The Role of Leader Influence Tactics and Safety Climate in Engaging Employees'' Safety Participation

This study examines the effect of leader influence tactics on employee safety participation in a U.K.-based manufacturing organization, examining the role of safety climate as a mediator. Structural equation modeling showed that leader influence tactics associated with a transformational leadership style had significant relationships with safety participation that were partially mediated by the safety climate (consultation) or fully mediated by the safety climate (inspirational appeals). In addition, leader influence tactics associated with a transactional leadership style had significant relationships with safety participation: rational persuasion (partially mediated by safety climate) and coalition tactics (direct effect). Thus, leaders may encourage safety participation using a combination of influence tactics, based on rational arguments, involvement in decision making, and generating enthusiasm for safety. The influence of building trust in managers is discussed as an underlying mechanism in this relationship. Practical implications are highlighted, including the design of leadership development programs, which may be particularly suited to high-reliability organizations.     

Discursive strategies for internal legitimacy: Narrating the alternative organizational form

A significant body of academic work has explored the ways in which hybrid organizations seek to secure external legitimacy. However, there is a more limited understanding of the ways in which organizational units in hybrid organizations seek to acquire internal legitimacy – legitimacy which is conferred by internal stakeholders. This study draws on more than a century of communications in a Dutch cooperative bank to uncover how a major organizational unit enacted distinct discursive strategies to seek internal legitimacy. The paper extends prior work by showing how internal legitimacy work – the efforts to shape, reinforce, or suppress internal legitimacy judgments – in a hybrid organization is a dynamic process whereby an internal unit generates multiple complementary narratives to promote a fit between its own attributes and the legitimacy evaluations by internal audiences. In addition, it shows how internal legitimacy work can promote this fit by attempting to manipulate not only the impressions of the internal unit's attributes, but also its audiences’ understanding of wider cultural norms of the day, on which their legitimacy judgments are based. In this vein, the paper highlights how discursive internal legitimacy work seeks to generate a taken-for-granted organizational position for the internal units concerned.     

The importance of innovation leadership in cultivating strategic fit and enhancing firm performance

This study examines the importance of innovation leadership in cultivating the strategic fit of an organization with its environment, and enhancing various economic, relationship, and product performance outcomes. It thus explores how innovation leadership enables a firm to change and adapt to its external environment and by implication enhance its performance. The results of data collected from 117 firms show that innovation leadership, both directly and through increased strategic fit, significantly enhances firm performance. Implications for research on strategic and innovation leadership and adaptive organizational systems are discussed.     

An Olympic‐sized Challenge: Effect of Organizational Pathology on Maintaining and Repairing Organizational Legitimacy in Sports Governing Bodies

Private organizations increasingly wield public authority, with substantial impact on the lives of individual persons. Such authority is often paired with enhanced public scrutiny and decreased trust in the relevant organization, leading to a loss of legitimacy. This paper uses sports governing bodies to contribute to the literature on governance by developing theory on the interaction between organizational legitimacy and pathological internal structures. It takes a nuanced view of legitimacy and extends a model of organizational pathology. While primarily conceptual, the paper uses the well‐documented cases of the International Olympic Committee and, to a lesser extent, FIFA to illustrate how organizational pathology can not only undermine an organization's legitimacy, but can also interfere with its ability to perceive a path to legitimacy repair, even when it recognizes the necessity of doing so. The paper concludes with recommendations for practice and suggestions for future research looking beyond sports governing bodies.     

The reorganization of legitimate violence: The contested terrain of the private military and security industry during the post-cold war era

We investigate the interplay between institutional structures and agency in the emergence of the private military and security industry (PMSI). Despite its controversial nature, the PMSI has achieved sufficient legitimacy since the end of the Cold War to account at times for the majority of military personnel deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. We find both structure and agency central to the PMSI's development. The analysis points first to the central roles played by actors with expertise, reputation, and credibility based in sovereign structures, and, second, to structural shifts that reconfigured the military field in ways that both enabled and constrained agency. Various actors lent credibility to new activities that were integrated with and substitutes for previously legitimated approaches by using these openings to discredit prevailing institutional logics and to construct bridges between old and new institutions. However, it is the interplay of structure and agency that affords the clearest view of the expansion of the modern PMSI and the forces fostering and impeding its legitimacy. Our analysis reflects on a central question in organization theory: Where do new industries come from, and what entrepreneurial strategies are employed to establish organizational legitimacy under structural constraints?     

Proactivity Directed Toward the Team and Organization: The Role of Leadership, Commitment and Role-breadth Self-efficacy

Employees' proactive behaviour is increasingly important for organizations seeking to adapt in uncertain economic environments. This study examined the link between leadership and proactive behaviour. We differentiated between organizational leadership and team leadership and proposed that transformational leadership by team leaders would enhance commitment to the team, which would predict team member proactivity. In contrast, transformational leadership by leaders of the organization would enhance commitment to the organization, which we expected to predict organization member proactivity. Transformational leadership on both levels was expected to increase employees' role-breadth self-efficacy, the confidence necessary to engage in proactive behaviour. Our results demonstrate the importance of leadership as an antecedent of proactive work behaviour and suggest that leadership at different levels influences proactivity via different mediators. Transformational team leaders seem to facilitate proactivity by increasing employees' confidence to initiate change. Transformational organizational leaders on the other hand increase proactivity by enhancing employees' commitment to the organization.     

On the leadership function of self-sacrifice

This paper describes the leadership function of self-sacrifice in organizational settings using a multiple-level model of leadership. It explores why self-sacrificial behaviors would arise in organizational settings and what would be the effects on followers if a leader exhibits self-sacrificial behaviors. It is proposed that self-sacrificial leadership will facilitate individual and organizational adaptations to changing environments and that followers will attribute charisma and legitimacy to a self-sacrificial leader and intend to reciprocate.     

The missing link? Investigating organizational identity strength and transformational leadership climate as mechanisms that connect CEO charisma with firm performance

In this paper, we suggest that CEO charisma is related to firm performance via its effect on two important mediators. First, charismatic CEOs are expected to raise the transformational leadership climate within an organization. Second, both CEO charisma and transformational leadership climate are proposed to increase a firm’s organizational identity strength (OIDS), which in turn, relates positively to firm performance. We tested these propositions on a sample of 150 German companies (20,639 employees) with a three-path mediation model at the organizational level of analysis, utilizing four independent data sources. Our study helps open the black box of organizational leadership and organizational performance by demonstrating top-level leadership’s (CEO charisma) cascading effect on the TFL climate throughout the organization and by showing that OIDS mediates both leadership levels’ relationships with firm performance. Further, our study is the first to investigate the relationship between OIDS and performance at the organizational level of analysis.     

基于中国公司情境的和谐管理领导力研究

在回顾有关领导理论研究的基础上,提出了和谐管理领导力应具备3种特征:组织影响力、内在控制点的个性特征和管理技能.同时,发展了相应的测度和研究量表,通过对中国公司样本的研究,对比了环境、组织、战略与领导4个要素对组织绩效的影响效果,用实证结论支持了和谐管理领导力的观点,即在中国公司情境下,与环境、组织和战略因素相比,领导扮演着更为重要的角色并发挥关键作用.     

Is leadership born or made?

Is leadership born or made? By profiling three colleagues who made the transition from clinician to top-flight executive in a health care organization, the author provides case studies from which to discuss leadership issues. An evolutionary pattern has developed with respect to physicians changing careers: The first model was the medical director, followed by the vice president for medical affairs, and finally the move to managing the health care system, group practice, or managed care organization. Are physician executives fundamentally different from clinicians in terms of leadership characteristics? What are the essential qualities needed to lead health care organizations? These questions are explored in-depth.     

The War of the Woods: Facilitators and Impediments of Organizational Learning Processes

This study examines unfolding organizational learning processes at MacMillan Bloedel, a company which, after years of resisting stakeholder pressures for change, disengaged from the field’s dominant paradigm and developed a new solution. We elaborate the Crossan, Lane and White multi–level framework of organizational learning processes, finding support for the four feedforward learning processes they identified (intuiting, interpreting, integrating and institutionalizing), and adding two action–based learning processes: ‘attending’ and ‘experimenting’. We introduce the concept of a ‘legitimacy trap’ to describe an organization’s over–reliance on institutionalized knowledge when external challenges arise. The trapped organization rejects external challenges of its legitimacy when it perceives the sources of those challenges to be illegitimate. Feedforward learning is blocked as the organization escalates its commitment to its institutionalized interpretations and actions. Taking a grounded theory approach, we discuss how individuals attend to new stimuli and engage in intuiting about them, how groups interpret, experiment with and integrate new solutions, and how the firm validates and institutionalizes the successful solution. Facilitators and impediments of each of these learning processes are identified. Our additions to the model recognize the importance of context in organizational learning processes, and suggest how power may impact organizational learning.     

Organizational and contextual influences on the emergence and effectiveness of charismatic leadership

The literature on charismatic leadership in organizations has neglected the organizational context in which such leadership is embedded. The purpose of this article is to enrich and refine charismatic leadership theory by linking it to its organizational context. We argue that while charismatic leadership principles and processes potentially apply across a wide variety of situations, the emergence and effectiveness of such leadership may be facilitated by some contexts and inhibited by others. We develop and present a series of propositions linking contextual variable to the emergence and effectiveness of charismatic leadership. Among the contextual variable we examine are the organizational environment, life-cycle stage, technology, tasks, goals, structure, and culture, as well as the leader's level in the organization and the circumstances surrounding his or her appointment.     

学习型组织对企业绩效的影响研究

在回顾国内外学习型组织文献的基础上,检验了西方学习型组织模型及其测量工具“学习型组织问卷调查表”在中国的适用性,并得到中国环境下学习型组织由“支持个体学习以达成共同愿景”、“建立沟通与创新机制”、“鼓励团队学习与合作”、“倡导系统思考与战略领导”4个要素构成。同时采用平衡记分卡的思想开发了企业绩效评价问卷,为研究学习型组织与企业绩效的影响关系提供了绩效衡量工具,研究结果表明学习型组织对企业绩效有正向的影响作用,从而证明了创建学习型组织对提高企业绩效的必要性。     

A reconceptualization of authentic leadership: Leader legitimation via follower-centered assessment of the moral dimension

We explore some challenges that face authentic leadership scholarship including problems related to how the construct is understood and measured. We present a model of authentic leadership that looks at it, not as a leadership style, but as an outcome of a legitimation process. Authentic leadership represents legitimated follower perceptions of a leader's authenticity which are activated by moral judgments. We explain how a follower-centered assessment of the moral component helps explain leadership dynamics in situations involving ethical relativism, thus alleviating concerns regarding the presumed moral component of the construct. The overlap between leaders' and followers' value systems leads to impressions of authenticity, even in cases in which there are no clear universal moral standards. An authentic person's behavior cannot be labeled as “leadership” unless it is embraced by a follower who grants moral legitimacy to the leader. We then discuss the implications of our study for scholars and practitioners.     

Development and validation of the Legitimate Monitoring and Control Questionnaire (LMCQ)

In this paper, we present the multidimensional Legitimate Monitoring and Control Questionnaire (LMCQ), which is based on social-exchange and institutional theory. Our aim was to develop and validate a widely applicable leadership inventory that accounts for comparable criterion variance as transformational leadership. While transformational leadership scales emphasize charismatic or visionary behavior, the basis for the LMCQ is the belief that perceptions of control legitimacy are essential and lead to high-quality social-exchange relationships between supervisors and subordinates. To build the dimensions comprising the LMCQ, an exploratory study (study 1, 38 respondents) was conducted to investigate which kinds of socioemotional benefits actually drive subordinates' perceptions of control legitimacy. The interview data were used to compile an initial item pool that was condensed as a subsequent step (study 2, 494 respondents). Lastly, the resulting measurement instrument representing six dimensions of legitimacy-enhancing supervisory behavior was validated (study 3, 936 respondents).     

Leadership for organizational adaptability: A theoretical synthesis and integrative framework

One of the biggest challenges facing leaders today is the need to position and enable organizations and people for adaptability in the face of increasingly dynamic and demanding environments. Despite this we know surprisingly little about this topic. In this paper we provide a theoretical synthesis and integrative review of research from strategy, organization theory, innovation, networks, and complexity to provide a framework of leadership for organizational adaptability. Our review shows that leadership for organizational adaptability is different from traditional leadership or leading change. It involves enabling the adaptive process by creating space for ideas advanced by entrepreneurial leaders to engage in tension with the operational system and generate innovations that scale into the system to meet the adaptive needs of the organization and its environment. Leadership for organizational adaptability calls for scholars and practitioners to recognize organizational adaptability as an important organizational outcome, and enabling leadership (i.e., enabling the adaptive process through adaptive space) as a critical form of leadership for adaptive organizations.     

How Will We Know It When We See It? Conceptualizing the Ethical Organization

How might one conceptualize the ethical organization? The argument presented here is that the truly ethical organization accentuates three main components. First it must be law-abiding in its basic execution of its organizational ethical responsibility. Second, the organization must exercise strong ethical leadership in its day-to-day operations and policies. Finally, at the organizational level, there must be ongoing monitoring processes ensuring compliance of the organization. Specific techniques for consistent, ongoing monitoring and enforcement of ethical compliance by an objective party are described.     

家长式领导、冲突与高管团队战略决策效果的关系研究

本文以四川省78家企业371名高管团队成员为实证研究对象,探讨了CEO的家长式领导行为对高管团队战略决策效果的影响,以及团队冲突在其中的中介作用.同时,构建了包括家长式领导、认知冲突、情绪冲突和决策效果四个变量的概念模型,并提出相应的理论假设.通过结构方程模型的检验,表明CEO的德行领导和威权领导分别从正反两个方向对决策效果产生显著的影响,仁慈领导对决策效果没有显著的直接影响.德行领导主要通过认知冲突作用于决策效果,仁慈、威权领导则通过情绪冲突作用于决策效果.     

A meta-analytic review and future research agenda of charismatic leadership

Charismatic leadership is a critical construct that draws much attention from both academic and practitioner literatures. Despite the positive attention received by the charisma construct, some have criticized its conceptualization and measurement. These critiques have, in turn, cast doubt on what we know regarding the antecedents and outcomes of charismatic leadership. In this review, we adopt a recently developed definition of charismatic leadership and then conduct a meta-analysis of its antecedents and objective outcomes. Following an examination of 76 independent studies and 36,031 individuals, results indicate that the Big Five traits and cognitive ability vary in their association with charismatic leadership. Other findings show that dimensions of charismatic leadership predict outcomes of interest, such as supervisor-rated task performance, supervisor-rated citizenship behaviors, and group or organization performance. Several shortcomings are identified, however, in testing theoretical and methodological moderating variables. The present research ultimately provides a roadmap for new frontiers in theoretical, measurement and empirical work on charismatic leadership.     

Reputation, trust and the dynamics of leadership in communities of practice

The aim of this article is to propose a theoretical framework describing the internal organization of communities of practice in a dynamic perspective. More precisely, we argue that communities of practice adopt some specific patterns of internal organization where some of their members obtain a leadership status. Leaders contribute to cognitive advance of the community of practice by providing members with a consistent and coherent vision of its objectives. We identify two of their attributes as important for allowing them to fulfil their task: informational mimesis and mediation. Finally, we propose a simulation model describing the emergence of leadership as the outcome of a self-organizing process. We find that leaders correspond to members who are characterized by higher levels of activity in the community.This work has greatly benefited from comments by participants at the 3^rd ETE Workshop held in Sophia-Antipolis. Comments by Markus Becker, Antoine Bureth, Patrick Cohendet, Robin Cowan, Christophe Lerch, Julien Pénin are gratefully acknowledged. Remarks by two anonymous reviewers and the editor contributed to improve significantly the quality of the article. The usual disclaimer applies.