Indian business leadership: Broad mission and creative value

While general models of business leadership have drawn extensively on American companies, we find that two distinctive leadership principles have emerged among Indian companies. We conducted interviews in 2007–09 with top executives, primarily the chief executive, of 102 of the 150 largest companies listed on the Mumbai stock exchange. Though aware of Western leadership principles and applying some of them, Indian business leaders have developed their own guiding principles that emphasize 1) broad mission and purpose, servicing the needs of stockholders but also focusing on family prosperity, regional advancement, and national growth; and 2) creative value propositions, devising new products and services to meet the needs of large numbers of low-income consumers with extreme efficiency. Business leaders in the U.S. have long stressed total shareholder return, and while business leaders in India also focus on owner interests, Indian business leaders have embraced goals extending beyond their company's financial calculus.     

Transformational Leadership Education and Agency Perspectives in Business School Pedagogy: A Marriage of Inconvenience?

We critique transformational leadership education in university business schools based on a literature review, a study of the websites of 21 leading business schools, and an analysis of two presentations to business school students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University by the former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch. Our critique draws attention to the unresolved tension between two motivating ideas that underpin much teaching in business schools: collective interest ideas that permeate transformational leadership education; and self-interest ideas derived from agency theory. Transformational leadership tends to be depicted as a process by which leaders exert a 'top-down' influence over the activities of others, while simultaneously asserting that their organizations have a common purpose and pursue a collective interest. We highlight the risk that business schools are producing graduates who will attempt to appeal to common needs (guided by precepts of transformational leadership) but who will simultaneously enact contradictory performance management systems (guided by agency theory). We encourage business school educators in leadership to adopt approaches which are more critical, relational and reflexive. We suggest some general directions for an alternative leadership prospectus, based on followership, the promotion of critical upward communication within organizations, and the recognition of leadership as a contested, discursive and co-constructed phenomenon.     

Leadership and business model innovation in late internationalizing SMEs

Drawing on the distinction between small-scale and large-scale business model innovation, and between directive and empowering leadership, we examine how CEOs in SMEs lead business model innovation during the process of internationalization. Building on eight cases of Japanese manufacturing SMEs, we develop a theoretical framework pointing to two different patterns in the articulation between CEO leadership style and business model innovation. We show that small-scale business model innovation led by directive leadership results in a timelier foreign market entry. However, in order to increase international sales, large-scale business model innovation is required. This is facilitated by an empowering leadership style of the CEO.     

Moral guidelines for international corporations: The Vesper-Hinksey challenge

The quest continues for a Code of Conduct embracing universal principles which will provide guidelines and norms for corporate decision making in our increasingly complex world of global business. The search continues to identify those criteria which will enable the corporate leadership, especially those engaged in international business to be more morally sensitive and to make better ethical decisions. This article will report on an ambitious initiative designed to achieve that goal: to develop through consultation and consensus new Guidelines for International Corporations.     

Leadership and the three faces of integrity

Recent scholarship in business and leadership strongly suggests that integrity is not fundamentally a moral concept. This paper presents an account of leadership integrity that defends its ethical meaning while identifying important cognitive structures that clarify the confusion surrounding integrity attributions. The paper begins with a brief review of historical, philosophical, and business discussions of integrity. Using the insights from these discussions, I argue that integrity is fundamentally, but not exclusively, a moral concept that supports the ethical claims of leadership theories. I then review current leadership theories and derive a definition of integrity as a moral concept. Using this definition, I explain how a leader's integrity is founded on identity-conferring commitments to values and then describe three types of leadership integrity to better understand these constructs. I conclude with a few research questions that seek to advance leadership integrity research with the goal of advancing our understanding of ethical leadership.     

Sustainability in the Construction Business — A Case Study

Skanska is among the world's five largest construction companies, with construction-related activities and project development operations in some 60 countries. A strategic approach to environment was adopted in 1995. In 1998 a decision was made to introduce certified environmental management systems. The drivers behind these steps were pressures from the market, future legislation and public opinion.By the end of 2000, all business units of Skanska had environmental management systems certified according to ISO 14001. Newly acquired companies are required to have certified systems within two years after acquisition. While environmental management systems provide the necessary framework, more technical tools are also needed. Some examples of such tools are presented in this article.ISO 14001 is an important element in focusing the attention of the organization on environmental issues, but for leadership in environment, a number of guiding principles are also presented and discussed.Finally, corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be seen as a framework for all types of issues where a company is regarded as having certain obligations toward society at large, because of direct or indirect effects from its business operations. It is only logical that Skanska, following its work with ISO 14001 and the move toward leadership in environment, now has decided to develop a CSR platform.     

Testing the generalizability of the white leadership standard in the post-Obama era

Over a decade ago, Rosette, Leonardelli, and Phillips (2008) conducted a study on race and business leader prototypes and discovered that participants held an implicit “white leadership standard”. As revealed in that study, such a standard introduces racial bias into the leadership categorization process, and places employees from racial minority groups at a disadvantage as they seek to attain leadership roles. However, in the last decade, broader trends and events in American society (e.g., the Obama presidency; the Harris Vice Presidency; an increase in minority business leader representation; changing demographics) have altered the socio-cultural context in which implicit leadership theories (ILTs) develop, hence offering the possibility that leadership models may have become amenable to change. The present study set out to retest the theoretical hypotheses of Rosette et al. (2008) in a direct/close replication study to examine the extent to which the findings generalize to a new sample within this new era. Across four experimental studies, results reveal more racially inclusive leadership perceptions than previously observed, as well as a weakened and context-dependent white leadership standard.     

Emerging paradoxes in executive leadership: A theoretical interpretation of the tensions between corruption and virtuous values

The recent mini scandal surrounding questionable on-line postings of John Mackey, the founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc., raises once again ethical challenges related to contemporary business leadership. Given his visible commitment to environmentally sound strategies and other responsible business practices, Mackey’s actions epitomize the irony and paradox that can surround executive leadership ethics. While this essay acknowledges the potential role of stricter legal constraints, punishments for offenders, decentralized governance systems, and rationalized structures that help prohibit power abuse, it views such rationalistic considerations alone to be inadequate. Rather, the authors suggest that the promotion of authentic virtuousness is an often overlooked yet indispensable part of any meaningful long term ethical leadership process.     

THE USES OF BUSINESS GAMING IN EDUCATION AND LABORATORY RESEARCH*

This paper reports an empirical investigation of business gaming in education and research. Subjects were approximately 200 junior and senior undergraduate students who were assigned to seven-man teams on the basis of scores on the Least Preferred Co-worker (LPC) leadership style questionnaire, and who played the Marksim business game during one academic semester. Relationships were explored between post-game perceptions of the game, team atmosphere and the leader, combinations of congruent and incongruent leadership styles, and measures of team performance. Also explored were relationships between several predictor variables (including grade point average) and measures of team performance. The results were generally disappointing in regard to business gaming as an educational tool. However, it seems that business gaming may hold promise for laboratory research in the behavioral sciences. The results of this investigation suggest that relationship-oriented and task-oriented leadership styles and combinations of these styles within hierarchically structured groups affect members' perceptions of the task and other aspects of the task environment but do not affect group performance, at least directly. These results may have significance for those interested in organizational design and the selection and development of leaders for first and second-level managerial positions.     

Assessing the effects of responsible leadership and ethical conflict on behavioral intention

This study develops a research model that elaborates how responsible leadership and ethical conflict influence employees from the perspectives of role theory and attachment theory. Its empirical results reveal that turnover intention indirectly relates to ethical conflict and responsible leadership via the mediating mechanisms of organizational identification and organizational uncertainty. At the same time, helping intention indirectly relates to ethical conflict and responsible leadership only through organizational identification. Finally, the managerial implications for international business and research limitations based on the empirical results are discussed.     

Leadership succession in different types of organizations: What business and political successions may learn from each other

We systematically review the recent impactful leadership succession literature in three types of organizations/contexts, namely publicly-traded, privately-owned (mostly family businesses), and political organizations. We compare and contrast these literatures, and argue that business and political leadership succession researchers and practitioners can learn from each other. The purpose of the review is fourfold. First, to take stock of the existing leadership succession research in these three related literatures – that examine the same essential phenomenon – but that have evolved separately. Previous reviews have focused mostly on CEO succession (not the broader phenomenon of leadership succession) mainly in publicly-traded firms; and to our knowledge no (recent) comprehensive literature reviews on the important topics of privately-owned and political organization leadership succession exist yet. Second, to develop an overarching integrative conceptual framework (ICF) that structures the overall leadership succession literature and shows the potential areas of integration and difference among the three literatures. Third, to develop three organizational frameworks – one for each organization type – that review what we know and what we should know about leadership succession in each type. Fourth, to critically compare the ICF, the three organizational frameworks, and the three literatures to better understand the similarities and differences among these literatures. By doing so and using a multidisciplinary approach we aim to contribute to the field in the following ways. Firstly, we seek to synthesize the field of leadership succession to identify important research questions that are ripe for study in the near future in the business and political science disciplines. Secondly, we strive to uncover what succession researchers and practitioners across these disciplines may learn from each other.     

The many (distinctive) faces of leadership: Inferring leadership domain from facial appearance

Previous research has shown that people form impressions of potential leaders from their faces and that certain facial features predict success in reaching prestigious leadership positions. However, much less is known about the accuracy or meta-accuracy of face-based leadership inferences. Here we examine a simple, but important, question: Can leadership domain be inferred from faces? We find that human judges can identify business, military, and sports leaders (but not political leaders) from their faces with above-chance accuracy. However, people are surprisingly bad at evaluating their own performance on this judgment task: We find no relationship between how well judges think they performed and their actual accuracy levels. In a follow-up study, we identify several basic dimensions of evaluation that correlate with face-based judgments of leadership domain, as well as those that predict actual leadership domain. We discuss the implications of our results for leadership perception and selection.     

The loci and mechanisms of leadership: Exploring a more comprehensive view of leadership theory

Through a qualitative review of the leadership literature, we derive two fundamental principles for codifying the last century of leadership theory and research: the locus and mechanism of leadership. Our systematic review and categorization of past theories suggests that further development of the follower, collective and context loci, and the affect mechanism is needed. Building on these insights, we propose that by simultaneously considering all five loci and four mechanisms in their theories, leadership scholars can advance a more comprehensive and integrative understanding of the leadership phenomenon. We then demonstrate the potential of using the locus and mechanism framework for examining and expanding current and future leadership theory including work on shared and strategic leadership.     

Traditional Chinese philosophies and contemporary leadership

We discuss three traditional Chinese philosophies—Daoism, Confucianism, and Legalism—as they relate to Western-originated leadership theories. We analyze articles reporting interviews with fifteen contemporary Chinese business leaders to determine how their leadership practices reflect the traditional philosophies. We discuss future research directions for Chinese and global leadership. In a response to world-wide call for developing indigenous theories and knowledge about management, we encourage scholars to consider cultural settings and traditional wisdom in their studies of contemporary leadership practices.     

Creating a corporate vision

Work on strategy has only recently been paying attention to the role of vision in the strategic management process and the possible relationship between vision and concepts as creativity, leadership and entrepreneurship. Analysis, however, has not been uniform in defining the core issues itself or in positioning vision within the overall strategic management construct. Even worse, the inter-relationship between vision and other concepts like leadership and entrepreneurship was only casually treated. This article is an attempt at putting strategic vision within one consistent conceptual frame. A frame that would encompass a definition, a set of attributes, an input and output flow and an operationalization dimension. The article relies heavily on contemporary work on strategy, entrepreneurship, creativity, leadership and organization. Illustrative cases are drawn from recent business (and non-business) histories of business organizations.     

Working with Language: A Refocused Research Agenda for Cultural Leadership Studies

This paper critically reviews existing contributions from the field of cultural leadership studies with a view to highlighting the conceptual and methodological limitations of the dominant etic, cross‐cultural approach in leadership studies and illuminating implications of the relative dominance and unreflective use of the English language as the academic and business lingua franca within this field. It subsequently outlines the negative implications of overlooking cultural and linguistic multiplicity for an understanding of culturally sensitive leadership practices. In drawing on lessons from this critical review and the emergent fields of emic, non‐positivist cultural leadership studies, this analysis argues that the field of cultural leadership studies requires an alternative research agenda focused on language multiplicity, which enables the field to move towards emic, qualitative research that helps to empower individual cultural voices and explore cultural intra‐ and interrelationships, tensions and paradoxes embedded in leadership processes. The paper concludes by offering suggestions on methodological approaches for emic cultural leadership studies that are centred on the exploration of language as a cultural voice.     

Top-Management-Coaching in mittleren Unternehmen

Top-Management-Coaching in mid-sized companies The author discusses coaching of business leaders in mid-sized companies. These companies appear to be under considerable pressure to professionalize at times regarding their understanding, functions and instruments of leadership and management, — unlike their technical and product know-how. Due to the strong personalization of leadership in mid-sized companies, this professionalization can only take place if the business leaders build up an adequate understanding of leadership by alternating self- and business reflection. A coach can be of great help, acting as a sparring partner by combining the ?personal perspective“ with the ?functional perspective“. A prerequisite on behalf of the coach, aside from his competence in individual and interaction psychology, is however the ability to transport himself into the specificities of a mid-sized company and its management as well as profound knowledge of the management of complex sociotechnical-economic systems.     

Escape from organizational nihilism: Leadership core values for Business Excellence

An earlier contribution to this journal focused on Leadership for Business Excellence, as reflected in business and performance excellence models which provide the criteria for various international quality prizes. Consideration of leadership in such models is bent toward competencies and their deployment and, also, to involvement in non-delegable activities deemed critical to the organization's competitive position. Herein a leadership core value set is developed, deployment of which can contribute to systemic leadership throughout the organization. Two subsequent contributions to this journal will examine leadership core value deployment and assessment of Leadership for Business Excellence.     

‘Female Heroes’: Celebrity Executives as Postfeminist Role Models

This paper explores the significance of contemporary celebrity businesswomen as role models for women aspiring to leadership in business. We explore the kind of gendered ideals they model and promote to women through their autobiographical narratives, and analyse how these ideals map against a contemporary postfeminist sensibility to further understand the potential of these role models to redress the under‐representation of women in management and leadership. Our findings show that celebrity businesswomen present a role model that we call the ‘female hero’, a figure characterized by 3Cs: confidence to jump over gendered barriers; control in managing these barriers; and courage to push through them. We argue that the ‘female hero’ role model is deeply embedded in the contemporary postfeminist sensibility; it offers exclusively individualized solutions to inequality by calling on women to change themselves to succeed, and therefore has limited capacity to challenge the current gendered status quo in management and leadership. The paper contributes to current literature on role models by generating a more differentiated and socially situated understanding of distant female role models in business and extending our understanding of their potential to generate sustainable and long‐term change in advancing gendered change in management and leadership.     

商业生态系统价值结构、企业角色与战略选择

与强调企业在商业生态系统中如何攫取领导地位的战略观不同,本文把研究重心放在了企业战略如何塑造成功商业生态系统上。首先,本文构建了成功商业生态系统的价值结构模型,为企业的战略选择提供了微观与宏观上的方向与路径。其次,本文讨论了与成功商业生态系统相匹配的企业角色,并结合价值结构模型定义了与企业角色相匹配的战略任务。最后,在此基础上,重点阐述了骨干型企业在如何塑造成功商业生态系统过程中具体的宏观战略选择路径与机制问题。