Increasing supply chain resilience against disruptions and interruptions depends not only on cooperation among supply chain partners but also on cross-functional cooperation within the companies in the supply chain.
A new paper explodes the concept of the craft organization of work as musty history, presenting different configurations of craft that can offer solutions to challenges faced in the 21st-century workplace.
A qualitative study, based on interviews and roundtable discussions with 79 women in the financial sector, identifies 10 action steps companies can take to encourage and enable women to overcome gender barriers to promotions and leadership positions.
Caught between low-power employees and high-power executives, the ‘middle power’ of middle managers keeps them hopping between the roles of subordinate and superior. A new Theory of Power framework helps middle managers, their bosses and their organizations identify the challenges and psychological consequences of their caught-in-the-middle position.
Why Being a Middle Manager Is So Exhausting. Eric M. Anicich, Jacob B. Hirsh. Harvard Business Review (March 22, 2017). Through a series of empirical studies exploring the concept of charisma outside of an organizational leadership context, a team of researchers identify the two core dimensions of personal charisma and show that charisma is an informal personality trait observable in any context.
In their efforts to persuade and influence others, leaders pay close attention to the words they choose. Listeners, however, often doubt the sincerity of those trying hard to persuade them. Research into how leaders modulate their voices — by adjusting the volume of their speech, for example — reveals that such ‘paralinguistic cues’ can enhance their persuasiveness, and even increase their perceived sincerity.
Dedicated collaborative spaces for cross-functional and open innovation (mixing internal and external participants) teams can encourage and enhance collaboration, but can also generate their own constraints. Co-location alone is not a silver bullet strategy for seamless collaboration among diverse teams.
Leaders have different origin stories—the stories of how they became leaders. For example, some were thrust in leadership positions; others became leaders when they decided to start an initiative. A new study shows that origin stories legitimize leaders in their leadership roles and explain the variety of motivations, styles and personalities through which they enact those leadership roles.
A new study building on leadership from an evolutionary perspective and exploring the needs of followers reveals that leadership is most in demand when a group needs to coordinate their activities, and when conflicts of interests threaten effective action by the group.
Societal expectations concerning gender and leadership attributes pull women leaders in opposite directions: if strong, they are criticized for not being empathetic or likeable; if empathetic, they are criticized for not being strong enough. The best women leaders thrive by managing these tensions through a paradox mindset.
Building on their own research and case studies, as well as the research of others, three experts in organization studies build a framework for organizational culture as a lever for change. At the heart of the framework is the concept of organizational culture as a ‘toolkit’ of resources.
While high external performance expectations often improve performance, they can also have the opposite effect. Research shows that high-performance expectations can increase the embarrassment of those who experience early setbacks, reducing their motivation to persist and leading, ultimately, to failure.
An experimental study of the decision-making process in cross-functional teams reveals the impact of leadership, or lack thereof, on the quality of the teams’ decisions and the satisfaction of team members with those decisions.
Research-based on Norway’s pioneering quota for corporate boards reveals the positive impact of demand-side pressure to resolve the gender gap in corporate top leadership—and the contribution gender differences bring to corporate strategies and outcomes.
Mentees with a growth mindset, mentors driven by empathy and a desire to give, and program administrators who invest in training for mentors and mentees on how to best leverage mentoring relationships are leading success factors for entrepreneurial mentorship programs.
Management controls can be used to overcome the challenge of aligning conflicting corporate strategies with functional tasks, such as new product development.
The best entrepreneurship education and training (EET) programs for women, especially in developing countries, focus not only on the program goals and its contents or curriculum but also on often-overlooked human factors — e.g. the intentions of the participants — and the contextual environment in which the entrepreneurs will be working.
Women mentors and mentees both benefit from their involvement in mentoring programs, acquiring a range of cognitive, skill-based, and affective-related learning — and to a lesser extent social networking skills.
Five practices for cross-functional teams, using a visual or conceptual illustration as a starting point for dialogue and solution-seeking, help team members share knowledge without emphasizing their differences.
A new study based on male teacher reactions to female principals — based on 40 years of data — sheds light on continued biases against female leaders in all industries and sectors.
Executives often flounder, unable to execute a strategic vision and lead their people as they battle other executives over conflicting goals and priorities. Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries shows how group coaching instills a team culture among executives that breaks the deadlock, creates alignment, and helps them fulfill their roles as leaders.
Although a health care organization improved its services significantly, and its reputation as a result, key stakeholders continued to mistrust the organization. A research study based on in-depth interviews revealed the disconnect between transactional-driven reputation and relational-driven trust.
Although a health care organization improved its services significantly, and its reputation as a result, key stakeholders continued to mistrust the organization. A research study based on in-depth interviews revealed the disconnect between transactional-driven reputation and relational-driven trust.
Narcissistic tendencies in leaders can be productive as well as non-productive. A new study shows that non-productive narcissistic tendencies have an impact on turnover intention and job satisfaction, although this impact can vary depending on gender and position in the company.
More employers are discovering the benefits of the four-day working week, including increased productivity and employee satisfaction. Many employers, however, continue to express concern over the difficulty in implementing and managing the four-day working week, as well as its impact on customers.
Diversity will fail to yield higher performance if leaders don’t take steps to disarm negative perceptions of diversity as an initiative that destroys unity and cohesion, rather than contributing important new perspectives and insight.
Many organizations ignore the collaborative demands of agility and are then surprised when agile teams fail to produce the expected results. Four collaborative practices based on organizational network analysis takes full advantage of social networks to enhance the success of agile initiatives.
Inspiring the human desire to help others, customer contact sparks the collective energy of employees, leading to better company performance. Transformational leadership is vital, however, to capture the benefits of customer contact.
CEOs and CFOs with a high promotion focus, who are afraid to miss opportunities and willing to experiment, are more likely to lead a company to growth than low promotion-focused CEOs and CFOs, who are more aware of potential risks. The best strategic decisions, however, seem to come when the two executives have clashing levels of promotion focus.
