How leader humility helps teams to be humbler,psychologically stronger,and more effective: A moderated mediation model

We hypothesize that (a) the level of humility expressed by leaders predicts team performance through, serially, team humility and team PsyCap, and (b) the strength (i.e., consensus within the team) of the leader humility, team humility and team PsyCap moderates the paths of that hypothesized model. A sample comprising 82 teams (82 leaders; 332 team members) was collected. Team members reported leader humility, team humility and team PsyCap. Leaders reported team performance. To handle the risks of common method bias, each mediating path of the hypothesized model is based on data from two different subsamples within each team. Our model's most novel theoretical contribution is the (moderated mediated) connection between leader humility, collective humility, and team PsyCap, and this was consistently supported in our data. Our inconsistent findings dealing with the relationship between team PsyCap and performance is well established in the literature and our results in both sub-samples were in the theorized direction. The study contributes to understand why, how and when humble leaders are more effective.     

Stewardship as process: A paradox perspective

Long-term stewardship is usually represented as a stable structural condition and portrayed as a source of competitive advantage to firms (including family businesses) that use it as a mode of governance. Less is known about how organizations engage with stewardship as a process. We embrace a process approach to report a case study about the unfolding of stewardship in a multi-business family group. We conclude that stewardship is a process marked by critical tensions and paradoxes; by exploring the nature of these we uncover further dimensions and responses to the paradoxes of stewardship.     

Are authentic leaders associated with more virtuous,committed and potent teams?

Through a team-level analysis, the study shows how authentic leadership (AL) predicts team potency both directly and through the mediating role of team virtuousness and team affective commitment. Data about AL and team virtuousness were collected two months before data collection on team affective commitment and team potency. Fifty-one teams were selected for testing the hypotheses. The main findings are the following: (a) AL predicts team affective commitment through the mediating role of team virtuousness; (b) team virtuousness predicts team potency through the mediating role of team affective commitment; (c) AL predicts team potency through the mediating role of team virtuousness and team affective commitment. By focusing on two positive constructs (AL and team virtuousness), for which interrelations have rarely been explored, the study contributes to the Positive Organizational Scholarship movement, and suggests that AL and virtuousness are good in themselves and also potential facilitators of team success.     

Improvising Prescription: Evidence from the Emergency Room

Global medical practice is increasingly standardizing through evidence‐based approaches and quality certification procedures. Despite this increasing standardization, medical work in emergency units necessarily involves sensitivity to the individual, the particular and the unexpected. While much medical practice is routine, important improvisational elements remain significant. Standardization and improvisation can be seen as two conflicting logics. However, they are not incompatible, although the occurrence of improvisation in highly structured and institutionally complex environments remains underexplored. The study presents the process of improvisation in the tightly controlled work environment of the emergency room. The authors conducted an in situ ethnographic observation of an emergency unit. An inductive approach shows professionals combining ostensive compliance with protocols with necessary and occasional ‘underlife’ improvisations. The duality of improvisation as simultaneously present and absent is related to pressures in the institutional domain as well as to practical needs emerging from the operational realm. The intense presence of procedures and work processes enables flexible improvised performances that paradoxically end up reinforcing institutional pressures for standardization.