Organizational Dynamics最新文献

Leadership development continues to rely on executive and educational programs that focus on enhancing individuals’ skills, knowledge, or experience. But when leadership is collaborative (i.e., socially achieved by multiple people irrespective of status or title), then currently favored development approaches may be inadequate and inefficient because they do not train the correct skills and therefore waste leadership development dollars. In this paper, we describe a six-step process that can be used in organizations for collaborative leadership development. The six-step process used video recordings of two groups who watched themselves in order to notice and describe the emergence (or not) of collaborative leadership. Before watching themselves, we provided a new graphical language that changed the ways in which the group could see and understand their collaborative activity. The new graphical language (called vectors) made it possible for them to focus and comment on their group practice and not on their practice as individuals. This process of video recording a group and giving them graphical tools to reflect on the practices that they see, provides a simple way for participants to discuss their group patterns and the consequences of these for leadership. Their discussion was developmental in that it naturally helped the group to learn about their own practice. The six-step process seems to be particularly potent because it is based on the group identifying what does and does not advance their collaborative leadership experientially rather than just being taught about behaviors that support or detract from collaborative leadership. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of our process for those interested in developing collaborative leadership.

To lead effectively in a VUCA (i.e., volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) environment, leaders must quickly and continuously acquire new skills. However, formal development opportunities aren’t nearly enough to support the ongoing skill development leaders need to manage the level of complexity and change they are facing. Instead, leaders must take ownership of their own development. In this paper, we describe a straightforward, four-step process that leaders can implement to pursue their individualized development through leader development planning. Specifically, we walk leaders through the evidence-based steps of creating their unique leader development plan (LDP), including (1) identifying their leadership strengths and weaknesses, (2) setting effective leader development goals, (3) designing SMART strategies, and (4) reflecting, refining, and realigning their plan. Throughout the article, we detail positive examples as well as common pitfalls that we observed from our work supporting 101 mid- to senior-level leaders in designing their LDPs. Our purpose in doing so is to provide tools and examples to enable leaders at all levels to drive their development at their own pace.

Evidence-Based Change Management is the science-informed practice of managing planned organizational change. It reflects two key principles: 1) Planned change is more likely to succeed when using science-informed practices, and 2) Regular use of four sources of evidence (scientific, organizational, stakeholder, and practitioner experience) improve the quality of change-related decisions. We describe two sets of science-informed practices: 1) Ongoing Actions used throughout the change process (e.g., goal setting, vision communication, and feedback/redesign) and 2) Phased Actions each timed to a specific change phase (e.g., early diagnosis or late-stage institutionalization).

Organizations are increasingly turning to sustainable practices. A significant challenge in the endeavour to embrace sustainability relates to the trade-off between corporate greening and corporate growth – i.e., the difficult task of achieving growth while being truly sustainable. Through an in-depth study of Brunello Cucinelli, one of the world’s leading companies in the luxury fashion industry, we introduce the management philosophy of “gracious growth” to help organizations manage the green-growth trade-off and pursue substantial rather than symbolic sustainability. We offer actionable recommendations and present a process framework that organizations can adopt to implement “gracious growth”. Generating new insights about how growth and sustainability can be simultaneously achieved, this article provides ideas that can help managers enhance their organizations’ economic and environmental performance while also avoiding the legitimacy risks associated with greenwashing.