform over time is central to many theories of leadership. However, for a variety of conceptual and methodological reasons, such longitudinal research remains uncommon in the leadership domain. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the leadership scholar to conceptual issues involved in longitudinal design and analysis, and then demonstrate the application of random coefficient modeling (RCM) as a framework capable of modeling longitudinal leadership data. The RCM framework is an extension of the traditional regression model, so many readers will already have the fundamental knowledge required to use RCM. However, RCM has the additional capability of analyzing the kinds of data commonly found in longitudinal studies, including correlated observations, missing data, and heterogeneity over time. Further, the RCM allows for testing predictors of change over time. Thus, we introduce conceptual issues related to longitudinal research, discuss RCM within the context of regression, and conclude with an application of the RCM approach. We use a common substantive example throughout the paper to facilitate our discussion of the RCM.     

The evaluation of two key leadership development program components: Leadership skills assessment and leadership mentoring

This study evaluated two key components in leadership development programs: a 360-degree assessment of leadership skills and leadership mentoring. The participants in this study include 303 individuals in a leadership development program and 41 leadership mentors. The methodology and underlying rationale for using the two methods selected to evaluate the program are described. The results illustrate the degree to which mentees open up when mentors focus more on coaching and less on compliance and when mentors initiate personal contact with the mentees more often. The results also indicate that self-reports and observer-reports are statistically significantly different from one another. Implications and limitations are discussed.     

Zeroing in on leadership effectiveness: The methodological challenges of benchmarking leadership practices

Business success in the 21st century will be based on the widespread mastery of leadership roles, rather than on the directives of a professional or leadership elite. The first step for systematically enacting a leadership development agenda for our nation is to identify the factors, values or qualities most important to leadership effectiveness. Next, we must improve our understanding of how these guiding ideas and insights translate into what successful leaders do. As we perfect this understanding, we will need to operationally define the best practices of successful leaders. These best practices must then become benchmarks for intensive leadership development efforts.This article considers nine methodological challenges of the first agenda item-identification of the factors, values or qualities most important to leadership effectiveness. To illustrate these challenges, the authors use their own business leadership research as a case study. This research surveys 127 chairmen, chief executive officers, and presidents-a cross section of successful U.S.A. business leaders, including men and women from all parts of the nation who have diverse industry, racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds. The authors identify where methodological improvements are needed to cope with the challenges of leadership research. They suggest important directions for methodological development and propose three minimum standards for future leadership research.     

The myth of change management: A reflection on personal change and its lessons for leadership development

Abstract

In this article I reflect upon my own personal learning when faced with significant individual change, leaving a corporate role to start my own business and returning to serious study after twenty-five years of neglect. I look at the relationship between individual and organizational change, trying to reconcile the mechanistic models of change ingrained by years of practice with new insights gleaned from my own personal transition. Implications for change agents include taking a more adaptive and multi-dimensional approach to change, rather than vainly trying to manage it. For people developers it may question the way we develop leaders and managers to cope with change. And all of us may decide we can be better at learning how to embrace perpetual change and perpetual learning as part of the same unpredictable process.     

The WICS approach to leadership: Stories of leadership and the structures and processes that support them

This article presents the WICS approach to leadership and relates it to other approaches. Effective leadership is viewed as a synthesis of wisdom, creativity, and intelligence (WICS). It is in large part a decision about how to marshal and deploy these resources. One needs creativity to generate ideas, academic intelligence to evaluate whether the idea are good, practical intelligence to implement the ideas and persuade others of their worth, and wisdom to balance the interests of all stakeholders and to ensure that the actions of the leader seek a common good. The structures and processes underlying WICS work in concert to produce and maintain stories of leadership. These stories in turn enable leaders to fulfill their mission in leading followers.     

The effects of leadership style on stress outcomes

The present study manipulated transformational and transactional leadership styles to examine their influence on individuals' performance on a stressful task, and on perceived social support, self-efficacy beliefs, emotions, and stressor appraisals. In addition, this study examined whether these variables mediated the relationship between leadership style and performance. Two hundred fourteen participants viewed video instructions for a stressful task presented by an actor depicting one of three leadership styles (transformational, transactional-contingent reward, and transactional-management by exception). Participants' psychological, emotional, and motivational responses to the videos were assessed prior to their engagement with the task. The transformational leadership condition was associated with enhanced task performance, higher social support perceptions, greater efficacy beliefs, lower negative affect, and lower threat appraisals compared to the transactional conditions. Causal modeling revealed that leadership style had a direct, rather than indirect, effect on task performance. The present research extends leadership research by providing an experimental evaluation of the costs/benefits of transformational and transactional leadership under stressful task conditions. Some of the results parallel those from correlational field studies, thus corroborating transformational leadership theory while other results diverge from theory, but present opportunities for future research.     

The downside of transformational leadership when encouraging followers to network

Network scholars argue that one responsibility of leaders is to help their followers develop social capital. We suggest that one way leaders do this is by encouraging followers to engage in networking behavior. However, we argue that such encouragement is more effective when leaders are seen as less transformational, because followers are then less able to benefit from their leaders’ social capital. We support our arguments with a study of 142 followers and their leaders. Our findings show that followers engage in greater networking behaviors when encouraged by their leaders to do so, but this association is moderated by leaders’ transformational leadership style such that it is stronger as transformational leadership behaviors decrease. We thus introduce an unrecognized cost of leaders’ transformational leadership behaviors. Our findings contribute to research on networking behavior by investigating the role of transformational leadership style, and suggest avenues for research linking social capital and leadership.     

The impact of tax uncertainty on irreversible investment

Traditional models of capital budgeting with taxes are based on deterministic tax rates and tax bases. In reality, however, there are multiple sources of tax uncertainty. Frequent tax reforms make future taxation of investments a stochastic process. Fiscal authorities and tax courts create additional tax uncertainty by interpreting current tax laws differently. Moreover, simplified models that anticipate the actual tax base incorrectly contribute to tax uncertainty as perceived by investors. I analyze the effects of stochastic taxation on investment behavior in a real options model. The investor holds an option to invest in an irreversible project with stochastic cash flows and stochastic tax payments. Pre-tax cash flows and tax payments are assumed to be correlated. Increased tax uncertainty has an ambiguous impact on investment timing. For low tax uncertainty, high cash flow uncertainty and high correlation of cash flows and tax payments, increased tax uncertainty is likely to accelerate investment. A higher expected tax payment delays investment. A higher after-tax discount rate affects investment timing ambiguously.     

Dynamic capabilities,entrepreneurial rent-seeking and the investment development path: The case of Samsung

As noted by Narula and Dunning [Narula, R., Dunning. J.H., 2000. Industrial Development, Globalization and Multinational Enterprise: New Realities for Developing Countries. Oxford Development Studies, 28, 141–167.], it has been observed that some of the more advanced developing countries, those rapidly ‘catching-up’, outpaced the postulated Investment Development Path (IDP), in which the strategic asset-seeking type of outward foreign direct investment is supposed to occur in later stages, i.e., when countries reach the higher “developed” levels of economic progress. Firms who led the outpacing in those countries did so through their entrepreneurial commitment to upgrade technological capabilities to maintain and augment their O-advantages rather than because of the overall economic development of their home country. Samsung Electronics' recent success in the semiconductor industry allows us to identify and analyse the factors whereby it not only utilised status-quo resources but also developed dynamic capabilities as it rose to the top. Aggressive and risk-taking investment behaviour in search of entrepreneurial rent and the effective policy of managing technology development contributed to the extraordinary achievement of Samsung Electronics. The company's remarkable transformation over the last decade or so can shed light on how a firm's dynamic capabilities, the ability to improve its O-advantages by reconfiguration, transformation and learning, contribute to its home country's idiosyncratic development path.     

The effects of leadership change on team escalation of commitment

Although teams benefit from developing plans and processes that boost efficiency and reduce uncertainty, they may become too attached to these plans and escalate commitment when an alternative response is needed. Drawing on theories of team leadership, team processes and escalation of commitment, we propose that a change in leadership can help the team reduce commitment to outdated plans and avoid further escalation over time. Across two studies, we tested and found support for our hypotheses and provide evidence that leadership change can break the cycle of escalation by enhancing leader-driven team reflection and refocusing the team on error correction instead of additional investment. We discuss how the results of these studies extend existing theory and add to our understanding of the important role leaders play in enhancing team adaptation and preventing team escalation.     

The evolution of organizations and leadership from the ancient world to modernity: A multilevel approach to organizational science and leadership (OSL)

The purpose of this paper is to offer an initial theory, timeline, and taxonomy for discussing and researching the evolution of types of organizations and the concomitant context they provide for leadership. Specifically, leadership roles in the ancient world and modernity are contrasted and found to be almost diametrically opposed. To arrive at this conclusion, this work draws upon current extensions of evolutionary theory from biology and psychology to organizational studies and leadership (Yammarino & Dansereau, 2011). This framework is then contrasted with Kellerman (2012) who calls for an end to leadership studies. The question this paper attempts to address is: from a multi-level perspective, how have evolutionary changes in the types of commercial organizational structures led to differing dominant leadership styles? Without having to call for an end to leadership studies, an understanding of ancient forms of organization can lend insight into a number of contemporary business and geopolitical conflicts where tribalism is a factor.     

The effects of self-efficacy on computer usage

This paper examines the effect of self-efficacy, belief in one's capabilities of using a computer in the accomplishment of specific tasks, on computer usage. It introduces an extended technology acceptance model (TAM) that explicitly incorporates self-efficacy and its determinants (experience and organizational support) as factors affecting computer anxiety, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and the use of computer technology. A survey of 450 microcomputer users in Finland found strong support for the conceptual model. In accordance with TAM, perceived usefulness had a strong direct effect on usage, while perceived ease of use had indirect effect on usage through perceived usefulness. Self-efficacy had both direct and indirect effects on usage, demonstrating its importance in the decision to use computer technology. It also had a strong direct effect on perceived ease of use, but only an indirect effect on perceived usefulness through perceived ease of use. Computer experience was found to have a strong positive direct effect on self-efficacy, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and usage. Organizational support and computer anxiety had only indirect effects on usage, mainly through perceived usefulness. Implications of these findings are discussed for researchers and practitioners.     

The intersection of leadership and entrepreneurship: Mutual lessons to be learned

Leadership scholars are quite familiar with the often convoluted and problematic path that leadership theory has taken. Despite these challenges, leadership is currently considered a “mature field” [Hunt, J.G., & Dodge, G.E. (2000). Leader Deja Vu all over again. The Leadership Quarterly, 11 (4), 453–458] even though this maturity has not been achieved without considerable growing pains. Similar to the path that leadership scholars have taken, those who study entrepreneurship also struggle with issues associated with a field in its early stages. This review examines the intersection between the fields of leadership and entrepreneurship with an emphasis on how the path taken by leadership research can inform entrepreneurship and possibly lessen this young field's growing pains. We first identify several areas where these fields theoretically converge (both in the models employed and the research questions addressed). Next, we take a historical perspective of leadership and entrepreneurship by identifying the life cycle stage of each construct or domain. Finally, we conclude with some thoughts on how the entrepreneurship field may avoid (or is avoiding) the pitfalls experienced by those who study leadership.