Organizational leader and decision making – Discussion
Please write in APA formatting 2 pages and use Grammarly to avoid grammar mistakes and write as per 3 questions and a minimum of five peer-reviewed journal articles. Attached documents for reference including textbook
After completing the reading this week, we reflect on a few key concepts this week:
Discuss what performance management is and how it influences effective teams.
Review table 11.1, define leadership behaviors (in your own words) and note which behaviors are beneficial at specific organizational activities (example: project planning, leading coworkers, etc…). Please note at least five organizational activities and be specific when responding.
Note at least two organizational capabilities and compare and contrast each.
Please be sure to answer all the questions above in the initial post.Please ensure the initial post and two response posts are substantive. Substantive posts will do at least TWO of the following:
Ask an interesting, thoughtful question pertaining to the topic
Expand on the topic, by adding additional thoughtful information
Answer a question posted by another student in detail
Share an applicable personal experience
Provide an outside source
Make an argument
At least two scholarly (peer-reviewed) resource should be used in the initial discussion thread. Please ensure to use information from your readings and other sources from the UC Library. Use APA references and in-text citations.
Human Resource Development Review
2016, Vol. 15(3) 340 –358
The Cultural Evolution of
Talent Management: A
Memetic Analysis
Stephen Swailes1
Abstract
Using the concept of memes as cultural transmitters and replicators, this article
explores the origins of a talent meme and the subsequent evolution of talent
management (TM). The sociogenesis of TM is traced through historic developments
in management thinking. The rise of individualism in the late 20th century created
the conditions for the birth of TM, and the proliferation of the meme since birth
is analyzed. The meme reproduces through its psychological appeal and the logic
of itself, and the article uses an established approach to reveal cultural rather than
rational explanations for TM. Five reasons for the attractiveness, survival, and
replication of the talent meme in business organizations are identified. They are
salience with business conditions, lack of a competing meme, ambiguity, complexity
reduction, and enhanced control over a powerful group. Understanding more about
the psychological attractors attached to the talent meme forms part of an expanded
research agenda.
As a distinctive approach to human resource management, the phrase “talent manage-
ment” (TM) first appeared in the 1990s (Casse, 1994; Istvan, 1991) and now attracts a
strong practitioner and research following (Lawler, 2008; Silzer & Dowell, 2010;
Sparrow, Scullion, & Tarique, 2014). Although it can take many forms, it typically
1University of Huddersfield, UK
Corresponding Author:
Stephen Swailes, The Business School, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1
3DH, UK.
Email: s.swailes@hud.ac.uk
664812HRDXXX10.1177/1534484316664812Human Resource Development ReviewSwailes
research-article2016
concerns the identification, development, and deployment of employees deemed to
have above average potential to contribute to an organization. The primary variation
involves a broadly elitist approach toward identifying high-performing and high-
potential employees and providing them with a differentiated management experience
to that enjoyed by the majority workforce. This may be complemented by a robust
approach to managing employees whose performance falls below expectations which
is necessary, in a “hard” TM mind-set, to liberate the talents of employees that poorly
performing managers are suppressing (Michaels, Handfield-Jones, & Alexrod, 2001).
The idea of memes was introduced by Richard Dawkins (1976) as an analogy to
genes and the ways that genes replicate and survive through time, and this article
applies meme theory to explain contemporary interest in TM. Memes can be thought
of as social cultural phenomena such as ideas or fashions that, like genes, adapt, repli-
cate, and survive throughout time and which help to explain cultural transmission
(Blackmore, 1999). Some memes are short-lived, others survive over long periods.
They pass from brain to brain often with some level of variation occurring each time
transmission occurs. The receiving brain becomes host to the meme and helps to prop-
agate it. Religions, arguably, are memes that have adapted over a long time and which
derive their survivability because they provide answers to some difficult questions
about human existence.
There is considerable potential for the application of meme theory in organization
development. Specific applications include advertising (Williams, 2000), mergers and
acquisitions (Vos & Kelleher, 2001), marketing (Pech, 2003), the cultural evolution of the
firm (Weeks & Gelunic, 2003), innovation (Voelpel, Leibold, & Streb, 2005), and busi-
ness process reengineering (O’Mahoney, 2007). Defined originally as “a unit of cultural
transmission” (Dawkins, 1976, p. 192), memes are elements of culture that transmit ideas
and are passed on especially by imitation (Blackmore, 1999, p. 43). The replication of
these cultural units helps to explain cultural evolution (Aunger, 2007); in this case, why
some organizational cultures adapt to work with a talent mind-set. Management innova-
tions that are successful, in the sense that they are widely adopted, are memes that “infect”
organizations and are transmitted by and through, among other things, networks of execu-
tives, consultants, gurus, and conferences (O’Mahoney, 2007). There seems little doubt
now about the usefulness of the idea of memes to understanding cultural transmission
because they contribute to the distinctive culture of organizations that is itself created by
the enactment of combinations of memes (Weeks & Gelunic, 2003).
The theoretical treatment applied in this article builds on previous studies which
have focused on coming to terms with the meaning of talent (Collings & Mellahi,
2009; Gallardo-Gallardo, Dries, & Gonzalez-Cruz, 2013; Nijs, Gallardo-Gallardo,
Dries, & Sels, 2014; Tansley, 2011); understanding TM practices and their effects
(Gallardo-Gallardo & Thunnissen, 2016; Thunnissen, Boselie, & Fruytier, 2013); and
mapping the dominant theoretical frameworks (Gallardo-Gallardo, Nijs, Dries, &
Gallo, 2015). An underlying assumption of the talent literature is that talent (typically
defined as high-potential current or future employees) is scarce but when found, devel-
oped, and deployed in pivotal positions makes a disproportionately high contribution
to organizations.
342 Human Resource Development Review 15(3)
A feature of the literature, however, is an ongoing debate about the meaning of tal-
ent and TM. For the most part, talent is assumed to be a relative quality of individuals
such as ability or mastery (Gallardo-Gallardo et al., 2013) and is judged in relation to
context. Talent is usually equated to a scarce combination of performance and poten-
tial (Gallardo-Gallardo & Thunnissen, 2016) although inclusive approaches to TM see
talent as something that all employees possess to some extent (Swailes, Downs, & Orr,
2014). However, debates about the etymology of “talent” (Adamsen, 2016; Tansley,
2011) or contemporary definitions of talent (Nijs et al., 2014) do not matter much for
the present article because of its interest in explaining the spread of a meme for which
ambiguity among its hosts is a key characteristic. What matters here is the cultural
attraction to “talent” as a concept in business discourse rather than its various mean-
ings to scholarly or practitioner communities because TM is essentially the manifesta-
tion of the ways in which the talent meme plays out in the host organization. Related
literatures on strategic TM (Sparrow et al., 2014) and global TM (Schuler, Jackson, &
Tarique, 2011; Scullion & Collings, 2011) can be seen as mutations of the original
meme.
Thunnissen et al. (2013) noted the top-down nature of TM and called for new per-
spectives to widen its theoretical framework. Gallardo-Gallardo et al. (2015) identi-
fied the resource-based view, international human resource management including
global talent management, ways of assessing talent, and institutionalism as the domi-
nant frameworks used to-date, and their treatment of TM as a phenomenon is pertinent
here in emphasizing that practice is running ahead of theory (see also, Cascio &
Boudreau, 2016). Although scholars have attempted to map the TM field, the literature
contains little consideration of TM as anything but a rational choice. In a notable
exception, Iles, Preece, and Chuai (2010) considered whether TM displays features of
management fashions but do not explain its appeal and call for research into the factors
behind its adoption. Cappelli (2009, 2010) shows how firms have used management
development, and by implication historic approaches to TM, in response to changing
market conditions but does not consider TM directly. The point of departure for the
present article, therefore, is to trace the evolution of the specific notion of talent not the
broader concept of management development and also to provide a fresh perspective
on innovation transmission.
Of course, TM attracts a range of theoretical perspectives to explain why it occurs
(e.g., organizational institutionalism), why it should work (e.g., resource-based view
and workforce differentiation), and its effects on participants (e.g., organizational jus-
tice), but the present article shows that they do not fully account for its popularity and
to do so requires a consideration of TM over and above rational adoption. Memetics
provides a unit of analysis that helps to understand the cultural transmission of ideas
and thus the cultural evolution of organizations (Weeks & Gelunic, 2003). A memetic
appreciation offers a complementary angle to the existing theoretical frameworks sur-
rounding TM; in particular, providing a deeper understanding of why it is adopted.
Although the aim of the article is to show how and why TM spreads for non-ratio-
nal reasons, this does not mean that it is irrational. The article seeks to understand why
it has flourished and to explain why, in common with other human resource
Swailes 343
management practices (Lawler, 2007), it is popular ahead of a strong evidence base.
The contribution of the article is to show how TM evolved and proliferated not simply
because managers thought it had demonstrable connections to business performance,
although many might have done so, but because of the attributes and internal charac-
teristics of the meme itself. These are salience to competitive conditions, a lack of
competing ideas, ambiguity in the meaning of talent and the ways it can be operation-
alized, complexity reduction for executives, and providing a means of control and
power over potentially threatening groups.
Methodological Approach
TM carries some characteristics of management fads and fashions (Iles et al., 2010),
and it is important to understand why some ideas spread quickly and widely and why
others do not. This means looking beyond the apparent costs and benefits of innova-
tions that often do not completely explain why diffusion occurs (Newell, Robertson, &
Swan, 2001; Scarborough, Robertson, & Swan, 2015). Explaining this seemingly con-
tradictory aspect of innovation diffusion requires stepping beyond rational interpreta-
tions of innovations and looking at alternative yet complementary theoretical
explanations (Sturdy, 2004).
Of particular interest in meme theory is that explanations of innovation diffusion
have traditionally focused on external, rational actors selecting innovations that would
be the most successful for their situations (Abrahamson, 1996). However, rational
approaches do not fully explain the choices made by organizations and attention turned
to other factors that might influence management decision making. One of these fac-
tors is the ability of an innovation to replicate, adapt, and spread. The emphasis thus
shifted beyond external actors being responsible for diffusion and toward the innova-
tion itself to better understand its ability to attract attention (O’Mahoney, 2007).
Epistemologically, the article assumes that the present has no distinct boundary
with the past. The past has influenced the present, and any historical interpretation is
shaped by the present (Jenkins, 1995). The basic approach to understand the sociogen-
esis of TM is to start at the present and to go backward. The historical material used
here is not exhaustive but, proportionate to the researcher’s reflexivity, represents the
important building blocks in a complex pattern of management thinking.
Meme mapping is a new concept and to understand how TM evolved in manage-
ment thought, Paull’s (2009) meme mapping approach is used to explore gestation
events, the meme “birth point,” and subsequent meme development events. Events in
the gestation period are precursors to the birth event, and some events in this period
may be more influential than others. The historical development of the talent meme is
traced through a series of database searches looking for the occurrence of “talent” in the
source title. JSTOR was searched because of its historic coverage together with Scopus
and Business Source Complete to assess the rate of diffusion of the meme in more
recent business sources. The search focus was confined to “talent” because the term
captures the specific notion of interest and because “talent” predates the use of “talent
management” by centuries. The article next summarizes the gestation (sociogenesis) of
344 Human Resource Development Review 15(3)
TM. The particular birth point of TM is considered, and explanations for the prolifera-
tion of the meme following the birth point are developed.
The Sociogenesis of TM
Memetic analyses require an understanding of events occurring prior to the creation of
the meme itself (gestation events) to properly appreciate the social conditions from
which a particular meme emerged. The idea that some people are more talented than
others at art, sport, music, and science is a recurring feature of human society (Wolfle,
1971). As industrialization progressed in the 19th century, social transformations
occurred that gave greater focus to individual achievements over birth status and group
membership. As demographic and economic backgrounds began to offer a diminish-
ing role in explanations for individual success, attention turned to understanding dif-
ferences in mental characteristics (Jansz, 2004). John Stuart Mill in The Subjection of
Women (1869), for instance, saw talent as a social resource and was concerned about
the loss of talent caused by the ways that women were treated.
Durkheim gave talent central stage in his ideas on social justice. Individuals, he
said, possess their talents by chance and should have equal rights to deploy their tal-
ents to the extent that they possess them. Durkheim argued that because of their tal-
ents, individuals would have different opportunities to realize themselves such that
there will be inequalities in the ways that resources are allocated to individuals but that
any such inequalities are unavoidable and may be just (Green, 1989) implying that
people must be allowed to occupy positions that suit their talents if industrial systems
are to function properly. Some inequality based on merit was unavoidable but was
preferable to inequality based on social circumstances such as those that might accrue
from fortunate parentage.
The Davis–Moore theory of functional stratification (Davis & Moore, 1945) fol-
lows Durkheim’s thinking in assuming that some roles in society and business organi-
zations require more talent to discharge than others. Societies and organizations place
the more skilled and talented people into these roles, and the stratification that results
from these processes is presumed to benefit society. Functional stratification draws
attention to two things in particular: why some positions are deemed by society as
more prestigious (more rewardable) than others and how it is that certain people come
to occupy those positions. TM is more concerned with the second question, which is
revisited later in the article.
By the start of the 20th century, definitions of talent and genius had attracted close
scientific scrutiny (Fischer, 1904). Studies of individual differences showed how men-
tal capacities vary naturally and how they connect to differential ability (Hollingworth,
1923). Social factors and their impact on talent development began to be recognized
in the hope, perhaps, that replicating certain social conditions would allow greater
talents to flourish in society (Faris, 1936).
More complete theories of talent followed that attempted to combine psychological
dimensions, heredity, and general intelligence. Bray (1954), for instance, examined talent
in business administration and clearly linked talent to success at the expense of a
Swailes 345
more balanced treatment of factors that might boost success or suppress talent. Treatises
followed on the need for education and training systems to provide the men (talent was
generally equated with being male) who would lead further cultural and economic progress
(Brown & Harbison, 1957). The U.S. Committee on the Identification of Talent was created
in 1951 and recognized the importance of power and individual adjustment to impersonal
power systems in relation to talent recognition (McClelland, Baldwin, Bronfenbrenner, &
Strodtbeck, 1958). The mobility of talent, popularized as the Brain Drain, and its links to
social change, attracted attention in the 1960s (Adams, 1968; Ramsoy, 1965) as did the
influence of talent on career achievement (Ginzberg & Herman, 1964).
By the 1960s, articles on the deployment of talent in business were appearing. The
term “talent pool” was used in relation to concerns that talented people were choosing
careers outside business (Twedt, 1967), and Patton (1967) warned of looming shortages
of executive talent in the United States (see also McDonald, 2013b). The U.S. Civil
Service Commission oversaw the “strategic deployment” of top executives into key roles
(Bolster, 1967), and the strategic significance of aligning scientific talent with company
profit objectives was recognized (Blood, 1963). The special treatment of talented employ-
ees was recognized in the long term, manpower forecasting and planning strategies at the
time, at least in the United States (Hinrichs, 1966; Vetter, 1967) where concerted efforts
to isolate the qualities of managerial talent were underway (Ghiselli, 1971). Longitudinal
studies of individual differences and their association with career success and on the dis-
tribution of rewards appeared (Abrahamson, 1973; Husen, 1972). Concerns were also
surfacing about shortages of managerial talent fuelled by the 1960s counterculture and
changes to university education that were seen to be questioning authority in ways that
discouraged young people from choosing managerial careers (Miner, 1974).
Another ingredient in the social conditions that created the talent meme occurred in
the late 20th century when the concept of HRM embodied a re-evaluation of the con-
tributions that employees make to organizations. Concurrent with the rise of HRM was
a much stronger interest in fostering and creating high organizational commitment; the
basic idea being that committed employees require less supervision and control to
perform well (Walton, 1985). Efforts to raise employee commitment were underpinned
by a range of HRM practices including contingent-based pay, team building, coaching,
and leadership development to engender self-worth and self-efficacy. From the 1980s
onward, collectivism and collective agreements declined as a way of managing.
Individualism, individual contracts, and greater focus on individual performance
gained fresh impetus (van Drunen, van Strien, & Hass, 2004). A psychological shift
took place giving the self a more prominent place in organizational thinking.
An important function of labor markets is to allocate people of differing abilities to
different sectors of the economy (Grossman, 2004) and, 200 years after Adam Smith
realized the role of education and skills in wealth creation (Wolfle, 1971), economists
began looking for explanations for the growth of income inequality and used talent
heterogeneity as an explanatory variable (Bok, 1993). Rosen (1981) showed how art-
ists with slightly greater talent earn much more than people with slightly less talent
partly on the basis that “lesser talent is a poor substitute for greater talent” (Adler,
1985, p. 208). Adler (1985) extended this argument by showing that large differences
346 Human Resource Development Review 15(3)
in earnings (in the arts) can exist when there are no differences in talent, that is, stars
can exist among people of equal talent, a phenomenon returned to below.
Giftedness and talent continued to attract attention (Heller, Monks, & Passow, 1993;
Heller, Monks, Subotnik, & Sternberg, 2000) and with the contribution of talent in
society well established in the collective consciousness by the late 20th Century, the
conditions for the sociogenesis of a meme that would manifest as TM had been created.
Interest in understanding the characteristics of high performers continued (O’Connell,
1996; Spreitzer, McCall, & Mahoney, 1997), and the conditions for meme creation, in
an evolutionary sense, were created by a coalescence of economic liberalization in
times of uncertainty, diminishing lifetime employment arrangements, increased exter-
nal hiring in new organizational structures (Cappelli, 2008, 2009), free movement of
labor and capital, efforts to inject private-sector practices into public management,
privatization, and deregulation (see also, Adamsen, 2016). The confluence of economic
forces and the pointing-up of competitive conditions on such a scale in a relatively short
time brought organizational survivability into sharp relief such that concerted and
explicit ways of managing talent, in contrast to management development, were a logi-
cal way forward, particularly for large, private-sector organizations.
The Birth Point
In common with other innovations, TM arose from what came before; in this case, at
least 100 years of thinking about the interrelationships between talent and society. To
some extent, it is an aggregate of some older ideas around structured selection meth-
ods, performance management, and career development (Cappelli, 2009). However,
the critical adaptation was that TM emerged from these related but separate memes to
embed itself as part of a complex set of memes that sustain and replicate it (a meme-
plex). In essence, TM is the outcome of three things: a strong tendency in Western
societies to stratify, natural and socially constructed differences in human ability, and
distinctive economic conditions. The basis of stratification in this particular case
derives from the abilities that signal a person’s economic characteristics and potential.
The extent to which TM occurs in organizations is moderated by organizational tradi-
tions and overlaying competitive and political systems.
TM is in effect an artifact that people experience (as participants or as part of a team
designing and managing talent programs) and which is interpreted to give a particular
functionality. Human minds construct representations of the artifact to fit a particular
context (Aunger, 2007) which explains why talent programs differ in their philosophy
and operationalization. Although talent programs require sets of interlocking human
resource management practices, they are shaped and driven by a particular philosophy
and mind-set. The practices are not the meme, the manifestation of the meme is the
mind-set that shapes the practices.
The birth of TM in a business context, and as a distinctive aspect of management
development, occurred sometime in the late 20th century. Commentators often attribute
McKinsey’s 1997 “war for talent” report as a birth point for the sharp growth of interest
in what has become known as TM (Chambers, Foulon, Handfield-Jones, Hankin &
Swailes 347
Michaels, 1998). The book of the report, The War for Talent (Michaels et al., 2001) is also
widely cited as a seminal moment. The idea that organizations were fighting a “war” for
executive talent caught on and propelled the talent meme across boardrooms. The rhetoric
used by McKinsey was both assertive and moralizing; the “exultation” of strong leader-
ship and high-potential employees, the immorality of the poor performer, and survival of
the fittest analogies were all used to make the case (O’Mahoney & Sturdy, 2015). Michaels
and colleagues claimed to have interviewed nearly 13,000 managers, produced 27 case
studies, and held discussions with hundreds of other companies to derive five imperatives
including developing a talent mind-set, rebuilding recruitment and development strate-
gies, and differentiating among employees with “candid” performance reviews. They
insisted that companies at the top of their talent “index” outperformed others by some
distance and considered this to be “compelling” evidence that TM impacted positively on
business performance. A causal relationship was in no doubt.
With so much data behind their claims, how could they be wrong? Recognizing the
talent imperative was described as a strategic inflexion point; a turning point that compa-
nies had to pursue or risk falling behind. It would take a very brave executive in corporate
America to ignore it. The actual birth point, however, seems more likely to have been a
few years before the influential McKinsey report since it is clear that some companies and
large government offices were running variations of TM programs in the preceding years.
McKinsey did not birth the meme, rather it was the fruit of a build-up of corporate think-
ing, in the United States at least, that talent was the competitive weapon that organizations
had been overlooking. However, McKinsey’s role in the sociogenesis of TM should not
be underestimated given its long-standing influence over corporate America and how it
thinks and behaves (McDonald, 2013a). It was a great example of the consultant’s trump
card; a problem identified and a solution provided.
Meme Development
To track the popularity of TM and its progress into the consciousness of management
scholars, the Scopus database was searched for “talent” in article titles. Limiting
searches to social sciences only, in the 1970s and 1980s no more than five articles per
year were indexed. Twenty two were indexed in 1995, 21 in 2000, after which the
annual output increased steadily to 76 in 2005, 208 in 2010, and 202 in 2015. The peak
year was 2013 with 252 articles. Scopus shows the increasing spread of the talent
meme from 1996 to 1997 when the “war for talent” narratives were formulated up to
2010 after which the number of citations in the academic literature has leveled off.
Repeating the same search for the annual number of hits in Business Source Complete,
which indexes a wider range of scholarly and practitioner sources, showed a similar
pattern. Twelve articles were indexed in 1990 after which the annual total grew steadily
peaking at 717 in 2008 and was 679 in 2015. Both databases show that interest in TM
as evidenced by citations has reached a steady-state.
TM derives its survivability in the pool of management memes from its own logic
and psychological appeal in relation to uncertain business environments. It provides
solace to executives since, if they deploy it, it looks as if they are doing their best to
348 Human Resource Development Review 15(3)
get the best out of their employees in difficult times. There is as yet little robust evi-
dence that TM does actually improve survival rates (Collings, 2015; Silzer, 2010), but
on the surface, it makes sense as a way of improving the chances of organizational
survival even if considerable faith is also required. Each organization that pursues TM
interprets it in its own ways and adapts it to suit its culture, traditions, and survival
strategies. The talent meme can be thought of as the essential basis of the idea that the
different organizations deploying TM albeit in different ways hold in common.
The progress of the talent meme is evidenced by a sharp rise in the amount of aca-
demic and practitioner publications that has peaked in recent years, and the appeal of
TM has continued unabated even in the face of some harsh criticism. Shortly after the
birth point, Pfeffer (2001) argued that a talent mind-set could backfire by disaffecting
the bulk of a workforce through the glorifying of an elite, undermining teamwork, and
using TM to paper over some fundamental cracks in organizational systems and prac-
tices. Gladwell (2002), drawing heavily on the Enron folly, criticized the talent myth
that had become “the new orthodoxy of American management” pointing to failures in
promoting on potential rather than proven performance and the narcissistic behavior
of many who do achieve promotions.
But the logic of managing talent outmaneuvered its doubters and the meme spread.
In addition to the meme’s seductive logic, the meme’s progress was boosted and sus-
tained by the actions of some high-profile consulting firms and the ways that they
communicate with corporate clients. In 2013, consultants AM Azure published an
analysis of what became of the companies glorified in the original War for Talent. Of
the 106 companies that were identifiable, one third had disappeared and one third had
“done OK” or better. The others were somewhere in between. Of the 27 case studies
in War for Talent, about a quarter had continued to deliver good profitability but
nearly half had either disappeared or posted disappointing results. Companies, of
course, founder for many reasons and will not live or die by their talent strategies
alone so some attrition in the original sample is to be expected. Tantalizingly, how-
ever, after trying hard to demolish the original war for talent narrative, AM Azure
invites readers to contact them to find out more about “their distinctive approach to
TM”; an invitation that suggests they too clung to the faith and the promise of salva-
tion. Likewise, KPMG (2014) reporting a “recent global survey of Human Resources
professionals” conceded that “there is little evidence that typical ‘war for talent’ prac-
tices that focus on high performers actually contribute to improved business perfor-
mance” (p. 1). However, even this conclusion was not used to turn away from TM but
to justify new directions and more holistic strategies. This is a sign of the meme
adapting to survive, to widen its appeal by recognizing and embracing inclusive as
well as elitist strategies and thus appeal to more types of organizations and cultures.
Meme Appeal
So, why has this particular management meme prospered? Applying meme theory to
look “inside” the meme reveals five features that give it a high degree of “stickiness”
(Barrett, 2015). First, memes spread if they are salient and relevant to existing
Swailes 349
activities (Balkin, 1998). The meme benefited by attaching itself to other memes such
as leadership and performance management. The talent meme resonated with execu-
tives already hardwired for growth, innovation, self-reliance, and change. The meme
is easily assimilated; it is simple and sticks in the memory. It produces a behavioral
outcome that people experience and transmit as they move between organizations. The
structures of social networks affect the extent to which innovations diffuse (Abrahamson
& Rosenkopf, 1997) because they transmit information to potential adopters. Human
resource directors transmit the meme as they move around, and ambitious employees
who have experienced or who are looking for TM will assist the meme’s progress as
they circulate.
Second, meme propagation was, and continues to be, assisted because it has no
competitor save for a “stay as we are” strategy. This attitude has limited mileage in the
for-profit sector when conditions toughen although it is a steady defense in not-for-
profit sectors where memes for collectivism and non-differentiation provide some
immunity. Memes carrying messages of danger tend to spread quickly (Barrett, 2015),
and the talent meme taps into the dangers of inaction, of doing nothing while competi-
tors move forward. People are “wired” to pay attention to memes involving danger
(Brodie, 2009), and the meme appeals to the conscious fear that there are dangers “out
there” that put organizational survival at risk. Had McKinsey “emblazoned” its 20,000
surveys to senior managers (Michaels et al., 2001, p. x) with the “War for Skills” or
“The Battle for Recruitment” instead of War for Talent then the outcome might have
been very different, at least until an equally effective meme evolved.
Third, in the context of business organizations, the concepts of both talent and TM
are aided by their ambiguity; a feature that catalyses their diffusion (Adamsen, 2016;
Iles et al., 2010). Unlike sport, for example, in most business contexts innate talent is
very difficult to identify (Cappelli & Keller, 2014) and quantify. Talent may be, and
often is, described in competence frameworks and similar visions, but that does not
amount to quantification in the ways that talent in sport can be quantified through
goals scored or track times (Franck & Nuesch, 2011). The attributes of pop stars could
be described through their voice, appearance, and behavior, for example, but most
people displaying the same characteristics would not make it as a pop star. In social
settings, it is very difficult to separate real differences in a person’s ability and poten-
tial from luck, popularity, and effort.
TM has principles that can be interpreted to suit a wide range of organizational situ-
ations. It has good “interpretative viability” (Benders & van Veen, 2001) such that it
can, and does, mean different things to different organizations and can be defined and
implemented in a variety of ways. Memetics helps to understand why the ambiguity
around the specificity of talent and TM have not been of more concern to practitio-
ners—it is this very ambiguity that actually helps the meme to spread. “Talent” is a
seductive and easily assimilated word that captures a wide range of attitudes, charac-
teristics and skills that many people would think they possess and which organizations
might look for. Most people would think they have some sort of talent and the meme
attracts attention by reassuring executives that they must, after all, be talented to have
got where they are. Consumers of talent can select those bits of the meme’s core idea
350 Human Resource Development Review 15(3)
that appeal to them and use them opportunistically for their own purposes. Executives
can extract the meanings that they seek from the idea, line managers can use TM sys-
tems to leverage control over employees, and employees can play the systems to their
advantage, if they have the talent.
Fourth, meme development ties in with van Krieken’s (2012) analysis of contem-
porary celebrity society, and in particular, his observation that in a celebrity society,
information is in oversupply whereas attention is in short supply. The talent meme
easily attaches to a host that accepts the underlying philosophy of workforce differen-
tiation by shortcutting through the complexity of managing large organizations. Its
message offering the prospect of simple solutions to complex problems appeals to
executives in times of attention deficits. However, attention deficits seem likely to cre-
ate the conditions in which talent recognition is independent of talent and may not be
efficient. Extending Adler’s (1985, 2006) ideas about the relationships between star-
dom and talent to business organizations, employees could find themselves in talent
pools not because of differences in talent but because of the need for executives to
“consume” the same experiences of talent as others are consuming.
Suppose that many employees have talent quality but that executive attention can-
not be distributed across all of them. Executives acquire knowledge of those who
would be talented by discussing them with others, and when a talented person is popu-
lar, then it is easy to find someone to discuss. Hence, executives start to consume the
talent that others are consuming. When individuals are discussed by others, they raise
their consumption capital (Adler, 1985) such that an employee who does not normally
come into contact with the consumers of talent (people influential in talent decisions)
and who is not discussed by those consumers will have zero consumption capital.
Where a person has high consumption capital, then it is easier for consumers to find
other “fans,” and thus, individuals benefit from externalities of popularity which
explains, in part, why interest settles on a few “stars.” Executives, as consumers, con-
centrate their attention on a specific field of interest (those deemed to have greater
talent) at the expense of acquainting themselves with knowledge of the capabilities of
a greater number of others. It is more efficient for executives as consumers of talent to
patronize a smaller number of individual employees and to save the search costs of
discovering information about all others.
Because popularity is relative, everyone cannot be popular at the same time, and so
the non-talented suffer the consequences of executive judgments of their relative fail-
ure. Thus, “the hierarchy of success manufactures a hierarchy of psuedo-talent in its
own image, tending to reinforce the spurious perception of talent differential” (Adler,
2006, p. 898). In this way, stars emerge from groups who are equally talented. Being
spotted, and named, as a talented employee arises from chance events that raise popu-
larity and which attract attention. Because executives will prefer popular performers,
other executives will switch their attention to them. An initial advantage for an
employee, however obtained, can thus snowball into stardom. However, employees do
not simply rely on luck as they can engineer their popularity via ingratiation, impres-
sion management, and upward influence (Bolino, 1999; Chen & Fang, 2008; Thacker
& Wayne, 1995). Employees will invest in such methods to engineer their popularity
Swailes 351
to the extent that they think those investments could be recouped by the fruits of talent
status in a particular organization.
If employees are overlooked because they are truly less talented than those who are
deemed to be more talented, then the processes of talent recognition and reward are
efficient (following Rosen, 1981). However, if the reason for talent recognition is actu-
ally due to popularity, then the loss of psychic income to the excluded must be bal-
anced against the benefits that executives receive from a narrower concentration on a
“talented” minority. In this situation, the just-as-talented employees may stop trying to
be recognized further diminishing their psychic income with negative consequences
for organizations.
Fifth, the meme is spread by relatively successful and powerful people and elevates
the status of people linked to elite programs. Even though TM is hard to link to busi-
ness success, the idea spreads because those who are involved in running talent pro-
grams increase their power over the people in talent pools (van den Brink, Fruytier, &
Thunnissen, 2013) and their power to reveal and unmask who is “talented.” The same
effect occurs in mergers and acquisitions that are often unsuccessful but which raise
the power of executives in the predatory firm (Vos & Kelleher, 2001).
Power and status also accrue to those who are selected for elite talent programs.
Winning a talent contest produces gains over and above the actual prize that put addi-
tional resources at the winner’s disposal (Nippa, 2011). Being identified as talented
confers higher status that itself confers advantages as status influences the structure of
interactions with others and, even if there is no objectified status difference, individu-
als may draw some subjective evaluation of their recognition and take psychic income
from it. Higher status accentuates the perceived value of a person’s resources and
improves the chances of sharing the resources of others (Thye, 2000), raises the
chances of favorable outcomes independently of actual performance (Washington &
Zajac, 2005), and lessens the likelihood of receiving negative or aggressive behavior
from others (Lamertz & Aquino, 2004). It is clear, therefore, why status is an attractive
motivator in itself (Huberman, Loch, & Onculer, 2004) and how it can be used as a
means to an end. The outcomes of status in social networks are clear reasons for want-
ing to be associated with talent programs and help attract attention to the meme.
There is a striking parallel between elite talent programs and the analysis of court
society (Elias, 1983) that has influenced thinking about how organizations work (van
Iterson, Mastenbroek, Newton, & Smith, 2002). Elias drew attention to social pro-
cesses and how they are used to maintain order, and elite TM can be viewed as an
organizational strategy that uses hierarchical classifications to create and maintain dif-
ferences and distinctions between employees, talent pool members, line managers, and
senior managers. In the same way that royal courts were used to provide a forum in
which courtiers disciplined themselves, or face serious consequences, then competi-
tive relationships between the “talented” in talent pools impose a controlling order on
participants that mitigates threats that they may pose to senior managers. Talent pools
act as outlets for the creativity and individual strategies of ambitious employees, but
members must regulate their behavior to comply with prevailing organizational rules
and etiquette. Louis XIV of France ruled for 72 years and introduced ballet to his
352 Human Resource Development Review 15(3)
courts. The nobility and courtiers were kept busy practicing their dance, competing
against each other for the attentions of the king (Bintley, 2015). At the same time, dis-
sent and plotting were suppressed by the diversions of the dance.
Conclusion
This article contributes to a wider social understanding of TM, casts TM as a reflection
of contemporary society, and provides new insights into the reasons behind the diffu-
sion of TM. In the long tradition of management development, it is clear that large
organizations have engaged with practices that, with hindsight, we might now label as
TM. However, the widespread use of “talent” in management thinking is recent and
had a long gestation time. Set against the rise of individualism that accelerated in the
late 20th century, TM is a logical evolutionary device that derives its legitimacy from
the logic of itself and is implemented because it is seen in many large profit-seeking
organizations as a necessary survival mechanism. However, TM cannot be explained
simply through rational adoption, yet it is much more than “smoke and mirror” fash-
ion. Memetics help to understand the phenomenon and act as a metaphorical framing
device with strong explanatory power. There is plenty of scope for the meme to fit into
prevailing organization cultures and to be subject to whatever systems of inefficiency,
bias, and favoritism exist. Furthermore, the meme prospers even though perceived dif-
ferences in talent and the consequential TM processes may not be based on actual
talent differentials.
Indeed, there is little evidence that TM always works to organizational advantage,
and this is explainable because, analogous to viruses and bacteria, benefitting a host is
not a necessary condition for the spread of a meme. The point is that memes are repli-
cators and they do what they are good at; replicating (Dennett, 1995). Furthermore, in
common with other management innovations, the more the talent meme spreads, the
more it becomes subject to local interpretation (Jones & Thwaites, 2000), and thus, the
number of variations of the ways that the meme plays out in practice increases. The
more variations of the original idea there are, the more a definitive theory of TM
retreats into the distance.
For practitioners, this article locates TM in a particular managerial rhetoric that will
continue evolving. These “rhetorical waves” (Barley & Kunda, 1992) shift their ideo-
logical stance across time to play to the ways that society sees the core problems of
managing large organizations. The dominant rhetoric of the 1980s and 1990s was of
culture, commitment, and quality, and the present rhetoric, arguably, speaks more
about leadership, performance, and governance. TM focuses on how an internal
resource is used, and talent becomes a firm-specific asset that is impossible to replicate
exactly. But talent is not immutable, and the processes and routines used in organiza-
tions create resources of a particular kind and value. Where it is introduced, TM seems
likely to alter the nature of relations among groups of people by providing opportuni-
ties for new interactions among them, and it alters the meaning that particular groups
of employees have to top management. The extent to which TM benefits organizations
is still unclear, and this article identifies five non-rational (but not irrational) reasons
Swailes 353
why it is adopted. As for the future of the meme, if it follows the pattern of other
memes such as total quality management and business process reengineering, then the
principles will become widely accepted and adopted, and people start to think around
the concept but not necessarily use the same label (TM) that carried the original meme.
Memetic analysis suggests an important addition to the research agenda around
TM. To understand why TM has affected (infected) so many organizations, more
attention needs to be given to what is on the inside of the meme. Understanding more
about why and how the talent meme has proved to be a strong psychological attractor
is as important as pursuing conventional research agendas. Further research is needed
to understand what organizations get out of talent pools that create and maintain a
space between top management and ambitious others and which enable their members
to play against each other. There is much scope to research TM from a power perspec-
tive, and the effects of talent pools on organizational structures and processes offer a
fruitful research avenue. This avenue would be complemented by an understanding of
the social networks that lie behind the diffusion of TM in a range of organizations to
assess how influential they were in adoption or non-adoption and investigation into the
influence on non-talent factors in the recognition of talent and executive careers, par-
ticularly in the early stages, to reveal the factors that brought particular individuals to
attention.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
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Author Biography
Stephen Swailes is professor of Human Resource Management in The Business School,
University of Huddersfield. His current research interests focus on reaching a more critical
appreciation and understanding of talent management and the reactions of employees to talent
programmes.
Does Leadership Style
Make a Difference? Linking
HRM, Job Satisfaction, and
Organizational Performance
Brenda Vermeeren1, Ben Kuipers1,
and Bram Steijn1
Abstract
With the rise of New Public Management, public organizations are confronted
with a growing need to demonstrate efficiency and cost-effectiveness. In this
study, we examine the relationship between public organizational performance and
human resource management (HRM). Specifically, we focus on job satisfaction as a
possible mediating variable between organizational performance and HRM, and on
the influence of a supervisor’s leadership style on the implementation of Human
Resource (HR) practices. Drawing on a secondary analysis of data from a national
survey incorporating the views of 6,253 employees of Dutch municipalities, we tested
our hypotheses using structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that (a)
job satisfaction acts as a mediating variable in the relationship between HRM and
organizational performance and (b) a stimulating leadership style has a positive effect
on the amount of HR practices used, whereas (c) a correcting leadership style has no
effect on the amount of HR practices used.
During the last three decades, public sector performance has become an increasingly
important issue. With the rise of New Public Management, targets, performance, and
1Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Corresponding Author:
Brenda Vermeeren, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Room M7-13, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR, Rotterdam,
The Netherlands.
Email: vermeeren@fsw.eur.nl
510853ROP34210.1177/0734371X13510853Review of Public Personnel AdministrationVermeeren et al.
research-article2013
a more business-oriented management approach have come to play central roles within
the public sector (Boyne, Meier, O’Toole, & Walker, 20
06
; Osborne & Gaebler, 1992;
Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2004). Several innovations in the field promised to increase the
quality of public service while reducing its costs. However, research into human
resource management’s (HRM) contributions to these developments in the public sec-
tor has been scarce (Boyne, Poole, & Jenkins, 1999; Gould-Williams, 2003). This
neglect persists despite the fact that employees (those who deliver public services) are
crucial to achieving superior public performance. High-quality services require highly
qualified and motivated personnel (Batt, 2002).
Based on numerous studies in the private sector, we can conclude that human
resource (HR) practices and organizational performance are at least weakly related
(Boselie, Dietz, & Boon, 2005; Guest, 2011; Paauwe, 2009). However, research com-
paring HRM in the public and private sectors suggests that the HR policies and prac-
tices in these sectors differ in many important areas (Boyne et al., 1999). In particular,
public organizations are more likely than private organizations to engage in activities
associated with the role of model employer. Such activities imply commitment to staff
training, trade union, and workforce participation in decision making, promotion of
equal opportunities, and a concern for the welfare of employees to meet their personal
and family needs. Given these empirical findings, we cannot simply assume that the
relationship between HRM and performance will be the same in the public sector.
In private sector–based research on HRM and performance, the assumption is that
an underlying causal link that runs through employee outcomes (in the form of
employee attitudes and behavior) connects HR practices with organizational perfor-
mance (Boselie et al., 2005; Guest, 2002; Paauwe & Richardson, 1997). In other
words, HR practices are implemented to influence employees, with the ultimate aim to
positively influence the organization’s performance. Job satisfaction is conceptualized
as one of the key indicators of employee outcomes in HRM and performance research
(Guest, 2002; Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007). Previous research has demonstrated a
positive relationship between HRM and job satisfaction (e.g., Guest, 2002; Steijn,
2004) and between job satisfaction and performance (e.g., Hackman & Oldham, 1975;
Judge, Thoresen, Bono, & Patton, 2001; Taris & Schreurs, 2009). These findings sup-
port the idea that job satisfaction acts as a mediating variable in the relationship
between HRM and performance. At this time, only a few studies have examined that
mediating relationship (e.g., Ahmad & Schroeder, 2003; Gelade & Ivery, 2003), but
more research is needed to understand how HRM and organizational performance are
related. Such research is even more important in the context of the public sector, as
previous research showed differences in job satisfaction between public and private
sector employees (DeSantis & Durst, 1996).
In general, in the HRM literature is stated that the HR practices perceived or expe-
rienced by employees will be those enacted by their supervisors (Bowen & Ostroff,
2004; Paauwe, 2009; Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007; Wright, Gardner, Moynihan, &
Allen, 2005). To influence employee outcomes positively, supervisors require well-
designed HR practices for use in their management activities. Den Hartog, Boselie,
and Paauwe (2004) stressed the important role that supervisors play in implementing
176 Review of Public Personnel Administration 34(2)
an intended HRM policy, as differences in implementation at this level may be attrib-
utable to supervisors’ different leadership styles. Such differences in implementation
and communication may lead to variation in employees’ HR perceptions. However,
scholars have uncovered little empirical evidence that bears on the role of supervisors’
leadership styles in HRM implementation. Focusing on leadership style can provide
additional insight into how supervisors influence the implementation of HR
practices.
This study adds to prior research in three ways. First, we focus specifically on the
relationship between HRM and organizational performance in the public sector.
Second, we test whether job satisfaction acts within a public context as a mediator
between HRM and organizational performance. Third, we focus on the influence of a
supervisor’s leadership style on the implementation of HR practices. Thus, our main
research question is as follows:
Research Question: To what extent is the relationship between HRM and the per-
formance of public organizations mediated by job satisfaction and what is the influ-
ence of a supervisor’s leadership style on the implementation of HR practices?
After a theoretical exploration of the literature on HRM, job satisfaction, organiza-
tional performance, and leadership, we will formulate several hypotheses and test
them using survey data from 6,253 employees of Dutch municipalities. We perform
these tests using structural equation modeling (SEM). We will then discuss our find-
ings. Finally, we conclude by describing suggestions for future research and implica-
tions for theory and practice.
Literature Review
The increased focus on performance in the public sector has encouraged a large amount
of research (Boyne et al., 2006; Halachmi & Bouckaert, 1996). In particular, the
impact of management on performance in public organizations has been frequently
studied (Meier, O’Toole, Boyne, & Walker, 2007; Nicholson-Crotty & O’Toole, 2004).
The O’Toole and Meier (1999) model of management is well known and has often
been used to test the impact managers may have on the performance of public organi-
zations. In one of their articles, O’Toole and Meier (2008) focused on the internal side
of management and, in particular, on the contribution of “the human side” of public
organizations to organizational performance in public education. Their results indicate
that the power of HRM in attracting and developing an organization’s human capital
is important to organizational performance. Gould-Williams (2003), in turn, examined
the relationship between HRM and performance in local government in the United
Kingdom. He found, the more HR practices are used within an organization, the
greater the impact on organizational performance. In both articles, the authors stated
that more research is needed to explore the relationship between HRM and organiza-
tional performance in the public sector.
Vermeeren et al. 177
As the existing literature has paid little attention to the relationship between HRM
and performance in a public context, we must turn to the general HRM literature to get
more insight. However, that literature contains a very diverse array of theoretical per-
spectives, definitions, measurements, methodologies, and research fields (Boselie et
al., 2005). Nevertheless, following Paauwe (2009), we can conclude that there is at
least a weak relationship between HR practices and organizational performance. Yet,
despite the fact that several studies indicate a link between HRM and performance,
significant challenges to a full understanding of this relationship still exist (Boselie
et al., 2005; Bowen & Ostroff, 2004; Guest, 2011; Paauwe, 2009).
In this study, we adopt a micro approach to HRM. This approach reflects a more
operational view of HRM by focusing specifically on the effect of multiple HR prac-
tices on individuals (Wright & Boswell, 2002). By using this micro approach, we
attempt to acquire more insight into the impact of multiple HR practices on individuals
(measured through job satisfaction) and, subsequently, on organizational performance.
By focusing on job satisfaction as a mediating factor, our aim is to generate a better
understanding of what takes place between HRM and performance. Furthermore,
scholars frequently identify the leadership style of supervisors (who are increasingly
charged with implementing HR practices) as a variable essential to a better under-
standing of the relationship between HRM and performance (Bowen & Ostroff, 2004;
Paauwe, 2009; Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007; Wright et al., 2005). In this respect,
Purcell and Hutchinson (2007) used the term “people management” to mark the dis-
tinction between a supervisor’s leadership style and the application of HR practices.
This distinction is based on the assumption that supervisors require well-designed HR
practices to use in their people management activities and that their leadership style
will influence the way they enact these practices.
The Mediating Role of Job Satisfaction
Guest stated in 1999 that, given the growing interest in research on the relationship
between HRM and performance, a focus on workers’ viewpoints has become increas-
ingly important. An analysis of 104 articles by Boselie et al. (2005) confirms Guest’s
impression that the linking mechanisms between HRM and performance have largely
been disregarded. To understand how HR practices influence employees and improve
worker performance in ways that are beneficial to the organization, research is required
that concentrates on employee perceptions of HR practices and establishes relation-
ships between their job satisfaction and organizational performance, to take one exam-
ple (Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007). One model that takes this focus is the Paauwe and
Richardson (1997) model on HRM, HRM outcomes and organizational performance.
In this model, the first element consists of HR practices such as recruitment, rewards,
and employee participation. This element influences the so-called HRM outcomes,
such as job satisfaction and motivation. Both of these elements affect the third ele-
ment, organizational performance, which involves performance indicators related to
the effectiveness, quality, and efficiency of the organization.
178 Review of Public Personnel Administration 34(2)
A variety of studies have examined separate parts of this model. Focusing specifi-
cally on the public sector, a number of studies have explored the relationship between
HRM (Element 1) and HRM outcomes (Element 2; for example, Gould-Williams,
2004; Steijn, 2004) and between HRM outcomes (Element 2) and organizational per-
formance (Element 3; for example, Kim, 2005; Ostroff, 1992). The model by Paauwe
and Richardson (1997) adds to this research through its explicit focus on the mediating
effect of HRM outcomes on the relationship between HRM and organizational perfor-
mance. Moreover, the Paauwe and Richardson model adds to existing public sector
research by promoting an explicit concentration on the concept of HRM itself. This
concentration marks an important difference with the aforementioned management
model by O’Toole and Meier (2008). Therefore, we use the Paauwe and Richardson
model as the starting point for our research. However, while that model offers an
exhaustive range of options to consider for each element, we limit ourselves to job
satisfaction as the only included HRM outcome.
The introduction of job satisfaction enables us to refine the relationship between
HRM and organizational performance. To a large extent, positive employee outcomes
depend on employees’ perceptions of how much the organization cares about their
well-being and values their contributions (Gould-Williams, 2007; Vermeeren, Kuipers,
& Steijn, 2011). In this respect, the degree of job satisfaction will depend on the fulfill-
ment of employee’s needs and values (Hackman & Oldham, 1975). To increase orga-
nizational performance, it is likely important that the organization must not only meet
the needs of customers, but also meet those of employees (Schneider & Bowen, 1993).
This assertion is based on the assumption that if organizations care for their employ-
ees, these employees will care for the organization (and their customers). In other
words, this argument is based on the assumption that a happy worker is a productive
worker (Taris & Schreurs, 2009). In this respect, the degree to which HR practices are
introduced can be conceptualized as a marker of the extent to which an organization
values and cares for employees. As noted above, previous research has demonstrated
a positive relationship between HRM and job satisfaction (e.g., Guest, 2002; Steijn,
2004) and between job satisfaction and performance (Hackman & Oldham, 1975;
Judge et al., 2001; Taris & Schreurs, 2009).1 These findings support the idea that job
satisfaction acts as a mediating variable in the relationship between HRM and perfor-
mance. However, this relationship is mostly studied in separate parts and seldom
examined within one design. We will therefore study the relationships among HRM,
job satisfaction, and organizational performance in one model. Following this plan,
our first hypothesis is as follows:
Hypothesis 1: Job satisfaction acts as a mediating variable in the relationship
between HRM and organizational performance.
The Role of Leadership Style
For many years, HRM and leadership were separate research areas. Gradually, interest
in combining these two areas has grown. The connection between these areas is based
Vermeeren et al. 179
on the proposition that employees are likely to be influenced by the HR practices they
experience and their supervisor’s leadership style (Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007).
Supervisors need HR practices to support their management activities, and the way
supervisors enact these practices is influenced by their leadership style. However, pre-
vious research on the relationship between HRM and performance paid little attention
to supervisors’ leadership styles. One of the few studies that did attend to leadership
style demonstrated that leadership and employee satisfaction with HR practices have
a strong and independent impact on such employee attitudes as job satisfaction and
commitment (Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007).
However, this demonstration does not allow us to say much about the influence of
different leadership styles on the use of HR practices within an organization. It is
appropriate to assume a relationship exists between different leadership styles and
HRM, because the choice of which HR practices to use appears to be linked to leader-
ship style. For example, Zhu, Chew, and Spangler (2005) have shown that transforma-
tional leaders influence organizational outcomes by their use of “human-capital-enhancing
HRM.” Human-capital-enhancing HRM is defined as an approach to managing people
that achieves competitive advantage through the strategic development of a highly
committed and capable workforce (Zhu et al., 2005). Their assumption is that transfor-
mational leaders possess a clear vision of what the organization will be, and what it
will do, in the future. HRM plays a critical role in the communication process between
leaders and employees, because without such HRM activities as staffing and training
the leader’s vision will not be transmitted effectively.
Today, scholars in the field of leadership research use many and varied conceptual-
izations of leadership. Despite differences among these conceptualizations, we can
detect a certain commonality. This commonality is not of jargon, but of the ideas that
underpin the language used. Many conceptualizations are based on a distinction
between an internally and intrinsically directed, people-oriented, and stimulating lead-
ership style versus an externally and extrinsically directed, task-oriented and correct-
ing leadership style (Howell & Avolio, 1993). For example, this distinction underpins
the differentiation made between transformational versus transactional leadership
(Bass & Avolio, 1994) and participative versus authoritive leadership (Likert, 1961).
With respect to the relationship between leadership style and HRM, Guest (1987) has
argued that a more correcting leadership style could be linked to hard HRM and that a
more stimulating leadership style could be linked to soft HRM. In his research, he
refers to the classic distinction in McGregor (1960) between theory X and theory Y.
The “hard” version of HRM is widely acknowledged to place little emphasis on work-
ers’ concerns. In contrast, “soft” HRM would be more likely to pay attention to work-
ers’ outcomes (Guest, 1987).
We will also use McGregor’s distinction between theory X and theory Y. This dis-
tinction, despite frequent criticism (Bobic & Davis, 2003), still remains useful for
distinguishing between the different leadership styles a supervisor can adopt. Theory
X assumes that employees are not self-motivated and will avoid work if possible.
Employees, therefore, must be closely supervised and corrected when necessary.
Employees are seen as factors in the production process. Theory Y, in contrast, assumes
180 Review of Public Personnel Administration 34(2)
that employees are ambitious and self-motivated and can play a crucial role within the
organization. Supervisors must ensure that their employees are properly stimulated by
paying attention to their values and needs. It is in this context that Guest (1999) stated
that if more HR practices are used, the impact on workers will be larger. Based on the
idea that an HRM system should be designed to meet employees’ needs for skills and
motivation and provide them with the opportunity to profile themselves to improve
their performance (Appelbaum, Bailey, Berg, & Kalleberg, 2000), we would expect
that a stimulating leadership style (theory Y) would be accompanied by the use of a
greater number of HR practices tailored to invest in employees and meet their needs
than would be the case for a correcting leadership style (theory X), in which employ-
ees are seen as factors in the production process. This leads us to our second hypoth-
esis, which consists of two separate parts:
Hypothesis 2a: A stimulating leadership style has a positive effect on the amount
of HR practices used within an organization.
Hypothesis 2b: A correcting leadership style has a negative effect on the amount of
HR practices used within an organization.
Figure 1 shows the overall theoretical model representing the hypotheses thus
developed above. In the following sections, we present the methodology for testing
this model and our empirical results.
Research Methods
A quantitative study was carried out to address our research question. This section
describes the data and the measurement procedure, including the results of a confirma-
tory factor analysis using AMOS version 16.
Stimulating
Leadership
HRM
Job
Satisfaction1
Organizational
Performance1
Correcting
Leadership
2B
2A
1
Figure 1. Conceptual model.
Vermeeren et al. 181
Data
To test our hypotheses about the direct and indirect relationships between the variables
we apply a quantitative research design. For our analysis, we used data from a Dutch
national survey on well-being among municipal employees. In 2005, a public sector
organization representing municipalities approached 29,626 employees of Dutch
municipalities in all functional areas (e.g., administrative, sociocultural, legal and
information and communication technology functions), asking them to fill out a ques-
tionnaire about employee well-being via Internet or mail. Of these employees, 7,918
respondents participated in the research. The respondents with missing data for the
analyzed variables were removed from the sample, which resulted in a file with 6,253
respondents. The data for the resulting sample are as follows: 58% are male, the pre-
dominant age is 45 to 54 years (37.5%), and the predominant educational level is
secondary (vocational) education (43.1%). When compared with general population
data (A+O fonds Gemeenten, 2005), the sample’s deviation from the general popula-
tion is small (2%-6%). Despite the response rate of 26.7%, the respondents are gener-
ally representative of the population with respect to gender, age, and educational level.
The respondents also worked in different municipalities spread across the Netherlands
and in organizations of various sizes.
Measures
HRM. HRM and performance research exhibits little consistency in the selection of
HR practices by which to measure HRM. Boselie et al. (2005) analyzed 104 important
HRM and performance studies and identified as many as 26 different HR practices
that are used in different studies. No single agreed, or fixed, list of HR practices or
systems of practices exists by which to measure HRM (Guest, 2011; Paauwe, 2009).
Nevertheless, a certain consensus regarding the measurement of HRM has emerged in
the scientific literature on HRM and performance during the past decade. More than
half of the articles published after 2000 made use of Ability, Motivation, and Oppor-
tunity (AMO) theory (Paauwe, 2009). AMO theory proposes that an HRM system
should be designed to meet employees’ needs for skills and motivation and, after
meeting those needs, provide them with opportunities to use their abilities in various
roles (Appelbaum et al., 2000). The underlying idea is that employees will perform
well if they have the requisite abilities, when they are motivated and when they obtain
the opportunity to profile themselves (Appelbaum et al., 2000).
In our study, an existing data set is used for secondary data analysis. Although this
data set can be employed to search for the presence of HR practices within organiza-
tions, it was not developed for this specific purpose. The survey only measures 10
different HR practices used to a limited extent, and it is not able to measure all the
aspects of HRM proposed by AMO theory. In particular, the survey does not allow us
to determine whether an HR system provides employees with opportunities to use
their abilities in various job roles. Despite this limitation, we use this list of practices
as an indicator of the extent to which HR practices were used in public organizations.
182 Review of Public Personnel Administration 34(2)
Researchers often advocate the study of an HRM system instead of individual HR
practices (Wright & Boswell, 2002). Organizations rarely use HR practices in isolation;
they more typically use them in combination. This system approach adheres to the prin-
ciple “the whole is more than the sum of its parts” and examines a bundle of HR prac-
tices. In this study, we have followed the system approach. In the survey, employees
were asked about the use of 10 different HR practices within their organization (job
evaluation conversations, assessment interviews, personal development plans, training
plans, career plans, competency management, population aging HRM policy, mobility
management, job rotation, and individual coaching). This particular list has been used
in previous research (Steijn, 2004). In accordance with Guest’s suggestion, we counted
how many of these practices were present in the organization according to its employ-
ees. Cronbach’s alpha is widely used to demonstrate consistency among a set of items
and, based on the score, it might be argued that a bundle of HR practices can be observed
(Guest, Conway, & Dewe, 2004). The Cronbach’s alpha of the HR bundle is .70. This
is within the range for acceptable internal consistency. The assumption is that the use of
more HR practices suggests the existence of a better developed HRM policy within an
organization. In making this assumption, we can only say something about the surplus
value of HRM in general terms. However, we do not know whether some individual
practices have stronger effects than others, how each of the individual practices affects
performance and whether complementarities or synergistic interdependent relation-
ships among such practices can further enhance organizational performance (Delaney
& Huselid, 1996; Guest et al., 2004; Sels et al., 2006).
Job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is measured using one item: “All things considered,
how satisfied are you with your job?” The answers were given using a 5-point Likert-
type scale ranging from very dissatisfied (1) to very satisfied (5). Although there is
some disagreement regarding how to measure job satisfaction, previous research
shows that job satisfaction can reliably be measured using only one item (Nagy, 2002;
Wanous, Reichers, & Hudy, 1997).
Organizational performance. To measure organizational performance, perceptions of
performance and objective performance indicators can be studied (Delaney & Huselid,
1996; Kim, 2005). In this article, the focus is on employee perceptions of organiza-
tional performance because objective performance data are not available in the data-
base. When objective performance data are not available, subjective (perceptual)
performance measures may be a reasonable alternative (Delaney & Huselid, 1996;
Kim, 2005). There is evidence of a strong correlation between perceptual and objec-
tive measures at the organizational level, although there is always some doubt regard-
ing perceptual measures of performance (Kim, 2005). In this study, we used one item
to measure performance, “the perception that the organization is doing good work,”
utilizing a 5-point Likert-type scale, ranging from totally disagree (1) to totally agree
(5). The use of only one indicator is clearly an important limitation, but at least we are
able to characterize how employees assess their organization’s performance.
Vermeeren et al. 183
Leadership style. To measure the influence of leadership style, we used two latent vari-
ables that correspond to the distinction between stimulating and correcting leadership
(cf. Bass & Avolio, 1994; Likert, 1961; McGregor, 1960). The specific items can be
found in the appendix. All answers were given on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging
from totally disagree (1) to totally agree (5).
Descriptive and reliability statistics were computed for the individual items and the
two scales (see Table 1). To show the strength of the associations between the items,
Table 1 displays the correlations matrix. The correlations are all significant at the 1%
level.
To test whether the distinction between the two leadership styles is supported by the
data, we performed confirmatory factor analysis using AMOS version 16. Unlike
exploratory factor analysis, in which only the number of factors and observed vari-
ables are specified, confirmatory factor analysis permits specification and testing of a
more complete measurement model (Byrne, 2001). The simultaneous estimation of
the measurement models allows us to examine the relationships between the items and
their latent constructs as well as the relationships among the constructs themselves.
Furthermore, one also receives information on whether the items load only on their
target variable, or whether they load on the other dimension as well (unidimensionality
of factors). Based on the results of the confirmatory factor analysis, the measurement
model was modified where necessary. The modifications made to enhance the model
included the introduction of error correlations.2 Reasons for error correlation include
respondents’ inability to answer questions, a lack of effort on the part of the respon-
dents to provide the correct answers or other psychological factors, or inadequately
worded questions on the survey questionnaire (Byrne, 2001).
For evaluating the convergent validity of the measurement model, Anderson and
Gerbing (1988) suggested examining the construct loading and determining whether
each estimator’s coefficient is significant. For this model, the regression weights range
from .69 to .89 and all are significant (see Table 1). These coefficients may be inter-
preted as indicators of the validity of the observed variables, that is, how well they
measure the latent dimension or factor. For this model, convergent validity has been
achieved. With regard to discriminant validity, we note that the items related to the
same construct are always more closely correlated with one another than with the
items for the other construct. In addition, Bagozzi and Philips (1982) suggested that
discriminant validity in SEM is achieved if the unconstrained model has a signifi-
cantly lower chi-square value than the constrained model. In this study, the chi-square
value for the unconstrained model (CMIN 1711.061/df 62) appears to be significantly
lower than that for the constrained model (CMIN 2722.621/df 63). Thus, for this
model, discriminant validity has been achieved. Finally, the R2 in Table 1 is a measure
of reliability, which indicates how consistently the observed variable measures the
latent dimension. The explained variance corresponding to the observed variables
indicates that the respective factor explains an adequate portion of the variance
(between 47% and 78%; Perry, 1996).
The overall fit of the measurement model was tested using absolute and relative fit
indices, which indicated a good fit. In general, a chi-square test is used to assess the
184
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Vermeeren et al. 185
sample data in relation to the implied population data. However, there are concerns
about using the chi-square test because its probability is sensitive to sample size
(Jöreskog, 1993). In larger samples (as in this research), the chi-square test almost
always leads to the rejection of the model because the difference between the sample
covariances and implied population covariances will lead to a higher chi-square value
if the sample size increases.3 As a result, a number of alternative fit measures have
been developed (Hu & Bentler, 1999), including the goodness-of-fit index (GFI), the
adjusted goodness-of-fit index (AGFI), the normed fit index (NFI), and the compara-
tive fit index (CFI). The values for this model were .959 (GFI), .940 (AGFI), .972
(NFI), and .973 (CFI). In the social sciences, a cutoff value of .95 is the prescribed
norm (Hu & Bentler, 1999). Based on these fit indices, one can conclude that the
model is a good fit. In addition, the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA)
value of .065 indicates that the model is a reasonable fit (Byrne, 2001).
Finally, a traditional measure of scale reliability is Cronbach’s alpha, which mea-
sures internal consistency among items on a scale. The Cronbach’s alpha for the stimu-
lating leadership scale is .95 and for the correcting leadership scale is .78. Based on
these results, one may conclude that the reliability coefficients provide independent
corroboration for the results obtained from the use of confirmatory factor analysis. The
results show that the distinction between the two leadership styles is supported by the
data.
Control variables. Of course, several other variables can affect HRM, job satisfaction,
and organizational performance. Therefore, Guest (1999) emphasized that several
controls must be in place to take account of individual and organizational factors. Fol-
lowing Guest, our control variables are divided into two groups. In the first group, we
controlled for individual characteristics (gender, age, and educational level). These
controls are based on the assumption that different groups within organizations may be
managed differently with the result that their perceptions will be different. Then, we
controlled for one important organizational characteristic: organizational size. This
control is based on the assumption that large organizations pursuing improved perfor-
mance have more resources with which to provide their employees a large HRM
policy.
We coded gender as a dummy variable (1 = female). The category of age was sub-
divided into five categories (1 = 15-24 years; 2 = 25-34 years; 3 = 35-44 years; 4 =
45-54 years; and 5 = 55 years and older). Educational level was also subdivided into
five categories (1 = primary education; 2 = lower vocational education; 3 = higher
general secondary education, preparatory academic education; 4 = higher vocational
education, candidate exam; and 5 = scientific education). Finally, the category of orga-
nizational size was subdivided into seven categories (1 = fewer than 100 employees; 2
= 101-500 employees; 3 = 501-1,000 employees; 4 = 1,001-5,000 employees; 5 =
5,001-10,000 employees; 6 = 10,001-20,000 employees; 7 = more than 20,000
employees). Because we used secondary data analysis, we were restricted to these
categories in measuring the control variables.
186 Review of Public Personnel Administration 34(2)
Results
The hypothesized relationships among the variables were analyzed using SEM. This
statistical methodology allows us to test the full conceptual model in a simultaneous
analysis. In addition, SEM enables us to analyze simultaneously the direct and indirect
relationships among the dependent and independent variables. Finally, SEM also
enables us to compare different models (Byrne, 2001). We built our SEM model using
AMOS version 16. To examine whether the data were normally distributed, the index
of multivariate kurtosis was considered. Bentler (2005) has suggested that, in practice,
values above 5.00 are indicative of nonnormality. Our data have a score of 4.94, which
indicates that it is normally distributed.
In Table 2, the means, standard deviations, and correlations of the study variables
are presented.The results show that, of the 10 HR practices, employees observed, on
average, the use of 4 HR practices within their organizations. The most frequently
observed HR practice was job evaluation conversations, and the least frequently
observed practice was job rotation. Employees were generally satisfied with their jobs.
The average score for this variable on a 5-point scale was 3.78. Moreover, employees
perceive the organization to be doing good work, with the average score on a 5-point
scale being 3.48. Finally, the average score for the stimulating leadership style was
3.46 on a 5-point scale; the average score for the correcting leadership style was 3.47.
To test the proposed relationships, a causal structure was posited that resulted in a
structural equation model. First, we tested the hypothesis that job satisfaction acts as a
mediating variable in the relationship between HRM and organizational performance.
A distinction can be made between fully mediated and partially mediated models
(Wood, Goodman, Beckman, & Cook, 2008). Therefore, in SEM, two different mod-
els must be created. In the first model, the direct relationship between HRM and orga-
nizational performance was fixed at zero. In the second model, the direct relationship
and indirect relationship between HRM and organizational performance were esti-
mated. By using the chi-square difference test and other global-fit measures, one can
test the models against each other. In Table 3, the fit indices are presented. The chi-
square difference test implies that the relationship between HRM and organizational
Table 2. Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations (N = 6,253).
performance is partially mediated by job satisfaction. Furthermore, the partially medi-
ated model shows a better model fit than the fully mediated model.In Figure 2, the
partially mediated model is shown. Only the statistically significant relationships are
described (with a significance level of .01). The numerical scores on all lines indicate
standardized regression coefficients (β), and the scores in brackets are the explained
variances.
Second, we analyzed the effect of leadership style on HRM. We assumed that the
amount of HR practices perceived by employees would be influenced by their supervi-
sors’ leadership styles. We distinguished between stimulating and correcting leader-
ship to test our hypotheses that (a) a stimulating leadership style has a positive effect
on the amount of HR practices used within an organization and (b) a correcting leader-
ship style has a negative effect on the amount of HR practices used within an organiza-
tion. The overall model fit was tested using several fit indices. The model fit values
were .999 (GFI), .997 (AGFI), .996 (NFI), and .998 (CFI), implying that the model
was a very good fit. In addition, the RMSEA, with a value of .015, also indicated that
the model is a good fit.The model in Figure 3 is the result. Only the statistically signifi-
cant relationships are shown (with a significance level of .01). The numerical scores
on all lines indicate standardized regression coefficients (β), and the scores in brackets
are the explained variances. The results show that a stimulating leadership style has a
significantly positive effect on the implementation of HR practices, supporting
Hypothesis 2a, whereas a correcting leadership style appears to have no effect on the
amount of HR practices used, rejecting Hypothesis 2b.
Table 3. Fit Indices for the Fully and Partially Mediated Models.
Model χ2 df GFI AGFI NFI CFI RMSEA
Fully mediated model 189.389 7 .990 .970 .874 .877 .065
Partially mediated model 8.670 6 .999 .998 .994 .998 .008
Note. GFI = goodness-of-fit index; AGFI = adjusted goodness-of-fit index; NFI = normed fit index; CFI =
comparative fit index; RMSEA = root mean square error of approximation.
Age
Organizational
Size
Educational
Level
Job Satisfaction
(.024)
HRM
(.038)
Organizational
Performance
(.127)
.053
.074
.163
.158 .294
-.044 .020
.162
-.118
.158
Figure 2. Result of structural equation modeling.
188 Review of Public Personnel Administration 34(2)
When we compare the model in Figure 2 with the model in Figure 3, we see that the
first model shows a statistically significant and positive relation between HRM and
organizational performance. However, the model in Figure 3 shows that this relation
becomes weaker when the variables related to leadership style are included. Therefore,
we also examined whether supervisors’ leadership style influences the relationship
between HRM and performance (moderating effect). However, these effects do not
appear to be significant. These results imply that leadership style has its own, indepen-
dent, effect.
Finally, model validity was achieved through cross-model validation. Camilleri
(2006) suggested attaining cross-validation in three phases. In the first phase, data are
divided into two data sets. One data set consists of a random selection of 20% of the
data collected from respondents; the second data set consists of a random selection of
80% of the data collected. In the second phase, SEM by means of a path analysis that
calculates the structural fit index (measured by R2) is conducted for both the data sets.
The third phase consists of examining the differences between the calculated structural
fit indices obtained for each data set. The extent of model validity is determined by the
similarity in the variance accounted for by each data set. The results of the cross-model
validation are presented in Table 4. Given the fact that the differences in the explained
variances are small, the cross-model validation provided satisfactory results.
Age
Organizational
Size
Educational
Level
Job Satisfaction
(.177)
HRM
(.102)
Organizational
Performance
(.229)
.054
.076
.163
.050 .161
-.025 .029
.086
-.116
.159
Stimulating
Leadership
Correcting
Leadership
.252 .439
-.054
.310
.069.649
-.045
Figure 3. Result of structural equation modeling.
Table 4. Results of Cross-Model Validation Showing R2 for the Three Samples.
Predicted variable Full sample 20% sample 80% sample
Difference in R2 for
20%-80% sample
Looking at the main independent and dependent variables, we expected that a supervi-
sors’ leadership style has an influence on the implementation of HR practices. Our
research provides empirical evidence that a supervisor’s leadership style, and specifi-
cally a stimulating leadership style, is important to the HRM–performance relation-
ship within an organization. When we compare Figure 2 with Figure 3, we see that
adding “leadership” importantly increases explained variance. As such, the results of
this study emphasize the important role of supervisors in the HRM and performance
model, as was previously suggested by Wright et al. (2005) and Paauwe (2009), among
others. When we look at the results in greater detail, we find evidence of the positive
relationship between a supervisor’s leadership style and the HR practices conducted
within the organization, as previously shown by Purcell and Hutchinson (2007) and
Zhu et al. (2005). More specifically, a stimulating leadership style is demonstrated to
have an important effect on the implementation of HR practices. In contrast, a correct-
ing leadership style appears to have no effect on the amount of HR practices used.
Thus, our hypothesis that a stimulating leadership style has a positive effect on the
amount of HR practices used within an organization is confirmed, whereas our hypoth-
esis that a correcting leadership style has a negative effect on the amount of HR prac-
tices used within an organization must be rejected. Nevertheless, the results are in line
with the research discussed by Guest (1987), which argued that a stimulating leader-
ship style (theory Y) could be linked to soft HRM (HRM focusing on the development,
motivation, and commitment of employees). Furthermore, it would be interesting in
future research to test Guest’s (1987) idea that theory X (with a correcting role for the
supervisor) is linked to hard HRM (a focus on rewards and determinations of whether
employees do what the organization requires). To study this relationship, data must
include such elements of HRM as performance-related pay. An additional interesting
result is that a stimulating leadership style appears to be very important to employees’
degree of satisfaction, while the correcting leadership style has a negative influence on
job satisfaction. Finally, a stimulating leadership style and a correcting leadership style
have a positive effect on organizational performance, although the effect of the stimu-
lating leadership style is much larger.
Our research also provides empirical evidence for the mediating relationship
between HRM and organizational performance. The results indicate a direct effect and
an indirect effect of HR practices on organizational performance, as is already assumed
in the Paauwe and Richardson (1997) model. Our analysis shows that when employees
perceive a more elaborate use of HR practices, organizations do achieve a better score
for their performance. Moreover, when more HR practices are used, employees expe-
rience greater satisfaction, which positively influences organizational performance.
This study adds to previous research by confirming the hypothesis that job satisfaction
acts as a mediating variable in the relationship between HRM and organizational per-
formance. This important finding provides more insight into employees’ reactions to
HRM and its effect on organization performance. These reactions have been largely
disregarded in previous research (Boselie et al., 2005).
190 Review of Public Personnel Administration 34(2)
Looking at the results in greater detail, we see that older employees and employees
with higher education levels perceive a greater use of HR practices. This suggests that
different groups within organizations (e.g., younger and older employees) are man-
aged differently. In addition, organizational size has a relatively large effect on HRM,
as can be concluded from its high beta weight. In line with Guest’s (1999) assumption,
this finding indicates that the HRM policy of organizations is influenced by such con-
textual variables as the size of the organization.
Finally, our study supports the idea that a focus on HRM as a method of increasing
organizational performance is also relevant in the public sector. Based on this study,
conclusions regarding the relationship between HR practices and organizational per-
formance in private organizations (cf. Paauwe, 2009) also appear applicable to public
sector organizations. In line with the results of previous research (e.g., Gould-Williams,
2003; Kim, 2005; O’Toole & Meier, 2008), public organizations appear to be more
successful if they value their employees and if they utilize a more extended set of HR
practices. In addition, this study illustrates the important role supervisors play in this
relationship in the public sector.
Conclusion
In the introduction, we stated that public sector performance has become an increas-
ingly important issue over the past three decades. Several innovations in the field have
promised to increase the quality of public service while reducing its costs. However,
research into the contributions of HRM to these developments has been scarce. Our
main research question, therefore, was “To what extent is the relationship between
HRM and the performance of public organizations mediated by job satisfaction, and
what is the influence of a supervisor’s leadership style on the implementation of HR
practices?” Based on the data and arguments presented in this study, one can conclude
that a positive relationship exists between HRM and organizational performance in the
public sector. Specifically, by studying the relationships among HRM, job satisfaction,
and organizational performance in a single model, this research showed that job satis-
faction partly mediates the relationship between HRM and organizational perfor-
mance. Moreover, this study showed that the choice to use HR practices is influenced
by a supervisor’s leadership style.
Despite these findings, the limits of this article suggest lines of further research.
This study used a cross-sectional data set restricted to Dutch municipalities. Its find-
ings, therefore, have limitations with respect to internal and external validity. A longi-
tudinal data set would increase internal validity, as such data enable researchers to
make stronger causal claims. HRM–performance research is dominated by cross-
sectional research, which generates considerable discussion of questions regarding
“what came first?” (Guest, 2011). Are public organizations more successful if they
value their employees, or do public organizations value their employees if they are
more successful? Or are both propositions true? A similar problem can be observed
with respect to the relationship between job satisfaction and performance (Judge et al.,
2001; Taris & Schreurs, 2009). For this reason, a longitudinal research design would
Vermeeren et al. 191
be preferable in further research. With respect to external validity, we have examined
the HRM and performance relationship in the public sector by focusing on Dutch
municipalities. More research is needed to determine whether the HRM–performance
relationship holds for different kinds of public sector organizations and different coun-
tries. Finally, the selection of the data source (survey) may have influenced some of
the results. The use of only one survey instrument may create distortions in the data,
in particular regarding common method bias (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). This is spe-
cifically a question with respect to the connection between job satisfaction and organi-
zational performance. The strong relationship between these two variables may be
attributable to the fact that employees were asked to rate their job satisfaction and their
perceptions of organizational performance. This potential problem highlights the
importance of replicating our research, ideally by using objective performance
indicators.
This study not only generates recommendations to further enhance HRM and per-
formance research in the public sector. Based on its observations, this study also pro-
vides possible starting points for improving the performance of public organizations
through their employees. To increase organizational performance, it appears important
that organizations invest in employees’ needs by implementing HR practices.
Moreover, this study suggests that the stimulating leadership style is very important to
employee satisfaction, while the correcting leadership style negatively influences job
satisfaction. This suggestion further implies that when a public sector organization
wishes to acquire an involved and motivated staff, its supervisors must assume a stim-
ulating role. Based on our findings, attention to a supervisor’s leadership style appears
to be a prerequisite for successfully implementing HRM within an organization. More
specifically, this study indicates that there is an important role for supervisors to play
in implementing HRM, developing a satisfied workforce, and enhancing organiza-
tional performance.
Appendix
Correcting Leadership
•• X1: My supervisor keeps an eye on my work to check if I do my work well.
•• X2: My supervisor tells me when I do not do my work well.
•• X3: My supervisor controls whether work is finished on time.
Stimulating Leadership
•• Y1: My supervisor is aware of employees’ welfare.
•• Y2: I get enough support from my supervisor.
•• Y3: My supervisor allows people to cooperate well.
•• Y4: My supervisor lets me know if she or he is satisfied with my work.
•• Y5: My supervisor consults his staff about issues that are important to them.
•• Y6: My supervisor provides support as needed.
•• Y7: My supervisor creates a work climate in which I can develop new ideas
about my work.
192 Review of Public Personnel Administration 34(2)
•• Y8: My supervisor is accessible.
•• Y9: My supervisor lets us participate in conversations that are relevant to me
and my colleagues.
•• Y10: My supervisor protects me from high work pressure.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
Notes
1. Although there is some disagreement about the precise relationship between job satisfac-
tion and performance, the literature generally assumes that greater job satisfaction is asso-
ciated with better individual and organizational performance (Judge, Thoresen, Bono, &
Patton, 2001; Taris & Schreurs, 2009).
2. Error correlation between X1 and X2 is .137 and between Y10 and Y11 is .326.
3. Chi-square value = N × difference between sample covariances and implied population
covariances.
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Author Biographies
Brenda Vermeeren is a PhD student at the Department of Public Administration at Erasmus
University Rotterdam. Her research is focused on the relationship between human resource
management (HRM) and Performance of Public Organizations.
Ben Kuipers is an assistant professor at the Department of Public Administration at Erasmus
University Rotterdam and director and consultant at Performability. His research and consulting
work focus on strategic human resource management, change management, and team perfor-
mance in private and public organizations.
Bram Steijn is a full professor of HRM in the public sector at the Department of Public
Administration at Erasmus University Rotterdam. His current research is focused on public
service motivation, job satisfaction, and HRM and performance in the public sector.
455610ADHR14410.1177/1523422312455610Adva
nces in Developing Human ResourcesKim and McLean
1Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
2McLean Global Consulting, Inc., USA
Corresponding Author:
Sehoon Kim, Educational Administration and Human Resource Development, Texas A&M University, 4226
TAMU College Station, TX 77843, USA
Email: shkim2077@gmail.com
Global Talent
Management: Necessity,
Challenges, and the Roles
of HRD
Sehoon Kim1 and Gary N. McLean2
Abstract
The Problem.
Despite increasing attention in business, talent management in global contexts has not
been explored adequately in HRD. Most studies related to global talent management
explain only part of it and do not provide an integrative understanding of what is going
on globally in talent management in an HRD perspective.
The Solution.
This article proposed an integrative conceptual framework for global talent
management that involves the necessity, challenges, and roles of HRD. Considering
cross-cultural viewpoints and multinational enterprise issues in HRD, the study
analyzed why talent management is necessary and the challenges of developing
talent. Finally, proposals were made for developing global talent and roles for HRD
researchers and practitioners.
The Stakeholders.
The results of this study will provide insights or guides for researchers interested
in talent management/development and HR practitioners involved in a multinational
enterprise.
Since The War for Talent (Michaels, Handfield-Jones, & Axelrod, 2001), business
practitioners have enthusiastically embraced talent management (TM; Iles, Preece, &
Chuai, 2010; Lewis & Heckman, 2006). Despite the recent shrinking employment
caused by the economic recession, interest in talent in business has extensively
increased with the unprecedented global competition (Athey, 2008; Scullion,
Collings, & Caligiuri, 2010) because such talent is regarded as generating great ben-
efits and value for the organization (Tarique & Schuler, 2010). The business para-
digm has shifted from marketing and finance to “talentship” (Boudreau & Ramstad,
2005, p. 21).
As the world economy continues to globalize, organizations continue to increase
their international profits and intensify their overseas investments (Guthridge &
Komm, 2008). As this occurs, the importance of global talent in organizations has
also been increasing. Managing and developing necessary global talent are regarded
as among a company’s priorities for sustainable growth (Collings, McDonnell, &
Scullion, 2009; Guthridge & Komm, 2008). According to an Ernst & Young survey
that included more than 150 global executives among Fortune 1000 companies, 65%
of respondents answered that how to deal with global TM would highly impact their
organization (Leisy & Pyron, 2009). For this reason, many organizations are making
great efforts to acquire, develop, and retain talent worldwide (Boudreau & Ramstad,
2005; Lewis & Heckman, 2006).
In spite of the recent enthusiastic attention to this theme in business, academic
activities on managing global talent have not yet fully recognized its importance
(Burbach & Royle, 2010). The concept and features of TM have not been clearly and
sufficiently explored (Collings et al., 2009; Lewis & Heckman, 2006), and many stud-
ies still debate its identity, definition, and scope (Collings & Mellahi, 2009; Farndale,
Scullion, & Sparrow, 2010; Iles et al., 2010; Lewis & Heckman, 2006; McLean, 2010;
Tarique & Schuler, 2010). Although there is a view in which TM may be a business fad
or “old wine in new bottles” (Iles et al., 2010, p. 126), how to deal with talent is critical
for organizations to develop in a sustainable way, no matter what we call TM (McLean,
2010). Most studies on TM were found in human resource management (HRM),
although development, as focused in HRD, is one of the key elements in the TM pro-
cess, and its importance is being increasingly emphasized (Collings & Mellahi, 2009;
Tarique & Schuler, 2010). When it comes to a global context, only a few studies on
global TM were found. However, these studies, which focused on concepts or cases,
explained only part of the global TM approaches and did not provide an integrative
understanding of what is going on globally in TM in an HRD perspective.
The purpose of this article is to identify the necessity and challenges of TM in a
global context and suggest roles for HRD. First, studies on TM not only in HRD but
also in related disciplines were investigated. Then, consideration was given to cross-
cultural and multinational enterprise (MNE) issues in HRD, specifically exploring
why TM is necessary and the challenges of managing and developing talent in a global
setting. Finally, proposals were made for developing global talent and roles for both
HRD researchers and practitioners. In this study, we supported the perception of
568 Advances in Developing Human Resources 14(4)
McLean (2010) and Collings and Mellahi (2009) that TM is not a very new concept
but should be reemphasized by HR professionals to identify key positions and develop
a talent pool, a critical step for successful TM. In addition, findings in this study
focused on global TM, which is different from TM in a domestic context.
The results of this study will contribute to further academic and practical studies on
global talent by providing guidelines for strategic approaches to managing and devel-
oping talent in a global environment.
Talent Management
As TM is a relatively new topic in HR, first introduced as a unified concept in the
1990s, there is still ambiguity and a lack of agreement in terms of its definition,
nature, and features (Collings & Mellahi, 2009; Garrow & Hirsh, 2008; Iles et al.,
2010; Lewis & Heckman, 2006). However, recently, several studies on TM have
helped define its attributes, scope, and aspects in both empirical and conceptual ways.
There are three perspectives on TM prevalent in organizations (Lewis &
Heckman, 2006). The first looks at TM as typical HR roles and activities. In this
perspective, HR provides the same approaches to talent, however that gets defined,
through recruiting, development, and retention as is done with employees not
defined as talent. The second view emphasizes how to secure and develop internal
talent by building talent pools. This is generally related to organizational staffing
and career planning. In the third perspective, talent in the organization is identified
not for certain jobs or through specific succession plans but through recognizing
outstanding individual performance. In this view, organizations evaluate employees
according to their performance and try to retain the talent of the A grades and eject
the C and D grades. In addition to these three perspectives, there are talent pipeline
approaches, such as succession planning and leadership development, that are
regarded as TM (Iles et al., 2010).
By borrowing the concept from a supply chain perspective, Cappelli (2008) pro-
posed four principles for operating TM more effectively. The four principles are hiring
or developing talent according to the business strategy as an investment; reflecting the
uncertain future; improving the cost-efficiency of employee development; and balanc-
ing individual and the organizational interests in development investment.
Integrating recent definitions and perceptions on TM, Collings and Mellahi (2009)
proposed a definition for TM emphasizing its strategic aspects:
Activities and processes that involve the systematic identification of key posi-
tions which differentially contribute to the organization’s sustainable competi-
tive advantage, the development of a talent pool of high potential and high
performing incumbents to fill these roles, and the development of a differenti-
ated human resource architecture to facilitate filling these positions with com-
petent incumbents and to ensure their continued commitment to the organization.
(p. 304)
Kim and McLean 569
In the same vein, Collings and Mellahi (2009) also developed a theoretical
model of strategic TM. In their model, the firm’s performance results from a dif-
ferentiated HR architecture. To develop and utilize internal talent, an organization
should recognize which positions are critically related to its performance. Once a
talent pool of high potentials and high performers is formed by developing or
recruiting talent, the pivotal positions should be filled from the pool. These organi-
zational efforts in HR architecture are intended to enable talent to retain work moti-
vation, organizational commitment, and extra-role behavior, which results in
sustainable performance in the organization. Organizations that deal with human
resources in more than one country, however, need different strategies and action
plans for talent from domestic organizations. That is, global TM should involve an
integrated strategy of TM activities at a global level in order for the business suc-
cess of global organizations that goes beyond general HR assignments (Collings et
al., 2009). Thus, global TM is defined as an organization’s efforts to acquire,
develop, and retain talent to meet organizational strategies on a global scale, given
not only the differences between organizations but also their global and cultural
contexts (Scullion et al., 2010; Tarique & Schuler, 2010). Based on the interna-
tional human resource management context, Tarique and Schuler identified chal-
lenges that influence global TM activities, dividing the challenges into “exogenous”
and “endogenous” drivers (p. 126). External challenges include globalization,
workforce demographic changes, and shortages of talent, and internal ones incor-
porate regional specification, retaining talent, and competencies.
HRD in a Global Context
The more globalization, the more studies and practices in international HRD are
needed (Wang & McLean, 2007). To support organizational work successfully in this
broad and complicated business environment, HRD professionals need a global per-
spective and understand differences in cultures among countries (McLean, 2006).
However, the majority of the studies on cross-cultural training have looked at culture
not as the context but as the content of the training and focused on how to prepare
expatriates (Osman-Gani & Zidan, 2001).
Global HRD can promote the global success of the organization because the perti-
nent development of human capital produces an invaluable organizational resource
(Marquardt, Berger, & Loan, 2004). When organizations become globalized, roles and
activities of HRD will also be influenced by different cultures, ways of doing business,
physical locations, environments, and languages. If HRD relies on the same approaches
in a global situation as used in a domestic setting, this may result in inappropriate
behaviors and decisions by employees. This can then lead to lower performance or
even business failure. Therefore, HRD professionals should know how to deal with
different cultures and utilize global HRD interventions needed for organizations
involved in international or global activities (Marquardt et al., 2004; McLean, 2006).
These global interventions include virtual or cross-cultural team building, cultural
570 Advances in Developing Human Resources 14(4)
self-awareness, cross-cultural training, sharing stories, joint ventures, global job
assignments, and blending of diverse cultures (McLean, 2006).
DeSimone, Werner, and Harris (2002) listed the four major elements included in
most cross-cultural training programs: (a) raising the awareness of cultural differ-
ences, (b) focusing on ways attitudes are shaped, (c) providing factual information
about each culture, and (d) building skills in the areas of language, nonverbal com-
munication, cultural stress management, and adjustment adaptation skills (p. 639).
Cross-cultural training needs to develop knowledge, skills, and attitudes for interac-
tions with people from different cultures (Osman-Gani & Zidan, 2001).
Method
To conduct a comprehensive review of literature, we identified keywords and related
terms for a database search: talent management, talent development, global talent
management, global talent development, global human resources, international
human resources, and cultural training. The search was conducted at the end of 2010.
The identified literature was screened by types of publication (scholarly article,
research report, and book) and published time (only after 1990), with an initial
abstract review. Relevant literature (n = 82) was identified through Google Scholar
and several academic databases, such as Academic Search Complete, Business Source
Complete, Eric, Human Resource Abstracts, and ABI/INFORM Global, and by refer-
ences found in the resulting articles.
In spite of the few studies on TM or global TM in HRD, we found a number of
relevant literature related to TM in HRM and industrial psychology. The identified
studies were analyzed to identify how academic studies and practical activities related
to global TM have been conducted and how to maximize developing global talent in
the organization.
Why Is Global TM Necessary?
Global TM includes organizational activities to acquire, develop, and retain talent for
organizational strategies on a global scale, taking account of cultural contexts
(Scullion et al., 2010). Despite the recent global economic recession that has resulted
in massive downsizing and restructuring in business, the majority of firms still recog-
nize TM as one of the top organizational priorities (Tarique & Schuler, 2010). The
reasons global TM is necessary can be identified as expansion of a market to the
world, deficiency of talent, and competition for talent.
Expansion to the World
As companies step into a global environment, they face competition for talent, one
of the most valuable assets in the organization (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1998). A Hewitt
survey of more than 500 companies in the United States revealed that 45% of the
Kim and McLean 571
organizations were currently doing or within 3 years would do business in other
countries (Gandossy & Kao, 2004). The success of the organization in a global set-
ting depends on how the resources are used and how talent is supported to commit
to the work and organization (Marquardt et al., 2004). Marquardt et al. (2004) clas-
sified organization types according to global status: domestic, international, multina-
tional, and global. They found that each stage had different strategies, products,
competitors, markets, structures, and cultural sensitivity. Because of these different
corporate activities, globalized organizations need talent who can make a profit in a
wide scope of environments (Farndale et al., 2010). Moreover, infrastructure around
TM in other regions may be different from the headquarters country of the organiza-
tion (Leisy & Pyron, 2009; Odell & Spielman, 2009).
According to a McKinsey Global Survey, most global companies expect that
emerging global markets will provide not only more production but also talent and
innovation and plan to look for talent in local markets (44%) or from developed mar-
kets and deploy them to emerging markets (35%; Dye & Stephenson, 2010). To iden-
tify, acquire, develop, and retain global talent, global organizations need new types of
competencies, recruitment strategies, development approaches, career paths, and
reward systems that are different from the domestic environment (Marquardt et al.,
2004). Global TM is not merely about managing physical bodies of smart people but
also about dealing with human capital and the intangible resources of individual
knowledge and skills (Odell & Spielman, 2009).
Deficiency of Talent
The U.S. labor force will decline as Baby Boomers retire and the birth rate decline
(Athey, 2008). As in the United States, several reports and studies warned that work-
ing populations in most developed countries were rapidly decreasing, and this phe-
nomenon would spread over the world in a few years (Gandossy & Kao, 2004;
Hayutin, 2010; Leisy & Pyron, 2009; Orr & McVerry, 2007; Strack, Baier, &
Fahlander, 2008; Tucker, Kao, & Verma, 2005). According to Hayutin, for the past 20
years, the working-age population grew rapidly in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia,
but, for the coming 20 years, the increase would slow in most countries. Most devel-
oped countries are projected to face a workforce shrinkage, and the European working
population will decline by 50 million (Hayutin, 2010).
The shortages of labor will result in a serious deficiency of talent (Strack et al.,
2008) that can cause low productivity in organizations (Dye & Stephenson, 2010).
This deficiency will affect the state of talent pools in organizations. Relying only on
traditional HR activities may be an ineffective way to retain enough talent because of
the limited resources in the labor market. For a sustainable talent supply, organizations
need to emphasize not only acquiring and retaining high performers but also develop-
ing internal employees who have potential and encouraging them to increase their
abilities (Athey, 2008; Strack et al., 2008). In addition, the development activities
should not be ad hoc or haphazard but strategically planned to align organizational
goals and vision (McDonnell, Lamare, Gunnigle, & Lavelle, 2010).
572 Advances in Developing Human Resources 14(4)
Competition for Talent
The lack of labor may be one of the major reasons why more intense competition to
acquire and retain talent happens (Strack et al., 2008). However, a lack of critical
skills that employees have is also regarded as one of the key factors that increase the
need for talent globally (Odell & Spielman, 2009; Zheng, 2009) because skill defi-
ciency is related to a high rate of turnover (Zheng, 2009). As global competition for
talent heats up, organizations that do not prepare ways to acquire, develop, utilize, and
retain talent may fall behind in a race for global business. Therefore, organizations
need to consider carefully the actions they take for a sustainable talent supply
(Bhatnagar. 2008).
Challenges of Developing Global Talent
Given the geographic and cultural scope in which global organizations work, we
found three primary challenges that may occur while developing global talent: ethno-
centric strategy, worries about global mobility, and barriers between headquarters and
subsidiaries countries.
Ethnocentric Strategy
One of the critical challenges global organizations can encounter when they deal with
talent development is ethnocentrism, defined as a belief that other groups are inferior
to one’s own (Barger, 2008). Many organizations are not aware that what they have
carried out may not be applicable to other regions, cultures, or countries and believe
that standardization through an ethnocentric approach is more efficient than consider-
ing difference. Indeed, many HR practitioners struggle with a balance between global
formalization or standardization and local flexibility or customization (Begley &
Boyd, 2003). With global standardization (formalization), organizations may expect
efficiency and fairness in HR policies and activities (Begley & Boyd, 2003). However,
regional strategies for talent—hiring regional talent and developing them taking into
account local contexts—can result in better performance with lower costs than central
strategies because each region or country may have a different perception and condi-
tion of talent (Tarique & Schuler, 2010).
For instance, Boussebaa and Morgan (2008) discovered that one of the challenges
of a multinational company in France, with headquarters in the United Kingdom, was
the difference in understanding of talent in headquarters. According to their study,
talent has a meaning of someone who has potential among the U.K. companies,
whereas talent in France means someone who has already developed and proven their
abilities. Failure to take into account the different understanding of concepts of talent
brought about a failure of the talent development system projects led by the British
company in France.
Moreover, ethnocentric perceptions of global organizations can result in less prep-
aration for global assignments of their talent, which is associated with expatriate
Kim and McLean 573
failure (Choi, 2002; Shen & Lang, 2009; Yeaton & Hall, 2008). According to Osman-
Gani (2000), U.S. expatriates generally deemed that a 3-day predeparture training is
most appropriate, whereas the majority of German, Japanese, and Korean expatriates
considered at least a 1-week-long training as a minimum. In fact, 16% to 40% of U.S.
expatriates fail their assignment and return prematurely (Wagner & Hollenbeck,
1995), which is an apparent contrast to a 5% to 10% global assignment failure of non-
U.S. expatriates (Dowling, Welch, & Schuler, 1999).
Worries About Global Mobility
Through the McKinsey Global Survey, Dye and Stephenson (2010) found that 35%
of global companies considered deploying talent employed in the host country to
other countries. This means a substantial number of people will work for years in an
environment where the culture, language, law, business style, and weather may be
different from their home country. Although the experience of global assignments can
be invaluable for learning and development, many employees assigned to work in
another country may be demotivated not only because of the new environment they
will face but also because of worries about career disadvantages after repatriation to
their home country (Guthridge & Komm, 2008).
Marquardt et al. (2004) reported that 20% of the repatriates left their organization
within 1 year after they came back and 50% quit the job within 1 to 3 years.
Mismanagement of expatriates can cause tremendous damage to organizations. The
reasons why expatriates fear global mobility are that they think they lose promotion
opportunities, there may be limited positions for them when they come back, the
overseas assignment may be a result of a demotion, few colleagues welcome them
back (Allen & Alvarez, 1998), and they hear about negative repatriate experiences
from their colleagues (Farndale et al., 2010). In addition to the situations that may
happen in the organization, reverse culture shock of the expatriates themselves, as
well as their families, can result in maladjustment (Marquardt et al., 2004).
De Cieri, Sheehan, Costa, Fenwick, and Cooper (2009) found that national identity
with their country of birth and quality of life in the home country are also factors that
can influence global mobility of employees, either in a positive or negative way. A
strong sense of national identity is likely to strengthen the desire for repatriation. In
terms of quality of life in the home country, they contended that people tend to desire
to relocate and stay in another country if the life in the host country is better than in the
home country.
Barriers Between Headquarters and Subsidiaries
When the goals of the global organization’s headquarters are not in alignment with
the subsidiaries, the regional or local strategies and activities may not be in accord
with the overall organization’s purposes (Bjorkman, Barner-Rasmussen, & Li, 2004).
If the relationship between headquarters and subsidiaries is distant, local branches
574 Advances in Developing Human Resources 14(4)
will be interested in developing talent only for their performance, not for the overall
success of the organization. In this regard, subsidiary managers may recruit, assess,
and develop talent with a standard according to their own strategies and competen-
cies rather than that of the headquarters (Mellahi & Collings, 2010). Sometimes the
best employee in the organization can be a victim of abandonment when he or she is
positioned between the headquarters and subsidiary (Gandossy & Kao, 2004).
Furthermore, this defensive behavior can bring about a reduction in effectiveness of
global TM strategies (Farndale et al., 2010).
When barriers between headquarters and subsidiaries are strong, a lack of appropri-
ate information on talent in the subsidiaries can cause a failure of the global TM sys-
tem, which may result in limited opportunities for talent at subsidiaries to work in the
upper management team at headquarters (Mellahi & Collings, 2010).
Mellahi and Collings (2010) also found that a reason for a lack of communication
between headquarters and subsidiaries is culture. In regions that have a strong power
distance culture, such as China, Japan, and South Korea, people tend to regard saving
face for someone who is in a higher position as very valuable. Therefore, employees
cannot easily report their opinions to headquarters even though mismanagement of
talent may happen in the subsidiary.
HRD Roles for Success in Global TM
Wooldridge (2006) warned that relying heavily on a particular approach to talent can
no longer be beneficial for the organization and can even adversely affect the future
of the organization. Too much emphasis on attracting and retaining talent, and ignor-
ing or neglecting development or deployment, may cause significant harm to the
organization (Athey, 2008; Pfeffer, 2001). For this reason, many global organizations
have changed their talent supply strategies from hiring outsiders to developing insid-
ers (Boussebaa & Morgan, 2008; Osman-Gani & Chan, 2009), although this does not
mean that external transfusion of talent has been ignored. The roles of HRD are
critical for global organizations, not only to support talent in order to generate better
performance but also to develop employees who have global potential that will lead
to a sustainable talent supply for the organization. For successful global TM, we sug-
gest roles for HRD in the areas of balancing centralized and decentralized strategies,
developing global competencies, creating structured global talent development, and
conducting global team building.
Balancing Centralized and Decentralized Strategies
Although global organizations may have headquarters that have central power and
roles, their global subsidiaries are normally led by managers from diverse areas
(Marquardt et al. 2004). That is, on the one hand, globally unified strategies, struc-
tures, and corporate cultures are emphasized; on the other hand, locally specified and
customized approaches cannot be ignored. Thus, when a global organization makes
Kim and McLean 575
a decision, the uniqueness of each local environment should be taken into account
throughout the vision and strategies of the global organization (Harvey, Fisher,
McPhail, & Moeller, 2009).
To enhance the organization’s homogeneous culture and strategies, many compa-
nies send managers from headquarters to sites around the world to communicate cen-
tral values and cultures (Marquardt et al., 2004). HR managers from headquarters can
help incorporate and utilize global TM systems at the subsidiaries, taking into account
the local context. Beechler and Woodward (2009) mentioned the Coca Cola Company
as an example of an effective strategy of bringing local talent to headquarters and
developing their leadership ability. After one or one and a half years, they go back to
the subsidiaries as a manager and spread the company’s core values and culture to the
local firms. The shared global TM system and its strategies will make it possible for
global organizations to have a balanced supply, structured deployment, and develop-
ment in terms of talent (Mellahi & Collings, 2010).
Using the same values, systems, and even HR resources tends to provide organiza-
tional efficiency, such as flexibility for deploying talent, active communication and
cooperation between organizations, and cost saving. However, talent developed for the
specific market and culture can result in better performance. A decentralized approach
that develops and delivers localized or acculturated interventions (Marquardt et al.,
2004) can be effective for local organizations and employees. For example, from a
study with Japanese MNCs, Arreglel, Beamish, and Hébert (2009) found that the
regional-level effects provided positive influences, such as expanded localized knowl-
edge, strong social relationships, and transfer of knowledge and practices due to geo-
graphic proximity. Talent hired and developed through localized strategies may be
more productive at the local businesses than at headquarters or in another region.
When local HR practitioners adopt a TM system and interventions created by head-
quarters, the success of the system and interventions will depend on how well the
system is localized, taking account of the local culture and business context (Boussebaa
& Morgan, 2008).
Developing Global Competencies
Global competencies are indicators that global organizations utilize to manage global
talent (Farndale et al., 2010). The competencies need to be used to align and integrate
activities and processes with regard to TM in each subsidiary and region in order to
maximize the synergy of organizational functions, as well as performance excellence
of talent (Heinen & O’Neill, 2004). The role of HRD here is to identify the competen-
cies and provide effective interventions to develop the abilities of global talent.
Marquardt et al. (2004) introduced six global competencies as special abilities for
global employees: cultural self-awareness, global perspectives, language, tolerance
for ambiguity and differences, cultural flexibility, and strong communication skills.
Among these competencies, the need for cognitive abilities is related to a global mind-
set. A global mindset, which is the ability to develop individual criteria that can be
576 Advances in Developing Human Resources 14(4)
applied to different regions, nations, and cultures and properly utilize those criteria in
a different context, is the most critical for the sustainable success of global organiza-
tions (Begley & Boyd, 2003). Tarique and Schuler (2010) found three types of required
global talent competencies through several related studies. First, general business
competencies, which can apply to most companies, are needed for global talent. The
second is cross-cultural competencies divided into the competencies we can easily
learn, such as knowledge about the culture, and ones that take a long time to obtain,
such as characteristics or attitudes common within the culture. The last type is compe-
tencies for creating and managing knowledge required for business performance.
Global competencies can be utilized not only for training and development but also for
global recruitment, assessment, career paths, staffing, and reward and recognition
(Marquardt et al., 2004).
Creating Structured Global Talent Development
Global organizations need a structured development system to grow their employees’
abilities for business competitiveness (Marquardt et al., 2004). The structured devel-
opment system should be connected to business strategies and goals, reflect needs for
global talent development strategies, identify action steps, and analyze inner and outer
factors and resources.
Global leadership development, succession plans, and expatriate training can be
included in a global development system (Odell & Spielman, 2009). Although these
interventions are different from each other, the key activities used may be similar.
Systematic cross-cultural training and encouraging global assignments may be exem-
plary activities.
Global talent who work with people from different cultures and backgrounds need
cross-cultural training because the training helps employees not only obtain knowl-
edge, skills, and attitudes needed for challenging assignments (Osman-Gani & Zidan,
2001) but also adapt to a culturally different region or country, which is essential for
a successful international task (DeSimone et al., 2002). Despite much research on
cross-cultural training, McLean (2006) pointed out that many training programs deal-
ing with cross-cultures are still “atheoretical” (p. 211) and emphasize mainly what to
do or not to do. Relying only on cognitive information and linguistic skills can be less
effective for people who are preparing for global tasks (Guthridge & Komm, 2008;
McLean, 2006). To make a cross-cultural training program effective, trainees should
have learning experiences in terms of acculturation and be encouraged to have a “cul-
tural milieu” (Marquardt et al., 2004, p. 44) in the program (Stanek, 2000).
Work experience in a challenging assignment is one of the most effective ways of
developing employees (Meyers, Paunonen, Gellatly, Goffin, & Jackson, 1989). This
effective approach is also applied to development in a global setting, providing thor-
ough support for completing global assignments (McLean, 2004). These assignments
can be coordination, computational, or creative tasks so that global talent can develop
interpersonal skills, problem-solving abilities, mediating abilities, business insights,
Kim and McLean 577
and specific subject knowledge and techniques (Harvey et al., 2009). Experiences in
different cultures and countries also enable global talent to develop cultural awareness
and tolerance (Guthridge & Komm, 2008). In spite of its merit, a global assignment is
the least extensively used intervention among global organizations because it takes
time to produce desirable results, and employers may be afraid of providing continual
opportunities that may fail and damage their business (McDonnell et al., 2010).
However, HRD needs to create opportunities for challenging global assignments and
establish a supportive environment for talent so that they can improve their capacities
and commit to their job and organization (Hiltrop, 1999).
These development interventions provided for talent should be strategically con-
nected to the global TM system. McDonnell et al. (2010) discovered that a number of
global organizations did not allocate learning resources to their talent, although they
had formalized global development programs. HRD practitioners should recognize
what interventions they have and how they can help talent to develop their organiza-
tional performance.
Conducting Global Team Building
A global team, a group of employees from different cultures or countries who work
together to do a particular job (McLean, 2006), is regarded as an integrated, strategic,
and generative approach to managing global talent (Beechler & Woodward, 2009).
As telecommunicating technologies are developed, global teams can be organized as
not only face to face but also virtual teams in which group members can work in
different places at the same time using a web-chat or web-cam (McLean, 2006).
Regardless of type, a global team is expected to provide organizations with capa-
bilities to respond to global challenges, solving complex global problems quickly
(Marquardt et al., 2004).
According to Marquardt et al. (2004), a global team influences global TM in sev-
eral positive ways. First, a global team can encourage an atmosphere of managing
talent from all over the world. If employees in an organization are culturally and
nationally diverse, the employees can help stop or reduce the effects of making a
biased decision when recruiting, deploying, promoting, and developing people.
Second, organizations have an opportunity to find and develop their high potentials
scattered over the world. Through a global team, talent located in a subsidiary can
have a chance to show their capability and to be provided with equal support for
development from the organization. Third, while dealing with challenging global
tasks, talent can enlarge perspectives, increase global capacities, and gain global
managerial skills.
However, a global team does not always guarantee successful results. Several
studies have pointed out the ineffectiveness of a globally heterogeneous team because
of communication problems, behavioral conflicts, and discriminations (Chatman,
Polzer, Barsade, & Neale, 1998; Ely & Thomas, 2001; Thomas, 1999). In this regard,
Thomas (1999) found that the difference in effectiveness between a culturally
578 Advances in Developing Human Resources 14(4)
homogeneous and heterogeneous team is dependent on the nature of the tasks. He
contended that homogeneous teams perform better with highly structured or overall
assessment tasks, whereas diverse teams show more confidence and proficiency with
tasks involving creative solutions and idea generation. In addition to the nature of the
tasks, he argued that individual cultural characteristics also influence the result of the
effectiveness of diverse teams. That is, the more individuals with collectivistic char-
acteristics a team has, the more effective the performance of the team is because a
collectivistic person tends to be more receptive and regards group harmony as impor-
tant. However, those from a collectivistic culture may be less creative because it is
more subject to groupthink.
To enhance the effectiveness of a global team, global organizations need to pro-
vide organizational activities, as well as develop their systems and cultures, so that
the organizations can be open to diversity without any unhealthy interpersonal con-
flict and difficulty (Beechler & Woodward, 2009). Diversity training, coaching, and
mentoring programs can help develop both knowledge and attitudes for working
with diverse colleagues (McGuire, 2011). Cultural facilitation and mediation by
HRD professionals may reduce the incidences of prejudice and misbehavior in the
first meeting (McLean, 2006). When individuals are willing to learn about and
accept differences, a diverse team can generate a synergic effect and provide better
performance (Ely & Thomas, 2001). Interpersonal problems can also be addressed
by clarifying team goals, roles and responsibilities, or procedures and processes
(Burke, 2011). Efforts for global team building should be a long-term approach in a
systemic way so that organizations sustain the interventions and develop their cul-
tures (McGuire, 2011).
Conceptual Framework for Global TM
On the basis of the findings explored, we created a conceptual framework for the
necessity, challenges, and roles of HRD in terms of global TM (Figure 1). First, global
TM plays a critical role for global organizations because of the globalized business
environment, shortage of talent, and competition for talent. Second, ethnocentric per-
spectives in terms of talent development, concerns of talent about global mobility, and
gaps between headquarters and subsidiaries can be challenges in developing global
talent. Third, for success in global TM, HRD needs to balance strategies between
centralized and decentralized, develop global competencies, create a structured devel-
opment system, and support global team building.
Discussion
Despite the limited literature directly relevant to global TM, we found sufficient
information to present the necessity, challenges, and HRD roles through reviewing
literature related to HRD, HRM, and industrial psychology and synthesizing their
contents. Our findings support our initial research assumption that TM is not a
Kim and McLean 579
concept newly created but is reinterpreted HRM/HRD activities focusing on high
potentials or high performers (Collings & Mellahi, 2009; Iles et al., 2010; McLean,
2010). Challenges and HRD practitioners’ roles regarding global TM may not be
very different from those of general international HRD. However, we believe how to
manage or develop global talent is critical for success in global business and HR
scholars and practitioners should keep paying attention to matters of global talent.
What we discovered in this article makes several contributions to HRD. First, we
disclose a topic that has not received much attention among HRD professionals but
inevitably needs their involvement and interest. What HRD can consider and do for
talent development in a global context was also identified. In addition, we provided
strategic and systematic approaches to developing global talent for HRD professionals
extending beyond relying solely on cross-cultural training, the most frequently occur-
ring activity in both the field and academy.
This study has limitations. First, only studies written in English were reviewed
because of our language and search limitations. Although it appears that the majority
of research on global TM has been conducted in the United States, Europe, and coun-
tries using English, such as Australia and Singapore, there may be studies or cases in
non–English-speaking countries. Second, focusing only on content related to global
talent and global HRD limited viewpoints beyond HRD and HRM, although we agree
that TM should not be confined to HR. As global talent is emphasized in global busi-
ness, identifying, developing, deploying, and retaining talent are no longer only HR’s
job but the responsibility of all management from line manager to top executive
(McCauley & Wakefield, 2006; Odell & Spielman, 2009). Third, our research focus is
limited to for-profit organizations and do not include nonprofit global organizations.
Thus, there may be difficulty in applying our findings to different types of global
organizations.
Figure 1. Conceptual framework of the necessity, challenge, and HRD roles for global talent
management (TM)
580 Advances in Developing Human Resources 14(4)
Recommendations for HRD Researchers
There are four recommendations we suggest for HRD researchers.
First, HRD researchers need to pay more attention to global TM. Although the
number of articles on TM have rapidly increased since the concept of TM was intro-
duced (Iles et al., 2010), more theoretical and practical studies are necessary for estab-
lishing TM as a solid academic area within HRD. How to manage global talent has
been one of the hot issues among organizations involved in international business or
interested in global human resources. However, academic development of TM is still
so minimal that what scholars have accomplished for TM does not meet the field’s
needs. This leads many organizations to rely mainly on business consultants who may
use tools or models not theoretically grounded. For the academic development of
global TM, more cases need to be investigated and, based on those case studies, more
empirical studies should be conducted. And then, HRD researchers can perform
theory-building studies on global TM and examine those theories.
Second, HRD researchers need to be careful when they prescribe roles for HRD in
TM. In an actual business situation, dividing HRD from HRM is likely to be mean-
ingless because both have the same goal, contributing to organizational performance
and have many overlapping tasks under the same umbrella, HR. Thus, it is hard to say
that HRD oversees only training functions in TM or that identifying and deploying
talent are only HRM’s functions. Rather, to supply the talent the organization needs,
HRD must be involved in all processes of TM. For example, when individuals with
high potentials need to be developed as leaders, HRD can draw a career map, identify
necessary competencies, provide interventions, and evaluate not only TM activities
but also the talent themselves.
Third, TM in nonprofit organizations should also be explored. Most studies on
global TM are focused on corporations, not other types of organizations, such as non-
governmental organizations. Because these organizations have different purposes,
structures, and activities, they may need a different definition of talent and a unique
process for managing talent.
Fourth, HRD researchers can broaden their perspective on TM to the national level.
Most studies on TM in HR deal with the corporate level. Like the discipline of HRD
involving community and nation, however, TM at the national level should also be
explored by HRD scholars, recognizing a country as an organization. Therefore, a
national policy on acquiring, developing, retaining, and utilizing talent, talent flow in
a country, and national brain drain versus gain can be exemplary subjects for further
studies on national TM. We expect that these studies will show reasons why phenom-
ena that corporations cannot control occur, such as a deficiency of talent or incompe-
tent employees, and provide appropriate directions for fundamental remedies.
Recommendations for HRD Practitioners
Global TM can be a new term and area among HRD practitioners, especially those
involved in a global organization. A great deal of attention is necessary when HRD
Kim and McLean 581
practitioners deal with global TM because efforts for managing talent are likely to
fail without consideration of the necessities and possible challenges mentioned ear-
lier. We recommend the following for HRD practitioners who are preparing to man-
age global talent.
First, the meaning of talent should be defined, taking into account the organiza-
tion’s business contexts and strategies. Even though organizations do business glob-
ally in the same industry, they may have different types of business operations, such as
company-owned, joint venture, and outsourced, and the TM approach should be
adapted to the business type (Gandossy & Kao, 2004). Misunderstandings can occur
when leaders are seen as equal to talent or leadership development is considered the
same as talent development. However, a leader can be talent depending on whether the
position is critical for the organization’s profit and sustainable development.
Second, TM is a long-term approach. If HRD practitioners expect immediate effects
from global TM, the results may be disappointing. Hasty changes in the management
plan and system because of expectations for short-term results can cause not only a
waste of time and money but also a loss of trust in HR by the organization. Thus, HRD
practitioners may need to be cautious with TM, making sure every step of TM works
properly and persuade clients who desire instant outcomes of their investment on TM
if necessary.
Third, successful global TM needs fairness in the whole process. Once employees
question the criteria for selection of talent, the appropriateness of development oppor-
tunities, and the timing of deployment or promotion, complaints about the TM system
will arise and cause the organization to suspect its effectiveness. Constant communica-
tions and clear statements on the policies and processes will help minimize employees’
confusion or misunderstanding about the organizational approach to TM.
Fourth, HRD practitioners should be aware that the process of TM can result in
unexpected problems in cultures different from the host culture. For example, while
managing the talent pool, designating talent may cause an unpleasant relationship
among colleagues in collectivistic cultures. Because people regard group harmony as
most desirable in those cultures, both the selected individuals and their colleagues may
feel uncomfortable with a public announcement about the results of the selection.
Sometimes, employees in the culture refuse to be identified as a talent because of their
relationship with their colleagues.
Fifth, best practices or illustrative case studies can be produced and shared in orga-
nizational and interorganizational levels in order to be used as a benchmark, develop
more appropriate methods and processes related to TM, and enhance abilities of HRD
practitioners. When these techniques are used, however, what is common and different
from the applying organization should be taken into account.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
582 Advances in Developing Human Resources 14(4)
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
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Bios
Sehoon Kim is a PhD student in the Department of Educational Administration and Human
Resource Development at Texas A&M University. He previously worked in the HR field in
Korea. His research interests include work hours, talent management, cross-cultural issues, and
brain drain.
Dr. Gary N. McLean (Ed.D., Ph.D. hon.) is president of McLean Global Consulting, Inc., a
family business. As an OD practitioner, he works extensively globally. He also teaches regu-
larly at universities in Thailand, Mexico, and France. He was formerly a senior professor and
executive director of international human resource development programs at Texas A&M
University and is professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota. He has served as President
of the Academy of Human Resource Development and the International Management
Development Association. His research interests are broad, focusing primarily on organization
development and national and international HRD.
–
Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No.2 Winter 2000
A Reappraisal ofHRM
Models in Britain
by
Pawan s. Budhwar
Human Resource Management is still struggling to find a strategic role.
For a better understanding ofthe subj ect, both management practitioners
and scholars need to study human resource management (HRM) in
context [1]. The dynamics of both the local/regional and international/
global business context in which the firm operates should be given a
serious consideration. Similarly, there is a need to use multiple levels of
analysis when studying HRM: the external social, political, cultural, and
economic environment; and the industry. Examining HRM out-of-context
could be misleading and fail to advance understanding. A key question is
how to examine HRM in context? One way is by examining the main
models of HRM in different settings. However, there is no existing
framework that can enable such an evaluation to take place. An attempt
has been made in this paper to provide such a framework and empirically
examine it in the British context.
This paper is divided into three parts. Initially, it summarises the
main developments in the field of HRM. Then, it highlights the key
emphasis of five models of HRM (namely, the ‘Matching model’; the
‘Harvard model’; the ‘Contextual model’; the ‘5-P model’; and the
‘European model’ ofHRM). Lastly, we will address the operationalisation
of the key issues and emphases of the aforementioned models by
examining their applicability in six industries ofthe British manufacturing
sector. The evaluation highlights the context specific nature of British
HRM.
This introduction looks at the need to identify the core emphasis of
the main HRM models that could be used to examine their applicability in
different national contexts. Developments in the field of HRM are now
well documented in the literature [2, 3]. The debate relating to the nature
ofHRM continues today, although the focus of the debate has changed
over a period of time. At present, the contribution ofHRM in improving
Pawan S. Budhwar is Lecturer in Organizational Behaviour and
HRM at CardiffBusiness School, UK.
Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No.2 Winter 2000
the firm’s performance and the overall success of any organization
(alongside other factors) is being highlighted in the literature [4, 5].
Alongside these debates, a number of important theoretical
developments have taken place in the field of HRM. For example, a
number ofmodels ofHRM have been developed over the last 15 years or
so. Some of the main models are: the ‘Matching model’; the ‘Harvard
model’; the ‘Contextual model’; the ‘5-P model’; and the ‘European
model’ ofHRM [6, 7]. All these models have been developed in the US
and the UK. These models ofHRM are proj ected to be useful for analysis
both between and within nations. However, the developers of these
models do not provide clear guidelines regarding their operationalisation
in different contexts. Moreover, it is interesting to note that, although a
large number of scholars refer to these models, very few have tested their
practical applicability (exceptions being Benkhoff [8]; Monks [9]; Truss
et al. [10]). For the development of relevant management practices there
is then a clear need not only to highlight the main emphasis of the HRM
models but also to show their operationalisation. Such an analysis will help
to examine the applicability of these models in other parts of the world.
With the increasing levels ofglobalisation ofbusiness such investigations
have become an imperative.
Moreover, although the present literature shows an emphasis on
themes such as ‘strategic HRM’ (SHRM), the majority of researchers
persist in examining only the traditional ‘hard’ and’ soft’ models ofHRM
[11]. For the growth and development of SHRM, there is a strong need
to examine the applicability of those models ofHRM which can help to
assess the extent to which it has really become strategic in different parts
of the world, and the main factors and variables which determine HRM
in different settings. This will not only test the applicability of HRM
approaches in different regions, but will also help to highlight the context
specific nature of HRM practices.
The aims of this paper are twofold. First, to identify the core
emphasis offive main models ofHRM which can be used to examine their
applicability in different national contexts. Second, to test empirically the
applicability of these models of HRM in the British context. Before
answering why this investigation is being conducted in the UK, the main
models of HRM are briefly analysed.
Models of HRM
Five models ofHRM, which are widely documented in the literature are
chosen for analysis. They are: the ‘Matching model’; the ‘Harvard
model’; the ‘Contextual model’; the ‘5-P model’; and the ‘European
model’ ofHRM [12,13, 14]. The reason for the selection and analysis of
thesemodelsis two-fold.First, it will help to highlight their main contribution
–
..
Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No.2 Winter 2000
to the development of SHRM as a distinct discipline. Second, it will help
to identify the main research questions suitable for examining these
models in different national settings. The analysis begins with one of the
traditional models ofHRM.
The strategic fit of HRM
The main contributors to the ‘Matching model’ ofHRM come from the
Michigan and New York schools. Fombrun et al. ‘s [15] model highlights
the ‘resource’ aspect ofHRM and emphasises the efficient utilisation of
human resources (like otherresources) to meet organizational objectives.
The matching model is mainly based on Chandler’s [16] argument that an
organization’s structure is an outcome of its strategy. Fombrun et al.
expanded this premise and developed the matching model of strategic
RRM, which emphasises a ‘tight fit’ between organizational strategy,
organizational structure and HRM system, where both structure and
HRM are dependent on the organization strategy. The main aim of the
matching model is therefore to develop an appropriate ‘Human Resource
System’ that will characterise those HRM strategies that contribute to the
most efficient implementation ofbusiness strategies. The Schuler group
made further developments to the matching model and its core theme of
‘strategic fit’ in the late 19?Os [17]. The core issues emerging from the
matching models are:
1. Do organizations show a ‘tight fit’ between their HRM and
organization strategy where the former is dependent on the
latter? Do personnellHR managers believe they should
develop HRM systems only for the effective implementation
of their organization strategies?
.2. Do organizations consider their HRs as a cost and use them
sparingly? Or, do they devote resources to the training of
their HRs to make the best use of them?
3. Do HRM strategies vary across different levels of
employees?
The soft variant of HRM
Beer et al. [18] articulated the ‘Harvard Model’ of HRM. It is also
denoted as the ‘Soft’ variant ofHRM [19], mainly because it stresses the
‘human’ aspect of HRM and is more concerned with the employer-
employee relationship. The model highlights the interests of different
stakeholders in the organization (such as shareholders, management,
employee groups, government, community and unions) and how their
interests are related to the objectives of management. It also recognises
the influence ofsituational factors (such as the market situation) on HRM
policy choices. According to this model, the actual content of HRM is
described in relation to four policy areas i.e. human resource flows,
Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No.2 Winter 2000
reward systems, employees’ influence and work systems. Each of the
four policy areas is characterised by a series of tasks to which managers
must attend. The outcomes that these four HR policies need to achieve
are commitment, competence, congruence, and cost effectiveness. The
model allows for analysis of these outcomes at both organizational and
societal levels. As this model acknowledges the role ofsocietal outcomes,
it can provide a useful basis for comparative analysis of HRM [20]. The
key issues emerging from this model which can be used for examining its
applicability in different contexts are:
1. What is the influence ofdifferent stakeholders and situational
and contingent variables on HRM policies?
2. To what extent is communication with employees used as a
means to maximise commitment?
3. What level of emphasis is given to employee development
through involvement, empowerment and devolution?
The contextual model of HRM
Researchers at the Centre for Corporate Strategy and Change at the
Warwick Business School developed this model. They examined strategy
making in complex organizations and related this to the ability to transform
HRM practices [21,22]. Hendry and associates argue that HRM should
not be labelled as a single form of activity. Organizations may follow a
number of different pathways in order to achieve the same results. This
is mainly due to the existence of a number of linkages between the outer
environmental context (socio-economic, technological, political-legal and
competitive)and inner organizationalcontext (culture, structure, leadership,
task-technology and business output). These linkages directly contribute
to forming the content of an organization’s HRM. The core issues
emerging from this model are:
1. What is the influence of economic (competitive conditions,
ownership and control, organization size and structure,
organizational growth path or stage in the life cycle and the
structure of the industry), technological (type of production
systems) and socio-political (national education and training
set-up) factors on HRM strategies?
2. What are the linkages between organizational contingencies
(such as size, nature, positioning ofHR, and HR strategies)
and HRM strategies?
Strategic integration of HRM
The existing literature reveals a trend in which HRM is becoming an
integral part of business strategy – hence, the emergence of the term
SHRM. It is largely concerned with ‘integration’ and ‘adaptation’. The
purpose of SHRM is to ensure that [23]:
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Journal of General Management
VoL 26 No.2 Winter2000
1. HRM is fully integrated with the strategy and strategic needs
of the firm;
2. HR policies are coherent both across policy areas and across
hierarchies; and
3. HR practices are adjusted, accepted, and used by line
managers and employees as part of their every day work.
Based on such premises, Schuler [24] developed a 5-P model of
SHRM that melds five HR activities (philosophies, policies, programs,
practices and processes) with strategic needs. This model, to a great
extent, explains the significance ofthese five SHRM activities in achieving
the organization’s strategic needs, and shows the inter-relatedness of
activities that are often treated separately in the literature. This is helpful
in understanding the complex interaction between organizational strategy
and SHRM activities.
The model raises two important issues (also suggested by many
other authors in the field) for SHRM comparisons. These are:
1. What is the level of integration of HRM into the business
strategy?
2. What is the level ofresponsibility for HRM devolved to line
managers?
European model of HRM
Based on the growing importance of HRM and its contribution towards
economic success and the drive towards Europeanisation, Brewster [25]
proposes a ‘European model ofHRM’. His model is based on the premise
that European organizations operate with restricted autonomy. They are
constrained at both the international (European Union) and national levels
by national culture and legislation, at the organization level by patterns of
ownership, and at the HRM level by trade union involvement and
consultative arrangements [26, p. 3]. Brewster suggests the need to
accommodate such constraints when forming a model ofHRM. He also
talks about ‘outer’ (legalistic framework, vocational training programs,
social security provisions and the ownership patterns) and ‘internal’ (such
as union influence and employee involvement in decision making) constraints
on HRM. Based on such constraints, Brewster’s model highlights the
influence of factors such as national culture, ownership structures, the
role of the state and trade unions on HRM, in different national settings.
The European model shows an interaction between HR strategies,
business strategy and HR practice and their interaction with an external
environment constituting national culture, power systems, legislation,
education, employee representation and the constraints previously
mentioned. It places HR strategies in close interaction with the relevant
Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No.2 Winter 2000
organizational strategy and external environment. One important aim of
this model is to show factors external to the organization as a part of the
HRM model, rather than as a set of external influences upon it.
From the above analyses, it can be seen that there is an element of
both the contextual and 5-P models of HRM present in Brewster’s
European model. Apart from the emphasis on ‘strategic HRM’, one main
issue important for cross-national HRM comparisons emerges from
Brewster’s model. This is:
• What is the influence of international institutions, national
factors (such as culture, legal set up, economic environment
and ownership patterns), and national institutions (such as the
educational and vocational set-up, labour markets and trade
unions) on HRM strategies and HRM practices?
Recently, Budhwar and associates [27, 28,29,30] have proposed
a framework for examining cross-national HRM. They have identified
three levels of factors and variables that are known to influence HRM
policies and practices and which are worth considering for cross-national
HRM examinations. These are national factors (such as national culture,
national institutions, business sectors and dynamic of the business
environment), contingent variables (such as the age, size, nature, ownership,
and life cycle stage of the organization, the presence of trade unions and
HR strategies, and the interests of different stakeholders) and
organizational strategies and policies (related to primary HR functions,
internal labour markets, levels ofintegration and devolvement, and nature
ofwork). This framework is used to examine the applicability ofthe issues
arising from the five HRM models in British organizations. But why
conduct this form of investigation, and in the British context?
As mentioned already, there is a scarcity of this type of research.
So far, only Truss et al. [31] have examined the applicability of some of
the models of HRM in a few UK case companies. Apart from their
research, there is scarcely any study that conducts the type ofinvestigation
described here. There are, then, two main reasons for conducting this
investigation in British companies. First, a UK sample possesses the
characteristics suitable to test the operationalisation ofthe main emphases
and critical issues ofthe five models ofHRM. Second, the HRM function
in the UK is under intense pressure due to competitive conditions, and the
restructuring and rightsizing programmes going on in British organizations,
as well as the pressure on British firms from EU and other international
players to stay competitive and meet the EU regulation regarding the
management ofhuman resources. In such dynamic business conditions it
is worth examining the HRM function in context. Moreover, since the five
models have been developed among Anglo-Saxon nations, it is sensible to
test them initially in these countries before recommending their testing in
others parts of the world.
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Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No.2 Winter 2000
The Research Methodology
Sample and data collection
A mixed methodology, using a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews,
was adopted. During the first phase of the research, a questionnaire
survey was conducted between August 1994 and December 1994 in
British firms having 200 or more employees in six industries in the
manufacturing sector (food processing, plastics, steel, textiles,
pharmaceuticals and footwear). The respondents were the top personnel
specialist (one each) from each firm. The response rate ofthe questionnaire
survey was approximately 19 per cent (93 out of 500 questionnaires). The
items for the questionnaire were constructed from existing sources, such
as those developed by Cranfield researchers in their study ofcomparative
European HRM [32] and other studies (see for example [33, 34]). The
questionnaire consisted of 13 sections. These were: HR department
structure, role of the HR function in corporate strategy, recruitment and
selection, pay and benefits, training and development, performance
appraisal, employee relations, HRM strategy, influence ofnational culture,
national institutions, competitive pressures and business sector on HRM,
organizational details. Public limited companies represented approximately
one-third of the sample, with the remainder from the private sector. The
industry-wide distribution of respondents is shown in Table 1.
Analysis of the demographic features of the sample suggests that
the sample was representative ofthe total population. Sixty-two per cent
of sample organizations were medium-sized and employed 200-499
employees, 14 per cent employed 500-999 employees, 15 per cent 1000-
4999 employees, and 8 per cent employed 5000 or more employees.
In the second phase of the research, 24 in-depth interviews were
conducted with personnel specialists representative of those firms which
participated in the first phase of the research. The interviews examined
six themes, viz. the nature of the personnel function, integration ofHRM
into the corporate strategy, devolvement ofHRM to line managers, and
the influences of national culture, national institutions and business
environment dynamic on HRM.
Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No.2 Winter 2000
Measures
Multiple regression analysis and descriptive statistics are used to analyse
questionnaire data. Table 1 in the Appendix shows the main dependent
and independent variables used for multiple regression analysis. Table 2
in the Appendix presents the mean scores of respondents regarding the
influence of different aspects of national factors (culture, institutions,
business environment dynamic and business sector) and HR strategies on
HRM policies and practices. The qualitative data is content analysed. In
the discussion, survey results are complemented by key messages coming
from the qualitative interviews.
Findings of the Study
The matching models suggest a strong dependence ofHRM on organization
strategy, i.e, HRM is mainly developed for the effective implementation
of organization strategies. The results show that in 34.6 per cent of the
organizations under study personnel is involved from the outset in the
formation of corporate strategy, and 42 per cent of organizations actively
involve HRM during the implementation stage of their organizational
strategies. Such a trend of ‘active’ personnel management is further
evident from 55 per cent of sample organizations having personnel
representation at board level. Moreover, 81.1 per cent ofthe respondents
believe that their HRM has become proactive over the last five years (i.e.
more involved in decision making).
Such results reflect the growing strategic and proactive nature of
the British personnel function. There is support for such findings in the
existing literature [35, 36].
The second reason to examine the matching models in a cross-
national context is to assess whether human resources are considered as
a cost (‘use them sparingly’) or as an asset (spend on training to ‘make
their best use ‘). The results suggest that British organizations claim to be
spending variable though reasonable proportions oftheir annual salaries
on human resource development (HRD) related activities (see Table 2).
Table 2: Proportion of Annual Salaries and Wages Currently
Spent on Training and Development
Value(%) Percentage of Sample
Nil –
0.1- 2.00 41.3
2.01-4.00 7.6
4.01- 6.00 3.3
6.01 or more 1.1
Don’t know 46.7
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Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No.2 Winter2000
A similar pattern characterizes the number ofdays training provided
to different levels ofemployees (see Table 3). The substantial majority of
British firms have increased (rather than maintained or reduced) their
training spend across all categories of staff over the last five years (see
Table 4). There is evidence that this investment has been directed
particularly in the areas of performance appraisal, communication,
delegation, motivation and team building.
Table 3: Average Number of Days Training and Development
Given to Staff Categories Per Year
Different Cat~ories of Staff
Number ofDays Mana}!erial(%) Prof,/Technical(%) Clerical(%) Manual(%)
These developments in the British HRD scene appear to be
consistent with the increased realisation by both business and government
that the development of human resources has been neglected for too long
[37].
Table 4: Nature of Change in Amount of Money Spent on
Training Per Employee
Another key emphasis of the matching model suggests a variation
in HRM strategies across different levels of employees. This is clearly
evident from the results as the nature and type of approach to the
management of different levels of employees vary significantly (see for
example, Tables 3 and 4). This aspect is further highlighted later in this
paper. Based on the above evidence, it seems that the British personnel
function still plays an implementationist role rather than being actively
involved in strategy formulation. On the other hand, there is a strong
emphasis on training and development.
Important Situational Determinants
One of the basic assumptions of the Harvard model of HRM is the
influence of a number of situational factors (such as work force
Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No.2 Winter 2000
characteristics, unions, labour legislation and business strategy) and
different stakeholders (such as unions, government and community) on
HRM policies. The impact of a few of the situational factors and
stakeholders (proposed by Beer et al. [38D was examined during the
multiple regressions, analysis of means scores and the analysis of
interview results.
Taking the number of employees as a characteristic of the work
force [39, 40], the regression results show that small British organizations
(those having less than 499 employees) are likely to recruit their managerial
staff by advertising externally. Medium size organizations (those having
500 to 999 employees) are likely to recruittheirclerical staffas apprentices.
Large organizations (those having 1000 to 4999 employees) are more
likely to use assessment centres to train their human resources. Lastly,
very large firms (having over 5000 employees) are less likely to recruit
their managerial staff by advertising internally and their manual staff
through the use of word of mouth method. These firms are likely,
however, to recruit their professional staff with the help of consultants.
Moreover, large UK firms are more likely to adopt formal career plans,
succession plans and planned job rotation to develop their human resources
(for details see Table 1 in Appendix).
Support for these findings can be found in the literature (see for
example, [41D. The size ofan organization has a positive relation with the
formalism of their HRM policies [42]. Therefore, as the size of the firm
becomes large, logically, the degree offormalism ofits personnel function
increases and the organization obtains the help ofrecruitment agencies to
recruit its professional employees.
The results show a strong impact of labour laws, educational and
vocational training set up (highlighting government policy) and unions on
British HRM policies (see Table 2 in Appendix). Unions in the UK are
now playing a more supportive role [43]. The implementation of labour
legislation is also having significant influence on UK HRM policies.
Various pressures groups also contribute in this regard (for example,
against age discrimination). Over the last decade or so, the education and
vocational set-up in the UK has initiated a number of programmes and
qualifications such as the national vocational qualifications (NVQs),
investors in people (IIP) and’ opportunity 2000′ . These are now significantly
influencing HRM in British organizations [44].
The results also show a number of significant regressions regarding
the impact of HR strategies on British HRM. Results in Table 1 in the
Appendix show that organizations pursuing a cost reduction strategy are
more likely to recruit their clerical and manual staffas apprentices. These
organizations are likely to adopt an effective resource allocation HR
strategy. Organizations pursuing a talent improvement HR strategy are
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Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No.2 Winter 2000
less likely to recruit their manual staff by word of mouth method.
However, sample firms pursuing a talent acquisition HR strategy are
likely to use consultants to recruit their managerial staff and recruitment
agencies for manual staff. These organizations are also likely to adopt
assessment centres to train their staff.
Most of the above results seem to be logical. For example, by
recruiting employees as apprentices organizations not only pay them less
but also train and prepare them for working in the long run in their
organizations. Hence, it helps to reduce the costs. Similarly, by recruiting
employees externally, organizations increase the opportunity to improve
their talent base.
The second key emphasis of the Harvard model of HRM suggests
extensive use of communication with employees as a mechanism to
maximise commitment [45, p. 63]. Ninety-one per cent of British
organizations share information related to both strategy and financial
performance with their managerial staff. However, this percentage is
significantly lower for other categories of employees (see Table 5).
Table 5: Employees Formally Briefed about Strategy or
Financial Performance
There can be a number of explanations for the difference in the
sharing of strategic and financial information with different levels of
employees in British organizations. Whilst noting that top personnel
specialists are now more and more involved in strategy making, it seems
that top management continue to be reluctant to devolve responsibility to
line managers for the dissemination offinancial and strategic information.
These issues are further examined when discussing the 5-P model.
The above discussion suggests applicability of the Harvard model
ofHRM in British organizations. The results showed an impact oflabour
laws, education vocational set-up, unions, work force characteristics and
HR strategies on HRM policy choices. There are encouraging results on
the communication of information with different levels of employees
regarding sharing strategic and financial performance and on employee
development through their involvement and training.
Contextual Factors
The main issue against which the relevance of the contextual model can
be evaluated is the impact on HRM policies and practices of economic
Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No.2 Winter 2000
(characterized by competitive pressures, ownership and life cycle stage),
technological (type ofproduction system)and socio-political (characterised
by national education and training set-up) factors and organizational
contingencies (such as size, age and nature of organization).
The results show a strong influence of competitive pressures on
British HRM policies and practices (see Table 2 in Appendix). To achieve
a competitive edge in such situations, they are focusing particularly on
total customer satisfaction and the restructuring oftheir organizations. As
competitive pressures are also forcing British organizations to enter into
new business arrangements (such as alliances), so these are having direct
influence on HRM policies and practices.
The results also show the impact of increasingly sophisticated
informationand communications technology on HRM policies and practices
(see Table 2 in the Appendix). Further evidence indicates that the
majority of respondents suggest these technologies mainly influence
training, appraisal and transfer functions. Why? Because with the change
in technology, employees need to be trained to handle it. To see if they
have achieved the required competence they are appraised and if
required, transferred to suitable positions.
Finally, we summarise the relevance of the contextual model of
HRM in terms ofthe impact of organizational contingencies. Contingent
variables such as size of the organization, presence of HR strategy and
presence of unions were examined above, as were the impacts of
ownership and organizational life cycle stage. These variables do not
seem significantly to impact HRM in British organizations.
Nevertheless, there is significant evidence overall regarding the
applicability of the contextual model ofHRM in British organizations.
Strategic Integration and Devolvement of HRM in Britain
Our discussion now focuses on the relevance of the ‘5 P’ model ofHRM
in British organizations. To achieve this, results regarding the integration
of HRM into corporate strategy and the devolution of responsibility for
HRM to line managers are examined. The detailed results are presented
elsewhere [46], but are summarized below.
In brief, the level of integration is measured on the basis of the
following four scales:
a) representation of Personnel on the board;
b) presence of a written Personnel strategy;
c) consultation ofPersonnel (from the outset) in the development
of corporate strategy; and
d) translation ofPersonnel/HR strategy into a clear set of work
programmes.
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Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No. 2 Winter 2000
The level of devolvement is measured on the basis of the following
three scales:
a) primary responsibility with line managers for HRM decision
making (regarding pay and benefits, recruitment and selection,
training and development, industrial relations, health and
safety, and workforce expansion and reduction);
b) change in the responsibility of line managers for HRM
(regarding pay and benefits, recruitment and selection, training
and development, industrial relations, health and safety, and
workforce expansion and reduction); and
c) percentage ofline managers trained in performance appraisal,
communication, delegation, motivation, team building and
foreign language.
High integration is the result of personnel representation at board
level, the personnel function being consulted about corporate strategy
from the outset, the presence of a written personnel strategy, and the
translation of such a strategy into a clear set of work programmes. As
mentioned earlier, the personnel function is represented at board level in
the majority (55 per cent of organizations). For our sample companies,
87.4 per cent have corporate strategies. Of these, 34.6 per cent consult
the personnel function at the outset, 42 per cent involve personnel in early
consultation, and only 13.6 per cent involve personnel during the
implementation stage. Over a quarter (26.4 per cent) of sample
organizations did not have a personnel strategy, 29.9 per cent had an
unwritten strategy and 43.7 per cent had a written personnel strategy. A
clear majority (57.4 per cent) of organizations felt that their personnel
strategy was translated into clear work programmes.
High devolvement is the result of: primary responsibility for pay,
recruitment, training, industrial relations, health and safety and expansion/
reduction decisions lying with the line (see Table 6); line responsibility for
these six areas on an increasing trend (see Table 7); and, evidence of
devolved competency with at least 33 per cent of the workforce being
trained in appraisals, communications,delegation, motivation, team building
and foreign languages.
Budhwar’s [47] analysis shows that when the four measures of
integration are summated and divided into a single scale of high and low
type, 50.5 per cent of the sample organizations would be categorised as
having high integration and 49.5 per cent fall into the low integration
category. The average score of the summated integration scale for a1193
organizations is .50. These results show a moderate level of integration
being practised in the sample industries. On the other hand, the summated
scales demonstrate a low level of devolvement. Sixty-one per cent of the
sample practise low levels of devolvement of HRM to line managers.
Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No.2 Winter 2000
Table 6: Primary Responsibility for Major Decisions on
Personnel Issues
Personnel Issues Line Line Mgt in IIR Dilpt. inHRDept. Consultation COllSuJtationRelated to: Mgt. wi!il1lB.l)llUt. withLineMat.
Pay andBenefits 48.3 14.3 11.0 26.4
Recruitment and Selection 17.2 12.9 34.4 35.5
Training andDevelopment 15.1 18.3 22.5 44.1
Performance Aonraisal 17.5 6.9 30.4 45.2
Industrial Relations 36.3 13.2 25.3 25.2
Health and Safety 18.5 32.6 19.6 29.3
Workforce
19.4 19.4 44.1 17.1Expansion/Reduction
WorkSystem/Job Design 7.6 33.7 40.2 18.5
Figures in the above cells represent valid percentage, calculated after excluding the missing
values.
Table 7: Change in Responsibility of Line
Management for Different Personnel Issues
PellSonnelIssues Increased (%) Same(%) Decreased (%)
Pay andBenefits 27.2 65.2 7.6
Recruitment and Selection 43.5 48.9 7.6
Training and Development 69.6 23.9 6.5
Performance Appraisal 60.0 37.8 2.2
Industrial Relations 28.9 63.3 7.8
Healthand Safety 61.5 35.2 3.3
Workforce
The results confirm the relevance of the 5-P model of HRM in
British organizations. They also help to examine the main emphasis of
Brewster’s [48] European model of HRM, i.e, the linkages between
corporate strategy and HRM strategy.
Conclusion
Overall, the results show a mixed picture, i.e. from strong to moderate
applicability of the mentioned HRM models in Britain. The study aimed to
examine HRM in context, and the findings should be useful for relevant
policy makers. In particular, it seems that the sample firms are practising
a relatively low level of devolvement in comparison to the integration
function. Ifthe HRM function is to become more strategic, then the level
of practice of both these concepts has to increase. Such demands are
likely to increase in future as more and more firms restructure and
become lean in order to respond to competitive and other pressures [49].
The study has two main limitations. First, it is restricted to six
industries ofthe UK manufacturing sector. Second, the views of only top
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Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No. 2 Winter 2000
personnel specialists were examined. In order, therefore, to obtain a more
comprehensive picture, research needs to be extended to other business
sectors and to the views of other key actors (such as line managers).
Future research could also build upon this study by investigating other
models ofHRM and their applicability in different national contexts.
Appendix
Table 1: Factors Determining HRM Practices in
British Organizations
Independent. lJependentVariables If BiJta . t·valueVarin/J/es
Training and development
0.2102 0.2984* 2.3790
Introductory through planned iob rotation
lifecycle stage Communication through
0.1629 -0.2663* -2.0720
immediate superior
Turnaround Recruiting managerial staff by
0.3695 -0.3038* -2.6170
lifecycle stage advertising externally
Recruiting managerial staff by
0.3695 0.3658** 3.0590
Less than 499 advertising externally
employees Recruiting clerical staff from 0.1014 -0.3184* -2.4220
recruitment agencies
Between 500- Recruiting clerical staff as
0.3337 0.2891* 2.4600
599 employees apprentices
Between 1000- Training and development
4999 through assessment centres 0.2607 0.3547** 2.8530
employees
Recruiting managerial staff by
0.1563 -0.2835* -2.1800
advertising internally
Recruiting
professionals/technical staff by
0.1039 0.3223* 2.4550
use of search/selection
More than
consultants
5000
Recruiting manual staffby
0.3698 -0.4529** -3.9340
employees
word of mouth
Training and development
through formal career plans
0.1406 0.375** 2.9170
Training and development
0.1685 0.4105** 3.2460
through succession plans
Training and development
0.2102 0.3873** 3.0880
though planned job rotation
Public Limited Recruiting managerial staff by
0.3695 0.4436** 3.8050Company advertising externally
Organizations Trainingand development 0.2607 0.4364** 3.3780incorporated throughassessment centres
between 1948- Communication through 0.1629 -0.3255* -2.53201980 immediatesuperior
No formal communication 0.3517 0.3265** 2.7370methods
Communication through 0.0858 0.2929* 2.2090suggestion box(es)
Recruitingclericalstaff from 0.2842 -0.3019* -2.4240current employees
Cost reduction Recruitingclericalstaff as 0.3337 0.4182** 2.9450HRstrategy apprentices
Recruiting manualstaff as 0.1330 0.3646** 2.8240apprentices
Talent Recruitingmanualstaff by 0.3698 -0.3655** -3.2440improvement word of mouthHRstrategy
Recruiting managerial staffby
0.0777 0.2787* 2.0930use of search/selection
Talent consultants
acquisition HR Recruitingmanualstaff from 0.0914 0.3024* 2.2880strategy recruitmentagencies
Trainingand development 0.2607 0.2857* 2.2090throughassessment centres
Effective Recruitingclericalstaff as
0.3337 0.2882* 2.0300resourceHR apprenticesstrategy
Recruitingmanagerial staff by 0.3695 0.3593** 2.9750advertising externally
Recruitingmanualstaff by 0.1226 0.3502** 2.6960Unionised advertising internally
firms Communication through 0.3517 -0.255* -2.1820attitude survey
Communication throughtrade 0.7445 0.5656** 6.4000unions or work councils
* Significance at .05 level; **Significance at .01 level
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Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No.2 Winter 2000
Table 2: Influence of Different Aspects of
National Factors on HRM
Aspectsoff”lational (;ultttre No. of Cases Mean
1 Way in which managers are socialised 84 18.07
2 Common values, norms of behaviour and customs 81 20.28
3 The influence of pressure groups 58 10.47
4
Assumptions that shape the way managers perceive and
84 25.98
think: about the organization
5
The match to the organization’s culture and ‘the way we
86 35.58
do things around here’
N(ltif.}1Inl T- o ‘011.6
1 National Labour Laws 82 40.91
2 Trade Unions 61 21.72
3 Professional Bodies 56 15.11
4 Educational and Vocational training set-up 84 27.62
5 International Institutions 54 20.07
Globalisation of corporate business structure
Growth of new business arrangements, e.g. business
2 alliances, joint ventures and foreign direct investment 66 19.01
through mergers and acquisitions
3
More sophisticated information/communication
70 19.62
technology or increased reliance on automation
4
Changing composition of the workforce with respect to
48 12.39
gender, age, ethnicity and changing employee values
5
Downsizing of the workforce and business re-
69 23.13
engineering
6
Heightened focus on total management or customer
78 26.92
satisfaction
Aspects qfBusinessSector
1
Common strategies, business logic and goals being
71 22.95
pursued by firms across the sector
2
Regulations and standards (e.g. payments, training,
79 20.35
health and safety) specific to your industrial sector
Specific requirement/needs of customers or suppliers
3 that characterise your sector (i.e. supply chain 82 28.96
management)
4 The need for sector-specific knowledge in order to 56 15.35
provide similar goods/services in the sector
5
Informal or formal benchmarking across competitors in
61 16.39the sector (e.g, best practices of market leaders)
Cross-sector co-operative arrangements, e.g, common
6 technological innovations followed by all firms in the 37 10.54
sector
7
Common developments in business operations and work
49 14.40
practices dictated by the nature of the business
8
A labour market or skill requirement that tends to be
39 13.10used by your business sector only
Respondentswere asked to allocate a totalof100points to the different aspects ofthe above
nationalfactors.
Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No.2 Winter 2000
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[15] Fombrun, C. J., Tichy, N. M. and Devanna, M. A., Strategic
Human Resource Management, New York: Wiley, 1984.
[16] Chandler, A., Strategy and Structure, Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1962.
[17] Schuler, R. S. and Jackson, S. E., ‘Organizational Strategy and
Organizational Level as Determinants of Human Resource
Management Practices’, Human Resource Planning, Vol. 10,
No.3, 1987, pp. 125-141.
[18] Beer, M., Spector, B., Lawrence, P. R., Quinn Mills, D. and
Walton, R. E., Human Resource Management, New York: Free
Press, 1984.
[19] Legge, K., 1995. op. cit.
[20] Poole, M., 1990. op. cit.
..
[21]
[22].. [23]
[24]
[25]
[26]
[27]
[28]
Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No. 2 Winter 2000
Hendry, C and Pettigrew, A.M., ‘Patterns of Strategic Change in
the Development of Human Resource Management’, British
Journal ofManagement, Vol. 3, 1992, pp. 137-156.
Hendry, C., Pettigrew, A. M. and Sparrow, P. R., ‘Changing
Patterns of Human Resource Management,’ Personnel
Management, Vol. 20, No. 11, 1988, pp. 37-47.
Schuler, R. S., ‘Linking the People with the Strategic Needs of the
Business’, Organizational Dynamics, Summer, 1992, pp. 18-32.
Ibid.
Brewster, C., 1995, op. cit.
Ibid.
Budhwar, P., ‘Taking Human Resource Management Research To
The Next Millennium: Need For An Integrated Framework’,
Annual Academy of Management Conference, Chicago, 1999.
Budhwar, P. and Debrah, Y., ‘Rethinking Comparative and Cross
National Human Resource Management Research,’ The
International Journal of Human Resource Management, 2001
(forthcoming).
[29] Budhwar, P. and Sparrow, P., ‘An Integrative Framework For
Determining Cross National Human Resource Management
Practices’, Human Resource Management Review, 2001
(forthcoming) .
[30] Budhwar, P. and Sparrow, P., ‘National Factors Determining
Indian and British HRM Practices: An Empirical Study’,
Management International Review, Vol. 38, Special Issue 2,
1998, pp. 105-121.
[31] Truss, C., Gratton, L., Hailey, H., McGovern, P. and Stiles, P.,
1997, op. cit.
[32] Brewster, C. and Hegewisch, A., (eds.) Policy and Practice in
European Human Resource Management, London and New
York: Routledge, 1994.
[33] Baird, L. and Meshoulam, r., ‘Managing Two Fits of Strategic
Human Resource Management’, Academy of Management
Review, Vol. 13, No.1, 1988, pp. 116-128.
[34] Jackson, S. E., Schuler, R. S. and Rivero, J. C., ‘Organizational
Characteristics as Predictors of Personnel Practice’, Personnel
Psychology, Vol. 42, No.4, 1989, pp. 727-786.
[35] Legge, K., 1995, op. cit.
[36] Hendry, C., Human Resource Management: A Strategic
Approach to Employment, Bath: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1998.
[37] Townley, B. ‘Communicating with Employees’ , in Sisson, K. (ed.),
Personnel Management: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory
and Practice in Britain, Blackball Business: London, 1996, pp.595-
633.
[38] Beer, M., Spector, B., Lawrence, P. R., Quinn Mills, D. and
Walton, R. E., 1984, op. cit.
[39] Jackson, S. E. and Schuler, R. E., 1995, op. cit.
[40] Tayeb, M., Organizations and National Culture, London: Sage,
1988.
Journal of General Management
Vol. 26 No.2 Winter 2000
[41] Sisson, K. and Storey, J., 2000, op. cit.
[42] Brewster, C. and Hegewisch, A., 1994, op. cit.
[43] Heery, E., ‘Annual Review Article 1996’. British Journal of
Industrial Relations, Vol. 35, 1997, pp. 87-109.
[44] Collin, A. and Holden, L., ‘The National Framework for Vocational
Education and Training’, in. Beardwell, 1. and Holden, L., (eds.),
Human Resource Management. London: Pitman Publishing, 1997,
pp.345-377.
[45] Truss, C., Gratton, L., Hailey, H., McGovern, P. and Stiles, P.,
1997,op. cit.
[46] Budhwar, P., ‘Strategic Integration and Devolvement of Human
Resource Management in the British Manufacturing Sector’ , British
Journal of Management, Vol. 11, No.4, 2000, (in Press).
[47] Ibid.
[48] Brewster, C., 1995, op. cit.
[49] Terry, M. and Purcell, J., ‘Return to Slender’ , People Management,
23 October, 1997,46-51.
–
1
2
Organizational Leadership
3
4
5
Organizational Leadership
Edited by
John Bratton
Los Angeles
London
New Delhi
Singapore
Washington DC
Melbourne
8
Typeset by: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed in the UK
At SAGE we take sustainability seriously. Most of our products are printed in
the UK using responsibly sourced papers and boards. When we print overseas
we ensure sustainable papers are used as measured by the PREPS grading
system. We undertake an annual audit to monitor our sustainability.
9
The honest man, though e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that!
(Robert Burns)
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go
together.
(African proverb)
10
11
Praise for Organizational Leadership
‘Organizational Leadership brings together a number of
leading scholars to provide a comprehensive perspective
on leadership. This text offers an accessible exploration
of different aspects of leadership and the many
challenges and issues facing contemporary leaders. By
analysing and critiquing different leadership theories and
practices, Organizational Leadership encourages
students to take a critical approach to effectively evaluate
how leaders operate.’
Jennifer Robertson, Associate Professor of Human
Resource Management, Western University, Canada
‘A book that covers all facets of leadership, in theory and
in practice, with a critical approach that will benefit
students and practitioners. Its comprehensive coverage
of contemporary and timely leadership themes make it a
valuable resource for effective people management in
today’s diverse and complex workplaces.’
Lori Rilkoff, Human Resources and Safety Director,
City of Kamloops, Canada
12
13
Summary of Contents
1. Your Guide to Using this Book
2. About the Contributors
3. Acknowledgements
4. List of Figures
5. List of Tables
6. List of Videos
7. Foreword
8. Introduction
9. Part I Contextualizing Leadership
1. 1 The Nature of Leadership
2. 2 Strategic Management, Innovation and Leadership
3. 3 Power and Leadership
4. 4 Culture and Leadership
5. 5 Ethics and Leadership
10. Part II Leadership Theories
1. 6 Trait, Behaviour and Contingency Theories of
Leadership
2. 7 Charismatic and Transformational Leadership
3. 8 Relational and Distributed Theories of Leadership
11. Part III Managing People and Leadership
1. 9 Human Resource Management and Leadership
2. 10 Talent Management and Leadership
3. 11 Performance Management and Leadership
4. 12 Leadership Development
12. Part IV Contemporary Leadership
1. 13 Followers, Communication and Leadership
2. 14 Gender and Leadership
3. 15 Leadership in Public Sector Organizations
4. 16 Leading Pro-Environmental Change
5. 17 Leadership for Urban and Regional Innovation
13. Bibliography
14. Index
14
15
Detailed Contents
Your Guide to Using this Book
In the book you’ll find
On the website you’ll find
For lecturers
About the Contributors
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Videos
Foreword
Introduction
Objectives of this book
A framework for studying leadership
The organization of this book
Part I Contextualizing Leadership
1 The Nature of Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
Defining leadership
Leadership and management
Mapping the changing study of leadership
Critical leadership studies
The employment relationship
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
2 Strategic Management, Innovation and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
Strategic management
A framework for studying strategy and leadership
The nature of innovation
The external and internal contexts driving innovation
Leaders’ roles in innovation processes
Evaluation and criticism
16
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
3 Power and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
Conceptualizing power
Different perspectives on power
Power and management
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
4 Culture and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of national cultures
Understanding organizational culture
Perspectives on organizational culture
Organizational culture, climate and leadership
Evaluation and criticism
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
5 Ethics and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of ethical leadership
Philosophical approaches to ethical leadership
Dimensions of ethical leadership
Organizations behaving badly: failures in ethical
leadership
Context, the rhetoric and reality
Whistleblowing: is it responsible behaviour?
Millennial leadership, digitization and artificial
intelligence
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
17
Further reading
Part II Leadership Theories
6 Trait, Behaviour and Contingency Theories of
Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
Leader traits and attributes
Leader behaviour and styles
Contingency theories of leadership
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
7 Charismatic and Transformational Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of charismatic leadership
Neo-theories of charismatic leadership
Transformational leadership
Critiquing charismatic and transformational
leadership
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
8 Relational and Distributed Theories of Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
Classical relational studies
Contemporary theories of relational leadership
Positivist dyadic relational perspectives
Social constructionist group-level relational
perspectives
The growth of distributed leadership
Practising distributed and shared leadership
Evaluation and criticism
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
18
Part III Managing People and Leadership
9 Human Resource Management and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of human resource management
Scope and functions of human resource
management
Theorizing human resource management
Human resource management and leadership
Critiquing the human resource management
discourse
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
10 Talent Management and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of talent and talent management
Leading and managing talent
The influence of ‘talented followership’ on co-
producing leadership
Collaborative talent management
Critiquing the talent management debate
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
11 Performance Management and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature and purpose of performance
management
Determinants of employee and organizational
performance
Historical milestones in the development of
performance management
The performance management appraisal process
Modelling leadership and performance
19
Problems of methodology and theory
Criticism of individual performance appraisals
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
12 Leadership Development
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
Leader and leadership development in organizations
Reflection and critical thinking for leadership
development
What capabilities should leaders develop?
Approaches to leaders’ development
Approaches to the development of leadership in
others
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
Part IV Contemporary Leadership
13 Followers, Communication and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of followership
Follower behaviour and personality
Follower behaviour and motivation
Dialogic conversation and leadership
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
14 Gender and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of diversity
The glass ceiling, the labyrinth and the glass cliff
Gender pay gap
Women in global leadership
Millennial women and leadership
20
Future challenges for practices of gender diversity
and inclusion
Supporting women to lead
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
15 Leadership in Public Sector Organizations
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
Problematizing public sector leadership
Distinctive challenges associated with public sector
leadership
The new public management and the rise of
transformational leadership
Beyond transformational leadership: shared and
distributed leadership
Challenges of distributed leadership in public sector
organizations
Leadership and performance in public sector
organizations
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
16 Leading Pro-Environmental Change
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of environmental sustainability
Employees’ pro-environmental behaviours and
environmental management systems
Environmental leadership, organizational change
and culture
Creating a sustainable workplace through human
resource practices
Employee voice in environmental sustainability
Critical perspectives on corporate-oriented
sustainability
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
21
Further reading
17 Leadership for Urban and Regional Innovation
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of place-based leadership for urban and
regional innovation
Regional innovation systems and strategies
Placed-based leadership
Place-based leaders, knowledge producers and
decision makers
Generative leadership – a missing link in
transformative efforts
Criticism and exemplary research for place-based
leadership
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
Bibliography
Index
22
23
Your guide to using this book
Organizational Leadership has been developed with a number of
print and online features to help you succeed in your course.
24
In the Book You’ll Find:
25
Leadership in Action boxes
Short case studies demonstrate leadership approaches and
concepts in practice and introduce you to examples from around
the world.
26
Critical Insight boxes
Contemporary debates and examples are analysed through
different viewpoints and help you to develop your critical thinking
skills.
27
Pause and Reflect boxes
Short activities check your understanding as you progress through
each chapter.
28
Chapter Review Questions
End-of-chapter questions test your knowledge and help you to
identify areas for revision.
29
Assignment Tasks
Longer activities at the end of each chapter develop your
research, analytical and problem-solving skills.
30
Further Reading
Suggested book chapters and journal articles help you to build
your bibliography for assignments.
31
Case Study
An extended case study in each chapter provides a deeper insight
into how key leadership issues and ideas manifest in practice.
32
On the Website You’ll Find:
33
Videos
Watch video conversations with leaders sharing insights
into the reality of leadership practice across a diverse range
of organizations. Find out about:
how leaders can incorporate social good into their
business models
leading teams on the front lines in Iraq
challenges and opportunities for women in leadership
roles
fostering a shared organizational culture in a
multinational enterprise
collective leadership in the NHS
and much more!
See the full list of videos on pages XXIX–XXX.
34
Case Studies
Read SAGE Business Cases to find out about leadership in
practice around the world:
Sydney Brian-Peters: A Case Study in Gender and
Leadership Issues
Transformational Leadership—Steve Jobs
Now What? Now Who? A Mexican Small Family
Business in Transition
Leader–Member Exchange Theory: Barack Obama
The BMW Group’s Journey to Leadership in Sustainable
Development Practice
35
Further Reading
Access SAGE journal articles to delve deeper into the field
of leadership and prepare for assignments.
Online resources can be accessed at
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton. See inside the front cover of
this book for your access code.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
36
For Lecturers
A selection of tried and tested teaching resources have been
developed to accompany this text and support your course. Visit
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton to set up or use your
instructor login and access:
A video teaching guide with notes and questions to help
you make the most of the video conversations in class.
PowerPoint slides that can be adapted and edited to suit
your own teaching needs.
Testbank questions offering a variety of multiple choice
questions to use with your students.
SAGE business cases to use in class or as material for
homework.
All resources have been designed and formatted to upload easily
into your LMS or VLE. Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
for more details.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
37
38
About the Contributors
John Bratton
holds visiting professorships at both Strathclyde University,
Glasgow, and at Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland. He
has more than 30 years’ experience of teaching a range of
organizational behaviour, leadership and HRM courses, at
both undergraduate and graduate levels, mainly in the UK
and Canada, but also in Finland and Singapore. His research
interests traverse the sociology of work and management. In
addition to editing this book, John is author of Japanization at
Work: Managerial Studies in the 1990s; co-author of
Workplace Learning: A Critical Introduction (2004); co-author
of Organizational Leadership (with Keith Grint and Debra
Nelson) (2005); co-author of Human Resource Management:
Theory and Practice (with Jeff Gold) (2017), now in its sixth
edition; co-author of Capitalism and Classical Social Theory
(with David Denham) (2019), now in its third edition, and
author of Work and Organizational Behaviour (2020), now in
its fourth edition.
George Boak
is a Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Innovation at York St
John University. He has worked on aspects of individual and
organizational development for 30 years, with managers and
professionals from a wide range of public sector and large
private sector companies in manufacturing, banking and
energy, as well as with smaller companies. He currently
works with experienced managers and professionals on York
Business School’s executive MBA programmes.
John Burgess
is Professor of Human Resource Management at RMIT
University, Melbourne, Australia. His recent research has
included human capacity development in Asia, employment
conditions in the aged care sector, HRM programmes of
multinational enterprises, graduate work readiness and
transitional labour markets.
Andrew Bratton
39
is a Lecturer in Human Resource Management at Queen
Margaret University, Edinburgh. He previously worked as a
Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) Associate in Business
Process Improvement and Knowledge Management, at the
University of Strathclyde, in a Microsoft technology
consultancy company. His research interests include
innovative and sustainable workplaces, change management
and employee voice. His current research centres on
knowledge management and the application of lean and agile
practices in small and medium-sized enterprises.
David Denham,
prior to his retirement, was Senior Lecturer in Sociology at
Wolverhampton University, where he has subsequently been,
until 2018, Honorary Research Fellow within the Faculty of
Social Sciences. He has taught a wide variety of sociology
courses over a career of 35 years. David has published
articles on the sociology of law, criminology, and the sociology
of sport, and is co-author with Lorraine Wolhunter and Neil
Olley of Victimology: Victimization and Victim’s Rights and co-
author (with John Bratton) of Capitalism and Classical Social
Theory (3rd edn) (2019).
Lois Farquharson
is the Deputy Dean (Education & Professional Practice) in
The Faculty of Management and The Business School at
Bournemouth University. As an experienced leader, she
demonstrates a strong scholarly and practice-based
understanding of delivering effective diversity and inclusion in
dynamic organizational contexts. Her areas of research and
knowledge exchange work are focused on leadership
practice, change management, socio-emotional intelligence
and good practice HRM. She is also a certified facilitator for
the Strengths Deployment Inventory (SDi), the Emotional
Quotient Inventory (EQi) and Appreciative Inquiry (AI).
Helen Francis
is Professor of People and Organization at Edinburgh Napier
Business School and holds honorary professorships at St
Andrews University and at the University of Strathclyde.
Helen started her career in personnel management and
industrial relations. When she moved into academia she
completed a PhD in the role of language and strategic
40
change. She has played key roles in research, teaching and
commercial developments in public, private and not-for profit
sectors. Helen has published in a wide range of academic
and practitioner journals/textbooks, calling for the pursuit of
more ‘balanced’ HR agendas. She is a Fellow of the
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
Jeff Gold
is Professor of Organization Learning at York and Leeds
Business Schools. He is a strong advocate of the need for
actionable knowledge that is rigorously developed but
relevant for practice. He has designed and delivered a wide
range of seminars, programmes and workshops on talent
management and development, change, strategic learning,
futures and foresight, management and leadership
development, with a particular emphasis on participation and
distribution. He has worked closely with organizations such
as Skipton Building Society, Hallmark Cards, the NHS, the
Police Service, Leeds Bradford Boiler Company and a host of
others. He is the co-author of CIPD’s Leadership and
Management Development (with Richard Thorpe and Alan
Mumford), The Gower Handbook of Leadership and
Management Development (with Richard Thorpe and Alan
Mumford), Human Resource Development (with Julie
Beardwell, Paul Iles, Rick Holden and Jim Stewart) and
Human Resource Management (with John Bratton), both
published by Palgrave.
Kirsteen Grant
is Associate Professor of Work and Employment at Edinburgh
Napier University. Kirsteen draws on complementary
backgrounds in organizational practice and academia. She
has worked extensively in areas of organizational,
professional, leadership and talent development. Her
research interests centre on professional, responsible and
precarious work; the changing nature and expectations of
work; leadership; talent management; and workplace skills
utilization. Kirsteen is passionate about bridging the gap
between academic research and professional practice. She is
a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel
and Development (CIPD) and Senior Fellow of the Higher
Education Academy (HEA).
41
Roslyn Larkin
is a Human Resource Management/Employment Relations
lecturer at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Current
research interests include ethical leadership, knowledge
management in clusters, ethical AI across industry and
university graduate destinations.
Colin Lindsay
is Professor of Work and Employment Studies at the
University of Strathclyde, Scotland. He has published more
than 50 books and peer-reviewed articles on public policy and
management and public governance issues. At the University
of Strathclyde, he teaches at undergraduate, postgraduate
and doctoral level on public management and employment
studies.
Alan Montague
is Programme Director for the Masters of Human Resource
Management at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Alan’s
research, experience and publications are linked to
skill/vocational shortages, government policies relating to the
links between education and industry, and
employment/education programme policy development.
Leadership and workforce planning, critical commentary on
corporate ethics and the impact of artificial intelligence on
organizations and jobs are the focus of more recent work.
Joanne Murphy
is a Senior Lecturer in Queen’s University Management
School, Belfast, and Academic Director of Queen’s University
William J. Clinton Leadership Institute. Her research focuses
on how public, private and third-sector organizations, situated
in environments of violent conflict, manage and function
during violence and can contribute to building peace. She has
published widely on issues of change, leadership and
extreme contexts. Her new monograph, Managing in Conflict
and Transition, is due for publication in 2020.
Bernadette Scott
is a Senior Lecturer at Glasgow School for Business and
Society (Glasgow Caledonian University). In an academic
career spanning 28 years, she has designed and led many
business programmes at home and overseas and is currently
working with the African Leadership College in Mauritius to
42
deliver Business Management education. Her PhD looks at
employability and talent management and how these
concepts have an impact on graduates. She is regularly
asked to contribute to global trade publications, and recent
journal outputs have looked at graduate employment and
graduate talent management.
Markku Sotarauta
is Professor of Regional Development Studies in the Faculty
of Management and Business at Tampere University, Finland.
He specializes in leadership, innovation systems and policies,
and institutional entrepreneurship in city and regional
development. Markku has published widely on these issues in
international journals and edited books. His latest publication,
Leadership and the City: Power, Strategy and Networks in the
Making of Knowledge Cities (2018), is published by
Routledge. He has worked with the Finnish Parliament, many
Finnish ministries, Sweden’s Innovation Agency as well as
cities and regions in Finland and in other countries.
Peter Watt
is Senior Lecturer in Management and Organization and
Director of Research at York Business School, York St John
University. His research explores the cultural, philosophical
and theological underpinnings of managerial and
organizational practice and thought.
43
44
Acknowledgements
The initial idea for this book originated from Kirsty Smy, Senior
Commissioning Editor, of SAGE Publications, who suggested I
should develop a proposal. The scope of the book was informed
by discussions with Kirsteen Grant, of Edinburgh Napier
University. The editorial work that ensued was far more
challenging than I had anticipated and I would like to take this
opportunity to acknowledge numerous individuals for their
commitment to the project and help in bringing it to a successful
conclusion. I am indebted to the other chapter authors who have
contributed to this book. Each brought their own research and
perspective of leadership to their chapter. Collectively, I believe
they have helped to produce a distinctive book that offers
undergraduates a readable, context-sensitive, nuanced and
reflexive approach to studying contemporary leadership.
On behalf of all the chapter authors, I would like to thank the
following reviewers for their invaluable feedback:
Linda Alker, Principal Lecturer, Manchester Metropolitan
University
Jane Boeske, Associate Lecturer, University of Southern
Queensland
Carol Bond, Lecturer, RMIT University
Dave Chesley, Senior Lecturer, Leeds Beckett University
Dean Horsman, Senior Lecturer, Leeds Becket University
Heather Kent, Teaching Fellow, University of Sussex
Frank Meier, PhD Fellow, Copenhagen Business School
Pamella Murray, Senior Lecturer, University of Worcester
Jan Myers, Associate Professor, Newcastle Business School
Emma Roberts, former Associate Head of School (Learning &
Teaching), Leeds Trinity University
Sandra Romenska, Senior Lecturer and Deputy Head of
School, St Andrews University
Nataliya Rumyantseva, Senior Lecturer, University of
Greenwich
45
Jon Salkeld, Principal Lecturer and Director of Corporate and
UK Partnerships, Anglia Ruskin University
Norbert Steigenberger, Associate Professor, Jonkoping
University
Geoff Thomas, Professor, University of Surrey
I would also like to thank all the participants who gave their time
and shared their experience and perspective on leadership during
the production of the book’s leadership videos. These videos will
not only accompany the book but form part of SAGE’s wider
leadership video collection, providing students with a glimpse into
the reality of leadership, beyond the rhetoric often learned in the
lecture hall. Thank you to Adam Foskett, Helen Francis, Peter
Goddard, Paul Gray, Sarah Hawkins, Stephen Moir, Beverley
Petrossian, Paul Stanley, Catherine Thomson, Diane Vincent and
Erinn Woodside. Additionally, I would like to thank Pamela
McCloskey and Carmen Chai for developing the book’s other
online resources.
I am most grateful to the team at SAGE Publications for making
this book possible. In particular, I am beholden to our
Development Editor, Laura Walmsley, for her encouragement and
support over the length of the project, and good advice for
improving the book. I thank, too, the cover designer, Francis
Kenney for working with me to produce such a symbolic and eye-
catching cover for the book. I also appreciate Ruth Stitt, Sarah
Cooke and Martha Cunneen.
John Bratton, Edinburgh
46
47
List of Figures
0.1 Leadership as an interconnected process 5
1.1 The classic Fayolian management cycle 17
2.1 The three traditional poles of a strategic plan 37
2.2 A framework for linking management strategy and
leadership 38
2.3 Stages of the innovation process 49
4.1 The three levels of organizational culture 86
4.2 Climate as an artefact of organizational culture 88
6.1 A diagrammatic representation of the leadership grid 136
7.1 The augmented effect of transformational leadership 161
8.1 The incremental effect of group size on relationships 173
8.2 A taxonomy of relational theories 176
8.3 The vertical dyad 177
8.4 Relational leadership processes 182
8.5 Practising distributed/shared and team leadership 187
9.1 Kolb’s experiential cycle of learning 203
9.2 A framework for studying key HR policies and practices
206
9.3 The Harvard model of HRM 209
11.1 The performance management cycle 249
11.2 A framework for determinants of performance
management 251
12.1 Informal and planned leadership development 271
13.1 A two-dimensional taxonomy of follower behaviour 298
13.2 Expectancy theory 305
13.3 Shein’s ‘road map’ of conversation 308
13.4 Balancing advocacy and inquiry 309
16.1 A strategy for creating a sustainable workplace 370
17.1 The relationship between place leaders, other actors
and regional development and innovation 396
48
49
List of Tables
1.1 Competing definitions of organizational leadership 14
1.2 Summary of cited distinction between management and
leadership 20
1.3 Development of the main theories of leadership 22
3.1 Traditional and non-traditional conceptualizations of
power 65
5.1 Assessing the ethical behaviour in work organizations
111
5.2 Classifying ethical behaviour in organizations 111
6.1 Key Attributes Related to Leadership Effectiveness 129
6.2 Path–goal theory in action 140
6.3 Situational leadership in action 142
8.1 The traditional and high-performance team models 185
9.1 The Storey model of HRM 211
9.2 HRM and transformational leadership behaviours 214
11.1 A hierarchical taxonomy of meta and specific
behaviours 258
12.1 Revans’ classic principles of action learning 281
13.1 Howell and Mendez’s three perspectives on
followership 292
13.2 The Big Five personality model 295
13.3 The Myers-Briggs personality model 296
13.4 A classification of motivation theories 301
13.5 Comparison of Maslow’s and Alderfer’s needs theories
303
13.6 Kantor’s model of structural dynamics 310
13.7 Paradoxical tensions 313
16.1 Different concepts of involvement and participation 376
50
51
List of Videos
You can find the following short video conversations online at:
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
Chapter 1: The Nature of Leadership
with Professor Mats Alvesson, Lund University 12
Chapter 2: Strategic Management, Innovation and
Leadership
with Paul Stanley, CEO of Global Navigation Solutions 36
Chapter 3: Power and Leadership
with Sara Hawkins, Founder and Director of Projekt 42 58
Chapter 4: Culture and Leadership
with Peter Goddard, CEO of Myrseside Management 80
Chapter 5: Ethics and Leadership
with Professor Mollie Painter, Nottingham Trent University
104
Chapter 6: Trait, Behaviour and Contingency Theories of
Leadership
with Erinn Woodside, V.P. of Development at Invisible
Technologies Inc. 126
Chapter 7: Charismatic and Transformational Leadership
with Professor Marianna Fotaki, the University of Warwick
150
Chapter 8: Relational and Distributed Theories of
Leadership
with Paul Gray, former CEO of NHS Scotland 172
Chapter 9: HRM and Leadership
with Diane Vincent, former Director of People and
Organisational Development for the Scottish Fire and Rescue
Service 198
Chapter 10: Talent Management and Leadership
with Stephen Moir, Executive Director of Resources for the
City of Edinburgh Council 224
Chapter 11: Performance Management and Leadership
with Stephen Moir, Executive Director of Resources for the
City of Edinburgh Council 246
Chapter 12: Leadership Development
with Beverley Petrossian and Adam Foskett from Skipton
Building Society 268
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
52
Chapter 13: Followers, Communications and Leadership
with Professor Helen Francis and Catherine Thomson from
Edinburgh Napier University 290
Chapter 14: Gender and Leadership
with Diane Vincent, former Director of People and
Organisational Development for the Scottish Fire and Rescue
Service 318
Chapter 15: Leadership in Public Sector Organizations
with Paul Gray, former CEO of NHS Scotland 340
Chapter 16: Leading Pro-Environmental Change
with Professor Mollie Painter, Nottingham Trent University
360
Chapter 17: Leading Urban and Regional Innovation
with Paul Stanley, CEO of Global Navigation Solutions 386
53
54
Foreword
Paul Gray
It is a great privilege to have been asked to provide a foreword to
this book, which tackles a complex subject, in a complex world.
The world in which we live assails our senses – not just the
senses of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell, but also our sense
of balance, our sense of right and wrong, our sense of justice and
equity. And in service of others, leaders can help to make sense
of the world, not just by acute observations and definitions, but
also by offering models and insights which help those around
them to flourish in a context which is volatile, uncertain, complex
and ambiguous – often shortened to VUCA.1
1 Author’s note: the acronym VUCA was by some accounts first
used in 1987, drawing on the leadership theories of Warren
Bennis and Burt Nanus – to describe the volatility, uncertainty,
complexity and ambiguity of conditions and situations. The US
Army War College introduced the concept of VUCA to describe
the multilateral world emerging from the end of the Cold War.
But the definition of the context is insufficient in itself – such a
world is a demanding world. The key lies in responding to these
demands, and more significantly, in enabling others to develop
their capacity to respond effectively in that environment. What
then is the leader’s role in offering a source of stability, and a
means to make progress? My experience suggests that the
answer could lie in values, understanding, connection and agility.
In a demanding context, delivery is crucial – and delivery rooted in
values and a thirst for understanding will be more likely to draw
energy, knowledge and ideas from connections, and to
demonstrate agility in its response.
Such an approach requires acceptance – not mere
acknowledgement – by leaders that they do not have all of the
answers, and that the answers they do have may not be the best
55
ones. Effective leadership recognizes the central role of followers.
It requires a willingness to engage in dialogue, and in doing so to
embrace diversity, and to accept challenge to received wisdom. It
requires humility – including the ability of the leader to accept a
follower role when they are not the person best placed to lead on
a particular issue. It does not absolve leaders of the responsibility
to take hard decisions, including decisions about how to respond
when an individual or group does not act in accordance with
agreed values.
In a world where connection and collaboration are increasingly
crucial, leaders also need to accept that they are accountable –
and they should be willing to be held to account publicly. But in
being held to account, it is much more compelling to adopt an
assets-based approach. Such an approach says what can be
achieved in a complex context, despite the constraints, by
recognizing, valuing and drawing on all of the connections,
experiences and resources available. The alternative is to adopt a
deficit model, whereby we explain what cannot be achieved
because of the constraints or the complexity. That choice between
assets and deficits is a key leadership decision: an assets-based
approach by its very nature requires collaboration. It also requires
good governance; it requires good delegation; it requires
transparent decision making – there is sometimes a sense that
collective or collaborative leadership disperses or dilutes
accountability, whereas in fact it works best when accountability is
clearest.
Over my professional career, I have seen a substantial body of
research and commentary focused on the central role of leaders,
and how they engage and influence people. It remains relatively
novel (although it is becoming less so) to see leadership
expressed as a collective endeavour involving leaders and
followers in a shared relationship, with shared values and shared
goals. Organizational Leadership critically examines why, and
how, the focus of leadership studies is shifting towards
followership. In doing so, it explores many aspects and modes of
leadership; it seeks to do so in a way that is well researched,
soundly based and impartial. It acknowledges complexity and is
clear that one size does not fit all. It should prompt the reader to
56
think about how leadership is exercised to best effect in the
current context, and for that it is to be warmly welcomed.
Paul Gray was Director General Health & Social Care,
and Chief Executive NHS Scotland, from December
2013 to February 2019; he was also a member of the
Scottish Government’s Corporate Board. NHS Scotland
has an annual budget of £13 bn, serves a population of
5.4 million citizens, and employs 160,000 people. From
2009 to 2013, he held a number of other Director
General roles within government.
Paul is also an Honorary Professor at the University of
Glasgow College of Medical, Veterinary and Life
Sciences, a Senior Faculty Member at the Royal College
of Physicians (Edinburgh) Quality Governance
Collaborative, an Advisor to Care Opinion, and a coach
and mentor to a number of senior public sector
executives.
Learn more from Paul’s leadership experience by watching his
videos for Chapter 8, Relational and Distributed Theories of
Leadership and Chapter 15, Leadership in Public Sector
Organizations.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
57
58
Introduction
John Bratton
Contemporary management parlance emphasizes that leaders
provide vision, ignite creativity, and nurture and support
innovation. Leaders are engines of change. While preparing this
book, we have observed the political drama in London over
Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU) – the Brexit
negotations. In this context, businesses and political pundits
invoke the need for leadership with special urgency as, at the time
of writing, there is no clarity about what Britain’s relationship will
be with the EU, its largest trading partner, after 31 January 2020.
Political leadership, or its absence, is widely acknowledged to be
negatively affecting the economy. As political leaders haggle over
the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU, in a rare demonstration of
unity by Britain’s business lobby and trade unions, the
Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and the Trades Union
Congress (TUC) warned that the UK faced a ‘national emergency’
(Peel et al., 2019: 1).
Contemporary leadership theory has drawn on an intellectual
heritage from organizational studies, and today leadership is
considered to be one of the more foundational topics in
management education. An obvious question you may ask is,
‘What makes an effective leader?’. Suffice to say, opinion is
divided. There is a substantial body of literature that highlights the
importance of the charisma and ability of an individual leader to
inspire others to fulfil strategic goals. While others posit that
regardless of the quality of the individual leader, vision building,
innovation and change fail without committed and engaged
followers. From this perspective, effective leadership is not
singular but shared, a collective and cooperative phenomenon
that acknowledges the central role followers play in the leadership
process (Northouse, 2019). Leaders and followers together create
the leadership relationship. The process of followership, rather
than having perceived negative connotations, offers more agency
59
to followers through a combination of direct and indirect forms of
‘voice’ (Emmott, 2015).
Other writers, on the other hand, suggest that leadership can only
be understood in the context of the wider social-cultural,
economic, political and environmental factors which influence, if
not determine, the way leaders act, and that mediating processes
help explain leader–follower behaviours. The discourse on
leadership theory and practice must be considered in the context
of changes in work organizations of significant magnitude
including, but not limited to, trends in work–family patterns,
diversity in organizations, new thinking on human resource
management (HRM), globalization, and the development of
complex inter-organizational and buyer–supplier relationships
(Bendl et al., 2017; Harvey, 2005; Puranam, 2018; Stiglitz, 2017).
Additional to these contextual changes, as a student of leadership
you find yourself confronting humanity’s greatest challenge:
climate change (Klein, 2015). Work organizations are cited to be
amongst the largest contributors to the warming of planet Earth. It
is in this context of the need to lower carbon emissions and
protect the environment, that researchers are showing a growing
interest in pro-environmental leadership. Here pro-environmental
leadership is conceptualized as a process in which leaders
influence others to realize a vision of organizational sustainability
without compromising the ecosystem. The research focus on pro-
environmental leadership includes investigating how leaders
influence workplace low-carbon initiatives, the characteristics of
pro-environmental leaders, and the leadership behaviours that
influence followers’ pro-environmental behaviours (Robertson and
Barling, 2015).
It is within work organizations that work is structured, jobs
designed, employees rewarded, and the employment relationship
is fashioned. As the ‘architects of employment’ (Rubery, 2006: 33),
an organization consists of a recurrent set of human relationships
between leaders and followers, including reporting relationships,
patterns of decision making and communication and other
behaviour patterns, both ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ (Donaldson,
1999). It is ultimately dependent upon goal-directed ‘human
60
collaboration’, ranging from a leader–follower dyad to leader–
leader relations between multinational corporations. The idea of
interdependence and collaboration suggests that the leadership
process is reliant on a confluence of leaders, followers and
context (Bastardoza and Van Vugt, 2019). This holistic
perspective theorizes that followers are co-producers of
leadership. That is to say, ‘The follower is teacher to the leader’
(Grint, 2005: 105). Effective leadership is therefore conceptualized
not so much as a set of innate personality traits, competencies or
charisma but as the readiness of leaders to engage, listen and
learn from their followers. Thus, in recent years, researchers have
shown more interest in what is known as ‘follower-centric’ models
that see two-way learning embedded in the leader–follower
relationship.
Conceptualizing leadership as a human process within an
employment relationship illustrates the potential of some HRM
practices to nurture effective followership whereby an employee or
employees accept the influence of leaders to accomplish a
common goal. The premise developed in this book is that a
combination of HRM variables (or ‘clusters’ of HR practices) can
help to mediate the positive effect of leaders’ influence over both
individual-level and group-level outcomes (e.g. follower
commitment, job satisfaction, performance), as well as creativity
and innovation (Shalley et al., 2004). The distinctive feature of
HRM is its assumption that improved performance is achieved
through changing people’s behaviour in the organization (Guest,
1997). Improved individual and group performance hinges on,
amongst other things, shaping follower behaviour through
rewards, performance management, training and a positive
organizational culture. In evaluating the HRM-performance
relation, Purcell and Kinnie (2007) draw attention to the frequently
experienced gap between ‘espoused’ management practices and
their enactment. They observe that ‘HR practice measures may
be acting as proxies for these wider variables of leadership,
culture, and management behaviour’ (2007: 543).
As you will hopefully see through the chapters in Part III, the way
HRM has been conceptualized avers HRM shares common
theoretical concepts and goals with the process of leadership.
61
Both disciplines predominantly focus on understanding how, and
why, followers behave in the organization, how people are
managed and how leaders can influence, mobilize and leverage
human capability to enhance individual and organizational
performance.
In planning this book, I have opted to use an inclusive
conceptualization of effective leadership that pays attention to the
context, therefore we propose leadership in organizations as
influenced by four factors: strategy, power, culture, and ethical
considerations. In addition, while this book includes chapters
examining the attributes, competentences and behaviour of
leaders, it also includes chapters examining the dynamics
between the process of leading and the process of following. It
further probes whether and how leaders might influence
innovation and change and how HRM theory and practice
contribute to our understanding of leadership and followership
processes. The book aims to review and critically evaluate the
theory and practice of leadership and to provide critical insights
into the interlocking dimensions of leadership, organizational
behaviour and people management.
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Objectives of this Book
This book provides you with an in-depth examination of leadership
and how it applies to managing people in organizations. The idea
for the book stems from a research project funded by the Alberta
Government, Canada. This research explored leadership through
a series of case studies involving the Calgary Police Service,
PanCanadian Petroleum, Banff Springs Hotel, The Body Shop
(UK) and Volvo (Sweden). These case studies gave insight into
the comparative perspectives on leadership in private and public
sector organizations and within different national cultures.
Organizational Leadership has been written specifically to fulfill
the needs of undergraduate and postgraduate business students
for an accessible, critical and engaging analysis of leadership. In
so doing, it emphasizes the perceived importance of leadership in
managing people and change across different contexts in both
private and public organizations and, largely overlooked, in
promoting innovation, pro-environmental change and urban and
regional development.
Work organizations are multi-level in nature and, in organizational
studies, levels of analysis refer to entities of interest in research
(Klein and Kozlowski, 2000). Organizational Leadership examines
how leaders affect their organization’s performance through two
levels of influence at individual and organizational, and two types
of influence relationships inside and outwith the organization
(Portugal and Yukl, 1994), as well as ‘theory to practice’ by
considering how strategic issues influence relationships and
management practices. At the individual level of influence, leaders
use their social interactions to influence individual employees and
groups of employees. At the organizational level, leaders change
HR practices, structure and culture to indirectly influence
individuals and groups. Turning to the types of influence, leaders
seek to influence and motivate employees inside the organization
(senior colleagues, line managers, other subordinates) and
external bodies (e.g. customers, suppliers, governments) – see
Part IV. The conception of leadership that we advance in the book
63
is context sensitive, expansive and connected to corporate
strategy; and one that profoundly shapes the employment
relationship.
You will find this book relies less heavily on US cases and
examples by placing more weight on UK, European, South
African, Far East and Australian material, contexts and leaders.
Moreover, you will find that international issues relevant to
leadership are discussed and analysed in ‘Leadership in Action’
features in order to avoid a Western-centric approach, which will
help UK and non-UK students to relate to and operate ethically in
different contexts and cultures.
This book is desgined to improve your critical thinking skills. It will
not only help you to evaluate leadership theories but also to think
critically about how leaders operate in practice. This is an
extension of Karen Legge’s (2005) memorable ‘rhetorics and
realities’ approach to examining HRM. Each chapter explains and
critiques leadership theories and actual practices, but will include
pedagogical features to encourage students to question, to be
critical and to seek multi-causality when analysing leadership.
Specifically this book will help you to:
demonstrate an awareness of how leadership behaviours and
practices are shaped, if not determined, by the external
business environment and by internal factors in the
organization;
critically examine the continuum between classical and
modern theories of leadership, and understand the effect of
leadership on followers, and organizational outcomes. The
critical study of the leadership canon helps students to
understand the connections between theory and practice, and
conflict and cooperation between people in the workplace;
analyse the role of HRM and leadership in promoting
organizational outcomes in the areas of talent management,
performance management and leadership development;
critically examine contemporary leadership theories including
followership, gender and leadership, and the role of
leadership in public sector organizations and in promoting
64
pro-environment behaviours and urban and regional
innovation.
65
A Framework for Studying
Leadership
The process perspective espoused in this book conceptualizes
leadership, not simply as a position, but as a dynamic relational
phenomenon residing in a specific organizational context. In
consequence, it implies that a leader affects and is affected by
followers and the context. Studying organizational leadership
systematically, therefore, involves a close examination of three
interlocking factors: context, leader and followers (see Figure 0.1).
These, in turn, influence the leadership relationship and can affect
organizational effectiveness. This conceptual framework allows us
to compare, across a consistent set of dimensions, the multitude
of ways researchers and practitioners have defined leadership
and the different approaches that they have brought to the study
of leadership.
Figure 0.1 Leadership as an interconnected
process
66
As will be explained, the context part of the model refers to those
external drivers of change – social, technology, economic,
political, legal, ecological (STEPLE) – as well as organizational
design and strategy considerations inside the organization. Time
is context, too – what is effective at one period of time, dealing
with one set of circumstances, may not be effective in another
(Mumford, 2010). Context is not only constantly changing, but also
strongly influences the leader–follower dichotomy and the
asymmetrical power relationship embedded within the
organization and capitalist society. Importantly, the differences in
understandings of leadership may differ depending on
organizational culture and climate and between national cultures.
These, and other studies, challenge the idea of a universal
leadership model, and have implications for leadership practices
and development.
The leader part of the model examines a cluster of lasting themes
found in the literature, specifically what the leader contributes as
an individual to the leadership process. Much of the research
examines the ‘attributes’, behaviours and ‘dynamic’ capabilities
said to be required of leaders. By extension, some writers
recognize the importance of power in the leadership equation and,
importantly, the dynamic nature of the employment relationship.
The followers part of the model refers to those employees leaders
seek to influence. They may be managers or non-managers. In
early leadership literature, followers are studied – if they are
studied at all – as either passive recipients of leaders’ diktats or as
embodiments of individual personalities or as sources of
psychological needs or problems. We eschew this perspective in
favour of a sociological approach which emphasizes how the
three fundamentals of the social world – class, gender and race –
effect, though they do not determine, the character of leader–
follower relations in the contemporary workplace .
The emergent opinion is that followers are a critical component of
the leadership process. Follower-centric theories and the
followership process focus on follower attributes relevant to the
leadership process, including the importance of values, attitudes,
self-identity and leader–follower dynamics. They examine the
67
active role followers play as co-producers of leadership, with
leader and followers influencing each other through their
behaviours and actions. Leader–follower relations are inherently
cooperative and consensual, or defiant and conflictual (Budd,
2004) and focus attention on the indeterminacy of the employment
contract and the performance of others. The framework put
forward in this book provides an inclusive explanation of the
leadership process; a complex, ongoing relational construct with
others, located within a nexus of interconnected economic and
socio-cultural factors which shape the practice of management
and the employment relationship.
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The Organization of This Book
Organizational Leadership is divided into four parts, which of
course are interconnected, and 17 chapters.
Part I explains the closely connected concepts of management
and leadership before contextualizing leadership behaviour and
action by examining the external and internal forces that influence
the behaviour of leaders and followers, power, national culture
and ethics.
Part II reviews and critically analyses a selected number of
traditional and contemporary theories of leadership, including trait,
behaviour, contingency, charisma and transformative, relational
and distributed.
Part III shifts the focus, this time to analyse how the
complementary field of HRM informs and directs the way
leadership and management are practised and how they impact
on employees and organizational performance outcomes.
Part IV turns attention to the followership process and explores
how such factors as individuals’ attributes, levels of competence,
learning and communication styles, gender and race affect the
way people understand and respond to one another in order to act
together. The other chapters look at some contemporary
leadership issues by examining public sector organizations,
leading pro-environmental change and urban and regional
innovation.
Finally, I would like to thank the other contributors to this book.
Each has brought their own research and perspective of
leadership to their chapter. Collectively, I believe they have helped
to produce a distinctive book that offers the reader a context-
sensitive, nuanced and reflexive approach to studying leadership.
John Bratton, Edinburgh
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Part I Contextualizing Leadership
71
72
1 The Nature of Leadership
John Bratton
‘Anybody who feels called upon to lead is a leader.
Leadership is also difficult. If it were easy, everyone
would do it.’ (Bonang Mohale, 2018: 3)
73
Chapter Outline
Introduction
Defining leadership
Leadership and management
Mapping the changing study of leadership
Critical leadership studies
The employment relationship
Conclusion
74
Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
explain the nature of leadership and the apparent difference
between leadership and management;
explain the essence of classical and contemporary trends in
leadership theories;
discuss how the trends in leadership theories are connected to
changes in global capitalism’s and competing theories of
organizational design;
explain the importance of the employment relationship in the
process of leadership.
video
To learn more about critical leadership perspectives, don’t forget to
watch the video conversation for this chapter online.
75
Introduction
Many of today’s challenges, from catastrophic climate breakdown
– floods, droughts, famine, forced migration – to global inequality,
are complex and the public look to leaders for solutions or for
someone to blame when crises present themselves. Two decades
ago, it was held that dynamic leaders were to be found in the
corporate world. Sir Richard Branson and the late Steve Jobs, for
example, were held up as people possessing vision and the right
personal qualities to be ‘real’ leaders. The public’s largely positive
perception of business leaders changed after the historic 2007–08
global financial crisis (GFC). Post-2008, following a series of
corporate scandals and fraud, and alongside austerity, job
insecurity, falling real wages and global inequality (Milanovic,
2016), the public no longer seem to have confidence in, or high
regard for, corporate leaders (Stewart, 2015).
Despite all this, leadership is still considered to be a defining topic
in management, which is perhaps why there has been so much
written about organizational leadership. Typical media coverage
includes reporting the leadership achievements of Sybil Taylor,
founder of Canadian Steam Whistle Brewing, which in 2011
received the Excellence in Corporate Responsibility Award, the
Minister’s Award for Environmental Excellence, and Canada’s
Greenest Employers. Media interest has also focused on South
African Siza Mzimela, who in 2010 was appointed the first female
Chief Executive Officer of South African Airways. Mzimela served
on the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy board and has been
listed as one of the most powerful women in African business. The
leadership behaviours of Taylor and Mzimela offer a counterpoint
to that exhibited by Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber, accused of
verbally berating an Uber employee, or that of Sir Philip Green,
chairperson of Arcadia Group, accused of making inappropriate
sexual comments to female employees. Green’s egregious
leadership also came under intense scrutiny following the collapse
of retailer BHS. Following an inquiry, it was concluded that BHS’s
leaders engaged in ‘wilful or reckless behaviour’ relating to the
company’s £571m pension deficit (Editorial, Financial Times,
76
2019). Leaders like Travis Kalanick and Philip Green illustrate that
not all those holding top management positions are effective
leaders, and when we face near-constant change in global
business and climate breakdown it’s what sets leaders apart from
nonleaders.
In this book, we critically examine the role of leaders in managing
organizational change and people across different settings in for-
profit and non-profit organizations and, in an area that is less
frequently studied, in promoting innovation and pro-environmental
change in the context of managerial rationales, constraints and
opportunities. In this chapter, we begin by exploring the ways in
which academics have defined leadership and the difference
between leadership and management. Its purpose is to provide a
map of how theories of leadership have been contested and
changed across space and time. We end the chapter by exploring
the nature and significance of the employment relationship to
understanding leadership.
77
Defining Leadership
Scholars have collectively searched for the meaning of leadership
since the beginning of western civilization. The first serious
attempt to develop a theory of leadership can be found in Plato’s
The Republic, 2000 years ago (Grint, 1997b). In the 16th century,
Machiavelli’s The Prince attached great importance to the role of
leaders in shaping societal events. Over the centuries, English
history has been replete with examples illustrating the central role
of individual leaders as depicted by the exploits of Lord Nelson at
the Battle of Trafalgar, Lord Kitchener on the Somme, and
Winston Churchill in the Second World War. One important reason
for this enduring interest in leadership is the very common
assumption that ‘great’ leaders profoundly shape events in
society.
The rise of organizational leadership studies follows the growth of
industrial capitalism. In the 20th century, research on leadership
was driven by both the military and manufacturing demands of two
world wars, the development of the capitalist global economy and,
more exactly, the preoccupation of organizations and government
with competitiveness. Over the last half-century, the number of
articles and books published is a measure of the interest in
leadership. The number of articles on leadership published in
English-language management journals increased from 136 in
1970–71, to 168,633 in 2015 (Storey, 2016). In 2003, Amazon
Books UK offered 14,139 books with the word ‘leadership’ in the
title (Grint, 2011: 1). In 2019, using the same database, the
number had mushroomed to over 30,000.
Despite the burgeoning growth of interest in studying leadership,
grappling with its precise meaning can best be characterized as
juggling a bar of wet soap. Indeed, four decades ago, Burns
(1978: 2) observed that ‘the concept of leadership eludes us or
turns up in another form to taunt us again with its slipperiness and
complexity’. Stogdill (1974: 259) famously concluded that there
are ‘almost as many definitions of leadership as there are persons
who have attempted to define the concept.’ As Table 1.1 shows,
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researchers around the English-speaking world have
conceptualized leadership as a matter of individual attributes, as
particular behaviour, as a power relation, as a process, and as
combinations of these variables.
Table 1.1 Competing definitions of
organizational leadership
Table 1.1 Competing definitions of organizational leadership
Focus Definition
Traits
Interaction between specific traits of one person
and other traits of the many, in such a way that
the course of action of the many is changed by
the one (Bogardus, 1934: 3).
Behaviour
Leadership may be defined as the behaviour of
an individual while he [sic] is involved in
directing group activities (Hemphill and Coons,
1957: 7).
Leadership … acts by persons which influence
other persons in a shared direction (Seeman,
1960: 53).
Power
Leadership is a particular type of power
relationship characterized by a group member’s
perception that another group member has the
right to prescribe behaviour patterns for the
former regarding his [sic] activity as a member
of a particular group (Janda, 1960: 358).
79
Focus Definition
Process
Leadership is the reciprocal process of
mobilizing by persons with certain motives and
values, various economic, political, and other
resources, in a context of competition and
conflict, in order to realize goals independently
or mutually held by both leaders and followers
(Burns, 1978: 425).
Leadership is a formal or informal contextually
rooted and goal-influencing process that occurs
between a leader and a follower, groups of
followers, or institutions (Antonakis and Day,
2018: 5).
These representative definitions define the dimensions of
leadership differently, away from ‘leader-centric’ notions of
powerful white men with innate traits to reconsider leadership as a
holistic process underscoring a social relationship between the
leader and followers and relational dynamics. The concept of
influence features in many definitions of leadership. For example,
House et al. (1999: 184) proposes that leadership is ‘the ability of
an individual to influence, motivate and enable others to contribute
toward the effectiveness and success of the organization.’
Leadership involves both direct and indirect forms of influence.
Direct leadership describes how leaders attempts to influence
others they interact with, for example when chairing a meeting or
presenting a report. Indirect leadership describes how leaders
influence employees at lower levels of the organization who do
not interact directly with the leader. For example, a CEO who
supports environmental initiatives can indirectly influence
subordinates’ workplace pro-environmental behaviours. Although
the concept of influence highlights the social relationship between
the leader and the follower, that relationship is not necessarily
characterized by control (Bass, 1990a). This is because of the
indeterminate nature of the employment relationship that makes
motivating and managing individual performance an ongoing
theme of leadership (Bratton, 2020).
80
The concept of reciprocal process features in most popular
definitions of leadership. Thus, Yukl (2013: 23) defines leadership
as ‘the process of influencing others to understand and agree
about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of
facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared
objectives’.
Some critical accounts also view leadership as a dialectical
process, but with a focus on economic power (Clegg and
Dunkerly, 1980). The question ‘What is economic power, and who
has it’? is not academic. It is highly relevant for understanding
leader–follower relations and behaviour. Economic power is the
ability of an individual to influence or control others to do
something they would not otherwise do through the deliberate use
of economic assets, such as payment, financial reward or
promotion leading to higher pay. The economic power wielded by
employers such as film producer Harvey Weinstein is the power to
offer a film contract or payment. It is the offering or the removal of
economic assets that influence or control how people behave or
misbehave in organizations. See ‘Leadership in Action’ below for
an example of economic power.
In reviewing the different ways leadership is defined, several
points are worth emphasizing. First, the meaning of leadership is
contested. The absence of a consensus is partly a language
problem. It is much like the words ‘love’, ‘beauty’ and ‘happiness’
– while each of us intuitively knows what these words mean, they
can have different meanings for different people. Second, the
notion of leadership carries unrelated connotations that create
ambiguity. This is because terms such as ‘authority’ and
‘management’ are used to describe similar social phenomena.
Third, the way leadership is defined and understood is strongly
influenced by an individual’s philosophical and theoretical
standpoint. Thus, broadly, there are those who view leadership
through a psychological prism, as the consequence of a set of
characteristics possessed by a ‘leader’ and an individual agency,
whilst others view leadership through a sociological prism, as a
social process that emerges from the relationship between a
leader and a follower – a dyadic relationship – and group social
relationships.
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Fourth, and related, notions of ‘shared objectives’ and ‘shared
aspiration’ reflect a unitary view of organizations and the role of
leaders therein: seeing the organization as a single entity with one
goal and claiming that individual employees, managers and
organizational interests are one and the same. Applying a critical
eye to these differences, Grint (2005) observes that leadership is
a contested concept because there is disagreement on whether
leadership is derived from personal qualities (i.e. traits), or
whether a leader persuades others through a process (i.e. leader–
follower interaction), or whether leadership is primarily embodied
in the position a leader occupies within the organization.
Despite the widely acknowledged differences in conceptualizing
leadership, we need a definition because how it is defined has
implications for how we study leadership and formal
organizations, and therefore how we understand management in
the context of the global economy. For the purposes of this book,
we use the following definition:
Organizational leadership is a process of influencing
within an employment relationship involving ongoing
human interaction with others wherein those others
consent to achieve a goal.
This definition captures key elements common to many
definitions. First, organizational leadership is a dialectical process
(act) embedded in a context of both cooperation and structural
conflict, which may affect the style of leadership adopted. Process
also implies that a leader affects and is affected by the
‘psychological contract’, a metaphor for a perceived set of
expectations and understandings between employees and
employers, an important concept in people management
(Rousseau, 1995). Second, leadership is an influencing process
occurring both directly and indirectly among others within formal
employment relations. Third, the influence process may involve
only a single leader, such as a CEO, or it may encompass
numerous leaders within the organization. Fourth, it is ultimately
concerned with achieving a particular goal, and goal achievement
will be a measure of its effectiveness.
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Leadership and Management
The difference between management and leadership has long
been debated. For many critics, ‘leadership’ is a new label to
describe aspects of management. The mainstream discourse has
long praised leaders for their ability to ‘ignite’ change and ‘excite’
followers. We can grasp the difference between management and
leadership by addressing the questions ‘What do managers do?’
and ‘What do leaders do?’. Both require us to understand the
concept of ‘role’, which is a key idea in sociological theory
because of the social expectations attached to particular social
positions, such as a manager or a doctor in a hospital (Scott and
Marshall, 2015). Sociological analyses can reveal enduring
gender roles, for example. Moreover, individuals have multiple
roles, also known as a role set, which can lead to role conflict. A
role set in an organizational setting is an expected set of activities
or behaviours stemming from the position.
Thinking of multiple roles played by individuals both inside and
outside the workplace, the professor teaching your leadership
course, for example, has numerous roles: as well as a teacher, he
or she is also a researcher, is likely to be an administrator with
responsibility for coordinating a programme within the school, and,
if they have been in academia for a while, may mentor junior
colleagues. As part of this role set, your professor may also
represent colleagues on the governing body of the university or as
a union representative at employer–union meetings. Outside the
university, the same individual may have the role of partner or
spouse or parent, and act as chairperson of a neighbourhood
community group. In the role of union representive or chairperson
of a community group, your professor might well therefore be
practising exemplary leadership by role and challenging the status
quo or leading change.
A manager therefore can undertake a diverse range of roles within
an organization. It is important to note here that more than one
individual can perform a leadership role. That is, leadership can
be shared or distributed within the organization. The opportunity to
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perform certain roles will depend on the manager’s position in the
organization’s hierarchy, the nature of the work undertaken and
the level of education of her or his co-workers. For example,
managerial and leadership activities in ‘creative milieus’ and in
‘research-intensive’ environments are unlikely to replicate the
managerial and leadership activities undertaken in a warehouse
employing unskilled manual workers (Sundgren and Styhre,
2006).
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The role of managers
The role of managers has been the subject of thorough
examination by management theorists and there is no need to
explore them at great length here. In mainstream management
literature, there is agreement that the role of managers is central
to achieving control and direction. Critical studies, on the other
hand, emphasize that managers’ work deals with uncertainties,
resistance and conflicts. The pioneer of ‘scientific management’,
Frederick W. Taylor (1911), documented the role of managers in
terms of analysing and designing work systems that minimize skill
requirements while maximizing management control over the
workforce. These principles have had an enduring influence on
management research and practice throughout the 20th century.
Henri Fayol (1949), a French businessman, identified four key
roles performed by managers: planning, organizing, directing and
controlling. This is sometimes called the ‘PDOC’ tradition (see
Figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1 The classic Fayolian management
cycle
For Fayol, planning meant studying the future and drawing up a
plan of action; organizing meant coordinating both the material
and the people aspects of the organization; directing referred to
ensuring that all efforts were focused on a common goal; and
controlling meant that all workplace activities were to be carried
out according to specific rules and orders. The Fayolian
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management cycle portrays the role of the manager in a positive
way, and, despite claims that it presents an idealized image of the
manager, surveys of managerial work exhibit striking parallels with
the Fayolian management cycle (Hales, 1986).
Other studies have offered an alternative picture of what
managers do. They include three sets of behaviours:
interpersonal, informational and decisional (Mintzberg, 1989).
There are three different interpersonal roles – figurehead, leader
and liaison – that arise directly from the manager’s formal
authority. The manager’s three informational roles – monitor,
disseminator and spokesperson – flow from the interpersonal
roles. Finally, it is suggested that managers perform four decision-
making roles, those of entrepreneur, disturbance handler,
resource allocator and negotiator.
Pause and reflect
This classic account of management identifies ‘directing’ as a key
management activity. Do you think all employees would appreciate
being ‘directed’? If not, why?
Managerial work has also been conceptualized as an
interconnected three-dimensional model consisting of activities,
contingencies and processes (Squires, 2001). Activities such as
planning, organizing, directing and controlling are impacted by
internal and external contingencies; for example, internal
corporate strategy and external regulatory factors that impinge on
the manager. This model also incorporates processes, which are
the various means by which managers communicate ideas, gain
acceptance of them and motivate others to implement the ideas
through change. These processes are highly relevant to the
leadership process as they are dependent on cooperative
relationships. Thus, the current wisdom offers a more complex
picture of what managers do that helps us to be aware of the
‘totality of management’ (2001: 482).
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Critical studies have challenged the universality of managerial
behaviour, and have emphasized the importance of factoring into
the analysis of management diversity, including gender, race,
sexuality and consideration of the cultural mores that prevail. As
highlighted in the ‘Leadership in Action’ feature below, research
has exposed an alternative, less flattering picture of managerial
behaviour: bullying and sexual harassment. Such abusive
behaviour is caused by a power imbalance and is not the result of
individual deviant behaviour; neither is it a new phenomenon.
Indeed, it is argued that bullying is part of the management
repertoire of ‘getting things done’ through people, and reflects the
significance of a power imbalance.
Leadership in Action: Bullying and harassment as an instrument of
control?
Mainstream leadership scholars curiously have little to say explicity
about economic power and its effect on leader–follower relations.
Leaders have the economic power to persuade others through
economic assets or values. Implicit in the employment relationship is
also the power of fear – the power to initiate discipline or dismissal. A
manager or leader can compel employees to do something by
threatening one’s employment status or livelihood. The power held
by managers and leaders is evident in media and research reports.
Take, for example, the company Sports Direct:
Sports Direct owner, Mike Ashley … ran a warehouse ruled
by fear. Where men too scared to call in sick instead went in
and suffered a stroke. Where ambulances were called out
to deal with births and miscarriages – including a woman
who gave birth in the loos. All this happened at one of the
key sites of the Ashley business. (Chakraborty, 2016)
In the context of meeting performance targets, bullying may be
interpreted as a tool of managerial control, part of a manager’s
repertoire of ‘getting things done’ (Beale and Hoel, 2011). Corporate
executives have also lost their sheen through reports of sexual
harassment. Take, for example, the allegations of sexual impropriety
against film producer Harvey Weinstein in 2017:
87
An article in the New Yorker alleged that Weinstein, once
the most powerful man in Hollywood, had forced himself on
three women, made aggressive sexual advances towards
the actors Mira Sorvino and Patricia Arquette and groped,
masturbated and exposed himself in front of others. Actors
Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie said Weinstein had
sexually harassed them (Ellis-Petersen, 2017a) …
Weinstein auditioned an 18-year-old Romola Garai, the
actor known for Atonement, wearing only a dressing gown
in an encounter at the Savoy Hotel that the British actor
described as humiliating and ‘an abuse of power’ (Ellis-
Petersen, 2017a) … Léa Seydoux, star of the film Spectre,
alleged that when she first met Weinstein ‘he flirted and
stared at me as if I was a piece of meat … He was using his
power to get sex’ (Ellis-Petersen, 2017c).
Cases of sexual harassment ignite arguments about power. In terms
of leader–follower relations, power is the capacity to exercise control
or influence over others. The exercise of power by powerful men
over vulnerable women is not a Hollywood idiosyncrasy. Nor is
economic power an abstract concept for it impacts the lives of people
within and outside the workplace.
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Reflective questions
1. Have you ever experienced or witnessed bullying or sexual
hararassment in an academic setting or in the workplace?
2. Do you agree that bullying and sexual harassment are an
abuse of power? Why or why not?
89
Sources
Chakraborty, A. (2016) ‘Mike Ashley has pocketed millions from
treating people like battery hens’, Guardian, 7 June.
Ellis-Petersen, H. (2017a) ‘Weinstein denies three separate rape
allegations’, Guardian, 11 October, p. 1.
Ellis-Petersen, H. (2017b) ‘Romola Garai: “I felt violated by
Weinstein”’, Guardian, 10 October, p. 1.
Ellis-Petersen, H. (2017c) ‘Weinstein jumped on me. I had to defend
myself’, Guardian, 12 October, p. 1.
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To explore this topic further see:
Beale, D. and Hoel, H. (2011) ‘Workplace bullying and the
employment relationship: exploring questions of prevention, control
and context’, Work, Employment and Society, 25 (1): 5–18.
Bratton, J. (2010) ‘Power, politics and conflict’, in J. Bratton, P.
Sawchuck, C. Forshaw, M. Callinan and M. Corbett (eds), Work and
Organizational Behaviour (2nd edn). Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, pp. 370–96.
Hearn, J. (2012) Theorizing Power. London: Macmillan International.
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The role of leaders
Although it is stating the obvious to observe that ‘managing’ and
‘leading’ can potentially coexist in the same individual,
mainstream leadership scholars, since Zaleznik’s (1977) seminal
contribution, have argued that managers and leaders are in effect
different and that leadership and management are different. Table
1.2 summarizes the cited differences between the roles performed
by managers and leaders.
Table 1.2 Summary of cited distinctions
between management and leadership
Table 1.2 Summary of cited distinctions between
management and leadership
Management Leadership
Acting as the figurehead Establishing direction
Liaising with other managers Communicating direction
Developing subordinates Encouraging emotion
Planning Empowering others
Handling conflicts Influencing
Negotiating Challenging the status quo
Monitoring information Motivating and inspiringothers
Directing subordinates Modelling the direction
Allocating resources Building a team
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Management Leadership
Produces potential
predictability
Produces radical change
Source: based on Hales, 1986; Kotter, 2012; and Kouzes and Posner,
1997
Contrasting the role of managers and leaders, five broad areas of
difference have been identified. First, allegedly, leaders establish
direction, align people with that vision, model the direction and
motivate and inspire them to make it happen despite obstacles.
Therefore, it is said that a leader creates a vision as well as the
strategy to achieve the vision. In contrast, the manager’s key role
is to choose the means to implement the vision that the leader
formulates.
Second, it is contended that leaders operate at a emotional level,
seeking to appeal to followers’ emotions, whereas managers
operate logically and value rationality. Third, it is alleged that
leaders encourage empowerment. That is, they ‘enable others to
act’ (Kouzes and Posner, 1997: 12). In contrast, managers, by the
very nature of their role, encourage compliance. Fourth, it is
contended that leadership is a value-laden activity, whereas
management is not. Studying environmental leadership,
Robertson and Barling (2015), for example, point to the
significance of personal values that extend beyond self-interest in
predicting the actions of pro-environmental leaders.
Fifth, it is argued that leaders have a different attitude towards
organizational change. Leaders are change agents associated
with ‘episodic’ (Weick and Quinn, 1999) or ‘revolutionary’ (Burke,
2014) organizational change, whereas managers opt for more
‘continuous’ or ‘evolutionary’ change that is ongoing, evolving and
cumulative. For Kouzes and Posner (1997: 9), exemplary
leadership entails ‘challenging the process’. Finally, Grint (2005:
15) posits that leadership is the equivalent of vuja dé (never seen
before), whereas management is the equivalent of déjà vu (seen
or experienced before).
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Pause and reflect
1. Recall an organization where you have worked or a group of
which you were a member (e.g. a group to complete a module
assignment).
2. To what extent were you a leader and a follower? Did the leader
change at any time and, if so, why?
3. Do managers where you work or have worked, or group
members exhibit managerial or leadership behaviours? Explain.
It is important to recognize that while a manager is a person who
has a formal title and authority, a leader is a person who has the
ability and opportunity to influence others and may be either a
manager or non-manager. As Bernard Bass (1990a) observed,
not all managers lead and not all leaders manage, and an
employee, without being a formal manager, may be a leader.
Individual managers will vary in terms of their capacity or
inclination to engage in the leadership process. Importantly,
negatively stereotyping managers as administrators or
bureaucrats mired in the status quo neglects empirically-based
evidence that shows successful managers to be good leaders,
and successful leaders to be also good managers (Yukl, 2013).
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Mapping the Changing Study of
Leadership
We have seen that leadership as a field of study has produced a
voluminous amount of literature, both about what it is leaders
should do, and about what leaders actually do. The former
contains theories for leaders, while the latter involves theories of
leadership. Theories for leaders are primarily normative, directed
at providing ‘how to’ prescriptions for improving leadership
effectiveness. Theories of leadership, on the other hand, are
primarily analytical, directed at better understanding leadership
processes, explaining why they vary in different circumstances
and the ‘platforms’ (ship) that leaders create to enable others to
act as leaders (Antonacopulou and Bento, 2016; Ford, 2015).
As we map the major theories of leadership, it is important to
understand that leadership scholars necessarily take their view of
their research, in part, from their academic field of study, from their
view of the world, and the changing context of capitalism in which
other people live and work. Leadership theories over time have,
therefore, been informed by a theoretical inheritance, not only
drawn from psychology and sociology, but also by multiple
theorizing of the contextual forces influencing the management of
organizations. Thus, as with the discourse of organizational theory
(Reed, 1999), the discourse of leadership theory must be
considered as a historically contested arena of concepts and
theories, infused more recently with the belief that free markets
should guide economic activity, sometimes referred to as
‘neoliberalism’, which seeks to gain recognition and acceptance in
the management of organizations.
The sheer diversity of leadership theories can sometimes mean
that recognizable trends or patterns are obscured. To navigate
through the myriad theories, we have divided leadership research
into five major categories: trait, behaviour, contingency,
charisma/transformative and shared/distributed leadership
(Bryman, 1999).
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Table 1.3 shows the major leadership schools and the time period
in which the theory attracted most research attention (Antonakis
and Day, 2018). In mapping developments in theory, it is important
to recognize that research focus and preferred leadership
paradigms evidently diverge across time and space. The
trajectory of leadership theory is not linear, but rather follows
endless swings between leader-centric and follower-centric
models often premised on new thinking about work design and
organizational change. Therefore, theories of leadership and
disruptive organizational change are inseparably intertwined
(Parry, 2011).
Table 1.3 Development of the main theories of
leadership
Table 1.3 Development of the main theories of leadership
Time Theory Selective Author(s)
1920s
–
1950s
Trait
Bogardus (1934); Bird (1940);
Stogdill (1948); Judge et al.
(2009)
1950s
–
1960s
Behaviour Hemphill and Coons (1957);Blake and Mouton (1964)
1970s
–
1980s
Contingency
and Situational
Fiedler (1967); Hersey and
Blanchard (1969)
Social
exchange
Dansereau et al. (1975); Graen
and Uhl-Bien (1995)
1990s
–
2000s
Charisma and
Transformative
House (1977); Conger and
Kanungo (1998); Antonakis
(2011)
Burns (1978); Bryman (1992);
Kouzes and Posner (1997)
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Time Theory Selective Author(s)
Servant Greenleaf (1977); Graham(1991); Eva et al. (2019)
Authentic George (2003); Walumbwa et al.(2008)
Competencies Boyatzis (1982); Mumford et al.(2000); Sotarauta (2005)
Psychodynamic DeBoard (1978); De Vries (2006)
Relational Kerr and Jermier (1978); Graenand Uhl-Bien (2005)
Distributed
Benne and Sheats (1948); Tichy
(1997); Gronn (2002); Bolton
(2011)
Empowered Sims Jr. et al. (2009); Amundsenand Martinsen (2014
The premise is that as the context of capitalism changed (from
Fordist mass-production to team systems and flexible
specialization), leadership fashion shifted from an active focus on
the leader to the role followers play in the leadership process –
from a leader-centric to a follower-centric focus. However, this
argument for identifible patterns of leadership across time is both
contestable and complicated by researchers invoking
contingencies, external and internal events or circumstances
which are possible but cannot be predicted with certainty (e.g.
disruptive technology) to explain preferred styles of organizational
leadership.
Reviews of leadership theories have been undertaken by
numerous leadership academics, including Bernard Bass et al.
(2008) and Antonakis et al. (2004), and there is no need to repeat
97
the findings here. The aim of this section is to provide a road-map
through the literature as a precursor to more detailed coverage in
the theory chapters, noting the shifts in focus, and to identify the
connections to leadership practice discussed in other chapters in
this book.
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Leader-centred perspectives
The earliest studies of leadership date back to the ‘Great Man’
theories from 19th-century Victorian Britain. This perspective
focused on iconic leaders – often military figures or politicians –
who allegedly possessed innate qualities shaped by masculine
traditions and Anglo-Saxon values and attitudes. To put it another
way, elitist, sexist, misogynous, xenophobic and racist. An early
leader-centric study identified over 75 traits to distinguish leaders
from non-leaders and successful leaders from failures (e.g.
Stogdill, 1948). This approach is predicated on the belief that
individuals who occupy leadership positions possess superior
qualities or attributes as compared to traits possessed by non-
leaders. Leader traits and attributes are looked at in detail in
Chapter 6. We should note that statistical studies that seek to
measure critical human traits, such as intelligence, in order to
predict leadership effectiveness, have given trait theory something
of a renaissance (e.g. Judge et al., 2004).
In the 1970s, scholars shifted attention to leadership
competencies. Like trait theory, these contributions take a leader-
centred perspective on leadership. However, unlike the trait
approach, the competencies model views leadership as a set of
developable competencies or skills, which suggests that many
managers and non-managers have the potential for leadership.
Research has focused on defining distinct clusters of
competencies that leaders and managers should possess. Critical
competencies would include decision-making skills, interpersonal
skills (e.g. listening and speaking) and social intelligence (SI),
which is having the ability to understand social dynamics and
situations (see e.g. Mumford et al., 2000; Sotarauta, 2005).
In the 1950s, the early inconclusive research on trait theory
shifted attention to the behavioural styles of leaders. The
leadership behaviour perspective focuses on what leaders do (i.e.
leadership), and in particular on how they behave towards
followers. Research distilled two clusters of leadership
behaviours. One cluster captures task-oriented behaviours (e.g.
assigning work and job redesign activities), referred to as initiating
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structure. The other cluster represents people-oriented behaviours
(e.g. showing respect and support for followers), referred to as
consideration. It was posited that the most effective behavioural
style is when leaders exhibit high levels of both task-oriented and
people-oriented behaviours. While research on behavioural
theories of leadership declined in the 1970s, recently leadership
behaviours in organizations to promote low-carbon initatives have
been subjected to considerable empirical scrutiny. Leaders’
supportive behaviours, for example, have been shown to be an
important element of pro-environmental leadership (Robertson
and Barling, 2015).
The late 1990s witnessed the rise of the ‘new leadership’ model,
so-called because the writers viewed leaders as managers of
meaning rather than authorizing influence (Bryman, 1996: 30).
Research shifted to charismatic attributes, and other mental
characteristics of leaders. Individuals celebrated as ‘leaders’
according to this approach are those able to persuade employees
to exert exceptional effort and make personal sacrifices to
accomplish the group’s goal. House’s (1977) theory of charismatic
leadership inspired another leader-centric approach called
transformative leadership (see Chapter 7). Here, individuals
celebrated as ‘leaders’ are those who can make sense of a crisis
and threat, are able to evaluate the strengths and opportunities of
the organization within that environment, and have the capabilities
to formulate, communicate and mobilize support for a compelling
‘vision’ for the organization.
Critical Insight: The constructivist perspective to knowledge making
An important object of Organizational Leadership is to help you
develop critical thinking skills when reading other texts in leadership
and management and related fields. To do this effectively, you need
to be aware that all academic writing should be considered not only
as a source of information and meaning as defined by the author, but
also as a text revealing something about the author’s standpoint on
organizational leadership and power relations in society. Knowledge
should be viewed in the context of power, and consequently the
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relationship between writers, readers and texts (including this one)
has to be understood as sites at which different meanings,
interpretations and perspectives take place. Reinharz (1988) posits
that most academic writing reflects a dominant perspective that is
capitalist, racist and androcentric in orientation. To help you prepare
for this journey through the leadership discourse, read Grint (1997b:
1–10) and Charmaz (2000).
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Activity
Working on your own, or with a group, look through recent academic
journals and select a leadership article:
1. What dominant assumptions underlie the article?
2. To what extent are gender, race and class conflict discussed by
the author?
3. How does the author explain the constructivist perspective to
knowledge making?
4. Explain the notion that the author has been both a producer
and a product of the text.
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Contingency and situational perspectives
The contingency or ‘if–then’ approach to understanding leadership
became fashionable in the early 1970s, and is associated with the
seminal work of Field and House (1990). It is based on the idea
that the most effective leadership style depends upon the leader,
the capability of followers, and specific situational factors
determine rational decision making and how a leader behaves.
Effective leadership, it is posited, will depend upon situational
variables such as the characteristics of followers, the nature of the
work to be performed and the external environment. Contingency
theory will be discussed further in Chapter 6. A variant, situational
leadership theory (Hersey and Blanchard, 1969) is probably one
of the best-known contingency models. Understanding the
situational factors in which leadership is embedded is an
important theoretical development for advancing a more holistic
understanding of leadership.
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Follower-centric perspectives
In the 1990s, another strand of leadership theory emerged that
swung the pendulum from leader-centric towards a more holistic
follower-centric approach (Shamir et al., 2007). Studies of
‘followership’ fall into three main categories: leader–follower
relations, follower attributes and follower outcomes such as
change, as a result of leadership behaviours (Bligh and Kohles,
2008). The early work on leader–member exchange (LMX)
conceptualized leadership as a reciprocal influence process that is
centred on the dyadic interaction, a relationship of two, which can
develop in leader–follower relationships (Graen and Uhl-Bien,
1995). Moreover, follower-centric theories suggest that employees
are not a passive homogeneous group to be acted on by leaders,
but rather potentially dynamic, each acting in a self-determining
manner within the employment relationship (Brown, 2018).
In the 2000s, the demands for strategic alignment and coherence
in increasingly complex organizational structures gave rise to new
preferred models variously called distributed (e.g. Gronn, 2002a)
and empowered (Amundsen and Martinsen, 2015) leadership.
Empowering leadership, for example, is a process of sharing
power, and allocating autonomy and responsibilities to employees,
work teams, or collectives through a specific set of leader
behaviours for employees to enhance internal motivation and
organizational performance (Cheong et al., 2019). Within the
follower-centric genre, distributed or empowered theories
proposed that gifted leaders ‘lead from behind’ by empowering
workers (Spillane and Diamond, 2007). Distributed leadership also
echoes the notion of ‘leading quietly’ (Mintzberg and Lampel,
1999) and ‘servant leadership’ (Greenleaf, 1977, 1996), observes
Alimo-Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe (2005). Distributed leadership
is premised on assumptions about group synergy, learning and
developing followers. Therefore, leadership potentially resides in
every employee who, in one way or another, takes on the role of
leader in a group or team, and is not confined to those with formal
senior leadership roles.
The evident shifts in research interest and preferred forms of
leadership are not random but are linked to the formation of
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particular corporate strategies, which are often a response to
perceived and actual changes in organizational design and global
capitalism. Different leadership theories reflect two management
logics. The first is the logic of direct, process-based control, in
which the focus is on efficiency and cost containment. The second
is the logic of indirect behavioural outcomes, in which the focus is
on leaders engaging followers’ intellectual capital, commitment
and cooperation.
In the context of mid-20th century mass production and scientific
management, therefore, leaders acted as repositories of
knowledge and had direct control over production formerly
wielded by craft workers. These conditions provided the impetus
for leader-centric models in the West. That theories of leadership
should give disproportionate prominence to the personality,
priorities and achievements of primarily white upper-class men
reveals as much about cultural mores as they do about their
subject (Salaman, 2016). Fast-forward three decades, and
concerns about Japanese imports and evidence-based research
on the benefits of empowered work teams (Bratton, 1992) see
leadership theories emphasize that emotional processes and
symbolic actions by leaders are as important as rational
processes. The study of ‘followership’ evolved as a strategy to
solve a range of cooperation and coordination problems in work
groups (Bastardoza and Van Vugt, 2019). In the context of work
reorganization based on Japanese management practices, such
as work teams and just-in-time, follower-centric models of
leadership captured the zeitgeist of the 1990s (see Chapter 8).
Image 1.1 1950s mass production provided the
impetus for leader-centric models. Fast-
forward three decades, and the benefits of
work teams encouaraged follower-centric
styles of leadership.
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Competitiveness travails and leadership theory-building are
closely intertwined, serving to reinforce each other. To effectively
evaluate theories of leadership, it is important to understand the
philosophy or ‘worldview’ of the researchers and the assumptions
underpinning their research. Today, in the second decade of the
21st century, there is growing acknowledgment in the literature of
the need to adopt more holistic approaches to understanding
leadership and its relationships with various outcomes of interest.
The charismatic, ideological and pragmatic (CIP) model of
leadership, for example, is based on the varied cognitive
processes of leaders, but it also recognizes the significance of
followers and context (Lovelace et al., 2019). However, there is, in
parallel, a return of leader-centric approaches, because charisma
is ‘too important’ to leave to arbitrary processes or weak
institutions (Antonakis and Day, 2018: 75). That inspirational
leader-centric models are again avant-garde must be seen in the
context of wider social-economic factors: the rise of ‘meritocratic
extremism’ (Piketty, 2014), a popular culture overtly in thrall to
celebrities, and media exposure of high-profile corporate leaders
that projects a fabricated image of charismatics as ‘wealth
creators’ (Mazzucato, 2013) and rewards them with high
‘tournament-like’ salaries and bonuses.
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Critical Leadership Studies
The prevailing and dominant leadership literature reviewed in this
chapter take a functionalist approach to leading people.
Functionalism assumes that organizations are unitary wholes,
characterized by compliance, consensus and order. In contrast,
critical leadership studies (CLS) denote theoretical perspectives
that share a common concern to critique mainstream orthodoxies
and the power relations through which leadership dynamics are
frequently rationalized, often reproduced and sometimes resisted
(Collinson, 2011). CLS embraces multiple approaches informed by
an eclectic set of theoretical traditions and ideas (Prasad et al.,
2018), though typically critical academics view organizations as
arenas of domination, inequality, tension and conflict. The focus is
on power, subordination and expliotation. To adopt a critical
perspective is to ‘decolonise’ (Gopal, 2017) prevailing narratives,
and to ask difficult questions of society and ultimately of
ourselves. Critical studies address the intersection of class,
gender and race in work, organizational design and power
structures that is the reality of organizational life.
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Power, leadership and ideology
The German sociologist Max Weber (1921/1968: 53) defined
power as ‘the probability that one actor within a social relationship
will be in a position to carry out his [sic] own will despite
resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests.’
It is about having the means to enforce your will over others, even
against opposition. For Weber, power stemed from owning and
controlling the means of production, but it was also derived from
the knowledge of operational systems. A CIPD report (2017b: 42)
defined power in the workplace as ‘the capacity of employees to
leverage influence about the terms of their employment
relationship’. The authors observe that developments in capitalism
have shifted the balance of employment power away from workers
towards employers. Power is not an abstract concept, but has real
repercussions for the lives of people within and outwith
organizations.
Writers have emphasized that power can be exercised at various
levels, from a dyadic relationship to leaders enforcing their will on
an entire organization (Antonakis and Day, 2018: 275). At the
dyadic level, employment power features strongly in the alleged
cases of misogynistic abuse, sexual harassment, sexual assault
and rape (Elgot and Mason, 2017) by powerful men in Hollywood,
politics and the workplace. In 2013, the exercise of power at an
organizational level was demonstrated at the Grangemouth
petrochemical plant in Scotland. There, the workers had to
capitulate to all of the employer’s demands to avoid the company,
INEOS, closing the plant (Bratton, 2015a: 371).
Power can operate at a societal level too. It is posited that
dominant theories of leadership create a set of ideas and
practices, which constitutes the dominant thinking in universities
and society not only about forms of work and employment
relationships but also the relationship between business and
society. It is similarly argued that neoliberalism has produced its
own types of ‘elite power’; for example, elites that come to narrate
and justify what markets, and associated technologies and bodies,
are ‘saying’ (Davies, 2017). This argument echoes Marx’s
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treatment of ideology – that large-scale capitalists and their allies
have the capacity to control ideas and knowledge produced and
disseminated throughout society (Bratton and Denham, 2019). For
Graham Salaman, leadership is at the centre of a nexus of
interrelated ideas, such as the doctrine of neo-liberalism and
‘shareholder value’, which has dysfunctional consequences for
social justice. Hence, the prevailing view of leadership is heavily
implicated in and supportive of ‘a flawed model of capitalism’
(Salaman, 2016: 64).
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Gender and leadership
Leadership theory and research have largely neglected to take
account of gender (see Chapter 14). The entry of more women
into management positions has generated more research on
gender in the workplace; questioning, among other things, the
under-representation of women leaders, and whether women lead
differently from men. Several writers argue that women managers
have a more interactive style that includes more people-oriented,
knowledge-sharing and participative leadership (e.g. Helgesen,
1990; Rosener, 1995). Whereas men’s careers are accelerated by
a ‘glass escalator’ which carries them to senior positions, it is
argued that the gender gap in leadership can be explained by
unacknowledged barriers to career advancement – a ‘glass
ceiling’. Further, in a time of crisis, women have been promoted to
a leadership position and subsequently ‘failed’ due to pre-existing
operational failures outside of their control – the ‘glass cliff’.
Critical feminist scholars have taken a different approach to
studying gender and leadership. These studies have focused on
the way jobs, occupations and organizations are themselves
gendered, arguing that the processes of gendering within the
organization consolidate men’s power. While some posit that
leadership behaviour is ‘gendered’, Wajcman (1998) has counter-
argued that the behaviour of male and female managers is largely
determined by context imperatives – in other words, there is no
such thing as ‘female’ management behaviour. The structure and
culture of many organizations can create greater obstacles and
challenges for women than men (Carli and Eagly, 2011). The
debates on the gender gap in leadership in the early 21st century
provide a rich ground for future leadership research. Gender is
inextricably connected to other inequality issues, such as class,
race and sexual orientation, and critical research using
intersectional knowledge and praxis (Collins and Bilge, 2016)
might address the intersection of class, gender, race and ethnicity
and sexual orientation in different forms of organizational
leadership.
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The Employment Relationship
It is within work organizations that the employment relationship is
fashioned. The employment relationship is the exchange between
employers and employees for work or services performed in
return for remuneration as conditioned by markets or regulations.
It is through the employment relationship that reciprocal rights and
obligations are created between the employee and the employer.
It can be conceptualized in various ways, as:
a mutually-advantageous transaction in a free market;
a partnership of employers and employees with shared
interests;
a negotiation over ‘wage-effort’ between parties with
competing interests;
an unequal power relation embedded in complex socio-
economic inequalities. (Budd and Bhave, 2013)
These four ways of conceptualizing the employment relationship
provide very different perspectives on the fundamental aspects of
people management and leadership.
Conceptualizing leadership as a human process within an
employment relationship helps us understand how human
resource (HR) practices influence both the leadership and
followership process. First, the ongoing leader–follower
relationship is inherently cooperative and consensual, or defiant
and conflictual. The indeterminacy of the employment contract,
that employees have a potential capacity to provide added value
desired by the organization, focuses attention on the importance
and quality of the relational nature of the exchange. Followers’
attitudes (e.g. commitment), followers’ behaviour (e.g.
engagement) and followers’ performance (e.g. effort) will be
influenced by multiple contextual factors within and outwith the
organization.
Second, critics of mainstream theories of people management
and leadership have drawn upon the Weberian (1921/1968)
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notion of a ‘paradox of consequence’ arising from HR practices
(Bratton, 2015: 257). For example, work teams have been
introduced to enhance employee engagement in decision making
and improve labour productivity. But, on the other hand, the
productivity benefits arising from the new arrangements are
accompanied by a number of negative effects on the
‘psychological contract’, which have the effect of creating tension
in leader–follower relations (see Chapter 8).
Third, power is embedded in the employment relationship and the
leader–follower relationship is shaped by the balance of power
between the actors (see Chapter 3).
Fourth, if organizational life is recognized as an arena of complex
reciprocal human relations that are socially constructed and
embedded in a national and organizational culture, strategic HR
practices and strategic innovation is more appropriately
configured not simply as a series of causal steps, but rather as
planned practices and innovation that might be enacted as
envisioned (see Chapter 9).
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Conclusion
This chapter has introduced the reader to the different ways
leadership has been conceptualized, noting that its meaning is
contested and the way leadership is defined and understood is
strongly influenced by the theoretical standpoint a researcher
adopts. The chapter explored the ways writers have tried to
differentiate leadership from management. It sketched the major
theories and current issues relating to leadership as a starting
point and benchmark for subsequent discussion. The underlying
thrust of the chapter is to suggest that leadership theories reflect
the zeitgeist of the various historical times.
Amid the contemporary promotion of ‘authentic’, ‘servant’ and
‘shared’ leadership, our review explored critical leadership
studies, and current issues of power and gender, frequently
obscured or neglected in mainstream studies of leadership.
Inevitably, our own subjectivity has shaped our approach to
studying leadership. Throughout this book, we shall attempt to be
as impartial as possible as we introduce the reader to a wide
range of perspectives on leadership. After reflecting on the
content of the book, readers will be able to judge for themselves
how successful we have been in achieving this objective.
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Chapter Review Questions
1. Are management and leadership diametrically opposed?
2. What key developments in the business environment and in
organizations can help explain trends in leadership theory?
3. Why are issues of power and gender frequently neglected in
mainstream studies of leadership?
Assignment Task: Leadership and LMD
There has been an exponential growth in leadership and in
leadership and management development (LMD). In the UK, centres
for leadership training have been established in the civil service, local
government, the NHS and the fire service. In the EU, leadership is
entrenched as the key ‘enabler’ in the business excellence model
sponsored by the European Foundation for Quality Management
(EFQM). Examples of leadership training programmes can be seen
at: https://www.efqm.org/index.php/efqm-model (accessed 23
October 2019); www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/i-am/working-health/nhs-
leadership-academy (accessed 19 September 2019).
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Questions
1. Read Keith Grint’s chapter, ‘A history of leadership’, in A.
Bryman, D.L. Collinson, K. Grint, B. Jackson and M. Uhl-Bien
(eds) (2011) SAGE Handbook of Leadership, pp. 3–14. London:
SAGE.
2. Thinking about the dichotomy between management and
leadership shown in Table 1.2, what assumption(s) underpin the
growth of interest in leadership programmes across both private
and public sectors?
3. To what extent, if at all, is the fascination with leaders and LMD
a reflection of the changing business context?
Go Online
Further your knowledge and build your bibliography for
assignments by reading the recommended journal articles for this
chapter.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
video
Learn more about leadership in practice by watching the video
conversation for this chapter.
Mats Alvesson from Lund University shares his views on current
leadership studies and traditional ideologies, as well as discussing
his own work on reflexive leadership and followership.
The video can be found at https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
See the inside front cover for the access code and instructions.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
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Further Reading
Antonakis, J. and Day, D.V (2018) ‘Leadership: past, present, and
future’, in J. Antonakis and D.V. Day (eds), The Nature of
Leadership. London: SAGE, pp. 3–19.
Dinh, J.E., Lord, R.G., Gardner, W.L., Meuser, J.D., Liden, R.C.
and Hu, J. (2014) ‘Leadership theory and research in the new
millennium: current theoretical trends and changing perspectives’,
The Leadership Quarterly, 25 (1): 36–62.
Grint, K. (2011) ‘A history of leadership’, in A. Bryman, D.
Collinson, K. Grint, B. Jackson and M. Uhl-Bien (eds), The SAGE
Handbook of Leadership. London: SAGE, pp. 3–14.
McCann, L. (2016) ‘From management to leadership’, in S. Edgell,
H. Gottfried and E. Granter (eds), The SAGE Handbook of the
Sociology of Work and Employment. London: SAGE, pp. 167–84.
Squires, G. (2001) ‘Management as a professional discipline’,
Journal of Management Studies, 34 (4): 473–87.
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Case Study: Leading the Virgin Group
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Background
The Virgin Group has become a diversified grouping of more than 200
privately held companies. These include Virgin Atlantic Airways, Virgin
Holidays and Virgin Money. Since the late 1990s, the Virgin brand has
become one of the top 50 brands in the world. In 2017, the Virgin Group
announced plans to invest in a Hyperloop company that claims to
transport passengers from London to Scotland in 45 minutes. Though a
disparate group of companies, the Virgin brand has long been associated
with efficiency and high-quality services.
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Leadership at Virgin
Sir Richard Branson, Chairman of Virgin Group since 1973, has attained
almost cult status in England. Virgin’s success has been attributed to
Branson’s innovative entrepreneurial ideas and his leadership style. He
has operated his unwieldy holding company from a distance, relying on
telecommunications to keep him in touch with his executive managers.
His reasoning is that ‘People always want to deal with the top person in
the building. So somebody besides me takes complete responsibility. He
becomes chairman of that company … and I can be left to push the group
forward into new areas.’
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Case Exercise
On your own, or in a study group:
1. Complete an online search of the Virgin Group. What, in your view,
differentiates Branson from a senior manager (Hint: review Table
1.2).
2. Thinking about the evolution of the main theories of leadership (see
Table 1.3), what theory, if any, helps us understand Branson’s
leadership style?
3. To what extent, if at all, does context, such as outsourcing, affect
leadership?
120
Sources of additional information
Visit Virgin’s website at www.virgin.com.
http://www.virgin.com/
121
122
2 Strategic Management, Innovation
and Leadership
John Bratton
George Boak
‘Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a
follower.’
Steve Jobs, cited in Woo, 2013
‘Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral
thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not
know exactly how to build the ceiling.’
Greta Thunberg, 2019: 67
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Chapter Outline
Introduction
Strategic management
A framework for studying strategy and leadership
The nature of innovation
The external and internal contexts driving innovation
Leaders’ roles in innovation processes
Evaluation and criticism
Conclusion
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Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
explain the external and internal contexts of work organizations and
the potential implications for leader–followers’ relations and
behaviours;
discuss the proposition that neoliberalism has shaped the role of
leadership;
analyse the factors driving innovation and the leaders’ roles in
facilitating the process.
video
To learn more about innovation, don’t forget to watch the video
conversation for this chapter online.
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Introduction
We live in an era of turbulence and great change. As we write,
trade wars between the USA and China and the ongoing
negotiations surrounding Britain’s withdrawal from the European
Union (EU), commonly referred to as ‘Brexit’, are just two political
upheavals that make the global business context perhaps the
most challenging to analyse. Global factors and a variety of
internal organizational processes compel executives to reflect on
and revise their investment in research and development (R&D)
and their corporate management strategy. According to the World
Economic Forum (WEF), innovation is one of 12 pillars to national
competitiveness, and political turbulence put at risk R&D
expenditure and innovation (Hamilton and Webster, 2018).
Modern manufacturing strategies centre around complex just-in-
time supply chains, and trade disputes between the USA and
Canada, USA and Mexico, and Britain and the EU are sources of
uncertainty and risk, which may cause investment in R&D and
new technology to be scaled back (Inman, 2019; Pooler et al.,
2019). Academic interest in the role of context has been ‘limited’
to examining the links between economic-political crises and
charismatic leadership (Conger, 2011). This is because few
leadership scholars have a political economy background and,
further, any contextual investigations are complicated by the fact
that organizational leaders will perceive the relative importance of
any contextual changes differently.
Studying the changes in the global and national economies would
fill several volumes. The aim of this chapter is to provide a sketch
of the contexts that affect leadership dynamics. But we also have
to bear in mind that corporate leaders attempt to change the
external context. The chapter proceeds to examine innovation, its
drivers and the role of leadership in promoting innovation.
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Strategic Management
The word ‘strategy’, deriving from the Greek noun strategos,
meaning ‘commander in chief’. In a management context, the
word ‘strategy’ has now replaced the more traditional term ‘long-
term planning’ to denote a specific pattern of behaviour
undertaken by upper-echelon leaders with power in order to
accomplish organizational goals. Hill and Jones (2012: 3) define a
strategy as ‘a set of related actions that managers take to
increase their company’s performance.’ The giant retailer
Walmart, for example, has enjoyed competitive advantage over its
rivals because it pursues a number of strategies, including a lower
cost structure, lower prices, a larger market share, lower wages
and higher profits than rival supermarkets (Fishman, 2007). For
Grant (2018: 4) strategy is simply ‘about achieving success’. In
for-profit organizations, ‘success’ usually means the company has
a competitive advantage. In American and British non-profit
organizations, it invariably means doing the same or more for
less.
Traditionally, top power-wielding hierarchical leaders undertake
strategy development. In contrast, in non-traditional learning
organizations, the accumulated actions of informed and
empowered employees contribute to strategic development (Daft,
2015). A collaborative strategy can emerge from business
partnerships with suppliers and customers, non-profit and
environmental agencies and groups. Strategy is therefore the
essence of managerial activity.
In the UK, there has been a transformation of public sector
organizations through privatization, outsourcing or the application
of business-oriented management practices (see Chapter 15).
This development has led to generic models of strategic
management, previously applied only in for-profit organizations,
being applied in many public sector organizations (Ferlie and
Ongaro, 2015). Whether in private or public sector organizations,
a successful strategy is consistent with the organization’s
environment and with its internal goals, resources, capabilities
127
and shared values. But an important antecedent is corporate
ideology, a system of ideas that explains and lends legitimacy to
management’s actions which influences strategic decisions by
senior executives. Strategic management is best defined as a
continuous process that requires the constant adjustment of three
major, interdependent poles: the values of senior management,
the resources available, and the environment (Figure 2.1).
Figure 2.1 The three traditional poles of a
strategic plan
The environment operates at two levels. One is the macro or
societal environment that is external to an organization. The other
is the micro or specific environment. Forces in the macro
environment profoundly impact at the level of industry, and include
the economy, demographics, politics, technological developments,
national culture and ideologies. Forces in the micro environment
affect processes within the organization, and include local labour
markets, suppliers, customers and specific technologies. The
distinction between macro and micro environments is dynamic.
Elements in the macro environment constantly penetrate into the
micro environment, and affect an individual organization.
There are numerous ‘schools’ of strategic management, many of
which exhibit distinct theoretical perspectives (Mintzberg et al.,
2009; Ferlie and Ongaro, 2015). What follows, therefore, is a brief
introduction to the field. Typically, the strategic management
process is broken down into five steps:
1. Mission and goals
2. Environmental analysis
3. Strategic formulation
4. Strategy implementation
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5. Strategy evaluation.
Mission and goals is the first step. It involves top hierarchical
leaders evaluating their position in relation to the organization’s
raison d’être (mission), which indicates the direction in which
senior management is going and the outcomes the organization is
trying to accomplish (goals). The leaders who comprise what
Mintzberg (1989: 98) calls the ‘strategic apex’ coalesce around a
vision, which is contingent upon a specific belief system or
ideology that appeals to like-minded stakeholders (Lovelace et al.,
2019).
Figure 2.2 A framework for linking
management strategy and leadership
Environmental analysis involves identifying various factors that
might impact on the organization. STEEPLE analysis is a common
tool for classifying macro environmental influences into seven
129
categories: socio-cultural, technological, economic, ecological,
political, legal and ethical. Macro environmental scanning is a
difficult process and not all environmental influences are equally
important (Choo, 2001; Johnson et al., 2017). The STEEPLE
model forms part of Figure 2.2. Scanning the environment also
involves identifying principal external opportunities and threats
and internal strengths and weaknesses. This well-known tool is
referred to as ‘SWOT analysis’: while opportunities and threats
(the macro environment) will emerge through a STEEPLE
analysis, strengths and weaknesses (the micro environment) can
be analysed through a SWOT – Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities and Threats – analysis or a variant PRIMO-F –
People, Resources, Innovation, Marketing, Operations, Finance –
framework (CIPD, 2018c).
Strategic formulation involves upper-echelon leaders evaluating
the interaction between strategic factors and making strategic
choices that enable the organization to meet its business goals.
The process, as described here, draws on the ‘strategic choice’
perspective, which underscores the distribution of power: ‘where
power lies, how it comes to be there, and how the outcome of
competing power plays and coalitions within senior management
are linked to employee relations’ (Purcell and Ahlstrand, 1994:
45), which has relevance for theories of power and distributed
leadership (see Chapters 3 and 8).
Strategy implementation is an area of activity that focuses on
the role of leadership, as implementation often involves the
adaptation and development of a strategy, as well as gaining
support and commitment from those who are expected to carry it
out. Leadership is considered to be critical to driving pro-
environmental behaviours and promoting environmental
sustainability (Robertson and Barling, 2015) (see Chapter 16).
Strategy evaluation is an activity that determines to what extent
the actual change and performance match the desired change
and performance (see Chapter 12).
Conventional strategic management wisdom depicts the five
major activities as forming a rational and linear process. It is,
130
however, important to note that it is a normative model, that is, it
shows how strategic management should be done rather than
describing what is actually done by senior managers. Finally, to
conclude this brief overview of strategic management, we will
reiterate the idea that strategy is a political process undertaken by
people with power and who are influenced by the ideology of
neoliberalism (see Chapter 4).
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A Framework for Studying Strategy
and Leadership
A number of organizational theorists have argued the importance
of understanding leadership in terms of technological stability or
instability, economic ‘imperatives’ and levels of strategic decision
making (Wajcman, 1998; Cyert and Williams, 1993). We offer here
an integrative, or ‘open’, model for studying the context of
leadership and for examining how different levels of strategic
decision making can potentially be an antecedent for distributed
leadership. Our model, shown in Figure 2.2, consists of five parts:
(1) the external or macro environment, (2) the internal or micro
environment, (3) a hierarchy of strategy, (4) levels of leadership
and (5) corporate performance.
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1. The external or macro environment
For the EU, the USA, China and much of the world, these are
challenging and perplexing times. In discussing the external
environment, we shall apply the STEEPLE framework to illustrate
key forces:
Socio-cultural factors include demographic trends, social
mobility, levels of education, societal beliefs, customs,
conventions, attitudes to paid work and values. Changing societal
values have an impact on leader-followers. For example, changes
in traditional gender roles and new lifestyles change participation
rates (see Chapter 4).
Technology is quintessentially a defining feature of modernity.
Technological innovation has transformed our planet, our societies
and individual behaviour. Technologies are intertwined with
innovation; they are also complicit in the greatest challenges we
face today (Bridle, 2018b). The replacement of labour by the next
generation of robots and artificial-intelligence (AI) systems will
potentially make unskilled and semi-skilled workers superfluous in
all industrialized countries (Schwab and Davis, 2018). A
combination of new technologies and climate change will be the
key drivers of transformative economic and social change (Bratton
and Grant, 2018).
Economic globalization underscores the need to examine the
organization within its totality. Facebook, with roughly 1 billion
account users globally, exemplifies the globalization of capitalism
(Cavusgil and Knight, 2015). Globalization impacts buyer–supplier
and inter-organizational relationships (Puranam, 2018), business
cycles and unemployment (Yueh, 2018). As briefly mentioned in
Chapter 1, economic globalization has been augmented by the
ideology of neoliberalism, a theory of political economic practices
that proposes that human prosperity can best be advanced within
a national institutional framework characterized by robust private
property rights, free markets, free trade and minimum state
intervention in markets (Harvey, 2005).
133
The ideology of neoliberalism, particularly in the USA and the UK,
has dictated economic policies, public sector transformation and
deregulation of labour markets. Ideology is important because
corporate leaders use their vision, which is contingent upon a
specific belief system, to appeal to like-minded individuals
(Lovelace et al., 2019). Numerous critics argue that the ideology
of neoliberalism has had a detrimental effect on workers, including
creating insecurity and income inequality (Piketty, 2014; Stiglitz,
2017).
Ecology refers to the way human activities impact the natural
world. The science is clear: on current trends in global warming,
humanity faces an ‘existential crisis’ (Monbiot, 2017).
Organizations are significant contributors to climate change, and
leaders have the potential to decarbonize the workplace through
new investment and policies and practices that promote pro-
environmental behaviours (see Chapter 14).
Politics in our model refers to all levels of government impacting
on work organizations, including fiscal policy, trade regulations,
consumer protection, EU policies and directives, exchange rate
policy, and geopolitical factors like military conflicts and cross-
border terrorism.
Legal in the STEEPLE analysis includes employment legislation,
consumer protection laws, and occupational health and safety
legislation. Critics of neoliberalism argue that employment law
reforms have had negative effects on workers’ rights, which have
affected workplace relations. For example, a 2018 report found
widespread exploitation and abuse of workers, ranging from wage
theft to slavery, in 17 sectors of the UK labour market, including in
food services, car washes, nail bars and agriculture (Lawrence,
2018).
Ethical considerations reflect the growing concern for conducting
business in an ethical way. Organizations can be morally good or
bad according to the consequences of their actions (Hoffman,
1990). Profits and brand image can be profoundly impacted by
unethical strategic decisions. In 2015, for example, a high-profile
case of alleged unlawful and unethical behaviour centred on
134
Volkswagen executives accused of legal and ethical violations of
emission laws (see Chapter 5).
Pause and reflect
Look at Figure 2.2. How will new trade arrangements impact you or a
workplace you have studied?
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2. The internal or micro environment
The internal environment describes the regular, patterned nature
of work-related activities, technology and processes that is
repeated day in and day out in the organization. As mentioned
above, the CIPD suggests that the internal environment can be
analysed through a PRIMO-F model consisting of six identifiable
variables that impact on the active interplay of leaders and
followers: people, resources, innovation, marketing, operations
and finance (CIPD, 2018d). In studying the first variable, people, it
is important to emphasize that with increasing globalization,
immigration and changing demographics are increasingly
diversified in nature (Bendl et al., 2017). These changes are
challenging leaders to harness a diversity dividend by adopting
the practices of inclusion that improve performance outcomes
(see Chapter 9).
Resources, or lack of (e.g. skilled workers), can identify internal
weaknesses in the organization. Innovation and new technology
potentially affect the quality of work and the behaviour of
individuals, groups and operating processes. Marketing covers
both marketing and sales activities. Operations include the ‘nuts
and bolts’ of providing a product or service. The way work routines
and activities are managed will be strongly influenced by
organizational structure, defined as the manner in which an
organization divides up its specific work activities and achieves
the coordination and control of these activities. Structure can take
many forms. Much debate has centred on whether organizations
have shifted from bureaucratic forms with highly specialized tasks
and a hierarchical authority to post-bureaucratic forms with low
specialization and ‘flat’ authority. The sixth variable, finance,
incorporates all accounting procedures. Each variable is
examined using SWOT analysis.
Critical Insight: ‘Good jobs’ and ‘bullshit jobs’
136
British economist Paul Mason argues that the rapid change in
technology is altering the nature of work and blurring the distinction
between work and leisure. The technological direction of this
revolution is at odds with its social direction. ‘Socially, we are trapped
in a world of monopolies, inefficiency, the ruins of a finance-
dominated free market and a proliferation of “bullshit jobs”’, he
observes. There are competing explanations of the polarization in job
quality. Economic globalization has helped create this polarization
between high-skilled occupations such as professionals on the one
hand, and lower-skilled white-collar and blue-collar occupations on
the other, in terms of skill differences, remuneration and security of
employment.
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Activity
Working on your own, or with a group:
1. Read Arne Kalleberg’s (2016) chapter ‘Good jobs, bad jobs’, in
S. Edgell, H. Gottfried and E. Granter (eds), The SAGE
Handbook of the Sociology of Work and Employment London:
SAGE, pp. 111–28.
2. How does Kalleberg explain the polarization in job quality?
3. How, if at all, does job quality present challenges to managers
and organizational leaders?
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3. A hierarchy of strategy
Conventional wisdom identifies a hierarchy of strategy: corporate,
business and functional. In Figure 2.2 we have added a fourth
level of strategy: team.
Corporate-level strategy describes an organization’s overall
direction in terms of its general philosophy towards the growth and
the management of its various operating units. Figure 2.2
proposes that corporate strategy can only be understood in the
context of the wider external environment, the internal
environment, strategic choice considerations, the opportunities
and constraints facing the organization, and corporate ideology, all
of which, determine – or at least influence – the strategic
management process.
Corporate strategies determine the types of business a
corporation wants to be involved in and what business units
should be acquired, modified or sold. This strategy addresses the
question ‘What business are we in?’. Corporate-level strategy
involves at least four types of leadership initiative:
establishing investment priorities;
initiating actions to improve the performance of those
business units;
finding ways to improve the synergy between related
business units;
making decisions dealing with diversification.
Business-level strategy deals with decisions and actions
pertaining to each business unit, the main objective being to make
the unit more competitive, or in non-profit organizations to improve
or maintain services at reduced costs. This level of strategy
addresses the question ‘How do we compete?’.
Michael Porter (1980) describes three types of competitive
strategies: cost leadership, differentiation and focus. The low-cost
leadership strategy (e.g. Walmart) attempts to increase the
organization’s market share by having the lowest unit cost and
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price compared with those of competitors. The differentiation
strategy (e.g. Rolex) assumes that strategists distinguish their
services and products from their competitors in the same industry
by providing distinctive high-quality services or products such that
the customer is prepared to pay a premium price. With the focus
strategy (Mountain Equipment Co-operative), executives
concentrate on a specific buyer group or regional market.
Functional-level strategy relates to the major functional
operations within the business unit, including R&D, marketing,
manufacturing, finance and HR. This strategy level is typically
primarily concerned with maximizing resource productivity and
addresses the question ‘How do we support the business-level
strategy?’.
Team-level strategy relates to unit or team operations and
activities within major functional operations and is typically
concerned with implementing the functional strategy and
addresses the question ‘How do we support the functional-level
strategy?’.
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4. Levels of organizational leadership
Figure 2.2 also illustrates different vertical levels of leadership in
the organization, from executive to first-order, second-order and
team leadership. This notion of levels of leadership, aligned with
the vertical hierarchy of strategy, draws on Purcell and Ahlstrand’s
(1994) work on management decision making in multi-divisional
companies, and on Jaques’ (1990) idea of the different
capabilities required at different levels of an organization.
The notion of levels of leadership can be illustrated by the
example of flying different kinds of aircraft. Taking control of a
Boeing 747 or a small, single-engine Cessna aircraft both involve
piloting, but obviously the level of capabilities needed to fly each
aircraft is quite different. As already noted, in large organizations a
hierarchy of decision making exists, from corporate to business to
functional to team. Different levels of leadership match this
hierarchy of decision making. ‘Executive-level’ strategy involves
executive leadership, while ‘second-level’ strategy, it is suggested,
entails functional (e.g. HR) leadership. The leadership capabilities
needed to undertake a large-scale transformation at corporate
level or across multiple organizations (e.g. police, health care or
regional development) is obviously different to the capabilities
needed for team leadership (Jaques, 1990). Thus, leadership
scholars emphasize the complexity and importance of developing
leadership capabilities and high-quality relationships (see
Chapters 15 and 17, for example).
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5. Organizational performance
The fifth part of our model is organization performance. The
evaluative context addresses the much-researched question ‘Do
certain leadership behaviours actually improve and sustain
performance outcomes at the individual, group, and organizational
levels?’. Although there is well-documented evidence that a
combination of determinate leadership behaviours is associated
with positive performance outcomes, the association is by no
means uncontested. We examine performance outcome issues in
Chapter 11.
Models similar to the framework presented here for analysing the
links between management strategy and leadership have received
criticism for simplifying social reality. While we do need to caution
against any notion of describing ‘the’ context in reference to
leadership, the framework can be a useful heuristic for increasing
awareness and understanding of organizational leadership
processes.
Leadership in Action: The fall of Travis Kalanick
Travis Kalanick, the co-founder of ride-hailing organization Uber,
resigned as chief executive of the company in June 2017 in response
to pressure from Uber’s largest investors. This followed the
publication of a report commissioned by the company, from former
US attorney general Eric Holder, into the organization’s culture,
which found that sexual harassment, gender discrimination and
bullying were common, and recommended that Kalanick’s role
should be reduced. Recent years had also seen allegations of Uber
under-paying drivers, spying on politicians and celebrities, and
hacking technology. In March 2017, Kalanick had been filmed angrily
yelling at his own Uber driver when the latter complained about his
rates of pay.
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Reflective question
1. What ethical issues are raised by Kalanick’s behaviour?
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Source
Newcomer, E. and Stone, B. (2018) ‘The fall of Travis Kalanick was a
lot weirder and darker than you thought’, Bloomberg Business Week.
Available at www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018–01–18/the-
fall-of-travis-kalanick-was-a-lot-weirder-and-darker-than-you-thought
(accessed 17 September 2019).
144
To explore this topic further see:
Jones, M.T. and Millar, C.C. (2010) ‘About global leadership and
global ethics, and a possible moral compass: an introduction to the
special issue’, Journal of Business Ethics, 93 (1): 1–8.
Legge, K. (2000) ‘The ethical context of HRM: the ethical
organization in a boundaryless world’, in D. Winstanley and J.
Woodall (eds), Ethical Issues in Contemporary Human Resource
Management. London: Palgrave, pp. 23–40.
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The Nature of Innovation
Innovation can be defined as the process of coming up with good
new ideas and making them work technically and commercially
(Tidd and Bessant, 2018). Innovation therefore only counts as
innovation if it produces something that ultimately will be sold to
customers, or, in the public sector, that will result in ‘more for less’
(Parker, 2018: 30).
Bessant (2003) distinguishes between incremental and
breakthrough innovations. Incremental innovations improve
existing goods, services, processes and management practices,
techniques and structures: a more efficient vacuum cleaner,
motorcar or mobile phone, or data processing system, for
example. Incremental innovations enable organizations to ‘do
things better’. Over time, and in cumulative form, incremental
innovations can produce significant changes. Breakthrough
innovations enable organizations to ‘do things differently’.
Breakthrough innovations introduce wholly new products and
services, such as the iPhone, magnetic resonance imaging, and
social networking websites. Bessant observes that most
organizational innovation follows a pattern of occasional
breakthrough (e.g. Apple’s iPhone) followed by long periods of
cumulative improvement.
Innovation is not limited to creating new goods and services. The
OECD (2018) identifies two main types of innovation:
Product innovation: the introduction of a good or service that
is new or significantly improved with respect to its
characteristics or intended uses. This includes significant
improvements in technical specifications, components and
materials, incorporated software, user friendliness or other
functional characteristics.
Process innovation: the implementation of a new or
significantly improved production or delivery method. This
includes significant changes in management practices,
techniques, equipment and/or software.
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An innovation may be developed through invention or through
adoption from elsewhere. For example, Dyson invented and
introduced bagless vacuum cleaners and novel designs for hand
dryers, and then other organizations developed and introduced
their own versions of these products. The Dyson products were
what Tidd and Bessant (2018) would call ‘new to the world’
whereas the competitors’ products were ‘new to the organization’
that set out to manufacture them.
Since the 19th century, long business cycles have been driven by
major innovations (Bratton and Grant, 2018). As early as 1821,
the disruptive effects of new machinery were analysed by British
economist David Ricardo in his book The Principles of Political
Economy, and by Karl Marx, ‘Machinery and Modern Industry’ in
Capital in 1867. Innovation continues to be seen as a cornerstone
of competitiveness (Crossan and Apaydin, 2010; D’Souza et al.,
2017). Organizations innovate in order to capture new markets or
to retaliate against competitors; they do so in order to improve
aspects of their operations, and to reduce costs. Public sector
organizations innovate in order to improve services to their clients,
to improve efficiency and to reduce costs.
Christensen (2016) argues that a common pattern of innovation is
disruptive innovation. Disruptive innovation occurs when a
company – usually smaller and with fewer resources than the
market leaders – is able to enter a market and mount a successful
challenge to those who have dominated it. The smaller company
is able to do this because the market leaders focus on improving
their products and services to meet the needs of their most
profitable customers, and they ignore the needs of some parts of
the market. The new entrant produces goods/services – usually at
a lower price and with lower functionality – that appeal to these
ignored market segments. The market leaders judge this to be
irrelevant to their interests. However, over time, the new entrant is
able to improve the quality of their goods/services and moves into
the mainstream market: when they succeed in winning a stake in
the main market, they disrupt the position of the market leaders
(Hopp et al., 2018).
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At the time of writing this book, AI is emerging as one of the IT
world’s most disruptive innovations, which is causing market
leader Facebook, like some of its main competitors, to design the
core components for computer systems that can handle the new
demands of AI (Waters, 2019b).
Pause and reflect
Read Paul Krugman’s 14 March 2019 article in the New York Times:
https://nyti.ms/2CkOlFX?smid=nytcore-ios-share. Does innovation
‘destroy or create jobs’?
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The External and Internal Contexts
Driving Innovation
As discussed above, contextual changes create strategic
opportunities but also constraints (Tidd and Bessant, 2018).
Globalization and the dismantling of tariffs may lead to new
opportunities for product or service innovation and competition.
Changes in political positions (e.g. China and US trade tariffs) and
in legislation or regulations (e.g. diesel emissions standards) can
significantly alter the ‘rules of the game’ or product demand.
External drivers of innovation therefore include market
opportunities, competitive pressures, changes in laws and
regulations, and changes in available technologies. Changing
social attitudes impact on markets, for example, in the UK
changing attitudes to smoking and concerns about obesity, fast
foods and sugar. In the UK, a tax on sugar in foods and drinks
was introduced in 2018 as a measure to combat childhood
obesity, and this led many manufacturers of soft drinks to develop
new low-sugar formulae for their products to minimize the effects
of the tax. The confectionary manufacturer Cadbury, for example,
announced that it was to launch a version of its best-selling
chocolate bar with 30 per cent less sugar; rival brand Nestlé had
already announced that it would launch a chocolate bar containing
reduced sugar (Wood, 2018). Public concern about plastic
pollution in the oceans is encouraging individuals to recycle more
and avoid the use of single-use plastic, which is beginning to
create new thinking and ways of doing (The Economist, 2018).
In Canada, cannabis was legalized for recreational use in 2018,
with edible products infused with cannabis expected to become
legal a year later, leading a number of organizations to develop
cannabis-related products, including cannabis-infused cocktails
and cannabis-based beer (Kassam, 2018). In this case, a change
in legislation, and anticipation of a very large market, prompted
innovations.
News of developments in technology can also be seen as an
external driver of innovation. Technologies that currently appear
capable of giving rise to new products, processes and business
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models include: data analysis algorithms, AI, block chain and
crypto currencies, virtual reality and augmented reality, genetic
engineering, 3-D printing, the Internet of Things, smart mobile
devices, and autonomous driving. Not all innovations concern
technology changes, although this is a major driver in many
industries at present (Chambers and Kirkland, 2016; Ringel et al.,
2018). Innovations in the format of TV shows, for example, are
rarely dependent on new technologies. Process innovations that
can make a significant difference to how organizations operate,
such as team working, may be developed without the application
of new advanced technology (Womack and Jones, 1996; Storey
and Holti, 2013a).
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Enablers and obstacles to innovation
Enablers of innovation within an organization include the available
human knowledge and resources (Crossan and Apaydin, 2010),
positive innovation strategies (Tidd and Bessant, 2018),
organizational cultures and practices that encourage and facilitate
creativity and innovation (Mumford, 2014) and leadership (Su and
Baird, 2018).
Organizational creativity can be defined as the generation of ideas
that are both novel and useful (Amabile, 1988). Three main
factors contribute to individual or small team creativity: expertise,
creative-thinking skills, and intrinsic motivation (Amabile, 1997).
The main factors within the wider work environment that influence
employee creativity are managerial and supervisory direction and
encouragement, the organizational ambition to innovate, and the
availability of resources. In terms of management innovation,
including new management practices, techniques, processes and
structures, Su and Baird’s (2018) study found that leadership style
influences management innovation with a more initiating style
associated with the extent of use of new managerial techniques.
Management innovation was also influenced by the use of
controls with a more interactive (diagnostic) approach associated
with the extent of use of new managerial processes and
techniques (practices and structure). Creativity is only the starting
point for innovation, however, and organizational practices also
need to provide the infrastructure and resources to assess
creative ideas and to implement those that are deemed promising
(Tidd and Bessant, 2018).
Research has identified internal factors to be an obstacle to
disruptive product innovation: for example, practices such as a
focus on meeting the needs of customers in existing markets
through incremental improvements in products, services and
processes; a dependency on market research and planning;
expertise in manufacturing processes associated with existing
products; and the application of established rules for return on
investment decisions (Christensen et al., 2015; Christensen,
2016). To counter the effect of these impeding factors,
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Christensen advocates the establishment of smaller, rollout
organizations to focus on the emerging market.
However, Tushman and Euchner (2015) argue that radical
innovation can be achieved in established organizations, if
sufficient structural and systemic measures are put in place to
accommodate the tension between producing today’s products
and developing products for tomorrow. Ringel et al. (2018) found a
range of different organizational arrangements in companies
undertaking digital innovation, including the establishment of
centralized innovation units.
In summary, a number of external and internal factors may drive
or enable innovation. Managers and leaders influence internal
factors and, naturally, there has been much research interest in
how leaders can be most effective in generating and supporting
innovation processes.
Pause and reflect
Thinking about health care, what are the current drivers of innovation
(Hint: focus on demographic changes)?
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Leaders’ Roles in Innovation
Processes
Innovation involves a number of different processes: creative
thinking and action in order to produce new ideas; evaluation of
the outcomes of this creative thinking and making decisions about
whether to proceed and, if so, how; and development and
implementation of the ideas so that they become innovations that
are technically and commercially viable (Crossan and Apaydin,
2010). A simplified visual conception of the process as a series of
stages in a supportive organizational environment is shown in
Figure 2.3.
Figure 2.3 Stages of the innovation process
(based on Goffin and Mitchell, 2005, and Tidd
and Bessant, 2018)
As the end-of-chapter case study illustrates, it is widely
recognized that the reality of innovation is more complex than the
diagram. As Anderson et al. (2014: 1299) observe, ‘the innovation
process as it unfolds over time is messy, reiterative, and often
involves two steps forward for one step backwards plus several
side steps.’
Leadership at different levels in organizations influences
innovation processes. Senior leaders shape strategies, structures,
systems, knowledge management practices, organizational
culture and climate, and make crucial decisions about initiating
innovations and about resource allocation (Crossan and Apaydin,
2010).
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Denti and Hemlin (2012) argue that senior leaders need to
influence innovation in two ways: by constructing environments in
which people feel encouraged and enabled to innovate, and also
by setting goals and directing activities.
In larger organizations, leadership of innovation is likely to be
distributed between different levels of the organization and
between different individuals and groups (Fu et al., 2018; Patton
and Higgs, 2013). Being perceived as ‘clusters’ of innovation
within different units of the organization necessitates that
individual leaders need to be able to work well together across the
organization in order to exercise shared leadership (Bolden and
O’Regan, 2016).
Different stages of the innovation process require different types
of leadership behaviours. Countless different theories have been
offered and subject to empirical scrutiny. Mumford and Licuanan
(2004) note that leaders’ supportive and guidance behaviours are
vital in the initial creative stage, to encourage effective interactions
among group members, and are equally important in creating
suitable conditions for implementation. Mumford (2014) argues
that leaders may need to articulate a vision in order to stimulate
creativity, and that they must also be able to get creative people to
work together in teams towards common ends. He also argues
that leaders’ instrumental behaviours, such as clarifying roles and
responsibilities, establishing standards, appraising work quality
and providing resources, are often critical to success. In addition,
leaders need to be able to negotiate successfully with
organizational stakeholders for support and resources for
innovative projects.
Traditional views of leadership place the process of innovation
squarely in the hands of leaders. However, the role talented
employees play in generating ideas that are both novel and useful
shifts the focus of the process of creativity to followers. The
process of leading innovation requires the process of following.
‘Followership’ refers to the behaviours of followers, which
emerges from the leader–follower influence relationship (Kelly,
1992). It is co-produced by the leader and follower in a given
context, and, in terms of creativity, the focus shifts to talented and
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‘effective followers’ rather than just the leaders. As Jaussi et al.
(2008: 307) observe, ‘Creativity and innovation in organizations
require the recognition and valuing of followership.’ We explore
the notion of effective followers further in Chapter 13.
Studies of corporate innovation have drawn on ideas from
research into organizational learning that there is a need both for
exploration (the search for new knowledge and ideas) and the
implementation or exploitation of what is already known (March,
1991; D’Souza et al., 2017). Maintaining a balance between
exploration and exploitation has become known as ambidexterity,
and this idea has been applied to leadership behaviours (Rosing
et al., 2011; Havermans et al., 2015). Ambidextrous leadership is
likely to be needed at all levels of an organization, from executives
to team leaders (Uhl-Bien and Arena, 2018). Leadership
behaviours that encourage the opening up and exploration of
ideas and possibilities need to be balanced with leadership
behaviours that encourage implementation by closing down
possibilities, agreeing aims and deadlines, and achieving results
(Zacher et al., 2016). However, we should beware of over-
simplifying the relationship between creativity and implementation:
the pathway to realizing an innovation will rarely consist of a
moment of creativity followed by a process of straightforward
implementation. Creativity is likely to be needed at several stages
along the pathway to overcome problems that will arise.
Transformation and transactional leadership are well-established
theories of leadership behaviour (see Chapter 7) that have been
applied to innovation. The value-based inspiration associated with
transformational leadership is well-suited to stimulating changes in
employees’ creative and innovative behaviours. Oke et al. (2009)
argue that transformational leadership is particularly important for
the early stages of the innovation process – where leaders can
establish and communicate a vision, stimulate different
perspectives on issues, and demonstrate they value each
individual team member. The development and implementation
stages, which require a focus on management systems and
rewards (Oke et al., 2009), have a greater need for transactional
leadership.
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In summary, it is thought that leaders at different levels in an
organization may need to influence innovation processes in a
number of different ways, from nurturing creativity among
followers to providing the structure and direction for
implementation.
Pause and reflect
How can leaders support the innovation process?
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Evaluation and Criticism
Critical management scholars offer a sustained critique of the core
concepts and strategic decision-making process examined in this
chapter (e.g. Fleming, 2017; Parker, 2018; Salaman, 2016).
Critical accounts emphasize that neoliberalism is more than just
an economic system. It has a political and ideological agenda.
Such criticism brings to the fore the discourse on corporate
ideology, which here we define as the major beliefs and values
expressed by upper-echelon leaders that provide leaders and
followers with a frame of reference for decision making and action
(Goll and Zeitz, 1991). Importantly, corporate ideology provides
important insights into how the employment relationship is
managed (Edwards, 2006; Wajcman, 1998). For example, the
doctrine of ‘shareholder value’ holds that corporate leaders should
be rewarded for the extent to which they increase the benefits to
shareholders through the distribution of profits or the increase in
share price. Piketty (2014: 334) argues that ‘meritocratic
extremism’, the norm in the USA and the UK, ‘to designate certain
individuals as “winners” and to reward them all the more
generously’ is heavily implicated in and supportive of global
inequality.
A notable feature of much of the strategy literature is the tendency
for the research and narrative to be power blind. The prefix
‘strategy’ embeds hierarchy and power within the organization.
Although academics emphasize the importance of ‘engagement’
and ‘consultation’ with ‘stakeholders’ as part of the decision-
making process, strategy development is never the outcome of
democratic processes, and thus is predicated on the inequalities
of power (Parker, 2018).
A third criticism of the mainstream literature is its tendency to
fetishize the role of charismatic leaders in enabling innovation,
while the mediating effect of employees with creativity or the state
is ignored or downplayed. Workplace learning scholars remind us
that successful innovation is not about individual charismatics
having ‘light bulb’ moments of genius, rather the process of
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innovation resides in the complex dynamics of learning and
knowledge, cooperation and trust (Bratton and Garrett-Petts,
2008). The global success of Apple illustrates the active role of
the state in promoting innovation. Mazzucato (2013) persuasively
argues that Apple would not have been a global success without
the investment and intervention of the US government. In
particular, she points to the equity investment by a US federal
agency and Apple’s access to technology, resulting from
government research programmes in publicly funded institutions,
such as universities.
Image 2.1 Leadership literature tends to
fetishize the role of charismatic leaders in
enabling innovation; however, the global
success of Apple illustrates the active role of
the state in promoting innovation.
158
Conclusion
We have attempted to cover a wide range of complex issues in
this chapter. In essence, we have emphasized that the macro
(external) and micro (internal) environments have an effect on
corporate strategy – the way employees are managed and are
led. The connection between the external and internal
environments and the search for competitive advantage and
efficiencies through innovation are multifaceted. We have
explained that strategic management plans provide a ‘road map’
for managers to follow in order to fulfil their core responsibilities.
Levels of leadership are associated with different levels of
strategic decision making.
The chapter has conceptualized innovation as a cornerstone of
improved performance and competitiveness. A range of external
drivers can create innovation opportunities, challenges and
constraints for an organization. The external drivers and internal
enablers are likely to be different in detail for each organization,
but research indicates some common patterns that we can apply
to understand individual cases. Within organizations, leaders and
managers at all levels can influence the different processes that
lead to innovation.
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Chapter Review Questions
1. How can STEEPLE analysis and SWOT analysis be used to study
the effects of the macro environment on the tourism industry?
2. What do you understand by the term ‘neoliberalism’? What
relevance does it have to management strategy?
3. What key innovation processes do leaders need to support? How
can they do this?
Assignment Task: Apple
In 2007, Apple’s net income was US$3.5 billion. In 2015, it was
US$53.4 billion, and in 2018 it became the first trillion-dollar
corporation. Data available on the Internet shows Apple’s
performance before and after the launch of the iPhone in 2007.
Apple claims to give great importance to R&D. But there is an
apparent paradox here because Apple does not spend as much as
some of its main competitors on R&D. In 2013, investment in R&D
for Samsung was 6.4 per cent, for VW 5.2 per cent and for Google
13.2 per cent. In contrast to Apple’s phenomenal success, the
Canadian technology company Research in Motion (RIM), best
known for manufacturing BlackBerry smartphones, became a
casualty of the new super cycle of innovation. The arrival of Apple’s
iPhone caused a dramatic slowdown in RIM growth and a decline in
sales, most notably in the USA.
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Questions
1. Research online sources to write a report which includes: (a)
figures that chart Apple’s and RIM’s performance in terms of
growth rates in sales and net income between 2005 and 2018;
and (b) compare Apple’s spending on R&D with RIM. In the
light of these comparisons, provide some explanation for
Apple’s success and RIM’s relative demise.
2. Discuss the importance of the mediating effects of the role of
the state on the rise of Apple and the fall of RIM.
Go Online
Further your knowledge and build your bibliography for
assignments by reading the recommended journal articles for this
chapter.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
video
Learn more about leadership in practice by watching the video
conversation for this chapter.
Paul Stanley, CEO of Global Navigation Solutions, discusses how, as
the shipping industry goes through a large-scale digital transition, he
manages innovation and group dynamics within his team.
The video can be found at https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
See the inside front cover for the access code and instructions.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
161
Further Reading
Boxall, P. and Purcell, J. (2016) Strategy and Human Resource
Management (4th edn). London: Palgrave, pp. 31–53.
Christensen, C.M. (2016) The Innovator’s Dilemma: When new
technologies cause great firms to fail. Brighton, MA: Harvard
Business Review Press.
Farnham, D. (2015) Human Resource Management in Context:
Strategy, insights and solutions (4th edn). London: CIPD, pp. 16–
29.
Mazzucato, M. (2015) The Entrepreneurial State. New York:
Public Affairs.
162
Case Study: Steve Jobs – the quintessential
entrepreneurial corporate leader?
163
Background
In 2005, Steve Jobs was worrying about the path that innovation in his
industry was taking. He thought that the company’s leading product, the
iPod, was in danger of being overtaken by developments in digital
phones.
At that time, he was the CEO of Apple. He had led the team that
produced the Macintosh computer launched in 1984, but left the company
in 1985. In 1997, Jobs returned and rescued Apple from impending
bankruptcy by developing the iMac and by imposing strict efficiencies in
production, purchasing and stock control. Subsequent major innovations
followed. Jobs did not achieve Apple’s innovations single-handedly, but
even as CEO he took a ‘hands-on’ approach in product development. He
worked closely with Jony Ive, whom Jobs described as a ‘spiritual
partner’, to integrate design and manufacturing for each new product.
Ive later said, ‘The ideas that come from me and my team would have
been completely irrelevant, nowhere, if Steve hadn’t been there to push
us, work with us, and drive through all the resistance to turn our ideas into
products.’
In 2005, Jobs was concerned that digital mobile phones could make the
iPod redundant. There was also an opportunity: the mobile phone market
was large and rapidly growing. At first Jobs tried partnering with Motorola,
but that was unsuccessful. So Apple’s design team set their minds to the
features of a phone they would personally want to use. Jobs had trusted
his instincts. Asked in 1982 if he wanted to carry out market research on a
product, he said ‘No, because customers don’t know what they want until
we’ve shown them’.
164
The problem
As well as wrestling with design problems, there was a strategic issue to
address. A new phone would have much of the functionality of the iPod
and therefore destroy iPod’s market. Jobs showed little hesitation in
moving forward, however. But he said ‘If you don’t cannibalize yourself,
someone else will’. The work to develop the iPod into a smart phone was
not successful, but they used touch-screen technology they were
developing for what would become the iPad for the iPhone.
Jobs has been described as a perfectionist, and he would pick up on
small details of prototypes and developing products that he felt did not
meet his standards. He could be brutally critical and abusive, and throw
temper tantrums. Jony Ive, head of design, described how he kept the
design of the touch screen used in the iPhone from Jobs in the early
development stages because he feared Jobs would destroy it with
criticism. However, once they had decided to use a touch screen for the
iPhone, Jobs spent part of each day for six months contributing to the
detail of its design.
As they neared completion, Jobs called for a pause. He called the design
team together. He was not happy. He said ‘Guys, you’ve killed yourself
over this design for the last nine months, but we’re going to change it.’
The team accepted his assessment and the redesigned iPhone was
launched in 2007.
(Based on Isaacson, 2011)
165
Case exercise
It is widely recognized that the innovation process as it unfolds over time
is complex, reiterative, and often involves two steps forward for one step
backwards. With this in mind, look at Figures 2.2 and 2.3 and, working in
a group or alone, prepare a report that:
1. Identifies Jobs’ leadership role in Apple’s success before and after
2007. In particular, comment on his personal qualities that furthered
the innovation process.
2. Asks: To what extent, if at all, did team-level leadership at Apple
influence the innovation process?
3. Discusses the importance of the mediating effects of the role of the
US state on the rise of Apple to the first trillion-dollar corporation.
166
Sources of additional information
Christensen, C.M. (2016) The Innovator’s Dilemma: When new
technologies cause great firms to fail. Brighton, MA: Harvard Business
Review Press
Isaacson, W. (2011) Steve Jobs. London: Abacus.
Isaacson, W. (2012) ‘The real leadership lessons of Steve Jobs’, Harvard
Business Review, April: 93–102.
Mazzucato, M. (2015) The Entrepreneurial State. New York: Public
Affairs.
167
168
3 Power and Leadership
Joanne Murphy
John Bratton
‘It can be a tough world out there and building and using
power are useful organizational survival skills.’
Jeffrey Pfeffer, 2010: 5
‘Power is everywhere’ and ‘comes from everywhere’.
Michel Foucault, 1998: 63
169
Chapter Outline
Introduction
Conceptualizing power
Different perspectives on power
Power and management
Conclusion
170
Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
recognize and explain the types of power within leadership
processes;
understand and explain the different perspectives on power;
describe the evolution of studies of power and leadership as a field
of learning;
identity contemporary challenges around power and leadership.
video
To learn more about dispersed leadership, don’t forget to watch the
video conversation for this chapter online.
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Introduction
The concept of power is one of the most significant and
controversial issues in leadership studies. Bakan (2004) argues
that corporate power trumps parliamentary democracy and
society’s interests. As an example, sometimes, it is argued,
corporate leaders exercise their power to employ professional
lobbyists to reshape laws and politics in their own interests or to
thwart regulations, such as lobbying against compulsory labelling
of fat, salt and sugar on food, and opposing banking regulations
and controls (Jones, 2014; Monbiot, 2014). Evidence of executive
corporate power shaping economic and political outcomes
demonstrates, if nothing else, that the exercise of power is not an
abstract concept, but can have real repercussions for individuals,
society and the environment.
But what is power? Power is generally defined as the capacity or
the potential to influence others in relation to their beliefs, attitudes
or activities. This is often associated with the well-known concept
of social power (French and Raven, 1959) and the dyadic
relationship between the person being influenced and the person
influencing, and recent perspectives on how power is exercised
(Sloof and von Siemens, 2019).
Image 3.1 Mainstream leadership scholars take
the asymmetrical power relationship within
the leadership process as natural and
unproblematic
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Critical leadership scholars contend that mainstream leadership
scholars take the asymmetrical power relationship within the
leadership process as natural and unproblematic (Collinson, 2011;
Hardy and Clegg, 1996). The literature on team theories of
leadership espouses the sharing of power between leaders and
followers. Critical scholars, however, argue that work teams ‘blur’
power relations and generally continue to adopt an apolitical
perspective to power.
This chapter will outline the concept of power through its many
dimensions, and how our understanding of it has developed over
time within leadership studies. It will also explore different
perspectives on power and the use of power as a lever in other
organizational processes. The ‘Case Studies’, ‘Leadership in
Action’ examples and ‘Exercises’ will focus on the practice of
power within real-world contexts and the positive and negative
ways power can be used to achieve personal and organizational
objectives.
Pause and reflect
Before proceeding with your reading of the chapter, take a moment
to think about your own thoughts on the meaning of ‘power’. As you
read this chapter, be sure to keep in mind that a good definition of
173
power should offer you the capacity to see the areas through which it
might be questioned, challenged or altered.
174
Conceptualizing Power
The nature and distribution of power have been central issues for
social and organizational theorists. The classical social theorists
Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Max Weber (1864–1920) provided the
foundations for contemporary studies on power in organizations.
Marx’s declaration that ‘men [sic] make their own history, but they
do not make it just as they please’ (1852/1972: 595) inevitably
raises questions of conflict and power. For in Marx’s view, the
making of history is made not just in relation to the physical world
but also through the struggles that some social groups engage
against others in circumstances of domination. Marx (1867/1970)
argued that ‘class interests’ – capitalist versus workers – follow
from the social relations concerning the ownership and control of
the means of production, and there-fore conflict and power are
structured into organization design. Few scholars accept this
deterministic view of power (Hardy and Clegg, 1999). An oft-
quoted objection to Marx’s observations on conflict and power is
that they greatly exaggerate the significance of class struggle and
class relations in history (Giddens, 1984: 256).
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Max Weber’s theory of power
Weber offered a more nuanced approach to power. Although
acknowledging that power was derived from the ownership of the
means of production, Weber argued that power was derived from
the knowledge and expertise necessary to operate the means of
production as much from ownership. Weber’s analysis of power,
therefore, examined social relations in production as well as
relations of production (Hardy and Clegg, 1999: 369). Weber
defined power as ‘the probability that one actor within a social
relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite
resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests’
(1921/1968: 53). For Weber, power is about imposing your will in a
given situation, even against opposition and without regard to all
conceivable qualities of a person and all combinations of
circumstances. At the centre of Weber’s organizational writings is
his theory of legitimate domination through legally enacted
policies and regulations, found in modern bureaucracies. Two
central elements were crucial to the system of domination. First,
the legitimacy of the organizational leader’s power, and the
perception by followers that the leader’s authority was legitimate
for those who were subject to it. The second element was the
creation of an ‘administrative apparatus’ in which followers carry
out the commands of the leader. In essence, Weber’s conception
of legitimacy referred to the extent to which managers and
workers or followers actively acknowledge the ‘validity of the ruler’
in a recognized order (Morrison, 2006: 363), and in management
parlance the right of the leader to issue commands to cause
others to act.
Weber’s treatment of ‘types of authority’ rather than ‘power’ in
bureaucracies is frequently cited as the source of neglect of power
in studies of organizational behaviour. The treatment of ‘power’ as
‘authority’ can be traced to the early American mistranslation of
the term ‘Herrschaft’ to mean institutionalized ‘authority’ (Clegg
and Dunkerley, 1980: 434). This definition became the basis for
orthodox studies of power, in which power relates to authority, as
a phenomenon informally rather than formally developed in the
organization. The ‘formal–informal’ distinction thus becomes the
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focus where ‘authority is the potentiality to influence based on a
position, whereas power is the actual ability to influence based on
a number of factors including organizational position’ in the
hierarchy (1980: 435).
Orthodox studies of ‘power’ in work organizations have located
the bases of power in some relationship, such that they enable
‘power’ to be ‘exercised’ or in specific socially authorized
‘resources’ that a worker may control. An example of this
perspective is Robert Dahl’s (1957) model, which conceptualizes
social power by the phrase ‘power over’ versus ‘power to’ and
which produced his much-quoted phrase ‘A has power over B to
the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not
otherwise do’ (1957: 202–3). Power ‘over’, whether individually or
collectively, refers to the control of one agent over others, and
power ‘to’ is the capacity to realize ends. Critical scholars have
tended to focus on ‘power over’, concentrating on its
oppressiveness and injustice. However, Hearn (2012: 7) argues
that ‘power over’ and ‘power to’ are ‘inextricably bound together
… it is the increase in power over, in ever more extensive and
complex forms of hierarchic social organization, which has yielded
massive increases in our power to’ (2012: 7).
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French and Raven’s theory of power
Related to Hearn’s conceptualization of power is a definition by
French and Raven (1960) in which an a priori list of ‘power
resources’ is formed. This conceptualization of power likewise
focuses on the potential ability of one individual to influence
another within a certain social situation. This theory assumes that
the particular ‘resource’ possessed by the individual that will have
a utility in one situation, will have that usefulness in all situations.
It also assumes perfect knowledge on the part of all concerned
being able to judge correctly the utility of all resources in all
situations (Clegg and Dunkerley, 1980). In fact, French and Raven
developed five bases of power – referent, expert, legitimate,
reward and coercive – the most important of which, first
suggested by Warren (1978), are those related to reward and
coercion. An employer promising you a pay increase or promotion
to act as he or she instructs or, in contrast, threatens demotion or
redundancy, is using reward power and coercive power
respectively. Giddens (1984) notes that all individuals may ‘have
power’, but in an organizational context, power is influenced and
constrained by the distribution of different types of resource. In
this framework there are ‘allocative resources’, which refer to
control over physical things such as monetary reward, and there
are also ‘authoritative resources’, which involve control over
management practices. For example, an entrepreneur has the
allocative resources of her capital, as well as authoritative
resources granted by the legal system to establish her company
and HR system in a way she feels is appropriate.
Critical Insight: Crisis in British cycling
This exercise will look at the current difficulties in British cycling and
the role of power (in particular expert, legitimate, reward and
coercive) within the complex coaching and competitive environments
in elite sport.
Focusing on the 2017 internal review, allegations of bullying and
autocratic behaviour, this article in Cycling News explores how power
178
operates in high-octane environments:
www.cyclingnews.com/features/british-cycling-sexism-and-
discrimination-crisis-timeline (accessed 23 September 2019).
179
Activity
Thinking about your own experience as a student or an employee,
have you come across autocratic behaviour? How is power
exercised in different and complex environments?
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Stephen Lukes’s theory of power
Although Weber’s and French and Raven’s theories remain a
useful starting point for studying power, French and Raven’s
taxonomy of power treats power as an attribute and the property
of an individual leader (Jackson and Parry, 2011). Stephen Lukes
(1974) offers an alternative approach that treats power as a
relational construct, and not solely the property of an individual.
For Lukes, power is a ‘three-dimensional’ phenomenon. The one-
dimensional view of power focuses on the individual’s ability to
enact commands in observable conflicts. For example, if an
employer changes his mind for transferring operations abroad in
response to a strike by workers, it would be evidence that the
workers had power. One-dimensional power dynamics focus on
the behaviour of leaders and followers in the making and
enactment of decisions where there is a conflict of interest. The
outcome of a decision is observable and shows which side is
‘powerful’. Equally important to Lukes’s explanation are the
conditions of a conflict of interest. Where, for example, conflict is
just a matter of fine-tuning existing organizational structures and
routines simply rooted in the contingencies of everyday
organizational life, Lukes uses, not unlike Weber, the word
‘influence’. However, where conflict is so deeply rooted that to
challenge it is to simultaneously challenge the very nature of the
leader or the organization itself, Lukes uses the word ‘power’.
Both planned decision making and latent or unintended uses of
power play a role in Lukes’s explanation of power.
A two-dimensional view of power extends the analyses by
examining the ability of social actors to control the agenda, which
is a source of power overlooked in the pluralist model, one-
dimensional perspective. Lukes extends the analysis and argues
that there is also a three-dimensional perspective, which provides
a ‘radical view’ of power. He argues that people sometimes act
without coercion in ways that appear contrary to their self-
interests. Lukes calls this the ‘manipulation of desires’ and asks ‘Is
it not the supreme exercise of power to get another or others to
have the desires you want them to have – that is to secure their
compliance by controlling their thoughts and desires?’ (1974: 27).
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Thus, the three-dimensional view is the social processes in which
those with power induce the powerless to behave or believe as
the former wish, without coercion. This is achieved by a complex
infrastructure of persuasion or justification.
Most polemical accounts of how the powerful wield power through
an infrastructure of persuasion begin with Karl Marx’s theory of
ideology and his critique of consciousness and the work of neo-
Marxists, such as Herbert Marcuse’s claim that through the
agencies of socialization (e.g. education and the corporate press),
the powerful exercise power over the powerless by promoting
narratives and ideas that generate compliant workers and passive
consumers. The effectiveness of these agencies is captured by
George Monbiot’s incisive observation: ‘the ideology
(neoliberalism) that now governs our lives. Not only is it seldom
challenged; it is seldom even identified’ (2017: 3). It can be
argued that Lukes’s three-dimensional perspective is not a theory
of the exercise of power, but recognition of the effectiveness of
structures of persuasion on individuals (Giddens and Sutton,
2017: 911).
Pause and reflect
Take a pause to think back to your own university or work
experiences (or those of friends or family members). How can you
distinguish between Weber’s concept of ‘authority’ and the broader
structures of power as discussed by Lukes? More broadly, how has
the social infrastructure of power systems supported the ‘authority’ of
elites?
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Different Perspectives on Power
So far, we have looked at what can be called ‘traditional theories’
of power. These theories help us think outside common-sense
views. The writings of the French philosopher Michel Foucault
(1926–1984) and the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937)
offer important insights to consider.
183
Foucault’s theory of power
Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1977b) and Power/Knowledge
(1980), although oriented by an interest in the ‘micro-politics’ of
power and preoccupied with individual identity, is a highly
influential theory of power. Traditional theories of power, such as
those of Weber and Lukes, relied on fixed identities where power
is possessed; accumulated by powerful social elites that is visible,
such as the state, global oligarchs or corporate leaders (see Table
3.1). Foucault’s understanding of power is based on a different set
of assumptions. He states, ‘I hardly ever use the word “power” …
[but] … relationships of power’ (Foucault, 1991: 11 and cited by
Townley, 1994: 7).
For Foucault, power operates within all social institutions, at all
levels of social interaction and through all individuals. Power does
not intrude from powerful individuals; it exudes from within.
Followers are not the victims of others’ power; rather, they are
both the perpetrators and the victims of the very power that
constrains their behaviour. For example, an employee feels
obligated to stay late at the office because her team leader is still
there; even though she does not know whether late working will
result in anything either positive or negative. Thus, although the
team leader apparently possesses the power, it is, in reality, self-
coerced (Bratton et al., 2005: 135). Foucault argues that ‘one
must analyse institutions from the standpoint of power relations –
not vice versa’ (1983: 222). For Foucault, power is associated with
the web of policies, practices and procedures found within
organizations. Conceptualizing power as a relational activity,
rather than as a possession, widens the focus of attention from
the ‘who’ and the ‘why’ to the ‘how’ of power, HR policies and
practices (i.e. by which it operates). Thus, in Foucault’s model of
power, ‘the individual is continuously constituted and constructed
through social relationships, discourses and practices’ (Townley,
1994: 11).
Foucault’s conceptualization of power, unlike Lukas’s, makes it
even clearer that there is a double edge to power. It prevents
some behaviours while at the same time positively encouraging
184
others, both at the broadest political and historical levels and at
the deepest level of individual identity. Foucault observes:
[I]t seems to me now that the notion of repression is quite
inadequate for capturing what is precisely the productive
aspect of power. In defining the effects of power as
repression, one adopts a purely juridical conception of
such power; one identifies power with a law, which says
no, power is taken above all as carrying the force of a
prohibition. Now I believe that this is a wholly negative,
narrow, skeletal conception of power, one that has been
curiously widespread. If power were never anything but
repressive, if it never did anything but to say no, do you
really think one would be brought to obey it? What
makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is
simply the fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us as a force
that says ‘no’, but that it traverses and produces things, it
induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse.
It needs to be considered as a productive network which
runs through the whole social body, much more than a
negative instance whose function is repression. (1980:
119)
For Foucault, power constitutes what we know as a society,
including, of course, how we think about work organizations. His
approach emphasizes that power and knowledge are closely
interconnected, serving to reinforce each other. The claims to
knowledge of an accountant or engineer, for example, are also
rights to power, as they are put into practice in an organizational
context where that knowledge is operationalized (Giddens and
Sutton, 2017). Foucault claimed therefore that power is all-
pervasive: what people see as their interests as well as the
strategies they devise for achieving these interests are
determined by existing power structures or discursive practices
and to a considerable extent serve to reinforce them (Ailon, 2006:
783). In Foucault’s analysis, power is discussed in terms of the
development of discourses (ways of thinking and discussing
issues such as markets, poverty or climate change) which sets
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limits to how these are ‘known’ and the many ways through which
it is exercised – ‘regimes of power’, ‘networks of power’,
‘technologies of power’ (Crane et al., 2008). Theorists writing
about organizations and power have also come to use Foucault’s
theories to identify how organizations can resist the negative or
‘dark’ side of organizational life that ‘stifles the individual,
frustrates the attainment of certain desired social ends and
threatens to distort many core values of democratic societies’
(Abel, 2005: 496). By using Foucault’s conceptualization of power
as something not held by individuals but engendered by the
adjustments of dominance and resistance that occur in society
more generally, Abel (2005) draws attention to the possibility that
power can be used to optimise and grow organization
environments and to ensure that they better contribute to wider
society. Heizmann and Olsson (2015: 760) also make this point:
‘power is not only negative’. They conclude that Foucualt’s
power/knowledge lens offers a way to see power as productive or
the ‘claims and rationalities’ (2015: 760) that shape both society
and organizations.
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Gramsci’s theory of power
Gramsci’s perspective on power provides an important starting
point for political scientists, but it also overlaps with Foucault’s
approach to power. A key term is ‘hegemony’, which
acknowledges the complexity and mixture of consensus and
conflict, and hence power relations in a broad sense. It derives
from the Greek, where it originally referred to a leader or ruler
(egemon), but has come to describe a very nuanced form of
socio-political predominance. Raymond Williams (1983), one of
the earliest English-speaking writers on Gramsci’s work, explains
the importance of the concept of hegemony, in most general
terms, as follows:
The idea of hegemony … is especially important in
societies in which electoral politics and public opinion are
significant factors, and in which social practice is seen to
depend on consent to certain dominant ideas which in
fact express the needs of a dominant class (1983: 145).
Williams (1960) observes that Gramsci asserted that hegemony is
the ‘normal form of control’, and that state coercion and violence
only become the norm at times of political crisis (Williams, 1960:
591; cited by Clegg and Dunkerley, 1980: 492). Specifically,
hegemony expresses two types of power relations. The first
describes a group’s domination over other groups, and the second
describes a group’s leadership. Hegemony therefore represents a
whole body of practices as well as expectations, assignment of
energies and ordinary understandings of the world in terms of
meanings and values. In essence, it expresses the relationships
of leadership and domination that produce a general sense of
coordinated reality for most people.
An important contribution to our general understanding of power,
and in turn of power as it relates to organizational leadership,
comes from the notion of emergent forms of practice that lie in
some form of opposition to a dominant or hegemonic bloc in the
187
sense that Gramsci and Williams described. First, the notion
provides a basic framework for understanding the character of
alternative (resistant) practices in opposition to a complex of
dominant presumptions. An entire sub-school of organizational
studies literature has specifically addressed the issue of
resistance (Roscigno and Hodson, 2004). Building from this
notion, we can see that human behaviour emerging from non-
dominant (i.e. followers) standpoints need not strictly reproduce a
particular hegemonic order. Followers’ action can at times run
tangentially to it, and possibly even in direct opposition to it. In
both cases, it represents an active, social process in which
alternatives resist against incorporation.
Table 3.1 Traditional and non-traditional
conceptualizations of power
Table 3.1 Traditional and non-traditional conceptualizations of
power
Weber’s and Lukes’s
concepts of power
Foucault’s and Gramsci’s
concepts of power
Power is possessed by
the individual
Power is relational and
pervasive
Power resides in social
elites
Power is found in everyday
social practice
Powerful dominates
powerless, resistance is
futile
People build their own web of
power, resistance challenges
elites
Power is negative and
repressive
Power is creative and
contributes to social order
Power is visible,
exercised when needed
Power is imperceptible through
everyday routines
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Weber’s and Lukes’s
concepts of power
Foucault’s and Gramsci’s
concepts of power
Knowledge of power
sources is empowering
Knowledge buttresses the web
of power
Source: adapted from Buchanan and Badham, 2008
In less abstract terms, we are talking about people’s behaviour or
‘misbehaviour’ (Capeller, 2001; Smith, 2015) that is rooted in
activities which do not align with the basic goals of the
organization. Power in organizations is often revealed in different
forms of resistance. Richard Sennett’s (2012) ‘social triangle’
concept – authority, mutual respect and cooperation – remind us
that human capability is different from other ‘resources’ because
followers’ cooperation and commitment always have to be won
and sustained by leaders and managers. Human acts are
quintessentially indeterminate. This approach to power holds that
‘power is a consequence as much as a cause of followership: if –
and only if – followers follow leaders become powerful’ (Grint,
2005: 46). Followers always have a choice not to act and,
importantly, they have the capacity to resist a leader’s decisions
and actions and engage in non-cooperation, absenteeism or
strikes. In summary, no leader can guarantee that followers will
follow and any discussion of power and leadership has to
acknowledge that leader–follower relations are inevitably
characterized by structured power, cooperation and conflict.
Pause and reflect
Thinking about structural sources of power, why are accountants
typically more influential and powerful than human resource
managers? Do you think some university departments are more
powerful than others? If so, why?
Leadership in Action: The case of Oxfam and Aid worker abuse
189
In February of 2018 Penny Lawrence, the Deputy Chief Executive of
the international aid charity Oxfam, resigned following allegations
that its staff hired prostitutes while working in Chad and Haiti. Oxfam
employs nearly 10,000 employees working in more than 90
countries. Ms Lawrence had joined Oxfam in 2006 and
acknowledged that she had failed to act upon allegations that aid
workers had abused vulnerable people. Among the staff accused of
misconduct was the then director of Oxfam’s operations in Haiti,
Roland Van Hauwermeiren. He was alleged to have used prostitutes
in a villa rented for him by the charity. While the charity was aware of
the allegations and launched an internal enquiry at the time,
concerns were raised that it failed to give the Charity Commission full
details of the enquiry and that it failed to pass on details to future
employers of staff who were dismissed as a result of the enquiry.
These omissions resulted in the resignation of Ms Lawrence who
said she was ‘ashamed’ and took full responsibility.
190
Question
1. What does the example above add to an understanding of
power and its abuse within leadership positions?
2. What types of power can you identify?
3. Where was power used and where was it not used within the
example?
191
Sources
Aziz, S. (2019) ‘As a former aid worker, I’m not shocked by the
Oxfam revelations’, Guardian, 12 February. Available at
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/12/aid-worker-oxfam-
scandal-haiti-abuse-bullying-culture (accessed 17 September 2019).
BBC News (2018) ‘Oxfam Haiti allegations: how the scandal
unfolded’. Available at www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-43112200
(accessed 17 September 2019).
192
To explore this topic further see:
Hodson, R., Roscigno, V.J. and Lopez, S.H. (2006) ‘Chaos and the
abuse of power: workplace bullying in organizational and
interactional context’, Work and Occupations, 33 (4): 382–416.
193
Power and Management
Now we turn to the role of power in the context of leadership and
management within organizational structures and practices.
Power leader–follower relationships have gained importance as
workplaces have become increasingly complex, interdependent
and volatile (Asch and Salaman, 2002). Within this context,
obedience is central to an analysis of the construction of power in
leader–follower relations (Clegg, 1998), an insight shared by
ancient scholars such as Epictetus and classical social theorists
such as Max Weber (1921/1968). The Greek philosopher
Epictetus declared that ‘no one is afraid of Caesar himself, but is
afraid of death, loss of property, prison, disenfranchisement …
When we love and hate and fear these things, it needs must be
that those who control them are masters over us’ (quoted by
Bass, 1990b: 238). In organization situations, French and Raven’s
coercive power commonly implies the ability of a leader to inflict
on subordinates feared penalties, such as demotion or termination
of employment, for disobedient behaviour or control over
subordinates. Crucially, it is the subordinate’s dependency – job,
income or resources – on the leader that produces the power
imbalance necessary for coercion to be effective. Although
coercion most commonly involves punishment or its threat, uses
of power imbalance to coerce may involve bullying behaviours
that undermine a subordinate’s dignity and self-esteem (Bolton,
2005).
Power relationships are highly relevant to studying bullying
behaviours in organizations (Branch et al., 2013; Keashly and
Jagatic, 2011; Monks and Coyne, 2011). Organizational research
tends to use the terminology ‘bullying’, ‘harassment’, ‘victimization’
interchangeably, but each describes behaviour that constitutes a
‘systematic abuse of power‘ (Monks and Coyne, 2011: 6). Again,
vulnerability to this kind of behaviour is related to dependency. As
Bassman (1992: 2) observes, ‘one common thread in all abusive
relationships is the element of dependency. The abuser controls
some important resources in the [target’s] life; the [target] is
dependent on the abuser.’ The victim of workplace bullying may
194
not label it as such, often calling it ‘intimidation’ or ‘abuse’ or
‘harassment’. Indeed, the absence of recognition of a leader’s
behaviour as bullying may be the consequence of an
organizational culture that has ‘normalized’ bullying behaviours
(Hadikin and O’Driscoll, 2000).
In some organizations, bullying may be dismissed or denied as
simply ‘banter’ or difficult to identify as it appears to be a
behavioural norm. In Damaged Goods (2018a), author Oliver
Shah alleges that retail executive leader Sir Philip Green’s public
humiliations were a regular way of interacting with followers. Shah
alleges that Philip Green said to the women’s wear buyer who had
paid too much for a range of apparel: ‘You’re absolutely fucking
useless. I should throw you out of the window, but you’re so fat
you’d probably bounce back again’ (quoted by Hutton, 2018a: 54).
Publically compelled to deny unlawful sexual and racist behaviour,
Philip Green claimed he has only ever engaged in ‘banter’ which
had ‘never been offensive’ (Rumsby, 2018: 1). The research
evidence suggests that leader-coercive behaviour and bullying
behaviours occur in workplaces because of the inability of the
victim to defend her- or himself due to a power imbalance (Branch
et al., 2013). It is the analysis of dependency, the processes of
social interaction, the minutiae of everyday work experience and
the often misogynistic norms that inform its conduct which provide
a more cognizant understanding of leader-coercive and bullying
behaviours in organizations.
The episodes of leader-coercive and bullying behaviours in
workplaces clearly represent the ‘dark corners’ of organizational
life that ‘stifle the individual’ (Abel, 2005; Bolton, 2005: 147).
Those leader–follower interactions that include such behaviours
clearly seek to humiliate and degrade the follower. They act as a
sharp reminder that not all leader–follower social interactions rest
upon charismatic appeal or the ritual of deference or adulation.
They also remind us that leaders perpetrate coercive-bully acts
and too often this is interpreted as representing a ‘few bad
apples’, as though socio-cultural influences are of no importance.
But they are embedded within organizational cultures and
processes, which in turn form part of wider societal processes
(Bolton, 2005). Bullying behaviour – verbal abuse, harassment,
195
bullying, sexual innuendo, physical violence – come in many
guises and can be found in most workplaces, even in future-facing
organizations such as Google (Weaver et al., 2018). Importantly,
what Bolton highlights is that the indeterminacy of the employment
contract is further exacerbated within the cauldron of coercion and
abuse.
The effect of leader-coercive behaviour and bullying on recipients
is well documented and can range from psychological stress-
related symptoms to physical harm (Hogh et al., 2010). Research
has found that bullying and abusive behaviour have negative
effects on co-workers, which affect employees’ loyalty,
commitment and performance (Rayner, 1997). Salin and Hoel
(2011) report that acts of bullying can affect organizational
performance through an increase in absenteeism, high turnover
and the cost of recruitment and training interventions, as well as
loss of productivity. In some instances, it can lead to catastrophic
consequences for an organization. For instance, leader-coercion
was a factor in the case of two former Tesco executives facing
prosecution for alleged accounting malpractice. Chris Bush,
managing director of Tesco UK, and John Scouler, commercial
director, referred to in court as the ‘generals’, allegedly
‘pressurised or coerced’ junior ‘foot soldiers’ to falsify records in
2014 by including income in the financial records before it had
been earned. These acts took place within an organizational
culture that had an ‘obsession right from the top’ that ‘budgets
must be hit and targets must be hit’ (Croft, 2018: 18). After the
alleged fraud was discovered, Tesco was forced to issue a
corrected profit statement, which caused its share price to fall 12
per cent, wiping £2 bn (€2.24 bn) off its value (2018). These
reported violations underscore the multifaceted nature of power in
leader–follower relationships; the negative effects on recipients;
and the impact on co-workers and the organization as a whole. It
is also a further reminder that such leader behaviours are rooted
within organizational cultures (see Chapter 4).
Pause and reflect
196
Thinking about your own experience as a student or an employee,
what behaviours have you witnessed or experienced that could be
considered coercive, abusive or bullying? Why is dependency related
to leader-coercive or leader-bullying behaviour?
The academic debate around power in leadership is generally
divided into two perspectives (Gordon, 2002, 2011). The first is
dominated by the way traditional leadership approaches (trait,
style, contingency and new leadership) see power as a
phenomenon within hierarchical structures and control systems of
organization. The research framework for these mainstream
accounts deems a critical analysis of the leader–follower
relationship and power unnecessary and, in so doing, ‘normalizes’
power. The second focuses on the role of dispersed leadership
theories and their emphasis on the promotion of empowerment
through the transfer of leadership responsibilities to lower levels
with post-bureaucratic organizations (Bryman, 1999). In a general
sense, these non-traditional theories advocate a sharing of power
between leaders and followers (Gordon, 2011).
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Orthodox theories
So-called orthodox theories adhere to an understanding of the
conventional structures and control models of organizations and
identify the leader–follower relationship as being of central
importance to leadership practice within that structure. Gordon
(2002) identifies that this presents leaders with a dualistic position
of privilege within organizations: they are considered to be
superior to other followers, either through natural ability or
particular attributes. In addition, orthodox management theorists
see the historical nature of this power differential between leaders
and followers as being relatively ‘natural’ and ‘unproblematic’. As
a consequence, these theories tend to be ‘limited to reflections of
surface-level issues and occurrences. It is therefore limited to
descriptions of what occurs or what “ought” to occur and lacks rich
insight into the problematic interplay between leadership and
power’ (emphasis added, Gordon, 2011: 200). Earlier, Gordon
(2002) identifies this as a theme in the mainstream literature
where leaders are allowed to dominate the conversation and
narrative within organizations and that followers are overlooked
and ignored (Clegg and Hardy, 1999). This leads to a
conceptualization of power as being legitimate for leadership
figures but illegitimate for organizational followers or for trade
unions challenging managerial prerogative.
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Dispersed leadership theories
Dispersed theories of leadership focus primarily on self-leadership
and team-based leadership approaches. Self-leadership sees
employees take responsibility for their own work processes and
direction. Team leadership centres around autonomous work
teams, which each have their own leader. Unlike traditional
theories, these approaches to work design espouse a sharing of
power between leaders and followers. This in turn also changes
the emphasis of leadership and the exercise of power. The
sharing of leadership responsibilities ensures that the emphasis is
put on the process of leadership rather than the attributes or
behaviours of the ‘leader’. However, this also assumes that power
must be shared and that the process of sharing power will be
unproblematic. It is clear from the work of Foucault (1970, 1980)
and others that this is not the case. The ‘deep structures’ to which
Gordon (2002) refers act as a constraint on whether or not
organizational leaders give up power or cease to exercise it in
such environments. From this perspective, power is not something
that people have or don’t have; rather, it is embedded historically
and socially in the structures around organizational actors, is
closely related to the concept of dependency and therefore
pervades activity and impacts on attempts to disperse leadership
(Foucault, 1970, 1980).
Orthodox and dispersed theories do not represent the only way in
which we see power operating within organizational environments.
Fleming and Spicer (2014) remind us that there is a clear
distinction in the literature between episodic theories of power
(where power is directly exercised) and systematic forms of
influence (where power is concealed within often enduring
institutional structures). Fleming and Spicer also identify four sites
of organizational power that are relevant to thinking around
leadership. The first is power ‘in’ organizations, which relates
directly to struggles around formal organizational boundaries and
the exercise of managerial command structures. The second is
power ‘through’ organizations, when the organization itself
becomes a vehicle to further interests or goals. They cite how
NGOs and civil society organizations that partner with firms to
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further objectives such as poverty relief or environmental
protection. The third is power ‘over’ organizations that draws
attention to how elites might compete to influence how an
organization develops. They include attempts for regulation or
lobby for change to an established business model. The fourth
and last dimension is power ‘against’ the organization. This deals
with attempts to use extra-organizational spaces to engage in
political activity and create change within the sector (Spicer and
Böhm, 2007). Interestingly, Fleming and Spicer also draw
attention to the interaction between different types of authority
within organizational leadership structures. They note that while
there is much focus on the Weberian (and traditional) modes of
authority figures, there is little recognition about the role of other
types of authority within organizational leadership. In identifying
traditional forms of authority such as family relations and religion
as additional ‘regulatory’ forces, they ask us to reflect upon the
way established forms of authority interlink and overlap and
sometimes contrast within traditional or dispersed leadership.
In Weberian social theory, the bureaucratic organization is viewed
as a ‘social tool’ and an expression of rational thought and action.
Any follower in a large organization will encounter a complex flow
of power down, up and across organization hierarchies (Clegg,
1998). In mainstream accounts of leadership, such encounters
should be without the impediment of disobedience or resistance,
either individual or collective. Hence, economic domination and
subordination are axiomatic to the capitalist employment
relationship. Power engraves itself within contextual ‘rules of the
game’ that both enable and constrain social action in the
workplace (Clegg, 1975). In postmodernist theory, the
organization is viewed as a ‘defensive reaction to forces … which
constantly threaten the stability of organizational life’ (Cooper and
Burrell, 1998, cited by McKinlay and Starkey, 1998: 1).
Michel Foucault’s conception of power is a multifaceted and
complex phenomenon. McKinlay and Starkey (1998) draw
attention to the contribution of Foucault to our understanding of
the modern organization, power and management. Foucault
traces the genesis of bureaucratic forms of management
rationality not, as in the case of Weber, as a series of abstract
200
‘ideal-types’ but as spheres of power/knowledge centred on
specific social institutions and discourses. Although Foucault and
the classical social theorists Marx and Weber share a common
focus on control and resistance in the workplace arena, for
Foucault power is most potent and efficient when it operates
through bureaucratic rules rather than coercion or force majeure
(McKinlay and Starkey, 1998). Moreover, for Foucault, the defining
activity of 20th-century organizational leadership and
management is not coordination of resources but control of
human capability. For Foucault, therefore, power is associated
with practices and procedures.
In this light, Townley (1994) assesses Foucault’s contribution to
organization theory by examining management tools designed to
observe, know, monitor, shape and control employee behaviour.
Townley reminds us that when power is conceptualized as a
rational activity, questions focus not on the ‘who’ and ‘why’ of
power but on the ‘how’ of power, the practices and procedures by
which it operates. To understand the relevance of Foucault’s work
for leadership and management, we have to return to the essence
of the employment relationship. Central to this relationship,
explains Townley, is the indeterminacy of the contract, the
naturally occurring ‘space’ or gap between what is promised and
the capacity to work and what is realized. In a classic study,
Baldamus observes:
Though [the employment contract] stimulates wage
payments for the employer, nothing definite is ever said
about effort or efficiency; or anything about the
components of effort, the acceptable intensity of
impairment, the intolerable degree of tedium or
weariness. Instead it merely mentions hours of work,
type of job, occupational status and similar external
conditions … Thus the formal contract between employer
and employee is incomplete in a very fundamental
sense. (1961, and cited in Townley, 1994: 13)
Drawing on Foucault’s work, Townley conceptualizes human
resources management (HRM) as a set of practices designed to
201
close the gap between the expectation of performance and what
is realized. The core HR practices discussed in Chapter 9 (e.g.
the employment and appraisal interview) illicit knowledge about
employees that potentially help managers better influence the
relational nature of exchange and the inevitable indeterminacy of
the employee’s performance. To be manageable, individuals must
be known. Townley states that ‘Knowledge of the individual is
important at the point of entry into the organization, and it is here
that a number of confessional technologies operate’ (1994: 113).
Pre-screening processes prior to the employment interview, such
as Facebook or Twitter accounts, provide insight and knowledge
of the applicant. The next stage, the employment selection
interview, uses a number of examining and confessional
technologies. Various personality tests and disclosure about
interests and hobbies are an important means of ‘knowing’ the
candidate. Once employed, performance appraisal is a systematic
process of developing criteria by which to assess followers’
performance, but it is also an example of confessional technology,
argues Townley. It attempts to access the individual’s deeply held
knowledge of themselves, her or his personal wishes and
aspirations, with the ‘aim of creating an internalized self-discipline
based evaluation’ (1994: 118).
The critical literature suggests that people-management
technologies strive to make the individual an object of knowledge,
to locate the individual in a power/knowledge contract for the
purpose of making followers compliant and manageable. Indeed,
HR practices illustrate the intersection of a range of influences on
leader–follower relations. Finally, the use and abuse of power
within and outside organizational structures is a powerful
contemporary concern. Many of the issues that arise within a
consideration of the use of power are timeless: bullying,
bureaucracy, leadership perceptions and equality within
organizations. It is indubitably true that technological advances in
relation to data storage, social media and information accessibility
accelerate and intensify both the negative and positive exercise of
power and its impacts.
Pause and reflect
202
Thinking about recent debates about social media, what
contemporary challenges can you identify in relation to the exercise
of power at (1) an individual level or (2) a group or organizational
level? Do you think these challenges around power have changed
over time?
203
Conclusion
In this chapter we have suggested that leadership is intertwined
with power, but that power is inadequately theorized in most of the
extant leadership literature. We began with traditional theories of
power in which power appears to be ‘embodied’ in individuals, as
something they possess and exert. In short, a leader possessing
power causes others to act. Weber’s work on power remains a
valuable starting point to study power in organizations, but an
alternative perspective of power is offered by Stephan Lukes. For
Lukes, Weber’s account is a somewhat restricted view of power,
and he argues for a three-dimensional perspective.
Non-traditional theories of power show that there are many deep
social roots or ‘sources’ of power systems, including the
influences of ideology. Foucault’s work, perhaps the most
extensive theory of power, notes that it is omnipresent because it
constitutes the very way we talk and think about ourselves, and
implies that followers are deeply enmeshed in their own
subordination; they are both the victims and the perpetrators of
the very power that controls their behaviour. Power has been
defined as ‘good’ in that it can be a resource that is mobilized by
leaders in pursuit of organizational goals, and ‘bad’ or
dysfunctional in the hands of followers who challenge those goals:
a functionalist approach. Power has been equated with
domination and resistance to it as an empowering tool: a critical
approach. Understanding power as a relational process widens
the focus from the ‘who’ to the ‘how’ of power. Foucault’s work
suggests that power is a coin with two sides: on the one, consent,
accommodation and domination; on the other, lack of
commitment, stress, resistance, political action and ‘voice’.
Power is also a significant concern within management processes
and organizations. The chapter explored how orthodox theories of
leadership put leader–follower relations at the centre of
organizational debate. The work of Gordon (2002)
dimensionalizes this as a dualistic position of privilege, either
through natural ability or acquired attributes. The historical nature
204
of this power differential is also seen as relatively unproblematic.
In contrast, dispersed theories focus on self-leadership and team-
based leadership approaches and espouse a sharing of power,
and on the process of leadership rather than the leader. However,
we also identify the outworking of organizational power in other
ways and look to Fleming and Spicer’s work for a
conceptualization of episodic and systematic exercise of power
and for the identification of ‘sites’ of organizational power: ‘in’,
‘through’, ‘over’ and ‘against’. They also remind us that more
traditional modes of power and authority, such as familiar
relationships and religious hierocracies, still exist and can intrude
on and interact with organizational processes. Finally, power is
asymmetrical and requires understanding in its diversity in
organizations and that ‘a theory of power does not, and cannot,
exist other than as an act of power in itself’ (Hardy and Clegg,
1999: 382), otherwise such a theory is lacking reflexive critique.
205
Chapter Review Questions
1. What is the difference between power and authority?
2. What is the substance of the different theories of power offered by
Weber, Lukes, Foucault and Gramsci?
3. What is meant by the phrases ‘power is relational’ and ‘power is not
possessed, it is exercised’?
Assignment Task: Homeboy Industries
This assignment requires you to explore the experience of a Los
Angeles based social enterprise, Homeboy Industries. Homeboy
focuses on the experience of gang members and those who have
served time in prison for violent and gang- related offences. Founded
by Jesuit Priest Fr Greg Boyle (Father G) in 1988 and operating
under the slogan of ‘Nothing stops a bullet like a job’, Homeboy
Industries seeks to move people out of gangs and into meaningful
work.
206
Question
Search the Internet (https://homeboyindustries.org) and define how,
with the skilful exercise of referent, legitimate and reward power, the
leadership of Homeboy Industries has overcome the competing
forces of coercion and violence.
Go Online
Explore the real world of leadership by reading these case
studies:
Sydney Brian-Peters: A Case Study in Gender and Leadership
Issues
Transformational Leadership—Steve Jobs
The BMW Group’s Journey to Leadership in Sustainable
Development Practice
Further your knowledge and build your bibliography for
assignments by reading the recommended journal articles for this
chapter.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
video
Learn more about leadership in practice by watching the video
conversation for this chapter.
Sara Hawkins, founder and director of Projekt 42, explains the
unique dispersed management and leadership structure of the
company and how her employees are encouraged to have autonomy
over the shape of their job role.
The video can be found at https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
See the inside front cover for the access code and instructions.
208
Further Reading
Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge (edited by C. Gordon).
New York: Pantheon.
Foucault, M. (1998) The History of Sexuality: The will to
knowledge. London: Penguin.
Gaventa, J. (2003) Power after Lukes: A review of the literature.
Brighton: Institute of Development Studies.
Gordon, R. (2011) ‘Leadership and power’, in A. Bryman, D.L.
Collinson, K. Grint, B. Jackson and M. Uhl-Bien (eds), The SAGE
Handbook of Leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, pp. 195–
202.
Hayward, C.R. (1998) ‘De-facing power’, Polity, 31 (1).
Hearn, J. (2012) Theorizing Power. London: Palgrave.
209
Case Study: Policing in Northern Ireland –
using power to steer change
210
Background
The use of power within organizations is particularly apparent during
periods of change and transition. The end of the long-running conflict in
Northern Ireland created organizational as well as political challenges. For
the Northern Ireland police, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the
organizational change required was fundamental. As a formal,
hierarchical structure operating on a ‘command and control’ model, the
organization’s leadership was tasked with managing this change against
significant opposition. A new name, a new badge and uniform, a new
crest, a radical voluntary severance programme and the instigation of
balanced recruitment from both sides of Northern Ireland’s historically
divided community formed the core of the change programme. This
meant that the organization would move away from its structure, its
culture and its symbols. In reality, this meant a shift from the name
inscribed on the gravestones of many of the 302 officers who died as the
result of paramilitary violence, and the voluntary severance of many
officers who had served through the conflict. The nature of this change,
the significant resistance within the organization, and a volatile external
context required it to be led carefully and with an understanding of the use
of power in its many forms.
211
The problem
How can the leadership of the new Police Service of Northern Ireland use
different types of power to steer change against formidable internal and
external opposition?
212
Case exercise
Either individually or working in a study group, write a report to the new
police commissioner for Northern Ireland covering the following questions:
1. What aspects of power can you identify in the organizational
leadership during the progression of the change journey?
2. What power processes can you identify within the organizational
membership and in the external environment?
3. What does this example of policing change tell us about using power
to drive change?
213
Source of additional information
BBC News (2001) ‘”New era” as NI police change name’, 4 November.
Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/1636780.stm
(accessed 23 September 2019).
215
4 Culture and Leadership
David Denham
John Bratton
‘The Treasury select committee’s report … found the
alpha male culture was the main reason women gave for
not wanting to work in senior management at City firms.’
Kollewe, 2018: 32
‘I’m not at my desk because I’m walking out in solidarity
with other Googles and contractors to protest against
sexual harassment, misconduct, lack of transparency
and a workplace that’s not working for everyone.’
Weaver et al., 2018: 3
216
Chapter Outline
Introduction
The nature of national cultures
Understanding organizational culture
Perspectives on organizational culture
Organizational culture, climate and leadership
Evaluation and criticism
Conclusion
217
Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
explain the nature of culture and its relationship to organizational
culture;
critically evaluate how organizational leaders seek to change or
manage the culture of an organization;
appreciate critical perspectives on culture and alternative cultural
perspectives towards market relationships.
video
To learn more about employee engagement and voice, don’t forget to
watch the video conversation for this chapter online.
218
Introduction
The opening quotations are examples of research reported in the
media that frequently describe organizations as having a ‘box
ticking’ or ‘bullying’ or ‘alpha male’ culture. Whether it is Apple,
Amazon, Google, HSBC or indeed a university, the word ‘culture’
is used to describe the internal behaviour, values and processes
in an organization. It can also be used to refer to external socio-
economic and political forces that form part of the external context
of organizations. Since the 1980s, the assumption that effective
leaders in an international context need to recognize and respect
national cultural differences has generated cross-cultural research
(Hartnell and Walumbwa, 2011; Trompenaars and Hampden-
Turner, 2012). Indeed, cultural theorists believe that culture is
central to ‘all aspects of organizational life’ (Alvesson, 2016: 26),
that organizational culture can foster affective commitment among
followers (Lee et al., 2018), that under some circumstances
leaders can shape the culture of an organization, but also more
generally, culture can restrict leaders, which is why ‘culture is
serious business’ (Schein, 2017: xiv).
This chapter begins by explaining the nature of national culture
and its relationship to organizational culture, and critically
evaluates how leaders attempt to change or manage the culture of
an organization. It then proceeds to explain how neo-liberalism
has become a basic assumption in styles of political and
economic leadership in many societies, a phenomenon explored
in the case study. Finally, it explores critical perspectives on
culture and alternative cultural perspectives towards market
relationships.
219
The Nature of National Cultures
Williams (1988) believes the word culture is one of the most
complicated words in the English language. He identifies three
broad types of usage: as a process of intellectual, spiritual or
aesthetic development; as a reference to a particular way of life;
and as reference to the arts. All of these are based on social
values, norms and assumptions which people may not always be
aware of. British sociologists Giddens and Sutton (2017: 995)
define culture as ‘The values, norms, habits and ways of life
characteristic of a coherent social group.’ The term ‘socialization’
is used to describe how members of a society learn and embed
various layers of culture, both by internalizing the norms, mores
and values of society, and by learning to perform social roles.
Culture as a concept directs us to see the patterns in social
engagement and behaviour (Schein, 2017). As the late cultural
theorist Stuart Hall (1932–2014) observed, ‘Culture is not a matter
of ontology, of being, but of becoming … [it] is not just a voyage of
rediscovery, a return journey. It is not “archaeology”. Culture is a
production’ (2005: 556). The idea is therefore that a national
identity, such as ‘Britishness’, can be socially constructed, and,
importantly, a national culture is malleable and is being constantly
reproduced (Giddens and Sutton, 2017).
Although the multinational company (MNC) has been theorized as
the very embodiment of isolated or ‘disembedded society’, that is,
it has severed any dependencies on social institutions in its
domestic base (Lane, 2000), business leaders are nonetheless
exposed to and influenced by national culture. Geert Hofstede’s
(2001) influential research attempted to measure national culture
utilizing data from IBM employees across 64 countries. Like
Hofstede, researchers interested in gaining insight into the
implications of different national cultures for managing people in
the workplace, have endeavoured to discover how national
cultures differ. Northouse (2015), for example, describes an
extensive survey carried out by House et al. (2014) which
identified nine cultural dimensions:
220
1. Uncertainty avoidance, the extent to which society relies on
rules to avoid uncertainty.
2. Power distance, views about the extent to which power
should be unequally distributed.
3. Institutional collectivism, the identification of broader societal
interests compared with individual goals.
4. In-group collectivism, the expression of pride in social
organizations and families.
5. Gender egalitarianism, the promotion of restriction of gender
inequalities.
6. Assertiveness, the encouragement of toughness as opposed
to submissiveness.
7. Future orientation, the forward planning and support for
change compared with support for traditionalism.
8. Performance orientation, the extent to which people are
encouraged by and rewarded for improved performance.
9. Human orientation, the degree of cultural support for fairness
and concern for others.
According to the average results of respondents’ attitudes towards
these nine cultural dimensions, national cultures were clustered
into ten groups of countries. There is not enough space in one
chapter to describe the grouping of national cultures fully, but to
illustrate the findings the Anglo group (including the USA and the
UK) is said to have a culture that is characteristically competitive,
results orientated and less attached to their families. Nordic
countries, on the other hand, are said to value long-term success,
gender equality, orderliness and consistency. In contrast to the
Anglo group, assertiveness is downplayed and cooperation and
power sharing between people at all levels of Nordic society are
valued (Northouse, 2015: 437). Importantly, this clustering of
attitudes, it was claimed, reveals cultural differences in preferred
conceptualizations of leadership. Respondents from the Anglo
cluster of countries were found to favour charismatic/value-based
leadership whilst, in contrast, those from the Middle East valued
face-saving and status-maintaining leadership strategies. This
attempt to find average cultural values overlooks the divisions in
societies that mediate the responses of individuals according to
their values linked to class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and
religion.
221
The identification of national cultures is problematic because
surveys tend to assume that each society must have a unitary,
consensual array of values. To illustrate this point, take the UK. It
consists of four distinct nations: England, Wales, Scotland and
Northern Ireland. In both Wales and Scotland, the distinctive
marker of national identity, language – Welsh (Cymraeg) and
Scottish Gaelic – continues to thrive. While Scotland’s
iconography is virtually universal – lochs, whisky, haggis, kilts and
tartan – there is considerable debate on the distinctiveness of
Scottish culture vis-à-vis England. Among Scottish intellectuals, it
is posited that Scottish culture has undergone an eclipse as a
result of its cultural subordination to England. But McCrone (2002)
argues that there is little evidence that Scotland is, in the words of
French sociologist Émile Durkheim, ‘anomic’, a condition in which
society provides little moral guidance to individuals. On the
contrary, McCrone states that ‘one can identify a coherent body of
social and political values which makes Scotland a cohesive
society, as well as one with a complex array of social identities’
(2002: 146). McCrone’s argument is that in modern societies,
Scotland included, social identities are diverse and complex, but,
importantly, that does not mean such societies are ‘normless’
(2002: 145). Modern pluralistic societies have always been
fractured and fractious and values always openly contested
(Malik, 2017). It becomes therefore increasingly difficult to identify
a single ‘national’ culture. This is not to say there is no connection
between national culture and leadership, only to say that some
cultural values and mores rather than others may influence
leaders.
Pause and reflect
Do you think that the country you live in has a distinctive national
culture? Why? Can you identify a coherent body of social values that
make your country a cohesive society, or is it anomic?
222
Dominant cultures, subcultures and
countercultures
Sociological analyses of culture refer to a ‘dominant culture’,
‘subcultures’ and ‘countercultures’. The idea of a dominant culture
implies that in a society with diverse cultures and class divisions,
a ruling class is able to persuade most of the population that its
values and worldview should prevail. It is widely held within many
sociological perspectives that a shared belief system or a ruling
class ideology has a crucial role in maintaining social order in
class societies. In the 20th century, there was debate between
functionalist sociologists who focused on the integrative role of a
consensus of values and neo-Marxists who saw a ruling class
ideology as capable of preventing the working class from
recognizing its true interests and turning to revolutionary social
change. The theory of the Italian communist leader Antonio
Gramsci, who stated that the capitalist class had achieved
domination through cultural hegemony, became very influential
(Femia, 1975). In Gramsci’s view, it was the task of intellectuals to
articulate a critical vision to undermine the hegemony of the ruling
capitalist class. A culture can never be completely dominant as
there is always the possibility that competing values will exist or
that some sections of society (e.g. the poor) will, through their life
experience, fail to be entirely convinced of the legitimacy of the
ruling ideology.
Within society, or, indeed, within a work organization, there may
be groups who do not share the dominant values but express
themselves through different values and symbols such as dress
codes or language. For groups who are stigmatized within society,
their subculture may provide ways of coping and support for their
self-respect and identity. This phenomenon was widely studied by
sociologists of deviance in the 1960s (see e.g. Becker, 1963). The
occupants of different units in an organization who have particular
functions or professional ideals may have a range of subcultural
values which are different from the dominant culture of the
organization. Where a subculture opposes or inverts the values of
the dominant culture, it may be regarded as a counterculture. A
223
counterculture may provide a symbolic resistance to a dominant
culture, or even a solution for its members as they can find a more
positive self-definition within that culture. In work organizations, a
counterculture may develop following the introduction of new work
practices or technology if long-term employees perceive the
changes to be detrimental to their status or security.
224
Understanding Organizational
Culture
The national cultures embedded within people need to be
understood because they interweave explicitly and predictably
with people’s thinking, assumptions and action inside the
workplace, and for leaders they provide choices of who to be in
various situations (Schein, 2017). Though there are multiple
definitions, we can define organizational culture in a sentence
short enough to Tweet: organizational culture is a social construct
made up of values, patterns of relationships and ways of doing
things in a particular organization. Trompenaars and Hampden-
Turner (2012) adopt a wide meaning of organizational culture, one
that encompasses national values and preferences, as well as
personal values held by organizational leaders. A body of
organizational research and analyses provide testimony to the
intersection of work, management and national culture. In terms of
influencing people’s thinking and action, a growing body of cultural
literature is contributing to our understanding of organizational
culture. It is posited, for example, that the neoliberal logic of
privatization and competition forced into all aspects of society
(Mason, 2019) has come to frame decision making by upper-
echelon leaders. Moreover, it has coerced individuals into new
employment relationships, new routines, compelling human
beings to adopt new attitudes, thought patterns, values and self-
images. Writing at the beginning of the neoliberal era, the late
French sociologist Michel Foucault (2018) labelled this new kind
of individual the ‘entrepreneurial self’; for example, that one
establishes the self through forms of personal investment, such as
student loans and unpaid internships (Peters, 2001). Others have
labelled the archtype homo economicus individual as the
‘neoliberal self’ (Gershon and LaDousa, 2019; Sennett, 1998).
Sociologists have documented the rise of a new social archetype:
flexible, tech-savvy, networked, who has exchanged collective
activism and security for autonomy and entrepreneurial
individualism (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2018). The significance of
the model known as neoliberalism extends beyond free-market
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economics. Its real achievement ‘lay in the changes it made to the
way human beings think and behave’ (Mason, 2019: 44).
In summary, the influence of organizations is dominant in shaping,
if not determining, employer–employee relations and ideas, but
organizations are located in national cultures, which influence the
cultures of organizations (Hofstede, 2001). Although national
culture is basic to social interaction, ‘Organizations are typically
best seen as existing in a broader cultural context, with a variety
of societal, industrial, regional, class, occupation, etc., cultures
interplaying’ (Alvesson, 2011a: 153). The creation of the new,
archetypal followers of neoliberalism formed in networked and
anti-hierarchical cultures has obvious ramifications for managing
talent (see Chapter 10), the process of following (see Chapter 13)
and leader–follower relations.
The current trend in mainstream management literature in which
reference is made to ‘corporate culture’ implies that organizational
leaders create their culture through explicit ‘mission’ or value
statements and individual behaviours and the like, which is then
transmitted down to the lower-echelon leaders and other
employees as part of a formalized approach to managing people.
The objective is to persuade employees to internalize the ‘official’
organizational culture that leaders and managers have created. To
be able to create their culture presupposes a power source (see
Chapter 3). As Handy (1985: 189) observes, ‘This culture
depends on a central power source, with rays of power and
influence spreading out from that central figure. In sum, a leader’s
influence and power cause others to act.
Central to this vision of corporate culture is the idea that, with ‘the
right corporate vision, mission statement or leader, an
organization can build a highly committed, unified culture that
fosters productivity and profitability’ (Martin 2002, cited in
Alvesson, 2016: 267). The search for an ‘official’ organizational
culture that builds a committed and highly productive workforce
has dominated both mainstream academic and practitioner debate
for several decades. The focus on culture and performance can
be described as the culture Holy Grail. However, while cultural
control can help to reduce ambiguity and reinforce organizational
226
processes, it can also encourage ‘group think’, hinder critical
thinking and lead to unproductive activities and mistakes
(Alvesson, 2016).
The term ‘organizational culture’ found in the literature describes a
system of ‘shared’ values and beliefs, co-produced by leaders and
followers, which seek to reinforce employee behaviour so as to
achieve the organization’s goals. Cooke and Rousseau (1988:
245) define organizational culture as ‘the shared beliefs and
values guiding the thinking and behavioral styles of members.’
The recognition that organizational culture can be produced at all
levels is a challenge to the unitary theory discussed above. It is
challenged to the extent that it might be permeated by the broader
social culture and by the idea that within an organization there
may be a number of subcultures linked to levels, types of
employee or specialized units within an organization. Terms such
as ambiguity and fragmentation became popular in the 1990s and
organizations are said to have a multiplicity of cultural
orientations, including ‘a mix of broadly shared meanings, group
distinct meanings, ambiguity and an appreciation of individuals
fluctuating between such experiences’ (Alvesson, 2016: 16).
Organizational culture can be regarded as having material or
visible artifacts such as buildings or uniforms or displayed works
of art. For example, displaying art on the wall in the reception area
of a corporate head office signals to visitors and employees alike
that they are entering a stimulating work environment in which
workers can expect to explore ideas and aesthetics that are highly
valued (Harding, 2003). Other examples of cultural artifacts are
the wearing of a stethoscope by doctors in hospitals, the wig worn
by judges in British law courts and the wearing of a professorial
gown in universities. Visible artifacts also include language (when
written down), which is used by managers to convey meaning. For
example, Walmart refers to its employees as ‘associates’, while at
Disneyland they are known as ‘cast members’.
Image 4.1 Formal rituals are collective routines
that ‘dramatize’ the organization’s culture.
But while cultural control can help to reinforce
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organizational processes, it can also
encourage ‘group think’ and hinder critical
thinking.
Related are stories and legends about the organization’s history,
values, ‘ways of doing things’ and change. Jabri (2012), for
example, emphasizes the importance of narrative and storytelling
for constructing organizational change. Leaders and followers talk
about change in narrative form, and in so doing they attribute
meaning to events as they seek to make sense of change in their
organization: ‘narrative lends itself to “sense-making” as people
seek to understand the situations in which they find themselves’
(2012: 77). This includes oral or written discourse – real or
fictitious – that tells of an event or a series of events in a
prescribed sequence within a particular situation. Over the last
four decades, organizational theorists have applied narrative to
change management (e.g. Boje, 1995; Brown et al., 2009; Deetz,
1996).
Rituals and ceremonies are another aspect of observable
organizational culture. Formal rituals are collective routines that
‘dramatize’ the organization’s culture. For example, the office
party can be viewed as a ritual for integrating new members into
the organization. Planned ceremonies represent more formal
social artefacts than rituals; for example, the ‘call to the bar’
ceremony for graduating lawyers or the annual graduation
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ceremony at universities. Drawing on Schein (2017), whose work
has been influential, these observable artefacts and processes
are often viewed metaphorically as the ‘tip of an iceberg’ in
organizational behaviour textbooks (see Figure 4.1).
Figure 4.1 The three levels of organizational
culture
The iceberg metaphor shows two invisible dimensions of
organizational culture, shared values and shared assumptions,
held by members. Although shared work-related values are
invisible (below the surface), they do influence patterns of
observable behaviour in the workplace, including ethical values
and the way the organization relates to customers or clients. For
example, in healthcare, standard medical practice is influenced by
a belief in evidence or a commitment to patient-centred care. In
many universities, practice is influenced by the espoused value of
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‘We are a teaching-centred institution’. Employment-related
espoused values possess six characteristics:
They involve moral or ethical statements of ‘rightness’.
They pertain to desirable modes of behaviour at a given point
in time.
They directly influence employee behaviour and experiences,
and act as significant moderators.
They are typically associated with strategic goals and
address questions like ‘What are we doing?’ and ‘Why are we
doing this?’.
They guide the selection and evaluation of members.
They may vary in respect of male/female, demographic and
cultural differences (Nindl et al., 2013), for example a belief
that women in the armed forces should not engage in combat
roles.
The term ‘shared’ in cultural analysis implies that organizational
members are a whole. Each member has been exposed to a set
of dominant values, although not every member may internalize
and endorse them.
The third dimension of organizational culture relates to basic
assumptions, which, according to the literature, are invisible,
unconscious, taken for granted and highly resistant to change.
These are the implicit and unspoken assumptions that underpin
everyday choices and shape how leaders and followers perceive,
think about and emotionally react to social and organizational
events. For example, in healthcare, assumptions about the
relative roles of doctors and nurses, about patients’ rights or about
the sources of ill health are purported to underpin everyday
decisions and actions (Davies, 2002).
The basic assumptions/beliefs about human nature, human
relationships, relationship to nature and how the world works form
the base upon which employees, who as social beings enter the
workplace with life histories and experiences, build their values of
how the world should be. As Schein (2017) observes, the
occupations that govern work practices (e.g. in the arenas of the
NHS and universities) are themselves cultures with learned and
230
shared values and tacit assumptions that influence behaviour.
Thus, we know that doctors and academics strongly value
autonomy and that practices are often contested to maintain
control and authority over knowledge domains (Swan et al., 2002).
In terms of leading change, this makes certain kinds of reform in
the NHS or universities more challenging.
Pause and reflect
Think about your own university or college: (1) How would you
describe the culture? (2) Try to assess your answer at three levels:
observable artefacts, shared values and basic assumptions of the
culture.
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Organizational climate
In contrast to organizational culture, which reflects the invisible
and intangible dimension of organizational life, organizational
climate relates to managers’ and other employees’ evaluation of
tangible workplace attributes (Norton et al., 2015). Schneider and
Reichers (1983) define organizational climate as employees’
perceptions of formal policies, the procedures that translate
policies into guidelines, and the practices that act upon them.
Schneider et al. (2017) notes that ‘organizational climate’ is the
‘elder child’ in cultural scholarship, and some theorists use the
terms ‘culture’ and ‘climate’ interchangeably. Others refer to the
disagreements over whether the two concepts are distinguishable
constructs as ‘paradigm wars’ (Pane, 2000). Climate is
conceptualized as an artefact of organizational culture (Schein,
1996), as shown in Figure 4.2.
Figure 4.2 Climate as an artefact of
organizational culture
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Organizational culture and organizational climate are two
complementary constructs, but reveal overlapping nuances in the
social and psychological life of complex organizations. The former
tends to take a sociological approach, using qualitative
methodology, to examine symbolic and cultural forms of
organizations. Climate researchers, however, attempt to measure
individuals’ perceptions of autonomy, leadership, growth or
whatever, and the meaning they assign to them, using quantitative
methods derived from the nomothetic traditions in organizational
psychology. The distinction between culture research and climate
research lies in the different methodological traditions, what they
consider to be significantly meaningful, and their agendas. Norton
233
et al. posit that ‘climate represents the nexus at which culture,
local circumstances, and immediate events converge to influence
behaviour’ (2015: 337).
Critical Insight: TESTING THE CONCEPT OF NATIONAL CULTURE
Read the article by B. McSweeney, D. Brown and S. Lliopoulou
(2016) ‘Claiming too much, delivering too little: testing some of
Hofstede’s generalisations’, Irish Journal of Management, 35 (1): 34–
57.
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Activity
1. What do you understand to be the key features of Hofstede’s
concept of ‘national culture’?
2. In what ways did McSweeney et al. test their predictions in the
context of industrial relations?
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Perspectives on Organizational
Culture
Like leadership scholars, cultural theorists adopt different
perspectives on the study of organizational culture. The
genealogy of the different perspectives is rooted in classical
sociological theory (see Bratton and Denham, 2019). For
example, Durkheim’s concern for social solidarity through
ideological consensus suggests that culture is the social ‘glue’
binding an organization together, whereas Weber emphasizes that
individuals behave ‘not out of obedience, but … because … of
unreflective habituation to a regularity of life that has engraved
itself as a custom’ (1921/1968: 312, emphasis added).
Contemporary literature identifies four perspectives:
managerialist, symbolic-interactionist, social conflict and feminist.
The managerialist perspective shares assumptions with
functionalist sociology. Culture is looked upon as an organization-
wide set of values devised by senior managers in order to
produce a committed and loyal workforce. The approach regards
organizational values as having a key role in integrating the
organization at all levels and in ameliorating conflicts which
inevitably arise from managing the labour process. Writers from
this perspective focus on the role of leaders, their style of
leadership and the kinds of culture most appropriate to the
achievement of the goals of the organization. Thus, Rosabeth
Moss Kanter in The Change Masters (1980) observes that
employees find their stability and security not in specific
organizational arrangements but in the culture of the organization.
Since the 1980s, functionalist writers have put forward ideas
about causality by attempting to demonstrate positive linkages
between the ‘right’ corporate culture, employee commitment and
enhanced performance (Deal and Kennedy, 1982; Ouchi, 1981;
Peters and Waterman, 1982). Like the search for the ‘ideal’
leadership style, what constitutes the ‘right culture’ is a matter of
contested debate.
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The symbolic-interactionist perspective contends that
organizational culture is about shared meanings produced by
workers and management in regular, routine contact. Actors within
an organization construct a culture based upon symbols and
meanings that workers and managers share. Culture emerges
from day-to-day symbolic or meaningful action and is not fixed but
subject to negotiation over time. The advocates of this perspective
favour qualitative methods such as participant or non-participant
observation in order to obtain information about the meanings
actors share. Symbolic interactionism is often criticized for not
adequately accounting for the ways ‘larger social structures cause
disagreement on meanings’ (Bratton, 2015: 464).
The social conflict perspective is rooted in Karl Marx’s analysis of
capitalism. It assumes that conflict is a basic feature of all
organizations as members struggle for control over scarce
resources. Values, norms and beliefs are assumed to develop to
maintain the power and control of management. The ultimate
conflict, according to this approach, is between ‘capital’ and
‘labour’ and values are seen as legitimizing management against
resistance from subordinates. The picture represented by conflict
theorists is more likely to be one that represents contradictory,
fluid and unstable cultures. For Joanne Martin (1992),
organizational culture is characterized by so much ephemerality,
ambiguity and change, and so exposes the truth claims of
monolithic and united corporate cultures. The value of this
fragmentary approach to organizational culture is in its exposure
of the naivety of thinking that there is no ambiguity in what cultural
members believe and do. For example, it exposes claims to the
espoused truth that ‘We are an equal opportunity employer’ while
masking gender or race inequality arising from the cultural values
and beliefs of a male-dominant or white-dominant workplace
(Martin, 2002; Mills, 1995).
The feminist perspective argues that gender is a central aspect of
organizational analysis. Gender, defined here as the ‘patterned,
socially produced, distinctions between female and male, feminine
and masculine’ (Ackers, 1992: 250), is crucial for understanding
how people encounter support, encouragement and scepticism in
organizational contexts (Alvesson and Billing, 2009: 1). A gender
237
perspective in organizational culture analysis is important because
organizational membership often conforms to and extends sex-
biased societal values that discriminate against women. Further,
cultural values associated with notions of masculinity and
femininity are often reflected in organizational processes; for
example, processes and rewards that privilege masculine
attributes.
Gender analysis is important because some organizations (e.g.
schools, media) directly play a part in the socializing processes in
which people acquire gender identities (Helms Mills and Mills,
2000). Each of these alternative perspectives illustrates how
thinking about organizational culture reflects different assumptions
about the nature of organizational life and the complex
relationship between organizational culture and the societal
values and norms found in national cultures (Norton et al., 2015;
Ostroff et al., 2013).
Pause and reflect
If you were to study the intersection of organizational culture and
sexual harassment and abuse of young women in the workplace,
how would your approach differ if you adopted (a) the conflict
perspective and (b) the feminist perspective?
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Organizational Culture, Climate and
Leadership
As noted, much mainstream management ‘integrationist’ theory
identifies a robust corporate culture as an important factor in
promoting employee commitment and work motivation.
Proponents advocate that executive leaders abandon
bureaucratic regimes for ‘flat’ decision-making regimes with a
‘strong’ corporate culture to ‘win’ the commitment of their
workforce. The critical role of leaders and HRM practices in
creating, shaping and changing organizational culture is well
recognized within the literature (Alvesson, 2011b; Norton et al.,
2015; Schein, 2010; Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 2012).
Unsurprisingly, therefore, management and leadership theorists
have identified different cultural change strategies that focus on
changing the manifestations of organizational culture, such as
artefacts, work value, norms of behaviour and basic assumptions.
In terms of cultural change strategies, Alvesson (2011a: 152)
explores three perspectives on organizational culture and
leadership:
the role of leaders in creating an organizational culture;
leadership as maintenance and reproduction of organizational
culture;
culture as framing and reframing by leadership.
The strongest case for the role of leadership in creating
organizational culture is where the founder starts a business and
is able to have a significant influence on formulating its values and
the choice of people to be employed. In the formative stage, it is
suggested that executive leaders can create a particular culture
by using a cluster of HR practices including selection, training and
rewards. In this sense, Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (2012)
argue that HRM is not simply a functional organization, but an
integrated, essential discipline that pervades the entire
organization and shapes its culture. For example, induction and
training sessions create a particular organizational culture as new
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members formally learn, accept and identify with espoused values
(Whiteley et al., 2013). However, while HR practices may
ostensibly be able to create a particular culture during the
organization’s formative years, over time ‘other complexities and
other influences than founder values often undermine the impact
of the latter’ (Martin, 1985).
Leaders have a role in maintaining and reproducing culture.
Although less glamorous and less likely to be associated with
leadership, this role is a key part of what managers do (Alvesson,
2011a: 158). In Chapter 9, we will examine in more detail how an
organization’s performance appraisal system (PAS) can play a
role in maintaining and reproducing culture. When appraisal is
linked to rewards, it enables leaders to change or reinforce the
culture. For example, in higher education, the promotion of
academic staff can reinforce a ‘research culture’ or a ‘teaching
excellence culture’ when the criteria is tied to research productivity
or favourable student evaluations. Through a myriad of HR
practices, managers and other employees encourage each to
internalize the organization’s culture because it fulfils their need
for acceptance and identity (Bratton and Gold, 2017).
Leaders at the ‘strategic apex’ typically attempt to change
organizational culture by reframing social networks of symbols to
change members’ behaviour. Physical artefacts ranging from
redesigning office space to create an ‘open plan’ or displaying a
framed copy of the mission statement, to establishing a R&D hub
to emphasize the importance of innovation are examples of how
leaders can reframe social networks. Executive leaders have also
reframed shared meanings by stories and storytelling (Jabri, 2012;
Taylor et al., 2002). Notable examples of language and narrative
strategies to achieve cultural change are British ‘corporate’
universities, where students are considered as ‘clients’ and
professors as ‘service providers’ who must ‘brand’ their university
and sell their ‘products’, as do automobile manufacturers
(Gingras, 2009).
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Culture as a constraint on leadership
A strong case can be made that, contrary to assumptions in the
leadership literature, rather than creating culture leaders are
constrained by it. Alvesson (2011a) contends that managers can
influence organizational culture but only in a very restricted way
so that culture is generally seen as a constraint upon
management. Guthey and Jackson (2011) point out that the cross-
cultural studies of Hofstede concentrate on culture as a
determining influence upon leadership but contradict the notion of
leadership itself which connotes an active rather than a passive
relationship:
Charismatic leadership, servant leadership, quiet
leadership, all of these approaches involve in some way
or another the notion of taking initiative, inspiring
commitment, mobilizing action, promoting legitimacy or
exerting influence. (2011: 165)
Culture is a constraint on leadership behaviour and initiatives, but
so are other parts of the business environment such as
government policies, politics, laws and regulations (see Chapter
2). The ways in which leaders (and followers) influence culture
have, in the view of Guthey and Jackson, been neglected by
scholars. It is a two-way, dialectical process, which calls the
assumptions undergirding cross-cultural studies into question. If
people actively work to change culture then it cannot be taken as
an independent variable.
Leadership in Action: Collapsed companies which failed to put funds
into their pension deficit
The civil engineering company Carillion collapsed in January 2018.
The company was involved in large public private partnership
contracts (PPP) to construct three hospitals when it collapsed
241
(Goodley, 2018). Carillion’s pension scheme was estimated to have a
£990m deficit with the potential to cut pensions for nearly 30,000
pensioners by 15 per cent. Members of Parliament on the work and
pensions committee released documents which showed ‘long-term
indifference’ by company directors towards the company’s pension
obligations (Davies, 2018a).
Carillion’s former finance director considered it a ‘waste of
money’ to put cash into the company’s pension deficit,
according to the minutes of a meeting written by the
pension scheme trustees. (Davies, 2018b)
In evidence given to the work and pension committee, the managing
director of the investment firm BlackRock stated that:
It seems that the board was focussing more on [about] how
to remunerate executives rather than actually what was
going on at the business. (Davies, 2018c)
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Reflective questions
Imagine you are an employee in a company that has run its pension
fund into deficit:
1. Would you think that your company failed in its obligations to
maintain the retirement prospects it had promised when you
began employment with the company?
2. Would you think retirement is a distant prospect, so why worry?
243
Sources
Davies, R. (2018a) ‘MPs accuse Carillion chiefs of “long-term
indifference” on pension gap’, Guardian, 6 February.
Davies, R. (2018b) ‘Pension funds were called a “waste of money” at
Carillion’, Guardian, 23 February.
Davies, R. (2018c) ‘Carillion directors “worried more about bonus
than firm”’, Guardian, 8 March.
Goodley, S. (2018) ‘Shaky foundations: under pressure to grow,
everyone bids each other to death’, Guardian, 16 January.
244
To explore this topic further see:
Clark, G.L. (2015) ‘The UK pensions crisis and institutional
innovation: beyond corporatism and neoliberalism’, in C. Torp (ed.)
Challenges of Aging. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
245
Ideology as part of culture
The idea that the USA is an individualist rather than a collectivist
culture has been taken as a central assumption in cross-cultural
studies (Guthey and Jackson, 2011). The centrality of
individualism amongst Americans is not in dispute. But this poses
two questions: ‘How did they get that way?’ and ‘Whose interests
does this ideology of individualism serve?’. Drawing on the work
of the historian Elizabeth Fones-Wolf (1994), the authors argue
that after the Second World War, American business leaders
collectively sought to discredit New Deal liberalism, undermine the
legitimacy of organized labour, and ‘reshape the ideas, images
and attitudes’ through which Americans understood their
relationship to the corporate world and the state (Guthey and
Jackson, 2011: 175). It was an attempt to push back against the
gains made by organized labour after the 1930s: to shape values
and to associate the American Dream with frontier-style
individualism.
After the Second World War, most European countries accepted
some kind of settlement under which governments would be
expected to restrain wealth inequality; intervene in their
economies in order to avoid mass unemployment; provide a
welfare state; and support state ownership of key industries. By
the 1980s these ideas had lost favour in the USA and the UK
following the election of President Reagan and Prime Minister
Thatcher. Economists Milton Friedman in the USA and Friedrich
von Hayek in the UK influenced both politicians. As we discussed
in Chapter 2, the doctrine of neoliberalism proposes that human
wellbeing can best be advanced by free markets, deregulation,
the privatization of state assets and the withdrawal of the state
from many areas, such as health, prisons and transport (Harvey,
2005). Supported by right-wing politicians and journalists,
neoliberal ideology has created iconoclastic market-oriented
regimes in which business executives have redefined their
obligations solely in terms of shareholder value and executive
salaries, and in the process have become detached from wider
society (Hutton and Adonis, 2018; Jones et al., 2015; Salaman,
2016).
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Over the last four decades, a cacophony of critical voices has
argued that neoliberalism has become embedded in UK public
policy and organizations (Ferlie and Ongaro, 2015; Boardman and
Vining, 2012; Whitfield, 2012): (1) through privatization and the
creation of markets that transfer government functions and
services to private capital; (2) privatization reduces the role of the
state and changes public values and expectations of public
services, thereby transferring more power from the state to private
capital; and (3) through individual financialization (e.g. personal
training, student loans, personal pensions), which is a means to
transfer risk, cost and responsibility from the state and companies
to individuals.
In the UK, public sector organizations have been transformed
through neoliberal ideology. As Ferlie and Ongaro (2015: 221)
argue, ‘The politico-administrative culture and societal contexts
shape some of the very premises for the management of public
service organizations.’ In terms of the focus of this chapter,
neoliberalism is more than just an economic system. It has a
political and ideological agenda: a minimalist state and the
privatization of the self (Bratton, 2020; Storr, 2018). As such, it
represents a huge cultural change in private and public sector
organizations which provided a context for followers’ expectations
and responses, the prevailing pattern of social relations in the
workplace, and leadership.
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The role of employee engagement and voice
It should be clear by now that organizational cultures give
meaning to social relations in the workplace and to employment
(Kitching, 1997; Ram et al., 2017). A further piece of the
organizational culture jigsaw concerns employee engagement and
voice. Although there are diverse definitions, Emmott (2015: vii)
observes that the concepts of engagement and voice are rooted in
the notion that they create an effective employment relationship
built on ‘trust, fairness and respect’, which has a positive effect on
performance. ‘Employee engagement’ and ‘voice’ are terms used
to describe HR practices that are designed to allow employees
some input into decision-making processes. Leadership is an
antecedent or ‘enabler’ of engagement and voice, which is an
approach to employment relations designed to strengthen the link
between the individual employee and the organization to enhance
commitment to the organization’s goals and values (MacLeod and
Clarke, 2010). Employment relations models that encourage
employee engagement and voice contrast greatly with the
dominant assumption held by US (and UK) leaders that managers
should have the ‘right to manage’ (Bratton and Gold, 2017: 353).
Organizations use a wide range of direct and indirect HR practices
to give expression to engagement. Direct engagement refers to
those forms of participation where individuals are involved in
decision-making processes that affect their everyday work
routines. Examples include group and team briefings, quality
circles and problem-solving groups. Engaging employees directly
in the decision-making process is considered a key aspect of
enacting change, including cultural change, and subsequently
sustaining it (Davis and Coan, 2015; Pasmore, 1994).
Engagement can, for example, change an organizational culture
toward pro-environmental behaviours (see Chapter 16, and Young
et al., 2015). Guest (2015: 61) argues that these direct modes of
engagement can be seen as a ‘management-controlled means of
seeking to leverage the employment relationship to the benefit of
the organization’, with the aim of extracting more contribution from
employees by increasing their work motivation. As such, direct
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engagement does little to enhance employee voice and
diminishes indirect or representative employee voice.
Indirect employee voice describes those forms of worker
participation where employee representatives participate in the
processes of decision making at strategic organizational level.
Examples of indirect voice include ‘worker directors’ joint
consultative committees and European Works Councils (EWC).
These forms of voice are associated with a more radical stream of
thought, which is concerned to overcome alienation caused by
workers being excluded from the processes of decision making.
Hence, the advocacy of workers’ control to attain social justice
(Coats, 2004).
A less radical approach is what Johnstone and Ackers (2015) call
the ‘pluralist model’, which, whilst accepting that employers and
workers have different interests, assumes there is scope for co-
operation and compromise achievable through dialogue. In
Germany and the Nordic countries, for instance, employee
representatives sit on works councils, making decisions about
executive leaders’ salaries and on their organization’s strategic
goals. These cooperative mechanisms can improve employment
relations and performance at organizational and economy level
(Duffy et al., 2013). Discussions of Nordic culture highlight
varieties of social democracy, relatively low levels of social
inequality and trade union recognition and involvement in
workplace decision-making processes (Lindeberg et al., 2013).
Take Finland, for example: Henley (2018b) found Finns often cite
the word talkoo, which means ‘working together for a specific
good’. This analysis goes beyond a purely cultural perspective as
it contains a combination of historical experience, structural and
institutional factors as well as culture.
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Evaluation and Criticism
The first criticism levelled at cultural theorists relates to the
methodology used to identify distinct national cultures. The idea
that countries have a unique culture based upon the statistical
average of personal values claiming to measure the values of a
national culture is about as meaningful as an average of personal
income. That is, as there is a wide variance in personal income in
any population, so too is there is a wide dispersion in the personal
values of that population (Bratton, 2015). Second, much cultural
analysis is framed within a culture–performance relationship in
which a ‘strong’ culture increases commitment and better all-
round performance. Despite the fact that the culture–performance
link has been studied from a multitude of different angles,
demonstrating a causal relationship between a strong corporate
culture and business performance has proven problematic
(Sackmann, 2011).
Third, it must be kept in mind that followers within the same
organization will not necessarily internalize the culture of their
workplace in the same way, and predictions of a ‘strong culture’
creating commitment and motivation in one individual does not
necessarily work with all employees. Reviewing the extant
studies, Sackmann concludes that even though a direct link
between strong corporate culture and performance can be
observed, ‘the link may not always be direct’ (2011: 213). Thus,
the evidence for a positive culture–performance link is tenuous.
Indeed, it is so deficient that some have argued that it should not
be dignified with serious attention (Willmott, 1993).
Finally, a strong corporate culture does little to alter the nature of
the employment relationship, at least not in any meaningful way.
As Fleming (2017: 97) observes, ‘The typical employer today no
longer seeks to generate happy workers … It’s almost a badge of
honour to enforce low wages and economic anxiety, just so
workers fully understand their rightful place in the economic order
of things’. The preoccupation with culture does nothing to obviate
the need to reduce labour costs and, in the light of weak trade
250
union representation, to intensify the pressure of work and
increase employee voice (Edwards, 1990).
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Conclusion
The theme of the chapter has been culture and leadership.
Various meanings of the word ‘culture’ were outlined and the
discussion then covered the idea of a ‘national culture’.
Organizational culture was discussed as a resource for leadership
as well as a restriction upon it. The topic of neoliberalism was
introduced because, as a culture, it represented a disjuncture with
the dominant post Second World War orthodoxy around state
economic management of economies and the welfare state. The
Nordic countries in Europe appear to have remained relatively
immune to neoliberalism and, as the example of Finland suggests,
have been successful societies and economies. Arguments were
presented which claim that a participatory employment relations
system with high employee voice within a context of low social
inequality can contribute to successful societies that provide
prosperity and wellbeing for their members, and that they operate
in a distinctive culture. The example of Finland suggests that the
culture in which leaders and workers are embedded influences the
behaviour of leaders and followers and the goals for which they
strive.
252
Chapter Review Questions
1. Some believe that we are all products of our national culture. Do you
think this is the case? Why? If you disagree with the statement, give
your reasons for disagreement.
2. What is a ritual? Describe one in your university/college where you
are studying. How does the ritual reinforce the culture?
3. What practices would you use to try to change culture? Should
leaders attempt this in the first place?
Assignment Task: Cross-culture values
It has been argued that Sweden and Finland have a distinctive
consensual style of management and leadership and that this is
related to their shared history and cultures. Whilst these two
countries differ in leadership and decision making compared with
other European countries, in an article in the Review of International
Comparative Management Lämsä claims that there are distinct
cultural differences between business leadership styles in the two
countries.
253
Question
How do cultural values affect leadership styles between European
countries, and what cultural differences affect management styles in
Finland and Sweden?
254
For further information read
Lämsä, T. (2010) ‘Leadership styles and decision-making in Finnish
and Swedish organizations’, Review of International Comparative
Management, 11 (1): 139–49.
Go Online
Explore the real world of leadership by reading this case study:
Sydney Brian-Peters: A Case Study in Gender and Leadership
Issues
Further your knowledge and build your bibliography for
assignments by reading the recommended journal articles for this
chapter.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
video
Learn more about leadership in practice by watching the video
conversation for this chapter.
Peter Goddard, CEO of property factoring company Myreside
Management, shares how he operates an open door policy to involve
his employees in decision making.
The video can be found at https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
See the inside front cover for the access code and instructions.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
255
Further Reading
Alvesson, M. (2011) ‘Leadership and organizational culture’, in A.
Bryman, D.L. Collinson, K. Grint, B. Jackson, and M. Uhl-Bien
(eds), The SAGE Handbook of Leadership. London: SAGE.
Alvesson, M. (2016) ‘Organizational culture and work’, in S.
Edgell, H. Gottfried and E. Granter (eds), The SAGE Handbook of
Sociology of Work and Employment. London: SAGE.
Chatman, J.A. and O’Reilly, C.A. (2016) ‘Paradigm lost:
reinvigorating the study of organizational culture’, Research in
Organizational Behavior, 36: 199–224.
256
Case Study: The Volkswagen emissions
conspiracy
257
Background
News of the conspiracy broke on 18 September 2015 when America’s
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed that several diesel-
powered VWs and Audis had software which switched on nitrogen oxide
(NOx) controlling technology only when faced with the sort of demands
seen under test conditions. The EPA ordered VW to recall around half a
million cars in the USA to fix the software. The company admitted that the
software was fitted to 11 million vehicles worldwide, causing a ‘notable
deviation’ (around 35 times more) between NOx emissions seen in official
testing and those found in normal use.
258
Leadership behaviour
The Economist (2015) published an article suggesting that there were
three reasons why VW cheated. First, Martin Winterkorn, VW’s CEO, had
an overwhelming ambition to make the company the largest car producer
in the world, and in order to achieve this VW had to expand its sales in
the USA where diesel cars were less popular than in Europe, but where
regulation on emissions is much tighter. Second, technological remedies
to reduce NOx emissions are expensive, and it was ‘Easier not to fix the
problem’. And third, VW thought that they could get away with the
conspiracy because they had successfully done so in Europe where
standards are less stringent, and where manufacturers were allowed to
test their own vehicles and publish their emission data. In order to
produce satisfactory emission figures, manufacturers had become used to
‘gaming’ the system by modifying vehicles in ways which made it easier to
achieve low emissions. In the USA, car manufacturers are also
responsible for carrying out their own emission tests, but the EPA tests
standard automobiles, on sale to the public, to see if these vehicles
conform to the manufacturer’s claims.
The potential costs for VW were huge as they faced federal fines – class
action suits from motorists who would lose re-sale value for their cars.
Within days, the value of the company fell by €26 billion. In December
2017, Oliver Schmidt, a senior VW executive, was jailed for seven years
and fined $400,000 for his involvement in the scheme. How many middle
managers or engineers are implicated in the plot remains unclear. In
March 2018, VW pleaded guilty as a corporation and agreed to pay $4.3
bn in fines. Martin Winterkorn resigned from his post as CEO in 2015.
Winterkorn and five senior VW executives were charged with conspiracy
to defraud the USA and violate the Clean Air Act.
259
Case exercise
On your own, or in a study group, answer the following questions:
1. Does the idea of ‘national culture’ have any relevance to the
explanation of the VW emissions conspiracy?
2. How might the idea of leadership culture within an organization have
any bearing on the understanding of VW’s attempt to expand its
sales in the USA?
3. Would an explanation of the conspiracy which refers to market
pressure be more convincing than one based on cultural analysis?
260
Sources of additional information
This case study is based on ‘A murky business: the Volkswagen scandal’,
Economist, 416 (8957), 26 September 2015 and Rushe, D. (2018) ‘VW
emissions scandal: US charges ex-CEO with conspiracy and fraud’,
Guardian, 3 May, available at
www.theguardian.com/business/2018/may/03/vw-emissions-cheating-
michael-winterkorn-charged (accessed 17 September 2019).
262
5 Ethics and Leadership
Roslyn Larkin
John Burgess
Alan Montague
‘British Airways, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Porsche
are among five large companies identified as having paid
corporate intelligence firms to monitor political groups
that challenged their businesses.’
Evans and Jones, 2017
263
Chapter Outline
Introduction
The nature of ethical leadership
Philosophical approaches to ethical leadership
Dimensions of ethical leadership
Organizations behaving badly: failures in ethical leadership
Context, the rhetoric and reality
Whistleblowing: is it responsible behaviour?
Millennial leadership, digitization and artificial intelligence
Conclusion
264
Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
critically evaluate and comprehend the concept of ethical leadership
theories and models;
examine and discuss recent issues in ethical and unethical
leadership in the context of contemporary work organizations;
identify and critically analyse the social and ethical responsibilities of
contemporary leaders in industry;
understand the role of ethics in the future of organizations and
employment relations.
video
To learn more about the reality of ethical leadership, don’t forget to
watch the video conversation for this chapter online.
265
Introduction
The CEOs of sportswear multinational companies such as Nike,
Adidas, Puma and Reebok have long been held responsible for
some of the most unethical employment conditions in the world,
coming under attack for social dumping (moving production from
the home country to those with lower wages) and sweatshop
employment abuses. After 20 years, relentless pressure from anti-
sweatshop campaigners and global boycotts of products have
finally convinced corporations such as Nike to recognize fair
labour standards and re-think the level of transparency offered
into their own and their suppliers’ operations. Such practices pose
questions about motive and rationality, but they also raise ethical
issues about what constitutes ethical leadership. So, what does it
mean to be a ‘good’ leader, where good is defined as both
effective and ethical? Such questions have been the focus of
enquiry into ethical or moral approaches to leadership over recent
years (Lemoine et al., 2019).
This chapter will consider questionable individual and
organizational leadership practices from an ethical perspective. It
begins by examining the meaning of the term ‘ethical leadership’
and explores the topic from a range of perspectives and rationales
to present competing concepts concerning ethical leadership.
Using international case studies, the chapter examines the
presence or absence of ethical behaviours in organizations.
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The Nature of Ethical Leadership
Every society recognizes many ‘unwritten’ rules, for example a
duty not to tell lies. That we perceive we must conform to such a
rule is one of the main elements that aid human societies to
function smoothly. Thus, ‘moral rules’ affect decisions we take as
individuals, compelling us to tell the truth rather than lie to family
members, friends and colleagues. While CEOs have an ethical
dimension as human beings and as members of society, it is
argued that decision making by CEOs is different from that of an
individual (Morrison, 2015). Leadership ethics, which is the study
of ethics applied to organizational leaders, examines the goals of
organizations, organizational values, and the behaviour and
misbehaviour of leaders.
The number of CEOs, initially recruited for their perceived
capabilities, who have lost their moral compass and suffered the
indignity of public exposure for a ruthless disregard for ethical
rules and an astonishing disregard for customers, has an informal
membership that is high. In the last few years, bad leadership
stars have included well-known corporations such as Volkswagen
and Wells Fargo. In 2018 Facebook had its tensions, along with
Samsung, Uber, Yahoo as well as the four biggest banks in
Australia, exposed in the media and a Royal Commission as
engaging in ruthless ethics fuelled by greed (Hayne, 2018).
Image 5.1 Initially recruited for their perceived
capabilities, a number of corporate leaders
have lost their moral compass. Bad
leadership stars include Volkswagen,
exposed for a disregard for ethical rules and
the environment.
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We can begin to find an answer to these questions by first
defining ethical leadership. Is it something we have, or something
we are? To answer this question, we need to recognize the two
clear schools of thought surrounding the notion of ethical
leadership. The first is steeped in philosophy whereby the notion
of the leaders, who are imbued with ethics, act as a driver of
ethical conduct in the organization (see e.g. Brown et al., 2005).
This view is about ‘having’ ethics. The other notion of ethical
leadership is more transactional in nature and derived from the
behavioural sciences whereby ethical leadership’s sole purpose is
to provide conditions for organizational success (see e.g.
Engelbrecht et al., 2017). This view is about managing ethics.
Regardless of the point of derivation of the concept of ethical
leadership, both the behaviourist and philosophical approaches
share many points of overlap, including many consistencies in
terminologies, actions and behaviours (Mariama-Arthur, 2018).
The following section tackles both consistencies and
inconsistencies by taking a closer look at leadership through the
lens of ethical frameworks and leadership styles.
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Philosophical Approaches to Ethical
Leadership
The philosophical interest in ethical leadership appears to have
gained enhanced traction largely as a response to corporate
scandals in the 1990s and early 2000s (i.e. Enron, Nestlé, Adidas,
Lehman Brothers, James Hardie, BHP Billiton and Union
Carbide). Some of the primary philosophical approaches to ethics,
which may be unfamiliar to many business students, are
utilitarianism, deontology, philosophical egoism, ethics of virtue
and ethics of responsibility. The following provides a very brief
overview of each:
Utilitarianism: otherwise known as ‘consequentialism’,
utilitarianism is, as the name suggests, forward looking.
Under the banner of utilitarianism, the right or wrong of
actions and behaviours are directly assessed against
potential consequences and whether those consequences
prescribe to the basic consequentialist principles of the
greatest good for the greatest number, or the ends justify the
means (see Larkin et al., 2017). Utilitarianism is commonly
associated with philosophers Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)
and John Stuart Mill 1806–1873).
Deontology: also known as ‘Kantianism’, after the
deontologist Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), deontology is
backward or present looking. To this point, it is not the
consequences of an action that make it ethical, but whether
the action was simply the right thing to do. Actions that
mislead, conceal fraudulent behaviours or misinform are
unable to be morally justified by their motivations (Meyers,
2018).
Philosophical egoism: associated with the work of Thomas
Hobbes (1588–1679) and, a century later, David Hume (1711
–1776), philosophical egoism focuses on the beliefs of reality
through a social lens. Where leadership is constructed
through social rules, people will follow if it avoids punishment
(Dion, 2012). Social acceptability of behaviour is paramount
269
to achieving one’s self-interest, and therefore social approval
directs the moral path (Gert, 2010).
Virtue ethics: most closely related to the work of Plato and
Aristotle. Under this framework, it is the system of beliefs that
take precedence, rather than behaviours. Virtues may be
moral (courage, justice and prudence) or intellectual (i.e.
wisdom) (Larkin et al., 2017).
Ethics of responsibility: while there are some differences
between exact viewpoints surrounding this framework, the
key understanding is that everyone is responsible for
themselves through an open set of possibilities (Dion, 2012).
It is right to assume that others also have their own self-
responsibility orientating their conduct according to their own
parameters of truth.
Reflecting on these brief definitions of primary philosophical
approaches, it can be seen that ethics concern the morality of
outcomes, the morality of process, social expectations, self-
expectations and the ‘truth’ according to the decision maker. Such
a montage of competing thoughts and potential definitions can
make it difficult to understand ethical leadership as a response to
ethical frameworks.
A different and equally accepted method is to understand
leadership models to capture those components that promote
ethical behaviour. Mainstream models include authentic
leadership, transformational leadership, charismatic leadership
and servant leadership. It is important to consider the merits of
these leadership models in the context of ethics.
The first example is R. Gardner’s (2017) application of an ‘ethical
prism’ to authentic leadership traits whereby authenticity refers to
integrity and sincerity, which are considered virtuous and by
implication connected to virtue ethics (Dion 2012). Kim and Kim
(2017) consider transformational leadership and, drawing from the
work of many others, include influence or charisma, inspiration
and stimulation of others in their definition. Servant leadership
varies again, but is reported to have evolved through ethics and
altruism in response to a recognized need for communal
leadership (Sims, 2018). Dion’s (2012) analysis places both
270
transformational and servant leadership within the realm of
deontology, philosophical egoism and ethics of responsibility.
Numerous criticisms of these perspectives exist. For example,
while an authentic leader may be true to their own values, these
values may be inclined toward selfish or bad behaviour
(Cramwinckel et al., 2013). The potential for destructive outcomes
for those whose values do not align with the leaders (see e.g.
Faircloth, 2017) has been a genuine consequence. While
transformational and charismatic leaders may certainly have
ethical, virtuous or moralistic drivers, the association with ethical
leadership must be questioned in all leadership models on a case-
by-case basis. For example, one of the biggest criticisms of the
willingness to place ethical leadership under the transformational
or charismatic leadership model is the recognition that not all
visionaries are considered ethical. From the political sphere
consider Hitler, and from the business world consider the former
CEO of Enron, Jeff Skilling, and the consequences of his
performance leading to a lengthy prison sentence. Even while
some, for example Bass and Steidlmeier (1999), argued that such
criticisms fail to distinguish between legitimate transformational
and pseudo-transformational leadership, like ethical frameworks,
leadership frameworks also fail to provide a complete picture.
As such, it is inherently difficult to describe ethical leadership as
either utilitarian, deontological or values based. There is also
difficulty in ascribing ethical leadership to transformational and
charismatic frameworks (Brown et al., 2005) or authentic
leadership frameworks (Fine, 2017). Judge et al. (2009)
considered leadership effectiveness through the bright and dark
sides of leaders’ traits, yet this line of enquiry continues to fail to
answer a key question: ‘Is effective leadership necessarily
ethical?’ Possibly through recognition of the difficulty in ascribing
ethical leadership based on a clear definition, many have claimed
that ethical leadership is mostly about the moral components (see
e.g. Treviño et al., 2000 and Brown et al., 2005).
Pause and reflect
271
How do you define ‘ethical leadership’? Using a search engine or
journal database, search for some individual or organizational
examples of good leadership and explore why these examples might
signal ethical exemplars.
272
Dimensions of Ethical Leadership
The moral components are not solely about the personal
attributes or characteristics of the leader, nor are they solely about
providing the conditions for organizational success (Williams,
2016). The prevailing view on ethical leadership and management
is that it is important to be a good leader, where good is defined
as both effective and ethical (Bonner et al., 2016; Ciulla and
Forsyth, 2011; Treviño and Nelson, 2017). As such, one should be
both a morally good person and a morally good manager, and
morality is based on the principles of what is right and not
necessarily what is considered to be legal (Beard and Lynch,
2015).
Resick et al. (2006) and DuBrin (2015) identified the dimensions
of ethical leadership to include ‘character and integrity’, ‘ethical
awareness’, ‘people orientation’ (including altruism), ‘motivating’,
‘empowering’ and ‘accountable’. From this perspective, therefore,
ethical leadership is seen as one, or a set of behaviours. DuBrin
(2015) and Williams (2016), along with many others, included
integrity, trustworthiness, honesty and empathy in the mix. Viewed
from these observations, arguably what is construed as ethical
leadership is a social construct in that it is defined by humans and
society.
While many associations are made, typically the words ‘trust’,
‘integrity’ and ‘morals’ appear to be the most consistent. But what
does this mean? For Engelbrecht et al. (2017), trust and integrity
constructs act to influence followers, leading to higher levels of
engagement and outcomes for the organization. Here, ethical
leadership is essential to promote trust, and in turn trust is
essential to promote employee engagement, which is essential for
organizational success (Nankervis et al., 2014, 2017; Engelbrecht
et al., 2017). Trust in the leader is considered to be a condition
moderated by ethical leadership that promotes employee
engagement, which is vital as it promotes value-driven behaviour
(Engelbrecht et al., 2017; Nankervis et al., 2017).
273
Linked closely with conditions that promote employee
engagement, research findings from Engelbrecht et al. (2017)
identify ethical leaders as being instrumental in creating a trusting
work environment. Trust, however, is moderated by either a
perceived or actual authenticity of a leader’s behaviour (Zhu et al.,
2004) while a perceived lack of integrity is more likely to elicit
distrust from followers (DuBrin, 2015). In 2017, the Harvard
Business Review, reporting on the results of the Edelman Trust
Barometer, identified a decline in the trust people have in
business, media, government and NGOs. This decline coincided
with a confidence level of only 29 per cent, with overall credibility
for this group coming in at 37 per cent across the globe
(Harrington, 2017).
Pause and reflect
Download the the Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report, available
at www.edelman.com/trust-barometer. Identifiers in the report show
the largest percentage drop in trust between 2017 and 2018 for a
country is the USA, and for a sector, Finance. In groups, draw up a
list of reasons why that country and that sector have received such a
downward rating in overall trust.
The results reported from surveys such as Edelman’s Trust
Barometer suggest that we are witnessing a downward trajectory
in perceptions of ethical leadership. But what have been the
causes of such distrust and destruction? Blumenthal (2015) stated
that where companies practise ‘amorality and mistrust’, ‘bad
actors’ will dominate and scandal will follow. Indeed, it is here that
we see a dark side of trust in that, just as an ethical leader
inspires trust in others, an unethical leader may inspire trust for a
time as well.
The next section adopts a critical view of the failures of ethical
leadership, with organizational cases from around the world that
challenge terms such as trust, equity, honesty and morality and
raise issues of distrust, unethical leadership and ethical hypocrisy.
http://www.edelman.com/trust-barometer
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Organizations Behaving Badly:
Failures in Ethical Leadership
There is a multitude of websites detailing the bad behaviour of
organizations across the globe, from misleading advertising to
faulty products, tax evasion, bribery, money laundering, blackmail,
exploitative labour practices, abuse of human and employee
rights, employing child labour and a litany of illegal activities.
Fortune Magazine (2017) ran its list of the 10 biggest business
scandals of 2017 – it included passenger assault (United Airlines),
sexual harassment (21st Century Fox, Uber), fake news
(Facebook), confidentiality breaches (Equifax), bribery (Samsung)
and falsified records (Kobe Steel, Mitsubishi Motors). In most
cases, but not all, leaders were not held accountable. It is not
clear if the abusive behaviour was isolated or one-off and confined
to a few employees or evidence of a process within organizations
that nurtures and supports bad behaviour. Do the various reported
incidents associated with the identified companies listed above
reflect on or represent leadership styles? In the case of large
multinationals, a question often posed is ‘Where are leadership
and responsibility located – the head office or the branch office?’
It seems from Edelman’s Trust Barometer that findings of
misbehaviour and illegal activity are accepted without surprise,
and that they are expected to continue. The ongoing revelations
around the institutionalized abuse of children in the care of state
authorities and religious organizations given responsibility for their
care, demonstrate the extent to which organizations (and the
state) can close ranks and operate in denial and with impunity
over a long period, despite extensive evidence in the public
domain of systemic child abuse. It seems that in none of the
countries where ongoing abuse occurred have those in leadership
positions been held responsible for raising the question ‘Do
unethical leaders use the organization as a shelter for bad
behaviour?’. This underscores relational power, as it is those with
hierarchical power who decide what counts as ‘misbehaviour’ and
what will not (see also Chapter 3).
275
As for leadership ethics, Ciulla and Forsyth argue that ‘The moral
foible people fear most in leaders is personal immorality
accompanied by abuse of power’ (2011: 235). It is difficult to
untangle the many instances of organizational misbehaviour and
assign responsibility and culpability. Many of the organizations
found to be guilty of transgressions continue to operate.
Companies with a record of adverse publicity surrounding their
activities, such as Shell and Nestlé, continue to be successful and
dominant in their respective industries. Many of the CEOs and
boards of directors who were empowered with leadership were
well rewarded and maintained their careers. In the murk of
organizational behaviour, it is not clear where responsibility lies
and what the place of leadership is in any transgressions. In any
large organization, many employees may not know who the
organizational leader (CEO) is, much less who is on the governing
board of the organization. Followers may be considered by the
courts to be responsible for illegal actions, but rarely is the CEO or
the governing board held responsible. The problem with the
leadership literature is that it personalizes the leader position,
often assigns character traits and suggests that these
personalities impact across the organization. This is difficult when
the leader and the board of directors are unknown to the majority
of followers (least of all consumers), especially where there is
turnover at the top or at board level. The only leadership style
experienced by followers is that of an immediate supervisor or line
manager. Does the behaviour or style of line managers reflect the
behaviour or style of upper-echelon managers and the board of
directors? However, the leader, or more specifically the governing
board, is rarely held responsible for illegal behaviour. In a worst-
case scenario, an organization may suffer bad publicity, a decline
in share price and may be fined by a regulator; rarely are there
sanctions for ‘leaders’. That is, there is rarely a penalty or a
responsibility for leadership, but there is a premium.
Pause and reflect
276
While the drive for profit at all cost and personal greed are clear
promoters of unethical leadership, what other factors can you think of
that induce unethical leadership?
In the many case studies of organizational misbehaviour, it is
difficult to assign responsibility, identify culprits and examine
leadership styles. Misdemeanours may be supported by the state
or by poorly drafted or porous laws. The complexity of
organizations, especially transnationals with many subsidiaries,
offshore holding companies and complex supply-chain
relationships, makes the identification of responsibility and
culpability more complex. Organizations, especially multinationals,
are opaque, and the organization can survive evidence of
illegalities on a large scale from forced imprisonment, tax evasion,
to slave labour. For example, many of the key corporations that
were necessary in supporting the Nazi Government in pre-war
and Second World War Germany remain in operation today.
The UK-based Ethical Consumer (2018) uses a checklist to
assess the ethics of organizations. It publicises the bad list and
the good list. It has built up a database that covers five main
criteria which in turn are divided into sub-categories (see Tables
5.1 and 5.2).
Table 5.1 Assessing the ethical behaviour in
work organizations
Table 5.1 Assessing the ethical behaviour in work
organizations
Criteria Sub-category
Animals Animal testing; factory farming; animal rightsand cruelty.
Environment
Environmental reporting; climate change;
pollution and toxins; habitats and resources;
palm oil.
277
Criteria Sub-category
People
Human rights; workers’ rights; supply chain
management; irresponsible marketing; arms
and military supply.
Politics Anti-social finance; controversialtechnologies; political activity.
Sustainability Company ethos; product sustainability.
There are metrics and confirmatory evidence across many of the
criteria. However, it is not clear where leadership fits into patterns
of good or bad behaviour.
Table 5.2 Classifying ethical behaviour in
organizations
Table 5.2 Classifying ethical behaviour in organizations
Five best ethical retail
Lush, The Co-op, Marks
and Spencer, John
Lewis, WH Smith
Five least ethical companies Amazon (tax evasion;
employee conditions);
ASDA, Walmart
(employee conditions;
product sourcing);
Nestlé (irresponsible
marketing; genetically
modified inputs and
palm oil);
Tesco (product
sourcing; supplier
management);
278
Coca-Cola (employee
rights; environmental
management).
Boycott list (NB The full
boycott list is extensive and is
available at
www.ethicalconsumer.org)
Air France, Amazon,
BP, Cadburys, Fed Ex,
Kellogg’s
Magazines such as Time, Fortune and Forbes run regular listings
of the world’s ‘best’, or in some cases ‘most influential’ leaders.
This does not equate with ethical leadership. In terms of the
analysis of leadership, there are a number of questions that
should be addressed. First, whose leadership – in many of the
management texts and articles, it is assumed that there is an
identifiable leader, but is this the case, especially for large
organizations? Second, what does leadership mean – is it
exercised through behaviour, through decisions or outcomes?
Finally, to what extent is leadership constrained – for example
bylaws, organizational structure and governance, codes of
practice? This raises the issue of how leadership is exercised and
manifested. In large organizations, a context and framework can
be developed that not only supports leadership, but supports
ethical leadership to the extent that it is possible to consistently
maintain high ethical standards within the organization regardless
of who is the appointed leader.
Leadership in Action: Scottish shell firms ‘cleaning up’ Latin
America’s political bribes
In what has been described as a ‘billion-dollar mega-scandal’,
Scottish shell firms have been implicated as playing a core role.
Three Scottish businesses, alongside another two from England,
have been exposed as money-laundering vehicles for ‘international
criminals’.
http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/
279
The background
Between 2014 and 2016, Brazil held the hosting rights for both the
World Cup and the Summer Olympics. These kinds of events bring
vast numbers of tourists and visitors to the host country and usually
much new infrastructure is needed to be able to provide access to
and house the events and provide venues to satisfy the need for
accommodation and services that the temporary increase in
population brings. Not surprisingly, building contracts for events such
as these are both highly sought after and very lucrative.
Investigations following the events identified that much of the work
for both events had been awarded to one single construction
company, Odebrecht, a Brazilian firm with a multi-billion-dollar
turnover.
Further investigations uncovered a bribery ring that implicated
Odebrecht in more than a billion dollars in bribes to secure the
contracts. Odebrecht was also found to have committed bribery in
the Dominican Republic, Panama, Angola, Argentina, Ecuador and
Peru. Those being chased for accepting the bribes include several
former presidents and vice-presidents and senior executives, all
leaders in these and other countries.
280
Scotland’s role
A shell company is a firm with no current business activity or
significant assets. Scottish shell firms have long been accused of
being the ‘money laundering vehicles of choice for international
criminals’. Previously linked with the ‘Russian Laundromat’ scandals,
these corporate entities emerge as Scottish Limited Partnerships
(SLPs), dubbed by many as ‘Britain’s homegrown secrecy vehicles’,
and are established openly and following UK law. An Odebrecht
executive has been identified as controlling 19 out of more than 40
offshore firms, including the SLPs in Scotland. For more than ten
years, advocates have been fighting to have what they call
dysfunctional money-laundering defences and emasculated British
company law repaired in order to stop the support for corruption. In
March 2018, British MP Roger Mullin accused the Law Society of
complacency. This occurred after it publicly defended the legitimate
use of the firms, suggesting that the issue goes beyond the legalities
and that an end to the abuse of such shell firms can only be
achieved through a change of ethics, to include the duty-based,
deontological school and the consequentialist school where actions
result in the good for the greatest number.
281
Question
Although an act is legal, this does not make it ethical. Either
individually or in a group, give examples of actions by politicians and
CEOs that lend truth to this statement.
282
Sources
Leask, D. (2018a) ‘Why it will take a change in ethics, not just rules,
to end abuse of secret shell firms’, Herald Scotland, 8 March.
Leask, D. (2018b) ‘Scots shell firms play key role in Latin America’s
bribery “mega-scandal”’, Herald Scotland, 3 February.
Leask, D. (2018c) ‘Peru leader accused of taking bribes through
company based at Scots law firm’, Herald Scotland, 12 February.
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To explore this topic further see:
Du, S. and Vieira, E.T. (2012) ‘Striving for legitimacy through
corporate social responsibility: Insights from oil companies’, Journal
of Business Ethics, 110 (4): 413–427.
284
Context, the Rhetoric and Reality
The discussions so far highlight the consequences of unethical
leadership for organizations and people, usually innocent,
generally. The remainder of the chapter will take a closer look at
contextual factors, including organizational culture, human
resource management (HRM), whistleblowing, digitization and
artificial intelligence (AI).
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Organizational culture
Organizational culture is frequently described as ‘the way we do
things around here’ (see Chapter 4). Culture can manifest through
formal channels, for example policies, or informally through
actions and behaviours that may or may not resemble the rules of
the formal. By and large, however, an organization’s culture is
defined by the actions, behaviours and values of senior leaders.
That is, where senior leaders exhibit a visible commitment to
ethical principles, a ‘trickle-down’ or ‘tone effect’ occurs throughout
the workforce. Returning to the ‘moral person–moral manager’
theme, an ethical leader will exhibit characteristics of honesty and
integrity while taking visible action for holding people accountable
for unethical behaviour. Conversely, a leader may behave
unethically because they are outside the scope of common
morality and therefore certain rules do not apply to them (Ciulla
and Forsyth, 2011). Where a leader behaves unethically and
accepts similar behaviour from others, unethical practices will
become normalized through acceptance and, in some cases,
rewarded (Brown and Treviño, 2006).
The culture in organizations can develop conditions that allow
leaders to become unethical or ‘toxic’. Winn and Dykes (2019)
explain how toxic leaders work with self-interest foremost in their
minds, at variance with the goals of the organization and thus
resulting in a ‘dysfunctional environment’. Where toxic leaders
prevail, a hostile workplace occurs, resulting in negative but
prevalent consequences that permeate the organization and have
the effect of inducing ‘a stressful environment that adversely
affects the subordinate’s professional and personal life … that
costs organizations billions of dollars’ (Winn and Dykes, 2019:
38). The authors also provide evidence of strategies that
employees at all levels may adopt to protect themselves and their
organizations in order to thwart toxic leaders. In contrast to
unethical leaders, Winn and Dykes advance a persuasive
argument that ‘authentic leaders can build a culture where morale
and improved organizational resilience’ can be achieved (2019:
38). Authentic leaders, according to the authors, will help build
resilience at the department level by using a framework that
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includes establishing an overt, public set of values or an honour
code to live by, including acting decisively and being supported by
subordinates when they do.
An ethical leader promotes the confidence of employees, leading
not only to improved worker engagement as an outcome of a
leader trust relationship (Engelbrecht et al., 2014), but also
employee wellbeing (Kalshoven and Boon, 2012). As mentioned
above, an organization formally and ideologically committed to
ethical leadership will demonstrate commitment through policy.
Policy areas may include a commitment to corporate social
responsibility (CSR), which here is defined as a self-regulating
business model that helps an organization be socially accountable
to its employees, shareholders and society. Williams (2016)
argues that CSR is not so much ethical leadership in its own right
but an outcome of ethical leadership. Other policy areas may
include internal processes, for example HRM policies, which we
will go on to consider now.
Pause and reflect
If ethical leadership is reflected in an ethical culture and ethical
organization, is the same true for unethical leadership and culture?
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Human resource management (HRM)
Often linked with reinforcing an organizational culture (see e.g.
Bratton and Gold, 2017; Groysberg et al., 2018; Trompenaars and
Hampden-Turner, 2012), HR practices are widely held to provide
antecedents to an organization’s actual culture (Guerci et al.,
2015). The authenticity of a leader’s ethical behaviour can be
achieved through HR practices consistent with procedural and
distributive fairness (Nankervis et al., 2017).
Although individual HR practices are not the focus of this chapter
(see Chapter 9), it is important to acknowledge that all areas of
HR policy and practice have an ethical dimension, and that some
of these ‘ethical dilemmas may be neither apparent or easily
resolved’ (Woodall and Winstanley, 2000: 278). Thus, key HR
functions such as recruitment and selection, training and
development, performance and rewards management all provide
a piece to the ethical tapestry, where overarching values should
combine to entrench employees within an ethical environment.
This requires a commitment to ethical decision making and HR
design from the HR leaders. For example, training programmes
designed to create ethical awareness (see Bratton and Gold,
2017: Ch. 11) and ethical frameworks that can be applied to test
managerial decisions before they are implemented, can all
encourage ethical decision making. Reward and punishment
systems that promote ethical behaviour, unlike those found in the
Australian banking, superannuation and financial services industry
sector (see end-of-chapter case study), are crucial (Nankervis et
al., 2017). This is especially so where many firms create a
downward spiral of financial incentives for outcome targets that
can only be reached through taking short-cuts and, in some
cases, behaving fraudulently or corruptly.
But HR practices are not simply about compliance, they are also
about demonstrating values through responsible self-managed
conduct (Weaver and Treviño 2001; DuBrin 2015). In a similar
respect, Featherstone (2018) questions whether we are seeing a
shift from institutional blame to the person-leader blame. That is,
until recently, and from many of the above examples, unethical
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leadership is attributed to the organization. The focus of ethical
leadership, however, includes the individual.
Critical Insight: The dark side of a leader’s power
The strategic management literature, for some time, has developed
an interest in the psychological characteristics of executive
management. One condition that has captured the attention of many
is the negative effects of executive exaggerated pride or self-
confidence.
Often, it has been this condition that many blame for unethical
executive behaviours, including the global financial crisis. While there
are some critical assumptions behind the emerging interest in hubris,
there has been some evidence that this condition is increasing in
senior and executive management. There is also evidence that
claims that the increasing incidence is attributed to the positive
connections between a hubristic personality and successful selection
into higher-level jobs.
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Activity
Read H. Bollaert and V. Petit (2010) ‘Beyond the dark side of
executive psychology: current research and new directions’,
European Management Journal, 28 (1): 362–76, and answer the
following questions:
1. What do the authors claim is the danger of hubris fascination?
2. What are the differences between hubris, narcissism and
overconfidence?
3. What do the authors claim are the positive aspects of hubristic
behaviours?
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Whistleblowing: Is it Responsible
Behaviour?
Whistleblowing is a response by an organizational member to
disclose what they view as a wrongdoing. For example,
whistleblowers alleged that senior Wirecard executives in
Germany were involved in suspicious transactions in Asia
involving suspected forgeries, falsified documents and money
laundering (McCrum and Palma, 2019). Whistleblowing has been
associated with ‘ethical leadership’ through rights-based
frameworks and freedom of speech (Velasquez, 2006). It has also
been conceptualized as ‘responsible followership’ (Alford, 2008,
see Chapter 13). Whistleblowing may be internal to the
organization or external, although some argue that if a reported or
disclosed issue is dealt with internally, then its reporting cannot be
called whistleblowing (Grace and Cohen, 1998).
Ciulla and Forsyth contend that followers are enablers; that is,
they permit leaders to do ‘good’ and ‘bad’ things, but followers
also have a responsibility to ‘watch their leaders’ (2011: 235).
However, the personal risk for whistleblowers and their families is
often increased. In extreme cases, whistleblowers face
relationship breakdowns, alcohol and drug abuse, job/career
and/or personal reputation loss. A reason for this is that an
employee has a duty to the employer whereby the psychological
contract becomes a vehicle through which the employee remains
loyal to the employer. The employer’s rights are to have
employees with a sense of duty. Whistleblowing here is viewed as
being a snitch or a grass (Fisher and Lovell, 2009), a violation of
the employer–employee relationship.
The moral dilemma for the whistleblower occurs where the
employee has a moral obligation to prevent a wrong. Here, an act
of whistleblowing is justified as ethical leadership if it stops an
employer from acting in a way that is likely to cause harm to
others. This type of ethical leadership requires courage through
the action of upholding high moral principles.
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Millennial Leadership, Digitization
and Artificial Intelligence
The generational group titled ‘millennials’ (born between the
1980s and early 2000s) is about to emerge as the primary
generational group in employment and emerging leadership.
Influenced by world events including 9/11, millennials face a
workplace where digitization and increasing automation of jobs
are possibly the only certainty. Just as occupational change will
occur, so will the need for cultural transformation to enable
organizations to be continually adaptive with a drive for ongoing
learning (Nankervis et al., 2017). The Deloitte Millennial Survey
identified that confidence in business ethics is at its lowest in four
years (Deloitte, 2018). These results signal that ethical leadership
is not only required but mandatory for the group that is not only
the immediate future workforce but also consumers of those
products and services provided by others.
Finally, the predicted increase in the use of AI to displace roles,
responsibilities and decision making in organizations may seem to
provide solutions to alleviate the risk of self-serving or unethical
decisions and cultures, but is AI prepared to make ethical
decisions, and by which framework or management style
(Montague et al., 2019)? Some consider that AI may learn moral
conduct through observation and in turn develop its own virtue
ethics (Russell and Norvig, 2010, cited in Pavaloiu and Kose,
2017). But, can AI provide ethical leadership? The Australian
company BrainChip has already developed human brain
assimilation through neuron-processing units. If future ethical
leadership cannot be the domain of AI, then it must be a job for
the whole of society.
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Conclusion
Leadership ethics are moral principles and values that influence
the decision making of leaders within the organization. Key ethical
frameworks include utilitarianism or consequentialism (whereby
leaders’ actions and behaviours can be evaluated as right or
wrong, or good or bad, according to their consequences),
deontology or Kantian ethics (which is based on the premise that
the motive for the action is more important than the
consequences), virtue ethics (which does not require action but is
embodied through the aspiration that individuals should lead a
virtuous life) and rights-based ethics, as represented by the
United Nations, which includes free speech, freedom from slavery
and equal opportunity. These philosophical approaches to ethics
affect the role of leaders in the workplace. In particular, they
challenge the notion of what makes a good leader, where good is
defined as both effective in terms of individual, group or
organizational performance, and ethical. The study of leadership
ethics is important at two levels: theoretical and practical. At a
theoretical level, the literature on transformative leadership and
‘idealized’ influence behaviour may include the sharing of ethical
values, such as ‘eco-centric values’ (Robertson and Barling,
2015). At the practical level, the ethics of leaders is important
because they wield power and, concomitantly, their actions affect
large numbers of employees and possibly communities.
The chapter has highlighted an array of cases across the globe to
demonstrate ethical and unethical leadership, and critically
explored ethical or unethical leadership from a range of
perspectives and rationales. International cases have helped us to
explore the rhetoric and reality of ethical leadership in a turbulent
business world.
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Chapter Review Questions
1. Define ethics and ethical leadership. Can a leader be both effective
and ethical?
2. Does your definition represent ethical frameworks, leadership styles
or values and behaviours? Does it represent all three?
3. Is whistleblowing responsible followership?
4. What do you think are the three most problematic areas for ethics
with the increase in AI and smart technology?
Go Online
Explore the real world of leadership by reading this case study:
Transformational Leadership—Steve Jobs
Further your knowledge and build your bibliography for
assignments by reading the recommended journal articles for this
chapter.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
video
Learn more about leadership in practice by watching the video
conversation for this chapter.
Mollie Painter from Nottingham Trent University discusses her work
running a values-based leadership programme across Africa.
The video can be found at https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
294
See the inside front cover for the access code and instructions.
295
Further Reading
Aedy, R. [Presenter] (2017) ‘Responsible leadership: beyond
regulation’. This Working Life, Australian Broadcasting
Commission, Sydney. Available at
www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/this-working-
life/responsible-leadership/9011398 (accessed 14 March 2019).
Bachmann, B. (2017) Ethical Leadership in Organizations:
Concepts and implementation. Cham: Springer, Chapter 3:
Literature Review: The evolution of ethical leadership, pp. 27–63.
Ciulla, J.B. and Forsyth, D.R. (2011) ‘Leadership ethics’, in A.
Bryman, D. Collinson, K. Grint, B. Jackson and M. Uhl-Bien (eds),
The SAGE Handbook of Leadership. London: SAGE, pp. 229–41.
Den Hartog, D. (2015) ‘Ethical leadership’, Annual Review of
Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 2 (1):
409–34.
Frederiksborg, A. and Fort, T. (2017) The Sincerity Edge: How
ethical leaders build dynamic businesses, Part II: From Integrity
and trust to authenticity and sincerity. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, pp. 79–126.
Winn, G.L. and Dykes, A.C. (2019) ‘Identifying toxic leadership
and building worker resilience’, Professional Safety, 64 (3): 38–45.
Assignment Task: Corruption Perceptions Index
Transparency International has issued the Corruption Perceptions
Index (CPI) annually, commencing in 1995, ranking countries ‘by
their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert
assessments and opinion surveys’. The CPI, which is identifiable
with the concept of ethics generally, defines corruption as ‘the
misuse of public power for private benefit’. Each year this
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organization scores countries in terms of the extent to which their
public sectors are perceived to be corrupt. Access the report at
www.transparency.org/research/cpi/overview.
http://www.transparency.org/research/cpi/overview
297
Questions
1. Which country is the least corrupt?
2. Which country is the most corrupt?
3. In groups, research the five lowest-scoring countries and see if
you can come up with some reasons attributable to the low
score.
298
Case Study: Corporate hypocrisy – financial
institutions using HR to launder unethical
transactions
299
Background
An organization’s commitment to stakeholders in matters of reputation,
and policing and managing fraudulent behaviour, could be no more
important than it is in the banking and finance industry. Consumer trust in
a country’s financial operators is required for the continuation of a healthy
economy. Yet, the Australian finance sector has joined many of its global
counterparts in acting in a manner that has exposed it to sensational
allegations and findings of fraud and corruption through both retail and
investment arms. In 2017, one of Australia’s big four banks was called to
account for allegations of money-laundering activities that were being
conducted unchecked and seemingly unnoticed through the bank’s ATMs.
300
The policy
Regulation of the banking sector occurs through both external and
internal mechanisms. Externally, banking operations are kept in order by
long lists of external regulations and legislation overseen by the
government’s regulatory watchdogs. Transactions, foreign exchange,
trade integrity and criminal activity are among many others in prescribing
and regulating appropriate conduct. Internally, banking institutions have
numerous policies that address the regulatory requirements through the
identification of appropriate behaviours. Many of the internal policies are
the domain of the HR department and are created to assist employees to
work within the limits of the regulations through performance
management and reward.
The ‘About us’ section on the bank’s website demonstrates a commitment
to regulation and legislation compliance through its statements and
policies. For example, the bank’s ‘Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-
Terrorism Financing Disclosure’ statement actively embraces the
requirements of customer due diligence, rigorous record keeping,
monitoring and reporting suspicious activities and transactions as well as
ensuring that all customer-facing staff are trained in and periodically
reminded of detection and reporting processes. The bank’s personal
commitment to fighting money laundering extends to additional internal
policies that demonstrate a zero-tolerance approach to corruption,
responsibility in product and service provision and an invitation for staff to
adhere to a culture of speaking up on the occasions that they witness
behaviour that is considered misconduct or fraud. Such cases are
recorded as either ‘anonymous’, ‘confidential’ or ’whistleblower’ through a
dedicated ‘speak up’ hotline. The Corporate Responsibility Report
identifies over 200 reports that were registered through the ‘speak up’
programme in 2017.
Regardless of these and the other above measures, however, the bank in
2017 was accused of alleged ‘serious and systemic breaches of anti-
money laundering and terrorism financing laws that could leave it
exposed to massive civil penalties’ (Ryan, 2017). This case study
provides a closer look at the allegations, as reported both through the
press and empirical inquiry.
301
The evidence
The regulatory body Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre
(AUSTRAC) alleged that 53,700 transactions by the bank had failed to be
reported. This amounted to $8.9 billion in deposits through the bank’s
intelligent deposit machines (IDMs) before the bank conducted a money-
laundering risk assessment. AUSTRAC’s allegation that the bank had
failed to observe judicial prudence at the time of the transactions
(November 2012 to September 2015) carried an A$18 million fine per
offence. If found guilty and the penalty applied, the bank would be fined
A$97bn, which is A$87bn more than its 2016–2017 profit (Eyers interview
in Doogue, 2017).
Ryan (2017) cited the AUSTRAC claim that the offences were conducted
as cash deposits through IDMs, which were immediately followed by
international and domestic transfers. According to the AUSTRAC
statement:
Deposits are automatically counted and instantly credited to the
target account, which can be located domestically or
internationally. IDMs can accept up to 200 notes per deposit, or
up to $20,000 per cash transaction with no limit to the number of
transactions made per day. (Ryan, 2017)
However, the anti-money laundering laws that the bank clearly proscribed
to (above) required banks to report cash transactions of A$10,000 or
more made through IDMs, resulting in the claim that the bank failed to
‘monitor IDM customers for money laundering risk’ (Ryan, 2017).
This anomaly between the laws and the loose limits on transaction rules
meant that where transactions above the legal limits were being
undertaken, there was no flag, either to the bank or to AUSTRAC (Lynch,
in Letts, 2017).
However, even where automatic flags were absent, the policies outlined
above identify training for ‘customer-facing’ staff to recognize and report
suspicious transactions. Curiously, in this case, reports indicate that
managers were reporting cases of people sitting on plastic milk crates for
extended periods, feeding many thousands of dollars in to the bank’s
IDMs (Eyers, in Doogue, 2017). It was also reported that bank staff
witnessed people feeding vast amounts of cash into the machines and
reported this up the line (Lynch, in Letts, 2017). Eyers (in Doogue, 2017)
further stated that there were alerts when people were seated or standing
too long at IDMs and bank staff sent internal emails flagging their
concerns and suspicions of illegal activities to no avail. As such, the bank
302
failed to act and the system broke down despite the number of alerts
flagged by staff within the bank.
One interview respondent was quite candid as to the reasons why this
might have been the case:
‘Oh well there are HR policies written down which are all lovely,
but its how they apply … We’ve heard about AUSTRAC that was
going for quite some time, about 3–4 years, people sitting on
plastic crates and the staff blowing the whistle inside the
organization and nothing was happening. See, even if you are a
whistleblower and you have proven your case they continue to
prosecute you and smear you, that is why the whistleblower
policy isn’t genuine … So that is the whistleblower policy … they
have a term for it, being a ‘good team player’. A good team
player is somebody who does not rock the boat. I have passed
information to people responsible and nothing will happen. If you
are persistent you will be told, look you are not doing yourself
any favours here, and in fact they might just think “well, we’ll just
get rid of that guy because he is a troublemaker”
(whistleblower1, Sydney, December 2017).’
The question of hypocrisy in the leader’s behaviours is salient in this
case. Circumstances indicate a clear problem in the bank as it could be
alleged that senior executive leaders and managers were asleep at the
wheel and the lack of ethics signifies a major problem for the
organization. The bank’s board of directors has declared that bonuses will
not be paid to senior executives, although the chief risk officer at the time
of the transactions, and who was the second highest-paid staff member,
was reported to have left the bank in 2016 with a multimillion-dollar
payout and his bonus intact (Eyers, in Doogue, 2017). The current plight
of the bank highlights the many system failures throughout.
On 4 June 2018 ‘an agreement [was] reached between AUSTRAC and
the Common-wealth Bank of Australia (CBA) for a 700 million Australian
dollars penalty to resolve Federal Court proceedings relating to serious
breaches of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws’
(AUSTRAC, 2018).
Many of these executives hold tertiary qualifications and, in some
reported cases, consider themselves to be honest citizens. So, what
happened to these people? How did their ethics become so distorted that,
on their watch as leaders, white-collar crime became rampant and so
astonishingly destructive to many customers of these banks? Why is the
ethical leadership in these organizations so appalling?
303
Case exercise
In groups, answer the following questions:
Who is holding the senior executives in check?
How is it that leaders appeared to exhibit paralysis and atrophy
when clear breaches were being reported?
How do the leaders of these organizations rate on any ethical scale?
304
Sources of additional information
More information is accessible from the Australian Broadcasting
Commission’s website at www.abc.net.au/news/story-streams/banking-
royal-commission (accessed 18 September 2019) on which this article is
based, as well as from the website for the Royal Commission into
Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services
Industry at
https://financialservices.royalcommission.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx
(accessed 18 September 2019).
308
6 Trait, Behaviour and Contingency
Theories of Leadership
John Bratton
‘I went from VERY successful businessman, to top TV
Star … to president of the United States … I think that
would qualify as not smart, but genius … and a very
stable genius at that.’
President Donald Trump, 2018
309
Chapter Outline
Introduction
Leader traits and attributes
Leader behaviour and styles
Contingency theories of leadership
Conclusion
310
Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the early research on
leadership traits, describe the research methods used, and explain
why many of the early studies were contradictory or inconclusive;
explain the University of Michigan, the Ohio State and the Blake and
Mouton models of leadership;
describe and critique early and contemporary contingency theories
of leadership, including least preferred co-worker theory, path–goal
theory and situational theory.
video
To learn more about contingency theories of leadership, don’t forget
to watch the video conversation for this chapter online.
311
Introduction
Great leaders are said to ignite passion and inspire us to bring
about change. Whosoever is deemed to be a ‘great’ leader is a
matter of personal judgement and debate. In politics, Winston
Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson
Mandela are frequently cited. In business, Mary Barra, Bill Gates,
Annita Roddick and Gina Rinehart are cited. While gender and
multicultural diversity are slowly transforming the selection, you
are likely to choose alternative leaders based upon your own
worldview and criteria. Donald Trump, for example, professes to
be successful and a ‘genius’, but it is debatable whether he would
occupy an elevated plinth as a ‘great’ leader.
This chapter will build on what you learned in Chapter 1, where
the ideas of trait, behaviour and contingency theories were
introduced. Early mainstream research focused on the role of
individual traits to explain the differences between leaders and
nonleaders, and leadership effectiveness. Critical reviews of trait
research found, at best, the relationships between various traits to
be generally weak for predictive purposes. The effect of these
critiques was to shift the focus from studying traits that a leader
‘has’ to the study of how leaders ‘behave’. The foundational
research on leader behaviours provided the framework for
contingency theory. This theory is premised on the assumption
that different situations or contexts necessitate different kinds of
leadership.
This chapter begins with a review of the early and contemporary
trait theories that investigate the role of individual differences in
explaining leadership. We then move on to examine early
behavioural theories and contingency models of leadership that
encourage us to look beyond individual differences and consider
the importance of contexts, follower development and situations.
312
Leader Traits and Attributes
The word ‘trait’ refers to a variety of enduring characteristics,
typically belonging to an individual, including personality
tendencies that determine an individual’s behaviour. Human traits
exhibit four core properties. They: (1) are measurable, (2) vary
across individuals, (3) exhibit time and situational stability, and (4)
help predict attitudes and behaviours. Examples include
extroversion, introversion, emotional intelligence and
conscientiousness. In recent years, emotional intelligence (EI) has
been considered a trait that may indicate effective leadership. EI
refers to an individual’s inherent ability to recognize their own and
other people’s emotions, together with the ability to use emotions
to enhance thoughts and actions (Coleman and Argue, 2015;
Mayer et al., 2000). Another theoretical framework for
understanding personality is trait activation theory (TAT), which
predicts that some events, situations or human interventions
‘activate’ a trait more than others. For example, in a supportive
organization culture employees are more likely to behave pro-
socially. TAT suggests that individual personality and the situation
affect behaviour in the workplace (Judge and Zapata, 2015).
Pause and reflect
Looking at the chapter’s opening vignette, President Trump
claims that he is a ‘genius’; even if true, do you consider
that intelligence is positively related to leadership? What
traits do you think make a person an effective leader?
Leadership in Action: Top personality traits of successful leaders
313
The trait approach to understanding the leadership phenomenon still
flourishes (see Zaccaro’s et al., 2018). A 2017 analysis of former
Harvard dropout and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed that
his top personality traits and characteristics included intellect,
emotionality, immoderation, melancholy and gregariousness. The
report went on to observe that ‘While Mark Zuckerberg’s top
personality trait is his intellect, others, like his melancholy, may seem
more surprising’ (Synder, 2017).
Other reports offer some reflection on less desirable traits exhibited
by corporate leaders. In February 2009, there were demands that Sir
Fred Goodwin, the former CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland, be
stripped of his knighthood for ruling over ‘a culture of reckless
spending’. Giving evidence to the Treasury Select Committee of the
British parliament, Goodwin and other former banking executives
gave a ‘profound and unqualified apology’ for all the distress caused
by the financial crisis (Farrell, 2009). In June 2017, Barclays’s ex-
chief executive John Varley, and three other bank executives, Roger
Jenkins, Thomas Kalaris and Richard Boath, were ‘charged with
fraud committed during the banking crisis’ (Burns, 2017).
Trait research has attempted to identify the personality, social,
physical or intellectual attributes that differentiate effective leaders
from ineffective leaders. In terms of personality, the research has
focused on the Big Five model, which proposes that five basic
dimensions – extraversion, conscientiousness, emotional stability,
agreeableness and openness to experience – encompass most of
the significant variations in leader personality. Judge et al. (2002)
found extraversion to be the most predictive trait of effective
leadership. Also, trait research has found that effective leaders are
endowed with intelligence, emotional stability and integrity. However,
a plethora of reports put a spotlight on leaders’ personality
characteristics not typically mentioned in academic research. Sports
Direct CEO Mike Ashley allegedly conducted senior management
meetings that were ‘effectively a “pub lock-in” with alcohol continuing
to be served … following a drinking contest Ashley vomited into the
fireplace “to huge applause from his senior management team”’
(Young, 2017). Travis Kalanick, ex-CEO of Uber, was forced to
resign following revelations that he presided over ‘a culture of gender
discrimination and sexual harassment’. The removal of Kalanick, it is
claimed, is ‘“going to prompt some of the Silicon Valley tech bros to
think carefully about who they select as their leaders,” said business
ethics professor, Joseph Holt’ (Solon and Carrie Wong, 2017).
314
Reflective question
1. To what extent, if at all, do these reports of past profligate
misdeeds by executives cast doubt on the trait approach to
understanding effective leadership?
315
Source
Aldisert, L.M. (2018) ‘5 Must-Have Traits of Successful Leaders’,
Success. Available at www.success.com/5-must-have-traits-of-
successful-leaders (accessed 23 October 2019).
316
To explore this topic further see:
Granrose, C.S. (2001) ‘The challenge of Confucius: the
generalizability of North American career assumptions’, in J. Kidd, X.
Li and F.-J. Richter (eds), Maximizing Human Intelligence
Deployment in Asian Business: The sixth generation project. London:
Palgrave, Chapter 4, ‘Culture and leadership’.
Guthey, E. and Jackson, B. (2011) ‘Cross-cultural leadership
revisited’, in A. Bryman, D.L. Collinson, K. Grint, B. Jackson and M.
Uhl-Bien (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Leadership. London: SAGE,
pp. 165–78.
As we have already covered, trait theories of leadership focus on
personal characteristics, or intellectual attributes that differentiate
leaders from non-leaders (see e.g. DeRue et al., 2011). Interest in
traits to predict effective leadership began in the 19th century
when ‘great leaders’ were generally regarded as superior
individuals who, as a result of the fortunate inheritance of genes,
possessed attributes important for effective leadership. Until the
mid-20th century, trait theories and research flourished in the
enduring quest to discover (1) specific psychological traits and
attributes which would help explain whether an individual will
emerge as an informal leader in a group, and (2) how traits and
personal attributes are related to leadership effectiveness.
Image 6.1 Trait theories of leadership focus on
personal characteristics, or intellectual
attributes that differentiate leaders from non-
leaders.
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Researchers used various methods to identify a universal cluster
of leadership traits, including intelligence and personality testing,
observation, and analysis of biographical data. To illustrate the
trait approach, Table 6.1 compares two sets of data measuring
traits with leader effectiveness. A word of caution: any
interpretation of comparative data might differ because the
researchers use different descriptors to describe similar personal
characteristics. The attributes shown are cognitive ability and what
is referred to as the five-factor or Big Five personality model.
Table 6.1 Key attributes related to leadership
effectiveness
Table 6.1 Key attributes related to leadership
effectiveness
1974–2002 attributes Stogdill Judge et al.
Cognitive Ability *r =
Intelligence 25 0.33
Personality
Extraversion 31 0.24
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1974–2002 attributes Stogdill Judge et al.
Conscientiousness 38 0.16
Openness – 0.24
Agreeableness 35 0.21
Neuroticism – – 0.22
Source: based on Stogdill, 1974; Judge et al., 2002, 2004
Note: *Coefficients have 95 per cent confidence intervals and 80 per cent
credibility intervals that exclude zero
Cognitive ability has stood the test of time and is strongly related
to leadership outcomes (Antonakis, 2011). The correlation
coefficient is a statistical measure that calculates the strength of
the relationship between the relative movements of two variables.
In Stogdill’s 1974 review of leadership research, 25 studies found
a positive relationship between intelligence and leader
effectiveness. The average correlation coefficient was r = 0.28.
More recent meta-analytic findings show that intelligence explains
objective leadership effectiveness measuring r = 0.33 (Judge et
al., 2004, cited by Antonakis, 2011: 277). However, correlations
between measures of perceived leader effectiveness and
intelligence are much lower. One explanation for this phenomenon
is that an individual with a high IQ might not emerge as an
effective leader because the relationship between the trait and
outcome seems counter-intuitive to observers (Antonakis, 2011).
For example, observers may not be impressed with smart
managers because they have difficulty communicating their ideas
to nonleaders.
Although using different descriptors, Stogdill (1974) and Judge et
al. (2002) linked five personality traits – extraversion,
conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness and neuroticism –
with leadership effectiveness. Extraversion, which refers to
assertiveness, dominance and being positive, was found to be
important in 31 studies when reviewed by Stogdill and measured r
= 0.24 by Judge et al. (2002). Conscientiousness, whose facets
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include determination, being goal directed and self-discipline and
which was found to be important in 38 studies and meta-analyses,
predicts leadership effectiveness and measures r = 0.16.
Openness, which was not included in Stogdill’s review, refers to
curiosity and creativity and measures r = 0.24. Agreeableness,
which refers to sociablity, being trustful of others and empathy,
was found to be important in 35 studies reviewed by Stogdill and
had a correlation of 0.21 in Judge et al.’s (2002) research. Finally,
neuroticism, which includes emotions such as anxiety, anger and
depression, had a correlation of –0.22. Theoretically, effective
leaders tend to have higher scores on assertiveness,
conscientiousness and openness to new ideas and learning, and
lower scores on neuroticism.
Considered singularly, Stogdill (1974) observed that traits have
little diagnostic or predictive significance. Rather, specific ‘patterns
of traits’ appear to interact in a complex way to give leadership
advantage and are a ‘sensible modification’ of the extreme variant
of the situationalist model (1974: 87). Judge et al. (2002) found
that, taken as a whole, the Big Five personality model predicts
who becomes a leader and leadership effectiveness. For
Antonakis (2011) and Zaccaro et al. (2018), statistical analysis has
established that valid traits can be useful in predicting leader
emergence and leadership effectiveness, which helps explain the
‘renaissance’ in trait research (Zaccaro et al., 2001, 2015) and
why business gurus continue to be ‘fascinated’ by the interface
between the ‘intrinsic’ personality traits of leaders and a leader’s
ability to influence followers (Swart, 2019).
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Critiquing the trait approach
Although research on traits has given HR practitioners some
benchmarks for selecting potential leaders and, as noted, recent
statistical analysis (Zaccaro et al., 2018) has specified and
validated multi-leader attributes, the trait approach has several
significant weaknesses.
First, trait leadership research has largely neglected the context
within which leaders find themselves. As Stogdill argued over 70
years ago, ‘if there were general traits that characterize leaders,
the patterns of such traits were likely to vary with the leadership
requirements of different situations’ (1948: 65, our emphasis).
Zaccaro et al. make a similar observation, that researchers need
to investigate the role of context as ‘an influence on leaders’
behavioural expressions of their attributes’ and that certain traits
that promote behavioural flexibility increase ‘leaders’ capacity to
adapt’ to their activities’ situational contingencies (2018: 48).
Second, trait leadership theory underplays followership in the
leadership process. It focuses on trait variables and optimum
performance and downplays what it is like to be a human being.
As human beings, followers have different life experiences, vary in
ability, motivation, role perceptions, emotional needs, and,
together with how they behave in work groups, this affects the
leadership process and outcomes. The heterogeneity of followers
leads to a third criticism that trait models disregard three well-
known dimensions of the social world: class, gender and race.
Although Stogdill’s (1974) study reported an association between
societal factors and leadership, how class, gender, race or
sexuality work together to influence leader–follower relations is
under-researched. For example, British research has persisently
found that class impacts on school performance (Malik, 2018).
While not emphasizing the social importance of individualization,
some scholars maintain that class hierarchy is the central dynamic
shaping modern society. And, therefore, in this context, it is
unsurpirsing that few individuals occupying a senior leadership
position had fathers who were from a working-class background
(Eidlin, 2016).
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The philosophy and praxis of intersectionality are particularly
interesting when seeking to understand and analyse the
complexity and dynamics of leader–follower relations.
Intersectionality has become a ‘hot’ topic in social science inquiry,
and describes an analytical tool to help identify and challenge
people’s life experiences and the organization of power in a given
society or work organization, as shaped by their class, gender,
race and sexuality all at the same time (Collins and Bilge, 2016).
As a form of critical inquiry and practice, intersectionality helps us
better understand, for example, that leader–follower relations are
shaped not by a single axis of social division, be it gender or
sexuality, but by many axes that work together and influence each
other. Intersectionality as an analytical tool therefore gives us a
better insight into the complexity of workplace human relations.
A fourth related criticism is that traditional trait leadership
theorizing is culturally determined. Therefore, we may assume
that what could be considered a positive personal attribute will be
an issue for debate between Asian and Anglo-American scholars
(Tse et al., 2012; Norton et al., 2015). Thus, traits regarded as
desirable in individuals who will most likely be seen as ‘leader-like’
will differ radically in ‘masculine’ countries and ‘feminine’ countries
(Hofstede, 2001; Minkov and Hofstede, 2011) and across cultures
and time.
Finally, statistical research correlating traits and leadership raises
an obvious criticism: do quantitative results actually establish a
causal connection between traits and leadership effectiveness?
Traditional statistical models underestimate the challenges of
proving causations. Informed by critical realism, which
acknowledges that social phenomena are intrinsically meaningful,
and meaning has to be understood – it cannot simply be counted
or measured (Sayer, 2000) – the study of causal inferences in
traits-effectiveness research means that, in addition to
establishing causal connections, researchers have to examine the
mediating effects of other key variables, such as context, and
followers’ shared meanings, attitudes and actions.
Critical Insight: Do traits predict effective leaders?
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323
Activity
Search the Internet and identify three present-day leaders of private
or public sector organizations, along with the special attributes that
you believe each possess. Compare your list of special qualities with
those of your peers and try to reach agreement on a ‘master list’.
How many of the attributes on the master list match those listed in
Table 6.1? To what extent was the 2008–09 global financial crisis
(GFC) caused by leaders’ traits or context? Where there appears to
be a relationship between personality and performance, do you think
personality causes the outcome? What other variables could explain
the relationship?
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Further information
Lanchester, J. (2010) Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and
No One Can Pay. London: Penguin.
MacKenzie, C., Garavan, T.M. and Carbery, R. (2012)
‘Understanding and preventing dysfunctional behavior in
organizations: conceptualizing the contribution of human resource
development’, Human Resource Development Review, 10 (4): 346–
80.
Martin, I. (2014) Making It Happen. London: Simon & Schuster.
Swart, T. (2019) ‘5 traits of super-successful leaders’, Forbes, 5
March. Available at www.forbes.com/sites/taraswart/2019/03/05/5-
traits-of-super-successful-leaders/#25a224de31ff (accessed 16
September 2019).
The history of trait research has been described as a ‘roller-
coaster’ (Antonakis, 2011). Interest was high up to the 1950s, but
thereafter dropped right off until a resurgence in the 2000s. This
was partly because the critiques of trait leadership theories at the
time encouraged the focus to shift away from individual
differences and more towards the importance of leaders’
behaviour and situational or contextual factors. We will go on to
consider these theories now.
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Leader behaviour and styles
We introduced the concept of leadership behaviour in Chapter 1.
Whereas trait theories of leadership emphasize personal
characteristics and provide a basis for selecting the right people to
be leaders, behavioural theories of leadership, in contrast, focus
on behaviour and infer that people can be trained to be leaders.
Research shifted from thinking about leadership in terms of
attributes that a leader ‘has’ to the reconceptualization of
leadership as a form of ‘activity’; in other words, what leaders do,
and in particular how they behave towards followers.
Since the early days of industrialization, it has been possible to
identify a variety of styles of leadership. As noted, some
employers devised a system of ‘scientific management’ to provide
the means and justification for extending control over workers
(Braverman, 1974). Other employers, notably the Quakers,
believed that employers and managers should be paternalistic
and nurturing in order to build a workforce that is productive and
satisfied, and adopted what is called a benevolent paternalism
style of leadership. The influential American Frederick Taylor
extolled the notion of an organization as a ‘machine’ (Morgan,
1986), with an emphasis on the orderly arrangement of who does
what and who has authority over whom. In the 1950s and 1960s,
this kind of management thinking gave way to the ‘neo-human
relations’ movement. This approach to work and people
management believed workers were primarily motivated by their
inherent need for self-fulfilment. Taken together, the new theories
observed a disconnect between the employee’s psychological
aspirations, management practices and leadership styles
(Thompson, 1989).
The neo-human relations school is a backdrop to influential
American research that focused on a variety of leadership
behaviours in various contexts. Despite the use of different labels,
these studies provided an analytical framework for comparing
different types of leadership styles based on two main types of
behaviours: task behaviours and relationship behaviours. Task
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behaviours describes the extent to which the leader emphasizes
productivity targets or goal accomplishment. These behaviours
are also called ‘producton-centred’ and ‘task-orientated’
leadership styles. Relationship behaviours, on the other hand,
describe the extent to which the leader is concerned about her or
his followers as people: their needs, development and problems.
These behaviours are also called ‘employee-centred’ and ‘person-
orientated’ leadership styles. Two well-known studies at the
University of Michigan and the Ohio State University provided the
foundations for behavioural theories of leadership.
327
University of Michigan studies
The studies conducted by Katz and Kahn (1951) at the University
of Michigan focused on the effect of the leader’s behaviour or
style on work performance. Based upon responses to a
questionnaire, the researchers identified two discrete types of
leadership behaviours, which they called production orientation
and employee orientation. Leaders classified as being production-
orientated emphasize the production and technical aspects of
work. Followers were viewed simply as a factor of production – as
a means for getting the work done. Leaders classified as being
employee-orientated give special attention to a subordinate’s
personal needs, value their individuality, and generally approach
followers with a strong ‘human relations’ emphasis.
In their early publications, the Michigan researchers
conceptualized production and employee orientations as opposite
ends of a single leadership dimension. This suggested that the
leader who emphasized high levels of productivity was less
concerned with followers, and the employee-orientated leader was
less concerned with production. However, qualitative data shows
that a leader can be production and employee orientated
simultaneously. This dual orientation was illustrated by one
participant who explained his job like this: ‘Keeping the section
running smoothly; keeping the clerks happy; keeping production
up; making impartial assignments of work’ (Katz et al., 1950: 21,
and quoted by Wright, 1996).
Katz and his colleagues interpreted the qualitative data, for
example ‘keeping the clerks happy’, as an example of employee-
oriented leader behaviour, despite the fact of that particular
participant citing ‘keeping up production’ as an important part of
his job. As more research was conducted, the investigators
reframed their views and no longer conceptualized concern for
production and concern for employee as opposite ends of a single
continuum. Rather, the two leadership constructs were
conceptualized as independent orientations. Thus, leaders were
seen as being able to show high concern for both production and
employees simultaneously. With respect to effectiveness, the
Michigan researchers found that employee-orientated leader
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behaviours were associated with higher group performance and
higher job satisfaction among group members (Kahn and Katz,
1960).
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Ohio State studies
While researchers at the University of Michigan were investigating
the effects of leaders’ behaviour on performance, researchers at
Ohio State University were investigating how leaders behaved
when they were leading a team or an organization. The initial Ohio
State research studied aircrews and pilots (Stogdill and Coons,
1957). The aircrew members, as followers, were asked a wide
range of questions about their lead pilots, using the Leader
Behaviour Description Questionnaire (LBDQ). The results
suggested that there were two important underlying dimensions of
leader behaviour (Halpin and Winer, 1957): initiating structure and
consideration.
Initiating structure is leader behaviour aimed at defining and
organizing work relationships and roles, as well as establishing
clear patterns of communication, and ways of completing tasks.
Consideration is leader behaviour aimed at nurturing warm
working relationships, and encouraging mutual trust and respect
among the leader and followers. The effective leader attempts to
increase both initiating and consideration structure and to
maintain a balance between the two (Stogdill and Coons, 1957).
The Ohio State researchers regarded initiating and consideration
structure as being two independent dimensions. Therefore, they
considered a leader’s behaviour to be flexible and capable of
changing as the situation warranted. Leaders could be high on
initiating dimension and not on consideration dimension, but
equally could be high on both or low on both. This was one of the
earliest studies that conceptualized leadership styles as anything
other than a continuum and recognized the need for a rational
understanding of situations. Although the University of Michigan
and Ohio State studies were conducted separately, there is an
obvious similarity between the two. What the Michigan group
labelled ‘employee orientation’ is similar to the Ohio State team’s
‘consideration’, and Michigan’s ‘production orientation’ is similar to
Ohio State’s ‘initiating structure’. However, the Ohio State
approach measured both formal and informal variables. The Ohio
team was especially interested in the differences between the
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leader’s formal responsibility and formal interaction with followers
on the one hand, and the informal elements of leadership
activities and interactions with followers on the other. The
research seemed to indicate that leadership could derive from
individuals who held no formal position in the organization (Grint,
1997b).
The behavioural approach to studying leadership led to the
characterization of organization leaders as having particular
leadership styles. At the University of Michigan, Rensis Likert’s
research, spanning more than 25 years, culminated in what Likert
calls ‘four systems of management’, which describe four general
leadership styles. The four systems are: exploitative-authoritative,
benevolent-authoritative, consultative and participative. Each
system of management represents a distinctive leadership
paradigm, or set of beliefs, values and assumptions that guide
leaders. The key element differentiating the styles of leadership
behaviour is the amount of empowerment or participation the
leader allows followers in the decision-making process. In varying
degrees, reviews of behavioural leadership research produced
inconsistent and conflicting results (Korman, 1966).
Pause and reflect
Think about a successful manager you have studied. What pattern of
effective leadership behaviour did she or he exhibit?
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The leadership grid
Working independently of the Michigan and Ohio University
researchers, Blake and Mouton (1964) addressed the limitations
of early behavioural research. Their influential managerial grid,
later revised and renamed the ‘leadership grid’, is based on leader
styles similar to those found in the Ohio State studies. Blake and
Mouton characterized the two main activities of leaders as
involving a concern for results and concern for people. These two
attitudinal dimensions are independent of each other. In different
combinations, they yield a broad range of different leadership
styles (see Figure 6.1).
The leadership grid provides a way of plotting the behaviours of
leaders along the two axes. It is a nine-point scale, where 9 shows
high concern people and 1 shows low concern. The various styles
that leaders use as they attempt to accomplish results through
followers can be found at different points of intersection of the two
scales. Blake and Mouton focused on five major leadership styles
– those plotted at the four corners and at the centre of the grid.
Figure 6.1 A diagrammatic representation of
the leadership grid (adapted from Blake and
Mouton (1964) and Northouse (2019))
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An authority-compliance style (9,1 on the grid) of leadership is
characterized as having great concern for results (meeting
targets) and little concern for people. This leader desires tight
control in order to get tasks done efficiently and gives little
consideration to human relations. In contrast, a team style (9,9) is
characterized as having great concern for both people and results.
This leader works to motivate followers to reach their highest
levels of accomplishment, is flexible, responsive to change and
understands the need for change. A country club style (1,9) has
great concern for people and little concern for results, attempts to
avoid conflict and endeavours to be well-liked. This leader’s goal
is to keep followers happy through good interpersonal relations,
which are more important to him or her than the task. An
impoverished style (1,1) of leadership is often referred to as
‘laissez-faire’ leading. This leader has little concern for people or
results, avoids taking sides and stays out of conflicts; he or she
does just enough to get by. A middle-of-the-road style (5,5) has a
medium concern for people and results. This leader attempts to
balance a concern for both followers and results without a
commitment to either.
The leadership grid model differs from the Ohio State approach in
an important way. Whereas the Ohio State approach is descriptive
and non-evaluative, the leadership grid is normative and
prescriptive. According to Blake and Mouton, it is the 9,9 leader
who achieves ‘the effective integration of people with [results] …
by involving them and their idea in determining the conditions and
strategies of work’ (1964: 142). Moreover, the 9,9 style, more than
any other, is more positively associated with career success and
organizational performance. This is the reason the leadership grid
is often referred to as the ‘one best way’ approach. As an
individual development tool, the grid supports changing the
behaviour of leaders to move them all toward the team leadership
style. Moreover, it considers leadership as the purview of the
individual rather than as a collective and distributed concept
(Harris and Gronn, 2008).
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Critiquing the behaviour approach
Despite its application in early leadership management
development (LMD), the behaviour approach has several
limitations. First, like the trait approach, it has been unable to
identify a universal style of leadership that could be effective in the
vast majority of situations. Another criticism is that the behaviour
approach suggests that the most effective leadership style is the
so-called ‘high-high’ style, that is, high results and high people-
oriented behaviour. However, extensive research in Anglo-
American countries found only limited support for the universal
proposition that ‘high-high’ leaders are more effective (Nystrom,
1978; Yukl et al., 2002).
A third criticism of behavioural theories of leadership is that they
have not adequately demonstrated how leaders’ behaviours are
associated with performance outcomes (Bryman, 1992). In his
evaluation of behaviour taxonomies, Yukl observes that the
‘results from this massive research effort have been mostly
contradictory and inconclusive’ (1994: 62). In general, behavioural
taxonomies can only superficially explain leadership emergence
and effectiveness. Leaders may have the right inherent traits or
exhibit the right behaviours and still be ineffective, because those
traits and behaviours are inappropriate for a particular situation or
context facing the leader. Context is important too, which, in the
mid-1960s, gave rise to researchers isolating situational variables
to explain leadership effectiveness. We will go on to consider
contingency theories next.
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Contingency Theories of Leadership
The critiques of traits and the behavioural studies of leadership
that identified two basic leader behaviour styles, one focusing on
results and one focusing on people, provided the theoretical
framework for contingency or ‘if–then’ theories of leadership
(Bratton et al., 2005). In explaining the differences in management
and leadership (see Chapter 1), we introduced the notion of
contingencies by identifying some internal and external
contingencies – strategy, government regulations or
organizational design – that affect managerial behaviour.
Contingency, as it applies to organizational theory and practice,
means that the effectiveness of a particular competitive or HR
strategy, organizational structure or leadership or managerial style
depends on the presence or absence of other factors or forces.
Accordingly, there is no ‘one best’ way, structure or style. Instead,
these factors must be gauged relative to the context,
circumstances or other situational factors (Jaffee, 2001). The
contingency theories, as they apply to leadership, propose that
the appropriate leader behaviour depends on certain factors or
contingency variables, including the task and the followers.
Therefore, there is no one best behaviour or style of leadership,
but, rather, situation X requires leadership behaviour or style B.
We next discuss Fiedler’s (1964) work that provided the general
umbrella for House’s (1971) path–goal contingency theory and the
widely known situational model developed by Hersey and
Blanchard (1977).
Pause and reflect
Based on your own work experience or studies, do managers
change their leadership style according to the task at hand or the
experience of followers?
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Fiedler’s contingency theory
Fred Fiedler’s contingency theory assumes that leaders are either
task oriented or relationship oriented, an orientation that the
leader cannot change. Task-oriented leaders are focused on
accomplishing goals, meeting set targets and getting work done.
In contrast, relationship-oriented leaders are focused on
developing good, comfortable interpersonal relationships. The
effectiveness of both types of leaders depends on the
favourableness of the situation. The theory classifies the
favourableness of the leader’s situation according to the leader’s
position of power, the structure of the team’s task and the quality
of the leader–follower relationships. Fiedler’s theory posits that the
fit between the leader’s orientation and the favourableness of the
leader’s situation determines the team’s effectiveness in
accomplishing a task. Fiedler classifies leaders using the Least
Preferred Co-worker (LPC) Scale (Fiedler, 1964, 1970).
The LPC Scale is a projective technique through which a leader is
asked to think about the person with whom she or he can work
least well (the least preferred co-worker, or LPC). The leader is
asked to describe this least preferred co-worker using adjectives
like pleasant versus unpleasant, friendly versus unfriendly,
quarrelsome versus harmonious. Leaders who describe their least
preferred co-worker in positive terms, such as pleasant, cheerful
or friendly, are classified as high LPC, or relationship-oriented
leaders. Those who describe their least preferred co-worker in
negative terms, such as unpleasant, quarrelsome or gloomy, are
classified as low LPC, or task-oriented leaders.
The LPC scale is a controversial element in Fiedler’s theory.
Specifically, it has been criticized because it is a projective
technique, with associated measurement biases and low
measurement reliability (McMahon, 1972; Peters et al., 1985). The
leader’s situation has three dimensions: task structure, position
power and leader–member relations. Task structure refers to the
number and clarity of rules, regulations and procedures for getting
the work done. Position power refers to the leader’s legitimate
authority to evaluate and reward performance, punish errors and
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demote group members. The quality of leader–member relations
is an indication of the positivity of the leader’s relationship with
their followers. Based on these three dimensions, the leadership
situation is either favourable or unfavourable for the leader.
A favourable leadership situation is one in which the task is highly
structured, the leader has considerable position power, and the
leader–member relations are good. The most unfavourable
leadership situation is one with an unstructured task, weak
position of power for the leader, and poor leader–member
relations. The three dimensions above combine in various ways to
determine the favourableness of the situation. Fiedler posits that
low and high LPC leaders are each effective if placed in the right
situation. Specifically, low LPC (task-oriented) leaders are most
effective in either very favourable or very unfavourable leadership
situations. In contrast, high LPC (relationship-oriented) leaders
are most effective in situations of intermediate favourableness.
What happens when a low LPC leader is in a moderately
favourable situation or when a high LPC leader is in a highly
favourable or highly unfavourable situation? Fiedler argues that
leader orientation is difficult, if not impossible, to change. He
recommends that the situation be modified to fit the leader’s
orientation. A moderately favourable situation could be made
more favourable to become a better fit for the low LPC (task-
oriented) leader. A highly favourable or highly unfavourable
situation could be changed to a moderately favourable one, which
is a better fit for the high LPC (relationship-oriented) leader. There
is considerable debate concerning the validity of Fiedler’s LPC
model. While a large number of studies have been conducted, not
all of them have supported the model, particularly when
conducted in workplace conditions (Peters et al., 1985). It has
also been pointed out that the LPC scale may not truly measure
leadership style (Schriesheim and Kerr, 1977).
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House’s path–goal theory
Robert House (1971) developed the path–goal theory of
leadership, which has its roots in the expectancy theory of
motivation (Vroom, 1964). Expectancy theory is based on the
notion that work motivation is contingent upon the perception of a
link between levels of physical or mental effort and reward
(Bratton, 2020). In path–goal theory, the main task of the leader is
to facilitate the follower’s path to the goal. The leader uses the
most appropriate of four leader behaviour styles – directive,
supportive, participative or achievement oriented – to help
followers clarify the paths that lead them to work and personal
goals.
The directive style is used when the leader must communicate
expectations, schedule work and maintain performance
standards. The supportive style is used when the leader needs to
express concern for followers and create an organizational climate
that demonstrates support. The participative style is used when
the leader wants to share decision-making authority with
followers. The achievement-oriented style is used when the leader
must set challenging goals for followers, expect very high levels of
performance and show strong confidence in the followers.
Selective examples of contingency variables are shown in Table
6.2.
Table 6.2 Path–goal theory in action
Table 6.2 Path–goal theory in action
Work
characteristics
Follower
characteristics Leadership style
Complex
Imprecise rules
Recalcitrant
Sclerotic
Directive
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Work
characteristics
Follower
characteristics Leadership style
Stressful
Routine
Dissatisfied
Need for affiliation
Supportive
Ambiguous
Unstructured
Need for
empowerment
Need for clarity
Participative
Multi-faceted
Challenging
High expectations
Motivated to learn
Achievement
oriented
The contingency variables identified in path–goal theory are the
characteristics of the work environment (situation) and of the
followers. Research has focused on matching leader behaviours
to follower characteristics and environmental characteristics. For
example, when tasks are ambiguous, directive leader behaviour is
appropriate. When the environment is stressful, supportive
leadership is appropriate (Maier, 1963; Valenzi and Dessler, 1978)
When followers are ready to be empowered, participative
leadership is appropriate. Followers who have high learning and
achievement orientations need achievement-oriented leadership.
These are but a few examples of the links between leader
behaviour and the contingency variables. By selecting the
appropriate behaviour style, the leader helps their followers
achieve their personal goals. Leaders can try out several different
styles in order to diagnose the situation and then apply the most
appropriate behaviours.
The research support for path–goal theory has several limitations.
First, the research support for the theory is weak (e.g.
Schriesheim et al., 2006). Second, path–goal theory incorporates
so many different aspects of leadership that interpreting the theory
can be unclear. Third, the model neglects to explain adequately
the leader–behaviour–follower motivation relationship. Fourth, the
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leader has to provide coaching to help followers achieve their
goals, which assumes that the leadership is a one-way process
and fails to recognize followers’ initiative and action.
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Hersey and Blanchard’s situational theory
Developed by Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard, the situational
leadership model (SLT), like the path–goal theory, suggests that
the leader’s behaviour must be flexible to reflect the situation. It
posits that effective leadership depends on choosing the right
leadership style contingent on the subordinates’ ability and
motivation to perform a given task (Hersey and Blanchard, 1969,
1977; Blanchard et al., 2013). SLT employs two dimensions of
leader behaviour drawn from the Ohio State studies: directive
behaviour, which focuses on the task in hand (e.g. routine or
nonroutine), and supportive behaviour, which focuses on
followers’ job-related development (e.g. ability, training,
experience). Followers’ development is the degree to which they
are able or have the competence and willingness or commitment
necessary to accomplish a given task or goal.
The principal tenets of SLT require a leader to appraise her or his
subordinates and judge how competent and committed or
motivated they are to perform and accept responsibility for
completing a given task or goal. Followers who have low
competence and low commitment are the least developed.
Followers who have high competence and high commitment to
accomplishing the goal are the highest in development, and in this
situation there is little need for the leader to intervene. The
followers’ development is categorized into four levels – low,
moderate 1, moderate 2 and high – as shown in Table 6.3.
STL recommends that leaders adapt their leadership style to the
ability or competence and commitment of the followers. It
assumes that tasks and followers’ ability and commitment change
over time, which means that a leader should adapt and become
more or less directive or supportive to match the new situation.
The four styles of leader behaviour – directing, coaching,
supporting and delegating – associated with each level of follower
development are shown in the table as well.
Table 6.3 Situational leadership in action
Table 6.3 Situational leadership in action
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Follower
development
Directive
behaviour
Supportive
behaviour
Leadership
style
Follower
development
Directive
behaviour
Supportive
behaviour
Leadership
style
Low: Unable and
unwilling High Low Directing
Moderate 1:
Unable but
committed
High High Coaching
Moderate 2: Able
but variably willing Low High Supporting
High: Able and
willing Low Low Delegating
Pause and reflect
The biopic Darkest Hour (2018), starring Gary Oldman, presents
Winston Churchill as the imperturbable war leader with extraordinary
rhetorical skills. After the war, as leader of the Conservative Party,
Churchill lost the general election. If Churchill had the capacity to
mobilize and unify people behind a collective endeavour in May
1940, why did he lose the general election in 1945? Was context a
factor? If so, why?
Situational leadership theory recommends that a leader should
use a directing style of leadership with low-developed followers
who are unable (low competence) and unwilling (low commitment)
to take responsibility for completing their work. This style is
characterized by high concern with the task and less time on
supportive behaviour. Adopting this style, a leader gives
instructions about how the task is to be completed by the
followers, and then controls them carefully. As followers develop
to the second level, it is recommended that the leader adopt a
coaching style, in which the leader focuses on both the task and
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supportive behaviours. The able (moderate to high competence)
but with variable willingness (commitment) followers are the next
most developed and competent and require a supporting style
from the leader. This style is characterized by high supportive
behaviour and low directive behaviour.
Finally, the highest developed followers are those who are both
highly able and willing, therefore requiring a delegating style of
leadership. The leader employing this approach offers less goal
input and relationship support because the followers are highly
competent and accept responsibility for completing the work. Task
or directive behaviours are high in directing and coaching
approaches and low in supporting and delegating approaches,
whereas supportive behaviours are high in coaching and
supportive and low in directing and delegating approaches. STL
has intuitive appeal to many practitioners.
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Critiquing the contingency approach
The contingency approach has the strength that it facilitates
managers and leaders to become more context sensitive, flexible
and responsive to peers (Graeff, 1983). Enhanced
responsiveness to context and peers can emerge through the use
of performance management tools. For example, 360-degree
appraisal, which involves feedback from four groups of people –
the appraiser (e.g. leader), the subordinate or appraisee (self-
appraisal), peers and subordinates – can help to assess the need
for leadership development (see Chapter 12) by giving managers
and leaders the opportunity to see themselves through the eyes of
others (Ayman and Lauritsen, 2018; Bratton and Gold, 2017).
There are, however, a number of conceptual and methodological
limitations to contingency theories. All the theories incorporate
multiple factors simultaneously into recommending a preferred
leadership style, which is open to wide interpretation. A key
methodological concern is that contingency theories do not
explain adequately the causal effects underpinning the
relationships they draw. The absence of central hypotheses does
not allow for a reliable testing of the variability of dependent and
independent variables. While some partial tests of contingency
models have indicated support (e.g. Castro et al., 2006), others
have not found a convincing relationship between situational
variables and performance outcomes (e.g. Blank et al., l990).
Gary Yukl concludes that ‘the evidence supporting contingency
theories of effective leadership is weak and inconsistent’ (2011:
294).
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Conclusion
In this chapter, we have addressed some evolving theories of
leadership. These theories have attempted to explain how leaders
emerge and direct or support their followers. We began with a
consideration of the traits approach, which, despite its limitations,
has consistently found a moderate association between
intelligence and the Big Five personality attributes and various
leadership outcomes. We noted, however, the doubts about the
causal links between individual traits and attributes and
organizational performance. We also reviewed early behavioural
theories of leadership, which studied what leaders do and, in
particular, how leaders behave towards subordinates. Two main
types of behaviours were identified: results-driven behaviours and
supportive behaviours. Finally, we examined three contingency
theories. Considering contingencies and the situation in which
leaders operate helps us to understand why leadership styles vary
so much between one leader and situation to the next, and,
therefore, they are an important part of the leadership process.
Contemporary leadership theories have been built on the
foundations of the early approaches we have just examined, and it
is to these current prominent theories we now turn in Chapters 7
and 8.
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Chapter Review Questions
1. What traits would you look for in a person to be appointed to a
leadership position in (a) HR department and (b) an IT department?
How would the nature of the leadership position influence the traits
you were looking for?
2. What traits are the best predictors of leader emergence and
effectiveness? Why?
3. What do you feel is the primary contribution of the behavioural
theories to our understanding of the leadership process?
4. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the early behavioural
theories of leadership?
5. To what extent, if at all, should leaders change their style to the
different development levels of their subordinates?
Assignment Task: Leadership traits
Form small groups of three to five people.
1. Using materials such as the Economist, Fortune, Forbes, Wall
Street Journal or other management magazines, look up at
least two articles on corporate leaders. Do the descriptions of
these leaders’ behaviour fit any of the particular contingency
theories examined in this chapter? What are the styles of leader
behaviour that are cited most often (task oriented or people
oriented)? What are today’s contingency variables that impact
leadership? Do the articles provide any insight into the effects
of ‘good’ leadership on organizational outcomes?
2. View the film Norma Rae (1979). This powerful film, based on a
true story, portrays leadership among US textile workers.
Reuben (Ron Leibman), a full-time union organizer, encourages
Norma Rae (Sally Field) to recruit fellow workers in the plant.
What leadership traits does Reuben have? What leadership
traits does Norma Rae have? What implications do the events
portrayed in Norma Rae have for managerial leadership?
346
Go Online
Explore the real world of leadership by reading these case
studies:
Now What? Now Who? A Mexican Small Family Business in
Transition
Leader–Member Exchange Theory: Barack Obama
Further your knowledge and build your bibliography for
assignments by reading the recommended journal articles for this
chapter.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
video
Learn more about leadership in practice by watching the video
conversation for this chapter.
Erinn Woodside discusses how she led teams on the frontlines of
Iraq and adapted her leadership style to suit an unstable
environment.
The video can be found at https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
See the inside front cover for the access code and instructions.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
347
Further Reading
Antonakis, J. (2011) ‘Predictors of leadership: the usual suspects
and the suspect traits’, in A. Bryman, D.L. Collinson, K. Grint, B.
Jackson and M. Uhl-Bien (eds), The SAGE Handbook of
Leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, pp. 269–85.
Ayman, R. and Lauritsen, M. (2018) ‘Contingencies, context,
situation and leadership’, in J. Antonakis and D. Day (eds), The
Nature of Leadership (3rd edn). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, pp.
138–66.
Graeff, C.L. (1997) ‘Evolution of situational leadership theory: a
critical review’, Leadership Quarterly, 8 (2): 153–70.
Hannah, S.T., Uhl-Bien, M. Avolio, B.J. and Cavarretta, F.L. (2009)
‘A framework for examining leadership in extreme contexts’, The
Leadership Quarterly, 20: 897–919.
Yukl, G. (2011) ‘Contingency theories of effective leadership’, in A.
Bryman, D. L. Collinson, K. Grint, B. Jackson and M. Uhl-Bien
(eds), The SAGE Handbook of Leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA:
SAGE, pp. 286–98.
Zaccaro, S.J. (2007) ‘Trait-based perspectives of leadership’,
American Psychologist, 62: 6–16.
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Case Study: Leadership training at
Bluespire Technologic
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Background
In post-Brexit Britain, it is predicted that employers across different
employment sectors will face challenges to attract people with talent
(Bratton and Gold, 2017). The term ‘talent management’ gained
widespread use when, in a period of buoyant labour markets, Michaels et
al. (2001) declared a ‘war for talent’. As the IT sector has grown in
importance in post-industrial Britain, retaining talented IT specialists and
line managers has become a top priority.
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Bluespire Technologic
Bluespire Technologic is a medium-sized Scottish employer located in
Dundee, 97 kilometers north of Edinburgh. The company develops
software platforms that brings business information together in one place.
Although based in the north-east of Scotland, the company serves a
broad range of clients from multiple sectors throughout the UK, and
employs 38 graduate IT and software engineers. Established in 2009, the
company had no difficulty in recruiting or retaining its workforce in its early
years. However, while the company has no difficulty recruiting new
graduates, increasingly it has difficulty retaining talented staff. To retain
staff and reduce recruitment costs, the company decided to introduce a
leadership management development (LMD) programme for its six line
managers.
351
Investment in LMD
One LMD programme the company CEO Brad Martin is looking at is the
situational leadership model, which he believes will develop both line
managers and teams, and improve manager–team member relationships
within the company. The LMD programme is offered by a well-respected
firm of management consultants. The CEO formed a senior management
team to review the proposal. Prior to meeting, team members were asked
to consider the following:
What specific leadership skills will the programme provide to line
managers?
How will the LMD programme fulfil a competence need as
determined in line managers’ development plans?
How will the LMD programme improve the individual performance of
line managers and help retain talented staff?
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Team meeting
At the meeting to review the LMD initiative, Joyce Donaldson, an
experienced and well-liked senior manager, opened the discussion by
speaking positively about the need for leadership training. ‘The LMD
programme should encourage our line managers to treat their team
members individually. It should also help our new graduates learn faster
too’, she said. ‘Take, Phil, for example. He assigned the Southernrock
Bank project to his team and allowed the team to determine how to
accomplish the project. So, yes, if it empowers teams and we stop
haemorrhaging talent, lets go for it.’
Not everyone agreed with Joyce’s position. Andrew, a senior manager,
remarked, ‘It’s all well and good empowering teams but in my section,
most team leaders have to give precise instructions on design issues, and
team members need close supervision. Besides, I don’t see a LMD
programme solving our retention problem.’
353
Case exercise
On your own, or in a group, provide a written recommendation to CEO
Brad Martin on investing in a LMD programme. In your report:
1. Explain the style of leadership described by Joyce and Andrew,
based on your understanding of the situational leadership model.
Have the line managers treated team members in the wrong way?
2. Explain the strengths and weaknesses of the situational leadership
model. The model suggests that when it comes to leading teams, no
‘one size fits all’. What does this mean?
3. Critically examine the argument that leaders’ leadership styles can
have different causal effects on the performance of talented
followers.
354
Sources of additional information
For more information on the situational leadership model, see Situational
Leadership II, by K. Blanchard et al. (2013). Also go to
http://enviableworkplace.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Situational-
Leadership-Model-overview (accessed 18 September 2019). Read
Gary Yukl’s chapter, ‘Contingency theories of effective leadership’, in A.
Bryman, D.L. Collinson, K. Grint, B. Jackson and M. Uhl-Bien (eds) (2011)
The SAGE Handbook of Leadership, pp. 286–98. Read Butcher, D.,
Bailey, C. and Burr, J. (2016) ‘How leadership impacts organizational
performance’, in J. Storey (ed.), Leadership in Organizations, London:
Routledge, pp. 177–97 to explore the connection between leadership and
performance.
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7 Charismatic and Transformational
Leadership
John Bratton
‘The problem is, Theresa May has neither the strength,
the cunning nor the charisma to bind her party’s long-
suppurating wounds over Europe.’
Observer Editorial, 2017
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Chapter Outline
Introduction
The nature of charismatic leadership
Neo-theories of charismatic leadership
Transformational leadership
Critiquing charismatic and transformational leadership
Conclusion
358
Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
explain the meaning of charismatic and transformational leadership;
explain what is meant by the charismatic and transformational
approach to leadership;
critique charismatic and transformational perspectives of leadership.
video
To learn more about the ‘dark side’ of charismatic leadership, don’t
forget to watch the video conversation for this chapter online.
359
Introduction
That leaders should have ‘charisma’ is one of the most talked
about issues in modern politics. After former British Prime Minister
Theresa May’s 2017 ‘strong and stable’ election mantra
evaporated, along with her sizable majority, May’s personal
leadership qualities came under close public scrutiny. Many
political pundits and her detractors agreed that she did not have
that ‘quality’ to communicate effectively, to get people excited and
then committed to her government’s programme. In contrast, the
front-runner in the Conservative Party leadership contest to
replace Theresa May, former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, is
widely acknowledged as being the most charismatic politician of
his generation (Parker, 2019). Other politicians acknowledged as
charismatic include: wartime British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill; American civil rights leader Martin Luther King; South
African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela; US President
Barack Obama; First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon; and
New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. The ability to use
language to stir emotion, to persuade and to mobilize people can
be called, for simplicity, the ‘charismatic effect’.
Charismatic and transformative leadership are two contemporary
leadership theories that share a common theme in the leadership
discourse: they view leaders as individuals who inspire others
through language to change. When the charismatic leadership
approach first emerged in the 1970s, it was considered so
different from extant theories that it was described as ‘new
leadership’ (Bryman, 1992). Charismatic and transformative
theories of leadership are considered ‘close cousins’. While both
take a leader-centred perspective on leadership, the focus is on a
set of behaviours and skills that can be learned and developed.
This chapter starts by giving you a brief history of charisma before
explaining the nature of charismatic leadership. It then examines
transformational leadership, and discusses the similarities and
differences between charismatic and transformational leadership.
360
Finally, the chapter provides a critique of charismatic and
transformational leadership.
362
When charismatic organizational leaders put things into words
and communicate through conversation, they can reassure,
inspire and alter people’s perceptions of change. For example,
every organizational change and the direction it takes originate in
conversation. Every conversation or story and counter-story in
meeting rooms and corridors has the ability to ‘push’ and ‘pull’ for
differing interpretations of change (see e.g. Barry and Elmes,
1997; Baskin, 2008; and see also Chapter 13).
The theoretical foundation for the charismatic effect on followers is
found in the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle
(384–322 BCE) and in the work of sociologist Max Weber (1864–
1920). In The Art of Rhetoric (Lawson-Tancred, 1991), Aristotle
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posited that persuasion is achieved using rhetorical means, which
include the speaker’s personal character (ethos), stirring the
hearers’ emotion (pathos) and using reasoned argument (logos).
These three dimensions, or what can be called the ‘Aristotelian
triad’, can be seen as a shell version of contemporary theories of
charismatic leadership (Antonakis, 2018). It is important to note
here, therefore, that the power of persuasion may be less to do
with the leader’s personal qualities and more about the audience,
when the speech stirs their emotions and meets their need for a
visible personification of these deeper emotions. Communication
scholars suggest that charisma is a personal attribute – command
of language, use of non-verbal communication (e.g. hand motions,
eye contact) – that can be cultivated, that many individuals may
have and that some have more than others. If charisma is indeed
something that individuals have, then it should be objectively
verifiable. That is to say, we should be able to measure charisma
and differentiate between a charismatic and a non-charismatic
individual.
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Charisma as a relationship
A related question is, ‘Once cultivated, can charismatic leaders
lose their charisma?’ For instance, if we believe Martin Luther
King to be a charismatic leader, then presumably he was
charismatic all the time, throughout the day, as well as when he
was giving speeches. Scholars suggest that context plays a role;
for instance, size of audience, cultural dynamics and timing
(Perloff, 2010); that charisma only emerges under certain
situations – most notably when an audience is available. Further,
an audience or followers may attribute high levels of charisma
regardless of their leader’s rhetorical talent for being
representative of, rather than distinct from, the audience itself
(Platow et al., 2006). This suggests that charisma is not simply a
possession but a relationship, not something individuals ‘have’ but
something that others perceive (Bratton et al., 2005).
To take an example, some British people believed Winston
Churchill to be a charismatic leader – but others do not, and it is
these non-believers that pose the quandary. How can charisma be
objective if it depends upon the belief and perception of others?
And, if Winston Churchill were to be alone on a desert island, to
whom would he be charismatic? The implication of these
questions is that charisma, like beauty, lies in the eye of the
beholder.
To return to the Greek origin of the word, charisma is not a ‘favour’
embodied in an individual because a ‘favour’ has to be given by
another – it is essentially an exchange, not something you
possess from birth or retain permanently. Indeed, the biographies
of people that are recognized as charismatic inform us that it is
only within a specific social context that charisma emerges. For
instance, neither Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King nor Barack
Obama were born charismatic, though, at a later stage of their
lives, exceptional qualities were subsequently ‘recognized’ by their
followers. Charisma from this perspective appears not to be a
psychological phenomenon but is a social construct (Grint, 2000)
and whether charismatics are effective leaders depends, to some
extent, on the context.
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The ‘dark side’ of charismatics
Charisma can be exploited for evil purposes, what others call the
‘dark side’ of charisma. For example, when exploited by
psychopaths like Adolf Hitler, it can have dangerous, existential
consequences. Work organizations are replete with leaders who
are narcissistic and also display some behaviours associated with
charismatic leadership (e.g. Conger and Kanungo, 1998). Some
leaders at Enron, Tyco and WorldCom in the USA and at Royal
Bank of Scotland and Carillion in the UK acted recklessly and
unethically to further their own personal gain (see Chapter 4), and
in some cases faced criminal proceedings for corruption and
fraudulent behaviour. The lesson is that charismatic leaders do
not always act in the best interests of their followers, shareholders
or the communities in which they are based.
Pause and reflect
What is the ‘Aristotelian triad’? What relevance does it have to
modern charismatic leadership?
366
Weber’s theory of charisma
Max Weber’s sociological writings were concerned with the rise of
modernity and bureaucracy (Bratton and Denham, 2019). For the
purpose of studying leadership, the importance of Weber’s
sociology lies with his theory of domination. According to Weber,
domination can be legitimate and illegitimate (coercive). Weber
(1921/1968) was primarily interested in legitimate forms of
domination or power, or what he called ‘legitimate authority’ that
allocates the right to leaders to command and the duty of
subordinates to obey. He argues that every form of rule attempts
to establish and cultivate the belief in its legitimate authority. The
starting point for his theory is his classification of legitimate
authority into three types:
Traditional authority, in which compliance is due to the sacred
nature of the office. Historically, this was the most important
form of domination but it has declined, along with
monarchies.
Rational-legal authority, in which compliance is derived from
the rationality of the authority. For example, people generally
obey traffic laws because they appear to make sense, and
not because police officers are charismatic or because they
have some inherited authority.
Charismatic authority, in which obedience is attributed
fundamentally to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or
exemplary character of an individual.
Weber established charisma as an important concept to describe
a form of authority based on perceptions of an individual. He
defines the term charisma as:
A certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of
which he [sic] is considered extraordinary and treated as
endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or, at least,
specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are
not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded
as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of
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them the individual concerned is treated as a ‘leader’.
(1921/1968: 241)
Weber provided four related elements of charisma: (1) an
individual of exceptional powers or qualities; (2) a social crisis; (3)
a radical solution to the crisis offered by the individual; and (4)
devoted followers. Weber posits that charismatic power, unlike
traditional authority, is a powerful force for social change, which
abandons traditional rules:
The power of charisma rests upon the belief in revelation
and heroes, upon the conviction manifestations … are
important and valuable; it rests upon ‘heroism’ …
Charismatic belief revolutionizes men ‘from within’ and
shapes material and social conditions according to its
revolutionary will. (Weber, 1921/1968: 1116)
Charismatic leaders have no need to resort to force in order to
persuade followers. Charismatic power is achieved by the
voluntary acquiescence of these followers. Weber believed that
charisma could not be analysed along a continuum; people were
charismatic or they were not. This type of charisma can be called
‘pure’ or ‘strong’ charisma, to differentiate it from ‘weak’ charisma,
which forms the basis of contemporary theories of charismatic
leadership (Bratton et al., 2005).
Weber is emphatic that charismatic power emerges as a quality
conferred on a ‘supernatural’ leader only during periods of
‘extraordinary’ social crisis. At such ‘moments of distress’, the
charismatic leader ‘seizes the task for which he [sic] is destined
and demands that others obey and follow him by virtue of his
mission’ (1921/1968: 1112). However, the importance of a crisis
situation offers an alternative understanding of charismatic
leadership: not as a quality conferred on a leader but as a quality
‘projected’ on to a leader by virtue of situations, events and crises
(Craib, 1997). For example, in 1940 following the evacuation of
the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk, the British Prime
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Minister Winston Churchill demonstrated charisma. But Churchill’s
charisma melted away like fresh snow in late spring after the war.
Although it might seem surprising, especially given the promotion
of the 2018 film Darkest Hour, Ken Loach’s 2013 film The Spirit of
‘45 contains a clip from a newsreel showing Churchill
electioneering on an open platform while being booed by the
audience, which seems to contain many demobbed soldiers and
sailors. Indeed, in 1945, the Labour Party in the general election
defeated Churchill’s Conservative government. In Britain, Churchill
is also remembered as a politician who had his share of failures
and controversial views: for his rabid anti-union views, for
example when he advocated a ‘shoot them down’ policy towards
strikers during the labour unrest of 1910–14 (Hutt and Gollan,
1975: 60), and for his notorious comment about Mahatma Gandhi,
‘this malignant subversive fanatic’ (Guha, 2019: 359). In the
1960s, and after his release from prison after 27 years in 1990,
Nelson Mandela, leader of the movement to end South African
apartheid, moved an entire nation toward significant social change
through the power of his ideas, charisma and oratory skills. In the
1980s, for a few years, it appeared that the British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher also possessed charismatic powers during the
Malvinas (Falklands) War with Argentina. However, her
charismatic power had gone by 1990. Before and during his
presidency (2009–2017), Barack Obama, to some, displayed
charisma, elevating him to the nation’s ‘orator-in-chief’. He
achieved this accolade by often organizing his speeches around
the same structure as a sermon: beginning by finding common
ground with the audience; bringing them down with a challenge;
and concluding by lifting them up to higher ground than the
opening (Kusnet, 2016). These examples serve to emphasize that
charismatic power is conferred upon a leader by followers, but it
can also be retracted. Weber devotes time to discussing how, in
its pure or strong form, charismatic authority has a character
‘foreign’ to everyday life. Therefore, it exists only for a short
period; periods of crisis facilitate charismatic leadership, and once
a crisis has passed a charismatic leader needs to adjust to
everyday life.
369
Charismatic authority is a product of social relationships. While
Weber did not provide a comprehensive exposition of the
relational dynamics between a charismatic leader and followers, it
is noteworthy that charisma formed part of his critique of
bureaucracy, suggesting that at times ‘charisma is the great
revolutionary force’ by changing attitudes and directions of action
(1921/1968: 245, emphasis added). In the 1960s, scholars
extended Weber’s theory of charismatic leadership to individual
attributes and leader–followers dynamics (Conger, 2011).
Pause and reflect
Thinking about your own country, which leader – political, religious or
corporate – would you describe as charismatic? Why? What role
does context play in judging a leader to be charismatic?
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Neo-theories of Charismatic
Leadership
According to Weber’s definition, charisma only prevailed in a small
group of people. For academics to co-opt charisma into leadership
research, they had to use a ‘tamed’ or weaker version of charisma
than that adopted by Weber (Shamir, 1999: 559–60). We examine
next House’s and Conger and Kanungo’s theories of charisma.
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House’s theory of charisma
House (1977) was one of the original academics who attempted to
explain the behaviour of charismatic leaders and provide a
theoretical explanation regarding the process charismatic leaders
use to influence followers. House’s reinterpretation of charisma
identified the necessary persuasive competencies to influence
people and, importantly, proposed that individual-deference
predictors of charismatic leaders might be empirically quantifiable.
These insights were prescient and probably the most important in
establishing the ‘foundations for how charisma is studied today’
(Antonakis, 2018: 63).
House argued that the charismatic effect was not the individual
leader, nor the context, but the emotional interaction that occurs
between a leader and his or her followers. According to House,
charismatic leaders are those ‘who by force of their personal
abilities are capable of having profound and extra-ordinary effects
on followers’ (1977: 189). House called this reconstruction of
charisma ‘organizational charisma’ (we call it ‘nurtured charisma’)
since it implies no necessary connection to religion or prophecy,
can be found amongst a wide group of organizational decision
makers, and can be developed.
House and Shamir (1993) integrated charisma and theories of
self-identity to explain how leaders engage followers. The term
‘identity’ is derived from the Latin root idem, implying sameness
and continuity, but its precise meaning is contested. Sociologist
Antony Giddens (1991: 52) writes that ‘self-identity … is not
something that is just given … but something that has to be
routinely created and sustained in the reflexive activities of the
individual.’ As a theoretical model of charisma, House and Shamir
(1993) proposed that leaders have extraordinary effects on
followers, who are motivated by enhanced levels of self-identity
that lead to personal commitment to the leader’s mission, self-
sacrificial behaviour and fulfilment. Shamir et al. (1993: 582)
argue that ‘charismatic leaders … increase followers’ self-worth …
[and] general self-efficacy.’
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House (1999: 564) suggested that charismatic leaders accomplish
significant achievements through the efforts of followers who are
exceptionally loyal to the leader, have a high degree of trust in the
leader, and are willing to make personal sacrifices in the interests
of the leader’s vision and the collective, led by the leader.
Contrary to Weber, House suggests that there are many
charismatic leaders whose charisma did not diminish with time.
Similarly, Bass (1999a: 546) observes that charisma can still be
present in leaders beyond the moment of crisis. More
controversially, perhaps, Bass posits that many charismatic
leaders retain their charisma despite ‘failing to perform’ (1999a:
550). In essence, charismatic leadership can be effective because
it ties followers and their self-identity to the organizational identity
(Northouse, 2015). House’s notion of ‘organizational charisma’
forms the foundation of the ‘neo-charismatic leadership paradigm’
(Bratton et al., 2005: 208).
Critical Insight: Boris Johnson’s Brexit speech – an exemplar of
charisma?
Go to YouTube and watch Boris Johnson’s 2018 Valentine’s Day
‘Brexit speech’. To better understand the ‘Aristotelian triad’ and its
significance to contemporary theories of charismatic leadership,
analyse Boris Johnson’s use of charismatic tactics in his Brexit
speech.
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Activity
As a guide:
1. How did Johnson’s personal character (ethos) come across?
2. What statements or words did Johnson use to stir the hearers’
emotion (pathos)?
3. What reasoned argument (logos) did Johnson employ?
Based on your analysis of his speech, to what extent will Johnson be
seen as a charismatic leader? Of course, an operationalization of the
Aristotelian triad in no way suggests that Johnson is effective as a
leader. To help with the analysis, go to www.ukpol.co.uk/boris-
johnson-2018-speech-on-brexit (accessed 23 October 2019).
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Conger and Kanungo’s theory of charisma
Conger and Kanungo (1998) further developed charismatic
leadership. They proposed that charisma is an attributional
phenomenon. The attribution of charisma qualities to a leader is
through a three-stage behaviour process. First, charisma is more
likely to be attributed to a leader who articulates an attainable
vision that will inspire follower collective action to achieve
objectives that are necessary in fulfilling the vision. Second, a
leader who creates an aura of confidence about the vision is more
likely to be perceived as charismatic than a leader who
demonstrates doubt and equivocation. Third, charisma is more
likely to be attributed to a leader who uses unconventional and
novel strategies or practices to achieve the vision. This three-
stage process is said to engender high trust in the leader and
enhanced follower performance.
As Weber (1921/1968) argued, contextual factors are important
because attribution may be highly dependent upon the
characteristics of the situation, such as an economic loss or
turbulence and uncertainty or collapse of a company. Some
organizational cultures may perhaps be more prone to
charismatics; that is, where the context already supports
unconventional and innovative approaches to problem resolution
rather than resorting to conventional remedies (Howell and Avolio,
1993). A new software company, for instance, might be an
appropriate example of the former (Cassidy, 2002), while a well-
established, risk-averse bureaucratic organization might be an
illustration of the latter.
A leader may engineer a ‘crisis’ to set the stage for demonstrating
visionary leadership. As an extreme example, the French
politician Marion Le Pen of the Front National engineered a sense
of ‘crisis’ by talk of ‘swarms of migrants’ and ‘Islamic takeover’
fostering social divisions and the demonization of Muslims. Such
narratives imply that not only is the context important where an
objective crisis is self-evident (e.g. war, famine, bank collapse),
but that individuals may just as surely perceive a crisis. Either
way, people may be more susceptible to a charismatic leader and
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accept radical change. The idea that social crises can act as
catalysts for change developed into a theory. The American
economist Milton Friedman wrote the highly influential statement:
‘Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change’ (1982:
ix). This became known as ‘the crisis hypothesis’.
Two attributes are seen to be essential for charismatic leadership:
the leader must be determined, self-confident and emotionally
expressive; and their followers must want to identify with the
leader as a person, whether they are or are not experiencing a
crisis (Bass, 1990a). Conger and Kanungo do not consider a
crisis, genuine or precipitated, to be a necessary condition for
charismatic leadership. An individual can be validated as a
charismatic leader by followers by communicating that the status
quo is unsustainable and provide a new vision and strategy for the
future. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that transformational
leadership is considered as a ‘close cousin’ of neo-charismatic
leadership.
Pause and reflect
To what extent is charismatic leadership more likely to be found in
crisis situations? Is charismatic leadership better suited to private or
public sector organizations? Why?
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Transformational Leadership
In the 1990s, the theory of transformational leadership had
become the ‘approach of choice’ for much of mainstream
leadership theory (Bass and Riggio, 2006: xi). This development
was, at least in part, prompted by research evidence, which
showed that traditional leadership models, defined as
‘transactional’, only accounted for a relatively small percentage of
variance in performance outcomes (Bryman, 1992). Research
evidence on the new models, on the other hand, found that
charismatic and transformational leadership are positively
associated with a range of important individual (e.g. job
satisfaction, motivation, commitment) and organizational (e.g.
performance, innovation, change) outcomes.
Transformational leadership highlights the power of the human
synergy between leaders and followers. Many writers use the
terms ‘transformational’ and ‘charismatic’ leadership
interchangeably. Burns (1978), an early theorist of
transformational leadership, believed that ‘transformational’
leaders were the same leaders described as charismatic by his
academic peers. Although charismatic and transformational
leadership share some common features, there are important
conceptual differences.
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Transactional and transformational leadership
We can understand transformational leadership by contrasting it
with ‘transactional’ leadership models, which are rooted in the
employment relationship. Transactional leadership is primarily
defined as an exchange relationship in which leader and follower
are engaged in some kind of agreement, whether economic (e.g.
reward), social (e.g. group membership) or psychological (e.g.
self-esteem). Contingency leadership theories describe
transactional leaders, who direct and nudge their followers toward
established organizational targets by clarifying role and task
requirements and giving support. The precise form of the
exchange is negotiable but is bounded by mutual benefit (Burns,
1978). Indeed, these transactional exchanges constitute the
‘psychological contract’ – the implicit contract between employer
and employee – which remains rooted in such an exchange
process.
Pause and reflect
In Chapter 1 and above we discussed the psychological contract, a
perceived set of expectations and understandings between
employees and employers. How do transformational leaders in
organizations define and maintain meaning and thereby influence the
psychological contract?
In contrast, ‘transformational’ leadership is not an exchange
process at all. Instead, according to Burns, leaders appeal to their
followers’ sense of values beyond their own self-interests. It is
possible for a leader to secure such a commitment from followers
that satisfy the leader’s, rather than the followers’, interests. The
objective of the transformation, however, has to be the benefit of
the organization, not the benefit of the leader. Thus, for Burns, all
transformational leaders are charismatic, but not all charismatics
are transformational – those who are not are likely to be
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charismatic ‘power-wielders’ (cited by Bass, 1990b: 220). For
Bass, transformational leadership occurs when:
leaders broaden and elevate the interests of their
employees, when they generate awareness and
acceptance of the purposes and mission of the group,
and when they stir their employees to look beyond their
own self-interest for the good of the group. (1990b: 21)
379
Bass and Riggio’s transformational leadership
model
Bass and his colleague Avolio appropriated Burns’s notion of
‘transformational leadership’ to develop a similar model for
organizational leaders (Conger, 2011: 89). At the centre of Bass’s
model is the notion that transformational leaders are able to
inspire followers to transcend their self-interests for the good of
the organization. Whether related to organizational processes or
products or services, all innovations begin with imagination and
creative ideas produced by people and then implemented using
organizational resources (Amabile et al., 1996). Transformational
leadership theory suggests that leaders can create a culture which
will facilitate informal learning and motivate followers to be
performing at levels that exceed expectations. According to Bass
(1985), the charismatic or ‘idealized’ effect is a necessary
component of transformational leadership, but by itself it is
insufficient to account for exceptional levels of performance.
In Bass and Riggio’s (2006) model, transformational leadership
involves four essential behaviours:
Charisma or idealized effect: the leader must share ethical
values and behave in ways that allow her or him to serve as a
role model for their followers;
Inspirational motivation: a leader must have the capacity to
inspire and elevate employees’ motivation with challenging
work and persuasion, to arouse ‘team spirit’, and achieve
extraordinary outcomes at individual, group and organization
level;
Intellectual stimulation: the leader must encourage her or his
followers’ efforts to be creative thinkers and innovate by
questioning assumptions, the status quo, reframing problems,
and approaching ‘old ways of doing’ in new ways;
Individualized consideration: the leader must have the
personal capacity to perceive and understand the individual
emotions of her or his followers, to demonstrate concern for
individuals’ needs, to help each employee to develop her or
his skills and to be able to handle human relationships.
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Conceptually, the four behavioural elements of the leader mitigate
or ‘augment’ the effects of traditional transactional leadership.
Figure 7.1 shows each of these elements in a schema of
interaction between transactional and transformational leadership
behaviours, which intervenes between the expected outcomes
and the psychological contract between employer and employee.
The social reconstruction of the psychological contract changes
from a self to a collective base and results in employee
performance beyond expectations.
There is great proximity between what Bass and Riggio are
describing here and Blake and Mouton’s (1964) ‘concern for
people’ leadership style discussed in Chapter 6. Bass and
Riggio’s model acknowledges the role of emotional intelligence.
This is the capability of a leader to identify and manage her or his
own emotions, as well as the emotions of others (Goleman, 1995;
Mayer et al., 2000), to facilitate creative thinking and to effectively
manage emotions in relationships with other members in the
organizations.
So how do transformational leaders link their vision to their
employees’ growth needs and values? This, Bass and Riggio
argue, is achieved by responding to individual followers’ learning
and growth needs by empowering them. The leader’s vision is
linked to their followers’ values through a ‘reframing process’ in
which traditional issues are ‘reframed’ by leaders who, by
appealing to their own vision and higher sense of morality and
values, persuade followers to realign their own values to those of
the leader and exert themselves above and beyond the
contractual expectations. As such, anyone could demonstrate
transformational leadership.
Figure 7.1 The augmented effect of
transformational leadership (adapted from
Bass and Riggio, 2006)
381
In addition to the four behavioural elements of the leader, Bass
and Riggio’s (2006) model includes two others: contingent reward
and management-by-exception (MBE). The contingent reward
component is related to follower performance on what needs to be
done, with rewards offered in exchange for satisfactory
accomplishment of the work. This component, therefore, though
important, has the primary and deleterious side-effect of
establishing a transactional or instrumental relationship between
leader and follower (Burns, 1978). The follower learns that reward
is contingent on work done.
The management-by-exception component consists of ‘active’
management-by-exception, in which leaders carefully monitor
followers’ actions. In contrast, in the case of ‘passive’
management-by-exception, leaders only involve themselves when
things go wrong so that their intervention is always associated
with failure and admonishment.
Leadership in Action: Entrepreneurial charismatics or an
entrepreneurial state?
In the media and popular management magazines and books on
leadership, we read a lot about how the engine of innovation in
Silicon Valley lies in its charismatic entrepreneurs and venture
capitalists. According to this storyline, the fast-moving, risk-loving
and pioneering charismatics and the private sector are what drive
innovation. The charismatic and transformational theories of
leadership tend to reinforce this popular narrative. The common
382
conception of the role of risk-taking charismatic entrepreneurs is
reflected in an article in the Economist:
Governments have always been lousy at picking winners,
and they are likely to become more so, as legions of
entrepreneurs and thinkers swap designs online, turn them
into products at home and market them globally from a
garage. As the revolution rages, governments should stick
to the basics.
Economist Mariana Mazzucato challenges this common conception
of innovation. Her book highlights the importance of context and, in
particular, the role of government and the public sector in the
innovation process. Mazzucato (2013) presents a counter argument
to that which portrays governments, at best, as merely facilitating the
economic dynamism of the private sector; or worse, governments are
slow, heavy-handed and bureaucratic institutions which actively
inhibit innovation. She postulates:
The fabricated image of a lazy State and a dynamic private
sector is one that has allowed some agents of the economy
to describe themselves as the ‘wealth creators’, and in
doing so, extract an enormous amount of value from the
economy – in the name of innovation … This fabricated
story hurts innovation and increases inequality. (2013: 3–4)
Contrast Mazzucato’s thesis with the leadership theories examined in
this chapter; for example, Kouzes and Posner’s observation that
‘leadership is inextricably connected with the process of innovation’
(1997: 51).
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Reflective questions
1. What evidence supports Mazzucato’s thesis?
2. What evidence challenges her argument?
3. Does Mazzucato’s thesis debunk charismatic theories of
leadership? Why?
(Hint: Search the Internet and watch the presentation at the UCL
Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose IIPP by Director Mariana
Mazzucato speaking about the concept of value, with an audience
Q&A chaired by Paul Mason).
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Source
Economist (2012) ‘The third industrial revolution’, 21 April. Available
at www.economist.com/node/21553017 (accessed 17 September
2019).
http://www.economist.com/node/21553017
385
To explore this topic further see:
Mazzucato, M. (2013) Entrepreneurial State. New York: Anthem
Press, pp. 3–4.
Thus, Bass (1985, 1997) and Bass and Riggio’s (2006) model of
transformational leadership includes both elements of the ‘new
leadership’ (i.e. charisma, inspiration, stimulation, consideration)
and elements of the ‘old leadership’ (i.e. reward for performance
exchange). Bass and Riggio use a multifactor leadership
questionnaire (MLQ) and statistical analysis to evaluate the
effectiveness of transformational leadership over transactional
leadership. The predictive validity of the MLQ factors has been
supported by meta-analyses (Banks et al., 2016). These results
suggest a hierarchy, with the four transformational factors –
charismatic, inspirational, intellectual, individualized – at the top,
followed by contingent reward, and then management-by-
exception. The results reaffirm a fundamental point emphasized
by Bass (1985). That is, transactional leadership, particularly
contingent reward, provides a broad basis for effective leadership,
but extraordinary performance and employee satisfaction,
commitment and loyalty are possible from transactional leadership
if augmented by transformative leadership (Bass and Riggio,
2006).
According to Bass, the transactional and transformational factors
are independent of each other. A strong transactional leader may
well prove to be a weak transformational leader, but Hughes et al.
(1999) suggest otherwise – that, in fact, strong transformational
leaders are also likely to be strong transactional leaders. In other
words, all of these factors act as related resources for a leader to
use, but they tend to be good or bad across the entire range. The
implication of this is that leaders tend to be effective or ineffective
leaders per se, rather than concentrating on one specific
motivational method.
A recent development in the charismatic/transformational
literature is the charismatic, ideological and pragmatic (CIP)
model of leadership (Lovelace et al., 2019). While in their
386
prominent model Bass and Riggio (2006) define their main
components in terms of leader behaviours, the CIP model
emphasizes a leader’s ‘sensemaking’ process before outlining the
resulting leader behaviours. The notion of sensemaking is that
reality is an ongoing achievement which develops from efforts to
create order and make sense of events or conditions (Weick,
1993). Upper-echelon charismatic leaders provide a sense of
identity, emphasize a sense of shared experience, and provide
direction toward an organizational goal while also empowering
followers to use their own discretion to accomplish the higher-
order vision (Lovelace et al., 2019). Through sensemaking,
leaders help followers see the past and to envision what is ahead
more clearly. ‘Ideological leaders’ use past events to provide a
common reference point for followers to facilitate sensemaking
activities by limiting the uncertainty and anxiety associated with
thinking about an unknown change. The CIP model postulates
that an effective leader is a pragmatist, solving complex
organizational problems. A leader’s cognitive orientation (i.e. her
or his prescriptive mental model) leads them to define problems,
react to situations in a certain way, and emphasize certain skills or
processes in their problem-solving approaches. Thus, a leader’s
cognitive orientation strongly influences an organization’s
response to complex problems, with significant consequences for
various outcomes (Lovelace et al., 2019).
The Bass and Riggio model is probably the ‘most influential’
contemporary theory of leadership (Antonakis, 2018: 66), but it
has received criticism for its tendency to be US-centric. An
interesting question, therefore, is to what extent particular social
classes, genders, ethnic groups or nationalities are more prone to
the appeals of charismatic or transformational leadership. As
Chapter 4 explained, cross-cultural studies seem to confirm the
universality of some aspects of charismatic leadership, though the
influence of leadership is particularly popular in the USA and
significantly less so in Nordic countries (see House, 1999).
The connection between charismatic leadership and culture is
illustrated by Finland. One Finnish word is hard to translate into
English: talkoo, meaning ‘working together, collectively, for a
specific good … cooperating, everyone together, equally’ (Henley,
387
2018a: 24). In Finland, where cooperation and relative equality
are recurring themes, employees may be less prone to the
appeals of charismatic leadership. Indeed, there is a large body of
research on the relationship between national cultures and what
counts as good leadership and, most particularly, the influence of
culture in enabling and constraining various forms of leadership
(see e.g. Chapter 4, also Guthey and Jackson, 2011).
Pause and reflect
Thinking about the Finnish example, is the appeal of charismatic or
transformational leadership more or less likely in an egalitarian
society with relative equality? Why?
388
Transformational leadership, innovation and
change
Numerous leadership writers suggest that leadership can help
facilitate innovation and organizational change. Kouzes and
Posner (1997: 51) argue that ‘Leadership is inextricably
connected with the process of innovation.’ As noted already,
leaders can facilitate change by communicating a vision in a way
that inspires employees, challenging them to look at old problems
in new ways. Kotter (2012), for example, emphasizes the
importance of communicating a vision in generating a compelling
case for innovative change. In effect, the Bass and Riggio model
of transformational-transactional leadership is essentially an
emotional bonding between leader and followers, which results in
followers doing things they would probably not do under a non-
charismatic leadership.
But having vision and oratorical skills cannot be enough to
generate innovation because there are plenty of managers with a
‘vision’ and some communication skills that are ineffective for
leaders in facilitating innovation or change. Employment relations
scholars emphasize the value of employee ‘voice’ in the
innovation and change process (Emmott, 2015). Employee ‘voice’
is the promise of an effective employment relationship built on
trust and respect, which can be a key driver of workplace
innovation and change.
Although it is not well understood, employee voice is the product
of a culture where followers feel able to speak out, make
suggestions and engage in decision making with a degree of
confidence that they will be listened to and not penalized for doing
so. The intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration
domains in Bass and Riggio’s model act as antecedents or
‘enablers of engagement’ or ‘employee voice’, which, research
suggests, encourage followers to be creative and innovative and
open to change. In summary, transformational leadership must be
inclusive, open and engaging, otherwise trust, knowledge creation
and sharing will falter (see e.g. Adler and Kranowitz, 2005;
Marchington and Wilkinson, 2012).
389
Critiquing Charismatic and
Transformational Leadership
Although in some models charisma is only one element of
transformational leadership, charismatic and transformational
leadership are often treated synonymously. Mainstream
leadership studies have criticized transformational leadership for
its lack of conceptual clarity. It treats leadership as a personality
trait rather than a behaviour or competency that people can learn
(Bryman, 1992). Transformational leadership also reinforces the
‘heroic leader’ perspective (Yukl, 1999) because of its basic
premise that it is the leader who inspires and mobilizes followers
to do exceptional things. Further, it is argued that the charismatic
nature of transformative leadership presents significant risks for
organizations (Conger, 1999). Reverence and blind obedience to
a leader can risk the Icarus paradox. Based on the fabled Icarus
of Greek mythology, the Icarus paradox refers to the phenomenon
of a business failing after a period of apparent success, where this
failure is brought about by the very elements that led to its
success (Miller, 1991). An apparently successful iconoclastic,
charismatic and transformative leader can imperil an organization
by overstretching resources and risk-taking. Arguably, the Icarus
paradox and blind obedience to a transformational leader were
factors that led to the epic implosion of the Royal Bank of
Scotland. As one female bank employee put it, ‘Grown men
saying they were too scared of Fred [‘Sir’ Fred Goodwin, RBS’s
CEO] to give him bad news? Isn’t that a bit pathetic?’ (Martin et
al., 2014; quoted by Bratton, 2015: 280).
Critical management theorists contend that charismatic-
transformational leadership theories downplay the importance of
power. The disposition of followers to attribute charismatic
qualities is not because of reference to the leader’s personal
qualities but by their location in the organizational hierarchy and,
concomitantly, to economic power (Clegg and Dunkerley, 1980,
2005; Shils, 1965). The locus of charismatic qualities is never too
far from the locus of power, yet it is striking that mainstream
390
leadership scholars pay so little attention to the whole issue of
relations of power, and the way it is distributed, directed and
effectively contested in organizations. In terms of the employment
relationship, charisma may be present in the act of obedience but
it does not account for the whole act of obedience. Corporate
leaders are attributed charisma (what we call ‘nurtured’ charisma)
‘simply by virtue of the tremendous power concentrated in them’
(Shils, 1965: 207). Thus, it is contended that charismatic and
transformational leaders achieve, and expect, obedience by a
combination of charismatic and rational-legal types of authority.
This perspective helps to correct the tendency to ascribe greater
causal power to charismatic and transformational qualities rather
than to economic power or context.
Finally, ethical concerns revolve around the transformational
leadership model (see Chapter 5). That persuasion by
transformational leaders for followers to accept the need for
‘commitment’ by displaying certain behavioural competencies,
simultaneously, as the spectre of precarious work is omnipresent
(Hewison, 2016), alongside an acceptance of increased insecurity
in the employment relationship, is arguably ethically deficient.
391
Conclusion
Charismatic-transformational leadership is a complex
phenomenon and it is not fully understood. Research has tended
to describe the power of charismatic leaders without explaining
the actual processes that achieve obedience and inspire followers
to do extraordinary things. Contemporary reinterpretations of
charisma have emphasized the role of rhetoric in leading change
and the way that rhetoric, from its classical Aristotelian definition
until today, involves the capacity to communicate a vision and to
‘move’ people. Further, a leader who creates an aura of
determination and confidence about the vision is more likely to be
perceived as charismatic than a leader who demonstrates doubt
and equivocation. Charisma is also more likely to be attributed to
a leader who uses unconventional and novel strategies or
practices to achieve the vision.
We examined the theory that the charismatic effect is a necessary
element of transformational leadership, but emphasized that, by
itself, it is insufficient to account for the transformational process.
It seems that three other elements – inspirational motivation,
intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration – are
essential to transformational leadership. The CIP model,
examined as part of the charisma/transformative literature,
focuses on the complex cognitive processes of leaders, as well as
recognizing the significance of followers and context.
Cross-cultural studies suggest that further research is needed on
the influence of culture in enabling and constraining
transformational leadership. But despite its limitations,
transformational leadership appears to have become highly
influential and an integral part of leadership and change
management theory.
392
Chapter Review Questions
1. What relevance is the ‘Aristotelian triad’ to contemporary theories of
charismatic and transformational leadership?
2. To what extent, if at all, are transformational and charismatic
leadership identical?
3. How do charismatic leaders maintain control over their followers?
Assignment Task: Leadership speeches
Form a small group and watch the two YouTube videos: Martin
Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech at www.youtube.com/watch?
v=smEqnnklfYs and Steve Jobs’s most inspiring speech at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAs867sz9oE (both accessed 27
September 2019).
393
Questions
1. Both these leaders were regarded by many of their followers as
charismatic, but how is this represented in the videos?
2. Do Luther King and Steve Jobs need a group of followers in
their immediate presence to appear charismatic, or can they
seem charismatic even when on their own?
3. Do they display similar behavioural and attitudinal
characteristics?
4. Is a crisis or radical change a critical prerequisite for the
appearance of their charisma?
Go Online
Explore the real world of leadership by reading these case
studies:
Leader–Member Exchange Theory: Barack Obama
Transformational Leadership—Steve Jobs
Further your knowledge and build your bibliography for
assignments by reading the recommended journal articles for this
chapter.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
video
Learn more about leadership in practice by watching the video
conversation for this chapter.
Marianna Fotaki from the University of Warwick explains her work
researching narcissistic leaders, and how the positive and negative
attributes of these leaders can affect organizations and wider society.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
394
The video can be found at https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
See the inside front cover for the access code and instructions.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
395
Further Reading
Antonakis, J. (2018) ‘Charisma and the “new leadership”’, in J.
Antonakis and D.V. Day (eds), The Nature of Leadership. London:
SAGE, pp. 56–81.
Bass, B.M. and Riggio, R.E. (2006) Transformational Leadership
(2nd edn). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Conger, J.A. (2011) ‘Charismatic leadership’, in A. Bryman, D.L.
Collinson, K. Grint, B. Jackson and M. Uhl-Bien (eds), The SAGE
Handbook of Leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, pp. 86–
102.
Diaz-Saenz, H.R. (2011) ‘Transformational leadership’, in A.
Bryman, D.L. Collinson, K. Grint, B. Jackson and M. Uhl-Bien
(eds), The SAGE Handbook of Leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA:
SAGE, pp. 299–310.
Lovelace, J.B., Neely, B.H., Allen, J.B. and Hunter, S.T. (2019)
‘Charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic (CIP) model of
leadership: a critical review and agenda for future research’, The
Leadership Quarterly, 30 (1): 96–110.
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Case Study: Leadership at Watson Winery
397
Background
In 2007, the Australian wine industry was booming, having had
extraordinary growth in productivity, profitability and exports for over a
decade. The industry contributed over A$40 billion a year to the
Australian economy. A surge in the planting of vineyards resulted in an
oversupply of wine, and by 2010, Australia was producing 20–40 million
cases a year more than it was selling. Price discounting reduced
profitability.
The industry’s woes impacted on Watson Wines. A family-owned
company headquartered in South Australia, Watson Wines employed
more than 1,500 people worldwide. Its brands were sold in over 100
countries, with its premium-vintage sparkling wine aimed at the more
affluent export markets.
On retirement, George Watson, who founded the company, appointed his
daughter Stella Watson as Chief Operating Officer. Stella’s management
team included a General Manager of Corporate Affairs and Strategy,
Oliver Taylor, who took pride in the fact that he had led the division during
the prosperous years. Oliver had been with the company since its
inception and was a lifelong family friend.
398
The problem
Stella had been keenly aware of falling sales, with the company’s financial
reports mirroring the current crisis faced by other Australian wine
companies. She kept abreast of the information provided by Wine
Australia, and eagerly sought out any advice or help from others in the
field. When Stella turned to Oliver for his guidance, she was surprised at
how he remained committed to the current direction of the company;
despite the signs it was no longer the logical path to take. He talked
continuously about past achievements but could not articulate his vision
for the future. When Stella suggested he reach out to his staff for new
ideas, she was politely rebuffed. ‘My staff know what is expected and
what our goals are,’ he remarked. ‘I don’t see any need to change what
has been working so well for us.’
At a recent Wine Australia conference, Stella met a new business school
graduate, Samuel Adams. He impressed her with his approach to the dire
situation faced by the wine industry. Samuel spoke passionately about the
benefits of employee engagement and spoke about employee input into
corporate initiatives. Stella felt herself caught up in his enthusiasm as he
described his vision: ‘In boom times we didn’t have to try too hard to sell
wine, but things have changed. We have to be global-thinking now in
order to survive. We can match any wine country in the world in terms of
quality and technical ability, but we have to improve our marketing. We
have to create a demand for our product again in the world market.’ Stella
was particularly impressed with his idea that the industry needed to move
away from the low-cost, high-volume model of the past and focus on
producing high-quality wines.
Samuel’s ideas were not far from Stella’s mind when at a monthly staff
meeting shortly after the conference, she was confronted with the reality
of the lowest sales in ten years. Employee layoffs were imminent if
conditions remained unchanged. Stella thought of Samuel’s vision and
what he could do for her company if given the opportunity. She also knew
that making a change to the leadership in strategy and market
development would be the hardest decision she would ever face as the
head of the company.
399
Case exercise
1. Drawing from this chapter, how would you characterize Oliver’s
leadership?
2. In what ways do Samuel’s ideas about dealing with the challenges in
the Australian wine industry reflect a transformational leadership
style?
3. What would you advise Stella to do in terms of the leadership in
strategy and market development? What would be your justification?
400
Sources of additional information
Bartlett, C.A. (2009) Global Wine War 2009: New world vs. old, case
study. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Publishing.
Charters, S., Clark-Murphy, M., Davis, N., Brown, A. and Walker, E.
(2008) ‘An exploration of managerial expertise in the Western Australian
wine industry’, International Journal of Wine Business Research, 20 (2):
138–52.
Williams, K.M. (2013) ‘A profile of cellar door personnel: an exploratory
case study analysis of two Australian wine regions’, Journal of Human
Resources in Hospitality and Tourism, 12 (1): 91–108.
401
402
8 Relational and Distributed
Theories of Leadership
John Bratton
‘A bullying genius may well destroy others who are not
only human, but who given the opportunity and
encouragement may be an equally valuable source of
ideas.’
Mark Moody-Stuart, 2014: 268
403
Chapter Outline
Introduction
Classical relational studies
Contemporary theories of relational leadership
Positivist dyadic relational perspectives
Social constructionist group-level relational perspectives
The growth of distributed leadership
Practising distributed and shared leadership
Evaluation and criticism
Conclusion
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Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
explain the nature and the benefits of follower-centric approaches to
understanding leader–follower relations and the leadership process;
understand positivist/entity and social constructionist perspectives
on relational leadership;
explain how dyadic and group relationship dynamics influence the
leadership process;
critically discuss the competing views of what distributed leadership
represents in organizations;
engage critically with important themes in team leadership.
video
To learn more about distributed leadership, don’t forget to watch the
video conversation for this chapter online.
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Introduction
The leadership theories we have described thus far have focused
on the efforts of leaders in relation to followers in different
situations. The emphasis of these leader-centric approaches to
understanding leadership has been on how leaders engage and
influence people in the organization. In this chapter, we introduce
you to a development in theory building over the last three
decades that shifts the focus primarily to followers and the role
followers play in the leadership process. The field of ‘followership’
studies evolved as a strategy to solve a range of cooperation and
coordination problems in work groups and self-managed teams
(Bastardoza and Van Vugt, 2019). Follower-centric approaches
cultivate the opinion that followers’ self-concept – how we
perceive ourselves through attitudes, values, perceptions, emotion
– directly influences the leader–follower relationship and
effectiveness, which has given rise to relational and distributed
leadership theories. Follower-centric theories explore leadership
as an interdependent relationship that involves the human
chemistry between leader and follower(s) in a purposeful
relational process of influence (e.g. Shamir et al., 2007; Riggio et
al., 2008). As a result of this symbiotic relationship, leaders and
followers influence each other through the perceptions they hold
about who they are, how they see others and their behaviours and
actions. Another closely related stream of theory building focuses
on the concept of distributed leadership. Distributed theories of
leadership shift the focus away from leaders in hierarchical
positions within the organization to viewing followers as reflective
and proactive: as leaders across the organization.
We begin this chapter with a discussion of the genesis of
relational leadership through the work of classical social theorists
Georg Simmel (1858–1918) and George Herbert Mead (1863–
1931). It then proceeds to analyse dyadic and group relationships
between leader and followers. It also explains why and how
distributive leadership developed before providing an overview of
how distributed leadership has been introduced in the workplace.
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Classical Relational Studies
Studying micro aspects of human interaction is rooted in work on
the sociology of mind first enunciated by the German sociologist
Georg Simmel and developed by the American philosopher and
social psychologist George Herbert Mead. These scholars
advanced the idea that people not only shape the relations they
engage in, but also are simultaneously shaped by reciprocal
human interactions, and it is this insight that forms the basis of
‘new’ thinking on the leadership process.
Simmel regarded society as a myriad web of complex human
interactions and relationships between individuals. For Simmel,
society is constituted of a web of interactional forces between
individuals and groups, and his focus on the concept of reciprocity
emphasized that every single social phenomenon has meaning
only through its relationships with others. As a social theorist,
Simmel is attentive to the seemingly mundane nuances of
everyday urban life, such as linguistic practices, human interaction
in small groups, and the cultural implications of body language.
Simmel investigated the influence of numbers upon human
relationships. For Simmel, the size of a group influences how
individuals interact with one another. Adding new members to the
group alters the group dynamics, since the increased number of
relationships results in different configurations of interactions. He
coined the terms ‘dyad’ and ‘triad’ to designate, respectively,
groups consisting of two and three members. A dyad is a
relationship of two; a triad has a relationship among three; and a
quintet, with five members, has ten relationships. These are
examples of forms in which group size affects the kind of
relationships that are possible within it. As Figure 8.1 shows,
when a third member joins a group to form a triad, the dynamics
change: one new member brings two new relationships.
Figure 8.1 The incremental effect of group size
on relationships
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If you have lived in a student residence, you should be able to
recognize these group dynamics. Simmel’s treatment of the
effects of groups size contains a paradox. In general, the larger
the size of the group, the more its members can become
dissimilar to each other, and the more independence and
intellectual development can take place. This phenomenon has
obvious implications for leading work teams.
Simmel’s most insightful observation is that the individual is not an
isolated observer of the physical world, but a participant in human
society whose personality is formed through social affiliation and
interaction. He writes, ‘a man’s [sic] inner personal unity is based
upon the interaction and connection of many elements and
determinants’ (quoted in Bratton and Denham, 2012: 310).
This arresting idea influenced the work of George Herbert Mead.
In his posthumously published Mind, Self and Society
(1934/2015), Mead analysed in detail how the human self is
created by social processes, emphasizing that the human mind
developed thanks to cooperation and complex social
relationships. He writes, ‘We attempt … to explain the conduct of
the individual in terms of the organized conduct of the social
group, rather than … in terms of the conduct of the separate
individuals belonging to it’ (1934/2015: 7).
Mead’s theory of self incorporates the crucial condition of
‘reflexiveness’ – the ability to unconsciously turn back the
experience of the individual upon themselves – for the
development of the human mind. He noted:
408
It is absurd to look at the mind simply from the standpoint
of the individual human organism … it is essentially a
social phenomenon … It is by means of reflexiveness …
that the whole social process is thus brought into the
experience of the individuals involved in it …
Reflexiveness … is the essential condition … for the
development of the mind. (Mead, 1934/2015: 133–4, my
emphasis)
Mead views the mind in terms of what it does, the role it plays in
human interaction. He emphasized the significance of human
intersubjectivity: a myriad of human interactions, individual self-
reflection and meaning that is modified through social interaction.
This Mead called the ‘act’ or, if other people are involved, the
‘social act’. After his death, Mead’s work became known as
‘symbolic interactionism’ (Bratton and Denham, 2019). While
rarely acknowledged, Mead’s conceptualization of the social act
looms large in the contemporary relational leadership theories
which we discuss next.
409
Contemporary Theories of Relational
Leadership
Since the 1990s, the relational leadership school of thinking has
gathered ‘momentum’ (Epitropaki et al., 2018). The premise of
relational leadership is that leadership is a two-way influence
relationship between a leader and a follower, and the quality of the
relationship affects attitudes and behaviours. For scholars, the
focus is on the dynamic leadership relationship between leaders
and followers in which influence is interactionally and dialectically
achieved, leading to a reconfiguration of management practices
and relationship development. There is no doubt that the work of
Simmel and Mead has contributed to the analysis and
understanding of relational leadership.
Leadership scholars have extended early theories, and
subsequently focused on the nature of the vertical interactions
leaders engage in with each of their followers. The relational
leadership theory argues that leadership effectiveness hinges on
the ability of a leader to create high-quality relationships with
others in the organization. Thus, while leadership is always
dependent on the context, the context is established by positive
symbiotic relationships. Relational leadership has been defined as
‘A social influence process through which emergent coordination
… and change … are constructed and produced’ (Uhl-Bien, 2006:
655).
This definition proposes that a relational orientation to
understanding leadership starts not with an individual leader or
follower but with social interaction, and views leadership as
relationally co-constructed (Fairhurst, 2007). Relational-based
research has examined the significance of a two-way influence
relationship between a leader and a follower aimed at achieving
shared (supposedly) goals (Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995),
relationships between a leader and a group or work team (Seers,
1989), and relationships within social networks (Balkundi and
Kilduff, 2006). We shall examine examples of these diverse
410
studies, but before we do, we need to take a sojourn into ontology
debates, which is a branch of philosophy concerned with the
nature of social reality (Bryman, 2015).
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Ontology and relational leadership
The aim of this section is to help you understand the distinct ways
to study relational leadership. Two ontological debates are of
particular relevance to organizational researchers, and these
revolve around two questions: ‘Does social reality exist
independent of our perceptions?’ and ‘Is what passes for reality
merely a set of mental constructions?’. The more we affirm ‘yes’ to
the first question, the more we move towards the positivist
position. Scholars holding this view maintain that there is such a
thing as social reality, and the job of the researcher is to discover
what that reality is. The more we affirm ‘yes’ to the second
question, the more we move towards the social constructionist
position. Scholars holding this view empathize with the German
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844–1900) famous adage that
there are no facts, only interpretations. Such scholars maintain
that there is no objective social reality in which our views of the
world can be tested.
For example, the workplace has rules and regulations and adopts
standardized procedures for producing goods or services.
Employees entering the organization learn and apply the rules
and follow standard procedures. Thus, the organization is a social
order that confronts individuals as an external reality beyond their
influence and control. To a large extent, this represents the
positivist position that advocates the application of the research
methods of the natural sciences to the study of social institutions.
The alternative constructionist position maintains that the rules
and procedures are less rigorously imposed; indeed, a social
order is internalized, challenged and created to some extent by
employees through engagement. For example, one scholar
conceptualized a hospital as one of ‘negotiated order’ (Strauss et
al., 1973).
Ontological debates also revolve around two other questions: ‘Is
social reality largely fixed, something that individuals and groups
have to confront but over which they have little or no control, akin
to the weather?’ and ‘Is social reality not necessarily pre-existing
412
but fluid, and open to be shaped by individuals and groups
through their social interactions and agency?’.
An affirmative answer to the first question means that you agree
with the positivist position, and agreement with the second affirms
support for social constructionism. Based upon these different
ontological positions, we can divide relational leadership research
into positivist and constructionist perspectives. These can, in turn,
be classified into studies that focus on dyadic relationships and
group-level relationships. Figure 8.2 presents a taxonomy of
relational theories as well as selective authors.
Figure 8.2 A taxonomy of relational theories
(adapted from Epitropaki et al., 2018: 112)
The next two sections examine two important streams of relational
leadership theories: dyadic relationships from a positivist-based
position and group-level relationships from a constructionist
position.
Critical Insight: Leadership scholars as researchers
Ontological considerations cannot be divorced from issues
concerning the conduct of leadership research because they affect
how research questions are formulated and how the research is
carried out.
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Activity
Read Alan Bryman’s chapter in ‘Research methods in the study of
leadership’, in SAGE’s Handbook of Leadership, edited by Bryman et
al. (2011), pp. 15–28.
1. What research methods have dominated leadership research?
2. How does the choice of research methods reflect different
ontological perspectives?
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Positivist Dyadic Relational
Perspectives
Leadership theorists looking at relationships through a positivist
prism treat leaders and followers as stable entities who have
different roles in the organizational context. The focus of analysis
is on individuals and their personal values, attitudes, perceptions
and behaviours, and how they interact in relationships
instrumentally in order to influence and accomplish mutual goals
(Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995).
Leader–member exchange (LMX) theory focuses on the quality of
the dyadic relationship between a leader and an individual (see
Figure 8.3). It argues that because followers are uniquely
different, leaders should establish a special relationship with each
of his or her followers, rather than treating followers as a
homogeneous group. Thus, early research focused on the nature
of the vertical linkages (or relationships) developed between a
leader and each of his or her followers.
Figure 8.3 The vertical dyad
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Pause and reflect
Thinking of a lecturer (or manager) you know, does this lecturer or
manager have favourite students/co-workers who make up an
‘ingroup’? If yes, are you corroborating LMX theory.
LMX research has studied multiple variables as potential
antecedents of dyadic relationship quality, including contextual
forces, operational imperatives, leader attributes, follower
characteristics and interactional variables (Epitropaki et al., 2018).
We will go on to consider these now.
416
Antecedents of dyadic relationship quality
The role of contextual forces and organizational imperatives, such
as culture and reaching performance or quality targets, as one
might expect, strongly influences the employment relationship
and, in turn, the symbiotic relationship. For example, downsizing
can have a negative effect on follower morale (Brockner et al.,
1987), hinder followers’ learning capacity (Fisher and White,
2000) and dismantle social networks (Cascio, 2009). Strategic
economic imperatives too are negatively correlated with LMX
quality (Wajcman, 1998). National culture has also been identified
as an antecedent of LMX quality. For example, high-quality LMX
relationships are more noticeable to individualists than collectivists
(see Chapters 2 and 4, and Anand et al., 2010).
The quality of LMX can be affected by leader attributes, such as
emotional intelligence (Rosete and Ciarrochi, 2005), the
personality trait agreeableness (Schyns, 2015), ethical behaviour
(Mahsud et al., 2010) and support for HRM policies (Straub et al.,
2018). The quality of LMX can also be affected by follower
characteristics, such as the Big Five ‘super traits’ that underlie
most of the significant variations in human personality. As you
may remember from Chapter 6, and further discussed in Chapter
13, the ‘Big Five’ traits are conscientiousness, agreeableness,
neuroticism, openness and extraversion. Personality-based
research unsurprisingly suggests that followers high in
agreeableness and conscientiousness and low in neuroticism tend
to report higher LMX quality (Dulebohn et al., 2017).
LMX is both a dyadic and dialectical process, and therefore in
order to understand it consideration must be given to the
interactional variables between leader and follower. Perception is
an example of an interactional variable. Liden et al. (1993) found
that perceived congruence between follower and leader is
important in determining LMX quality. Perceived high LMX quality
is positively related to feelings of energy in followers, which, in
turn, are related to greater involvement in creative work (Atwater
and Carmeli, 2009). This finding underscores the importance of
perception because it is through our perception that we decide
417
what social reality is, and, perhaps even more importantly,
perception plays a role in shaping the tone of employee relations
in the workplace (Bratton, 2020).
Another interactional factor is the role played by the psychological
contract, which you might remember from previous chapters is the
informal set of expectations and understandings between leader
and follower (e.g. Rousseau and Ho, 2000). The psychological
contract represents a dynamic and reciprocal unwritten agreement
that gives primacy to open-ended deals about what the follower
and the leader expect to give and receive from the employment
relationship. Over time, new expectations are added and the
leader’s perceptions of the follower’s dependability, competencies
and obligations evolve. We might therefore plausibly expect
follower, as well as leader, perceptions of the psychological
contract to affect LMX quality.
Consistency with this view brings to the fore the concept of equity,
which is discussed in more detail in Chapter 13, as a potential
antecedent of the LMX relationship. Individual followers expect to
receive a similar ratio of inputs (e.g. effort) to outputs (e.g. pay) to
comparable others. Arguably, this process of ‘social comparison’
has contemporary resonance in the 2017 controversy and
backlash from female journalists about the extreme gender pay
gap at the BBC (Ruddick, 2017).
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Differentiated LMX relationships
Early LMX research of dyads found two broad types of
relationships: those that were based on expanded role
responsibilities, which were labelled the in-group, and a second
type of relationships that was based on restricted role
responsibilities, which were labelled the out-group (Graen, 1976).
Just how a leader chooses who falls into an ‘in’ or ‘out’ group is
ambiguious, but there is evidence that in-group members have
attitudes, personality and demographic characteristics that are
similar to their leader (Uhl-Bien, 2003). Members of the in-group
receive more information, support and attention from their leader
than do out-group members. Whereas in-group followers go
‘beyond the contract’ and do extra tasks for the leader, members
of the out-group usually work to contract and leave work at the
designated time (Dansereau et al., 1975). A number of
prescriptions stem from this analysis: a leader may offer certain
followers increased involvement in decision making and/or
creative work. In turn, these followers may reciprocate by
expending even more energy on and having a greater
commitment to their work goals. If this happens, such followers
become members of the in-group.
Less privileged employees who are not offered such a special
relationship become members of an out-group. As such, they
have a relationship with the leader that is formally prescribed, with
the follower exerting a measured level of effort in exchange for a
determined level of reward. Think of a manager or lecturer you
know. Does she or he have favourites who make up an in-group?
If the answer is yes, you are corroborating LMX theory. Followers
are mindful of their relative standing in a set of differentiated LMX
relationships. We might conclude that when followers perceive
themselves to be in the out-group, there is a negative correlation
with job satisfaction and wellbeing (Hooper and Martin, 2008). In
the words of Epitropaki et al., ‘not all relationships are created
equal’ (2018: 121).
Pause and reflect
419
Why might qualitative research be more appropriate than quantitative
research to examine group-level relationships?
420
Social Constructionist Group-level
Relational Perspectives
Since its inception, differentiation has been an inherent
assumption of LMX theorizing. Leadership theorists, adopting a
positivist perspective, have produced three distinct streams of
work: (1) perceived LMX differentiation (Hooper and Martin, 2008);
(2) relative LMX (Hu and Liden, 2013); and (3) group-level LMX
differentiation (Erdogan and Bauer, 2010). Perceived LMX
differentiation seeks to capture the perceived variability of LMX
relationships within a group, whereas relative and differentiation
LMX work analyses the dyadic relationships in work groups,
characterized by complexity and interdependency. These studies
underscore the importance of context and role conditions.
In contrast, scholars adopting a constructionist position view
relationships through a socio-cultural prism. Here self-concept is
important. Focusing on the self emphasizes the panoply of
diversity and the indeterminate nature of human interaction and
lived experiences, which are ‘intersubjectively constructed in
everyday interactions’ (Epitropaki et al., 2018: 124). It is important
to remember that human interactions are embedded in cultural
and linguistic contexts, meaning that verbal and non-verbal
language, for example, can affect the type and quality of social
encounters (e.g. Morgan and Smirchich, 1980; Charmaz, 2000).
The constructionist approach to understanding the nature of
relationships draws heavily from classical social theorists. In
particular, Mead’s analysis of the social self is predicated on the
belief that ‘individuals’, through language, social interaction and
processes of socialization, learn to develop ‘selves’ within society
(Bratton and Denham, 2019).
From a constructionist perspective, leadership does not exist as
an entity, rather it emerges through processes of interaction and
co-construction. There are core orienting principles that seem to
be embedded in current conceptualizations of relational
leadership: intersubjectivity, dialogue, reflectiveness and
421
sensemaking. These principles, which have undeniable affinity
with some aspects of Mead’s (1934/2015) work, have found
expression in the work of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s
(1978) cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), which examines
the relationship between the human mind (what individuals think
and feel) and activity (what individuals do). It rests on the
assumption that consciousness is essentially subjective and
shaped by the history of each individual’s social and cultural
experience. Vygotsky argued that individual and group agency
occur through interconnected human interaction.
We introduced the concept of sensemaking in Chapter 7.
Sensemaking shapes human relationships, with the premise that
social reality is an ongoing achievement that arises from efforts to
establish order and understand the events that occur (Weick,
1993). The reality people construct is not fixed, it evolves, is co-
constructed and relational (Gergen, 2009). Importantly, the
dynamic relationship between leaders and followers imposes an
‘invisible hand’ on sensemaking. Thayer (1988) provides a
noteworthy analysis of the process, the crux of which is the idea
that a leader is one who shapes the [minds] of followers. He
writes:
A leader at work is one who gives others a different
sense of the meaning of that which they do by recreating
it in a different form, a different ‘face,’ in the same way
that a pivotal painter or sculptor or poet gives those who
follow him [or her] a different way of ‘seeing’ … The
leader is a sense – giver. (Thayer, 1988, and quoted by
Weick, 1995: 10)
The crux of distributed theories of leadership is that the role of the
leader as a ‘sense giver’ is not determined by the leader’s position
in the organizational hierarchy, but by the two-way relationship
between leader and follower.
The theory conceptualizes relational leadership as emergent,
negotiated and co-constructed through ongoing interaction – a
sensemaking process (Gittell and Douglass, 2012); arguably,
422
processes that define what it is like to be a human being. These
processes result in new ways of thinking and change (e.g. Barge
and Fairhurst, 2008; Crevani et al., 2010; Gittell and Douglass,
2012). From this perspective, leaders, followers and contexts are
all continually reconfigured in ways that either enlarge or contract
the social ‘space’ possible for action (Holmberg, 2000). Put
another way, ‘relationship’ is a verb, not a noun. This perspective
has implications in that it shifts the focus from individual leaders or
followers to emphasize that ‘leadership resides … in the between
space of the relationship’ (Epitropaki et al., 2018: 125, emphasis
added). It also has practical implications in helping sensitize
leaders and managers to the importance of their relationships, the
minutiae of everyday conversations, and mundane interactions
with employees (Cunliffe and Eriksen, 2011).
Image 8.1 Relational theories conceptualize
leadership as emergent, negotiated and co-
constructed through ongoing social
interaction. Group size influences how
individuals interact. A dyad is a relationship
of two; a quintet has ten relationships.
Interesting, Uhl-Bien (2006) suggests that relational leadership
theory can encompass the two epistemological camps (positivist
and constructionist) and span across two levels of analysis
423
(dyadic and group). Epitropaki and her colleagues (2018) offer a
bridge between these different paradigms. Figure 8.4 shows
differential LMX relationships developing between an in-group of
five followers and an out-group of four followers, as well as the
‘between space’ in which, for constructionists, leadership resides.
Pause and reflect
Look at Figure 8.4.
1. How does a team that increases in membership from four (six
relationships) to seven members (twenty-one relations) change
interactions, the ‘between space’ in which leadership resides?
2. How does understanding this conceptual model help you
understand your experience of study groups at university?
Figure 8.4 Relational leadership processes
(adapted from Epitropaki et al., 2018: 126)
424
425
The Growth of Distributed
Leadership
Distributed leadership theories shifts the focus from hierarchy to
heterarchy; from heroic to ‘post heroic’ leadership. The idea is that
leadership resides not solely in senior individuals at the top of the
organization, but in every person who, in one way or another,
takes on the role of leader in a group or team (Gronn, 2002a;
Goleman et al., 2002). The notion of distributed leadership is not a
new concept, although it is called different things in the literature,
including ‘dispersed’ (Gordon, 2010), ‘co-leadership’ (Vine et al.,
2008), ‘shared’ (Conger and Pearce, 2009) and ‘rotated’ or ‘team’
leadership. The common theme underpinning the perspective is
the lateral sharing of the leadership responsibilities throughout the
organization and team. The various conceptualizations explicitly
view it as an interactive collaborative process that brings to the
fore human capability and the importance of relationships. It is
associated with the critique of Taylorist and hierarchical work
structures (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2018). Changing the design
of work was accompanied by consensual employment practices,
with employees acting in concert in informal roles across all
organizational levels, and not confined to those with formal senior
leadership roles (Bryman, 1999).
Distributed theories of leadership do not disavow vertical
leadership, but propose that gifted leaders ‘lead from behind’ by
empowering their subordinates (Spillane, 2007). Acting as a
coach, rather than an ‘all-knowing’ expert, a leader’s prime
responsibility is to facilitate the leadership of their direct line
managers so they can be effective leaders in their unit (Hill, 2008).
Distributive leadership is strongly reminiscent of Peter Senge’s
work, which insists that, in creative organizations, ‘leaders are
designers, stewards, and teachers’ (Bass: 1990b: 220, emphasis
added), and echoes Mintzberg’s (1999) notion of ‘leading quietly’.
The purpose of the next section is to examine two primary
leadership foci: distributed leadership and team leadership. So
what does it mean to distribute or share leadership?
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Distributed leadership
Researchers have conceptualized distributed leadership as an
interactive process disassociated from the organizational
hierarchy (Harris and Spillane, 2008). A compelling way to
understand distributed leadership is the idea of ‘levels’ of
leadership linked to different levels of strategic decision making
(see Chapter 2, Figure 2.2). Executive-level leadership involves
people with power practising strategy formulation (Parker, 2018).
By contrast, distributed leadership involves people with less power
engaged in operational activities, which, it is argued, can help the
development of employee cohesion and vision building (Ensley et
al., 2006). Distributed leadership has also been modelled around
a set of competencies: problem solving, negotiating win-win
solutions through team learning, and use of shared visioning to
engage and empower employees (Lambert, 2002). As Burke et al.
observe, distributed leadership is not ‘a pattern of highly
differentiated roles, but several members adopting and exercising
more than one leadership role, as the situation dictates’ (2011:
343, emphasis added). Research evidence suggests that
distributed leadership has a positive relationship with performance
outcomes (Ensley et al., 2006). However, as with the earlier
leadership theories, as important as behaviours and
competencies are in identifying effective leaders, context and the
situation matter too. Underpinning the distributed perspective is
the notion that managers can actually have more power if they
devolve some power to a unit or team leader or, indeed, other
employees not formally designated as leaders in the organization.
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Teams and team leadership
Research and practitioner interest in distributed leadership and
team leadership is not random but, as explained in Chapter 1,
linked to particular corporate strategies generally responding to
the crisis of capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2018; Mason,
2019). From the 1980s, concerns about the need to ‘re-engineer’
organizations (Hammer and Champy, 1993), to create ‘lean’
workplaces (Womack et al., 1990) and to meet the ‘Japanese
threat’ (Bratton, 1992; Elger and Smith, 1994; Milkman, 1991)
heralded a new organizational model in which the employment
relationship is characterized by teamworking, flexibility and
employee ‘voice’ mechanisms. In this context, research focused
on the chemistry of teams and how leaders create and manage
teams (Kaplan et al., 2009). Whereas bureaucracies emphasize
control over people through the replacement of human judgement
with the dictates of rules, regulations and structures, the self-
management work teams (SMWT) movement proclaimed the
need for redesigning organizations to allow members to undertake
a wider range of tasks, including self-inspection, decision making
and leadership responsibilities.
In terms of leadership theory, Table 8.1, showing the key
characteristics of SMWT compared to bureaucratic work
organization, emphasizes the importance and role of contextual
factors in understanding leadership and HRM. For example, in a
traditional hierarchical factory manufacturing identical components
in large batches, leadership is autocratic with little, if any, scope
for employee input into decisions. HRM tends to support this
business model by implementing reward practices that emphasize
‘payments-by-results’ (the higher the number of widgets produced,
the higher the pay) and the minimal training practices necessary
to undertake the low-skilled, repetitive work. In contrast, SMWT
places much greater emphasis on fostering a work culture in
which team members can engage in decision making, quality
control and leadership activities. To support this business model,
HR reward practices are designed to encourage quality not
quantity, and HR training extends to developing leadership skills.
It becomes essential, therefore, to align HRM and leadership
428
practices with a new organizational architecture and work
practices (Danford et al., 2008).
High-performance team working is generally enacted through
mutual leader–follower reciprocation: leaders develop high-
commitment and trust-building work practices, and, in return,
subordinates experience higher levels of job autonomy,
involvement and leadership engagement (Boxall and Macky,
2009; Bridger, 2015). The model implies that, through team or
rotated leadership, members experience (or perceive) higher
levels of involvement in decision making and subsequently are
more inclined to experience higher levels of job commitment and
organizational engagement.
Table 8.1 Traditional and high-performance
team models
Table 8.1 Traditional and high-performance team models
Work
characteristic Traditional focus
High-performance
team focus
Competitive
advantage Cost Quality
Resources Capital People andinformation
Quality What is affordable No compromise
Focal point Profit Customer
Structural
design Hierarchical
Flattened and
flexible
Work
organization
Specialized and
individual Flexible and teams
Control Centralized Decentralized
429
Work
characteristic Traditional focus
High-performance
team focus
Labour Homogeneous Culturally diverse
Leadership Autocratic Distributive andshared
Culture Macho and rules Learning
Source: adapted from Bratton and Gold, 2017: 434
Team leadership involves team members performing leadership
functions as they relate to the operational work of the team (Erez
et al., 2002), so that the member in charge at any moment in time
is the one with the key relevant knowledge and ability for the
aspect of the task at hand. Burke et al. have provided a definition,
where they propose that team leadership is:
the enactment of the affective, cognitive, and behavioural
processes needed to facilitate performance management
and team development. (2011: 338)
This perspective defines the team leader’s main role as being to
do, or get done, whatever needs doing to address team problems.
Team leadership is conceptualized as any behaviour that helps
the team identify task-related or person-related problems and
generate and implement solutions. Zaccaro et al. (2001) propose
that team leadership affects team performance and outcomes by
effecting team processes: cognition, motivation, coordination and
learning. For example, effective leaders affect cognition by
instilling an understanding of the goals and each member’s
contribution to performance. Leaders effect motivational
processes through their planning and by the climate of the team in
order to set team norms. Leaders impact team coordination by
developing the team’s understanding of just-in-time practices and
awareness of what resources are available to the team. Finally,
leaders influence team and individual informal learning by
430
coaching, mentoring and encouraging members to develop a
‘questioning frame of mind’ (Bratton et al., 2004: 53). Evidence
suggests that work teams with shared or rotated leadership
experience more consensus, more trust and less conflict than
teams without shared leadership (Bergman et al., 2012).
Leadership in Action: Culture and harsh control in small teams
Globalization is often proposed as the unrestricted movement of
goods and labour across state borders. However, the complex
interweaving of transnational capital, national regulation and the
nexus of business, local government and local culture are crucial to
understanding the process (Poster and Yolmo, 2016). Multinational
corporations (MNCs) have become a compelling focal point of the
globalization process, as movers of technology and disruptors of
local business and labour practices.
MNCs increasingly use a ‘flexible’ system of production in which their
geography is dispersed, their functions are diversified, and their
plans are changeable. Flexibility includes the use of work teams.
While teams can have positive effects on productivity, many MNCs
have encountered challenges in managing multicultural teams.
These challenges are primarily related to team members’ different
cultural understandings about their role in the team.
Amazon has long faced criticism over its treatment of warehouse
workers. In the early days of Amazon, its founder and CEO, Jeff
Bezos, instituted a rule: every internal team should be small enough
that it can be fed with two pizzas. The goal was not to cut down on
the catering bill. It was focused on two aims: efficiency and
scalability. Teams can be harmful to employees’ health. A 2015 New
Yorker exposé of Amazon’s practices described highly skilled
employees ‘crying at their desks and suffering near-breakdowns from
pressure they were under’ (Hern, 2018: 10). These reports highlight
the centrality of culture and power in leadership. Effective leadership
in MNCs must address cultural misunderstandings and power
imbalances.
431
Reflective questions
1. Have you ever worked in a group with members from different
cultural backgrounds?
2. Discuss how culturally-based misunderstandings or
‘disconnects’ can influence LMX quality.
432
Sources
Gibson, C.B. and Zellmer-Bruhn, M.E. (2001) ‘Metaphors and
meaning: an intercultural analysis of the concept of teamwork’,
Administrative Science Quarterly, 46 (2): 274–303.
Hern, A. (2018) ‘The two-pizza rule and the secret of Amazon’s
success’, Guardian. Available at
www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/24/the-two-pizza-rule-
and-the-secret-of-amazons-success (accessed 9 July 2019).
Kokt, D. (2003) ‘The impact of cultural diversity on work team
performance: a South African perspective’, Team Performance
Management, 9 (3/4): 78–83.
433
To explore this topic further see:
Corgnet, B., Hérnan-Gonzalez, H. and Rassenti, S. (2013) Peer
pressure and moral hazard in teams: Experimental evidence. ESI
Working Paper, 13–01. Retrieved from
http://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/esi_working_papers/57.
Accessed 10 December 2019.
Mazzucato, M. (2013) Entrepreneurial State. New York: Anthem
Press, pp. 3–4.
Pause and reflect
Look at Table 8.1.
1. What organizational practices and behaviours have the
potential to practise shared leadership?
2. As a student, have you ever participated in a group to complete
an assignment for a module? If so, did you have a group leader
or did members take on different leadership roles at different
times?
3. Does your group experience shed light on shared leadership?
434
Practising Distributed and Shared
Leadership
The work characteristics in Table 8.1 are potentially the
antecedents associated with leaders practising distributed/shared
and team leadership. Here we group these factors into four main
groups: structural and job design; HRM policies and practices; the
role and behaviour of appointed leaders; and organizational
culture and climate (see Figure 8.5).
Figure 8.5 Practising distributed/shared and
team leadership
Structural or organizational design is the planning and
implementation of a structural configuration of roles and modes of
operation, often displayed in an organizational chart. Research
findings consistently point to the significance of organization
design in predicting the development of decentralized
autonomous decision making and shared leadership (Mabey et
al., 1998). Job design is the process of assigning tasks to a job,
including the interdependency of those tasks to other jobs.
Researchers have found that multi-tasking and autonomy in self-
managed work teams (SMWT) are more likely to develop
shared/team leadership (Katzenbach and Smith, 2005).
435
As previously explained, HRM policies and practices can facilitate
the development of distributed/team leadership (Danford et al.,
2008). Pearce et al. (2014) found that recruitment, reward
systems and training and development were linked to the
development of shared/team leadership (Fausing et al., 2015; and
see Chapter 9). Our final antecedent is culture and climate.
Scholars have identified both as being important influences on
group behaviour and shared leadership (e.g. Serban and Roberts,
2016; and see Chapter 4).
436
Evaluation and Criticism
In its current phase of development, research on relational and
distributed leadership has made several positive contributions to
our understanding of leadership. First, LMX theory has
significantly increased our understanding of leadership processes
through its focus on dyadic and group relationships. The theory
directs managers to assess the quality of the relationship between
the leader and each follower and to sensitize leaders to the
importance of ‘difference’. Over time, LMX research has taken into
consideration aspects of context, such as culture and its affect on
dyadic relationships; for example, emphasizing the role of
communication in the leadership process.
Second, the relational constructionist lens offers new insights into
relationships beyond the dyad to multi-member networks of
relationships, which increase in complexity as the group or team
increases in numbers. As such, the relational leadership
conceptual framework captures the essence of leadership as a
rational, interactional, dynamic and multi-level phenomenon
(Epitropaki et al., 2018). Third, a strength of distributed/shared
leadership is that it appears to be an important predictor of
positive performance outcomes at individual, group or team, and
organizational levels of analysis (Wassenaar and Pearce, 2018).
Further, shared leadership theories provide a cognitive guide that
helps managers design and maintain effective teams (Northouse,
2015).
However, scholars have identified a number of conceptual and
methodological weaknesses of relational and distributed
leadership. First, LMX theory still remains ambiguous in its
explanation of how the dyadic relationship develops. Also, it is
unclear how single dyads affect each other and how, for example,
income inequality in dyadic relationships affects overall group
outcomes. Income inequality is high in the UK: FTSE CEOs earn
on average 386 times more than workers on the national living
wage. Wilkinson and Pickett’s (2018) new research focuses on the
psychological costs of inequality. It is their contention that
437
inequality creates greater social divisions and tensions, which in
turn foster a lower tendency towards trust and reciprocity or what
is known among sociologists as social capital. Third, research has
shown that workforce diversity and diversity-related policies and
practices contribute to organization performance (Ng and
Stephenson, 2017), but there is a paucity of empirical research on
how diversity affects dyadic and group relationships.
Turning to the limits of distributed and shared leadership theories,
there are several issues to consider. First, there is debate among
critical workplace scholars regarding the tendency of leadership
researchers not to give sufficient consideration to economic (i.e.
profit or cost-reduction targets) imperatives and asymetrical power
relations (see Chapter 3). Shared leadership literature suggests
that line managers should create and maintain a strong team-
affective climate, which has been characterized by warmth,
support, acceptance, sincerity and enthusiasm. But, as Wajcman
(1998) reminds us, while the normative rhetoric may be ‘people-
centred’, the reality is that powerful paradoxical demands dictate
leadership behaviour that permits few substantial modifications
from unpopular cost-reduction decisions, which will impact
negatively on dyadic relationships. The notion of ‘paradoxical
leadership’ has recently emerged in the literature, which highlights
paradoxical imperatives at the centre of more follower-centric
approaches to leadership (e.g. Lavine et al., 2014). Economic
imperatives that dictate that ‘empowered’ and ‘engaged’ workers
should do ‘more with less’, for example, will cause tension and the
undermining of trust (Alfes and Langner, 2017; Francis and
Keegan, 2018).
Second, while Wassenaar and Pearce (2018) conclude that there
are many precursors that are likely to develop team leadership,
there appears to be a marked insufficiency of research evidence
about the extent of change in the practices, particularly outside
the domain of education, which give expression to the central
concepts of shared leadership (Leithwood et al., 2009).
Finally, while evidence mounts that high-quality LMX relationships
(e.g. Martin et al., 2016) and team leadership (e.g. Pearce et al.,
2014) can have positive effects on performance outcomes,
438
numerous observers recognize significant methodological
challenges. These have been summarized as measurement
problems and over-reliance on single-source data, typically from
HR managers (Anand et al., 2011: 321). Assessment of LMX from
the leader’s perspective has found that agreement between
leaders and members on perceived LMX is typically low – with
correlations in the 0.2s (2011: 322). Given that much of the study
of relational and shared leadership is actually about interaction
and the behaviour of leaders and followers, mediated by culture
and climate, it is surprising that qualitative research methods,
such as observing leader–follower relations or interviewing the
participants, are seldom used.
439
Conclusion
This chapter has emphasized the centrality of relationships in
organizational leadership. There is so much material to cover on
relational and distributed leadership theories that one chapter
cannot deal adequately with all the complexities. By necessity we
have been highly selective. We have reviewed the leader–
member exchange (LMX) model of leadership, which describes
how leaders interact and develop exchange relationships with
different employees over time. This focus on difference therefore
echoes contingency theories such as situational leadership
(Bratton et al., 2005).
The chapter also explored relational leadership perspectives
across two levels of analysis (dyadic and group) and two
dominant epistemological perspectives (positivist and
constructionist). We opined that the relational leadership approach
captures what it is like to be a human being, as well as the
essence of leadership as a rational, interactional phenomenon.
We explained how interest in distributed leadership parallels the
move towards post-bureaucratic designs, particularly the
enthusiasm for work teams. The central premise of distributed or
shared leadership is the idea that managers in hierarchical
positions can actually gain more power if they delegate and share
power with line managers and team leaders. We made the
observation that distributed or shared leadership can improve
organizational performance, but it does not negate the need for
vertical strategic leadership.
Finally, we identified the potential antecedents associated with
leaders’ practising distributed/shared and team leadership.
440
Chapter Review Questions
1. How can LMX theory help us understand the leadership process?
2. Explain the difference between relational leadership theories that
focus on dyadic relations using a positivist lens and group-level
relations using a social constructionist lens.
3. How can relational goals be impaired by extreme income inequality?
Assignment Task: LMX
With respect to the implication of LMX differentiation for team
performance, line managers seem to be faced with a dilemma. On
one hand, research shows that where line managers develop
different LMX relationships with different team members, this may
become disruptive for team-member relationships and overall
performance in work teams. On the other hand, it may not be
possible for managers to form similar LMX relationships with all team
members due to time constraints. Morgeson et al. (2010) use a
functional/positivist lens to delineate the specific behaviours of team
leaders.
441
Questions
1. What should team leaders do to effectively deal with their LMX
relationships?
2. Should they form different quality LMX relationships or treat
every team member the same?
3. Looking at this problem through a constructionist lens, would
your answers be different?
Go Online
Explore the real world of leadership by reading this case study:
Leader–Member Exchange Theory: Barack Obama
Further your knowledge and build your bibliography for
assignments by reading the recommended journal articles for this
chapter.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
video
Learn more about leadership in practice by watching the video
conversation for this chapter.
Paul Gray, former CEO of NHS Scotland, shares his personal
experience of the success and challenges of distributed/collective
leadership, and explains why this model can be so important in
implementing ideas in the public sector.
The video can be found at https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
See the inside front cover for the access code and instructions.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
442
Further Reading
Bastardoza, N. and Van Vugt, M. (2019) ‘The nature of
followership: evolutionary analysis and review’, The Leadership
Quarterly, 30 (1): 81–95.
Epitropaki, O., Martin, R. and Thomas, G. (2018) ‘Relational
leadership’, in J. Antonakis and D.V. Day (eds), The Nature of
Leadership London: SAGE, pp. 109–37.
Pearce, C.L., Wassenaar, C.L. and Manz, C.C. (2014) ‘Is shared
leadership the key to responsible leadership?’, Academy of
Management Perspectives, 28: 275–88.
Tse, H.H.M. (2014) ‘Linking leader-member exchange
differentiation to work team performance’, Leadership and
Organization Development Journal, 35 (8): 710–24.
443
Case Study: Teams at Agri-Tru
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Background
More than 200,000 British expats call South Africa their home, attracted to
its relatively low cost of living and warm climate. One of the most popular
cities for expats moving to South Africa is Cape Town. Capricorn Park is a
relatively new industrial precinct for commercial and light manufacturing,
situated about 25 km from Cape Town, the harbour and the airport. This
prime location provides for a reasonable commute from some of the more
sought-after southern suburbs of Cape Town. Capricorn Park is situated
in a nature conservation area with perimeter fencing, access control and
24-hour manned security. These features, in addition to its focus on
environmentally friendly working spaces, have compelled such well-
known international companies as SPI, KMP, Pyrotech and Nuwater to
make Capricorn Park their home base in South Africa. As Capricorn Park
tends to attract respectable companies that provide good jobs, employee
turnover is relatively low.
Agri-Tru, a producer of agricultural equipment based in the UK, decided to
make the move to Capricorn Park for these reasons. As there is a
requirement in South Africa for international businesses to employ at least
60 per cent South African citizens or permanent residency holders, Agri-
Tru has a diverse workforce with over eight languages being spoken at its
Capricorn Park office.
As the newly appointed head of marketing at Agri-Tru, British expat
George Davies was excited about leading a division based in Capricorn
Park responsible for the launch of a new production line as he had never
been given an international assignment before. Upon his arrival at the
office, the three teams of workers assigned to the marketing campaign
greeted him warmly. George felt some comfort to see that one of the team
leaders was a fellow British expat named Howard Clives. Arno Naidoo
and Jabulani Botha led the other two teams, both black Africans born and
raised in South Africa.
As everyone appeared enthusiastic to start, George spent little time on
introducing himself or on explaining the project details and immediately
began to delegate tasks to the teams. ‘I am sure we will get to know each
other over the next few months’, he remarked to the group. ‘Let’s get
started!’
445
The problem
Within a few weeks of his arrival, George had noticed that Howard was
much more responsive to his requests and had no problems meeting the
tight deadlines on the project. Arno and Jabulani, on the other hand, were
consistently failing to communicate with George about their teams’
progress on their assignments. At first George attributed this to a
language barrier, but it was apparent that both team leaders could speak
and write English extremely well despite English not being their first
language. George was also struck by how Arno and Jabulani promoted a
more relaxed work culture than what he was used to in Britain, with formal
business clothes not considered a necessity for their teams.
Feeling pressured by the head office to get the marketing strategy off the
ground so the Sales Division could begin its work, George began to rely
more heavily on Howard’s team and delegated the more important and
desired work to them. George and Howard worked long hours together,
sharing stories of their youth spent in Britain and going out for dinner with
their spouses in tow. During this time, the other teams were barely
keeping up with their work, which spurred George to turn to Howard’s
team with increasing frequency. This did not go unnoticed by Arno and
Jabulani and their teams.
When Howard unexpectedly fell ill just days before a major presentation
for the company’s senior management who were flying in from Britain,
George was forced to turn to Arno and Jabulani for help. He was taken
aback when, instead of being eager to be part of the high-profile event,
Arno and Jabulani both handed George their resignations, stating that
they felt underused and disrespected. George left the office that day with
his head spinning, wondering how he had ended up in such a dire
situation.
446
Case exercise
1. How do the concepts of the in-group and out-group of LMX theory
explain how the teams performed and Arno and Jabulani’s reaction?
How else do the principles of LMX theory apply in this case?
2. What other factors do you think may have contributed to George’s
dilemma?
3. What could George have done differently as the Division Leader
with the teams and their leaders to ensure the marketing strategy’s
success?
447
Sources of additional information
Matkin, G.S. and Barbuto, J.E. (2012) ‘Demographic similarity/difference,
intercultural sensitivity, and leader-member exchange: a multilevel
analysis’, Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 19 (3): 294–
302.
Minseo, K. and Beehr, T.A. (2019) ‘The power of empowering leadership:
allowing and encouraging followers to take charge of their own jobs’, The
International Journal of Human Resource Management, DOI:
10.1080/09585192.2019.1657166
Mitchell, M.S., and Uhl-Bien, M. (2003) ‘The new conduct of business:
how LMX can help capitalize on cultural diversity’, in G.B. Graen (ed.),
Dealing with Diversity. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing, pp.
183–218.
Nishii, L.H. and Mayer, D.M. (2009) ‘Do inclusive leaders help to reduce
turnover in diverse groups? The moderating role of leader–member
exchange in the diversity to turnover relationship’, Journal of Applied
Psychology, 94 (6): 1412–26.
448
449
Part III Managing People and
Leadership
450
451
9 Human Resource Management and
Leadership
John Bratton
‘People are the only element with the inherent power to generate value.
All other variables offer nothing but inert potential. By their nature they
add nothing, and they cannot add anything until some human being
leverages that potential by putting it into play.’
Fitz-enz, 2000: xii
452
Chapter Outline
Introduction
The nature of human resource management
Scope and functions of human resource management
Theorizing human resource management
Human resource management and leadership
Critiquing the human resource management discourse
Conclusion
453
Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
define human resource management (HRM) and its relation to leadership;
analyse the scope and functions of HRM;
explain and evaluate the different theoretical approaches to studying HRM;
assess the contribution of HRM to the process of leading and the process of following;
critique assumptions found in mainstream HRM literature.
video
To learn more about recruitment, don’t forget to watch the video conversation for this
chapter online.
454
Introduction
Leadership theorists often cite the obvious that to be a leader one has to have
followers. In the chapters you have read so far covering trait, behaviour and
contingency theories of leadership, followers, if they feature at all, are depicted as
passive recipients of policies and diktats handed down by leaders. Our coverage
of relational leadership directs attention to the differences that exist between
people – the leader and each of the leader’s followers. Organizations are, of
course, composed of people. You may ask why people or human resource
management (HRM) are important. In a nutshell, leaders and managers are
dependent on suitably talented people who have knowledge and skills, working
with physical and financial resources, which, as our opening vignette highlights,
will add value and create a viable business or service. People are the wealth
creators and without them organizations would not exist. We believe it is
important to examine how people are managed and how HRM is linked to the
process of leading and following. As you read in Chapter 1, HR practices can
help to mediate the positive effect of leaders’ interactions to influence single
individuals or small groups or teams of employees, and at the organizational
level, leaders can also change the organizational culture. Our coverage of
transformative leadership in Chapter 7 further underscored the role of HRM in
transactional exchanges.
Image 9.1 HR practices can help to mediate the positive
effect of leaders’ interactions to influence individuals. At
the organizational level, they can help leaders change
the organizational culture.
In this chapter, we define HRM and explain its role in creating the leadership
relationship. The aim is to provide a framework for subsequent chapters on
managing and developing people and leading change (Chapters 10–17). It
provides critical insights into the interconnectedness of HR practices and leader–
follower relationships and how HR practices can facilitate or hinder the leadership
process. After defining HRM and describing its scope and function, the chapter
455
scrutinises models of HRM. Finally, it concludes with an evaluation of HRM for
leadership and a critique of the HRM discourse.
456
The Nature of Human Resource Management
Since the 1990s, it has been widely documented that HRM has played a
fundamental role in designing and enacting workplace changes (van Wanrooy et
al., 2013). To meet the challenges posed by global competition, organizations
have introduced a myriad of new methods of working (Boltanski and Chiapello,
2018; Farnham, 2015a), which can potentially impact profoundly on the
employment relationship and the way people are managed and led. HRM policies
and practices and leaders together help shape leader–follower relations, and
without an understanding of HRM processes, our understanding of leadership is
incomplete.
The term ‘human resource management’ has been hotly debated and a generally
accepted definition remains elusive. Storey defines HRM as ‘a distinctive
approach to employment management which seeks to achieve competitive
advantage through the strategic deployment of a highly committed and capable
workforce using an array of cultural, structural and personnel techniques’ (1995:
5). Its reference to ‘strategy’, ‘committed’ employees and changing the
organization’s ‘culture’ highlight the role of senior leaders in people management.
Boxall and Purcell define HRM as ‘the process through which management builds
the workforce and tries to create the human performances that the organization
needs’ (2016: 7). Both Storey’s and Boxall and Purcell’s definitions highlight the
importance of performance and the role of managers’ micro-level (e.g. individual
commitment) social influence in achieving those performance goals. Bratton and
Gold argue that
HRM is a strategic approach to managing employment relations which
emphasizes that leveraging people’s capabilities and commitment is
critical to achieving sustainable competitive advantage or superior public
services. This is accomplished through a distinctive set of integrated
employment policies, programmes and practices, embedded in an
organizational and societal context. (2017: 5)
This definition conceptualizes HRM in terms of people management, one that
emphasizes the goals that underpin the processes, that applies organizational
behaviour (OB) and leadership knowledge to leverage people’s potential
capabilities to enhance individual and organizational performance. The definition
also conceives HRM as embedded in a capitalist society and its associated
ideologies and global structures. In terms of identifying effective leaders, HRM
formulations remind leaders that human knowledge and skills are a strategic
resource that needs investment and adroit management of followers. HRM could
be defined simply as those activities and practices associated with managing
people that meet the strategic objectives of the organization.
457
Scope and Functions of Human Resource
Management
While there are multiple definitions, HRM is fundamental to every organization
that employs people. HRM is concerned with managing employment relationships
in the workplace. The literature identifies three major subdomains of HRM
knowledge: micro, strategic and international (Boxall et al., 2008).
The largest subdomain refers to micro HRM (MHRM), which is concerned with
managing individual employees and small work groups. Similar to the ‘individual’
and ‘group’ levels of analysis in OB, MHRM draws on theory and research from
psychology and sociology.
The second domain is strategic HRM (SHRM), which concerns itself with the
processes of linking HR strategies with business strategies, and measures the
effects on organizational performance (see Chapter 2). Senior HR professionals
seek to affect their organization’s strategic decisions and performance through
two levels of influence: individual and organizational. At the individual level of
influence, HR professionals use their knowledge and interactions to influence
other upper-echelon leaders. At the organizational level of influence, HR leaders
can change HR policies and practices to indirectly influence line managers and
employees.
The third domain is international HRM (IHRM), which focuses on the
management of people in global companies operating in more than one country.
The proliferation of interest in IHRM springs directly from economic globalization
and international supply chains. Multinational corporations (MNCs) are crucial
agents in the transformation of national employment management systems. Yet,
executive leaders must be sensitive to, and adapt to fit, domestic legal
requirements and local cultural expectations and norms (Kramar and Syed,
2012).
458
Micro HRM activities
Key MHRM activities are designed in response to organizational goals and
contingencies, and each one contains alternatives from which leaders can
choose. Some of these key activities have been devolved to line managers (e.g.
selection) while others (e.g. training) have been outsourced to specialist
companies.
459
Workforce planning
More than ever, effective leadership and management demand an understanding
of workforce diversity and its strategic significance (CIPD, 2019c). Workforce
planning, also referred to as HR planning (HRP), is, according to the CIPD, ‘a
core business process to align changing organizational needs with people
strategy’ (CIPD, 2018a). The process seeks to forecast the supply and demand
for skills against the requirements of future services or production delivery in a
global economic context of uncertainty and rapid change. The workforce planning
process has four stages:
1. An evaluation of the existing employees.
2. An assessment of the proportion of current employees that are likely to
remain by the forecast date.
3. A forecast of employee requirements needed for the organization to achieve
its strategic goals by the forecast date.
4. Decisions to ensure that the necessary employees are available as and
when needed.
Workforce planning involves two broad activities: the use of statistical modelling
to estimate employee supply and demand; and the strategic understanding and
nuances associated with long-term planning, for example identifying new supply
chains or investment opportunities (Curson et al., 2010). The process generates
forecasts relating to the demand for labour, based on meeting the requirements
of the strategic business plan.
Pause and reflect
Bilateral global migration flows between all countries and is a global phenomenon.
Thinking about your own country, how do you think bilateral migration affects workforce
planning?
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Recruitment and selection
Informed by the workforce plan, recruitment and selection activities collectively
aim to attract a large pool of candidates from which the employer selects a
candidate based upon the criteria in the job description and personnel
specifications. A job description provides a description of the tasks and
responsibilities that make up the job. A personnel specification attempts to profile
the ‘ideal’ person to fill the job position. Both job descriptions and personnel
specifications have been key instruments in the traditional repertoire of
managers. The main means of attracting applicants include advertising, websites,
professional agencies, walk-ins and employee referrals.
The selection methods chosen to select candidates will depend on a number of
factors, such as the characteristics of the work and level of responsibility.
Selection methods must be consistent in order to ensure a fair comparison
across candidates: this is called the reliability criterion. In addition, the selection
technique must actually measure what it sets out to measure: this is called the
validity criterion. An interviewee’s capability may affect perceptions of that
individual’s commitment to an employer. It is assumed that interviewers perceive
highly-capable candidates to have lower commitment to the organization than
less capable candidates, therefore perception may penalize high-capability
candidates in the hiring process (Galperin et al., 2019). This counter-intuitive
finding highlights that capability signals do not necessarily afford talented
candidates an advantage in selection (see Chapter 12).
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Individual performance appraisal
Performance appraisals, sometimes called ‘performance reviews’, aim to ensure
that employees’ performance contributes to organizational objectives (CIPD,
2018a). Increasingly, individual performance appraisals (IPA) are one of a
number of HR tools that have significant outcomes for, among other things,
employees’ development needs and rewards. The process assumes that the
principal dimensions of an employee’s performance can be defined precisely, and
be measured over specific periods of time that take into account constraints
within the performance situation (Furnham, 2004). Both the HRM and leadership
literature rely on an explicit assumption that financial rewards motivate the
individual. As you will recall from reading Chapter 7, when, after a period
performance assessment, a leader recognizes a follower’s accomplishments and
gives a bonus, this is a form of ‘transactional’ leadership. There is good evidence
that measuring individual performance is ‘notoriously subject to individual
supervisory biases’ (Kepes et al., 2009: 525). To preclude unintended
consequences on the psychological contract, which, you will recall, is
underpinned by trust and the perceived ‘fairness’ of the employment relationship
(Guest and Conway, 2002), organizations need to design IPA processes
systematically and comprehensively.
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Training and development
The activities covering training and development range from informal on-the-job
learning to formal or planned learning on an MBA programme. In many
organizations, the training and development of managers are seen as part of a
strategy involving succession planning and leadership development (see Chapter
12). Human resource development (HRD) ‘is constituted by planned interventions
in organizational and individual learning processes’ (Stewart et al., 2007: 66). A
significant contribution to understanding how adults learn is illustrated by Kolb’s
(1976; Peterson et al., 2015) learning cycle. A learning cycle is a concept of how
adults learn from experience. It has a number of stages, the last of which can be
followed by the first. Importantly, Kolb sees adult learning as a continuous
process that is based on experiences employees encounter and how they
interpret, make sense of and respond to that experience (see Figure 9.1).
Figure 9.1 Kolb’s experiential cycle of learning
From a leadership perspective, Kolb’s model heightens awareness of the factors
that inhibit as well as stimulate the learning process at work. To be effective,
work-based learning requires supportive leaders’ behaviours (Gold et al., 2013).
Ramus and Steger (2000) reported that these behaviours include competence
building (supporting training initiatives), dialogic communication and engagement
(encouraging followers to engage and bring forward their ideas and criticisms),
and information dissemination (sharing organization information).
Pause and reflect
463
To what extent and under what circumstances might a pay increase serve to motivate
followers?
464
Rewards
Rewards are the centrepiece of the employment relationship for they underscore
the fact that the relationship constitutes an economic transaction. That is, an
employee engages in work-related physical and/or mental activities that benefit
the employer in return for some payment or reward. Bratton and Gold (2017: 262)
define reward as ‘A package of monetary, non-monetary and psychological
payments that an organization provides for its employees in exchange for a
bundle of valued work-related behaviours.’
Leaders can provide two broad types of reward: extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic
rewards satisfy an employee’s basic needs for survival, security and recognition,
which include financial payments. Intrinsic rewards refer to psychological
‘enjoyment’ and the satisfaction of ‘challenge’, sometimes called ‘psychic
income’, that an employee derives from her or his paid work. The growing interest
in spiritual leadership, which focuses on leaders mobilizing followers’ values and
sense of calling to motivate followers (Fairholm, 1996), has underlined the
importance of corporate values, work design and human relationships as an
intrinsic motivator (Lockwood, 2007).
Leadership in Action: The leader–follower pay gap
Over the past 30 years, increases in CEO pay have far outstripped earnings gains
made by other employees throughout North America and Western Europe. Over the
same period, income inequality started an upward trajectory and by the early 21st
century had returned to levels of income inequality not seen since the 1920s.
Accompanying the upward trend has been the social acceptance for the income gap
between the CEOs and workers to widen. Although the matter of global inequality is
extraordinarily complex, the statistics are truly breathtaking. Data shows that in the
USA, top executives received an average pay rise of 17.6 per cent in 2017–18 while
their employees’ wages increased by just 0.3 per cent over the year. The CEOs of
America’s top 350 companies earned 312 times more than their employees on average
in 2017. On 1 April 2019, the UK’s national minimum wage increased by 38p to £8.21.
In contrast, the median average pay for leaders of FTSE 100 companies is £3.9 million
a year, which is around 120 times the £28,758 average pay of UK workers. There are
1,542 dollar billionaires in the world, of which the top 500 own $5.3 trillion. Thirty-six
million people are dollar millionaires. They make up 0.7 per cent of the world’s adult
population and own 46 per cent of global wealth. At the other end of the spectrum,
about 3 billion people, or almost 50 per cent of the world’s population, live on less than
$2.50 a day (Bratton and Denham, 2019).
Justification for the CEO–employee pay gap is that high pay is necessary to motivate
corporate leaders to perform well. However, research does not support this assertion.
Piketty (2014) and Stiglitz (2017) provide evidence that growth in CEO pay is driven by
share value, not the individual capability and performance of CEOs. There is
compelling evidence, however, that extreme income inequality negatively impacts
employee morale, commitment and wellbeing.
465
Reflective questions
1. Between 1 January and 1 April 2019, the average FTSE 100 CEO earned over
£972,258. The average worker earned £7,189 over the same period. Do you think
the pay gap between CEOs and their employees is justified?
2. What are the potential consequences of the pay gap on leader–follower relations?
466
Source
High Pay Centre (2018) ‘Executive pay at FTSE 100 companies’. Available at
http://highpaycentre.org/pubs/hpc-briefing-executive-pay-at-ftse-100-companies-that-
are-not-accredited-li (accessed 17 September 2019).
467
To explore this topic further see:
Bachelder, J. (2018) ‘Growth in CEO pay since 1990’, Harvard Law School Forum.
Available at https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/09/19/growth-in-ceo-pay-since-1990
(accessed 17 September 2019).
Bell, L.A. (2005) ‘Women-led firms and the gender gap in top executive jobs’, IZA
Discussion Paper. Available at http://ftp.iza.org/dp1689 (accessed 17 September
2019).
Thompson, D. (2013) ‘What’s behind the huge (and growing) CEO–worker pay gap?’,
The Atlantic, 30 April. Available at
www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/whats-behind-the-huge-and-growing-
ceo-worker-pay-gap/275435 (accessed 17 September 2019).
468
Employee relations
The term ‘employee relations’ is used to encompass both collective and individual
dimensions, union and non-union relationships within the organization. The CIPD
(2019d: 1) emphasizes that ‘employee relations continues to shift from
“collective” institutions … to the relationship with individual employees, the ideas
of “employee voice” and the “psychological contract” have been accepted by
employers.’ In workplaces where a trade union is recognized for collective
bargaining purposes, employee relations include negotiating the substantive (pay
and hours) and procedural (e.g. grievances, sabbatical leaves and redundancy)
issues of employment contracts, and administrating collective agreements. In
non-union workplaces, employee relations include an assortment of HR practices
covering (1) employee voice, (2) communication, (3) grievance handling and (4)
employee discipline.
These four dimensions of employee relations can be operationalized both
informally or formally and without or with a union voice (Edwards and Sengupta,
2010). A formal employee voice scheme, for example, can include leaders,
followers and/or union leaders participating in decision making on a governing
body. On the other hand, employee voice may be informal, for example a leader
listening to suggestions from followers. The antecedents of leadership behaviours
and the theories of ‘leader–member exchange’ (see Chapter 8) underscore the
importance of interpersonal employee voice in the workplace.
Figure 9.2 provides a framework for studying key HR policies and practices. Its
premise is that people should be managed in a way that is congruent with the
organization’s strategy (Fombrun et al., 1984). These HR practices are the tools
of micro and strategic HRM (Sheehan et al., 2016), which upper-echelon leaders
can directly influence and change (see Chapter 16).
Figure 9.2 A framework for studying key HR policies and
practices
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How HR activities are organized and how much power HR leaders have relative
to that of other leaders is affected by both external and internal factors unique to
the organization. A regulation-oriented national business system (e.g. Denmark,
Norway and Sweden), with strong trade unions, employment laws and affirmative
action, elevates the status of HR professionals and strengthens the corporate HR
function. In contrast, a market-oriented national system (e.g. the UK and the
USA), with low union representation and weak employment laws, typically
weakens the HR function and HR leaders (Jacoby, 2005; Parry, 2011).
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HR strategy and leadership
As you have hopefully recognized through the text so far, both HRM and
leadership are seeking to enhance the organization’s performance through three
levels of influence: individual, group and organizational. In addition, HRM
activities and leaders’ influence are both concerned with the enactment of the
organization’s strategic goals. Boxall and Purcell (2016) identify four strategic key
goals:
Cost-effectiveness: maximizing profits or minimizing costs.
Flexibility: short-run responsiveness and long-run agility in response to
external pressures.
Social legitimacy: how people are managed and led affects the ethical
standing of the organization in society.
Power: managers aim to enhance their power as stakeholders.
The goals of HRM may vary between private- and public-sector organizations.
These strategic goals underscore the contribution of HRM principles to creating
an effective leadership relationship, and the need for HR strategy. The concept of
HR strategy describes a leader’s pattern of strategic choices in managing people.
The concept refers to ‘the critical set of economic and socio-political choices that
managers make in building and managing a workforce’ (Boxall and Purcell, 2016:
26). Senior leaders rarely adopt a universal HR strategy for all their employee
groups because different business models require different people with diverse
skill sets and experience, therefore variegated HR practices operate within
organizations.
Critical Insight: Understanding ‘critical’ HRM
As you have seen throughout this book so far, Organizational Leadership aims to help
you develop critical thinking skills when reading other texts in leadership and
management and related fields. Almost 60 years ago, sociologist Peter Berger wrote
that the first wisdom of sociological enquiry is that ‘things are not what they seem’
(1963: 23). A deceptively simple statement, Berger’s idea suggests that most people
live in a social world they do not understand. This chapter aims to shed light on how
HRM impacts on people and, in particular, leader–follower relations. Bratton and Gold
(2015) argued for students to be exposed to critical HRM (CHRM). This approach to
studying HRM is inspired by the work of the late C. Wright Mills’ belief in the
‘sociological imagination’: the ability to see the relationships between individual life
experiences and the larger society because the two are related (1959/2000). For
Watson (2010), a critical approach to studying HRM provides inspiration to apply the
‘sociological imagination’ to matters of HRM ‘outcomes’ that have ‘wider social
consequences’.
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Activity
To help you understand better the HRM discourse, read Bratton and Gold (2015) and
Watson (2010). Working on your own, or in a group:
1. Identify the dominant assumptions that underlie the two articles.
2. What do you understand by the term ‘critical HRM’ (CRHM)?
3. As an intellectual activity, how does CHRM help to understand (a) the rhetoric and
reality of HRM and (b) how HR policies and practices and leadership complement
each other?
What HR strategies have leaders used to render followers’ behaviour measurable
and controllable? Using the core premise of indeterminacy to frame the argument
and to guide their enquiry, researchers have identified alternative HR strategies
around the notion of direct control by line managers versus responsible
autonomy, entailing complex forms of self-control found in teams (Bratton, 1992;
Edwards, 1979). The choice and adaptation of a HR strategy is governed by the
organizational context (e.g. size, structure, technology) and the employers’
exposure to international competition (Ibsen and Nayrbierg, 2019). Thus, when
managing people, control and cooperation coexist, and the extent to which there
is any ebb and flow in intensity and direction between types of control will depend
upon the ‘multiple constituents’ of leader–follower relations and the process of
following (see Chapter 13).
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Theorizing Human Resource Management
So far, we have focused on the meaning, scope and functions of HRM. We now
turn to an important part of the mainstream HRM discourse, the search for a
theoretical model that demonstrates analytically the nature of the discipline. You
may ask, why bother looking at theoretical models? As Richard Hyman observed,
‘practice without theory is blind’ (1989: xiv). Models are important because they
provide an analytical framework for studying HRM. They provide a
characterization of HRM that establishes a cluster of variables and relationships
between the dependent and independent variables to be researched. For
example, ‘Do pro-environment “green” HR practices (independent variables)
promote pro-environmental employee behaviours (dependent variables)?’
Academics in the USA and the UK have offered several different HRM models.
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The Michigan model of HRM
The Michigan model developed by Fombrun et al. (1984) is associated with the
Michigan Business School. The model’s ‘cycle’ consists of four core HR activities:
selection, appraisal, training and rewards. It emphasizes the interrelatedness and
coherence of HRM activities, which requires HR strategies to have a tight
alignment to the overall strategies of the business. The Michigan model takes a
‘hard’ approach to people management, with a focus on performance. People are
considered a means to an end or a ‘resource’ (Bratton and Gold, 2015). The
strength of the model is its coherence and the importance of ‘matching’ internal
HR policies and practices to the organization’s external business strategy. Its
weaknesses are its prescriptive nature and its focus on just four HR practices,
and it also ignores different stakeholders such as workers.
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The Harvard model of HRM
The Harvard model offered by Beer et al. (1984) provides one of the first
comprehensive formulations on the nature of HRM. The framework consists of six
basic components: situational factors; stakeholder interests; HRM policy choices;
HR outcomes; long-term consequences; and a feedback loop through which the
outputs flow directly into the organization and to the stakeholders (see Figure
9.3).
The stakeholder interests recognize the importance of ‘trade-offs’, either explicit
or implicit, between the interests of business owners and the interests of
employees (e.g. health and wellbeing) and labour unions (e.g. a voice over
investment decisions).
Figure 9.3 The Harvard model of HRM (Beer et al., 1984)
The situational factors influence leader choice of HR strategy. This model
incorporates workforce characteristics (e.g. skilled, unskilled or professional),
management philosophy (e.g. neoliberal), labour market regulations (e.g. working
time directives), societal values (e.g. self-reliance) and patterns of unionization
(e.g. high union membership), and suggests a meshing of product market and
socio-cultural factors (Evans and Lorange, 1989).
HRM policy choices emphasize that a leader’s decision and actions in people
management can be fully appreciated only if it is recognized that they result from
an interaction between constraints (e.g. trade unions, food protection standards)
and choices (e.g. high technology and high skill, high wage versus low-
technology and low skill, low wage). It shows leaders as real change agents,
capable of influencing organizational parameters itself over time.
The HR outcomes of high employee commitment to the goals and values of the
organization are sometimes referred to as ‘organizational citizenship’, and the
competence necessary to provide a high-quality product or service is linked to
longer-term effects on organizational effectiveness and societal wellbeing. The
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underlying assumptions built into the model are that talented followers are rarely
fully utilized in the workplace, and that they show a desire to experience
individual growth through work. Thus, HRM is indivisible from a ‘humanistic
message’ about human growth and dignity at work.
The long-term consequences distinguish between three levels: individual,
organizational and societal. At the individual level, the HR outputs comprise the
psychological rewards that followers receive in exchange for their effort. At the
organizational level, increased effectiveness ensures the survival of the firm,
while, at the societal level, as a result of fully utilizing people at work some of
society’s goals (e.g. employment) are attained.
A feedback loop shows that long-term consequences and outputs can influence
situational factors, stakeholder interests and HR policies.
The strength of the Harvard model lies in its classification of inputs and outcomes
at both the organizational and the societal level. As Boxall (1992) observes, the
model contains elements that are analytical (i.e. situational factors, stakeholders
and strategic choice) and prescriptive (i.e. notions of commitment, competence
etc.). A weakness, however, is the absence of a coherent theoretical basis for
measuring the relationship between HR inputs, outcomes and performance
(Guest, 1997).
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The Storey model of HRM
The Storey (2007) model compares HRM with ‘traditional’ or personnel
management policies. It describes HR policies as well as focusing on the
processes through which HR policies and practices influence employee
behaviour and performance. It is what Weber called an ‘ideal type’, that is a
‘mental image’, which cannot actually be found empirically in any real
organization. Its purpose is to serve as a contrast between theory and social
reality in order to establish the differences or similarities between the two
positions, and to understand and explain whether one variable (e.g. pay) is
responsible for causing the other variable (e.g. individual effort); this is called a
‘causal relationship’ (Bratton and Denham, 2019).
The four main elements in Storey’s model are: beliefs and assumptions, strategic
qualities, the critical role of managers, and key levers (see Table 9.1).
Table 9.1 The Storey model of HRM
Table 9.1 The Storey model of HRM
Personnel and industrial relations (IR) and human resource management
(HRM): the differences
Dimension Personnel and IR HRM
Beliefs and assumptions
Contract Careful delineation of writtencontracts Aim to go ‘beyond contract’
Rules Importance of devising clearrules/mutuality
‘Can do’ outlook;
impatience with ‘rules’
Guide to
management
action
Procedures/consistency/control ‘Businessneed’/flexibility/commitment
Behaviour
referent Norms/custom and practice Values/mission
Managerial
task vis-à-vis
labour
Monitoring Nurturing
Nature of
relations Pluralist Unitarist
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Personnel and industrial relations (IR) and human resource management
(HRM): the differences
Dimension Personnel and IR HRM
Conflict Institutionalized De-emphasized
Standardization High (e.g. ‘parity’ an issue) Low (e.g. ‘parity’ not seenas relevant)
Strategic qualities
Key relations Labour management Business customer
Initiatives Piecemeal Integrated
Corporate plan Marginal to Central to
Speed of
decision Slow Fast
Critical role of management
Management
role Transactional
Transformational
leadership
Key managers Personnel/IR specialists General/business/linemanagers
Prized
management
skills
Negotiation Facilitation
Key levers
Foci of
attention for
interventions
Personnel procedures
Wide-ranging cultural,
structural and personnel
strategies
Selection Separate, marginal task Integrated, key task
Pay Job evaluation; multiple fixedgrades
Performance-related; few if
any grades
Conditions Separately negotiated Harmonization
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Personnel and industrial relations (IR) and human resource management
(HRM): the differences
Dimension Personnel and IR HRM
Labour
management Collective bargaining contracts
Towards individual
contracts
Thrust of
relations with
stewards
Regularized through facilities
and training
Marginalized (with
exception of some
bargaining for change
models)
Communication Restricted flow/indirect Increased flow/direct
Job design Division of labour Teamwork
Conflict
handling Reach temporary truces
Manage climate and
culture
Training and
development Controlled access to courses Learning companies
Source: Storey, 2007: 9
The model depicts a ‘recipe’ of ideas. The most fundamental belief and
assumption is that, ultimately, it is talented people that really distinguish
successful organizations from mediocre ones (see Chapter 12). It follows logically
from this that leaders ought to nurture followers as a valued asset and not simply
regard people as a cost. Moreover, leaders should ‘strive’ for ‘commitment and
engagement’ that goes ‘beyond the contract’ (Storey, 2001).
Strategic qualities seek to demonstrate that HRM is a matter of critical
importance to strategic planning and execution. In Storey’s words, ‘decisions
about human resources policies should … take their cue from an explicit
alignment of the competitive environment, business strategy and HRM strategy’
(2001: 10).
The critical role of managers adds extra understanding by emphasizing the role
of leaders at every level of the organization in the effective delivery of HR
practices (Bratton and Gold, 2017; Purcell et al., 2009). As Storey argues, ‘If
human resources really are so critical for business success, the HRM is too
important to be left to operational personnel specialists’ (2007: 10). There is also
an appreciation of the role of transformational leadership.
The key levers element in the model focuses on the methods used to implement
HR policies and practices. What is persuasive about the narrative is evidence of
a shift away from rules as a basis of good practice, to the management of
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organizational culture as a means of implementing transformative change (see
Chapter 16). The strength of Storey’s model is its recognition of the critical role of
all leaders in enacting HR policies and practices and the importance of managing
culture. A weakness, perhaps for practitioners, is the absence of a more
business-focused approach and a focus on cost-efficiencies.
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The Ulrich business partner model
The professional institutions, such as the UK Chartered Institute for Personnel
and Development (CIPD), have long sought to demonstrate the added value of
HR activities in business terms. Such a position requires a transition from HR
professionals focusing on the functional activities, such as recruitment and
training, towards a partnership orientation, with HR professionals sitting ‘at the
top table’ and engaged in strategic decision making. The model most favoured to
support such a transition is David Ulrich’s (1997) business partner model. Ulrich’s
original model highlights four key roles that HR leaders need to adopt to add the
greatest value to the organization:
Strategic partner: future/strategic focus combined with business processes.
Change agent: future/strategic focus combined with people.
Administrative expert: operational focus combined with process.
Employee champion: operational focus combined with people.
Ulrich posits that HR professionals must focus on both the strategic and the
operational, in both the long and the short term. Activities range from managing
business processes to managing people, suggesting that there are core
competencies that HR professionals must secure and develop to help deliver
value to the organization. A core HR competency, argues Ulrich et al. (2012), is
that of being both credible (respected, listened to, trusted) and active (taking a
position and challenging assumptions).
More recently, the business partner model has been questioned. The CIPD
recommends that HR professionals exercise caution when implementing the
model, as there is a risk when the HR function is segmented of creating ‘silos’
(CIPD, 2019e). The strength of Ulrich’s model is its business-focused approach
and affirmation of the strategic importance of HRM and HR leaders. Its
shortcoming relates to senior managers’ perceptions of the independence and
credibility of HR professionals (Rees and Johari, 2010), and whether the model
can resolve long-term tensions of identity, performance and organizing (Gerpott,
2015).
Pause and reflect
Reviewing the models, what beliefs and assumptions do you find implied in them?
What is the message for leaders?
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Human Resource Management and
Leadership
This section addresses two questions: how does HRM contribute to the
leadership process; and does HRM make a difference to individual and
organizational performance? As you have hopefully understood through this
chapter so far, the way HRM has been conceptualized avers HRM and leadership
are both concerned with understanding how, and why, people behave in the
workplace and, more fundamentally, how leaders can mobilize and leverage
human capability to enhance individual performance.
Conceptualizing leadership as a human process within an employment
relationship has several implications for the way we understand how HR
practices influence the behaviour of both leaders and subordinates and the
leader–subordinate dyad (for discussion of followers’ behaviour, see Chapter 13).
HR practices form part of the transformational leadership model. The suggestion
here is that clusters of follower-centred HR practices support manifestations of
transformational leadership. Think back to Bass and Riggio’s (2006) model
mentioned in Chapter 7 (Figure 7.1) in which transformational leadership is
described as involving four behaviours: idealized influence; inspirational
motivation; intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration. In addition, it
includes two others: contingent reward and management-by-exception (MBE).
Each of these behaviours offers important insight into the nature of leadership
and the contribution of HRM.
Table 9.2 provides examples of each of the six transformational and transactional
behaviours that encompass transformational leadership. In short,
transformational leaders engage in these behaviours to enhance their
organization’s performance through their engagement with, and influence on,
subordinates.
Table 9.2 HRM and transformational leadership behaviours
Table 9.2 HRM and transformational leadership behaviours
Dimension Example of leadership behaviours and HR practices
Idealized
influence
Leaders share ethical values and behave in ways that
allow them to serve as role models for their subordinates.
Behaviours are influenced by the ethical dimension of
HRM.
Inspirational
motivation
Leaders inspire and elevate subordinates’ motivation with
challenging work. HR job design practices.
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Dimension Example of leadership behaviours and HR practices
Intellectual
stimulation
Leaders encourage subordinates to be creative thinkers
and innovate. Employee voice processes help
subordinates examine and reframe problems.
Individualized
consideration
Leader must have the personal capacity to engage,
perceive and understand individual emotions and needs of
subordinates. HRD provides planned interventions in
individual learning processes to develop employee skills.
Contingent
reward
Leaders reward subordinates for satisfactory
accomplishment of the work. Reward management
schemes, including variable pay systems (VPS), e.g. merit
pay and profit-related pay, provide options.
Management-
by-exception
Leaders monitor subordinates’ actions. Performance
appraisal is used to monitor and evaluate subordinates’
capability and potential, enabling leaders to make informed
decisions for the purpose of performance.
The second question, ‘Does HRM make a difference?’, is important. Evidence
that better HR practices can indeed lead to improved performance has
fundamental implications for whether or not leaders should invest in HR
interventions. It has not been lost on either HRM academics or practitioners that
evidence on the effectiveness of HR interventions, and HR leaders’ related
involvement in strategic planning, enhances the status of the academic discipline
and the authority and self-importance of HR leaders in the workplace. It is,
therefore, unsurprising that demonstrating that there is a positive link between
particular clusters of HR practices and organizational performance has
dominated HRM research (Guest, 1997; Edwards and Sengupta, 2010).
A number of empirical studies have found that bundles of HR practices are
indeed positively associated with improved organizational performance (e.g.
Boxall and Macky, 2009; Ichniowski et al., 1996; Paauwe, 2004). Gerhart (2008),
however, identifies empirical and theoretical challenges in the modelling of HRM–
performance linkages. In terms of empirical evidence, there is little evidence of
organizations adopting a ‘coherent’ HRM agenda, especially among smaller
organizations. In terms of theory, researchers face the challenge of estimating
causal inferences on HR–performance linkages (Purcell and Kinnie, 2007).
Researchers continue to express doubts about the claims for a HR–performance
connection, and even when a positive link is established, there can be no
certainty of the direction of causality (Thompson and McHugh, 2009).
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Critiquing the Human Resource Management
Discourse
The more critical evaluations of HRM models expose internal paradoxes.
Paradox is inherent in HRM. It results when, in pursuit of a specific organizational
goal or goals, leaders call for or carry out actions that are in opposition to the very
goal(s) the organization is attempting to accomplish. Acceding to the imperatives
of increasing shareholder value, for example, a tendency for corporate leaders to
strive for profit maximization by implementing a HR plan of redundancies – so-
called ‘downsizing’ – can have a negative effect on employee morale, learning
capacity, and ‘hollow out’ the organization’s skills capacity (Little and Innes,
2003). Therefore, an HR strategy that includes workforce downsizing and
compulsory redundancies is unlikely to engender follower trust, loyalty and
commitment and will cause a misfit with HRM and relational leadership values.
There is a cacophony of critical voices exposing paradox and tension in HR
practices. Selection of the ‘best’ HR practice has tended to be viewed in terms of
standardizing and objectifying the selection process (Townley, 1994). Critics of
IPA argue that it is a HR tool illustrative of power/knowledge that seeks to monitor
and control (Bain et al., 2002), and that meaningful behaviour is rarely
quantifiable and behaviour that is quantifiable is rarely meaningful (Wright, 1991).
HRD is seen as an essential part of ‘capturing’ employee subjectivity (values,
attitudes and initiative) in achieving corporate objectives so that learning is a new
form of management control (Spencer, 2001). Reward exhibits the ‘overarching
tension’ between management theories that view people as a commodity, to be
hired for a price (wage), and social psychological theories with regard to the
leadership conundrum of follower motivation (Corby et al., 2009; Hutton, 2015).
The HRM mantra of employee development and wellbeing sits uncomfortably
with the reality of the gig economy, a world of short-term employment contracts
(CIPD, 2018b). Employment contracts have become increasingly flexible, which
is to say more inhumane and ‘brutal’, and critics of HRM provide a sustained
critique with respect to exploitation and growing inequality: ‘Trust relationships
between managements and workforces are typically lacking’, observes Hutton
(2015: 181). In sum, critics argue that HR policies and practices have given rise
to a shift from long-term ‘relational’ employment contracts between the employer
and the employee towards short-term ‘transactional’ and ‘precarious’ contracts,
which contradicts the goal of follower commitment and cooperation and relational
leadership values.
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Conclusion
In this chapter, we have examined some popular HRM models which enable us to
connect the outer (wider environment) and inner (organizational) contexts, and
explore how, similar to situational leadership theories, people management
adapts to changes in the context. We discussed a core assumption underlying
much of the HRM literature, that different business strategies are associated with
a different approach to managing people, that is, with a different HR strategy.
Strategic corporate and business-level planning provide the context within which
plans for managing people are developed and implemented. These strategic
plans provide a map for managers to follow in order to fulfil the organization’s
long-term goals. We have demonstrated how HRM theory and practice can
complement and support organization leaders. As part of the review of the links
between OB, HRM and leadership theories, we identified how specific HR
practices covering subordinate training and development, rewards and employee
relations’ mechanisms manifest in transformational leadership behaviours.
Despite the economic and political pressures from globalization, a divergence of
HR practices continues to remain. This is because HRM is influenced and
shaped by national and organizational cultures in the developed and the
developing world.
485
Chapter Review Questions
1. What is meant by micro HRM and strategic HRM? How do societal factors influence,
or determine, the choice of HR strategy and practices?
2. What is the role of HRM in promoting workplace transformational change?
3. Do HR practices generate superior organizational performance?
4. What can leaders do to influence line managers so as to put best HR practices into
effect?
Assignment Task: Zero-hourS contracts
In 2017, the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that there were 1.8 million
contracts that did not guarantee a minimum number of hours, compared to 1.7 million
in the year to November 2016. In terms of labour market share, zero-hours
arrangements still made up 6 per cent of all contracts. However, the ONS warned that
the comparison should be ‘treated with caution’, as the survey was changed from being
voluntary to compulsory between these two periods. During the three months to
December 2017, 901,000 people were employed on zero-hours contracts, making up
around 2.8 per cent of all people in employment. During the same three months in
2016, this figure was 905,000. The ONS also noted that increased awareness of zero-
hours contracts – as in workers recognizing they were engaged in this type of contract
– may have influenced the increase in numbers.
The term ‘precarious employment’ has been used to describe the employment
relationship of those workers on zero-hours contracts. Standing (2011) argues that
workers on zero-hours contracts constitute the ‘precariat’, a new class of workers.
These workers are living and working precariously, usually in a series of short-term
jobs, without recourse to stable occupational identities or careers, social protection or
relevant protective regulation (Savage et al., 2015)
486
Questions
1. Research online sources including data from the ONS to write a report that
includes: (a) figures that chart the growth of zero-hours contracts, and (b)
compare the UK’s national figures with a particular sector (e.g. hospitality).
2. In the light of these comparisons, provide some explanation for differences and,
based on your knowledge of transformational leadership, discuss the effect of
precarious employment on followers, for example organizational citizenship
behaviour (OCB), motivation and creativity.
487
For further information see:
Faragher, J. (2018) ‘Zero hours contracts increase by 100,000 as workers more aware’,
Personnel Today, 23 April, p. 1. Available at www.personneltoday.com/hr/zero-hours-
contracts-increase-by-100000-as-workers-more-aware (accessed 29 September 2019).
Savage, M., Cunningham, N., Devine, F., Friedman, S., Laurison, D., McKenzie, L.,
Miles, A., Snee, H. and Wakeling, P. (2015) A Pelican Introduction: Social class in the
21st century. London: Pelican.
Standing, G. (2011) The Precariat: The new dangerous class. London: Bloomsbury.
Go Online
Explore the real world of leadership by reading this case study:
Leader–Member Exchange Theory: Barack Obama
Further your knowledge and build your bibliography for assignments by reading the
recommended journal articles for this chapter.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
video
Learn more about leadership in practice by watching the video conversation for this
chapter.
Diane Vincent, former Director of People and Organizational Development for the
Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, shares her insights into how traditionally male-
dominated industries can attract and recruit a more diverse workforce, particularly into
leadership roles.
The video can be found at https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
See the inside front cover for the access code and instructions.
488
Further Reading
CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) (2013) ‘HR and its role
in innovation’. Available at www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/culture/innovation/hr-role-
report (accessed 17 September 2019).
CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) (2019) ‘The
psychological contract’, Factsheet. Available at
www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/relations/employees/psychological-
factsheet (accessed 17 September 2019).
Legge, K. (2006) ‘Human resource management’, in S. Ackroyd, R. Batt, P.
Thompson and P. Tolbert (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Work and
Organizations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 220–41.
Sambrook, S. (2008) ‘Critical HRD: a conceptual analysis’, Personnel Review, 38
(1): 61–73.
Wall, T.D. and Wood, S.J. (2005) ‘The romance of human resource management
and business performance, and the case for big science’, Human Relations, 58
(4): 429–62.
Watson, T.J. (2010) ‘Critical social science, pragmatism and the realities of HRM’,
The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 21 (6): 915–31.
Wilkinson, A., Redman, T., Snell, S.A. and Bacon, N. (2013) ‘Field of human
resource management’, in T. Redman, S.A. Snell and N. Bacon (eds), The SAGE
Handbook of Human Resource Management. London: SAGE, pp. 3–11.
489
Case Study: HR practices at Analytica InfoServices
490
Background
Analytica InfoServices is an IT company designing IT systems for hospitals and GP
surgeries. Based in Dublin, the MD and founder of the company, Fintan Brennan, moved the
company from Leeds in 2018 after the Brexit vote. The company currently employs 25 staff,
but plans to add more staff over the next few months. In anticipation of the expansion,
Fintan recruited Amy Murphy, a HR specialist with 10 years’ experience working in hospital
administration. Although the transfer has been relatively smooth, Fintan recognizes that staff
are experiencing increasing difficulties in meeting the demand for IT services and that more
attention needs to be given to performance appraisal and more IT specialists need to be
recruited sooner rather than later.
491
The problem
Twenty of the staff have been recruited over the last 12 months and are organized into four
teams. Each team is led by a manager with extensive IT experience, who reports directly to
Fintan. In Fintan’s view, the current assessment of performance has been undertaken rather
informally. While managers and staff have a general understanding of the principles
underpinning individual objective setting, Fintan confided in Amy that ‘realistic, time-specific
and measurable objectives are loosely interpreted’ by the managers. Differences and
variations in performance tend to be ‘overlooked’; although the first annual company profit
share satisfied most staff, some of the company’s ‘star’ performers were less happy.
Compounding the problem, said Fintan, ‘most of the new hires have little or no experience
of a performance culture.’
Fintan called a meeting of his managers and HR specialist with the aim to reaffirm his belief
that expansion of business in Ireland was contingent on an effective IPA system and the
recruitment of more IT staff. In discussion, Erinn, a team manager, gave a positive account
of appraisal: ‘The new staff like to talk about what they are doing, the challenges and where
they see their career going in the future’, she said. However, Bob, another team manager,
who perceives Erinn’s team is favoured by Fintan and receives the most interesting
assignments, was unconvinced about the value of IPA. He said, ‘Appraisal is just a box-
ticking exercise with little constructive outcome apart from a lot of bloody talking.’ Fintan is
concerned that the most talented staff are unlikely to stay with the company, unless IPA is
more closely connected to performance and personal development and is perceived to be
fair.
Like IPA, recruitment of staff had been informal, with team managers ‘given a free rein’ and
most recent staff had been recruited on the basis of ‘word of mouth’, and job descriptions
were not produced. Bob commented that ‘the “high-flyers” we hired six months ago have
already left the company.’ Six new staff will be recruited: two entry-level IT analysts, two
senior staff, one IT consultant and one IT software engineer.
492
Case exercise
In small groups, playing the role of Amy Murphy, HR manager, prepare a report for Fintan
Brennan that outlines the way forward. The report will need to consider:
1. Should Analytica InfoServices retain IPA? If you recommend retention, what learning
activities could improve appraisal? If you recommend replacement, what alternative
approach, if any, would you advise?
2. Relational leadership theory advises leaders to build high-quality relationships with all
of the followers. What is your assessment of how IPA can help Fintan and his
managers co-construct leadership at Analytica InfoServices?
3. What changes to the recruitment and selection process would you recommend?
493
Sources of additional information
Bain, P., Watson, A., Mulvey, G., Taylor, P. and Gall, G. (2002) ‘Taylorism, targets and the
pursuit of quantity and quality by call centre management’, New Technology, Work and
Employment, 17 (3): 170–85.
Bednall, T.C., Sanders, K. and Runhaar, P. (2014) ‘Stimulating informal learning activities
through perceptions of performance appraisal quality and human resource management
system strength: a two-way study’, Academy of Management Learning and Education, 13
(1): 45–61.
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) (2018) ‘Performance appraisal’,
September. Available at
www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/people/performance/appraisals-factsheet
(accessed 29 September 2019).
Hutchinson, S. (ed.) (2013) Performance Management: Theory and practice. London: CIPD.
McKenna, S., Richardson, J. and Manroop, L. (2001) ‘Alternative paradigms and the study
and practice of performance management and evaluation’, Human Resource Management
Review, 21 (2): 148–57.
495
10 Talent Management and
Leadership
Kirsteen Grant
‘I view my primary job as strengthening our talent pools.
So I view every conversation, every meeting as an
opportunity to talk about our talented people.’
Jack Welch, former CEO, General Electric (Michaels et
al., 2001: 31)
496
Chapter Outline
Introduction
The nature of talent and talent management
Leading and managing talent
The influence of ‘talented followership’ on co-producing
leadership
Collaborative talent management
Critiquing the talent management debate
Conclusion
497
Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to explain and evaluate:
the nature of talent and the complexities and organizational
challenges surrounding talent management;
leaders’ and line manages’ roles in talent management and capacity
building;
the value and limitations of talent collaborations;
the critical research that challenges the mantra of ‘talent are our
most valuable asset’.
video
To learn more about talent management, don’t forget to watch the
video conversation for this chapter online.
498
Introduction
As you now hopefully recognize, there is a growing body of voices
advocating the need for relational or shared approaches to
leadership whereby leaders and followers work collaboratively to
co-produce the leadership relationship at different levels in the
organization. Moreover, because of the seriousness of the global
and national challenges organizations face, they are more likely
solved collaboratively by leaders working with talented followers.
The notion of talent management (TM) has become a topic of
immense interest (McDonnell et al., 2017). Prior to the 2008
global financial crisis (GFC), McKinsey and Company proclaimed
the ‘war for talent’ (Chambers et al., 1998). Then, the dominant
narrative was that for sustainable competitive advantage, leaders
had to address the mounting challenge to attract, develop and
retain the best people. Since 2008, rising employment insecurity
has meant that, for many organizations, attracting talent has
become a less pressing challenge. However, many multinational
corporations (MNCs) in emerging economies report that a lack of
talent has become a major obstacle to strategy implementation
(Meyer and Xin, 2018). Yet, despite the enduring interest in TM,
there is still widespread disagreement over its precise meaning
(Gallardo-Gallardo et al., 2013). That being said, no matter which
interpretation is adopted, the premise of talent leadership and
followership is that it calls for mobilization of collective human
capability, the pooling of existing and new knowledge, and
resource allocation across the organization (Meyers et al., 2019).
In this chapter, we examine leaders’ roles and responsibilities in
the identification, development and mobilization of talent within
and across organizations. After exploring the nature of TM
alongside the conceptual and organizational challenges
enveloping TM, we explore leaders’ and line managers’ roles in
capacity building and in implementing and facilitating TM
practices. Given the growing interest in examining the active role
of followers, we consider the importance and influence of ‘talented
followers’ before the potential value and pitfalls of talent
499
collaborations. Last, we provide a critical analysis of the
mainstream debate on TM.
500
The Nature of Talent and Talent
Management
As the term suggests, TM is activity concerned with managing
people, but what do we mean when we pair the two words ‘talent’
and ‘management’? Although the language of TM has become
ubiquitous, there is an enduring lack of clarity regarding its precise
definition (Gallardo-Gallardo et al., 2013). For example, among
the 75 per cent of organizations reported within the CIPD’s
(2017a) resourcing and talent planning survey (based on 1,068
responses) deploying some form of TM, interpretations of what
exactly constitute ‘talent’ and ‘talent management’ vary
considerably between organizations and industry sectors. Indeed,
Lewis and Heckman (2006: 139) point to a ‘disturbing lack of
clarity regarding the definition, scope and overall goals of talent
management.’ One approach focuses on ‘strategic choice’ (see
Chapter 2), which often defines talent in terms of organizational
context (Thunnissen et al., 2013), including the extent to which an
organization defines talent as being an exclusive (targeted at
particular roles or people) or inclusive (whole workforce)
phenomenon (Meyers and van Woerkom, 2014).
Image 10.1 Analytically, talent management
emphasizes the fundamental inter-
relatedness and coherence of HRM. But,
while the HR function may be the champion
of talent management strategy and practices,
line managers are ultimately responsible for
their enactment.
501
Early conceptualization of TM focused on workforce planning and
recruitment activities (see Chapter 9). Cappelli (2008: 74) defines
TM simply as ‘a matter of anticipating the need for human capital
and then setting out a plan to meet it.’ In contrast, D’Annunzio-
Green defines TM as ‘a holistic approach to human resource
planning aimed at strengthening organizational capability and
driving business priorities using a range of HR interventions’
(2008: 807, emphasis added). Similarly, Meyers and van
Woerkom (2014: 192) argue that TM comprises ‘the systematic
utilization of human resource management … activities to attract,
identify, develop, and retain individuals who are considered to be
“talented”’. Meyers et al.’s (2019) definition reflects the potential
scope of TM, which often extends to HRM practices such as
employer branding to attract talented people, training, rewards,
employee engagement designed to motivate and retain talent and,
where recognized, engagement with trade unions (see Chapter 9,
Figure 9.1). Contemporary definitions of TM therefore encompass
a complex range of policies and practices that often pervade
every aspect of the ‘employment journey’ from the point of entry –
attracting and recruiting talented people – through to ensuring
high performance, commitment and retention, and ultimately long-
term growth through work. Analytically, TM emphasizes the
fundamental inter-relatedness and coherence of traditional HRM.
502
Crowley-Henry and Ariss (2018) argue that TM approaches are
generally constructed from a limited human capital-based
perspective wherein organizations focus on readily accessible
skills, disregarding the potential of skilled migrants. This
observation emphasizes that, in order to create a framework for
shaping TM, managers must first agree how to define talent; in
other words, which particular people or groups of people (often
referred to as talent pools) are of most value and are most critical
to sustainable competitive advantage and organizational success.
503
Who are ‘talent’?
This is not necessarily an easy question to address. In the extant
mainstream literature on TM, the most fundamental
belief/assumption is the notion that, ultimately, it is talented
people, rather than mediocre people, who distinguish successful
organizations from mediocre firms. It follows logically from this
that talented employees ought to be nurtured as a valued asset
and not simply regarded as a cost. As you will recall from Chapter
9, demographic changes and migration flows will, as in the 1990s,
once again elevate the notion of competing for talent. For
example, in 2018 the UK Migration Advisory Committee (MAC)
proposed a less restrictive immigration regime for ‘higher-skilled’
workers than that for ‘lower-skilled’ workers, despite warning that
EU migration was ‘falling sharply and there are some reasons to
think those falls will continue in the near future’ (MAC, 2018: 5).
UK business leaders have criticized MAC’s proposal, suggesting
that ‘The idea that only high-skilled immigration should be allowed
is both ignorant and elitist’ (Sabbagh and O’Carroll, 2018: 1). Two
points are worth noting: first, reduced migration flows either into
the EU or North America and makes it increasingly challenging for
organizations to attract and retain talented people. Second, while
‘precarious’ employment models – a growing feature of the gig
economy – increase workforce flexibility, it is an employment
practice that dilutes an organization’s ability to identify talented
people and develop talent ‘pipelines’ and succession plans for
medium- to longer-term business needs.
Interpretations of which employees to view as ‘talent’ vary widely
but it is generally agreed that the process is influenced by two
strategic factors: first, the extent to which an organization relies
upon its ability to recruit high-quality candidates from its external
labour market; and second, the extent to which it needs or wishes
to grow its own talent and develop employees more organically
from within the organization (Swailes et al., 2014). It should be
obvious that the external and internal conditions within which an
organization operates are of central importance to its TM strategy
(Thunnissen et al., 2013). As such, an organization may choose to
focus its TM policies and practices exclusively on current high
504
performers or upper-echelon senior leaders. Additionally, or
alternatively, it might focus on high-potential talent; for instance,
by developing a talent pool of graduates, middle managers or
technical specialists who have been identified as having the
potential to fill more senior business-critical roles in the future.
This approach to succession planning is particularly important
where there is a shortage of requisite skills within the external
labour market, if the skills required are highly technical and take
time to develop. In contrast, where an organization’s HR strategy
focuses on nurturing and developing its own talent, TM practices
are not exclusively tailored towards particular talent pools. Rather,
all employees are regarded equally as possessing talent and able
to contribute, in a variety of ways and at different levels, to
organizational success.
505
Exclusive and inclusive talent management
The exclusive approach to TM targets particular employees,
groups of employees, or talent pools, based on either their current
high performance or predicted future high potential to fulfil critical
roles. The assumptions behind this approach mirror the resource-
based view (RBV) of the firm (Barney, 1991). In the RBV model,
sustainable competitive advantage is achieved through careful
analysis of employees’ inimitable skills and capabilities. Barney
identified four key characteristics of human capabilities – value,
rarity, inimitability and non-substitutability – as being important
levers for sustainable advantage (Bratton and Gold, 2017: 56).
Putting TM in terms of a simple SWOT analysis, this approach to
people management highlights the strategic value and importance
of harnessing internal ‘strengths’ and, arguably, suggests that top
talent should indeed be nurtured and managed differently to that
of other employees. Therefore, this approach calls for
segmentation, or differentiation, of the workforce, based on
employees’ contribution, performance and potential.
However, this is not to say that those people who do not make it
into a talent pool are not talented, or that their contribution to the
organization is not valued. The exclusive approach simply enables
appropriate development opportunities and resources to be
directed more efficiently and timeously towards particular talented
people or talent pools in order to develop the capability and
potential for medium- to long-term business needs. One way to
illustrate the concept of exclusive TM is to consider managing a
world-class football team. Each player is brought to the club
based on their talent – the club does not acquire untalented
players. However, not every player will always play in the starting
eleven. Players will have their own areas of expertise such as
playing in forward or midfield positions, or as a defender or
goalkeeper, all of which are important to the team and club’s
overall performance. Some top international players like Raheem
Sterling and Lionel Messi are top talent (fulfilling a current critical
role). Other ‘high-potential’ players take time to develop and reach
their full potential. For example, as part of their development, they
may be loaned out to another club while they gain experience, or
506
they might play in more minor games or only part of a major game
as a substitute. The football manager therefore needs to manage
this talented group of players, responding to the particular needs
and availability of the talent.
Pause and reflect
How does this football example compare to managing talent in
private or public sector organizations? What might be the unintended
consequences of this differentiated approach to TM?
The exclusive approach can also be problematic. For instance, it
is sometimes described as an elitist approach with potential to
impact negatively on equality and diversity by creating multi-tiered
workforces differentiated by those who are considered to be
talented and those who are mediocre (Sheehan and Anderson,
2015; Yost and Chang, 2009). This in turn implies the creation and
nurturing of ‘in-groups’ and ‘out-groups’, which we discussed in
Chapter 8. These groups also have the potential to impact
negatively on leader–follower relationships and teamwork (e.g.
DeLong and Vijayaraghavan, 2003). The exclusive approach
brings to the fore the centrality of organizational culture and
climate, especially how TM practices are operationalized by
leaders and line managers and how, in turn, these practices are
perceived by employees (Sumelius et al., 2019). For example,
leaders who typically value more inclusive approaches to
managing and developing people may be more critical of
exclusive forms of TM.
In contrast, the inclusive approach to TM does not discriminate or
differentiate the workforce based on the extent of talent,
contribution or potential. Rather, fair and equal access to career
development and progression opportunities is available to all
employees (Swailes et al., 2014). The belief is that every
employee has some degree of talent, that talent can be nurtured
and developed over time, and that all employees are capable of
contributing in some way to organizational performance (Gallardo-
507
Gallardo et al., 2013). Although valuing talent equally perhaps
sounds appealing and guards against workforce polarization, the
corollary is that organizations tend to find it more difficult to
develop clear talent pipelines and succession plans for medium-
to long-term business needs. Moreover, resources (financial and
non-financial) are spread more thinly across the organization, as
opposed to being strategically aligned with and directed towards
identified talent pools.
Finally, where TM rests on the inclusive approach, it may be
beneficial for organizational leaders to deepen their understanding
of the nature of inclusive TM within their organization. This
clarifies an organization’s TM offering through differentiating
between routine HRM and training provision, and actual TM
practices. Thus, even if all employees are valued equally as
possessing talent or potential, identifying how particular skills and
talents could be more effectively and consistently differentiated
and leveraged at particular career junctures may prove beneficial.
Talent differentiation could then be more clearly aligned to the
organization’s strategic objectives as well as individuals’ career
development and aspirations (Collings, 2014).
Pause and reflect
For organizations that adopt an exclusive approach to TM, how might
this affect leader–follower relations? Conversely, what might be the
leader–follower implications where a whole workforce or inclusive
approach to TM is used? (Hint: see Chapter 8 and the discussion on
relational theories of leadership.)
508
Leading and Managing Talent
Avedon and Scholes (2010: 92) note that ‘Nothing defines
success better than when the TM practices are so ingrained in the
organization that they are part of the management culture.’ This
statement underscores the important role that both senior leaders
and line managers play in mobilizing and managing an
organization’s talent. While the HR function may be the champion,
or guardian, of TM strategy and practices (Farndale et al., 2010),
line managers are ultimately responsible for their enactment on a
day-to-day basis (Purcell and Kinnie, 2007). It is important to be
aware that the way in which TM practices are intended by
management might differ considerably from how they are
perceived and understood by employees (Thunnissen, 2016). This
is often dependent on the dominant organizational culture and is
regarded as the implementation gap (e.g. Boxall, 2012). For
example, there may be a tradition in the organization for people to
be promoted on their seniority, rather than through a competitive
internal process. It is therefore suggested in the literature that
managers consistently reinforce and role-model the desired
behaviours, values and leadership styles. While there are many
areas of overlap between the roles of senior leaders and those of
operational line managers (see Chapter 1), there are also some
notable differences. The extent of these differences is influenced
by the size and structure of the organization. For example, larger
organizations tend to have more hierarchical and bureaucratic
structures and reporting lines than small and medium-sized
enterprises (SMEs). Thus, large organizations typically have more
demarcated roles and responsibilities for leadership and
management. For the purpose of this chapter, the term ‘leader’ is
intended hereon as a generic term encompassing all aspects of
TM and leadership. The following section examines the key high-
level responsibilities of leaders in the TM processes.
509
Workforce planning
As we discussed in Chapter 9, workforce planning is concerned
with ensuring that the right person is in the right job at the right
time. To do this, leaders first need to understand the composition
of skill needs and gaps within their area of responsibility. This
process, as we explained, often involves subjective managerial
judgement to assess skills (Taylor, 2016). Further, there is an
acknowledgement that traditional workforce planning does not
address some important issues relating to talent promotional
prospects. Such issues indicate a need for a more encompassing
HR system (Guerry et al., 2015).
510
Talent attraction
The ability to attract the best talent is a critical aspect of TM. An
effective recruitment and selection strategy calls for an
understanding of the organization’s employment offering and
employer brand (Ambler and Barrow, 1996). According to Walker
(2008), an employer brand relates to an often intangible set of
attributes and qualities that make an organization unique,
promises a particular kind of employment experience, and is
attractive to people who are likely to perform best within its
culture. The strength (reputation) of an employer brand can
therefore have considerable impact on the extent to which an
organization is viewed by prospective employees as being an
‘employer of choice’. Thus, the employer brand plays a pivotal role
in either attracting or deterring particular people from the labour
market. Complementing the employer brand, Hatum (2010: 37)
emphasizes the importance of also developing a strong employee
value proposition (EVP), which he defines as ‘what employees
can expect to receive from the company in exchange for the work
they perform’. For Michaels et al. (2001: 43), an EVP is concerned
with ‘how well the company fulfils people’s needs, their
expectations, and even their dreams’. This observation might
sound familiar as it very much links in with the notion of the
psychological contract, discussed in Chapters 8 and 9. Making
judgements on an individual’s personal characteristics and
suitability for employment is inherently problematic and many
routine ‘selection methods contain significant flaws’ (Rumbles and
French, 2016: 186).
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Performance and reward management
Performance management (PM) is an everyday management
activity aimed at ensuring the effective management of individuals
and teams to achieve high levels of organizational performance.
Effective PM is a critical component of TM. For Bach and Edwards
(2013: 223), its value resides in ‘the cycle of integrated activities,
which ensures that a systematic link is established between the
contribution of each employee and the overall performance of the
organisation’. Therefore, leaders use PM tools and processes,
such as individual performance appraisal (IPA), to direct, monitor
and evaluate employees’ performance against their specific work
objectives and their overall contribution to the organization’s
strategic objectives.
PM can be viewed as a systemic process by looking at the
employee life-cycle and the TM activities that potentially contribute
to improved performance (Rees and Tymon, 2016). Thus, PM can
be used to identify, rate and reward talent and high potential, and
to formulate learning and career development plans that are
reflective of performance ratings. Despite their potential
importance to TM decision making, PM processes are often
criticized for being outdated, reactive, overly complex and
ineffective (e.g. Armstrong and Baron, 2005) and encourage
managers to be fixated on targets (Reeves, 2008). The efficacy of
PM processes therefore needs to be considered carefully within
the context of any TM strategy (see Chapter 13).
There are also many theories of performance-related pay and
reward. The question of whether money is a motivator that can
lead to enhanced performance is a very complex one with no
definitive answer (Latham, 2007). Suffice to say, as we discussed
in Chapter 9, both motivation and performance are affected by
many ‘intrinsic’ and ‘extrinsic’ factors. Individual performance,
reward and TM decision-making processes are often interlinked
and, as such, consideration needs to be afforded to their
compatibility and consistency.
512
Talent development
The business case for investment in talent development is built on
the economic goal to sustain organizational performance in a
turbulent environment (Tymon and Mackay, 2016). Talented
employees need to be strategically developed in line with the
organization’s goals and objectives. Endorsing the RBV model
(Barney, 1991), most organizations invest in talent training and
development in order to update employee skills, improve job
performance and develop the competencies and dynamic
capabilities that employees need to meet the strategic objectives
of their organizations. Training and development are also
important to talented employees for whom they increase
employment duration, commitment and career advancement
(Tharenou, 2013).
According to Garavan et al. (2012), effective training and
development require the creation of a flexible TM architecture,
wherein employees can be strategically and continuously
developed and mobilized to where their contribution is best suited
or required. Within this architecture, and with the caveat that
employees also have a responsibility to develop themselves,
leaders are usually well equipped to assist in the sourcing,
creation and facilitation of both formal and informal development
opportunities for employees (Conger, 2010). For example,
employees might undertake formal qualifications, training or
coaching as part of their exclusive talent development
programme. On an informal level, leaders are also often well
placed to connect employees, for instance through mentoring or
establishing networks with senior leaders or subject matter
experts.
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Talent mobilization
The TM architecture is intended to facilitate continuous
development and mobilization of talent to ensure that the right
skills are available and can be deployed in the right place at the
right time. Within smaller organizations, this might simply be about
ensuring or sharing the availability of skills across departments or
functions, whereas in MNCs, talent mobilization may be on a
regional, national or global scale (Collings et al., 2018). While
there is a tendency to consider TM in the context of talented
‘individuals’ or ‘stars’, Gold et al. (2016) highlight that performance
is normally enhanced through collective endeavour, for example
through projects teams sharing ideas and learning together rather
than individual application of talent. The synergies derived from
teams and talent blending are therefore important. For this
reason, leaders need to pay attention to how work is organized
and how jobs and teams are configured in order to maximize skills
utilization and performance (Grant et al., 2014; Grant and
Maxwell, 2018). For example, leaders can play an important role
in helping to break down traditional departmental silos and
professional or skill barriers through encouraging inter-disciplinary
project and cross-organizational working.
Pause and reflect
Within larger organizations, what might be the key differences
between senior leaders’ and line managers’ roles and responsibilities
in TM?
Leadership in Action: Leading talent within Skyscanner
Part of the Ctrip Group and founded in 2003, Skyscanner is a leading
global travel search site. The website is free to use, is available in 30
languages, and is used by approximately 70 million people per
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month. Its simple vision is ‘to inspire travellers around the world and
make travel search as easy as possible through our world-class
technology.’ Skyscanner now employs over 1,000 people across nine
offices around the world. Skyscanner is an organic, high-growth
business and one of its key growth needs, according to Ruth
Chandler, Chief People Officer, is being able to attract and retain
talented people with high learning agility. Skyscanner’s resourcing
strategy is to hire the best talent the market has to offer with
competencies such as leadership, adaptability, resilience and
teamwork, as well as technical skills.
Inclusion and diversity are high on the talent agenda and the
company’s approach to TM appears inclusive and transparent.
Leaders seek to understand both the business and individuals’ needs
in order to strive to implement development solutions that offer a
‘win/win’ outcome. The culture at Skyscanner is organic, collegiate
and developmental. Chandler explains that the culture is ‘forgiving’,
in that people are encouraged to experiment and test new ideas, and
cites examples of ‘quick up-skilling and accelerated development’
across the business. Skyscanner understands that employee
engagement is a key driver of performance. Chandler explains that,
critical to Skyscanner’s success, leaders understand how to build
trusting relationships with their teams and are able to balance this
with operational delivery. Leadership development therefore focuses
not just on leaders’ traits, but also on the business context.
One of the challenges for Skyscanner’s leaders is analysing the
general environment over both the long and short terms, in order to
understand what the business needs today as well as keeping an
eye on the future to support its growth. Chandler acknowledges that
the agile and flexible approach to TM can make it more difficult to
map out traditional career paths. Policies therefore act as guidelines,
designed to facilitate rather than restrict talent potential and
performance. Chandler also recognizes that, as the business
continues to grow, its approach to TM may need to become more
formal, while at the same time being able to maintain its unique
culture and employee agility.
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Reflective question
What are the strengths and limitations of the inclusive and flexible
approach to TM that Skyscanner has adopted? Do you think this
approach would work as effectively in other types of organizations?
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Source
Based on an interview between Dr Kirsteen Grant (chapter author)
and Ruth Chandler, Chief People Officer at Skyscanner.
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To explore this topic further see:
www.skyscanner.net
http://www.skyscanner.net/
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The influence of ‘talented
followership’ onco-producing
leadership
We have seen that leadership is dependent upon followership.
However, while the concept of talented leaders is widely
discussed in literature, little consideration is given to the
importance or influence of ‘talented followers’. Recent
perspectives on followership depart from traditional interpretations
which adopt a leader-centric perspective and assume the
presence of an organizational hierarchy, or power distance,
between leaders and followers (DeRue and Ashford, 2010). More
recently, scholars have advocated a growing need for shared, or
relational, approaches to leadership whereby leaders and
followers work collaboratively to ‘co-produce’ leadership at both
local and organizational levels (Reicher et al., 2005). This idea of
co-production emphasizes leadership as a ‘process’ (Uhl-Bien et
al., 2014: 83), which integrates both formal and informal
leadership and suggests that leadership is shared between
leaders and followers. In other words, it is devolved throughout an
organization. As such, co-production of leadership requires
followers to demonstrate key skills and qualities that would
traditionally only have been required by leaders. Effective
followers perform in ways that are mutually beneficial to leaders
and followers, for example by demonstrating an understanding of
the strategic aspects of the business, possessing high levels of
task knowledge and being able to engage in effective upward
communication and constructive challenge. Followers are also
likely to benefit from high levels of self-awareness and emotional
intelligence, as with effective followership comes the ability to
engage in reflective practice and demonstrate a moral and ethical
responsibility for one’s actions (Northouse, 2019).
Arguably, this emerging followership paradigm elevates the role of
followers to one that is ‘broader and more consequential’ (Shamir,
2007: xi) than within traditional interpretations of followership. As
such, the growing recognition of ‘exemplary’ or ‘star’ followers, to
519
use Kelly’s (1992) terms, suggests that exemplary followers are
capable of crafting positions of significant influence within
organizations through the co-creation of a culture of (formal and
informal) leadership throughout an organization. This, in turn,
creates a virtuous cycle of dynamic leader–follower interactions
whereby leaders are followers and followers are leaders. Many of
the qualities possessed by leaders and followers working together
to co-produce leadership are therefore mutually reinforcing. This
contemporary perspective, or reversed lens (Shamir, 2007), which
holds that ‘followership co-creates leadership’ points to the
potentially important role of TM in leader–follower relations – one
which has received very limited research attention to date. The
obvious inference is that the co-production of leadership may be
most effective when formal organizational leaders work with the
most talented employees (e.g. Riggio et al., 2008). In other words
talented followership. If one accepts the view that talented
followership is required to create great organizational leaders,
then traditional views of ‘high potential leadership talent’ perhaps
need to be re-examined. Moreover, this also raises important
questions concerning the eligibility criteria and future content of
leadership development initiatives and programmes within
organizations.
520
Collaborative Talent Management
We have seen throughout this chapter that using skills and talent
to their full potential requires the appropriate organizational
infrastructure and blending of talent (Gold et al., 2016). This talent
infrastructure may be contained within an organization (intra-
organizational collaboration) or it may span two or more
independent organizations (inter-organizational collaboration).
Intra-organizational collaboration thrives within enabling
organizational cultures and flexible structures that value talent
mobility, teamwork and developmental assignments. This is also
true of external collaborations, for example, between different
universities and external entrepreneurial ‘hubs’, although these
tend to be more complex to initiate due to multiple competing
demands and the diversity of ideas and expectations of
collaborating partners. This is often the case when initiating TM
collaborations as mirroring one of the key debates inherent in the
TM literature, collaborators often lack consensus on the scope
and definition of TM, which means that the outcomes and value to
be derived from the collaboration may also lack clarity (Gadsden
et al., 2017).
Pause and reflect
What do you think are the main challenges of internal TM
collaboration? What about external, or inter-organizational, TM
collaborations? (Hint: see Chapter 17 and the discussion on cross-
organizational leadership.)
Practitioners can gain many advantages from working across
organizational boundaries through collaborative TM. For example,
collaborations facilitate the sharing and generation of new
knowledge and innovation, and collaborative processes can
improve the efficacy of working practices through pooling
resources such as technology, facilities and finance. While leading
521
collaborations can be highly challenging (Huxham and Vangen,
2000), inter-agency or inter-organizational collaboration among
public service organizations in particular can be extremely
beneficial in avoiding unnecessary duplication and improving the
end-to-end journey of the customer or service user. An example is
the integration of health and social care services in the UK. This
means that health and social care organizations are working more
closely to understand each other’s needs, roles and challenges,
and jointly co-produce innovative solutions for mutually beneficial
outcomes.
Critical Insight: Inter-agency collaborative talent management
UK public service organizations are facing increasing pressure to
work together more efficiently to design and deliver public services.
They face significant talent shortages and operational pressures in
the foreseeable future. In Scotland, the Commission on the Future
Delivery of Public Services (Christie Commission, 2011) proffered a
number of recommendations, including:
public service organizations to develop a systematic and co-
ordinated approach to workforce development;
combining leadership and management development into a
single cross-public service development programme;
development of a competency framework to apply to all public
service workers.
A report by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM, 2005)
echoed similar messages for public services in England and Wales.
522
Activity
1. What opportunities do the recommendations offer to improve:
(a) skills and talent development, and (b) service delivery and
service user experience?
2. What unintended consequences might be associated with
implementing such recommendations?
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Sources
Christie Commission (2011) ‘The commission on the future delivery
of public services’. Available at
www.gov.scot/resource/doc/352649/0118638 (accessed 17
September 2019).
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) (2005) ‘Vibrant local
leadership’. Available at
http://forumpartnerships.archiv.zsi.at/attach/UK_05_R_ODPM_Vibran
tLocalLeadership (accessed 17 September 2019).
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Further reading
Gadsden, S., McLaughlin, D., Grant, K., Mackie, R., Cassidy, N. and
Derbyshire, H. (2017) ‘Talent management in public services in
Scotland’. Available at
www.improvementservice.org.uk/documents/research/talent-
management-final-report (accessed 30 September 2019).
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Critiquing the Talent Management
Debate
The HRM canon has been subject to widespread criticism (Bratton
and Gold, 2017) and the analytical approach of this criticism can
be applied to TM. Critical scholars lament that much of HRM
research does not adequately emphasize structural antagonisms
and contradictions (Thompson and McHugh, 2009), the routine
neglect of those most directly impacted by HR policies and
practices – the employees (e.g. Thunnissen et al., 2013) – and the
‘collateral damage’ resulting from the application of HR policies
and practices (Delbridge and Keenoy, 2010: 803).
The hyperbole surrounding the global talent ‘war’ leaves little
room to dispute the strategic importance of TM. However, a large
number of commentators have sought to explore the ambiguity
associated with the term ‘talent management’ itself. The term,
while ubiquitous in the scholarly and practitioner literatures,
remains shrouded in conceptual ambiguity (Gallardo-Gallardo et
al., 2013; McDonnell et al., 2017). The major area of contestation
arises from extreme variations in interpretations of who are
considered to be ‘talent’ and how they should then be strategically
developed and managed (Lewis and Heckman, 2006). This calls
for organizations to clarify what type of talent is most valued within
their organizational context for competitive advantage – technical
expertise, specialist knowledge, leadership potential, or a
combination of these. In other words, leaders need to address the
question of ‘Talent for what?’ (Thunnissen, 2016).
Pause and reflect
Who, in your view, should be regarded as ‘talent’ within an
organization? For example, do you believe the term should
encompass all employees; future high-potential employees; star
526
performers, etc? What might be the leadership implications of
defining talent according to your view?
The pure ‘talent’ or ‘star’ paradigm might be considered a highly
decentralized employment model. Its premise is that recruiting
talented people and allowing them the ‘freedom’ to perform with
minimal rules and supervision is the best way to achieve
sustainable competitive advantage. However, research evidence
on the effectiveness of ‘“star-focused” organizations is at best
“ambiguous”’ (Heckscher, 2015: 249). It is also noteworthy in
much of the TM research that there has been a failure to critically
scrutinize the ‘unintended consequences’ and, in particular, how
the ‘talent paradox’ plays out between the actors (Daubner-Siva et
al., 2018: 75). Relatedly, while research suggests that talented
employees tend to derive more positive attitudinal outcomes
(Björkman et al., 2013), the largely managerialist nature of TM
scholarship to date unwittingly assumes that TM practices result in
mutual (employer–employee) gains. As in strategic HRM,
evidence-based analytical TM is highly relevant given that its
raison d’être is to leverage talented people’s knowledge and
capabilities. Moreover, given the growing demands for
organizations to develop strategies which are environmentally
sustainable and socially just, a reflexive, critical analysis of TM is
equally important to understanding leading and managing people
in contemporary organizations (Bratton and Gold, 2017).
527
Conclusion
Since the later 1990s, TM has become a topic of immense
interest. We have seen that being able to attract, develop,
mobilize and retain the most talented people is arguably the main
challenge facing all organizations. Yet, despite the enduring
interest in TM, the meaning of talent and TM and its scope is
contested. This means that organizational context is important
and TM might look and feel differently within different
organizations and business sectors. An important variation in the
operationalization of TM is the extent to which an organization
considers talent as being an exclusive (targeted at particular roles
or people) or inclusive (whole workforce) approach.
No matter which interpretation of TM senior leaders adopt, the
premise of talent leadership is that it calls for the mobilization of
collective human capability, the pooling of existing and new
knowledge, and the deployment of resources across the
organization. This chapter has offered a framework for examining
and understanding leaders’ roles and responsibilities in
identifying, developing and managing talent. We have
emphasized that leaders play a crucial role in ensuring that the
right skills are available, effectively managed to maintain
employees’ commitment and engagement, and mobilized in the
right place and at the right time. Organizational leaders are
instrumental in identifying and developing talent and high-potential
employees to meet the current and future needs of their
organization.
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Chapter Review Questions
1. What are the strengths and limitations of exclusive and inclusive
approaches to TM?
2. What are the key areas of complexity for leaders to be aware of
when conceptualizing and deploying TM in their organization?
3. In what ways can collaborative TM benefit each partner, and what
pitfalls should they be aware of when initiating collaborations?
Assignment Task: The CEO of Guardian Life in anage of digital
disruption
This assignment task is based on a short interview with Deanna
Mulligan, CEO of Guardian Life. The interview was conducted by Rik
Kirkland, a Partner with McKinsey (New York Office). Watch the
video at www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-
insights/the-ceo-of-guardian-life-on-talent-in-an-age-of-digital-
disruption or read the interview transcript and then answer the
questions below.
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Questions
1. What do you think about the idea of ‘disruption’ in business and
deliberately seeking to hire people who have the necessary
skills and experience to lead an organization through new
disruption?
2. Thinking about the rise of the gig economy and millennial talent
that wants to be independent, how might contemporary
organizations best tap into this talent? What barriers might they
face?
3. How do you think the talent mindset within Guardian Life is
changing and challenging the traditional HR function?
Go Online
Explore the real world of leadership by reading this case study:
Sydney Brian-Peters: A Case Study in Gender and Leadership
Issues
Further your knowledge and build your bibliography for
assignments by reading the recommended journal articles for this
chapter.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
video
Learn more about leadership in practice by watching the video
conversation for this chapter.
Stephen Moir, Executive Director of Resources for the City of
Edinburgh Council, shares his insights into inclusive talent, how an
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
530
organization can attract the right talent and the importance of the
employer brand.
The video can be found at https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
See the inside front cover for the access code and instructions.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
531
Further Reading
Avedon, M.J. and Scholes, G. (2010) ‘Building competitive
advantage through integrated talent management’, in R. Silzer
and B.E. Dowell (eds), Strategy-driven Talent Management: A
leadership imperative. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, pp. 73–
122.
Collings, D.G., Mellahi, K. and Cascio, W.F. (eds) (2017) The
Oxford Handbook of Talent Management. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Lewis, R.E. and Heckman, R.J. (2006) ‘Talent management: a
critical review’, Human Resource Management Review, 16 (2):
139–54.
McDonnell, A., Collings, D.G., Mellahi, K. and Schuler, R. (2017)
‘Talent management: a systematic review and future prospects’,
European Journal of International Management, 11 (1): 86–128.
Meyer, K.E. and Xin, K. (2018) ‘Managing talent in emerging
economy multinationals: integrating strategic management and
human resource management’, The International Journal of
Human Resource Management, 29 (11): 1827–55.
Meyers, M.C. and van Woerkom, M. (2014) ‘The influence of
underlying philosophies on talent management: theory,
implications for practice, and research agenda’, Journal of World
Business, 49 (2): 192–203.
532
Case Study: Leading talent within Royal
Bank of Scotland
In 2009, some UK banks recorded losses of £28 billion. The scale of the
banking crisis led to public acts of atonement before the British
Parliament Select Committee and widespread public criticism of what was
described as the ‘buccaneer culture’ of US and UK banking (Bratton and
Bratton, 2015: 315).
A decade on, RBS employs some 77,000 people across its global
operations, providing a wide range of products and services to personal,
commercial and large corporate and institutional customers through a
number of well-known banking brands. The executive management team
has endeavoured to return the bank to financial viability at functional level,
and senior managers have led the way in building a different
organizational culture. Greig Aitken, Group Head of People, Strategy and
Insight at RBS, explains that in the enduring period following the global
financial crisis, a key part of RBS’s recovery plan resided in its ability to
develop a people strategy that ensured it was able to attract, engage and
retain great talent to support RBS’s ambitions. Aitken explains:
We focus heavily on identifying the key drivers to sustained high
performance in leaders and their teams as well as what drives
strong engagement and discretionary effort. To do this, we
looked at what differentiates great leaders, highly engaged staff,
and effective line managers and what impact these attributes
have on business performance.
A key element of Aitken’s role is working with leaders from across the
businesses to help them fully understand the effectiveness of their people
management and its impact on bottom-line business performance. Citing
the well-known adage that ‘what gets measured gets managed’, Aitken
explains that RBS’s evidence-based data measures form a core part of
their human capital approach, with each leader having desktop access to
his or her own team’s results. Indeed, over 4,000 separate teams across
the multiple businesses receive updated leadership and engagement
index scores twice a year to support their planning and assess the
progress of their people.
533
These data enable and empower leaders and managers to make more
informed talent decisions, target their efforts and ensure that they
understand their role in building high-performing teams. Performance and
talent development then centre around five integrated indicators of
sustainable high performance in leaders and their teams, namely:
organizational culture; employee engagement; leadership; line
management effectiveness; and RBS’s bespoke Determined to Lead
(DTL) performance excellence programme.
But it’s not just about metrics. Aitken is passionate about supporting
leaders through insight as well as data. Highlighting the crucial role that
leaders play in talent development and retention, he reminds us that for
many people, they join a company but ultimately leave their manager. He
emphasizes that there must be a focus on the ‘how’ (behaviours) as well
as ‘what’ is being done, and stresses the importance of equipping leaders
and managers, at all levels, with the support they need for both
themselves and their teams to flourish. For example, leaders have access
to a range of tools and techniques to help them drive up people
performance, including a dedicated online ‘global career hub’ complete
with interactive toolkit and self-service 360-feedback tool. Aitken refers to
the importance of ‘joining up the dots’ through the integration of
leadership tools, coaching and key behavioural and relationship
techniques that are developed within the DTL programme.
The term ‘talent’ is part of RBS’s everyday language, but there is an
assumption that no employee is devoid of talent and that talent has to be
recognized at different levels. No matter what the level of employee,
RBS’s EVP encompasses four key elements: a fulfilling job; excellent
training; fair pay (including flexible benefits); and good leadership.
According to Aitken, ‘we often recruit for attitude and train for
competence. It’s more about how we tap into and develop talent. We
need to get the right skills in the right place.’ He explains that succession
planning is common at senior and upper-echelon levels, but that there is
also flexibility for people to move between functions to gain experience
and develop their career paths in the way they aspire to. For instance,
Aitken cites RBS’s Next Generation Leaders’ Programme as an example
of a critical talent development programme, and emphasizes the
importance of building diverse skills for jobs that do not even exist yet.
RBS’s leadership and talent interventions have certainly led to some
impressive results. The Bank found that two of its most predictive
measures resided in its leadership index and engagement index (both
designed in partnership with Harvard Business School and Willis Towers
Watson). In 2014, its leadership index was 2 percentile points below the
financial services sector norm for global banks. Now, in 2018, it is 8 points
above the norm. Similarly, between 2014 and 2018, its employee
534
engagement index rose from 16 percentile points below the sector norm
to 2 points above. According to Aitken:
We’ve found that where you have strong leadership and strong
engagement, you have significant out-performance in sales and
customer service. Discussing important topics such as
leadership with business leaders gets much more traction and
sustained attention if they’re directly linked to business outcomes
and customer service.
535
The problem
Currently, line managers’ understanding of their team’s performance data
is variable across the business. Many line managers do not see the
added value of performance metrics and, consequently, there is a general
lack of buy-in and commitment in some areas to using the data. However,
quantitative measures of employee and team performance are important
to RBS and the key leadership challenges are threefold: (1) deepening
line managers’ understanding of their team’s performance data; (2)
increasing managers’ buy-in and commitment to using the data; and (3)
empowering and supporting managers to make qualitative and
demonstrable performance improvements.
536
Case exercise
It is widely recognized that there are many pitfalls with targets. Reeves
(2008) used the term ‘targetology’ to describe the fixation of many
organizations with meeting targets. With this in mind, working in a group
or alone, prepare a report that:
1. Examines the strengths and limitations of focusing on performance
data as a means of driving up people performance.
2. Explains how leaders could make better use of performance data to
improve TM practices.
3. Suggests what, if anything, leaders in SMEs can take from RBS’s
approach.
537
Source
www.rbs.com, accompanied by an interview between Dr Kirsteen Grant
(chapter author) and Greig Aitken, RBS Group Head of People, Strategy
and Insight.
http://www.rbs.com/
538
Sources of additional information
CIPD (2013) ‘Talent analytics and big data – the challenge for HR’.
Available at www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/strategy/analytics/hr-challenge-
report (accessed 30 September 2019).
Davenport, T.H., Harris, J. and Shapiro, J. (2010) ‘Competing on talent
analytics’, Harvard Business Review, October. Available at
https://hbr.org/2010/10/competing-on-talent-analytics (accessed 15
November 2019).
540
11 Performance Management and
Leadership
Bernadette Scott
‘If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more,
do more and become more, you are a leader.’’
John Quincy Adams, 6th US President
541
Chapter Outline
Introduction
The nature and purpose of performance management
Determinants of employee and organizational performance
Historical milestones in the development of performance
management
The performance management appraisal process
Modelling leadership and performance
Problems of methodology and theory
Criticism of individual performance appraisal
Conclusion
542
Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
understand the crucial link between leadership and performance
management in organizations;
explain the importance of context in the changing role of the leader
and other stakeholders in the historical development of performance
management processes and practices;
examine innovative leadership influences on performance
management activities in contribution to the achievement of
contemporary organizational goals;
critically evaluate research on the leadership–performance
relationship;
explain some criticisms and paradoxes in relation to performance
management.
video
To learn more about performance management, don’t forget to watch
the video conversation for this chapter online.
543
Introduction
The search for a causal link between leadership effectiveness and
organizational performance has been a dominant theme in the
literature for almost a hundred years. You should be acquainted
with this theme, as it is a topic we have discussed in previous
chapters, including Chapters 7 and 9. As we indicated, evaluating
the leader–performance relationship presents tough theoretical
and methodological challenges for scholars. Andersen (2002)
contends that there is a lack of clarity about the contribution of
leadership to organizational performance. The contention is a
methodological one and stems from a research preoccupation
with the leaders and their personal attributes, rather than how they
change processes or organizations (Dinh et al., 2014). The ability
of a leader to be a catalyst in this change is important for the
performance of followers (Ng, 2016). The premise that leaders
and followers co-produce the leadership relationship (Chapter 8)
requires an understanding of the process of performance
management, and an understanding of the leader’s contribution to
performance outcomes. Indeed, the transformational approach to
leading people partly depends upon ‘contingent reward’, which
explicitly provides for leaders to provide feedback on effort by
individual followers or small groups of followers.
This chapter begins by establishing the definition and purpose of
performance management and examines how contextual
variables mean that flexibility and adaptability of the processes
are crucial to the achievement of success. It will then outline
briefly some historical milestones in the development of
performance management. The chapter then examines the
contribution of leadership to organizational performance and the
theoretical and methodological challenges associated with the
research. It will allow the reader to make connections between
innovative approaches to performance management and the
leadership influence on these in the achievement of organizational
goals in contemporary organizations. Finally, the chapter explains
some criticisms of performance management.
544
The Nature and Purpose of
Performance Management
There are numerous definitions of performance management in
mainstream literature and the CIPD’s most recent definition is
frequently cited:
Performance management is the activity and set of
processes that aim to maintain and improve employee
performance in line with an organisation’s objectives. It’s
strategic as well as operational, as its aim is to ensure
that employees contribute positively to business
objectives. Ideally, performance should be managed
holistically, throughout the range of HR activities and
processes (2018a).
For Bratton and Gold, performance management refers to
the set of interconnected practices designed to ensure
that a person’s overall capabilities and potential are
appraised, so that relevant goals can be set for work and
development, and so that, through assessment, data on
work behaviour and performance can be collected and
reviewed. (2017: 186)
These definitions emphasize three important factors: first, at the
centre of performance management (PM) is work performance,
and managing the performance of employees is the essence of
managing the employment relationship. Second is the implication
that PM is a ‘continuous process’ (Biron et al., 2011: 1295) that
not only can determine reward to the employee but also involves
training and developing employees in line with organizational
strategy and goals (see Figure 11.1). Third, PM yields
measurements that can be used to close the ‘gap’ or space
545
between what is promised by an employee and what is realized in
terms of work performance. In this context, the tools, which are
used to communicate the goals of the organization to individuals,
assign goals, track progress in the achievement of those goals
and are designed to render followers and their performance
behaviour predictable and calculable (Townley, 1994: 14).
Image 11.1 At the centre of performance
management is performance, and managing
the performance is the essence of managing
the employment relationship. As such,
performance management is a continuous
process and yields measurements that can
be used to close the gap between what an
employee promises and what is realized.
PM activities are not just designed to improve performance
results, they also incorporate employee behaviour considerations
which indicate other action, such as commitment to the
organization, which can be measured separately and add value
(Brumback, 1988). An attempt to define PM is therefore complex
as it involves focus not only on the task in hand, but also on the
effort (motivation, behaviour and competencies) involved for the
parties in the process. We have discussed competencies in
Chapters 8 and 9. They can be described as the knowledge,
abilities and skill sets which help to identify and drive performance
in organizations. They can also be used to discern between those
546
who have leadership potential and those who do not (Olesen et
al., 2007). This is because competencies are usually linked to the
bedrock of the business in terms of core organizational values,
strategic focus and objectives (Campion et al., 2011).
Competencies are therefore connected to the positive
achievement of organizational performance (Levenson et al.,
2006) and the processes around it. Armstrong and Taylor (2017:
322) stated that ‘performance management is a systematic
process for improving individual, team and organizational
performance.’ All components, including employee roles in the
process, make up the necessary ingredients for success in
effective performance management. There is a need to consider
not only the ‘who’ factors (individuals/organizations) but also the
‘how’ (the techniques, behaviours and competencies deployed).
Individual performance appraisal (IPA) techniques are widely used
to gather information about individual employees that are
frequently disseminated to other HR functions, such as training
(Brown and Lim, 2013). In this sense, IPA now forms part of the
culture and climate in many work organizations (see Chapter 4).
However, to be successful they must take advantage of both
formal and informal channels in process and practice. Techniques
deployed in PM practice are crucial in contemporary business and
the effective management of the performance process is just as
critical, but also complex because it will involve an evolving
consideration of four crucial factors for any organization,
according to Kenerley and Neely (2003):
Process: to allow review, modification and action of
performance measures.
People: to ascertain the availability of required knowledge
and skills, determine their use, the ability to reflect upon
decisions, modification activity and action initiation.
Systems: to ensure available and flexible systems to enable
collection, analysis and reporting of the required data to
support performance activities.
Culture: by virtue of its existence will either support or negate
the value of measurement activities and their maintenance as
well as engender positive organizational appreciation for the
process.
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The purpose of PM can be simply defined as the strategic element
of HRM concerned with getting the best results for an organization
by joint partnership with individuals. It is ultimately about the
creation of value and about ensuring that the talent, whatever their
role in the organization, are involved in and engaged with the
successful attainment of business objectives. According to the
CIPD (2018a), the broad purpose of PM is to:
establish objectives through which individuals and teams can
see their part in the organization’s mission and strategy;
improve performance among employees, teams and,
ultimately, organizations;
hold people to account for their performance via linkage to
reward structures, career progression and potential
termination of contract.
Any PM process has therefore to be continuous, strategically
integrated and cyclical. It must take cognizance of the context
within which the organization operates and consider not only
short- to medium-term goals, but also those in the longer time
frame. It will typically encompass planning activity in accordance
with business objectives, it will manage plans as enacted upon
and it will enable review, then ongoing development activity. It will
reward appropriately and will be flexible and adaptive enough to
inform the next tranche of planning for effecting organizational
performance (see Figure 11.1).
Figure 11.1 The performance management
cycle
548
Pause and reflect
Thinking about the assessment of your university module, what kind
of assessment activities could leaders and managers use to
determine training intervention?
549
Determinants of Employee and
Organizational Performance
From a managerial perspective, where the leader and manager is
expected to ensure the more efficient and effective use of
resources, successful organizations are arguably those who can
ensure that their strategic processes and practices are of the
correct quality to provide the expected outputs (Tomal and Jones,
2015). The extent to which IPA affects individual and
organizational performance outcomes is contingent upon the
context and interconnectedness of innumerable variables and
mechanisms, including business model effectiveness and
efficiency (Boyatzis and Ratti, 2009; Budworth and Mann, 2011;
Ryan et al., 2009). In the area of macro economics, for example,
the cost of borrowing and fluctuations in exchange rates for
currencies impact on investment and exports, and thereby
organizational performance. New technology is another variable
that has the potential to enhance organization performance and
profitability significantly without any change in either leaders’ or
followers’ competence or behaviours. These variables are
dependent on the specific organizational setting, and it is
ultimately knowledge of individual organizational contexts as well
as the ability to be flexible, agile and adaptable in the approach to
performance processes and practices that provide a crucial
element in the achievement of success. Almatrooshi et al. (2016)
have proposed a framework in an attempt to identify those
constructs which influence employee and organizational
performance (see Figure 11.2).
This framework is leader-centric in that it places the competence
of the leader as pivotal to the success of an organization. Contrary
to theories of followership, Almatrooshi et al.’s model is predicated
on the assumption that individual employee and organizational
performance is influenced, if not determined, by leadership
competency skills. The model also shows a connection between
emotional intelligence (EI), social intelligence (SI), leadership
competencies and organizational performance (Miyake and
550
Friedman, 2012; Mustaffa et al., 2013). EI is the capability of
leaders to recognize their own emotions and those of followers. SI
is more expansive and refers to the leader’s capacity to know
herself or himself and to know followers. It has also been
conceptualized as an aggregated measure of self and social
awareness, evolved social beliefs and attitudes, and a capacity to
manage change (Goleman, 2007). In relation to the leadership
and followership theories, if a leader or a follower is able to ‘feel’
what others are feeling or ‘read’ what is happening in complex
situations, they are said to have social intelligence.
Figure 11.2 A framework for determinants of
performance management (Almatrooshi et
al., 2016)
According to Ryan et al. (2009), however, it is the ultimate
incorporation of all three – cognitive intelligence, EI and SI – that
builds effective leadership for the benefit of the organization.
Leadership competency will form and nurture followers, the
culture of the organizational culture, and thereby enhance both
551
individual and organizational performance, and it is this process of
leadership which, according to Carpenter and Sanders (2007),
creates added value and makes the business offering unique.
Both external and internal contextual factors, as we discussed in
Chapters 2 and 4, also influence an organization’s uniqueness
and play a major part in creating a competitive advantage
(Edmonstone, 1996). Haines and St-Onge (2012) argue that the
shared vision and experience of culture and social climate of the
organization, in tandem with effective integration with the HRM
function, can heavily influence the effectiveness of the outcome of
PM for employees. This includes the contextual consideration of
organizational politics influencing the process (Levy and Williams,
2004). Rusua et al. (2016), for example, advocate that the
inherent power of the performance appraisal, as a core aspect of
contemporary IPA practice, should be used to increase
performance, using the context in a more dominant way. They
argue that this customization will provide focus on the importance
of process and structural factors (Armstrong and Ward, 2005;
Murphy and DeNisi, 2008). Structural factors, such as levels of
management, the design of work and use of technology, it is
argued, will be unique to the context (across organizational
strategy, culture, business objectives) and permit ‘focus on the HR
context and employee motivation which have a significant
influence on employee performance appraisal as an important
instrument with a potential positive impact on employee work
performance’ (Rusua et al., 2016: 64). Another contextual factor to
consider in influencing performance is good communication (see
Chapter 13).
Pause and reflect
Thinking about your own work experience, or that of a friend or family
member:
1. What are your views on PM?
2. If you have been performance managed, make some notes on
what you felt about the process personally. Did it make you
552
perform better? Did you feel motivated after it? Explain why or
why not.
3. If you have never been involved in a PM process, make notes
on how you think it might feel for the employee in terms of
making them work more efficiently or increasing their
motivation.
553
Historical Milestones in the
Development of Performance
Management
The notion of improving performance in organizations was born
out of industrialization and the move from the rural, artisan nature
of manufacturing, to the urban setting of factory, and large-scale
mechanization, which needed to be tightly controlled and
monitored. The goal was to increase efficiency, productivity and
maximize individual performance through systematic management
interventions using systematic approaches. The American
mechanical engineer, Frederick W. Taylor (1856–1915), pioneered
the theory of ‘economic man’, which in the early 20th-century led
to the beginnings of appraisal systems that were closely linked to
employee motivation along with discretionary effort and
performance-related pay (PRP). Henry Ford (1863–1947) applied
Taylor’s management principles to car manufacturing. The flow-
line principle of assembly work – often called ‘Fordism’ – involved
a greater fragmentation of tasks and the recording of time to
complete allocated tasks. Ford stated his approach to people
management: ‘The idea is that man … must have every second
necessary but not a single unnecessary second’ to complete a
task (quoted in Bratton, 2015: 48). These early PM systems were
blunt in nature and relied heavily on the subjective judgement of
those in charge (despite the claimed scientific approach) and did
not focus on the human elements and social interactions in the
workplace.
Taylorism and Fordism invoked adverse reactions from workers,
including high absenteeism, high turnover and industrial action,
particularly during periods of high employment, which led to the
development of new approaches to work design and employee
motivation pioneered by the work of an academic at Harvard
University, Elton Mayo (1880–1949). In the 1920s, the Hawthorne
Experiments heralded in a new approach to employee motivation
and performance that challenged Ford’s monetary-based
preoccupation with the proposition of the ‘social man’. This
554
approach to managing people attempted to balance individual
needs and social norms and employed a holistic approach
towards work design and employees: this approach was labelled
the ‘human relations’ movement. In terms of research and
practice, the social man model had the effect of shifting attention
to the perceived psychological and social needs of employees,
such as social relationships, the nature and quality of
communications and leader–follower interactions, and provided a
new way of looking at performance at work. In the 1950s, there
was a further shift towards a focus on personality traits, which
ushered in a merit rating of employees. This focus, once more on
inward analysis of the workforce to enhance motivation and
productivity, was criticized by, for example, McGregor (1957)
because it neglected human capability, self-esteem and
development as a way to motivate employees.
Subsequently, Drucker’s work in 1954 on management by
objectives (MBO) provided a compromise which took into
consideration both internal and external factors in the appraisal
exercise and facilitated the setting of individual targets as part of
the agreed objective-based system that involved both employee
and employer. The MBO approach was adopted into popular
practice in the 1960s and 1970s. It then fell into disapproval
because, although more balanced in theory, the practice was
proving to be a challenge for organizations. There were reports of
inconsistencies across all elements of application, including lack
of objectivity, perceived fairness and levels of honesty, and a blind
focus on achievement and end results with a lack of consideration
as to how these could best be achieved through employee
development, among other things. However, the legacy of this
work is still found in IPA practices today. Indeed, as you have
hopefully recognized, a variant is an integral part of Bass and
Riggio’s (2006) transformational leadership model.
The term ‘performance management’ came from Beer and Ruh’s
work on employee growth in 1976. Employment relations in this
particular era was governed broadly by a crisis in profitability, low
productivity and labour unrest, which was fuelled by technological
deskilling, the threat of cheap imports and employers challenging
workers’ terms and conditions (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2018).
555
This decade also saw the beginnings of the end for personnel
management as a concept in the West to make way for more
effective management of the individual as advocated by the new
human resource management. PM was viewed as a new way of
managing. However, it took from the late 1980s to the early 1990s
to become popularized, with an increased emphasis on the need
for a more integrated focus to allow for continuity of process and a
preoccupation with how performance should be more effectively
managed, rewarded and, indeed, retained in an era of huge
economic, demographic and cultural change. Initially, PM took the
form of a top-down approach with a focus on managerialism,
ownership by the HRM function, with a focus on the process
rather than the people, and accusations of measuring the wrong
things (Neely, 2003).
The dawning of the concept of PM has inextricably altered how
the HRM function has evolved and a systematic approach to PM
or IPA was proposed. This entailed a strategic integration of the
key business functions to ensure that every part of the
organization was aware of and working to the achievement of
strategic objectives as laid down for growth. Employee
performance, as part of that system, works with the other HR
policies and practices (e.g. talent development and reward
management; see Chapters 9 and 10). The ultimate goal of this
interconnectedness is to secure employee commitment and
engagement by virtue of a joined-up and continuous approach to
strategic management to achieve competitive advantage or
superior service. Theoretical developments include
conceptualizing IPA as a continuous cycle that links together
performance with the various HR practices, which reflect the
employee life-cycle and which are deemed to be fairer (DeNisi
and Pritchard, 2006; Lowry, 2002). See Figure 9.2 on page 206.
Critical Insight: IPA – a new workplace tyranny?
Performance appraisal is an HR practice used to evaluate an
employee’s overall capabilities and potential, and enable informed
556
decisions to be made with regard to pay, promotion or development
for the purpose of improving performance. It also forms part of the
transformational leadership model. From differing perspectives, the
practice has come under much critical scrutiny in recent years. In
particular, critics argue the practice has encouraged the
individualization of work situations and remuneration (Boltanski and
Chiapello, 2018). Mainstream studies of PMS have also been
criticized for treating the IPA as a technical, politically neutral activity
detached from power relations. Performance appraisal’s detractors
argue that it ‘promised so much and delivered so little’ (Grint, 1993:
64); is a HR practice ‘whose time has gone’ (Bhote, 1994); and it
constitutes a ‘new workplace tyranny’ (Taylor, 2013). The pioneering
work of Barbara Townley (2005) encourages us to ‘deconstruct’ IPA
techniques and, in so doing, substantially reconsider IPA’s role and
suitability in the light of leader–follower relations and new interest in
followership.
557
Activity
Stop! Thinking about your own university experience or an
organization you have studied, to what extent do you agree or
disagree with V. Wright’s (1991) assertion that ‘the meaningful
is rarely measurable and the measurable is rarely meaningful?’.
What evidence is there to support the assertion that IPA is the
‘new workplace tyranny’? What effects, if any, does IPA have on
your understanding of lecturer–student relations or leader–
follower relations in the workplace?
Read: Barbra Townley (1993) ‘Performance appraisal and the
emergence of management’, Journal of Management Studies,
30 (2): 221–38; and Philip Taylor (2013) ‘Performance
management and the new workplace tyranny: a report for the
Scottish Trades Union Congress’. Available at
www.stuc.org.uk/files/Document%20download/Workplace%20ty
ranny/STUC%20Performance%20Management%20Executive
%20Summary%20final (accessed 5 January 2018).
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The Performance Management
Appraisal Process
In practice, PM typically involves the continuous process of
identifying, measuring and developing the performance of
individuals and groups in organizations (Aguinis, 2015), and it
involves providing both formal and informal performance-related
information to employees (Selden and Sowa, 2011).
The performance appraisal has a key role in the integration of
many HR undertakings, which, according to Selden and Sowa
(2011), should also provide informal performance feedback as well
as the formal. It typically takes the form of identifying, measuring
and developing the performance of employees in organizations,
both as individuals and as members of work groups (Aguinis,
2015), and may also determine reward. It has a central place in
the PM process and plays an important, if, in terms of actual
outcomes, sometimes disappointing, role in the achievement of
organizational goals. However, with its roots in the Industrial
Revolution, as discussed above, it is still the mainstay in
organizational performance, allowing a tangible link with the
cascading of business objectives to all corners of the workplace.
It usually takes the form of a formal review meeting, normally
scheduled annually or bi-annually. There are five main elements
involved in the process, according to the CIPD (2011):
Measurement: of performance against agreed objectives.
Feedback: on past performance and how to improve.
Positive reinforcement: on what has gone well and how value
can be added.
An exchange of views: in an open way, on any support
needed and future aspirations.
Agreement: jointly on what needs to be addressed to
improve/sustain performance.
The ongoing critique of the performance appraisal continues. The
CIPD (2018a) has indicated that it can lack impact in some
organizations due to how it is perceived and presented, in that it
559
has little value or meaning attached. It is important that both
business and employee know how the individual is performing and
that both formal and informal mechanisms are used to gain that
knowledge. It is proposed that the formal appraisal is clearer in
purpose; a review of a whole period or cycle entails a proper
dialogue between the parties and builds in time for reflection. The
use of ongoing informal performance ‘conversations’ are
suggested by the CIPD (2018a) to enable ‘a culture of trust and
openness, people managers who are appropriately skilled, for
example in asking good questions and active listening employees
who are receptive, prepared to align with business objectives,
learn and take responsibility for their performance.’
Leadership in Action: Using performance management to ‘manage
out dead wood’
Academics and professional bodies have long underlined the
importance of providing workers with performance appraisal
feedback, which provides a focus on improvement, reinforcement of
positive behaviours, attention to improvement specifics and the
support of development and training to meet needs. Constructive
feedback has been found to actually increase motivation and
ultimately enhance employee performance (Kluger and DeNisi, 1996;
CIPD, 2018a).
The Kimberly-Clark Corporation had a PM process in place which
was over 20 years old and it ring-fenced employees across three
levels of performance: meets expectations; exceeds expectations; or
does not meet expectations (Bersin, 2006). Most employees were
situated in the ‘meets’ level. A new approach to TM saw a new
process emerge, which was interested in details, guidelines,
objectives and competencies for every employee. The new
competency categories that emerged were: decisiveness, innovative,
inspiration, visionary, collaborative and building talent (Bersin, 2006).
These are awarded to employees dependent on their role. They are
then plotted against a 9-box rating scale, which examines
competency and goal attainment. The company claims it can now
see every employee’s results across behavioural development and
business goal achievements (Bersin, 2006).
560
The company used to have a reputation as being a paternalistic,
lifetime employer. Turnover is now almost double the rate it was a
decade ago. It says that around 10 per cent of its US employees
leave annually either on a voluntary basis or are terminated (Weber,
2016). Scott Boston, Vice President of HR, stated that ‘People can’t
duck and hide in the same way they could in the past’ (Weber, 2016).
Since 2009 the company has laid off around 2,900 employees
worldwide. In 2016 it employed around 43,000 people (Stengel,
2016). ‘Holding workers close through good times and bad is not
sustainable anymore’, said Liz Gottung (Human Resource Chief).
She states that the company’s stock price and business results
improved alongside the new performance strategy (Weber, 2016).
561
Reflective questions
1. Why do you think turnover at the company has almost double
its rate over the last decade?
2. To what extent has performance appraisal encouraged a new
personal self – one that is more flexible and self-reliant?
562
Sources
Bersin, J. (2006) ‘Best practices in PM at Kimberly-Clark’,
Performance Management, 7 April.
CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) (2018a)
‘Performance management: an introduction (understand how to build
an effective approach to performance management, including the
tools that can support it): Factsheet 6292’, September.
Kluger, A.N. and DeNisi, A. (1996) ‘The effects of feedback
intervention on performance: a historical review, a meta-analysis’,
Psychological Bulletin, 119 (2): 254–84.
Stengel, M. (2016) ‘Kimberly-Clark is transparent about what PM
means’, Talent Daily.
Weber, L. (2016) ‘At Kimberley-Clark, “dead wood” workers have
nowhere to hide’, Wall Street Journal.
563
To explore this topic further see:
Findlay, P. and Newton, T. (1998) ‘Re-framing Foucault: The Case of
Performance Appraisal’ in A. McKinlay and K. Starkey (eds),
Foucault, Management and Organizational Theory. London: Sage,
pp. 211–229.
Boltanski, L. and Chiapello, E. (2018) The New Spirit of Capitalism,
Trans by G. Elliott, London: Verso, pp. 284–286.
Pause and reflect
What do you think the Kimberly-Clark worker’s perspective is on both
the implementation of this strategy and its components? Consider
what it means for a company to be conflict-averse in the area of
performance. Given the knowledge you have gained from the
chapters so far, what do you think of these examples of leadership
and how do they fit with the old mission of the company?
564
Modelling Leadership and
Performance
The role of the leader is undoubtedly changing in the 21st century.
According to Turnbull and Noble (in Strycharczyk and Elvin, 2014:
107), leaders feel that they face accelerated and unprecedented
pressure to use their skills and behaviours to ensure the
attainment of business objectives and also to meet the demands
of the growing knowledge economy and its associated challenges
of ‘globalization, the war for talent, digital communications,
societal changes, the changing shape of organizations and the
aspirations of the next generation.’ Eberhardt and Majkovic (2016)
have proposed five megatrends which will challenge future
leaders: (1) the individual, (2) the transition to flexibility, (3) the
demography trend of age and gender, (4) the rapid social and
economic change, and (5) social responsibility and sustainability.
These are considered the major global trends that leaders will
need to contend with over the next 30 to 50 years.
To facilitate successful performance, it is expected that leaders
will execute a role that is focused on expected behaviours, such
as that illustrated by Bass and Riggio’s (2006) leadership model.
Yukl et al. (2002) present a hierarchical taxonomy that identifies
meta-categories of behaviour orientation (task, relations and
change) and utilizes ‘specific component behaviours’, which are
called upon to deliver effectiveness (performance) depending on
the situation that the leader finds him- or herself in (Table 11.1).
Table 11.1 A hierarchical taxonomy of meta
and specific behaviours
Table 11.1 A hierarchical taxonomy of meta and specific
behaviours
Leadership meta behaviours Leadership-specificcomponent behaviours
565
Leadership meta behaviours Leadership-specificcomponent behaviours
Task behaviours(about
efficiency)
Short-term planning
Clarifying responsibilities and
performance objectives
Monitoring operations and
performance
Relations behaviours(about
commitment)
Supporting
Developing
Recognizing
Consulting
Empowering
Change behaviours(about
innovation and adaption)
External monitoring
Envisioning change
Encouraging innovative
thinking
Taking personal risk
Source: based on Yukl et al., 2002
This approach focuses heavily on the individual having the ability
to employ complex intra-personal constructs in order to adapt
leadership behaviours to the required contexts (Hannah et al.,
2009; Lord et al., 2011). The pressure implied for the leader at this
level of self-awareness in order to ensure use of the right
competencies at the right time, in the right context to aid the
effective performance of the organization, will require
development and resilience planning for leaders. Considering the
communality between paid work and non-work, these demands
566
may well stem from followers’ perceived need to adopt pro-
environmental lifestyles and behaviours (Boiral et al., 2015). The
complexities of the contemporary business landscape will mean
they will face situations which have not yet been encountered,
which will necessitate a fresh outlook with new skills. Leadership
development in order to deliver performance is not a new concept
(Day, 2000) and the outcomes of the development will not be the
same for every leader, with success being dependent on their
experience and personal characteristics (DeRue et al., 2012).
Marques and Dhiman (2017) have provided an updated focus on
leadership skills, which they suggest are needed for leaders to
perform effectively and with purpose. Through provision of the
distinction between soft and hard skills, they emphasize the
needed dominance of positive leadership behaviours and action
for success. The required soft skills they propose are: spirituality,
trust, moral behaviour, values, empathy, vision, motivation, self-
confidence, ambition, mindfulness, authenticity, problem solving,
communication, initiative, emotional intelligence, sustainability,
dependability, creativity and resilience. The hard skills identified
are those of ambition, knowledge, information technology,
planning and global understanding. Marques (2014) argues that
leadership is an inner construct and that before a leader can truly
lead they must learn to lead themselves. This notion of the leader
having a good personal relationship with themselves can be
described in other ways, as self or intrinsic motivation, and this
can provide the impetus to change behaviours (Furtner et al.,
2013).
Pause and reflect
Think of a leader you have read about in the popular press (e.g.
football, politics, community). Did they use any of the soft and hard
skills identified by Marques and Dhiman? How was this person as a
leader?
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Problems of Methodology and
Theory
Since the common connection made between leadership and
organizational performance is frequently bound up in tangibles
such as market shares, revenue streams and balance checks, it is
often perceived that there is a direct correlation between
leadership effectiveness and performance outcomes in
organizations (e.g. Alchian, 1986; Yukl, 1998). However, just as
many theorists question the linkage (e.g. Gamson and Scotch,
1964; Andersen, 2002), Quazi (2001) has stated that effective
leaders only have the ability to influence actual business practices
and sustainability. Andersen states that
A widely held view amongst managers and management
researchers alike is that management has a major
impact on organizational effectiveness. The leadership
literature in general is implicitly based upon the
assumption that leadership is the cause of effectiveness
in organizations. Many theories are founded on the
contention of the crucial role of management. (quoted in
Svensson and Wood, 2005: 1003)
The issue potentially stems from an obsession with trait and style
theories, such as transactional/transformational leadership, ethical
leadership and so on, which have all been discussed in various
chapters of this book. These tend to put leaders in theoretical
boxes based on specific schools of thought around the traits and
behaviours they should subscribe to as part of the theory.
However, individuals by nature won’t possess them all (Dinh et al.,
2014) and therefore effective leadership becomes dependent on
the individual’s ability to use the correct mix of skills, behaviours
and attitudes as the context and time demand. Svensson and
Wood state that when it comes to the debate over the potential
relationship between leadership effectiveness and organizational
568
performance, both arguments (for and against such a proposition)
are valid:
At times, the achievement in organizational performance
is the outcome of prosperous and conscious leadership,
while at other times it may be the outcome of poor and
deficient leadership. (2005: 1002)
The importance of context and managing change therefore
becomes apparent. Effective leadership involves a multi-faceted
approach. Lord and Brown (2004) have described leaders as
‘organizational architects’ who, through their actions, can
influence the outputs of others. They can use top-down processes
as leadership influences or bottom-up processes to involve
employees as followers, and depending on context and time and
many other variables unique to the organization, but what is
important is that we continue to attempt to understand how
leaders achieve their goals (Dinh and Lord, 2012) and how this
directly impacts on the performance of the organization.
569
Criticism of Individual Performance
Appraisals
As we have explained, IPA is part of a broader approach known
as ‘performance management’ (Brown and Lim, 2013). Critical
analysis indicates that its use is to enforce organizational politics
(Holzer et al., 2019). Further, critics contend that the routine
subjection of managerial bias in the measure of employee
performance means that IPA approaches to managing the
employment relationship are far from neutral in intention and
scope. This shadows the entire reasoning for maintaining
systems, which are potentially open to corruption because they
can ultimately undermine both followers and an organization’s
leader–follower relations (Townley, 1993).
UK-based evidence shows that variant IPA has become
embedded in HRM over the last three decades. Significantly, its
usage has extended from managerial to non-managerial
employees. The data from Van Wanrooy et al. (2013) indicates
that the percentage of workplaces formally appraising at least
some non-managerial employees increased from 43 per cent in
2004 to 70 per cent in 2011. Furthermore, the percentage of
organizations directly linking performance appraisal to pay also
increased, so that by 2011 non-managerial pay was partly
determined by IPA in 25 per cent of workplaces surveyed (Van
Wanrooy et al., 2013: 98). Despite widespread adoption, the
effectiveness of IPA is disputed, with many organizations reporting
that managers go through the motions of performance
management but do not provide the continuous attention required
of ongoing evaluation to ensure relevance and success. The
systems are costly, not only in terms of implementation (IT
support, development of frameworks, management time) but also
in losses associated with employee retention and
morale/motivation. The 21st-century employee is expected to be
loyal, trustworthy, reliable and ethical, yet the very schemes used
to evaluate them can be biased, unfair and lacking in
standardization of approach.
570
Although in mainstream HRM literature IPA is often seen as
evidence of greater professionalization of the HR function, critical
management scholars have argued that the growth in usage of
performance appraisal has been fuelled by the rise of the HRM
model, the decline in trade union membership and power. As a
tool of HRM, IPA is integral to the individualistic-orientated HRM
model, which can be characterized as the atomization of
employment relations (Bratton and Gold, 2017). Controversially,
the data shows a correlation between reduced union presence in
workplaces, the rise of income inequality, alongside higher usage
of IPA (Bratton and Gold, 2017; Kumhof et al., 2012; Wilkinson
and Pickett, 2010). Wage inequality continues to grow, and
according to Lemieux et al. (2009) the popular adoption of
performance-related pay coincided with increased pay inequality
among men from the late 1970s. Gender consideration, which we
explore in Chapter 14, is also a focus for detractors. Bryan and
Bryson (2015) found that performance-paid employment is more
prevalent for men. Women are also often precluded for many full-
time, permanent, high-status jobs with quality for performance-
related pay. Studies on pay gaps (Woodhams et al., 2015) show
that the disparities in pay increase in disadvantaged groups,
gender being only one, with disability, race/ethnicity and ethnicity
being the others.
Townley’s (1989, 1993, 1994) pioneering analysis of performance
appraisal highlights its usage to changes in job design, in
particular the development of high-performance work (HPW)
designs, which require the exercise of discretion (see Chapters 1
and 8). It is Townley’s contention that discretion obviates the
exercise of formal rules and procedures typically found in
bureaucratic control mechanisms associated with mass
production. In HPW workplaces, individual empowerment,
personal responsibility and initiative replace rules-based control
with discretion. Here implicit expectations or informal regulation
about work behaviours shape how work should be done.
Discretion, therefore, requires the internalization of the
organization’s goals or ‘norms’ to ensure that individuals and work
teams interpret the discretionary space correctly from
management’s point of view. This observation emphasizes the
importance of a ‘strong organizational culture’ (see Chapter 4).
571
Critical theory emphasizes that all the talk about IPA as the
‘objective’ measurement of employee performance, functioning to
close the performance ‘gap’, omits the real nature of the
discourse. As you read in Chapter 2, in the context of
neoliberalism, IPA regimes actually serve to minimize
opportunities for collective action because individuals are
encouraged to make decisions based solely on their own self-
interest (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2018; Whitfield, 2012) and,
relatedly, they serve to ‘communicate organizational norms or
“culture” and reinforce this process’ (Townley, 1989: 103). Work
habits, attitudes, values and other personal attributes are learned,
while bad habits and dissenting voices are expunged through
performance appraisal (McKinlay and Starkey, 1998). Human
talent is defined in narrow terms of those employees displaying
enthusiasm, cooperation and emotional labour that further the
goals of the organization. Critical theory often underscores that
IPA represents the essence of leader–follower power when
related to the reward element of the employment relationship, and
in so doing weakens the bonds of reciprocity, trust and
commitment. Reinforcing the pay–performance relationship draws
attention to the role of the leader/manager, with potential
dysfunctional effects on the two-way necessity of the leader–
member exchange (LMX) relationship, discussed in Chapter 8
(Brown and Lim, 2013).
572
Conclusion
This chapter has introduced the concept of PM and examined the
linkage between organizational success and effective leadership.
It has examined the crucial role of context across both concepts
and explained how both the role of the leader and PM itself has
changed through time. It has outlined some innovative leadership
influences on PM activities in contribution to the achievement of
contemporary organizational goals. It has also summarized that
we know more about how leaders are perceived than we know
about how they make organizations more successful (Kaiser et
al., 2008), and that future research needs to focus less on
leadership traits and qualities and more on contextual factors and
how change is managed by leaders in our organizations as part of
performance processes. Critical theory emphasizes that
performance appraisal is not simply about the ‘objective’
measurement of individual performance being to close the
performance ‘gap’, but in the context of neoliberal transformation
of the workplace IPA regimes actually serve to individualize the
employment relationship particularly, but not exclusively, around
reward, as well as serving to communicate and reinforce
organizational culture.
573
Chapter Review Questions
1. What are the key elements of performance appraisal?
2. What challenges do leaders face in the 21st century around
managing performance?
3. After reading this chapter, do you believe IPA is a blunt tool to serve
management’s interests or can it benefit individual employees?
4. How, if at all, does the IPA process help to communicate
organizational culture to employees? Why might this be important?
Assignment Task: Appraisal
Read Michelle Brown and Victoria Lim’s chapter ‘Understanding
performance management and appraisal: supervisory and employee
perspectives’, in A. Wilkinson, T. Redman, S. Snell and N. Bacon
(eds) (2013) The SAGE Handbook of Human Resource
Management. London: SAGE. Followers have a choice in their
response to the tactics used by their line managers through the
appraisal system.
574
Questions
1. Does follower resistance have any impact on leader–follower
relations?
2. To what extent, if at all, do the action and reaction of followers
to performance appraisal depend upon age, gender, race,
education and personality?
Go Online
Further your knowledge and build your bibliography for
assignments by reading the recommended journal articles for this
chapter.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
video
Learn more about leadership in practice by watching the video
conversation for this chapter.
Stephen Moir, Executive Director of Resources for the City of
Edinburgh Council, discusses the limitations of formal performance
appraisal systems, as well as how a leader can support the
performance of an entire organization.
The video can be found at https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
See the inside front cover for the access code and instructions.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
575
Further Reading
Brown, M. and Lim, V. (2010) ‘Understanding performance
management and appraisal: supervisory and employee
perspectives’, in A. Wilkinson, N. Bacon, T. Redman and S. Snell
(eds), The SAGE Handbook of Human Resource Management.
London: SAGE, pp. 191–209.
CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) (2016)
‘Could do better? Assessing what works in performance
management’. Available at www.cipd.co.uk/Images/could-do-
better_2016-assessing-what-works-in-performance-
management_tcm18-16874 (accessed 17 September 2019).
Holzer, M., Ballard, A., Kim, M., Peng, S. and Deat, F. (2019)
‘Obstacles and opportunities for sustaining performance
management systems’, International Journal of Public
Administration, 42 (2): 132–43.
McKinlay, A. and Starkey, K. (1998) ‘The “velvety grip”: managing
managers in the modern corporation’, in A. McKinlay and K.
Starkey (eds), Foucault, Management and Organizational Theory.
London: SAGE, pp. 110–25.
576
Case Study: Performance management in
theUK Civil Service
577
Background
In 2015 the UK Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude made a call for
Civil Service managers to use a forced distribution (a performance
appraisal which demands employees be forced into a pre-specified
ranking) to rank workers as performing best or worst. The existing system
(which he had previously implemented in 2013 as the then Leader of the
Civil Service) had three categories, namely working well, working
acceptably and working poorly, and as part of this managers are expected
to put staff into specified rankings to ensure that 10 per cent are poor
performers, 25 per cent in the well category and 65 per cent in the
acceptable. In 2015, Minister Maude claimed managers were ‘gaming the
system’ by putting only those about to leave the organization and those
who are new in the bottom 10 per cent. He said, ‘I think it has improved,
but we’re nowhere near right. What you should probably do is move to a
forced ranking, so not just a forced distribution. So, you actually say:
“what order are people?” And then you avoid some of the gaming’ (Bowie,
2015). In 2016 the trade unions were celebrating the announcement of
the end of the controversial scheme, with some of them saying it was the
‘worst thing they had seen in a 40-year career’ (Bowie, 2015).
578
The organization
The Civil Service in the UK is a permanent bureaucracy which had around
431,000 civil servants employed in 2018, that’s around 8 per cent of
public servants in the country. They are defined as employees of ‘the
Crown’, which means they do government work in government
departments and are therefore employed by government ministers
(Stanley, no date).
579
The ‘rank and yank’ performance
management system
The ‘rank and yank’ system, so-called, was introduced to help identify
poor performers in the Service. This issue had been identified as a
performance challenge for a long time. Minister Maude had brought in a
PM system from the private sector in a hope to ‘shake up civil service
systems’ (Dudman, 2016) which were historically and contextually public
sector by their very nature. The trade union estimated that the Ministry of
Defence (just one part of the Service) was spending around £100 million
per annum on the system (Dudman, 2016) and they called it ‘wrong,
divisive and should never have been introduced’. Minister Maude is
reported as saying that he believed that the improvement of the bottom 10
per cent should be the focus of every organization in the world (Bowie,
2015). Management feedback by those who carried it out stated that the
grading of every member of staff had taken up a lot of time and resources
(Dudman, 2016). Dave Penman, the FDA general secretary, stated that
‘Any system that measures performance in a way that can result in
individuals achieving all objectives set of them and more, but still finding
themselves in the bottom 10 per cent as a result of being anonymously
ranked against individuals doing very different jobs for different managers,
should in itself be consigned to the “must improve” category’ (Bowie,
2015). The system was subsequently replaced in 2017 with a more
flexible performance system with a more contextual focus on what
individual departments need to meet based on core principles (Dudman,
2016).
580
Case exercise
On your own or in a study group, write a report:
1. Outlining how the actions of Minister Maude as the leader of this
organization have impacted on the different levels of employees with
the implementation of this system across a number of years.
2. What do you think were the fundamental errors preventing success?
3. Do you think the new initiative could work better? If so, why?
4. Discuss the negative impacts of this system on the trust and loyalty
of a body of staff who serve their country.
581
Sources of additional information
Bowie, J. (2015) ‘Francis Maude calls for change to civil service
performance management which would see bosses give staff individual
rankings’, Civil Service World, 29 April.
Dudman, J. (2016) ‘Brexit helps kill Francis Maude’s hated civil service
“rank and yank” system’, Guardian, 8 December.
582
583
12 Leadership Development
Peter Watt
George Boak
Jeff Gold
‘Organizations heavily committed to leadership
development tend not to differentiate between leadership
effectiveness and leadership development programme
success … the committed organization viewed
leadership development as critical for organizational
success.’
McAlearney et al., 2006: 978
584
Chapter Outline
Introduction
Leader and leadership development in organizations
Reflection and critical thinking for leadership development
What capabilities should leaders develop?
Approaches to leaders’ development
Approaches to the development of leadership in others
Conclusion
585
Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
explain various meanings of leader and leadership development;
understand how leaders learn and the value of critical reflection;
explain how leaders can be assessed for development;
understand different approaches to the learning and development of
leaders;
provide a case for connecting leader development to leadership
development.
video
To learn more about leadership development programmes, don’t
forget to watch the video conversation for this chapter online.
586
Introduction
Throughout history, there has been an almost axiomatic belief that
the relative success of organizations, cultures and society can be
attributed to the behaviour, attributes and skills of individual
leaders. Consequently, there has been much effort devoted to
locating, understanding and ultimately developing effective
leaders. While, for some, leadership remains an innate capacity of
the individual, the basis of leadership development begins with the
premise that, for the majority of leaders, effectiveness is achieved
through the processes by which they learn certain skills, take on
certain behaviours and acquire the key capabilities to do their
work. This perspective might be familiar by now, as it relates
directly to distributive theories of leadership and to further
questions regarding how, and indeed whether, certain traits and
forms of intelligence can be developed or learned as part of
individual leader, follower and leadership development. This
premise and its subsequent challenges have, in turn, led to a
proliferation of resources, programmes and literatures that are
devoted to what we often understand as ‘leadership development’.
In recent years, with common perceptions and the public
reputation of leaders being thrown into question, it is becoming
more frequently argued that the trainers and learning
professionals who were (and continue to be) engaged in
leadership development processes have failed to prevent leaders
from becoming a part of corrosive and lying practice, making
dangerous decisions and negatively impacting on their immediate
organizations and societies beyond (Christensen et al., 2019:
MacKenzie et al., 2014). Thus, fundamental questions face
leadership development: What is the role and responsibility of
leadership development professionals in the programmes they
employ? What type of leaders do training and learning
professionals seek to develop? What are the causes of these
challenges to leaders and leadership development? Can
programmes of leadership development provide answers to the
specific impacts and implications that leaders have on their
organizations and society?
587
The purpose of this chapter is to explore ideas about the
development of leaders and leadership, including about how
leaders can play a crucial part in developing followers and thereby
reconnecting with the collective processes of creating the
leadership relationship.
Pause and reflect
Before continuing with this chapter, reflect upon your own knowledge
of your university (or employment experience) and consider: where is
leadership located in the university (or workplace), what form does it
take, and what are the challenges inherent in locating leadership?
What issues do these pose for developing leadership?
588
Leader and Leadership Development
in Organizations
The question ‘Where is leadership located in an organization?’ is
a crucial consideration when examining leadership learning and
development issues. We may consider leadership as being
exercised solely by those designated as being in authority –
‘managers’ or ‘leaders’ – or we may see leadership as a process
that is more widely distributed among the members of an
organization (Gronn, 2010), as discussed in Chapter 8. This has
implications for practices of leadership development. Day et al.
(2014) distinguish between those activities that focus on
developing individual leaders and those activities that involve
processes of development which involve many individuals. In this
chapter, we will first concentrate on ideas and approaches for
developing individual leaders, and then move on to consider how
individual leaders may act to develop the leadership abilities of
those around them.
An important issue to consider is how the purpose of leadership
development is affected by context. Burgoyne et al. (2004: 49)
argued for the need to consider specific circumstances in
developing leaders, suggesting that development ‘works in
different ways in different situations’. Size is an important factor. In
large organizations, for example, there may be specialist
programmes and resources devoted to leadership development.
While there is no universal definition for small and medium-sized
enterprises (SMEs), the term typically refers to organizations
whose employee numbers fall below certain limits, which can
range from 5 to 100. In the majority of SMEs, the terms ‘leader’ or
‘leadership’ are not especially recognized or used (Kempster,
2009), and formal leadership development is rare. Learning the
role of the leader is likely to occur informally as part of the
entrepreneurial process (D’Intino et al., 2007).
Another contextual variation occurs when we consider how
advances in digital technologies facilitate organizing across
589
multiple locations away from a central location (Zaccaro and
Bader, 2003) or individuals (Zaccaro and Bader, 2003; Westerman
et al., 2012). Particularly with the rise of big data and data
analytics, if leadership is concerned with decision making, an
emerging area of concern is how digital technologies and
algorithmic imperatives disconnect humans as leaders in favour of
machines that learn (Newell and Marabelli, 2015). Leaders
therefore have to consider how to work with individuals, groups
and teams, mediated by and through such technologies
(Chrisentary and Barrett, 2015) and their ever-changing nature.
Image 12.1 If leadership is concerned with
decision making, an emerging area of
concern in leadership development is how
digital technology imperatives disconnect
humans as leaders in favour of machines that
learn. Leaders have to consider how to work
with individuals and teams, mediated by and
through such technologies and their ever-
changing nature.
590
We will make use of two definitions, based on those offered by
Gold et al. (2010). First, leadership development can be defined
as ‘a planned and deliberate process to help leaders become
more effective’. The assumption underpinning this definition is that
it is possible to identify a best way to lead. Thus, based on the
existence of key ideas, evidence, models and theories, it becomes
possible to provide courses, programmes and educational awards
for leaders, which clearly specify content and outcomes based on
planning and deliberation.
A contrasting definition allows for consideration of how leaders
can learn from their experiences at work and beyond: ‘a process
of learning based on informal opportunities to enable [leaders] to
perform as leaders’. This definition allows scope for leaders to
develop without conformity to an advance specification of what
they ‘need’ to learn in a formal or deliberative sense. In relation to
such a definition, learning might occur by a leader’s interaction
with others in meetings, reading news on a tablet or viewing a
blog; it also occurs naturally through everyday working practices
591
(Burgoyne and Hodgson, 1983). The development of leadership
capabilities, which here is defined as the ability to perform a
specific technical task (e.g. project planning), the ability to utilize
the mindset and behaviours of others in a given situation, and the
ability to influence others to a desired outcome, has been shown
to arise from actions taken in the workplace rather than through
formal training (Boak and Crabbe, 2019).
In this context, it is important to recognize that the nature and
approach to learning ceases to occur in a way predetermined by
those seeking to control the development process; rather, it is
given to the autonomy and discretion of the leaders themselves.
This can mean that leaders continue to learn outside formal
programmes (Seijts, 2017b) since this definition outlines an
approach which frames learning as something that occurs
naturally and between people, which makes it reliant on the acts
of others such as developers or colleagues to help in facilitation.
Part of this process involves leaders reflecting on events and
critiquing common assumptions. In a number of studies, this has
been shown to develop a greater sense of self-awareness and an
increase in emotional intelligence (Boyatzis et al., 2013; Tekleab
et al., 2008) and, in turn, the ability to consider and enact changes
in practice (Vince and Reynolds, 2010; Aas, 2017).
If we consider the two definitions together, it is useful to see them
as two separate dimensions (Figure 12.1):
Figure 12.1 Informal and planned leadership
development
Considered in this way, there are various positions that can be
taken up. For example, a leader might plan to learn from a course
or online training programme, but in doing so might blend the
592
deliberate learning of this programme with informal conversations
and processes. The latter might include ubiquitous or taken-for-
granted aspects of everyday interactions, like the latest gossip
about the work environment, which can actually influence learning
with others (Liu and Lim, 2018). Alternatively, informal learning at
work might be shared and then used in the formation of planned
and deliberate programmes for others, highlighting workplace
learning as a rich source of ideas for leaders.
Pause and reflect
How much of your learning is planned and how much is based on
informal recognition? Have you ever held a leadership position in a
sports team or club? How much of what you learned about
leadership has been gained from formal courses or through informal
learning?
593
Reflection and Critical Thinking for
Leadership Development
Whatever approach is taken to leadership development, it is
paramount to consider how and where learning takes place. In
addition, there is a renewed interest in critical approaches to
learning and consideration of the place of reflection in the learning
process, in how leaders as learners can transfer learning from
formal courses and programmes to daily work and performance
(Sparr et al., 2017). Leadership development often involves an
investment of time and resources, which can be wasted if learning
processes are not considered carefully.
It was suggested in our discussion in Chapter 9 on HRM that
experiential learning is a traditional mode of adult learning . You
will recall that Kolb’s (1984) model proposes a cycle of activities of
experiential learning, which includes attention to the importance of
reflection. Such models of learning have been criticized for their
lack of concern for such factors as how leaders form particular
attitudes, patterns of thinking and emotional competencies that
can prevent learning (Yadav, 2014). For example, through
differentiations of power relations with others, leaders can become
over-protective and defensive if they find their position under
threat (Holman et al., 1997). In recent years, there has been
interest in how the brain and central nervous system work and
affect learning. Developments in the field of neuroscience
research have shown that learning involves the formation of and
changes in neural connections or synaptic connections in the
brain that are produced by specific genes (Wasserman and
Wasserman, 2017). While some patterns of understanding are
subject to genetic predispositions, others are formed by
interactions with experience and contextual factors such as social
status, power dynamics and openness and trust in group settings
(Reynolds and Vince, 2004), which can all play a role in enabling
or preventing learning. Reflection as a feature of learning for
leaders can play a key part in helping uncover such factors.
594
Mezirow (1991) emphasizes the importance of reflection as a
means of improving understanding and a leader’s capacity for
critique. Critical reflection involves an examination of feelings and
beliefs associated with an experience and also an examination of
the assumptions that underpin them. If leaders can be helped to
bring their assumptions to the surface, they can then begin to
think critically. One consideration of what it means to think
critically has been presented by Mingers (2000):
to critique rhetoric – whether arguments and propositions are
sound in a logical sense;
to critique tradition – a scepticism of conventional wisdom
and long-standing practices;
to critique authority – being sceptical of one dominant view
and being open to a plurality of views;
to critique knowledge – recognizing that knowledge is never
value-free and objective.
Antonacopoulou (2004) extends this presentation to include:
the critique of simplification – moving beyond simple cause-
and-effect thinking;
the critique of identity – highlighting how subjectivity
influences thought, actions and emotions.
These features of critical thinking can serve to provide leaders
with an ongoing narrative of how they practise their work and
whether their conduct is appropriate (Alvesson and Spicer, 2012),
which can enable them to find new ways of taking action
(Mezirow, 1991).
595
What Capabilities Should Leaders
Develop?
The programmes that form part of planned and deliberate
leadership development are designed according to ideas about
what knowledge, skills and broader capabilities are required of
leaders. These programmes may be shaped by theories and
models of leadership explained in other chapters of this book, or
draw on ideas about specific leadership skills that are thought to
be of value, such as systems skills and complex problem-solving
skills (Schwab, 2016), cross-cultural leadership (Mendenhall et al.,
2017) or emotional and social competencies (Haber-Curran et al.,
2015). However, there is no clear consensus among academics or
practitioners about the capabilities that leaders need, nor about
the appropriate way of describing them, and there are numerous
frameworks and theories.
Many organizations have developed their own descriptions of the
capabilities they require of their employees in a range of different
jobs, including roles that involve management and leadership.
These capabilities are often brought together in a framework that
the organization uses for appraisal and human resource
development purposes (e.g. leading in health care, such as a
large NHS general hospital).
Current ideas about leadership capabilities have been influenced
by research into the competencies of managers (Boyatzis, 1982).
A competency was defined as ‘an underlying characteristic of a
person which results in effective and/or superior performance in a
job’ (1982: 21). A competency could be a motive, a trait, a skill or
a body of knowledge that the individual uses. Behavioural
indicators – observable behaviours of individuals that signified the
possession of the competency –identified these underlying
characteristics. Most of the competencies identified were skills
(rather than motives or traits) and therefore could be learned.
Research has also focused on the importance of emotional
intelligence (EI) and the development of emotional and social
596
competencies (e.g. Goleman, 2007; Mattingly and Kraiger, 2019),
such as emotional self-awareness, self-control and empathy.
The frameworks developed by academic researchers and
practitioners set out a range of actions, skills and attributes,
variously described as ‘competencies behaviours’ (Hamlin et al.,
2016) or ‘capabilities’ (Anzengruber et al., 2017). Some
frameworks include a mixture of behaviours (e.g. encouraging
change, networking) and attributes (integrity, being decisive),
while others consider the importance of courage, humanity and
judgement in effective leadership (Crossan et al., 2017). The
benefit of using competencies for leadership development is that
they can provide a framework for assessment and development of
the capabilities that an individual requires to be effective in their
role.
The main critique of such frameworks is fourfold. First, they are
overly reductionist, encouraging learners (and trainers) to view
capabilities atomistically rather than holistically. Second,
competencies are not valuable in themselves, but only if they are
used at appropriate times. Third, there is (often) a lack of good
evidence for the value of the competencies within a framework.
Fourth, a framework may set an array of competencies that no
single individual is likely to be able to possess. These critical
points represent useful warnings about the potential limitations of
using a competency framework in leadership development work.
The value of leadership competencies depends on the context
(Boyatzis, 2008), whether they are used in combinations (Silzer, in
correspondence, in Hollenbeck et al., 2006) and whether
judgement needs to be applied about the appropriate time for their
use (Buchanan and Boddy, 1992).
597
Preparing leaders for development
Based on the various ideas about what a leader must be able to
do, lists of skills, behaviours and competencies can be used to
assess people for development. In sophisticated systems for
leadership development, leaders can expect to engage with multi-
source feedback from peers, staff and more senior managers in a
process referred to as 360-degree appraisal. In these situations,
leaders need to be ready to respond to the feedback provided.
This will be determined by and affect a leader’s self-awareness
associated with reflection, which helps with self-development,
adaptability, authenticity and confidence for effective leadership
(Rosenbach, 2018). Day et al. (2014) suggest that we need more
research on how self-awareness of leaders is affected by
methods. Research tends to show differences in ratings between
leaders themselves and others such as peers and staff (Lee et al.,
2018).
598
Approaches to Leaders’
Development
If we refer back to the earlier definitions of leadership
development and Figure 12.1, we made a distinction between
planned and informal approaches.
599
Training, courses and programmes
It is not difficult to find formally planned activities for leadership
development, such as short training events focused on individual
leaders or small groups/teams. The focus is on leadership skills,
which, it is claimed, allows leaders to become empowered to
perform their roles. Planned courses can also lead to accreditation
such as an MBA or other valued qualification (McBain et al.,
2012). There has often been a critique of leadership training being
too supply-focused at the expense of what leaders need
(Antonacopoulou, 1999) and how formal qualifications can be too
focused on skills of analysis rather than implementation
(Mintzberg, 2004). In addition, we might suggest that too few
courses and programmes seem to involve critical thinking, futures
learning or the disruptions of artificial intelligence and machine
learning (Kolbjørnsrud et al., 2017).
A key issue for leadership training, courses and programmes
concerns the extent to which leaders are able to transfer their
learning into changed behaviour at work (Grossman and Salas,
2011). It has long been recognized that the workings of power
might prevent the transfer of new ideas and skills by leaders and
cultural practices that reward some learning and not others
(Salaman and Butler, 1990). Holton et al. (2007) have identified a
range of factors that can enable or inhibit the transfer of learning,
including:
motivational factors relating to expectations that people have
about applying new skills;
environmental elements such as supervisor support or
sanctions and peer support;
ability elements relating to the opportunity to apply new skills,
and the way training is designed to link to work performance.
Sørensen (2017) has considered similar factors for leadership
development in a Danish public-sector organization, finding that
support from supervisor, peer support, evaluation frequency and
opportunities to practise were important enablers of the transfer of
learning.
600
Executive coaching
Over the last 30 years, there has been growing interest in
executive coaching. McGill et al. (2019) highlight the importance
of executive coaching for leaders when they move into roles such
as Chief Executive or Chief Finance Officer, where the transition
can provide challenge and turmoil. Research suggests that
leaders who work with an executive coach are likely to set goals
that are clearer, seek ideas from staff, get higher ratings from
staff, show greater ability to deal with change, and be more
resilient and less prone to depression (Grant and Hartley, 2013).
Like other leadership development processes, executive coaching
might take place face to face, but may also blend face to face and
e-coaching.
Because executive coaches usually come from outside an
organization, a key issue is value-added relative to high cost. This
focuses attention on the quality of the relationship between coach
and leader (Athanasopoulou and Dopson, 2018; Bozer et al.,
2013). Baron and Morin (2009) found that the following were
important factors in the effectiveness of coaching in relation to the
transfer of learning:
the motivation to transfer;
the perception of support;
the amount of coaching received;
the coach’s facilitation of learning and results.
An alternative to the external executive coach is to facilitate leader
groups to coach each other as peers in a reciprocal manner
around plans to develop and implement skills (Goldman et al.,
2013), a process that is similar to action learning (see below).
601
Work-based learning
Probably of most value to leaders is the informal learning that can
be achieved from their work. As Day and Thornton (2018: 368)
note, ‘when you ask successful senior executives about how they
developed as leaders … they claim it was through on-the-job
experience.’ Crucially, such work-based learning (Raelin, 2016)
can exert considerable influence on what a leader does, so it
needs be made conscious, perhaps by executive coaching but
also through reflection. If consciousness can be achieved, the
leader may see a range of opportunities for work-based learning,
including meetings and key interactions with employees. If such
learning is more deliberate but still relies on informality, it is
suggested that leaders need challenging experiences that are
complex, novel, entail high stakes (Boak and Crabbe, 2019) and
are linked to strategic needs.
602
Evaluation
Leadership development has for many years suffered from
difficulties with respect to evaluation, especially when the desire is
to show a measurable return on the funds that were invested in
developmental activities, such as courses and training events.
The difficulties in measuring a return mean that such activities can
be taken as an ‘act of faith’, and during times of crisis is one of the
first investments to be cut by organizations. This is a similar
challenge to that discussed when we examined the HRM-
performance relationship in Chapter 9.
Pause and reflect
Why do you think that evaluation of leadership development activities
might be difficult? (Hint: re-read the section on HRM-performance
links in Chapter 9).
There are, of course, a range of models available for evaluation
and the most prominent has been Kirkpatrick’s (1994) four-level
model which assesses results in terms of measurable changes in
performance. In theory at least, leadership development events
could ensure a path of value-adding to link to organization results.
However, Day et al. (2014) question the purpose of measuring
changes on a leader’s performance when so many factors can
influence performance other than learning activities. As we have
mentioned, context has a key role and factors that constitute the
transfer of learning (Holton et al., 2007) can play a part. Time lags
between learning, and opportunities to apply learning, can also
affect impact and measurement.
There are other important reasons to evaluate leadership
development, including improving what is done, controlling costs
and, crucially, as part of a continuous process of supporting
learning (Easterby-Smith, 1994). One approach, suggested by
Thorpe et al. (2009), is that the evaluation of leadership
603
development needs to be holistic by taking account of wider
system impact and the interests of different stakeholders, by
providing data in response to show evidence of value added. For
example, where leaders participate in a programme, data relating
to goals and objectives can be collected, perhaps used by those
delivering programmes. An executive coach can work with leaders
before and after programmes to help transfer and reconfigure
goals as learning proceeds. Over time, and over different
programmes, evaluation might evolve to make adjustments and
improve measurability of outcomes and cost-effectiveness (Urban
et al., 2014).
Critical Insight: Carillion – a case for developing leadership
capability?
Carillion plc featured in Chapter 4. Its 2014 Annual Report stated:
We are a trusted partner when trust matters most, from
providing mission critical facilities management services to
public and private sector customers, notably in the health,
defence, secure accommodation, financial services and
energy sectors, to keeping transport and utility networks
operating 24/7 and to delivering new hospitals, schools,
roads, railways and other landmark buildings and
structures. We build long-term partnerships based on
delivering value for money services that our customers
know they can rely on. (Carillion, 2014)
The strategic report also states:
In 2014, we also increased the emphasis we place on the
development of leadership capability, with a number of
programmes running across the Group. We have also
remained focused on improving the development of our
people through our successful Leadership and Futures
Programmes. (Carillion, 2014)
604
You might like to examine these two statements carefully, in light of
what happened in January 2018 when the company suffered the
‘largest ever trading liquidation in the UK’. Carillion was a
multinational company with over half its 43,000 staff working outside
the UK. An inquiry by the UK parliament suggested Carillion leaders
were guilty of ‘hubris and greed’ which resulted in a ‘relentless dash
for cash’. The leaders were also accused of misrepresenting the
financial situation of the business.
605
Activity
Given what you have learned about hubris and leadership, why do
you think these leadership development programmes didn’t enable
leaders to sustain Carillion by 2017/18?
606
Further information
Go to www.thehubrishub.com (accessed 1 October 2019).
Also see Sadler-Smith, E., Akstinaite, V., Robinson, G. and Wray, T.
(2017) ‘Hubristic leadership: a review’, Leadership, 13 (5): 525–48.
http://www.thehubrishub.com/
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Approaches to the Development of
Leadership in Others
This section covers activities that leaders can undertake to
develop leadership abilities in others, and thus enhance
leadership throughout different levels of their organization. These
are coaching and mentoring, and facilitating action learning. The
activities are unified in that they promote the development of
leadership through collaborative learning and its dissemination
throughout the organization.
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Coaching and mentoring
Downey (1999) proposes that ‘Coaching is the art of facilitating
the performance, learning and development of another person’. It
is said to support natural learning processes and is often cast as
an intervention to help the experiential learning cycle in an
organization work. By assuming the role of coach within an
organization, a leader takes the ‘coachee’ through the stages of
an experiential learning cycle in order to help him or her to learn
from experience and to plan future action.
Coaching is a form of intervention that brings about the
development of others within the organization. In contrast to
traditional, classroom-based approaches to learning, which can
often become disjointed (see Figure 12.1), coaching articulates
learning as ‘an open-ended process that analyses the present
situation, defines the performance goal, combines personal,
organizational and external resources and then implements a plan
for achieving that goal’ (King and Eaton, 1999). Leaders can act
as formal coaches to others, or use a coaching style of leadership
when this is appropriate (Goleman et al., 2002). Over the past 15
years or so, the discipline of coaching has evolved into ever-
closer alignment with leadership development (Korotov, 2016).
Through this, coaching and mentoring have become a key domain
for leadership development. Indeed, the developmental nature of
coaching is premised on a relational style of peer support, which
lends itself to a distributed understanding of leadership (see
Chapter 8) and how leaders and their function relate to the rest of
the organization.
The premise of leaders assuming the role of coach for leadership
development is based on the principle that significant and
sustainable learning is likely to come about through leaders
helping others with real organizational problems rather than
dealing with hypothetical situations in a training room. Coaching
and mentoring are essentially similar in nature and the terms are
often used interchangeably (Garvey et al., 2008). Despite this, a
difference can be found in that mentoring can be formal and
informal (Buell, 2004); the dynamic between mentor and mentee
609
is one of support and trust, with the purpose of the mentor helping
the mentee develop in various ways. The supportive nature of
mentoring processes has many benefits for both mentor, mentee
and their organization, including ‘the building of networks across
the company, knowledge exchange, building leadership capacity,
and developing a company culture that values learning,
knowledge sharing and creativity’ (Western, 2012: 49).
Leadership in Action: Making leaders visible in West Yorkshire Police
In 2014, West Yorkshire Police – the fourth largest police force in
England with over 8000 staff – commissioned an audit of its
organization culture. While leaders of the force had declared a vision
for the future based on delivering ‘world class policing’ to its
communities, not surprisingly, in the face of significant challenges
with cuts to its budget at a time of austerity, the audit revealed some
crucial findings with respect to leadership and overall morale. The
audit identified:
poor engagement with staff by leaders;
low trust in leaders;
a need for greater buy-in and visible support for change from
leaders.
A culture shift process was initiated to address such issues which
included a leadership programme to increase the visibility of leaders
while learning about key issues affecting staff morale.
Informed by the theory of relational leadership (see Cunliffe and
Eriksen, 2011), the programme was designed to allow leaders to hold
conversations with staff on a more regular basis, reflect on what they
found and learned, then share their learning with each other to reveal
key themes and possible interventions. This process could then be
continued. The initial target was two conversations a week over five
weeks.
The leaders soon revealed some of the key features of life in the
Force and recognized that by engaging in this process, they became
more visible to their staff. They identified important issues relating to
change, the pace of change and a silo mentality, but also the need
for face-to-face engagement as leaders. One leader commented, ‘I
need to avoid the temptation to think “I’m just too busy for that
610
today/this week”, and plan specific time to have the longer
discussions.’
A range of themes were identified and shared, reflecting both
positive and less positive aspects of the lived experience of their
staff, including pride and commitment, making a difference and
affecting public expectations, but also difficulties in pace of change,
loss of talent and workload pressure. While this was not especially
surprising to the leaders, the prominence of pride and commitment
shown by staff became apparent because they had taken the time to
engage more purposely with their staff which reinforced the value of
the exercise, the importance of providing ‘recognition for
commitment’ and leadership as a relational process.
In combination with other culture shift activities, the programme
began to help restore trust in the leaders. A key action agreed by
some leaders was to continue the process where ‘face-to-face
engagement and communication is key’. Generally, leaders found
that their staff were more positive than they first thought and that
negative comments were mostly reflections of frustrations about their
desire to do well. Through their conversations, in relationship,
leaders found ways to reconnect with their organizations and
contributed to an improvement in the culture. By 2017, further culture
audits identified supportive leadership, showing significant
improvements against national benchmarks. One leader identified,
‘The main points were personally engage, make time to talk and act
on what we can change/explain what we can’t.’
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Reflective question
Given the pros and cons of formal and informal methods of
leadership development, how would you evaluate the programme at
West Yorkshire Police?
612
To explore this topic further see:
Cunliffe, A.L. and Eriksen, M. (2011) ‘Relational leadership’, Human
Relations, 64 (11): 1425–49.
613
Action learning
Action learning has been defined as a process that involves a
small group of individuals working on real-life problems, learning
as individuals or as a team and taking action. Action learning has
become a key method for leadership development, especially in
relation to the promotion and practice of collaborative styles of
leadership and ‘leaderful practice’ (Raelin, 2005, 2006). It is often
seen as an approach to leadership development that expands the
one-to-one method of coaching and mentoring (be that internal or
executive coaching) to the group level, and is often seen as a
more natural and established process for problem solving,
building teams and developing leadership rather than the
individual leader who enacts the process (Carson, 2014). Leaders
in organizations can establish, or support the establishment of,
action learning sets, and in doing so they can help to grow the
leadership capabilities of others.
As an approach to solving real-life problems facing individuals and
groups of individuals, action learning is based on the equation L =
P + Q, where L stands for Learning, P is Programmed knowledge
and Q stands for Questions (Revans, 1980, 1982). ‘Programmed
knowledge’ refers to any data that might be available about the
issue that is being addressed. For example, if a problem
concerning poor levels of customer service was being considered,
data could include customer feedback reports and results from
internet searches on the causes of poor customer experiences.
The learner (leader/manager) would then bring this issue to an
action learning ‘set’ (a group of 5 or 6 other co-members) who
would then proceed to ask questions (without suggesting
solutions) so that the learner can frame his or her own reflections
and decide upon a series of actions to resolve the issue. This type
of learning is believed to be useful as it persists beyond the initial
problem and enables leaders to become more reflective and
questioning in their approach. The classic principles of action
learning are set out in Table 12.1.
Table 12.1 Revans’ classic principles of action
learning
614
Table 12.1 Revans’ classic principles of action learning
The requirement for action as a basis for learning.
Profound personal development resulting from
reflection upon action.
Working with problems (no right answers), not puzzles
(susceptible to expert knowledge).
Problems being sponsored and aimed at organizational
as well as personal development.
Action learners working in sets of peers (‘comrades in
adversity’) to support and challenge each other.
The search for fresh questions, and ‘Q’ (questioning
insight) takes primacy over ‘P’ (access to expert
knowledge).
Source: Pedler et al., 2005
The results of action learning initiatives can often be
transformational for all involved, not least because the real-world
emphasis on the problem solving helps develop participants’
reflective habits in the context of their organization. Further, due to
the non-hierarchical nature of action learning, leaders become
participants in the process (Smith, 2001) and in turn become
closer to an understanding of leadership as a collaborative co-
produced process.
615
Conclusion
In this chapter, we have given an overview of a number of forms
of leadership development, and in doing so suggested that it is
time for two key elements to be introduced to any activity that is
presented as leadership development. First, activities must work
with critical reflection to allow for the articulation of assumptions
about a leader’s work. This requires an openness on the leader’s
part to be challenged and learn. Second, leaders must embrace
learning approaches to leadership development through activities
such as coaching, mentoring and action learning. This dual path
for what we call ‘leadership development’ is the minimum
necessary requirement of those in senior positions in a world that
is prone to confusion, disruption and disconnection.
616
Chapter Review Questions
1. Why do you think competencies for leadership development are still
much in use today?
2. Are formal training programmes for leaders effective? Do such
programmes transfer to work practice? Do they encourage or
discourage hubris among leaders?
3. What is the case for leaders becoming coaches and mentors to their
followers?
Assignment Task: Leadership development
Leadership development is still mainly targeted at individuals in
organizations. This remains the case across the world. Assumptions
about leadership in Anglo-American cultures tend towards an
individualistic, leader-centric perspective, which is manifest in images
of ‘heroic leaders’ who become the recipient for leader development
considerations. This assumption seems to remain in place in
countries such as India. Peter Gronn (2002b) presented some key
ideas on what is known as ‘distributed leadership’, which we
examined in Chapter 8 . Over the last 15 years, there has emerged a
variety of configurations of leadership where leadership can be
considered to include pairs, trios, quads, teams, departments and
whole organizations. So, how can we give more consideration to
configurations of leadership in leadership development activities?
One starting place is http://distributedleadership.org (accessed 3
October 2019).
http://distributedleadership.org/
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Questions
1. Find out more about leadership configurations by checking the
articles we have mentioned.
2. Research approaches to leadership development that vary the
unit of analysis beyond individuals.
3. Prepare a short report on possible approaches for different
configurations.
Go Online
Explore the real world of leadership by reading this case study:
Now What? Now Who? A Mexican Small Family Business in
Transition
Further your knowledge and build your bibliography for
assignments by reading the recommended journal articles for this
chapter.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
video
Learn more about leadership in practice by watching the video
conversation for this chapter.
Beverley Petrossian and Adam Foskett from Skipton Building Society
discuss informal and formal development programmes and the
importance of having a culture of learning and support across all
levels of an organization. They also share how they have personally
benefited from Skipton’s leadership and coaching programmes.
The video can be found at https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
See the inside front cover for the access code and instructions.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
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Further Reading
Alvesson, M. and Spicer, A. (2016) The Stupidity Paradox: The
power and pitfalls of functional stupidity at work. London: Profile
Books.
Collinson, D. and Tourish, D. (2015) ‘Teaching leadership critically:
new directions for leadership pedagogy’, Academy of
Management Learning & Education, 14 (4).
Kelly, R. (2019) Constructing Leadership 4.0. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Pedler, M. (ed.) (2012) Action Learning in Practice. Farnham:
Gower.
619
Case Study: Leadership development at
Lazy K, Melbourne, Australia
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Background
The city of Melbourne is considered Australia’s technology hub and more
than half of the country’s top technology companies are located there.
With strong support from the state government in Victoria, Melbourne has
world-class universities and technical colleges, which has resulted in the
largest supply of graduates with technology skills in Australia. You can
find more about Victoria’s technology strategy at
www.invest.vic.gov.au/opportunities/technology/melbourne-s-strengths-in-
technology (accessed 3 October 2019).
One of the most recent and successful technology development
companies is Lazy K, a company that has experienced rapid growth in the
past 18 months. An influx of new staff has meant more managers have
been appointed, including at the level of the senior management team,
where two experienced executives have joined the four company
founders. The expansion has not been without difficulties – technical,
financial and managerial – and the company has struggled to develop and
implement standard procedures in certain key areas. Previously, it had
been able to operate on the basis of personal decisions, with differences
and disagreements being resolved in senior management team meetings,
but increasing size has made this informal approach too difficult. The
Chief Executive, Mark Baker, refers to most of these problems as
‘growing pains’, and encourages his colleagues to work on solving them
while at the same time recognizing that this is a phase the company is
going through, from which it will emerge.
One of the new executives, Sarah Wright, has been asked to take the
lead on proposing what can be done to improve the managerial and
organizational issues. She has consulted with colleagues and she has
some suggestions for change to structures, systems and procedures. She
also proposes some leadership development activities.
The leadership development activities are based on a series of two-day
workshops. Sarah proposes to structure these with some guided training
on topics such as systems thinking, teamworking, coaching skills,
resilience, some discussion about issues that members of the group may
bring to the meetings to resolve, and some action learning work. All
managers in Lazy K will take part in the sessions. The aim is not only to
develop the skills of individual leaders, but also to enhance the abilities of
the leaders to work together: to bring about leadership development for
the company. Sarah has talked about her proposals with Mark and he has
given his support to the approach.
621
The problem
However, the proposal hits resistance at senior management team level.
Bill Sanchez, one of the founders, and a software engineer by
background, objects to the expectation that all managers (including
himself) will take part. ‘I don’t need to know about some of these things,’
he says. ‘Coaching? Really? Besides, there’s real work to be done back
here. I don’t think the managers in my team will take to this, either.’
He finds an unlikely ally in Liv Vernon, another founder, who heads the
marketing side of the company. ‘Maybe we can ask managers to
nominate people for the programme, Sarah?’, she says. ‘After all, there’s
no point in trying to train people who don’t want to take part.’
622
Case exercise
Either individually or as a group, write a report addressing the following
questions:
1. Find out why some leaders like Bill Sanchez might resist leadership
development. Why is leadership development seen as ‘some of
these things’ by some leaders?
2. What is the evidence for the use of coaching in organizations like
Lazy K? How can you make a convincing argument for coaching in
this organization?
3. Some leaders do not value leadership development; they ‘don’t want
to take part’. Does this mean that they are not learning to lead or
manage? How can learning and development be made relevant to
sceptical leaders? Prepare a short report for Liv Vernon.
623
Sources of additional information
Becker, K. and Bish, A. (2017) ‘Management development experiences
and expectations: informal vs formal learning’, Education and Training, 59
(6): 565–78.
Boak, G. and Crabbe, S. (2019) ‘Experiences that develop leadership
capabilities’, Leadership and Organization Development Journal, 40 (1):
97–106.
Cook, P. (2006) ‘Management and leadership development: making it
work’, Industrial and Commercial Training, 38 (1): 49–52.
Milner, J., McCarthy, G. and Milner, T. (2018) ‘Training for the coaching
leader: how organizations can support managers’, Journal of
Management Development, 37 (2): 188–200.
Vince, R. and Pedler, M. (2018) ‘Putting the contradictions back into
leadership development’, Leadership and Organization Development
Journal, 39 (7): 859–72.
624
625
Part IV Contemporary Leadership
626
627
13 Followers, Communication and
Leadership
John Bratton
Helen Francis
‘Great followership has never been more important, if
only because of the seriousness of the global problems
we face and the fact that they must be solved
collaboratively, not by leaders alone but by leaders
working in tandem with able and dedicated followers.’
Warren Bennis, 2008: xxvi
628
Chapter Outline
Introduction
The nature of followership
Follower behaviour and personality
Follower behaviour and motivation
Dialogic, conversation and leadership
Conclusion
629
Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
set out the meaning of followership and its significance and role in
creating the leadership relationship;
explain how the process of following enhances understanding of the
leadership process;
understand the significance of personality theories for understanding
followership;
identify the different theoretical perspectives and paradoxes related
to follower motivation;
appreciate the role of dialogic communication in the process of
leading and the process of following.
video
To learn more about engagement and communication styles, don’t
forget to watch the video conversation for this chapter online.
630
Introduction
The models we consider in this chapter will advance your
understanding of the leadership process by studying the active
role of followers in co-creating the leadership relationship. The
success or failure of an organization is often unfairly attributed to
leaders, although followers may have been the true reason for the
success or failure. For example, when a football or rugby team is
winning or losing, the success or failure is often unfairly attributed
to the manager. However, a talented team may have a successful
season regardless of the manager. Conversely, a mediocre team
may have an abysmal season despite having a skilful manager. In
the workplace, followers are collaborators in the influence and
change process and they can take action, either individually or
collectively, to result in either positive or negative consequences
for their leaders. Followership and how it is related to the
leadership process are under-researched, but in the last decade
there are indications that this is changing and followership is
attracting greater attention (Northouse, 2019).
This chapter provides a critical understanding of the different
approaches to followers and their role within leadership as a
process. Notable contributions are taken from the field of
organizational behaviour. Doing so is a somewhat messy task, for
follower personality, motivation, perception and communication
are characterized by a vast array of different and often conflicting
theories. But by exploring some of these major theories, we hope
to show you how the insights can help you to understand better
the process of following and the leadership relationship.
631
The Nature of Followership
A significant development in leadership studies over the past 30
years is the focus on followers, which has taken follower-centric
approaches from the radical to mainstream (e.g. Bligh and Kohles,
2012; Carsten et al., 2010; Shamir et al., 2007). That traditional
leadership research and commentary have characterized
followers as passive elements is not surprising, as the primary
motivation guiding scholars has been leader-centric (Brown,
2018). Studying followers has its roots in the pioneering work of
Mary Parker Follett (1926), but there has been a long thread of
attention to followership that can be traced throughout the 20th
century, most notably in the labour process studies tradition
(Thompson, 1989). Research also gathered momentum during
this time, concerned with leader and follower behaviours in self-
managed teams (Bratton, 1992). Other relevant work includes
Graen and Uhl-Bien’s (1995) leader–member exchange and
Gronn’s (2002b) distributed leadership theory, which critiques the
leader–follower dichotomy and the reciprocal influence that occurs
within dyads and groups. As Bligh and Kohles observe, all these
scholars either explicitly or implicitly questioned the assumption
that leadership behaviours must occur solely within the leader
role, and that ‘leaders and followers are distinctly different actors
and roles with fundamentally distinct characteristics and
behaviours’ (2012: 206). The research on followers affirms the
obvious, that leadership requires followers, and any
understanding of leadership is incomplete without an
understanding of the agency of followers (Brown, 2018; Uhl-Bien
et al., 2014). The notion of followership challenges the dominant
individual-centred, psychological theories of leadership. It looks at
the process of leading through a social lens which focuses on
dynamic and mutually created relationships at the centre of the
leadership process.
632
From follower-centric to followership
Followership is a subdomain of study within leadership. Scholars
commonly recognize that followership is an evolving concept, but
in essence it is concerned with the behaviour of followers, which
results from the leader–follower influence relationship.
Followership eschews traditional notions of followers as passive,
compliant, featureless, inconsequential, and instead they are
viewed as proactive, resistant and important in the leadership
process. Follower-centric studies not only provide a more holistic
perspective, they have also helped to sharpen the analysis of both
leader and follower roles by challenging assumptions and raising
new questions (Weick, 2007). The problem with the assumption
that typical followership behaviours involve deference to the
leader gives rise to reduced responsibility-taking and initiative and
increased reliance on the leader for motivation (Uhl-Bien and
Pillai, 2007). Other scholars emphasize that followers can and do
more actively construct their roles as partners, participants, co-
leaders and co-followers (Carsten and Uhl-Bien, 2012; Peus et al.,
2012). These sentiments are also echoed by Collinson (2006),
who points out that followers are not passive ‘sheep’ but are
active, powerful players in the leadership process.
Kelly (1992) proposed an early explicit theory of followership. He
defined followers in terms of two dimensions: independent/critical
thinking and passive/active (see Figure 13.1). Kelly’s influential
model initiated a discussion around why followership was most
often associated with negative stereotypes, yet stopped short of
questioning the nature of followership and leadership (Bligh,
2011). Meindl’s (1995) work began to address this issue and
critiqued the societal fetishism with leadership. Howell and
Mendez (2008) offer three perspectives on followership (see Table
13.1):
Table 13.1 Howell and Mendez’s three
perspectives on followership
Table 13.1 Howell and Mendez’s three perspectives on
followership
633
Role BehavioursRole Behaviours
Interactive
Effective followers complement and support
the leader, demonstrate knowledge and
competence, and build collaborative
relationships.
Independent
Followers are treated as independent actors
in the workplace; followers substitute for
leaders in the context of more highly skilled
and knowledgeable followers.
Shifting
Followers and leaders alternate roles.
Followers monitor and interpret the situation
to respond to dynamic changes, participate
in decision making when appropriate,
challenge the team, and role-model effective
team behaviour.
Source: adapted from Bligh, 2011: 429
Carsten and Uhl-Bien (2012) distinguish followership approaches
from follower-centric approaches to leadership. In essence, rather
than considering how followers view their leaders and their
leaders’ behaviours, a focus on followership considers how
followers view their own behaviours and roles when engaging with
leaders. As human beings, followers have different life
experiences. The heterogeneity of followers leads to the related
criticism that the field of followership is still in its infancy as, to
date, mainstream leadership scholars tend to disregard three well-
known dimensions of the social world: class, gender and race.
Nonetheless, the work on followership represents an important
development in what we know about the leadership process, and
the role of follower personalities, motivations and emotions in
understanding leader–follower processes. We will now look at
some of these issues.
Leadership in Action: Whistleblowing as responsible followership?
634
In recent years, public interest has increased in whistleblowing. This
can be explained by a number of highly public cases around financial
scandals cloaked in legal orders not to publicly discuss events – so-
called ‘gagging clauses’ – and revelations at Cambridge Analytica.
We introduced the concept of whistleblowing in Chapter 5. Lewis
(2000) gives a broad definition of whistleblowing as encompassing
disclosure by employees and former employees of malpractice, as
well as illegal acts or emissions at work.
In 2018, the Observer newspaper published the first in a series of
stories known as the ‘Cambridge Analytica files’. The story began
when Christopher Wylie, a 28-year-old Canadian and former
research director at Cambridge Analytica, revealed how the company
had exploited Facebook data harvested from millions of people
across the world to profile and target them with political messages
and misinformation, without their knowledge or consent. The
revelations led to the British parliament grappling with a series of
questions, not least whether Britain’s electoral laws were still fit for
purpose. In 2019, it published an official report that drew on hours of
testimony from corporate leaders including Cambridge Analytica
directors and Facebook executives. The report referred to Facebook
as ‘digital gangsters’ and concluded that Silicon Valley’s tech
platforms were out of control. The report concluded that this applied
particularly to Facebook, which it said had treated parliament with
‘contempt’.
The account of Christopher Wylie from inside the data analytics
company – the details are still disputed – raises some highly relevant
issues: whether upper-echelon leaders demonstrate commitment to
ethical behaviour, that procedures for handling concerns exist and,
importantly, followers do not perceive they will be harassed or
victimized for engaging in those procedures.
635
Reflective questions
1. What whistleblowing cases have been reported in your
country? For example, in the UK there are, in addition to
Christopher Wylie, a number of well-known legal cases – view
these at www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/emp-
law/whistleblowing/cases (accessed 3 October 2019).
2. In your view, does whistleblowing constitute responsible
followership?
636
Source
Greenfield, P. (2018) ‘The Cambridge Analytica files: the story so far’,
Guardian, 26 March. Available at
www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/26/the-cambridge-analytica-
files-the-story-so-far (accessed 26 October 2019).
637
To explore this topic further see:
Alford, C.F. (2008) ‘Whistleblowing as responsible followership’, in
R.E. Riggio, I. Chaleff and J. Lipman-Blumen (eds), The Warren
Bennis Signature Series: The art of followership – how great
followers create great leaders and organizations. San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass, pp. 237–51.
Cadwalladr, C. and Graham-Harrison, E. (2018) ‘Revealed: 50 million
Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data
breach’, Guardian, 17 March. Available at
www.theguardian.com/news/series/cambridge-analytica-files
(accessed 11 April 2019).
Mannion, R. (2016) ‘Whistleblowing in the wind towards a socially
situated research agenda: a response to recent commentaries’,
International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 5 (6): 395–6.
Mannion, R. and Davies, H.T. (2015) ‘Cultures of silence and cultures
of voice: the role of whistleblowing in healthcare organizations’,
International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 4 (8): 503–5.
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Follower Behaviour and Personality
Growing interest in the concept of followership is driving the need
to reassess the role of individuals in terms of their capacity to
shape leader–follower relations. Emphasis is being placed
increasingly upon followers in terms of assessing the significance
of the personality of individuals, and how perception determines
individual behaviour.
Personality is the starting point for understanding individual
workplace behaviour. For our purposes, we define personality
here as a relatively enduring pattern of thinking, feeling and acting
that characterizes a person’s unique response to her or his
environment (Bratton, 2020). Today, there are at least 24
academics or groups of researchers who have contributed to
theories of personality. The coverage below therefore has to be
highly selective. To help, we can divide the study of personality
into two broad perspectives: nomothetic and ideographic.
Just as with leadership, there is a debate on whether an
individual’s personality is the result of heredity or is shaped by
social experiences. The nomothetic approach supports the view
that personalities are determined by heredity and can be
measured. This approach often describes personality in terms of
the measurable traits a person exhibits. The ideographic approach
is a dynamic perspective that takes into account not only unique
innate characteristics, but also how individual differences are
moulded within a ‘society’ context. As such, it suggests that
personality can be shaped and that both personality and
behaviour are determined by specific social experiences.
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Trait theory
Personality traits, you will recall, were examined as an explanation
of effective leadership in Chapter 6. The roots of trait theory of
personality go back almost two thousand years, when the ancient
Greeks used the humoral theory to explain individual differences
in personality (Martin et al., 2014). In the 20th century, consistent
with the nomothetic approach, psychologists have used the
statistical tool of factor analysis to identify clusters of specific
behaviours to describe basic personality traits. Hans Eysenck
(1916–1997) used factor analysis to devise his personality
framework. Other frameworks, such as the Big Five personality
(BFP), the Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI) and the Dark Triad
also explain certain aspects of an individual’s personality. We
discuss each below.
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The introversion–extroversion framework
Eysenck (1970) identified a range of personality characteristics in
terms of three basic factors or dimensions: introversion–
extroversion, stability–instability and psychoticism. These factors
are bipolar dimensions. Introversion is the opposite of
extroversion, stability is the opposite of instability (sometimes
called neuroticism), and psychoticism is the opposite of self-
control. Introversion refers to a reserved nature and the pursuit of
solitary activities. Introverts tend to be shy, risk avoiders, and to
shun social engagements. Extroverts have the opposite human
characteristics. They tend to be sociable, thrive on change and be
willing to take risks. Although Eysenck’s theory is relatively simple,
it attracted considerable attention from managers who saw the
appeal of trait classification as a tool in employment selection.
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The Big Five personality framework
We have already looked at the Big Five personality framework in
Chapters 6 and 8. Cattell and Kline (1977) devised this more
comprehensive range of traits that could be used as the
framework for explaining the significant variation in human
personality. As a reminder, the Big Five framework of personality
trait structure proposes that personality is organized around five
core dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion,
agreeableness and neuroticism. These Big Five personality
dimensions, represented by the handy acronym ‘OCEAN’ (or
‘CANOE’ if the words are reconfigured), are shown in Table 13.2.
Table 13.2 The Big Five personality model
Table 13.2 The Big Five personality model
Dimensions Lower-order traits
Openness
Artistically sensitive, intellectual
interests, reflective, insightful, curious,
imaginative
Conscientiousness
Efficient, reliable, responsible,
scrupulous, ethical, persevering,
organized, self-disciplined
Extroversion
Talkative, outgoing, candid,
adventurous, sociable, assertive,
gregarious, energetic
Agreeableness
Good-natured, forgiving, generous,
non-critical, warm, gentle, cooperative,
trusting, compassionate
Neuroticism
Anxious, self-pitying, nervous, tense,
hostile, excitable, emotionally unstable,
impulsive
Source: adapted from Bernstein et al., 2000
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Researchers using the Big Five model to predict a variety of key
aspects of job performance found that conscientiousness was ‘the
best predictor of task performance, citizenship and
counterproductive work behaviour’ (Bowling and Hershcovis,
2017: 317).
Pause and reflect
What personality traits have you observed in your everyday
interactions?
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The Myers-Briggs type indicator
Briggs and Myers (1987) used Eysenck (1970) and Jung’s (1971)
analysis of personality to develop the the Myers-Briggs type
indicator (MBTI), which is shown in Table 13.3. The MBTI uses a
100-question personality test to determine where a person lies
between a set of four personalities.
Table 13.3 The Myers-Briggs personality model
Table 13.3 The Myers-Briggs
personality model
Personality type
Extrovert (E) Introvert (I)
Sensing (S) Intuitive (N)
Thinking (T) Feeling (F)
Judging (J) Perceiving (P)
Source: Robbins and Judge, 2019.
A person might be an INTJ (Introvert–Intuitive–Thinking–Judging)
personality type or an ESTP or any of the 16 possible
combinations of traits. For example, an INTJ person is a reflective,
rational decision maker who excels when focusing on a specific
task. According to the Myers-Briggs Foundation, two of the three
most common MBTI personality types are introverts: ISFJ and
ISTJ (cited by Robbins and Judge, 2019: 140). Although the MBTI
model is one of the most popular instruments for identifying
personality types, this does not necessarily equate to actual
behaviour in the workplace because of various situational
constraints (Bowling et al., 2010; CIPD, 2013). For example,
preferenece for designing work around teams may be a function
of a manager’s personality, but there may be obstacles to work
teams due to employee resistance or physical space or
technological constraints. Recall also that national culture
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influences the way personality traits are not only measured but
can be constrained by societal values (Cullen et al., 2015).
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The Dark Triad
In western cultures, the Five Big personality traits are considered
socially desirable, but researchers have identified three
undesirable traits, which we all have in varying degrees:
Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy. Researchers have
labelled these ‘the Dark Triad’ because of their negative nature.
The personality trait of Machiavellianism describes the degree to
which a person displays emotional and pragmatic behaviours and
believes that ends justify the means (Spain et al., 2013).
Machiavellian tendencies are also associated with unethical
behaviour (O’Boyle et al., 2012). The personality trait of
narcissism describes the degree to which a person possesses a
pervasive pattern of grandiosity, entitlement, self-importance, a
tendency to exploit situations and perhaps to develop and
manipulate others (Morf and Rhodewalt, 2001). Studies suggest
that narcissists often ignore appraisal information that conflicts
with their high sense of self-importance, although they may be
more charismatic than others (Sosik et al., 2014). Psychopathy in
an organizational behaviour context is defined as lack of concern
for others, a lack of remorse when actions cause harm, and
impulsivity (O’Boyle et al., 2012). Research suggests that
psychopathy is useful in predicting workplace aggression such as
assault, bullying, incivility and mistreatment (Bowling and
Hershcovis, 2017).
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Social-cognitive theory
The social-cognitive approach understands personality to be
fundamentally rooted in life experience, social relationships and
the self-concept (which you will remember from Chapter 8 is how
we perceive ourselves through attitudes, values, perceptions and
emotions). Influential social-cognitive theorists include Rotter
(1966) and Bandura (1977, 1997), whose work possesses an
idiographic approach – the research focus is the individual rather
than on generalizing individual results to the entire population – in
that they posit that personality is acquired through learning in an
immediate social milieu.
Rotter argues that a person’s decision to engage in behaviour in a
given situation is determined by two factors: what the person
expects to happen following the action, and the value the person
places on the outcome. This is called the ‘reinforcement value’.
However, the reinforcement value may be affected by the value
followers place on the leader’s behaviour and the outcome.
Expectancy is our perception of how likely it is that certain
consequences will occur if we engage in a particular behaviour
within a specific situation. Reinforcement value is basically how
much we desire or dread the outcome that we expect the action to
produce.
For Rotter, people learn about how life’s rewards and
punishments are controlled. Differences in lived experiences
produce his concept of the internal–external locus of control.
People with an internal locus of control believe that life outcomes
are largely under their control and depend on their own efforts. In
contrast, people with an external locus of control believe that
events are largely beyond their control, and that their fate has less
to do with their own efforts. The locus of control is about self-
identity, which has important implications for personality in later
life. For example, there is evidence that an internal locus of
control (ILOC) is positively related to self-esteem, which refers to
that part of the self-concept concerned with how we view our own
self-worth based on an overall self-evaluation (Branden, 1998).
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For Bandura (1997), the concept of self-efficacy is particularly
important in this web of interaction and influence. Self-efficacy is
that part of the self that is concerned with a person’s beliefs about
her or his ability to perform the actions needed to achieve desired
outcomes. It determines whether a person will engage in a
particular behaviour, and also determines the extent to which she
or he will sustain that behaviour in the face of adversity. For
instance, if you believe that you are qualified for a job at the BBC,
you are likely to apply for an interview. Even if you are
unsuccessful, you are likely to apply to another TV company
because you are confident of your abilities. High self-efficacy can
facilitate both the frequency and the quality of behaviour–social
interactions, and low self-efficacy can hamper both (Martin et al.,
2013). Thus, self-efficacy beliefs are always specific to particular
situations.
Pause and reflect
What social factors do you feel may be more important for shaping
personality? How might this impact the leadership relationship?
Both positive and negative aspects of personality traits matter
significantly to human interactions in the workplace. Researchers
have focused on traits to explain effective leadership, but it is also
argued that if dysfunctional aspects of personality can affect
leaders, then they can affect followers as well and therefore
account for the quality of leader–follower relations (Clements and
Washbush, 1999; Kelly, 1992). As mentioned above, Kelly’s
conceptualization of followership conceives follower identity and
behaviour by examining two independent dimensions. One
dimension captures thinking style (independent, critical thinking as
opposed to dependent, uncritical thinking); the second dimension
captures overall level of engagement (active as opposed to
passisve). In what is strikingly similar to Blake and Mouton’s
(1964) influential leadership grid (see Chapter 6), Kelly’s two-
dimensional model shows five different follower styles, passive,
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alienated, conformist, pragmatist and effective, as can be seen in
Figure 13.1.
Passive followers do not think critically, rely on leaders to do the
thinking, require constant direction and are not particularly active
participants. Alienated followers are deep and independent
thinkers who are sceptical about the organization and do not
willingly commit to any leader. Conformists are more participative
than passive followers, but follow instructions and do not provide
particular challenge. Pragmatic followers are middling in their
independence, engagement and general contribution. Effective
followers are exemplary in almost all ways, excelling at all tasks,
engaging strongly with the group and providing intelligent yet
sensitive support and challenge to the leader. Followers
occupying the upper-right quadrant are effective followers, and act
as ‘creative catalysts’ who stimulate others to generate ideas and
inspire others toward creative thinking and innovation in
organizations (Jaussi et al., 2008).
Figure 13.1 A two-dimensional taxonomy of
follower behaviour (adapted from Kelly, 1992,
and cited in Bratton et al., 2005)
Collinson (2006) also conceives follower identity and power in
terms of conformist, resistant and ‘dramaturgical’ identities. The
dramaturgical perspective, which is associated with the work of
the Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman (1922–1982),
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uses the theatrical stage as its key organizing metaphor. The
notion that ‘all the world is a stage and all the people players’
sums up dramaturgy. Imagine yourself as an artistic director
observing what goes on in the theatre and stage of everyday
organizational life; you are engaging in dramaturgical analysis, the
study of leader and follower interactions in terms of theatrical
performance. Followers’ identities, while over-simplifying follower
behaviour and power, do provide a useful starting point for
explaining the causes of a low-quality leader–follower relationship.
For example, a ‘directive’ leader with an exemplary follower is
unlikely to foster a high-quality relationship with that particular
subordinate. The theory suggests that understanding and
predicting the effect of leadership on followers require an analysis
of followers’ personality traits and of the specific leader–member
exchange relationships for each follower.
Critical Insight: FollowERship and THE Neoliberal Self
Although followership is an emergent concept, there are a number of
critical views on followership. Collinson (2006), for example, posits
that leadership scholars need to develop a much deeper
understanding of follower identities and of the complex ways that
these may interact with leaders’ identities. Alford (2008) examines
the need for exploring the dissent of followers, particularly whether
whistleblowing is ‘responsible followership’. Stech (2008) challenges
the dominant paradigms around power relations and followership.
The British economist Paul Mason (2019) suggests that
neoliberalism has forged new behaviours and attitudes – respect for
money, freedom defined as a form of consumer choice, the
obsession with global brands and celebrities – creating what
sociologists describe as the ‘neoliberal self’.
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Activity
Read: Collinson, D. (2006) ‘Rethinking followership: a post-
structuralist analysis of follower identities’, The Leadership Quarterly,
17 (2): 179–89.
Mason, P. (2019) ‘Creating the neoliberal self’, in Clear Bright Future:
A radical defence of the human being. London: Allen Lane, pp. 37–
55.
Question: In an era of neoliberalism, how does knowledge of
follower personality and self-identity help us understand the complex
ways in which followers may interact with leaders? (Hint: see also
this chapter’s Leadership in Action feature.)
Kelly’s notion of effective followers has clear positive implications
for organizational leaders. It is they who have the responsibility for
fostering and maintaining healthy leader–follower relationships. It
places no burden on followers to go within themselves and identify
the negative aspects of their behaviour. The Dark Triad and its
effects, however, are not confined to leaders, but are also evident
in followers. Followers, however, are not always forthcoming (or
even aware of) their ‘Dark Triad’ and may have a hidden agenda
they seek to gratify (Clements and Washbush, 1999).
Dysfunctional follower attributes include feelings of resentment
and envy (Hirschhorn, 1997), a ‘controlling’ or ‘passive-
aggressive’ disposition (Kets de Vries, 1989), ‘workplace
aggression’ (Bowling and Hershcovis, 2017) and ‘Machiavellian’
personality traits. These can all have serious consequences for
the health of leader–follower relations. It is suggested, for
example, that an individidual employee who attempts to gain
advantage by flattering influential managers or behaves in a
servile manner – a sycophant – may possess a high Machiavellian
personality and deprive a leader of feedback to allow the current
leader to fail, for the purpose of their own self-advancement. The
Big Five and the Dark Triad framework and others remind us that
personality traits can be both positive and negative and matter a
great deal to leader–follower relations and performance.
Importantly, leadership theorists and leaders need to develop
sensitivity to a broad spectrum of concepts of follower attributes
651
that are pertinent to leader–follower relations, including
personality, self-esteem, self-efficacy and their lived experiences.
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Follower Behaviour and Motivation
Implicit in the notion that leadership is about movement or change
is the ability to motivate people. Psychologists tend to agree that
motivation is by definition concerned with direction, the choice of a
particular action, the intensity expended on it and the duration of
energy. These dimensions can be found in Myers et al.’s definition
of motivation: ‘[It is] a choice about where to direct your energy,
how persistently, and how much effort to put in to achieving a
goal’ (2010: 543, emphasis added). Similarly, Pinder (2014)
defines motivation as the processes that accounts for an
individual’s inner forces of energy that initiate, shape, sustain and
direct behaviour toward attaining a goal. In other words,
motivation is responsible for why people decide to do something,
how much effort they are willing to put into it, and how long they
are going to sustain the level of effort. Theories of motivation are
embedded in human resource management (HRM) practices as
such practices measure both the physical and subjective
dimensions of people and offer a technology that aims to render
people and their behaviour predictable and calculable (see
Chapters 3 and 11).
The topic of motivation is of interest to any observer of follower
behaviour. But, as with other aspects of organizational life,
motivation has been studied from a variety of perspectives. As we
examine these, do keep in mind Chapter 4 and our discussion of
culture, and that theories of motivation have been developed
mainly in the USA, a western culture, and that the level of
motivation varies between people and within people at different
times. Most mainstream approaches to motivation can be
categorized as either content or process theories (see Table 13.4).
Content theories assume that there exists a common set of basic
needs which energises or motivates individuals, whereas process
theories attempt to identify and explain how work-related
behaviours are stimulated or hindered. Additionally, work
motivation theories derive from cognitive theories, which argue
that individuals are conscious of their goals and they behave
rationally and with purposefulness. They also derive from
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behaviouralist theories, which posit that individual behaviour is
reflexive and responds to positive or negative workplace stimuli.
The categorizations being used here will help you navigate
through a myriad of theories.
Table 13.4 A classification of motivation
theories
Table 13.4 A classification of motivation theories
Content theories Process theories
Hierarchy of needs
(Maslow, Alderfer) Equity theory (Adams)
Two-factor need theory
(Herzberg)
Expectancy theory (Vroom,
Porter, Lawler)
Achievement needs theory
(McClelland) Goal-setting theory (Locke)
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Content theories: followers with needs
Maslow’s (1954) hierarchy of needs theory is probably the most
well known of the content theories. He proposed that people have
a built-in set of five basic needs: physiological, safety-security,
social-belongingness, self-esteem and self-actualization.
The theory claims that lower-level needs (e.g. physiological and
safety) are the most important, but once satisfied cease to
motivate employee behaviour; only the need at the next level up
the hierarchy will activate motivation. Leaders need to ensure that
lower-order needs are satisfied before appealing to their followers’
higher-order needs. Although Maslow’s idea is easy to understand
and is intuitively logical, the consensus among workplace
researchers is that the scientific evidence does not validate the
theory (Pinder, 2014).
Herzberg et al.’s (1959) two-factor theory of motivation follows the
humanistic route established by Maslow, suggesting that some
aspects of a job have potential to motivate behaviour while other
aspects of a job are more likely to have a negative influence on
follower behaviour and performance. Motivating drives are
associated with factors that are instrinsic to the work itself and are
connected to the actual content of a person’s job, such as the
potential for individual growth. Hygiene factors, on the other hand,
are linked with factors that are extrinsic from the work itself and
are associated with an acceptable work environment, including
working conditions, pay and interpersonal relationships.
Herzberg’s two-factor theory suggests how an employee’s job can
be redesigned to incorporate more motivators. And not
surprisingly, a theory which describes both what motivates
employees and how jobs can be redesigned to promote employee
wellbeing and improve performance, has attracted much attention
from organization and leadership academics (e.g. Hackman and
Oldham, 1980; Parker, 1998). Critics have questioned the
methodology and the independent effect of motivational and
hygiene factors; for example, a study found that both motivational
and hygiene factors can produce job satisfaction and
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dissatisfaction (Bassett-Jones and Lloyd, 2005; Schneider and
Locke, 1971).
McClelland’s (1961) theory assumed that individuals are
motivated by three needs:
The need for achievement (nAch) is the drive to excel, to
exceed expectations.
The need for power (nPow) is the need to change the
behaviour of others.
The need for affiliation (nAff) is the desire for close
interpersonal relationships.
Research has focused primarily on the need for achievement
(nAch). According to McClelland, high achievers tend to set goals
that are moderately difficult, to seek out feedback on their
performance, and to be generally preoccupied with
accomplishment. High achievers also like to set goals that
demand stretching themselves physically or mentally.
McClelland’s theory has research support across cultures (van
Emmerik et al., 2010). And teams composed of employees with
high nAff tend to exhibit the most open communication,
experience the least amount of interpersonal conflict, and achieve
high performance. Both nPow and nAff tend to be closely related
to leadership effectiveness. Effective leaders may be low in their
need for affiliation and high in their need for power (Chun and
Choi, 2014).
The implications of McClelland’s work are significant for theorizing
on the psychological contract (covered in Chapters 1, 5 and 7).
For example, an individual with high achievement needs is likely
to value highly an unwritten understanding of advancement,
enhanced responsibilities and challenging job tasks. Applying
McClelland’s theory to the workplace, however, is fraught with
difficulties, not least because the degree to which individuals have
each of the three needs is difficult to quantify (Robbins and Judge,
2019).
Alderfer’s (1972) ERG theory posits three categories of needs:
existence (E), relatedness (R) and growth (G). Existence needs
include nutritional, safety and material requirements. Relatedness
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needs involve an individual’s relationships with family and friends
and colleagues at work. Growth needs reflect a desire for
personal psychological growth and development. These three
core needs are similar to the needs advocated by Maslow (see
Table 13.5).
Alderfer’s ERG theory differs in a number of respects from
Maslow’s need theory. First, it does not assume a progression up
a hierarchy. Alderfer suggests that needs may be activated
simultaneously, and he believed that it was better to think in terms
of a continuum, from existence needs to growth needs, with
individuals moving along it in either direction. This suggests that
unsatisfied needs become less rather than more important;
Maslow assumed the opposite. Second, Alderfer’s theory
suggests that growth needs are actually more important when
satisfied, whereas Maslow argued that when fulfilled a need
becomes less important to an individual. One prescription that
stems from Alderfer’s work is that teams which satisfy followers’
relatedness needs can continue to motivate followers, and are not
necessarily superseded by growth needs. If correct, it would make
it easier for team leaders to satisfy the needs of their followers.
Table 13.5 Comparison of Maslow’s and
Alderfer’s needs theories
Table 13.5 Comparison of Maslow’s
and Alderfer’s needs theories
Need hierarchy theory ERG theory
Self-actualization Growth
Self-esteem
Social Relatedness
Safety Existence
Physiological
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Although Maslow’s, Herzberg’s, McClelland’s and Alderfer’s need
theories have been popularized in the mainstream organizational
behaviour texts, from a followership perspective they do have
several limitations. The theories are conceptually flawed; they do
not provide leaders with a clear, unambiguous basis for predicting
specific follower behaviour to satisfy a particular need; and
empirical findings contradict their motivational assumptions.
Critics have also pointed out that the four theories are strongly
informed by the Anglo-American culture of individualism, and
there is an assumption that needs motivate regardless of gender,
ethnicity or sexual orientation (Bendl et al., 2017).
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Followers with choices
Process theories of motivation focus on how we make conscious
choices that lead to a specific work behaviour, taking into account
an individual’s cognitive processes in determining his or her level
of effort, the outcomes of their efforts, whether those efforts will
result in a desired goal, and whether the outcomes are equitable.
Here we briefly examine three contemporary process theories:
equity theory, expectancy theory and goal-setting theory.
Equity theory, which we discussed in Chapter 8 as a potential
antecedent of the LMX relationship, is based on the premise that
an employee measures equity by looking at the effort other
employees are putting into their work and the resultant rewards
they receive and comparing their own experience (Guerrero et al.,
2015). Equity theory holds that people engage in ‘social
comparison’ (Carrell and Dittrich, 1978), a process resulting in
feelings of equity or inequity which lead followers to form
judgements on the value or ‘valence’ of a reward or outcome.
Adams’s (1965) theory contains three central components: inputsy
(the effort an individual makes); outputs (extrinsic and intrinsic
rewards from the employer); and comparison with others. When
an employee perceives others receiving a similar ratio of inputs
(e.g. hours worked, time studying for qualifications, relevant work
experience) to outputs (e.g. pay, status, promotion) to themselves,
they experience equity. When they perceive an input–output ratio
that either favours other employees (underpayment) or relevant
others (e.g. workers in another, similar company) or themselves
(overpayment) they experience inequity, which is assumed to be a
sufficiently unpleasant experience to motivate changes in
behaviour; they exert less effort or engage in ‘misbehaviour’ such
as work stoppage or sabotage, or they leave the organization. It is
important therefore to ground equity theory in the reality of
societal effects of inequalities in contemporary everyday life
(Wilkinson and Pickett, 2018). Equity theory too has practical
implications for reward management (see Chapter 11); for
example, the huge gender pay disparity found between male and
female sport. The message for managers is that they must be
659
careful to avoid setting pay rates which cause employees to feel
underpaid relative to others either in the same workplace (internal
equity) or to comparison groups outside the organization (external
inequity). Equity theory’s hypothesis therefore serves as an
important precursor to the study of distributive justice (Greenberg,
2011). Support for equity theory among researchers is mixed.
Inequalities caused by overpayment do not seem to significantly
affect workplace behaviour (Mowday and Colwell, 2003). There
are also cross-cultural concerns with the theory’s propositions
(Bolino and Turnley, 2008). Importantly, real or perceived inequity
may lead to relationship difficulties between leaders and followers.
Pause and reflect
You may have experience as a worker or customer of the new ‘on-
demand’ or gig economy. How does the gig economy change the
nature of the employment relationship? What is the equity or inequity
effect on the motivation of ‘followers’ in the gig economy?
Expectancy theory is ‘one of the most widely accepted
explanations of work motivation’ (Robbins and Judge, 2019: 264).
The explanatory theory argues that the motivation to exert a high
level of effort is determined by an individual’s expectation that
performance behaviour will result in extrinsic or intrinsic rewards,
multiplied by the preference that person has for that outcome.
Vroom’s (1964) theory focuses on three work-based relationships:
Expectancy: the effort–performance relationship. The
probability perceived by the employee that her or his
behaviour will lead to a particular performance outcome.
Instrumentality: the performance–reward relationship. The
perceived probability that the performance will lead to those
valued outcomes or rewards.
Valence: The perceived reward–personal goals relationship
can be positive, negative or neutral.
The three relationships are displayed in Figure 13.2:
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Figure 13.2 Expectancy theory
Effective performance appraisal can help a manager apply
expectancy theory to increase effort by each employee (see
Chapters 9 and 11); for example, by increasing the employee’s
perception that her or his expenditure of effort will result in
completing the task successfully – the effort–performance
relationship –perhaps through additional training. Alternatively,
appraisal can increase the employee’s perception that improved
performance will lead to desired rewards – the performance–
reward relationship. Finally, a manager can engage in
transactional leadership (covered in Chapter 7) by increasing the
attractiveness of the reward. This could be achieved by offering
promotion or additional vacation days or redesigning the job to
give greater responsibility rather than a pay increase – the reward
–personal goal relationship. Expectancy theories represent a far
more nuanced approach and enable leaders to better understand
the complexity of followers’ work motivation.
Finally, goal-setting theory proposes that both motivation and
performance will be high if individuals set and work toward goals
that are challenging and where feedback is given on performance
(Locke, 1968). The model contains four major assumptions:
challenging goals will produce higher performance than less
challenging goals;
specific challenging goals will produce higher performance
than no goals or vague goals, such as ‘do your best’;
goal-setting with feedback on goal attainment will produce
higher performance than goal-setting alone;
follower participation in goal-setting will produce higher
performance than no engagement. In other words, an
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employee has to feel some ownership of the goal if the goal is
to influence work motivation.
Goal-setting is a popular technique used in performance
management (see Chapter 13). To faciliate achievement, it is
posited that goals should be SMART – specific, measurable,
agreed upon, realistic and time-bound (Locke and Latham, 2006);
that goal-setting should be part of the individual’s action plan
(Grant, 2012); that goals should be flexible and that constructive
feedback is crucial so that individuals can gauge the effect of their
efforts (Sorrentino, 2006). For leaders and managers, the plethora
of motivation theories can appear mystifying. In short, they should
identify the needs and ambitions of each employee, the outcomes
each wants, while avoiding any form of stereotyping, and
recognize that followers differ in their personality, needs and
expectations.
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Dialogic Conversation and
Leadership
Image 13.1 While a monologic mode of
communication is useful for imparting
information, it is not usually the most
appropriate way of securing consent or
creative ideas from organizational members.
In contrast, a dialogic mode of
communication is driven by an exchange of
views and is central to the process of
followership.
It has long been accepted that communication is essential to
leadership. Conventional treatment of communication treats
language as something that simply describes what is going on in
organizational life rather than actively shaping individual and
organizational behaviours (Francis, 2007; Tsouskas, 2005). A
monologic mode of communication, the process of information
transfer in a top-down fashion, from upper-echelon leaders to
followers, while useful for imparting information, is not usually the
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most appropriate way of securing consent or creative ideas from
organizational members.
In contrast, a dialogic mode of communication is driven by an
exchange of views. An explicit or implicit premise underpinning a
dialogic mode of communiction is the notion of conversational
practice and the crucial role of language and conversation in
shaping organizational realities (Barrett et al., 1995). The
leadership relationship has been conceptualized as being
embedded in an evolving process of leading and following, and as
‘dialogic’ focusing on communication processes between
participants (Reitz, 2015). Broadly, dialogic theories cluster into
two conceptual streams: prescriptive and descriptive (e.g.
Escobar, 2009). We will consider them each in turn.
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Prescriptive approach to dialogue
Prescriptive accounts treat dialogue as an ideal type of
conversation, structured with its own set of guiding principles
distinct from conventional forms of discussion, argument and
debate (Barge and Little, 2002). For Bohm, ‘collective thought’ is
foundational to our understanding of dialogue as a specialized
form of conversation. It is characterized as a form of free talking
and thinking amongst fairly small groups (Bohm, 1987, 1996) and
described as a ‘reflective conversational mode that can enable
leaders and managers to alter their mental models’ (Jacobs and
Heracleous, 2005: 342). Gryn explains that, conceptually, in a
‘Bohm dialogue’ format participants sit in a circle so they can
observe each other’s body language. There is no leader or
facilitator, no fixed rules, nor is there any fixed agenda or specific
goals. Focus is given to processes that enable a space where
participants feel psychologically safe to engage in an open,
natural and non-judgemental flow of conversation, underpinned by
the concept of ‘suspension’:
What is essential here is the presence of the spirit of
dialogue, which is, in short, the ability to hold many
points of view in suspension, along with a primary
interest in the creation of a common meaning. (Bohm,
1987, cited by Gryn, 2003: 94)
Seen from this point of view, Shein (2003: 30) argues that an
important goal of dialogue is to enable the group to reach a
‘higher level of consciousness and creativity through the gradual
creation of a shared set of meanings and a “common” thinking
process’. Shein presents a ‘road map’ of conversation in terms of
two basic paths (see Figure 13.3). Within this framework, the
underlying shift to a dialogic conversation is identified when
participants understand the value of suspending their own ideas
and opinions in ways that embrace everyone’s point of view fully
and non-judgementally.
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Figure 13.3 Shein’s ‘road map’ of conversation
Four dialogue practices – listening, respecting, suspending and
voicing – have been defined (Isaacs, 1993b, 1999). Dialogue is
activated within organizations when change is desired, based on
the premise that people can be trained in communication skills as
well as the processes, such as action learning (discussed
previously in Chapter 12), that allows for a ‘safe space’ for
dialogue in which people can offer ideas and criticism without fear
of reprisal (Barge and Little, 2002).
At a theoretical level, this normative ideal of reflective dialogue
can be used as an analytical concept to explore the processes of
product innovation. It is argued that managers can play a ‘key role
in inviting people in a safe, open setting in which listening and
understanding are valued by senior people’ (Jacobs and
Heracleous, 2005: 349). Creating a learning context of this kind is
not easy, however; it requires, among other things, time, space
and the development of group facilitating skills, and the alternate
‘descriptive’ perspective on dialogue foregrounds a more dynamic
view of organizational life.
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Descriptive approach to dialogue
The descriptive approach to dialogue is rooted in Bakhtin’s work
(1984). It argues that people acquire ‘dialogic wisdom’ to cope
with multiple voices in organizational life (Barge and Little, 2002).
The approach emphasizes the importance of enabling practices to
create a new dialogic ‘tone’ to everyday leadership conversations.
In doing so, a key challenge is creating a balance between
advocacy (a right to hold to one’s position and objectives) and
inquiry (a genuine openness to the position and interests of
others) (see Figure 13.4).
Figure 13.4 Balancing advocacy and inquiry
In striving for a better balance between advocacy and inquiry,
dialogic conversational practices seek to achieve a mutuality of
gains in the employment relationship, creating potential for
conversations that allow an openness to change, embrace
uncertainty and afford opportunities to work with tensions
creatively (Francis and Keegan, 2018).
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Building leader and follower communicative
competencies
There are a number of models that focus on the leader’s role in
‘leading’ workplace conversations. Each in different ways seeks to
develop ‘conversational leadership’, a process which makes
explicit use of conversation to cultivate collective learning and
organizational change (Gambetti and Biraghi, 2015). For instance,
Kantor’s (2012) ‘four-player model’ claims to enhance individual
leaders’ communicative competencies, and it involves balancing
four speech actions (see Table 13.6). Participants learn about
their common behavioural tendencies (action stances) that they
tend to hold when in conversation. They also learn about
advocacy and inquiry, how to expand their communicative
repertoire and how ‘operating systems’ shape conversation (i.e.
the rules participants implicitly follow and expect others to follow).
Table 13.6 Kantor’s model of structural
dynamics
Table 13.6 Kantor’s model of structural dynamics
Action stances MOVE (aspect of advocacy): initiates
action or suggests direction, for example
‘Let’s start the meeting, shall we?’
FOLLOW (aspect of inquiry): validates
and completes an action, for example
‘I’m ready also’.
OPPOSE (aspect of advocacy):
challenges and corrects the action. It
blocks the way of moves and follows:
‘Hold on. Ralph’s not here yet. We need
our CEO.’
BYSTAND (aspect of inquiry): provides a
perspective on the overall interaction,
and attempts, in some way, to reconcile
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competing actions: ‘It’s no secret that
he’s typically late. Are there reasons you
should not confront him directly?’
Communication
domains
AFFECT: feelings and connections
between individuals, for example
‘Whenever Ralph forgets time, he leaves
me with a sense that he doesn’t care
about how it affects me.’
MEANING: attends to ideas and ways of
understanding, for example ‘When he
gets immersed in an idea, he forgets the
whole world.’
POWER: takes on action and issues of
completion, achievement and influence,
for example ‘We can get things done
while we are waiting. Let’s do what we
can.’
Operating
system
CLOSED: negative loops predominate;
speakers regulated by formal rules and
orient themselves to the larger system.
OPEN: governed by both positive and
negative feedback loops; speakers are
regulated by one another and orient
themselves towards the collective.
RANDOM: regulated by positive
feedback loops; it encourages speakers
to self-regulate.
Source: Kantor, 2012: 9–10
In contrast to individual leader development (see Chapter 14),
leadership development has been defined as a process that
expands the collective capacity of organizational members to
engage effectively in leadership roles and processes (McCauley
et al., 1998, cited by Day, 2000). From this perspective, groups of
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leaders and followers work together in meaningful ways – to
‘learn’ their way out of problems (Day, 2000: 582). Appreciative
inquiry (AI), which seeks to engage all stakeholders in self-
determined change, helps facilitate this kind of ‘bottom-up’
conversational approach to leadership (Bushe and Marshak,
2009; Francis et al., 2012). However, implementing conversational
leadership remains a challenge (Groysberg and Slind, 2012), not
least because practitioners do not give sufficient attention to equal
rights of participation (Boje, 2008), and to achieve a ‘consensus’
that contentious voices are marginalized (Jabri et al., 2008).
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Conclusion
In this chapter we have discussed how followership has been
conceptualized and its importance to leadership. Leaders and
followers together co-produce the leadership relationship.
Through a process of question and answer, the interrogation of
ideas, shared understanding and advocacy, each follower affects
and is affected by the leader. Effective leaders are those that
understand the process of following and direct their attention to
the differences that might exist between themselves and each of
his or her followers, rather than treating followers as a
homogeneous group. An important aspect of attending to
differences is to understand how personality affects social
relations. Equity and expectancy theories also provide a nuanced
explanation of why followers are (or are not) motivated in their
jobs. It should come as no surprise that understanding what
motivates followers is complex and theories of motivation cannot
universally be applied.
The quality of the leadership relationship is inextricably bound to
the communication process. In so doing, we have examined the
notion of ‘conversational leadership’ involving dialogic
interventions to promote change. A common theme running
through the models is skill: both in accurately interpreting human
interactions and in designing a work environment that motivates
followers, which foster authentic dialogic conversation and high-
quality social relations.
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Chapter Review Questions
1. What is meant by the term ‘followership’ and how, if at all, does it
increase your understanding of the process of leading?
2. Discuss two ways that leaders can increase follower motivation by
changing the rewards–personal goals relationship.
3. How does the concept of dialogic mode of communication enhance
our understanding of the leadership relationship?
Assignment Task: Effective follower leadership
Theories of followership highlight a wide range of issues around the
role played by personalities, motivation and perceptions in
understanding dynamic leader–follower relations, and follower
perceptions of leadership and followership. Read Michelle Bligh’s
chapter ‘Followership and followership-centred approaches’, in A.
Bryman, D. Collinson, K. Grint, B. Jackson and M. Uhl-Bien (eds),
The SAGE Handbook of Leadership. London: SAGE, pp. 425–36.
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Questions
1. How do both leaders and followers play a role in managing
leader–follower processes?
2. What contexts are particularly ripe for constructions of effective
follower leadership?
Go Online
Further your knowledge and build your bibliography for
assignments by reading the recommended journal articles for this
chapter.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
video
Learn more about leadership in practice by watching the video
conversation for this chapter.
Helen Francis and Catherine Thomson from Edinburgh Napier
University discuss how language and communication can shape
leadership and engagement in the workplace. Helen expands on the
HealthOrg case study to explain engagement tensions, and
Catherine shares how her use of Kantor’s model has helped the
leaders she’s supported.
The video can be found at https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
See the inside front cover for the access code and instructions.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
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Further Reading
Alford, C.F. (2008) ‘Whistleblowing as responsible followership’, in
R.E. Riggio, I. Chaleff and J. Lipman-Blumen (eds), The Warren
Bennis Signature Series: The art of followership – how great
followers create great leaders and organizations. San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass, pp. 237–51.
Alrø, H. and Dahl, P.N. (2015) ‘Dialogic group coaching –
inspiration from transformative mediation’, Journal of Workplace
Learning, 27 (7): 501–13.
Bligh, M.C. (2011) ‘Followership and follower-centred
approaches’, in A. Bryman, D.L. Collinson, K. Grint, B. Jackson
and M. Uhl-Bien (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Leadership.
London: SAGE, pp. 425–36.
Pinder, C.C. (2014) Work Motivation in Organizational Behavior.
New York: Psychology Press.
Suda, L. (2013) ‘In praise of followers’. Paper presented at PMI
Global Congress 2013 – North America, New Orleans, LA.
Newtown Square, PA: Project Manage-ment Institute. Available at
www.pmi.org/learning/library/importance-of-effective-followers-
5887 (accessed 9 April 2019).
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Background
HealthOrg is a UK healthcare charity that employs 700 staff to provide
social services and training aimed at the promotion of mental health in the
workplace and the wider community. The organization has become
increasingly reliant on local government contracts and is under growing
pressure to do ‘more with fewer resources’ in the face of government
austerity measures and competition from private service providers.
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The problem
A core organizational paradox is emerging of cost control and quality of
customer service, indicative of the voluntary sector as a whole. In this
context, an engagement survey was launched which captured people’s’
experiences of workplace tensions; for example, how they pursue
meaningfulness in their work, and the kind of support they get from their
line manager. Results point to a strong service orientation to work,
typically couched as making a ‘real difference’ to customers’ lives. This
was infused, however, with tensions of engagement at task and
organizational levels (see Table 13.7).
Table 13.7 Paradoxical tensions
Table 13.7 Paradoxical tensions
Tensions at
task level
Social care and (regulatory) paperwork:
Meaningful (service) work depends on getting
contracts, and contracts depend on staff being
able to carry out procedural tasks that provide less
meaning to workers (i.e. ‘paperwork’).
Service excellence and service efficiency: ‘Quality
service’ is challenged by growing local authority
budget cuts, marked by reduced contact hours for
service users, and expectations to do ‘more with
less’. New contracts fall short of the standards care
staff are used to (and want to provide) alongside
growing work pressures.
Tensions at
organizational
level
Commercial identity v. service identity (with
external clients): Tensions are rooted in a re-
orientation towards ‘more commercial’ values in
order to reduce the current reliance on government
funding and/or meet the requirements for
government funding of new service contracts.
Responses to tensions were clustered into two main themes: ‘flailing’ and
‘muddling through’.
Flailing: A defensive ‘either/or’ response, marked by lack of conversations
about competing tasks/identities, and associated stressors. A typical
response would be:
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‘Pressure from HealthOrg to be completing more and more
paperwork and more and more regulations – this is having a real
impact on us being able to do the main job we are here to do, i.e.
supporting people.’ (Worker)
‘My perception is that HealthOrg is focussing all its attention on
their profile, media work, fundraising and campaigns, and this
sometimes feels that they are ignoring, forgetting about the
services and the people we support on a daily basis.’ (Worker)
Data suggested that a sense of ‘them and us’ developing between the
senior team, commercial managers and people working in client services,
heightened by poor communications about maintaining frontline services:
‘Poor support from further up the organization. An expectation
that you can just work with anything thrown at you. More hours,
less salary, less staff, stand still budgets […] things like the
Internet. Issues are either shelved and forgotten about or left
until the last minute.’ (Service Manager)
Muddling through: This response suggests a both/and perspective,
embracing tensions as best they can through conversations that enable
workers and managers to express and share problems, anxieties and
ideas about the handling of contradictory demands:
‘Currently in our services we are experiencing problems around
being able to maintain effective staffing levels against service
delivery expectations … This has required the local management
team to genuinely share thoughts and suggestions in a
constructive way that enables rota problems to be met […]
therefore good communication between the management team
ensures we are looking to minimize problems around service
delivery where we can.’ (Senior Manager)
‘However, in the face of a reduced “managerial presence” […] it
is now common for service managers to have to manage several
teams at a time – leading to a deterioration in the quality of
management, and ultimately in service provision.’ (Manager)
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Case exercise
In small groups, play the role of a consultant. Prepare a report for the
chief executive, outlining a proposal for the effective handling of tensions
arising in this case. Your report should also consider the implications for
leader–follower relations and leader capabilities.
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Source
Professor Helen Francis, adaptation of a case study written with
Professor Anne Keegan (Francis and Keegan, 2018).
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Sources of additional information
Francis, H. and Keegan, A. (2018) ‘The ethics of engagement in an age of
austerity: a paradox perspective’, Journal of Business Ethics, pp 1–15.
Lewis, M.W., Andriopoulos, C. and Smith, W.K. (2014) ‘Paradoxical
leadership to enable strategic agility’, California Management Review, 56
(3): 58–77.
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14 Gender and Leadership
Lois Farquharson
‘The phalanx of women now occupying top jobs in
politics represent a much more profound shift. So is this
equality? Hell no. The advance of women to the top of
politics has been accompanied by a misogynist
renaissance in Britain, the US and other supposedly
progressive democracies … Women wielding executive
power are a prime target.’
Rebecca McQuillan, 2017
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Chapter Outline
Introduction
The nature of diversity
The glass ceiling, the labyrinth and the glass cliff
Gender pay gap
Women in global leadership
Millennial women and leadership
Future challenges for gender diversity and inclusion practices
Supporting women to lead
Conclusion
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Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
define diversity and understand the value of diversity and inclusion
in a global leadership context;
understand the discourse around gender in leadership, particularly
concerning the benefits and challenges for women leaders in
differing countries and cultural contexts;
explain solutions to support impactful leadership diversity and
inclusion at work, with particular focus on gender.
video
To learn more about the challenges faced by women in leadership,
don’t forget to watch the video conversation for this chapter online.
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Introduction
As the opening vignette suggests, in spite of the progress that has
been made, women in leadership positions are contending with
misogyny. Inequality between men and women and misogyny long
predate the relatively new academic interest related to gender and
leadership. Early feminist writers studied the roots of European
ideologies based on patriarchy that placed men superior to
women, which shaped ideas and beliefs on what constitutes paid
work, what kinds of work are valued and the role of women in
western societies. The tendency until the early 1970s was for
researchers to examine the social organization of work through a
masculine prism (Bratton and Denham, 2019). As you will see,
this notable deficiency means that traditional leadership theory
and research offer an inadequate framework for understanding
many important aspects of the modern organization.
In the last decades, robust public discourse and scholarly interest
have challenged the stereotypes and language around women,
the inclusion and exclusion of people based on different genders,
racial and ethnic backgrounds, disabilities and sexual orientation.
Fuelling the interest is the upsurge in large-scale public protests
across the globe, including #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. Many
of these movements and protests have diversity, and the benefits
and tensions therein, at their heart. It should be no surprise to
you, therefore, that diversity and diversity management have
become a feature not only of university life but also of
contemporary organizations (Bendl et al., 2017).
In this chapter, we seek to advance your understanding of the
leadership relationship by examining issues of diversity,
highlighting that genuine ‘inclusion’ may support innovation and
enhanced organizational performance. While other identities are
crucially important too, the principal focus is on gender. We
discuss the challenges for female leaders, and leadership
behaviours are critiqued in order to surface feminine advantage as
a key contributor to effective leadership. Finally, we make
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recommendations around how organizations may address the
challenges of diversity and leadership.
Pause and reflect
Before reading on, consider your university: to what extent is it
diverse, and how does this impact on the university’s culture? How
does this affect your experience of interacting with and/or working at
the university?
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The Nature of Diversity
With changing demographics, globalization and immigration, work
organizations are increasingly heterogeneous in nature. The
plurality in the workplace represents the basis for theorizing
diversity and diversity management in organizations. The
difference between organization members can be visible and non-
visible. From the academic viewpoint, diversity is an ‘unwieldy’
concept that has produced a plethora of definitions (Özkazanc-
Pan and Calás, 2017: 576). In its broadest sense, diversity in
organizations is about bringing together ‘a mixture of people with
different group identities within the same social system’ (Nkomo
and Stewart, 2006: 520). Diversity reflects differences in terms of
social background, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, age,
disability, thinking and work styles. This encompassing sweep is
captured in an early definition:
Diversity includes everyone; it is not something that is
defined by race or gender. It extends to age, personal
and corporate background, education, function, and
personality. It includes lifestyle, sexual preference,
geographical origin, tenure with the organization … and
management or non-management. (Thomas, 1991: 12,
cited by Pringle and Strachan, 2015: 44)
For Hays-Thomas and Bendick, diversity is defined as ‘the mixture
of attributes within a workforce that in significant ways affect how
people think, feel, and behave at work, and their acceptance, work
performance, satisfaction, or progress in the organization’ (2013:
195). They point out that inclusion focuses new attention on the
policies, practices, and climate of the workplace – the workplace
culture – that shapes the experiences of employees with those
characteristics.
Whereas the notion of equal opportunity (EO) is externally
initiated and externally driven, in other words by government
legislation, managing diversity (MD) is internally initiated and
business-needs driven (Pringle and Strachan, 2015). The
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business case for diversity and equality is the result of the
changing composition of the talent pool (see Chapter 10) as well
as the internationalization of business (Tatli et al., 2017), which
may enhance performance at individual, group or organizational
level.
Interestingly, Winters makes a distinction between diversity and
inclusion by suggesting that ‘perhaps the most salient distinction
between diversity and inclusion is that diversity can be mandated
and legislated, while inclusion stems from voluntary actions’
(2014: 206). Therefore, inclusion requires a levelling of the playing
field and provision of opportunities through organizational and
leadership practices that offer real equal access to opportunities
for employees who belong to social identity groups that
experience greater discrimination (Bell et al., 2011; Roberson,
2006). Although much of the discourse on diversity has focused
on gender diversity, recent diversity literature (e.g. Farndale et al.,
2015; Dennissen et al., 2018; Mor Barak, 2018) has extended
research and theory on diversity and diversity management
practices beyond issues of gender to include a wide variety of
racial, religious, physical and sexual identifications or positions;
for instance, in Britain, black and minority ethnic (BME) groups
and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT+) members in
the workplace.
Pause and reflect
Before reading the next section, what is the business case for
diversity? Considering an organization you have worked for or
patronized as a customer, to what extent did it consist of visible
differences?
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The business case for diversity management
Many diversity and inclusion scholars and practitioners have
emphasized the benefits of investing in diversity management and
the business value that people with a variety of differences bring
to organizations (Ferdman, 2013; Nekhili et al., 2018). Danowitz
defines diversity management as ‘a concept and process that
acknowledges the value of difference and strategically strives
through structures and processes to increase inclusion and
promote equity among its stakeholders, especially its internal
ones, to create added value’ (2015: 358, emphasis added). This
definition posits that diversity management is a form of strategic
human resource management (SHRM).
The ‘Delivering through Diversity’ research report by McKinsey &
Company (Hunt et al., 2018) focuses on evidencing the business
case for diversity and found significant correlation between a more
gender-diverse leadership team and financial outperformance.
Gender-diverse executive teams were 21 per cent more likely to
outperform on profitability and 27 per cent more likely to have
superior value creation. The report also highlights the impact of
‘opting out’ of diversity – companies who lacked both gender and
ethnic/cultural diversity were 29 per cent less likely to achieve
above-average profitability than were all other companies in the
data set. Mor Barak (2018) links diversity with innovation and its
potential to uplift and energize economies during times of
economic hardship.
However, diversity does not necessarily yield positive outcomes
and can in fact lower cohesion and performance. The study by
Jackson and Joshi (2011) found that diversity yielded mixed
results, with the effects of team diversity ranging from positive to
neutral to negative. The authors posit that ‘social dynamics’
shapes how work teams experience diversity. This suggests that
the concepts of equity and reciprocity and perceived team-level
leader–member exchange (see Chapter 8) affect the way teams
experience diversity. Further, although intended to achieve
inclusion, some diversity practices unwittingly have the potential to
‘reproduce exclusion’ as well (Bendl et al., 2017: 1). Hence, while
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the focus on inclusionary management practices can promote the
potential advantages and opportunities of having a diverse
workforce, managing diversity in organizations is never without
controversy.
Winters (2014: 206) quotes Andres Tapia’s interesting distinction
between diversity and inclusion and introduces us to the inclusion
paradox: ‘Diversity is the mix; inclusion is making the mix work’
(see also Tapia, 2016: 15). Thus, transformational leaders
(arguably defined by female characteristics which exhibit
communal rather than the agentic approaches – see also Chapter
7) create the future by being open and including the new, different
and unusual. Chandler (2011) notes that women leaders practice
transformational leadership more frequently. Many of the other
characteristics associated with women’s leadership – the
development of followers, strong interpersonal relationships,
participative decision making – have also been associated with
more effective leadership (Chandler, 2011; Ellwood and Garcia-
Lacalle, 2018; Griffiths et al., 2019).
There is therefore a strong suggestion that transformational
leaders face the additional challenge of ‘inclusion’ to inspire and
bring about change, as leaders reconcile tensions between ‘I’ and
‘we’. In other words, leaders must balance when they push and
drive for their own way, excluding the views of others, and when
they listen, collaborate and synthesize others’ insights for a more
diverse and inclusive view. Tapia (2009) makes a compelling case
for inclusion as a business strategy, stating that it is inclusion that
‘Calling out differences unleashes the true creative contributions
of diverse perspectives that play off each other and lead to better
work relationships, greater innovation, and profitability that benefit
individuals, teams, and organisations’. Employees then become
more engaged, collaborative, productive and innovative based on
a deeper understanding of customers, their cultures and unmet
niches. Leaders have to develop their cross-cultural agility that
has at its heart self-awareness (“I”) and awareness of others
(“we”). Leaders need to understand this in a deep way in order to
activate diversity.’
Critical Insight: The power of intersectionality in driving diversity
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The concept of intersectionality recognizes multiple social categories
(including race, class, gender and sexuality), and views them as
operating in parallel (Breslin et al., 2017). Therefore, these
categories can exist independently, but can also combine to create
‘double jeopardy’ for individuals where each category adds up to
result in even more inequality (e.g. racial minorities or LGBTQ and
low socioeconomic status). For example, the concept of
intersectionality was used 30 years ago to examine the various ways
in which race and gender interact to shape multiple dimensions of
black women’s employment experiences. Further intersectionality
may help to explain perceptions and definitions of leadership and the
ways in which they may exclude particular social groups. Hearn and
Louvrier (2015) emphasize the value of intersectionality to managing
diversity across organizations and in leadership contexts, suggesting
that in multinational organizations the multiple intersectional
categories mentioned above are further developed across space,
place, cultures, interorganizational power relations and virtual
technologies.
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Activity
Read Danielle Mercer et al. (2017) ‘Intersectionality at the
intersection’, in R. Bendl, I. Bleijenbergh, E. Henttonen and A.J. Mills
(eds), The Oxford Handbook of Diversity in Organizations. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, pp. 435–53.
1. What is meant by the term ‘intersectionality’?
2. What is the research value in framing discriminatory practices
through an intersectionality lens?
3. Think about organizations that are cited in the media or are
known to you. Do they understand and acknowledge
intersectionality in their approach to managing diversity?
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The Glass Ceiling, the Labyrinth and
the Glass Cliff
We introduced the concepts of the glass ceiling and the glass cliff
in Chapter 1. The glass ceiling represents the invisible barrier that
exists in many workplaces, preventing women from achieving
senior positions. The metaphor of a ‘leadership labyrinth’ goes
further, suggesting that women are on a journey riddled with
challenges which must be successfully navigated. Within the
leadership labyrinth, women encounter multifaceted barriers that
not only result in lack of numerical parity between women and
men in leadership, but also critical gender differences in the
nature of leadership positions.
In order to break the glass ceiling or manoeuvre through the
complex leadership labyrinth, there continues to be an assumption
that women need to be ‘fixed’ so that they can better display the
competencies and behaviours associated more readily with a
traditional, arguably male, leadership profile (Bierema, 2016). The
expected outcome of this ‘fix’ and ‘fit’ approach would be that
organizations would see a larger proliferation of women in senior
leadership positions. However, the question must be asked
whether this is at the expense of an individual’s personal identity
and authenticity, and researchers suggest that this does create a
‘double bind’ for women (Varghese et al., 2018): be fixed and fit in
or fail. The 2016 US presidential election revealed the animosity
that many Americans harbour toward women who seek power.
Gender-based hostility (Hoyt and Murphy, 2016 call this
‘stereotype threat’) reached significant heights in relation to
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Throughout her career in
public office, many have demonized her as a woman, wife and
mother, and labelled her a ‘radical feminist’ and, during a
presidential debate, as a ‘nasty woman’. This backlash against
female power seeking was epitomized in the campaign slogan
‘Trump that Bitch’. It can be argued that Americans’ hostility
toward women and feminism predicated support for Republican
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candidate Donald Trump almost as strongly as their political party
affiliation.
Image 14.1 Within the leadership labyrinth,
women encounter multifaceted barriers that
not only result in lack of numerical parity
between women and men in leadership, but
also critical gender differences in the nature
of leadership positions.
Similarly, in New Zealand, a societal constraint that tends to
enforce gender order is that of ‘tall poppy syndrome’ (TPS). TPS
is a mechanism that targets those who stand out in some way,
whether through success in achievement or wealth, thereby
engendering envy. The response to success is therefore ‘cutting
him or her down to size’ and self-promotion is discouraged. For
women, this can result in diverting credit for excellent work and
self-deprecating humour to mitigate praise, both of which could
impact negatively on the use of the norms of self-promotion in
recruitment (Holmes et al., 2017).
When women are successful in promotion and do break the glass
ceiling, the contention is that they move onto the volatile glass cliff
(Ryan and Haslam, 2005, 2007). This is the phenomenon of
women making it to the boardroom but finding themselves
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disproportionately represented in what could be described as
unstable and potentially unsustainable leadership positions
(2005). For example, Theresa May became the first female prime
minister of the UK since Margaret Thatcher, just in time to preside
over Brexit – the country’s economically perilous break from the
EU.
Research into the glass cliff shows that women, relative to men,
are preferentially appointed to precarious leadership positions
coupled with greater risks and criticism (Ryan et al., 2016; Cook
and Glass, 2014). It is suggested that women’s promotion into
these types of leadership positions is dependent on firm
performance (Ryan and Haslam, 2007), that is, women are more
likely than men to be promoted in firms that are in crisis (which
may vary from financial performance and major change to
reputational scandals), making their leadership roles high risk,
with the potential for them to be ousted for apparent failure. The
danger here is that these types of positions only confirm and
continue biases against women’s leadership capabilities.
So, why do women apply for these leadership posts if this is the
case? There are a number of reasons, including men’s attitudes to
a risky or undesirable position, and women’s perception that these
leadership opportunities may not occur again in future. There is
also the important contention that female leaders’ relational
approach to leadership (including skills such as caring,
supporting, emotional intelligence, interpersonal skills and
teamworking) creates the ‘feminine advantage’ (Ryan et al., 2011)
by engendering trust which can result in job satisfaction,
organizational commitment, individual wellbeing and task
effectiveness, thus enhancing the effectiveness of crisis
responses (Post et al., 2019). In addition, it may also be the case
that when firms are in crisis, they look for non-traditional leaders in
order to signal a clear change in direction to stakeholders (Ryan
and Haslam, 2007). However, this type of approach could
encourage token status, and therefore their leadership may face
negative evaluation bias (Eagly and Karau, 2002; Heilman, 2001;
Schein, 2001), reducing stakeholder confidence in their abilities.
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The alternate view is that this is institutional sexism, which
assumes that a woman will do a good enough job for a while,
getting the business into a better position for when the next man,
often dubbed as the ideal manager (Ryan et al., 2011), can take
over. This has been dubbed the ‘saviour effect’ (Cook and Glass,
2014).
An example of female leadership success in a company in crisis is
that of Mary T. Barra, who became General Motors’ CEO in 2014.
Barra led the team that, in under a year, made enhancements to
the Chevrolet Malibu to give the flopped 2012 version a facelift,
which improved sales. During the auto crisis, she also increased
efficiency through product innovation and created more vehicles
that shared the same parts. She got General Motors’ purchasing
and product development departments to work together, which
they had previously never done. It is claimed that her ‘secret’ to
success is in her inclusive approach to leadership, managing by
consensus balanced with knowing when to make decisions
herself. When asked about her management style, Mary Barra
says:
Collaborative. When we have to make tough decisions,
giving direction and setting the strategies for the products
of General Motors, there should be constructive tension.
We should have vigorous debates … At the end of the
day, when the decision has to be made, if we don’t have
complete unanimity; I have no qualms about making it.
But I want that tension in a constructive way to make
sure we evaluate things from every angle. I am pretty
hands-on as well. I will call a chief engineer when I am
driving a vehicle. (Hirsch, interview with the Los Angeles
Times, 11 December 2013)
This approach built highly effective work teams who felt connected
to the organization which spurred them to drive innovation and
success in growth markets.
It is very important to note that this approach does not only apply
to women; leaders are made up of multiple identities, including
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race, socio-economic status, sexual orientation and other aspects.
Racial minorities are also more likely to be promoted in times of
crisis, for example Barack Obama, the USA’s first black president,
could be seen as a ‘glass cliff’ leader. Obama was elected in
2008, during the worst financial crisis in the country’s recent
history, and was often blamed for this crisis – which actually
happened before his election.
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Gender Pay Gap
As you will recall, we discussed perceived equity as a motivational
incentive in Chapter 13. Data shows the extent of the global pay
gap between men and women. In 2018, the average progress on
closing the global gender gap stands at 68.0 per cent – meaning
an average gap of 32.0 per cent remains to be closed worldwide
in order to achieve universal gender parity. Women across the
world are paid 63 per cent of what men earn and the earnings of
men are continuing to increase. This means the global gender pay
gap has only improved very slightly, despite numerous initiatives
to break the glass ceiling and force salary disclosure. Dworkin et
al. (2012: 364) observed that ‘the leadership [pay] gap is
surprising given that a noteworthy body of research suggests
businesses and organizations which employ women at the highest
levels reap significant financial benefits in doing so.’ But it is not
as simple as saying that men and women who are doing the same
job are paid differently, as the picture for women is much more
complex than that.
Although much has been done to close the gap, many women still
work in industries with lower average pay rather than high-income
areas such as finance or technology that are still traditionally
dominated by men. They are also more likely to undertake part-
time work due to commitments to caring responsibilities. And they
are less likely to be in highly-paid senior positions, often because
they have chosen to take a career break while having children.
Currently, only 34 per cent of individuals holding senior
managerial positions globally are women (WEF, 2018a). In order
to address this gap, two thirds of the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries have
introduced new policies on pay equality since 2013, while the UK,
Australia, Japan, Germany and Sweden are among a handful of
countries that require some employers to publish calculations
every year showing the gender pay gap. With inequality
permeating so much of the fabric of society – especially when it
comes to caring for children – it is perhaps not surprising that the
World Economic Forum (WEF) (2018a) indicates that it will take
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202 years to achieve parity (an improvement from 217 years the
previous year).
Leadership in Action: Are women set up as ‘fall-girls’?
Yahoo! has undergone major restructuring, including cutting
thousands of employees. As CEO, Marissa Mayer had a tough
experience as a leader. Activist investors demanded that Mayer
should be fired for mismanaging the company. There is no doubt that
the charismatic Marissa Mayer, who enjoyed being in the spotlight
and who was seen as a star in the tech industry with a background
working in Google, took on a challenging situation when she became
the CEO in 2012. She has been hailed as the spirit of womanhood
and female entrepreneurship. Initially, shares rocketed 254 per cent
from $15 to $53.12 when Mayer took over and Yahoo’s credibility in
the market began to improve. The stock performance was bolstered
by Yahoo’s prior investment in Chinese e-commerce company
Alibaba.
Transforming the company’s outdated internet portal proved
challenging. As apps and social networks continued to dominate, it
was clear that Google and Facebook had eviscerated Yahoo’s once-
healthy share of online advertising globally, and Instagram and
Snapchat were also coming into the market looking to take their
share. Mayer had a strong vision and took an assertive stance in her
strategy of acquisitions and executive hires, but she also had a hand
in some significant errors including two major data breaches of
Yahoo accounts between 2013 and 2016, a questionable acquisition
of social media site Tumbler and high-salaried employees who were
not performing to achieve company goals. Her approach also led to
internal politics at Yahoo where former male executives criticized
Mayer’s management style as brusque and inflexible. It was reported
that Mayer could have talked less and listened more, taken time to
learn before acting, and built bridges instead of walls within her
workforce. Tech, finance, law, sports, the military and the stock
market are all occupations where men continue to dominate, so her
experience may not be unusual.
But it is important to note that if we consider the five male Yahoo
CEOs who preceded Mayer, each of them had a similar challenge in
trying to create new growth waves as others fell; each of them also
failed. In addition, Mayer also introduced a ban on telecommuting
(working from home), which caused widespread consternation.
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Employees perceived this as unfair as Mayer was not ‘walking the
talk’ – she could take her own child to a personal nursery whilst other
employees might struggle to manage their own family responsibilities
because of the loss of flexible working arrangements. As a result of
the above leadership approach, the culture was perceived as toxic
which impeded the performance of the organization and ultimately
vilified Mayer.
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Reflective questions
1. Do you think Marissa Mayer fell from the ‘glass cliff’?
2. What action could she have taken to address the leadership
challenges she faced at Yahoo?
3. Should she have changed her leadership style?
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Sources
Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2017) ‘Marissa Mayer’s departure from
Yahoo and the challenge of drawing lessons from an N of 1’, Harvard
Business Review, 15 June. Available at
https://hbr.org/2017/06/marissa-mayers-departure-from-yahoo-and-
the-challenge-of-drawing-lessons-from-an-n-of-1 (accessed 14
November 2019).
Mejia, Z. (2017) ‘Why Marissa Mayer is the “least likeable” CEO in
Tech’, CNBC.com, 31 May. Available at
www.cnbc.com/2017/05/31/why-yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-the-
least-likable-ceo-in-tech.html (accessed 14 November 2019).
Myatt, M. (2015) ‘Marissa Mayer: a case study in poor leadership’,
Forbes.com, 20 November. Available at
www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2015/11/20/marissa-mayer-case-
study-in-poor-leadership/#2c7656bf3b46 (accessed 14 November
2019).
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To explore this topic further see:
Tinsley, C.H. and Ely, R.J. (2018) ‘What most people get wrong
about men and women’, Harvard Business Review, 96 (3): 114–21.
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Women in Global Leadership
As global society has developed its perspectives around women
in the workplace, there have been positive movements via an
increase in women in the boardroom, with evidence of success
and profitability as a result; however, this has been a slow growth
and arguably not enough to reassure women of their value and
impact in the workplace. The impact of social movements such as
the, arguably adversarial, #MeToo movement, spurred on by the
election of Donald Trump as President of the USA, has
reverberated around the world, asking questions about both the
treatment of women in global work and society, and the lack of
women represented in leadership positions. In 2018, the All India
Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) called a protest
against sexual and communal violence, lack of access to social
security programmes, malnutrition and unemployment. Around
5,000 women from 23 states in India participated in this protest,
marching in solidarity to the Indian Parliament. We have already
noted that the WEF (2018a) has predicted that it will take 202
years to achieve parity in terms of pay.
With reference to political and economic leadership, the world still
has a long way to go. Across the 149 countries assessed, there
are just 17 that currently have women as heads of state while, on
average, just 18 per cent of ministers and 24 per cent of
parliamentarians globally are women. Similarly, women hold 34
per cent of managerial positions across the countries where data
is available, and less than 7 per cent in the four worst-performing
countries (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Pakistan). However,
there are countries where significant progress has been achieved.
Full parity on this indicator is already a reality in five countries
(Bahamas, Colombia, Jamaica, Lao PDR and the Philippines),
and in another 19 countries there are at least 40 per cent of
women in managerial positions.
It is also important to recognize that more countries do have
gender-balanced national cabinets. Rwanda’s parliament is 60 per
cent female and Iceland continues its path toward complete
705
gender parity. Saudi women are at last able to drive legally and
allowed into sports stadiums, though the Crown Prince has also
jailed activists fighting for women’s rights. Whilst in Germany,
Chancellor Angela Merkel was succeeded by the new female
Christian Democratic Union party leader Annegret Kramp-
Karrenbauer, and in Denmark, Social Democrat leader Mette
Frederiksen, 41, was elected to become Denmark’s youngest ever
prime minister. In 2019, the world’s youngest prime minister,
Sanna Marin, 34, was elected in Finland and leads a centre-Left
coalition of women (BBC News, 9th December 2019). In the 2018
US midterm elections, more than 110 diverse women, including
the first Muslim women and the first Native American, were
elected to Congress. Several factors appeared to shape the
results, including an increase in the number of women willing to
run, women of colour moving forward, and President Donald
Trump himself – the strong societal reactions to his comments,
policies and the allegations surrounding his treatment of women
(WEF, 2018b).
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The artificial intelligence gender gap
This year’s analysis also suggests that the rise of new
technologies across a range of industries may play a role in
exacerbating persistent gender gaps. The state of the gender gap
in the fast-growing field of artificial intelligence (AI), which is
considered to be one of the main drivers of change in labour
market transformations, was analysed. There continues to be a
significant gap between female and male representation among AI
professionals: only 22 per cent of AI professionals globally are
female. Over the past four years, men and women have been
adding AI skills to their profiles at a similar rate. This means that
while women aren’t falling further behind, they also aren’t catching
up. If the current trend continues, male AI professionals will
continue to outnumber women, even as both genders continue to
gain AI skills.
It is interesting to note that the patterns in the AI gender gap are
similar to those in the overall workforce: female AI professionals
are more likely to work in ‘traditionally female’ industries – those
that already have a relatively high share of female workers, such
as the nonprofit, healthcare and education sectors. In general,
women with AI skills are more likely to work in the use and
application of AI, with common positions including data analytics,
research and teaching. Men are more likely to work in the
development of the technology itself, which is reflected in the skills
they report, such as deep learning and neural networks. WEF
(2018a) confirms that women are ‘growing but not gaining’ when it
comes to AI skills, which means that gender imbalance in the field
is likely to persist. In a global context where human skills are
complementary to technology, organizations must continue to
develop the women’s talent pipeline in sectors in which talent is
already scarce.
Pause and reflect
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To what extent do you think there has been an improvement in
women in leadership in your country and why? Can you think of any
prominent examples you have seen in the media?
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Millennial Women and Leadership
Women who are characterized as ‘millennials’ provide an
interesting discussion point in considering the changing attitudes,
drivers and identities of future women leaders. Millennials have
become the largest generation in the global workforce. As the
millennial generation becomes the majority of the workforce and
baby boomers retire, millennials will increasingly move into
leadership positions. What makes millennials different from
previous generations is that they are technologically savvy,
working and leading in a digital world where technology is
embedded in all aspects of business, education and government.
Research shows that millennials expect more out of work; they
are looking for meaning, challenge and flexibility (Kuron et al.,
2015). Sociologists have described the new archetypal millennial
as the ‘neoliberal self’ (see Critical Insight, p. 299 and Mason,
2019). It is maintained that millennials are more people-oriented
and gender-neutral in how they view women in leadership. While
this generation of women may often be stereotyped as less
motivated and lacking ambition, millennial women seek their
professional aspirations in ways that coexist with their personal
values and are likely to take different paths to leadership than did
previous generations (DeFrank-Cole and Tan, 2017).
This millennial approach parallels the three factors, identified in
the kaleidoscope career model (Mainiero and Sullivan, 2006), that
influence career decisions: authenticity (the need for fulfilling,
meaningful work), balance (integrating work and nonwork lives)
and challenge (the need to experience career advancement that
contributes to feelings of self-worth). Gerzema and D’Antonio
(2013) of The Athena Doctrine: How Women (and the Men Who
Think Like Them) Will Rule the Future, give an informed
perspective about leadership attributes that are sought around the
world, especially by millennials. They speak to the issues of
equality and fairness as being the preferences of young adults.
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Future Challenges for Practices of
Gender Diversity and Inclusion
Although women have been pivotal in reshaping the views we
now hold about leadership, there remains a disconnect between
women’s ways of leading in often competitive, top-down,
hierarchical systems. The evidence for differences in men and
women’s leadership behaviours is mixed, however. While Rosener
(1990) argues that women executives succeeded because of
‘feminine’ characteristics (e.g. interactive, power and information
sharing), Wajcman (1998) argues that executives of either sex
who hold positions of equivalent status in the organization adopt a
similar style of leadership largely as a consequence of the context
– ‘economic imperatives’ – in which they work.
Lipman-Blumen (1996, 2017) argues that leadership needs to
embrace a more nuanced multifaceted approach to leadership.
This means embracing what she labels ‘connective’ leadership.
The connective era is characterized by the global economy and
greater cross-cultural interaction, with contradictory tensions
pulling us toward greater global interdependence but also
fragmentation based on our diversity. At a time when polarization
and dissonance about values could lead to paralysis, successful
leaders of either sex need to reconcile differences and work
across national cultures (see Chapter 4) and seemingly
irreconcilable values. The connective leadership model requires a
blending of the various skills that can be seen across the
leadership literature – including the most recent studies of women
leaders (Carbajal, 2018; Kubu, 2018; Kulich et al., 2018).
According to Lipman-Blumen, connective leadership is focused on
three main areas: relational, direct and instrumental. Together,
these areas play a supportive role in contributing to others’ tasks
(relational), mastering one’s own task (direct) and maximizing
interactions (instrumental).
Lipman-Blumen (1996, 2017) emphasizes that although the model
includes many politically oriented behaviours, they are ethically
710
oriented toward community benefits such as a sense of belonging.
She also advocates a ‘politics of commonality’ as an alternative to
the politics of difference favoured by traditional leaders. In
recognizing differences in the approach to leadership, they help
translate the different styles and approaches so that different
change agents better communicate and can act together. Lipman-
Blumen regards connected leaders as inclusive, authentic and
accountable. Using connective leadership, women (and all other
groups) are better able to determine when they might need to use
traditional approaches but also how to counteract and circumvent
them with this knowledge. Connective leadership is also about
navigating the tensions of diversity, which women can do better if
they are harnessing multiple approaches and even, when
necessary, those with which they may be less comfortable. As
Lipman-Blumen predicts, we are living in an era when leadership
requires a complex integration of the best qualities of many
different approaches to leading.
Pause and reflect
Why should men work more closely with women on gender diversity
and inclusiveness – what are the benefits and barriers to this?
711
Supporting Women to Lead
Ely (1995) found that gender integration reduces the likelihood
that women will be viewed as ‘tokens’ and will be less subject to
negative evaluation bias and intense scrutiny compared to women
leaders in less diverse organizations (Ely, 1995; Kanter, 1977). In
other words, gender diversity among decision makers is likely to
increase the chances of women being promoted to leadership
positions.
Whilst there has been significant focus on women in
organizations, the role of men in organizational gender diversity
and inclusion has received less attention (Kelan and Wratil, 2018).
Relevant to this debate is the notion of ‘doing gender’, which is
the idea that in western culture, gender, rather than being an
innate quality of individuals, is a psychologically ingrained social
construct that actively surfaces in everyday social interaction. In a
landmark article, Deutsch (2007) distinguishes between men
‘doing gender’ as creating gender difference and ‘undoing gender’
as reducing gender difference. While the former leads to gender
inequality, the latter leads to gender equality. Kelan and Wratil
(2018) explore the ways of ‘doing gender’ – behaviours which
cement the power of male over female – in the workplace. First,
through everyday social interaction, men ‘doing gender’ create
connection with other men, which means to exclude women.
Second, men distance themselves from women for fear of being
entangled in accusations of sexual misconduct. Third, men
impress others and, fourth, men display heroism.
There is much less to say around ‘undoing gender’ in the recent
research. However, in practice, it is important to note that there
have been developments in social media and public organizations
around what men can do to ‘undo gender’ and contribute to
gender diversity in organizations and wider society. The Prime
Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, made headlines globally in
2016 when he suggested that ‘Men have got to be involved in the
conversation … We shouldn’t be afraid of the word feminist, men
and women should use it to describe themselves any time they
want … That role we have as men in supporting and demanding
equality and demanding a shift is really, really important’ (Saul,
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2016). He also appointed a gender-balanced cabinet in 2015. This
quote is reflective of the move from traditional gender equality
interventions focused on women (e.g. leadership development
and mentoring programmes), organizations (e.g. recruitment and
promotion policies), or government policy (e.g. gender equality
legislation) towards men and male leaders as ‘champions’ of
diversity and inclusion. The United Nations HeForShe campaign,
Lean In, #LeanInTogether and #MentorHer campaigns, and the
Australian Sex Discrimination Commission’s Male Champions of
Change initiative are examples of this type of highly publicised,
celebrity-supported approach.
Subašic´ et al. (2018) surface the question of how both men and
women can act collectively as champions to challenge gender
inequality, thus moving away from typical roles of men as the
perpetrators or bystanders and women as the victims. This is a
movement towards the identity of ‘we’ and shared values that
define ‘us’ in a common cause. White (2006) suggested that
African American women and men who identify as ‘feminists’ are
equally supportive of feminist activism on a range of measures,
and argues that experiences of discrimination based on their
racial identity caused increased solidarity. This suggests that it is
possible to rise above the traditional social category boundaries
acting as a barrier to diversity and inclusion.
But, practically, how do organizational leaders accelerate women
into leadership positions? Mara Swan, the vice chair of the World
Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Gender Parity,
suggests that ‘Conscious inclusion is about ensuring all people
feel invited in and their human potential is valued.’ PwC in their
recent ‘Time to Talk: What has to Change for Women at Work’
report (The Manpower Group, 2018), which focused on
professional women aged 28–40, suggested key organizational
areas for action including transparency and trust in promotion and
pay processes and feedback and strategic support through
proactive networks of leaders, mentors and peers to champion
them in the workplace. It is also interesting that this report states
that the much debated area of work–life balance is not a life-stage
or gender-specific issue. The suggestion is that perceptions
around flexible working are de-parented, de-gendered and de-
713
aged to establish more candid conversation across women, men
and those in leadership. Padavic et al. (2019) take a critical view
of the conflict between women’s family obligations and
professional jobs’ culture of working long hours. They suggest that
the enduring ‘work–family narrative’ is not representative of the
real reasons why gender inequality persists. Thus, the work–
family discourse becomes an unconscious ‘social defence’
evidenced in the use of HR policies and practices, which protect
powerful groups within the organization, that is, men, and sustain
workplace inequality.
Critical Insight: Quotas – regulating or empowering?
Whereas the ‘liberal’ approach to equal opportunity (EO) is
concerned with applying the ‘rules’ and process across all people,
the radical approach to EO has sought to intervene directly in
organizational practices, such as gender quotas (Pringle and
Strachan, 2015). However, around the world, there is much debate
over whether quotas help speed the closure of the gender gap. WEF
(2018a) has reported that government mandates are indeed slowly
closing the gender gap: in the 44 countries where companies have
three or more women on their boards, 43 have government-
mandated quotas. Those without affirmative mechanisms are seeing
only incremental gains.
Even though mandatory quotas for women on boards have been
adopted in countries including Norway, France, Belgium, Germany,
Italy and Iceland, these solutions remain controversial. Other
countries have chosen to implement voluntary goals (Austria,
Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK), with goals for female
representation varying from 25 per cent to 40 per cent. The
emphasis on women’s access to decision making is evident in the
strong recommendations of a wide range of international bodies – led
primarily by the United Nations, but including the Inter-Parliamentary
Union, African Union, Southern African Development Community,
Commonwealth, Council of Europe, EU, Organization for Security
and Co-operation in Europe, and Organization of American States.
Norway was the first to adopt a quota for female board members (40
per cent), building them into their legislation and holding companies
to account for the recruitment and development of women in the
workplace, resulting in an increase in women on boards alongside a
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more professional and formal approach to board selection. Other
Nordic countries take a similar, less legislative approach. Although
Sweden does not have a gender quota, there is a requirement in its
corporate governance code to ‘strive for equal gender distribution’ in
the board (Terjesen et al., 2015).
In Australia, on the other hand, the issue of gender quotas remains
very problematic. In 2018, the government continued to argue over
the semantics of ‘quotas’ and ‘targets’, suggesting that quotas are a
box-ticking exercise and can be demeaning to beneficiaries whom
others may regard as chosen because of their gender rather than
their talent. Focusing on gender quotas may also reduce applications
from men or ethnic groups as they see no rationale for applying, thus
reducing the talent pipeline. In Japan, in the 2000s, firms quickly
implemented global CSR standards so as not to fall behind their
American and European competitors (Kato and Kodama, 2018).
However, questions have been raised as to the extent they truly
embraced the standards but are instead an ‘investor relations’ issue
(Mun and Jung, 2018; Nemoto, 2016). In the US, although the need
for gender diversity on company boards does seem to be
acknowledged (e.g. California has mandated that publicly traded
companies headquartered in the state must have at least one woman
on their board) critics argue that more progress is needed.
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Activity
What is your perspective on quotas? Should there be a global
approach?
716
For further information on this topic see:
Brinton, M.C. and Mun, E. (2016) ‘Between state and family:
managers’ implementation and evaluation of parental leave policies
in Japan’, Socio-Economic Review, 14: 257–81.
Hughes, M.M., Krook, M.L. and Paxton, P. (2015) ‘Transnational
women’s activism and the global diffusion of gender quotas’,
International Studies Quarterly, 59 (2): 357–72.
Mölders, S., Brosi, P., Bekk, M., Spörrle, M. and Welpe, I.M. (2018)
‘Support for quotas for women in leadership: the influence of gender
stereotypes’, Human Resource Management, 57: 869–82.
Training in diversity, which includes recognizing underlying
prejudices, assumptions and unconscious bias towards women,
has come to the fore as an inclusive approach to managing
diversity. Arguably, unconscious bias training allows employees to
confront and problematize their prevailing biases, but this training
alone does not ensure individual behavioural change or cultural
change (Bezrukova et al., 2016: 1243) – this must come from
individual and group willingness to change. It is suggested that
unconscious bias training should be the start of reflection,
discussion and awareness-raising activities rather than a quick fix.
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Conclusion
After explaining diversity, this chapter proceeded to consider
contemporary debates around gender, diversity and leadership.
The future of women in leadership globally is making traction.
However, research evidence informs us that there is still much to
do to ensure that women do not become further victimized based
on gender rather than their skills set. This is where the importance
of inclusivity comes into play – the view that all the varied aspects
of individuals are valued and facilitated in the workplace, not only
through legislation or regulation but also through culture and role
modelling of leadership. We have emphasized the importance of
taking a social view of diversity, gender and leadership in order to
foster a more inclusive approach that transcends men/women or
binary thinking. Finally, the influence of the ideology of patriarchy
cannot be understated. Powerful men still hold the majority of
leadership roles globally, and until they are willing to support
women and champion them, women’s entry into and development
within leadership positions will be impeded. To take the spirit of a
quote from PwC (2018): diversity and inclusion cannot remain a
work in progress; they must become a work for progress.
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Chapter Review Questions
1. Why are gender and diversity so valuable to organizations on a
global scale?
2. What are the key challenges for women leaders and how can they
overcome them?
3. What type(s) of leadership approach(es) may be critical in the drive
for diversity?
4. To what extent do millennial women view their role in organizations
and as leaders differently from other generations? What are the
implications of this?
5. What can men do to support diversity?
Assignment Task: CIPD
According to Bendl et al. (2017), different organizations in different
cultural contexts still have varied interpretations of diversity and its
meaning, and practise diversity and its management in different
ways. The professional association for HR professionals, the UK
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD),
recommends, for example, that managers and leaders focus on
fairness and inclusion, ensuring that merit, competence and potential
are the basis for HRM decisions (CIPD, 2019b). See CIPD (2019a)
‘Building inclusive workplaces: assessing the evidence’, available at
www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/relations/diversity/building-
inclusive-workplaces and CIPD (2019b) ‘Diversity management that
works: an evidence based view’, available at
www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/relations/diversity/manage
ment-recommendations (accessed 3 November 2019).
719
Questions
1. Taking examples from your own internet and e-journal
searches, identify principles and practices that characterize
diversity management.
2. Enumerate and explain the key features of a diversity policy.
3. Write the key features of a policy for improving diversity in an
organization you have worked in or studied, giving ‘best
practice’ examples from your internet and e-journal searches.
Go Online
Further your knowledge and build your bibliography for
assignments by reading the recommended journal articles for this
chapter.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
video
Learn more about leadership in practice by watching the video
conversation for this chapter.
Diane Vincent, former Director of People and Organizational
Development for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, discusses
the challenges she’s faced in leading traditionally male-dominated
industries, as well as the impact of recent societal and workplace
changes towards women in leadership.
The video can be found at https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
See the inside front cover for the access code and instructions.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
720
Further Reading
Athanasopoulou, A., Moss-Cowan, A., Smets, M. and Morris, T.
(2017) ‘Claiming the corner office: female CEO careers and
implications for leadership development’, Human Resource
Management, 57 (2).
Bendl, R., Bleijenbergh, I., Henttonen, E. and Mills, A.J. (2017)
Oxford Handbook of Diversity in Organizations. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Carli, L. and Eagly, A. (2016) ‘Women face a labyrinth: an
examination of metaphors for women leaders’, Gender in
Management: An International Journal, 31 (8): 514–27.
DeFrank-Cole, L. and Tan, S.J. (2017) ‘Reimagining leadership for
millennial women: perspectives across generations’, Journal of
Leadership Studies, 10 (4): 43–6.
Kelan, E.K. and Wratil, P. (2018) ‘Post-heroic leadership,
tempered radicalism and senior leaders as change agents for
gender equality’, European Management Review, 15 (1): 5–18.
721
Case Study: Women and Leadership in
BRIC Countries
2018 was a key year for the five major emerging national economies of
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS). According to the
WEF Gender Gap Report 2018, South Africa is leading its BRICS
counterparts on progress towards gender parity, ranking number 19 in the
world. The rest of the BRICS members lag far behind, with Russia at 71,
Brazil at 90, China at 100 and India at 108. South Africa’s ranking is
boosted by its regulations towards equal gender representation in
Parliament, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into equality in the daily
lives of South African women.
The contributions of women have been largely invisible throughout the
rise of the BRICS. However, in these emerging economies this is
changing rapidly as government policies are supporting more women to
attend university and enter the workforce. Women are flooding into
universities and graduate schools in Brazil, Russia, India and China,
accounting for 60 per cent of students enrolled in tertiary education in
Brazil, 57 per cent in Russia, and 47 per cent in China. In relative terms,
women are therefore ‘more economically active in China and Russia than
in the United States already, while in Mexico and Brazil they are entering
the labour force faster than in the U.S.’ (Zahidi, 2014). Women are
providing the professional and technical skills that emerging market
companies need to compete globally. Russia, Brazil, China and South
Africa have more women than men in teaching, medicine and finance
professions. With the exception of China, more than a third of women in
the majority of emerging markets have been appointed to managerial
roles. In fast-growth companies, there is a dynamic focus on investment
in skills and expertise, none of which depends on gender.
According to WEF (2018a), women in BRICS countries:
earn wages that are closer to those of men (for similar work) in
Malaysia, the UAE, Nigeria, Indonesia and China in comparison
to the United States … Emerging economies are also more able
to embrace bold, progressive policies to integrate women into
leadership roles than their counterparts in the developed world
… For example, between 2011 and 2013, India, the UAE and
Malaysia proactively introduced quotas to increase women on
722
boards; kickstarting a mindset change. These policies reflect the
growing public acceptance of the need for visible female
leadership.
Perhaps most importantly, women’s own expectations are changing, as is
the social fabric around them. Skilled women in Latin America and China
show a preference for work over marriage, some choosing to delay
marriage and motherhood. In India, women’s own aspirations have been
transformed, as evident in the 2018 #MeToo protests over respect.
There are significant differences between geographies and generations,
especially for those women at the start of their careers (18 to 30 years
old) and the next generation on (31 to 45 years old). Hewlett (2012) offers
some key indicators which leaders must consider. These include, career
aspirations; employee engagement; love of work; satisfaction and loyalty;
and work–life balance.
The approach to business in emerging markets is different and there’s a
real recognition that innovation and creativity are sometimes more closely
linked to female leaders who become role models for the next generation.
For example, Maria das Gracas Silva Foster of Petrobras in Brazil and
Karen Agustiawan of Pertamina in Indonesia operate large state-owned
enterprises. Zhang Xin, CEO of SOHO, the Chinese real estate
developer, is a renowned role model.
While much work is still required around women’s safety, rights, political
empowerment and health in these countries, their economic progress to
date indicates that change is possible and that economic empowerment
can contribute to change in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
723
Case exercise
On your own, or in a study group, write a report addressing the following
questions:
1. How should employers ensure that they sustainably retain the talent
of women leaders in emerging markets?
2. How do generational and cultural aspects impact on women’s
performance at work?
3. In the fourth industrial revolution, where information technology is
king, how should organizations support and develop women in
emerging markets?
724
Sources of additional information
Hewlett, S.A. (2012) ‘Understanding female talent in emerging bric
markets’, Harvard Business Review, 30 January.
Näsman, C. and Hyvönen, C. (2016) Gender and Leadership in Brazil – a
Study on Women in Management Positions. UMEA Universitet, Brazil.
Zahidi, S. (2014) ‘How women will dominate the workplace BRIC by
BRIC’, CNN. Available at https://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/22/opinion/how-
women-will-dominate-the-workplace-bric/index.html (accessed 10
September 2019).
726
15 Leadership in Public Sector
Organizations
Colin Lindsay
‘Leading a … multimillion-pound organisation that
provide services … requires business acumen, the ability
to connect with communities and, ultimately, the
willingness to listen and respond to the needs of people
as individuals – not something you see in abundance
within the upper echelons of public service.’
Stephen Moir, 2008
‘By rolling back the state, neoliberalism was supposed to
have allowed autonomy and creativity to flourish.
Instead, it has delivered a semi-privatised
authoritarianism more oppressive than the system it
replaced.’
George Monbiot, 2019: J1
727
Chapter Outline
Introduction
Problematizing public sector leadership
Distinctive challenges associated with public sector
leadership
The new public management and the rise of transformational
leadership
Beyond transformational leadership: shared and distributed
leadership
Challenges of distributed leadership in public sector
organizations
Leadership and performance in public sector organizations
Conclusion
728
Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
explain the particular challenges of leadership in complex public
sector organizations and why there has been increasing interest in
strengthening public leadership;
explain how theories of leadership have informed approaches to
public sector leadership;
engage critically with important themes in leadership in the public
sector, from support for transformational leadership under ‘new
public management’ to more recent developments in shared or
distributed leadership in co-produced services.
video
To learn more about leadership in the public sector, don’t forget to
watch the video conversation for this chapter online.
729
Introduction
Policy makers have increasingly prioritized building improved
leadership skills among public sector managers. As you have
seen through this text, organizations face the challenges of
managing people and the dynamics of the employment
relationship including managing employee performance and
managing diversity. However, it has been argued that managers in
public sector organizations face highly specific leadership
challenges related to: competing performance demands; diverse
practice and priorities across multiple professional groupings; and
a reliance upon complex networks of organizations, managers
and employees in order to achieve their goals (Broussine and
Callahan, 2016). The ascendancy of what is called new public
management (NPM) is in response to these new specific
challenges. NPM describes a movement or ideology (see Chapter
4, pp. 94–95) that has informed management practices in public
sector organizations that include: contracting out of services;
competition within and between public services; and a sharper
focus on meeting ‘targets’ and measuring both individual and
organizational performance. We aim here to advance your
understanding of the leadership process by examining challenges
specific to public sector organizations. Two key questions are
posed: ‘Is it useful to seek to develop a single, coherent model of
public sector leadership?’ and ‘How are the practice and priorities
of public service leaders likely to differ from their private sector
counterparts?’
This chapter will trace policymakers’ and public managers’
increasing interest in leadership and explore the contested nature
of how leadership has been defined and understood in public
sector organizations. It will discuss the distinctive challenges
associated with leading public sector organizations, including: the
complexity and contested nature of goals and objectives; the
demands of regulatory and performance regimes; the influence
and siloed nature of professional hierarchies and demarcations;
and (increasingly) the complexity of inter-organizational,
networked public services. We will then note that public
730
organizations have increasingly focused on leadership
development based on arguments that the sector lags in
leadership capacity; the chapter will critically evaluate the
evidence for such claims.
731
Problematizing Public Sector
Leadership
There is no universally accepted definition of the public sector.
However, ‘public sector organizations’ can best be understood as
those organizations involved in the delivery of public goods and/or
services, and having a degree of (local, regional and/or central)
government control over their corporate policy or strategy. Public
sector organizations include those in: central government
(government departments and those bodies that deliver
departmental priorities, such as executive agencies and non-
departmental public bodies); devolved/regional and local
government and their agencies; and other public bodies
(organizations that are, in whole or part, publically funded to
deliver a public or government service).
A key theme in public leadership development over the past 20
years has focused on the potential benefits of transformational
leadership; the idea that strong leaders communicating a clear
vision can motivate improved individual and organizational
performance echoes ideas we first discussed in Chapters 1 and 6,
when we discussed leader-centric approaches to leadership.
Although there is some evidence of benefits associated with
supporting transformational leadership, critical scholars have
pointed to tensions associated with this approach to leading public
organizations: that the rhetoric of inspiring and transformational
approaches is not always matched by leaders’ capacity to break
free of the performance demands and constraints associated with
NPM. This argument connects with a broader critique of NPM-
inspired leadership strategies – that the transfer of private sector
management ‘best practice’ to the public sector (a key tenet of
NPM) can be problematic. We examine here the evidence of a
shift towards post-NPM approaches to leadership, and argue that
networked, co-produced services require more inclusive, shared
approaches to leadership. In doing so, we return to the ‘shared’ or
‘distributed’ approaches to leadership first examined in Chapter 8,
to look at the evidence on networked public service approaches to
732
leadership, identifying both the benefits and challenges
associated with this model.
Pause and reflect
What do you understand by the term ‘privatization’? Give public
sector examples. To what extent, if at all, has privatization improved
efficiency in public services?
733
Distinctive Challenges Associated
with Public Sector Leadership
Debate on the distinctive challenges of leadership in public sector
organizations to some extent reflect broader debates about
whether the public sector presents a different context for
management and organization more generally (Bovaird and
Loeffler, 2016). Despite some common challenges across sectors,
there is consensus that public sector leaders face a series of
distinctive issues (Hughes, 2012; Burnham and Horton, 2013;
Orazi et al., 2013; Seidle et al. 2016):
they need to lead across and within multiple professional
hierarchies and groupings – powerful professions with their
own networks, systems of peer review and institutions throw
up challenges to public sector leaders;
they are required to respond to the demands of multiple
principals (funders, political leaders and service users, to
name a few) and to deliver according to complex and varying
performance criteria;
their room for manoeuvre is limited due to multiple
audit/performance regimes and high levels of formalized
constraints on their authority;
their work is characterized by goal complexity and ambiguity;
the outcomes achieved (by which leaders are judged) may be
complex, hard to measure and take a long time to be
realized;
they are increasingly required to navigate inter-organizational
hierarchies and multiple agencies working together on
complex policy problems (so that organizational factors
external to their own team may impact performance);
they may lead on the design and delivery of services that rely
upon ‘co-production’ with service users, so that success will
be defined by whether they and their team can secure the
‘buy-in’ and support of relevant sections of the public.
734
Image 15.1 Public sector leaders face a series
of distinctive issues, including the need to
lead across and within multiple powerful
professions with their own networks. Their
work is characterized by goal complexity and
ambiguity, and they are required to ensure
delivery according to complex and varying
performance criteria.
These distinctive issues facing public sector leaders bring to the
fore the notion of ‘place-based leadership’ (see Chapter 17).
Building on Portugal and Yukl’s (1994) observation that leaders
influence internal and external others, place-based leadership is
often external, generative by nature, and highlights those
processes that are geared to constructing local conditions for
knowledge creation and action. Reflecting on the effect of these
unique challenges, Seidle et al. (2016: 604) observe that ‘These
factors limit the autonomy enjoyed by public sector leaders to set
priorities and allocate resources; they also divert attention away
from leading subordinates toward managing relationships with
external actors, generating external support for the agency and
obtaining vital information and resources.’ Nevertheless, despite
the distinctive challenges that potentially inhibit the capacity of
senior public sector officials to ‘lead’, recent years have seen a
substantial increase in interest in how to support effective
735
leadership in the public sector. To some extent, the changing
discourse on leadership in the public sector can be seen as a
mirror of broader shifts towards and beyond a NPM, which we will
go on to consider next.
736
The New Public Management and the
Rise of Transformational Leadership
Public leadership studies have increased in number and
prominence in the past two to three decades. Previously, there
was limited interest in the subject due to a perception that the
rule-based practices and bureaucratic structures of the public
sector limited the scope for senior public sectors to exert genuine
‘leadership’ (Orazi et al., 2013). In the British context, Spicker
(2012: 34) notes the ‘mushroom growth’ in interest in public
leadership from the late 1990s onwards: ‘hardly considered in the
UK in the earlier part of that decade, it became one of the focal
points of the New Labour government’. The New Labour
government (1997–2010) saw ‘strong leadership as a scarce
resource’ (Liddle, 2010: 658) and a series of reports (e.g. Cabinet
Office, 2001) argued for the need to invest in and drive up the
quality of public leadership. To some extent, this narrative
reflected a broader debate on the neoliberal proposition that
markets are supreme in all aspects of society and individual life
(Mason, 2019), and the inadequacy of leadership and
management skills in UK workplaces (BIS, 2012). Under
successive British governments since the end of the New Labour
era – and among policymakers in devolved and local government
– leadership development has remained a key priority (Broussine
and Callahan, 2016). Initiatives to support and develop leadership
capacity in the public sector have included the development of
competency frameworks, substantial investment in leadership
training programmes, and the funding of sectoral leadership
‘academies’ in areas such as healthcare and education (McGurk,
2013; Broussine and Callahan, 2016).
As noted above, increasing interest in leadership in the public
sector mirrors a broader shift in management thinking. McCann
(2016) reaffirms the observation we made in Chapters 1, 7 and 8,
that the era of modern global capitalism has seen a profound shift
in the approach to leading organizations, from command and
control to shared and distributed or transformative leadership.
737
McCann calls this the ‘third spirit of capitalism’ (the other two
being globalization and investor capital). McCann (2016) goes on
to make a link to specific changes seen in the public sector under
NPM ideas that dominated and continue to dominate
organizational reform agendas in public organizations (Hood,
1991; Ferlie, 2017). NPM refers to the organizational reform
movement that has informed changes to public sector
organizations that include: contracting out of services; increased
marketization and competition within services in the public sector
(Mason 2019); a focus on performance management; stronger
managerial capacity and control over the work of public sector
professionals; the disaggregation and decentralization of
organizations and management structures; and a focus on driving
down costs while improving performance (Ferlie, 2017). McCann
sees evidence of clear impact on how leadership is perceived in
the public sector:
Public sector organizations increasingly became
subjected to radical reforms, including deregulation,
outsourcing, privatization, and corporate-style re-
engineering, as neoliberal politicians repeated a mantra
of ‘value for money for tax-payers’, ‘flexibility’, and
‘increased accountability’. Leadership rhetoric and
managerialist discourse deeply infiltrated what used to
be relatively stable, self-policed bureaucracies, including
government and the professions. (2016: 174)
Similarly, Hughes is in no doubt that NPM’s emphasis on
empowered managers who are ‘free to manage’ but are
responsible for hitting performance targets (two classic tropes of
NPM thinking) leads directly to a stronger focus on individual
leadership: ‘once an individual public manager is responsible, his
or her personal qualities – their leadership – necessarily become
important in how results are achieved’ (2007: 320). Similarly, a
reliance on the motivational qualities of an individual leader
implies a shift away from the more rules-based and systems-
based approaches to managing public services that were familiar
under the ‘traditional’ public administration (Hughes, 2012):
738
The emergence of concepts of leadership in the public
sector should be seen as a reassertion of individual and
personal attributes in management and, as a corollary, a
reduction in the emphasis on management by formal
rules. Giving a manager real responsibility to achieve
results means that he or she must then deliver and their
part of the organization must also deliver. The staff
involved need to achieve and the manager needs to lead
them. (Hughes, 2007: 320)
Critical Insight: The tenets of NPM
In his landmark 1991 article that defined the ‘new public
management’ (NPM), Christopher Hood argued that NPM reforms
across the public sector were characterized by seven often-recurring
principles or ‘doctrines’:
1. Hands-on professional management: meaning ‘active,
discretionary control of organizations’ from named people who
are ‘free to manage’.
2. Explicit focus on standards and measures of performance:
meaning that individual and organizational goals and targets
should be clearly quantified and measured.
3. Greater emphasis on output controls: meaning that resource
allocation and rewards should be linked to measured
performance and the breakup of centralized ‘bureaucracy-wide’
HRM.
4. Disaggregation of units within the public sector: meaning the
unbundling of management systems in service-specific
business units operating at arm’s length from central
management.
5. Greater competition and contractualism: with the aim of
lowering costs and improving standards.
6. Stress on private sector management practices: the use of ‘best
practice’ in HR and organizational management from the
private sector and a shift away from a public service ethos.
7. Greater discipline in resource use: meaning increasing control
and discipline in the labour process and an emphasis on
reducing direct costs.
739
Many theorists of public sector leadership argue that these tenets of
NPM remain powerful influencers of practice today (Ferlie, 2017).
740
Activity
Read: Hood, C. (1991) ‘A public management for all seasons?’,
Public Administration, 69 (1): 3–19.
Question: Thinking about examples that you know about from the
public sector, to what extent are Hood’s seven tenets of NPM still
influential? What is this likely to mean for how public sector leaders
see themselves and identify priorities for leadership practice?
Many of the actions that have sought to promote leadership
development and capacity in the public sector from the 1990s
onwards have clearly been informed by thinking around the value
of entrepreneurial and transformational approaches to leadership.
Reflecting on the transformational leadership agenda promoted
under New Labour, it is clear that ‘North American models of
leadership, emphasizing an individualistic and entrepreneurial
approach to reforming public services were an important early
influence’ (McGurk, 2013: 155). Advocates of NPM reforms also
tend to support investing and developing entrepreneurial and
transformational leaders, whom they argue should be granted the
autonomy to drive change, and who might therefore lead
innovation in public service delivery (Miao et al., 2018).
‘Transformational leadership aims to develop motivation and
commitment by generating and communicating a clear vision … to
inspire their teams to achieve higher levels of performance and
encourage them to accept (or even embrace) change’
(Marchington and Wilkinson, 2012: 184). ‘They inspire followers to
transcend their self-interests for the sake of the collective.
Followers become highly committed to the goal of the collective’
(Den Hartog and Boon, 2013: 208). Accordingly, transformational
leaders in the public sector are seen as providing meaning and a
sense of purpose for employees and modelling pro-social
behaviours (Orazi et al., 2013). In the public sector, it has been
argued that transformational leadership styles – at least when
compared to more transactional forms of leadership – are
associated with higher levels of motivation and satisfaction among
employees (Oberfield, 2014).
741
The education sector in England represents an interesting
example of the British Government’s support for transformational
leadership since the 1990s. Investment in leadership development
for Head Teachers, the parachuting in of high-performing Heads to
lead schools perceived as failing, and increasing control for senior
teachers over their own budgets and practices (and even more
‘earned autonomy’ for the best performing schools, contrasted
with reduced discretion for ‘failing’ schools) reinforced the view
that transformational leaders could turn around educational
performance almost singlehandedly. Thus, Head Teachers ‘like
CEO superstars in the private sector [were] cast in a heroic,
transformational mould’ (Currie et al., 2009: 1744). While there
have been some examples of improvement from new leadership
in schools, concerns have also been raised that the recasting of
the role of Head has undermined professional collegiality, and
further embedded classroom behaviours such as ‘teaching to the
test’ in order to meet the school’s performance targets (Currie et
al., 2009). Thus, Hall (2013: 278) argued that the shared and
transformational leadership discourse around empowered
teacher-leaders is a distraction to hide the new reality of highly
controlled ‘target setting’ school regimes (Currie et al., 2009). In
such a work culture, school leadership is circumscribed and
malleable in the face of the doctrine of NPM.
Pause and reflect
It’s argued that measuring and appraising public services have led to
perverse work behaviours (e.g. hospitals manipulating waiting times,
police ignoring some crimes, teachers teaching to achieve test
results). Do you agree or disagree? To what extent are these
behaviours predictable? (Hint: Go back to Chapter 11 and read the
section discussing the potential problems associated with
performance management.)
742
Beyond Transformational
Leadership: Shared and Distributed
Leadership
We have already examined transformational leadership styles in
Chapter 7, and this section extends the discussion by critically
scrutinizing distributed forms of leadership in non-profit, public
organizations, which appear increasingly to have found traction
among public sector leaders (Drumaux and Joyce, 2018).
Given the limitations of NPM-oriented approaches to leadership,
the public sector in the UK and many other states has arguably
seen a shift towards ‘post-heroic’ visions of public leadership that
are much more focused on collaboration, teamwork and the
sharing of responsibility (and reward) for leadership. Thus, for
Bach and Kessler (2012: 109) ‘an emphasis on team working
reflected a shift away from NPM’s emphasis on “heroic” individual
leadership towards a more distributed form of leadership involving
staff across an organization.’
As we noted in Chapter 8, there are a number of drivers behind an
increasing emphasis on distributed or shared forms of leadership.
First, the 2008 global financial crisis generated a general sense of
‘disillusionment with heroic models of individual leadership’ (Boak
et al., 2015: 335). In Britain a series of high-profile scandals in
which apparently well-led organizations failed to deliver effective
public services (the failings at the Mid Staffordshire NHS
Foundation Trust being an infamous example) further weakened
the brand of transformational public leaders (West et al., 2014).
The sense that ‘transformational approaches perpetuate an
arrogance and grandiosity that allows leaders to flee from the
harsh side of reality’ was increasingly seen as a risk factor in
maintaining standards in the public sector (Orazi et al., 2013:
493). Thus, for the NHS in Scotland, ‘The model of heroic
leadership is no longer appropriate’ (2014: 2). There has been
some attempt to resuscitate the transformational public leadership
agenda by making claims for a ‘post-transformational’ leadership
743
that ‘differs from the classic concept of the heroic or charismatic
leader’ but still sees individual leaders as a source of ‘inspirational
motivation’ (Aagaard, 2016: 1173). These exercises in semantics
have not proved convincing.
Second, in public sector organizations, this shift in thinking on
leadership styles reflects a broader ‘post-NPM’ movement that
argues that NPM’s focus on markets, performance management
and transformational leadership failed to deliver the promised
results and, as importantly, is ill-suited to an increasingly
challenging public sector environment where inter-agency
networks are required to solve complex, ‘wicked problems’ (Ferlie
et al., 2013). Broussine and Callahan (2016: 275) agree: ‘Wicked
problems that cross-organizational boundaries can only be
addressed successfully by networks of public, private and non-
profit organizations, community groups and citizens and other
inter-organizational arrangements.’
The new wisdom emerging is that given public agencies have to
work together, formally and informally, to solve problems in multi-
organizational networked arrangements, shared, collaborative
leadership styles help to nurture public sector employees’
commitment to NPM practices and ‘public governance’, with a
focus on building coalitions of shared leadership across networks
(Hsieh and Liou, 2018; Osborne, 2010). For Teelken et al. (2012:
71), ‘within the network governance model of public management,
there has been a shift in emphasis to leadership as a directing
force … dispersed laterally and vertically through the
organization.’
There are implications for the content and focus of leadership
activities. For McGuire and Silva (2009), it is important that shared
or distributed leadership activities focus on: activating resources
and support from different stakeholder groups; framing a work
environment that validates collaborative problem solving; and
mobilizing support from stakeholders. Senior managers are
increasingly required to play a key role in creating opportunities
and providing resources that help public service professionals at
all levels to collaborate and innovate across organizations and
government (Lindsay et al., 2018). It has also been argued that
744
networked public services make demands on a different set of
leadership skills. The new network governance model of public
management requires that leaders are capable of leading not only
within the boundaries of their own public organization that
authorizes them, but they must also give leadership across the
boundaries in other public and private organizations, including, for
example, government, educational institutions, hospitals and
community spheres in which their influence and actions have no
authorization (Sotarauta, 2005). In this context, leaders are
compelled to learn new leadership skills not only in administrating
resources, but also in leading dynamic interactive processes.
These skills include, but are not limited to: (1) the ability to find
new resources; (2) the ability to direct resources according to
public sector strategies and policies; (3) the ability to find common
ground and negotiate with external agencies and institutions; and
(4) the ability to lobby government agencies and fund providers
and decision makers and to creatively use external funding. As
Broussine and Callahan (2016: 283) observe, ‘the skills needed to
design and lead networks place a premium on the ability to
negotiate, to work through uncertainty in funding and to engage a
wide range of stakeholders, clients and funders, as well as
influencing other public sector leaders.’
So, public leadership has been re-cast (again), this time as a role
that involves supporting collaboration and engaging in boundary-
spanning networking to co-lead multi-disciplinary public services
(Mangan and Lawrence- Pietronot, 2019). A parallel shift has
taken place in relation to the ‘who’ of public sector leadership. As
noted above, a change in emphasis towards shared or distributed
leadership implies a similarly collaborative approach within public
organizations. In the context of the new network governance
model of public management, distributed leadership
conceptualizes leadership as an emergent property of a group or
network of interacting individual leaders, and suggests openness
of the boundaries of leadership, widening the conventional net
and role of leaders. The assumption is that ‘leadership skills and
competencies are dispersed among actors within teams and
public networks’ (Orazi et al., 2013: 493), so that ‘post-
transformational and distributive leadership strategies encourage
senior leaders to share responsibility for leading and driving
745
change with frontline managers and employees’ (Hartley et al.,
2013: 824).
Gronn’s (200b) seminal research identified two dimensions along
which distributed leadership can be distinguished from other forms
of leadership: concertive action and conjoint agency. Concertive
action flows from institutionalized levels of collaboration and
shared leadership roles in work groups, producing overt learning
and its subsequent formalization. Conjoint agency refers to the
nature of interactions and extent of synergies among different
leaders, and their willingness to engage in reciprocal
relationships. Shared leadership, the NHS’s preferred term for
distributed leadership, is intended to embody both dimensions, as
‘a dynamic, interactive influencing process among individuals in
groups for which the objective is to lead one another to
achievement of group or organizational goals or both’ (NHS
Institute for Innovation and Improvement, 2009: 1). Thus, the
assumption is that leadership is best seen as shared between and
across clinical teams and multi-disciplinary groups.
The effective facilitation of shared leadership in the NHS includes:
consciously involving team members in decision making and
delegating responsibilities appropriately; empowering team
members; developing and maintaining non-hierarchical structures;
providing information required by teams; creating alignment; and
coaching colleagues in shared leadership (Smith et al., 2018). As
Smith et al. (2018: 460) observe, ‘for inter-professional teams to
work effectively, each team member must accept responsibility as
a member-leader stepping in and out of the leadership role when
their professional expertise, particular knowledge of a client, or the
situation comes to the fore.’ This needs a formal leader with
overall responsibility for team performance, but who consciously
shares the leadership function and facilitates joint decision-
making. Accordingly, a key leadership activity is to develop and
maintain non-hierarchical, democratic structures, and coach team
members to share their ideas. Internal research in the NHS has
pointed to a number of benefits of effective distributed/shared
leadership in terms of staff engagement and team performance
(Storey and Holti, 2013a). Fitzgerald et al.’s (2013) research in
several NHS organizations similarly found that widely distributed
746
leadership projects contributed to more effective change
management and service improvement.
Leadership in Action: Shared leadership for health improvement
among BME communities
An innovative initiative saw health professionals share leadership
across organizational, disciplinary and sectoral boundaries. Local
NHS organizations had identified the need to improve care for
members of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi community suffering from
diabetes (with black and minority ethnicity (BME) groups at a
significantly higher risk of diabetes). Increasing take-up of
retinopathy screening appointments and providing complementary
health education were seen as key priorities. Improving knowledge
and take-up of these services can lead to early identification and
treatment and significantly better clinical outcomes. A two-year
project brought together expertise from the local NHS Trust,
community-based NHS health services, the local government leisure
organization, a third-sector diabetes support group and other local
community organizations. The shared leadership approach adopted
built upon existing NHS third-sector partnerships as well as new
relationships, for example the NHS working with the community
leisure centre.
Five GP practices with low levels of retinopathy screening take-up
were targeted, with the team working with these practices to increase
awareness through easy-to-follow information mail-outs (in
appropriate languages), local drop-in sessions and engagement
through community groups. The team developed a tailored approach
to each GP practice based on networking, targeted research and
trust-building with local GP teams. Senior clinical leads from the NHS
acknowledged the importance of non-NHS co-leadership to the
success of the project, with local community organizations proving
innovative and effective at engagement work. At the same time, the
inclusion of NHS commissioning representatives meant that lessons
from the project could be mainstreamed in future commissioning
rounds.
The project saw increased attendance at retinopathy screening
appointments in the target areas. As part of the broader
lessons/spin-offs from the project, local NHS providers developed
cultural competency training for GP practices, while GPs reported
new and lasting networks with local community organizations with
747
expertise in diabetes (and engaging those BME communities at
greater risk). The NHS third-sector shared leadership team pointed
to a number of other lessons, including the need to: tailor
approaches to engaging with different stakeholders (from GPs to
local community groups); arrive at a consensus on aims, measures
of success and the roles and added value of each partner; and
ensure that communication lines remain open throughout the lifetime
of the project (Health Foundation, 2011).
748
Reflective question
To what extent does distributed leadership fit with the shift towards a
network-oriented new public governance, discussed above, given its
emphasis on pluralism and collaboration?
749
Source
Author’s own interpretation and reflections, adapted from Health
Foundation (2011) Shared Leadership for Change. London: Health
Foundation.
750
To explore this topic further see:
Bussu, S. and Tullia Galanti, M. (2018) ‘Facilitating coproduction: the
role of leadership in coproduction initiatives in the UK’, Policy and
Society, 37(3): 347–67.
751
Challenges of Distributed
Leadership in Public Sector
Organizations
There is substantial evidence of the problems and challenges
associated with promoting shared and distributed forms of
leadership in the public sector. Martin et al.’s (2014) extensive
case study research in the NHS found that those designated as
sharing in leadership in fact reported many barriers to exerting
concretive action and conjoint agency, including: a sense that
more junior leaders were not ‘heard’ by senior management; top-
down policy and management prescriptions that were seen as
impossible to challenge; and power inequalities according to level
of seniority or clinical (versus non-clinical) expertise. Martin et al.
(2014: 21) argue that these problems were exacerbated by a
‘delusional’ failure of senior management to acknowledge the
weaknesses of shared leadership processes, so that their
continued commitment to the rhetoric of distributing leadership
provided ‘fertile ground for constructing fantasies of the power of
others’.
Martin et al. (2014) also found systemic barriers in terms of:
limited resources, meaning that staff struggled to find time to
adopt leadership roles alongside their day-to-day work
responsibilities; professional demarcations and silo working that
limited inter-professional collaboration; and the scale of
organizational structures, which created practical difficulties in
bringing people together to share ideas and in creating
opportunities for senior leaders to engage with staff at other
levels. In line with previous research in the public sector, they also
argue that distributed or shared leadership requires sufficient skills
among those participating in the leadership process and sufficient
horizontal and vertical distribution of knowledge (Currie and
Lockett, 2011), and that not all designated leaders are able to call
on such expertise (see Chapter 12).
752
To return to the case of England’s school system, a recurring
theme has been the tension between recent strategies promoting
more inclusive and distributed forms of leadership, management
systems and residual styles of leadership that reflect the priorities
of NPM. Both school Heads and their colleagues invited to share
in distributed leadership tasks have reported a tension between,
on the one hand, new guidance promoting sharing leadership, and
on the other hand, the legacies of NPM. So, Heads felt that they
were being held personally and individually responsible for
performance metrics (reflecting a real and continuing focus on
performance management and individual accountability in
England’s school system), while their teaching colleagues
suggested that Heads remained ‘wedded to an individualistic
conception of leadership’ and possibly a more ‘heroic’ view of their
own leadership style and performance (Currie et al., 2009: 1747).
This example seems to connect with a broader concern that a
NPM-oriented emphasis on individual performance and
entrepreneurial and empowered management remains a strong
theme in the UK public sector, and are at odds with more recent
rhetorical commitments to encouraging more collaborative forms
of leadership (Currie and Lockett, 2011).
A further challenge relates to the link between distributed
leadership and calls for more networked approaches to leading
public sector organizations (see above). A focus on distributed
leadership within public organizations often goes hand-in-hand
with an emphasis on connecting and networking with other public
organizations and including community stakeholders in processes
of co-production. Thus, for Alimo-Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe
(2011: 226):
A distributed model of leadership is about enabling
individuals and groups to work together in meaningful
ways. It has, as its goal, the building of social
relationships involving all members of the community,
both internal and external to the organization, in order to
respond proactively and effectively to changing
circumstances, and thereby achieve organizational and
societal goals.
753
In the context of distributed leadership in schools, this has meant
Head Teachers being encouraged to engage with families,
communities and local stakeholders to involve them in the life of
the school, and being required to evidence outward engagement
with local businesses and civil society. This has again proved
problematic, with teaching staff seeing such engagement activities
as adding non-core tasks to their workload, and Heads faced with
the difficult task of ensuring that sometimes reluctant communities
engage with their schools (Currie et al., 2009).
To sum up, the past decade or so has arguably seen a decisive
shift in how leadership has been conceptualized in the public
sector, with far less emphasis on NPM priorities around ‘freeing’
individual (generally senior) leaders to drive transformation, and
more focus on building networks where people at different levels
and across diverse organizations can share leadership. This focus
on shared or distributed leadership seems a better fit given the
complex environments inhabited by public sector organizations,
their staff and managers. Under an emergent ‘new public
governance’, managers and public sector professionals are
increasingly required to lead through and across networks, and
bring together the resources of a range of colleagues and
stakeholders to attack wicked problems. But we have also seen
that a range of challenges – not least the enduring features of
previous NPM reforms and resource shortages in an era of
austerity – continue to throw up barriers to the full realization of
distributed leadership.
Pause and reflect
We have discussed the leader–performance relationship in previous
chapters; in terms of leading in a hospital or a university, how can we
measure leadership success?
754
Leadership and Performance in
Public Sector Organizations
Attributing the effectiveness of public services to the individual
performance of employees, managers or leaders has long been
acknowledged as problematic (Bach and Kessler, 2012; Spicker,
2012). Most often, discussion of public sector leadership
performance follows from occasional crises or scandals, such as
tragic failings in healthcare or child protection services (Marinetto,
2011). But beyond (perhaps rightly) blaming senior leaders in
these cases of failure, there is a lack of systematic evidence on
how leadership impacts on public sector performance. Although
Boyne and Dahya (2002: 187) have demonstrated a performance
bounce within public organizations appointing new chief
executives, they also acknowledge that this may be because
leadership changes are used to bring about broader reform
programmes ‘as outsiders are more likely to implement strategic
changes’.
There is some evidence that changing senior managers in local
government is positive for low performers (Boyne et al., 2011).
However, these authors are careful to acknowledge the limitations
of their evidence beyond these extreme cases. Meanwhile, there
is limited consistent evidence of individual leaders or even
approaches to leadership as encompassing ‘best practice’ in
delivering improved performance in some of the sectors that we
have discussed above, such as education and healthcare (Currie
et al., 2009). Perhaps this is because the rise in interest in public
sector leadership during the 1980s and 1990s coincided with a
NPM agenda that, with limited evidence, sought to present a
heroic or individual approach to leadership as potentially
‘transformational’. As Spicker (2012: 45) notes, given the
complexity of public sector organizational and inter-organizational
environments, there is little evidence that leadership must be
concentrated among ‘special’ people: ‘there is no standard of
skills, behaviours or roles which is generally applicable to
positions of responsibility throughout public services.’
755
The increasing interest in distributed or shared leadership,
discussed above, also perhaps reflects a broader acceptance that
much of the leading of the delivery of public services actually
happens through networks of professionals at ‘street level’. ‘There
are public services like policing and social work where officers are
routinely required to manage risks and take the initiative‘ (Spicker,
2012: 38) and, more generally, theories of ‘street-level
bureaucracy’ suggest that frontline professionals in these and
other areas of the public sector make judgements, ration
resources and shape services on a day-to-day basis (Lipsky,
1980).
Perhaps we are left with the conclusion that a careful and gradual
shift towards senior managers and other leading professionals
training for and supporting the implementation of distributed
leadership is our best guess at how to prepare people – across a
range of roles in the public sector – to engage in shared and
networked forms of leader activities that reflect the collaborative
context of public services.
756
Conclusion
Leadership theorists have sometimes struggled to nail down what
a model of effective leadership in the public sector might look like.
Part of the explanation we covered in this chapter lies in the
complexity of public services, the public sector and its
organizations. Public sector leaders arguably face a unique set of
challenges. They are required to respond to the demands of
numerous stakeholders – policymakers, funders, service users
and others – and their success is defined with reference to
multiple and sometimes contradictory performance indicators.
New approaches to public sector leadership emerged with the rise
of new public governance theory, and alongside this collaborative
new public governance, which generated increasing interest in
distributed leadership. There are signs that such collaborative and
distributed leadership is a better fit with what public sector
professionals themselves see as effective approaches to running
public services. But progress remains difficult to evidence.
Leadership in the public sector is always going to be a contested
space. Public sector leaders are compelled to engage with and
respond to the myriad demands of stakeholders (policymakers,
powerful professional groupings, trade unions and public service
users) to a much greater degree than leaders in private sector,
for-profit organizations. Arguably, it was a mistake for the public
sector to try to ape the transformational leadership fad that
dominated some private companies. More recent developments
towards distributed leadership models seems to offer a better fit
with the need to build networks of complementary professionals
and stakeholders, with leadership shared among them. However,
it remains to be seen if these collaborative approaches are able to
add to the limited evidence as to what effective leadership means
in public sector organizations.
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Chapter Review Questions
1. What sort of specific problems and challenges do leaders in public
sector organizations face?
2. How have NPM ideas challenged and informed approaches to public
sector leadership?
3. What do you understand by the term ‘distributed leadership’, and
why might this approach be effective in leading public sector
organizations?
Assignment Task: The NHS
As noted in this chapter, there are a number of leadership and HR
practices associated with the facilitation of shared leadership in
public sector organizations. Search the Internet to identify these
practices within NHS England or another public sector organization,
such as education.
758
Questions
1. What are the key barriers that health service managers might
face in supporting shared leadership?
2. What sort of strategies might they deploy to try to overcome
impediments to sharing leadership? Are there lessons that can
be drawn from the private sector on collaborative working that
might be transferable to public organizations?
759
Sources of additional information
O’Reilly, P., Lee, S.W., O’Sullivan, M., Cullen, W., Kennedy, C. and
MacFarlane, A. (2017) ‘Assessing the facilitators and barriers of
interdisciplinary team working in primary care using normalisation
process theory: an integrative review’, PLoS One, 12 (5). Available at
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5436644 (accessed 4
October 2019).
Smith, B., Fowler-Davis, S., Nancarrow, S., Ariss, B. and Enderby, P.
(2018) ‘Leadership in interprofessional health and social care teams:
a literature review’, Leadership in Health Services, 31 (4): 452–67.
Go Online
Further your knowledge and build your bibliography for
assignments by reading the recommended journal articles for this
chapter.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
video
Learn more about leadership in practice by watching the video
conversation for this chapter.
Paul Gray, former CEO of NHS Scotland, shares his personal
experience of leading a major public sector organization through
shared leadership, the unique rewards and challenges of working for
the NHS and how public sector organizations can recruit and develop
leaders with the right values.
The video can be found at https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
See the inside front cover for the access code and instructions.
760
Further Reading
Drumaux, A. and Joyce, P. (2018) ‘Leadership in Europe’s public
sector’, in E. Ongaro and S. van Thiel (eds), The Palgrave
Handbook of Public Administration and Management in Europe.
Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Ferlie, E. (2017) ‘The new public management and public
management studies’, in R. Aldag (ed.), The Oxford Research
Encyclopaedia of Business and Management. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Spicker, P. (2012) ‘Leadership: a perniciously vague concept’,
International Journal of Public Sector Management, 25 (1): 34–47.
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Case Study: Shared leadership
development in Scotland’s NHS
762
Background
An innovative project in Scotland was awarded resources to develop
strategies to improve diabetes care in the Lothian region. The project
sought to improve the quality and reach of diabetes care in GP surgeries
and areas (including rural communities) and support the development of
shared leadership and partnership-based structures to achieve improved
care outcomes.
The project was led by a lead consultant clinician within the main NHS
organization, and included another seven core members taking in other
relevant clinical leads in acute care, primary care practitioners (i.e. GPs),
a public health consultant physician, a clinical network manager, a
healthcare planner and a patient representative. These lead partners
were charged with coordinating and aligning activities within their own
teams and spheres of professional expertise.
The project focused on developing a shared leadership model, bringing
the partners together to: develop a common vision and framework for
collaboration to improve services; agree an accountability framework
where different partners’ roles and required actions were detailed; and
deploy 360-degree appraisals to allow for reflection on project
participants’ contributions linked to one-to-one coaching sessions
designed to support collaboration. Collaborative leadership development
coaching and mentoring were also provided. Responding to evaluation
research, the project participants recalled overcoming traditional silo
thinking in order to make discussions more action-focused and efficient.
Improved information sharing resulted in a better shared understanding of
the ‘patient pathway’. Participants also discussed taking new (shared)
leadership skills back to their own day-to-day work.
763
Benefits
Participants reported significant service improvements during the period
of the award: there was collaboration on clarifying and revising ‘patient
pathways’ so as to improve care and referral procedures for specialist
advice; expanded diabetes screening services and improved patient
information services were developed and piloted; and participants
suggested that there had been improvements in patient voice and a better
understanding of patients’ perspectives as a result.
In this and similar projects, there have also been reported improvements
in teamworking among health professionals, focusing on ‘getting things
done’, minimizing and managing conflict, and understanding others’ roles
and challenges (and how to influence and build consensus with other key
stakeholders).
In terms of the development of a shared leadership model, participants
reported a range of views: there was a consensus that the project had a
clear (single) clinical leader, but that in complex clinical services this was
often necessary to ensure clear lines of accountability and responsibility;
but there was also a sense of improved shared voice among all
participants (especially more junior and non-medical staff). Leadership
development activities were seen as delivering gains in confidence, and
individual participants felt better able to take leadership responsibility in
their own professional sphere.
764
Facilitators and challenges of the shared
leadership project
An evaluation found that the project benefited from being able to draw on
existing relationships of trust between the professionals involved (indeed,
participants noted that the project helped to accelerate progress on
collaborations that were already under discussion), clear leadership from
the clinical lead professional and a well-functioning administrative and
communications infrastructure, facilitated by a clinical network manager
who was responsible for supporting connectivity across services and
enabled by effective IT systems. Beyond the additional resources
allocated for partnership working, participants were able to commit extra
time – a sign of their shared commitment and the buy-in of senior
management colleagues.
Project leadership and membership remained relatively stable, which
allowed for the retention and sharing of learning. Unlike NHS
organizations in England, which have seen a series of re-organization
initiatives under successive waves of NPM, the project also benefited
from a stable policy and organizational context in NHS Scotland – as
Boxall and Purcell (2016: 217) note, ‘Scotland has been less enthusiastic
about NPM’ – and this stability supported collaboration and shared
leadership.
Evaluation research identified a number of challenges that the project
faced including: the perceived dominance of tertiary (i.e. specialist)
clinical services; disruption caused by frequent (if minor) organizational
changes; and time and resource pressures that limited opportunities for
collaboration.
765
Case exercise
In small groups or individually, identify the key lessons from the case
study and address the following questions:
1. The project developed a range of partnership-building and learning
initiatives to support shared leadership. Reflecting on the discussion
of the challenges of shared or distributed leadership earlier in this
chapter, are there any other leadership skills that should be
incorporated into leadership development activities linked to projects
like this one?
2. The implication of the case study is that the relatively limited impact
of NPM ideas in the NHS in Scotland created more fertile ground for
shared leadership. Based on the case study and the discussion in
this chapter, do you think that shared/distributed leadership and
NPM are incompatible? If so, why?
766
Source
Author’s own interpretation and reflections, adapted from information
drawn from Burgoyne, J., Williams, S. and Walmsley, J. (2009) Shared
Leadership for Change Award Scheme: Evaluation and final report.
London: Health Foundation.
767
Sources of additional information
Currie, G. and Spyridonidis, D. (2019) ‘Sharing leadership for diffusion of
innovation in professionalized settings’, Human Relations, 72 (7): 1209–
33.
West, M., Eckert, R., Steward, K. and Pasmore, B. (2014) Developing
Collective Leadership for Healthcare, London: King’s Fund.
768
769
16 Leading Pro-Environmental
Change
Andrew Bratton
‘The BBC’s Blue Planet series has made us aware of
how the oceans are being polluted, but it’s not enough to
return a few plastic bottles.’
John Vidal, 2018
‘Reducing emissions … it’s not about sacrificing. This is
about modernizing the economy to meet 21st-century
demands. It’s not about decreasing our quality of life. It’s
about increasing it, making it safer for ourselves, and
certainly for others, without the carbon footprint.’
Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN
(quoted in Allan, 2019)
770
Chapter Outline
Introduction
The nature of environmental sustainability
Employees’ pro-environmental behaviours and environmental
management systems
Environmental leadership, organizational change and culture
Creating a sustainable workplace through human resource
practices
Employee voice in environmental sustainability
Critical perspectives on corporate-oriented sustainability
Conclusion
771
Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
explain the nature of environmental sustainability and the role of the
workplace both as a significant contributor to carbon emissions and
as a site for implementing environmental improvements;
explain the role of organizational leadership in influencing
environmental sustainability;
critically analyse pro-environment management strategies;
explain how learning and development are connected to change
management strategies;
explain the meaning of ‘employee voice’ and how it contributes to
environmental sustainability in the workplace.
video
To learn more about the growing importance of sustainability within
organizations, don’t forget to watch the video conversation for this
chapter online.
772
Introduction
The 2018 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
concluded that the Earth is on track to overshoot the targets of the
Paris climate agreement and warm by 3 degrees C by the end of
the century, a level that would ‘disrupt life on the planet and cause
long-lasting or irreversible changes’ (Hook, 2018: 4). This would
result not so much in climate change but ever more
catastrophically uncontrollable ‘runaway climate change’
(Barkham, 2018). It is within this context that there has been more
incentive for organizations to report on their environmental
sustainability activities. This includes an area of management we
have examined in previous chapters: human resource
management (HRM). In this chapter, we extend the discussion to
‘sustainable’ or ‘green’ HRM. Here, environmental sustainability
incorporates ecological or environmental considerations (e.g.
carbon emissions) with organizational needs (e.g. profitability) in
such a way as to promote benefits for the environment (Norton et
al., 2015). That work organizations are both part of the problem as
well as part of the solution to carbon accumulation is not in doubt.
The question examined in this chapter, however, is to what extent
do organizational environmental leadership and people-oriented
management practices contribute to changing behaviours that can
create more environmentally sustainable workplaces?
The aim of this chapter is to examine how environmental
leadership and HR practices influence environmental
sustainability in the workplace. It introduces the concept of
environmental sustainability and examines how this might be
integrated within a workplace context to create positive outcomes
for employees, their organization as well as the environment. It
begins with explaining the nature of environmental sustainability
and why, and how, it is closely connected to organizational
change. This is followed by a discussion of the role of
environmental leadership and HR practices in reducing carbon
emissions. Finally, it focuses on organizational change strategies
to support environmental sustainability in the workplace.
773
Pause and reflect
What do you understand by the term ‘sustainability’ as it relates to
the planet?
774
The Nature of Environmental
Sustainability
The sustainability discourse evolved in the 1970s and 1980s with
publications on the ecological limits of economic growth (e.g.
Meadows et al., 1972). The issue of sustainability was initially
debated at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human
Environment in Stockholm (Sumner, 2005: 79). A significant
development came with the formation of the UN World
Commission on Environment and Development (WCED; also
known as the Bruntland Commission), which subsequently
provided the now classical definition of sustainable development:
‘development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs’ (1987: 43).
Conceptually, the meaning of sustainability, as cited in the
Brundtland Commission, ‘can be understood as an overarching
worldview recognizing the interconnectedness of ecological,
social, and economic factors in human activity’ (Docherty et al.,
2009: 6). The Commission’s report also introduced ‘the concept of
justice (within and between generations, global justice and justice
through participation and democratic arrangements) as a central
issue in relation to efforts to enhance sustainability’ (Lund, 2004:
43).
Sustainability science is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to
enhance sustainability by integrating knowledge from a range of
disciplines including natural sciences, engineering, social
sciences and the humanities (Kates et al., 2001). The challenge
for sustainability science is to ensure that knowledge production is
a communal effort that links academic research with industry and
government, and benefits individuals and society (Wiek et al.,
2011). Sustainability science is embedded within broader social
processes of understanding, and thus contributes to
organizational decision-making processes through the creation of
knowledge (particularly analysis of risks and consequences)
derived from emergent interdisciplinary enquiry (Kasemir et al.,
2003). Although it is recognized that there is a multiplicity of
775
viewpoints, sustainability is, for an increasing number of
organizational and environmental writers, the ultimate goal: that is,
‘living within the regenerative capacity of the biosphere’
(Wackernagel et al., 2002: 9266). Importantly, in terms of
managing work and people, scholars of sustainability science
advocate participatory and collaborative approaches to the co-
generation of knowledge and environmental decision making
(Blackstock et al., 2007).
Environmental management is an attempt to control the human
impact on and interaction with the natural environment in order to
preserve natural resources. At the organizational level, corporate
environmental performance refers to ‘organizational performance
in managing natural resources and the natural environment in the
process of conducting business’ (Ones and Dilchert, 2012: 450).
Corporate environmental performance includes both
environmental outcomes and the pro-environmental initiatives that
organizations implement. The former represent the ecological
impact or ‘footprint’ of organizational activities; the latter focus on
what organizations do for environmental sustainability. In the
workplace, this includes encouraging energy efficiency, waste
reduction and recycling, water conservation and employees’ use
of alternative low-carbon forms of transportation (e.g. a bus, train
or bicycle). At the individual level, workplace pro-environmental
behaviour (WPEB) can be defined as ‘a systematic set of actions
from a collective network of organizational actors spread across a
company, team, and/or value chain’ (Kennedy et al., 2015: 370).
For employees, this entails changes to their existing job duties,
additional requirements of their position and, in some cases, the
creation of entirely new occupational opportunities, such as
‘environmental manager’ (Ones and Dilchert, 2012).
Although environmental sustainability has been debated for
decades, it is an emerging concept in the business world, and the
existing literature provides numerous and varied interpretations of
it. In contemporary management parlance, sustainability has been
used to refer to values and ethics, as well as goals such as
corporate social responsibility (CSR). In 1997, expert John
Elkington, for example, coined the term ‘triple bottom line’ or ‘P3’
(People, Planet and Profit) which emphasizes that, in sustainable
776
workplaces, human and social resources along with ecological
and economic resources should be able to grow and develop.
From a work systems perspective, sustainability has been
described as an ongoing process of efficiency and improved
environmental and social performance (Docherty et al., 2009). For
Norton and his colleagues (2015), organizational efficiency and
improvements to the planet are combined in the concept of
environmental sustainability. In the organizational context, this
means that environmental sustainability incorporates business
needs (e.g. profitability) with environmental consideration (e.g.
lower carbon emissions) in such a way as to be ecologically
beneficial to the planet.
Therefore, WPEBs are necessary but not sufficient for
environmental (corporate) sustainability. Popular corporate
strategy authors have been optimistic, arguing that although the
concept is understood to mean different things to different people,
it has nevertheless made a positive social and environmental
impact. For example, management strategy expert Michael Porter,
championing the concept of creating competitive advantage and
shared value, has argued that the ongoing efforts of certain
corporations are helping to transform sustainability from a ‘cliché
term’ to an innovative and enduring business strategy (Porter and
Kramer, 2006, 2011).
Pause and reflect
In addition to the business case, to what extent have public protests
and the environmental movement transformed sustainability into a
potential innovative business strategy?
Leadership in Action: Trust as the most valuable commodity in
business?
777
It has been argued that trust – the invisible glue that holds
communities and social contacts in place – is the most valuable
commodity in business (Corner, 2015) and the workplace. You may
recall from Chapter 5 the Volkswagen emissions scandal that helped
reinforce public cynicism about the ability of the private sector to act
in good faith to help combat climate change. In Wolfsburg, Germany,
the headquarters of Volkswagen, when news of the scandal broke
thousands of VW employees, their families and their community were
angry and fearful (Goffee and Jones, 2015). They were angry that an
incredibly successful and profitable company, in which many had
invested their entire working lives, could have engaged in large-scale
corporate deception. An article in the New York Times explains that
The most significant difference between the European and
American approaches to emissions standards is that
regulators in the United States conduct their own tests to
check whether manufacturers’ claims are accurate. In
contrast in Europe, testing is left to the discretion of
automakers and their contractors. (Hakim and Barthelemy,
2015: B1)
With just 100 companies responsible for 71 per cent of the global
emissions, companies have a huge role to play in contributing to
climate change (Riley, 2017). In the context of the VW emissions
scandal, why should individuals bother to take the issue seriously
either? And if corporations can’t be trusted, should governments
intervene with stricter emissions regulations?
778
Reflective question
Do you agree or disagree that trust is the most valuable commodity
in business and the workplace? How important is mutual trust
between leaders and other employees?
779
Sources
Hakim, D. and Barthelemy, C. (2015) ‘VW fought in Europe on
testing’, New York Times, 2 December, p. B1.
Riley, T. (2017) ‘Just 100 companies responsible for 17 per cent of
global emissions, study says’, Guardian, 10 July.
780
To explore this topic further see:
Goffee, R. and Jones, G. (2015) Why Should Anyone Work Here?
What it takes to create an authentic organization. Brighton, MA:
Harvard Business Review Press.
The burgeoning literature demonstrates that sustainability is no
longer a fringe issue. Corporate titans, for example retailer
Walmart (2018), Google (2018) and BP (2017), have embraced
elements of sustainability. In the 20th century, occupational health
and safety was always an issue for trade unions, but in the 21st
century, institutions such as the International Labour Organization,
the European Trade Union Confederation and the British Trades
Union Congress (TUC) in the UK have also embraced the wider
concept of sustainability. Sustainability is particularly relevant to
‘mission-driven organizations, such as governments, charities,
and universities, because they are not evaluated in traditional
financial terms, and have missions that go beyond the bottom line’
(Boudreau and Ramstad, 2005: 130). This trend towards
sustainability, no doubt influenced by the environmental
movement of the 1980s and the CSR movement of the 1990s, has
influenced organizational leaders to become increasingly aware of
the need to build positive relations with stakeholders, both internal
and external to the organization (Harrison and Freeman, 1999).
The concept of sustainability has evolved since its first usage over
30 years ago. There is a general consensus in the literature that
the concept of sustainability is linked to nature, the notion of
resource conservation, and, as outlined by Dyllick and Hockerts
(2002), present-day interpretations of the term have been
influenced primarily by three different stakeholder groups:
ecologists, business strategy scholars and the United Nations
(WCED, 1987). While its origin begins with the natural
environment, the concept often embodies a human emphasis,
‘reflecting not only a concern for our future, but also an unease
with our current situation and an emphasis on human agency’
(Sumner, 2005: 78). Instead of helping to improve our
understanding of sustainability, these contradictory interpretations
and their tensions indicate the kind of problem that sustainability
781
can pose, both in evaluating the literature and in terms of
employers and employees working in partnership towards more
sustainable outcomes in the workplace. Following the perspective
throughout this textbook, sustainability is examined here through a
prism that recognizes that the employment relationship is, by
necessity, cooperative but that it also entails unavoidable
structural conflict between managers and workers.
782
Employees’ Pro-environmental
Behaviours and Environmental
Management Systems
The extant literature on sustainable workplaces raises the
possibility that work organizations, through appropriate policies,
processes and practices, can make strategic choices that may
enhance natural resource efficiency and reduce the amount of
greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere (Cox et al., 2012).
It is in the workplace, therefore, where human resources (HR)
policies and practices have their effects on the issue of work itself
and, by extension, on employee behaviour, labour productivity and
environmental sustainability (Bratton, 2020). It is to the workplace
that one must look to examine how managers’ and workers’
behaviours and own goals combine to create more
environmentally sustainable workplaces. The workplace is a site
where social relationships shape interests, motives and the
actions of managers and workers, and where cooperation and
resistance around management objectives take place in a
‘contested terrain’ (Edwards, 1979). Workplace sustainability is
therefore more than a technical challenge – it goes to the very
heart of managing people.
Ultimately, the solution to reducing carbon emissions in the
workplace lies with those social sciences that are tasked with
changing employee behaviour. In this regard, Boiral et al. (2015)
provide some insight into the nature and scope of employees’ pro-
environmental behaviours, and Renwick et al. (2016) examine the
role of green HRM (GHRM), which we will go on to consider in the
next section.
783
Employees’ pro-environmental behaviours
The role of employees’ pro-environmental behaviours has been
highlighted in many environmental studies (e.g. Yuriev et al.,
2018). Pro-environmental behaviour is a multifaceted concept
used to describe a broad range of actions intended to benefit the
natural environment. Ones and Dilchert (2012: 452) define
employees’ pro-environmental behaviours as ‘scalable actions
and behaviours that employees engage in that are linked with and
contribute to or detract from environmental sustainability’. This
definition focuses on environmental behaviours inside
organizations at the individual level, and excludes those
behaviours rooted in employees’ own lifestyle. Notwithstanding
the value of the definition, Ones and Dilchert focus only on
measurable behaviour at the employee level and exclude actions
taken by employees to support organizational practices, or
informal initiatives. Therefore, a more inclusive definition of WPEB
includes ‘all types of voluntary or prescribed activity undertaken by
individuals at work that aim to protect the natural environment or
improve organizational practices in this area’ (Boiral et al., 2015:
21). This definition highlights the diverse nature of informal and
formal employee-level behaviour and organizational initiatives,
and the voluntary or prescribed nature of the pro-environmental
behaviours of employees and managers alike. Employee pro-
environmental behaviours mostly comprise task performance or
organizational citizenship (commitment and engagement)
behaviours. Empirical research in this area has demonstrated that
effective environmental sustainability change depends, to a large
extent, on various behaviours intended to reduce pollution,
internalize environmental management practices and contribute to
eco-innovations (Boiral et al., 2015).
784
Environmental management systems
Within the emergent sustainable workplace literature, it has been
argued that in order to work towards the goal of environmental
sustainability, organizational managers must develop an
environmental management system (EMS). An EMS is the most
widely recognized tool for managing the impacts of an
organization’s activities on the environment. It refers to the
management of an organization’s environmental impact in a
comprehensive, systematic, planned and documented manner. It
incorporates people, procedures and working practices into a
formal structure, involves all members of an organization as
appropriate, promotes continual improvement, including
periodically evaluating environmental performance, and actively
engages senior management in support of the EMS (see e.g.
Zutshi and Sohal, 2004). EMS enables organizations to achieve
more environmentally sustainable processes, practices and
outcomes (see e.g. Jabbour et al., 2010). Thus, the focus is on
improving environmental performance and maintaining
compliance with environmental regulations. As EMS and risk
management are analogous activities, EMS supports an
organization’s overall approach to environmental risk
management.
785
Environmental Leadership,
Organizational Change and Culture
A growing body of research has highlighted the importance of
leadership (Robertson and Barling, 2015) and organizational
culture (Norton et al., 2015) to drive both organizational and
employee-level pro-environmental performance. The focus in this
chapter is on how leaders affect their organization’s environmental
performance through influencing the behaviour of individual
employees and by changing organizational practices and culture.
Image 16.1 Environmental leadership is a
process to create a shared vision of
environmental sustainability and motivate
others to create sustainable organizations in
an equitable manner whilst living within the
limits of ecosystems.
786
Environmental leadership
Although employees’ pro-environmental behaviours are critical to
the effectiveness of environmental sustainability initiatives, there is
insufficient understanding of the role of leadership to support
these behaviours (Afsar et al., 2018). Within the strategic
management context, the goal of environmental leadership is to
motivate followers to achieve high levels of environmental
performance. Egri and Herman (2000: 572) define environmental
leadership as ‘the ability to influence individuals and mobilize
organizations to realize a vision of long-term ecological
sustainability.’ This definition is based on the notion that, guided
by eco-centric values and assumptions, environmental leaders
seek to change economic and social systems that they perceive
as being currently and potentially threatening to the health of the
biophysical environment. Robertson and Barling’s (2015: 166)
framework for pro-environmental leadership highlights the
importance of leaders, inspired by their own personal values,
attitudes and perceptions, striving ‘to influence others at all levels
of the organization in an effort to benefit the natural environment’.
Pro-environmental leaders typically demonstrate transformational
patterns of behaviour, including charisma, two-way
communication, collaboration, and an orientation towards
changing work systems, that reduce the environmental impact of
an organization. For example, Portugal and Yukl (1994: 274)
report transformational leadership behaviours such as ‘articulating
an appealing vision with environmental issues, changing
perceptions about environmental issues, and taking symbolic
actions to demonstrate personal commitment to environmental
issues.’ Importantly, leaders’ supportive behaviours have been
shown to be a crucial component of environmental leadership
(Robertson and Barling, 2015). Here environmental leadership is
defined as a process to create a shared vision of environmental
sustainability and motivate others to create sustainable
organizations in an equitable manner whilst living within the limits
of ecosystems. This definition emphasizes the importance of
vision to help align individuals and motivate followers, that the
coordinated pro-environmental initiatives must be sustainable and
viable for the organization, and, at the same time, marries pro-
787
environmental leadership with notions of social justice and
ecological limits.
A sustainability leader can extend beyond senior managers
(Ferdig, 2007). Robertson and Barling (2015: 169) found that pro-
environmental leaders are more likely to: (1) possess personal
values that go beyond self-interest; (2) have favourable attitudes
toward the natural environment; (3) perceive social pressure to
support environmental and sustainability initiatives; and (4) view
environmental issues as commercial opportunities for their
organization. Other studies have identified different types of
behaviours enacted by sustainability leaders, including line-
management supportive behaviours (Ramus, 2001). These
behaviours include encouraging innovation among employees,
competence-building, communicating ideas on sustainability,
dissemination of information, rewards and recognition, and
management of goals and responsibilities by disseminating
environmental targets and responsibilities. Kotter (2012) points to
the importance of leadership behaviours that encourage employee
involvement and participation in organizational change.
Participation at all levels of management is essential to the
introduction of environmental sustainability change (Davis and
Coan, 2015). However, internal workplace stakeholders –
specifically front-line managers – are seen to be critical to the
overall success of an organization’s sustainability strategy
(Bratton and Bratton, 2015).
788
Reframing organizational culture
Having explored the concept of organizational culture in Chapter
4, here we ask ‘What role does culture play in developing
employees’ pro-environmental behaviours?’. Findings across
several studies consistently show that, when implementing
strategic change, managers need to consider organizational
culture and climate (see Chapter 4). Norton et al. (2015) define a
pro-environmental organizational culture as
a pattern of shared basic assumptions learned by a
group as it adapts to the challenges posed by human
activity’s impact on the natural environment in a way that
permits day-to-day functioning, which has worked well
enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be
taught to new members as the correct way to perceive,
think, and feel in relation to environmental sustainability’
(Norton et al., 2015: 329–30)
At the individual level, a pro-environmental climate – defined as
employees’ shared perceptions of pro-environmental policies and
practices that management tangibly supports – acts as a go-
between between the perception of management’s pro-
environmental behaviour and the pro-environmental behaviour of
employees. Research suggests that leaders and organizational
culture and climate influence employees’ and their organizations’
environmental performance. There is debate regarding whether
organizations need to have an underlying ‘moral commitment to
sustainability’ (Davis and Coan, 2015: 247), which suggests that
there is a need for the principles, assumptions and values that
underpin the organization’s norms and rules to be changed if
sustainability is to be achieved (see e.g. Hayes, 2014). This
introduces the concept of ‘cultural congruence’; that is, for an
organization to become environmentally sustainable, its
underlying values and assumptions must be aligned with
sustainability interventions in such a way that employees’ attitudes
and behaviours support the organization’s overall low-carbon
789
strategic objectives (Russell and McIntosh, 2011). A sustainable
workplace is therefore associated with specific pro-environmental
attitudes, values and behaviours. Taken together, the available
research findings identify two key antecedents or enablers of pro-
environmental behaviours and initiatives, which are leadership
and a pro-environmental culture and climate.
In this context, organizational behaviour theorists have tried to
identify effective ways to change manifestations of organizational
culture: visible artefacts, including language and shared
behaviour; work values, which are invisible, but can be espoused;
and various sets of HRM practices that reinforce culture.
Research shows that the three main strategies of planned culture
change are:
Leadership processes that create the motivation to change
behaviour, with a particular emphasis on their symbolic
content; for example, replacing office plastic cups with
ceramic.
Reframing social networks of symbols and meanings through
artefacts, language, rituals and ceremonies; for example, a
‘best employee’ award for an initiative that helps to
decarbonize the organization.
Initiating new HRM practices to change work conduct; for
example, training new and existing employees about the
need and benefits of reducing carbon emissions in the
workplace.
790
A process model of strategic change
All three strategies implicitly adhere to Lewin’s (1951) three-stage
model of planned change, which involves ‘unfreezing’ present
inappropriate employee work conduct, ‘changing’ to new
behaviour patterns, and positive reinforcement to ‘refreeze’ the
desired change. Drawing upon leadership studies, the three
strategies of planned culture change are shown in Figure 16.1.
Steps 1 and 2 represent Lewin’s ‘unfreezing’ stage, steps 3 and 4
represent the ‘changing’ stage, and step 5 represents the
‘refreezing’ or consolidation process. John Kotter’s 8-step model
(2012), which subsumes Lewin’s model, attempts to change
culture through an empiricist-rational strategy. That is, individuals
make rational choices if provided with ‘correct’ information. Steps
1 to 4 in Kotter’s model represent Lewin’s ‘unfreezing’ stage.
Steps 5, 6 and 7 represent the ‘changing’ stage, and step 8
represents the ‘refreezing’ process. The approach emphasizes the
importance of communicating a clear change vision to all
stakeholders affected so that employees can participate in the
change initiative. Senge et al.’s (1999) systematic model
highlights the critical period after change implementation, the role
of leaders in removing perceived barriers to change, and the
importance of sustaining cultural change.
Harris and Crane (2002) identify an undeveloped conception of
organizational culture in the GHRM literature, with non-
functionalist views of culture largely being ignored. The
comparative case study research by Fineman (1996, 1997) has
been referred to as ‘something of an antidote to the non-empirical
and largely uncritical literature on green organizational culture’
(Harris and Crane, 2002: 217). It suggests that even in the ‘most
progressive firms’, environmental values and beliefs tend to be
absorbed into existing cultural assumptions and beliefs rather than
eliciting any kind of cultural transformation. Newton and Harte
(1997) expose the over-reliance on simplistic formulae for green
change, the overselling of voluntary change as a solution to
environmental issues, and the lack of a critical perspective on how
and why culture change might occur. A simplistic formula, for
example, would be to believe that the organization can impact
791
climate change just by replacing single-use plastic cups, that
individual effort rather than enforceable carbon-reducing
legislation is a solution to high-carbon workplaces, and neglecting
the role of values in nudging human behaviour towards more pro-
environmental action.
Figure 16.1 A strategy for creating a
sustainable workplace (adapted from Bratton
and Gold, 2012: 163)
Pause and reflect
792
Thinking of your university, do you feel that top leadership value
sustainability? Have the university’s leaders communicated a shared
‘green’ vision? If so, how?
The extant literature on organizational culture and business
strategy highlights how important it is that the prevailing business
strategy and organizational culture are consistent with each other
(internal fit) and with the wider operation of the organization
(external fit) (e.g. Chow and Liu, 2009). For example, a company
may be targeting sales of a new craft beer to the 19- to 24-year-
old age group but its processing system uses traditional methods,
which is energy inefficient and pollutes a nearby river. Extending
the best-fit debate, theory and empirical research suggest that a
green HR strategy should coincide with the organization’s
business strategy and create an appropriate culture in which to
enhance environmental performance. Broadly, the HRM approach
to building a low-carbon workplace is to develop and support the
workplace’s environmental sustainability initiatives.
Pause and reflect
Visit the website of the Canadian company Steam Whistle Brewing at
www.steamwhistle.ca (accessed 6 October 2019). To what extent
does the company’s organizational culture fit its business model?
http://www.steamwhistle.ca/
793
Creating a Sustainable Workplace
through Human Resource Practices
What role do HRM practices play in developing employees’ pro-
environmental behaviours? As previous chapters suggest, when
HR policies and practices are embedded into the organization’s
architecture they improve organizational outcomes. Serial
research suggests that when green HR practices are embedded,
they also improve environmental sustainability (Fernández et al.,
2003). The established use of HR processes in occupational
health and safety, minimum waste production as part of a ‘lean’
manufacturing system and cultural management make HRM well
positioned to coordinate the goals of a sustainable workplace
(Oliveira and Pinheiro, 2009).
An early contribution to the debate on the links between HRM and
environmental management was made by Wehrmeyer’s (1996)
edited book, Greening People: Human Resources and
Environmental Management. In it, HRM is associated with a
distinctive HR philosophy, strategy and set of determinate HR
practices (see Chapter 9) to create a high-performance work
system (HPWS). Building on the HPWS concept, Bratton and
Bratton define a low-carbon work system as:
A planned approach to organization design, culture, and
HR practices to deliver low-carbon outcomes in the
workplace as well as to align the organization and its
processes to achieve innovation and sustainable high-
quality results for the organization, workforce, and
customers. (2015: 277)
A low-carbon work system (LCWS) requires new roles and low-
carbon behavioural activities for leaders, managers and other
employees. Low-carbon behaviours occur at three levels:
individual, social and material (Cox et al., 2012):
794
Individual-level influences act on individual motivations (e.g.
personal rewards).
Social-level influences act on employees when operating in
teams or groups (e.g. social norms, shared understandings
and communities of practice).
Material-level influences act on organizational structure and
processes (e.g. products, technology and environment).
The research by Cox et al. (2012) suggests that behavioural
interventions tend to be most successful when they consider
these three dimensions holistically, and do not simply focus on
trying to change individual employee attitudes or just installing
new technology. In other words, when establishing a LCWS, the
goal should be to take an integrated approach that raises
awareness and improves understanding with individual employees
and groups, builds social meaning and norms around pro-
environmental, ‘low-carbon’ or ‘sustainable’ working practices, and
supports employees with the technology they need, backed up
with consistent policies.
HRM scholars have tried to identify effective ways to change
manifestations of an environmentally sustainable organizational
culture through modified HR practices. The emergent literature on
GHRM emphasizes that a set of integrated HR practices covering
recruitment, selection, performance management, training and
development, rewards and employment relations can promote
pro-environmental behaviours at work and build a more
environmentally sustainable organizational culture.
Existing GHRM studies highlight the opportunity for improved
environmental performance when the goals, policies and
procedures of EMSs are more closely aligned or ‘embedded’
(Purcell and Kinnie, 2007) with HR practices and wider activities
of the organization (see e.g. Chen, 2011; Jørgensen, 2000).
However, this convergence between HR practices and
organizational culture is considered secondary in classic studies
of organizational sustainability (see e.g. Shrivastava, 1995). A
central question that arises from the literature is whether effective
environmental sustainability initiatives can develop from top-down
management-driven exercises, or whether they are more likely to
795
be successful if they are part of a more grass roots, employee-led
initiative for environmental sustainability in the workplace. To date,
much of the GHRM research has focused on core HR practices
(see Chapter 11, Figure 11.2).
796
Recruitment and selection
Environmental sustainability has become an important dimension
shaping the recruitment and selection process. Research
suggests that attracting top candidates is easier for organizations
known for their superior environmental stewardship (Gully et al.,
2013; Rupp et al., 2013). An Italian study found, for example, that
‘green recruiting practices’ could have a distinct and direct effect
on attracting applicants (Guerci et al., 2016). One obvious way to
build a sustainable workplace is through self-selection of
prospective employees. For example, German companies such as
chemical and pharmaceutical company Bayer and engineering
company Siemens use their environmental reputation to attract
competent employees who are committed to the environment
(Jabbour and Santos, 2008). The published research suggests
that given a choice, people are attracted to green employers that
are keenly attuned to climate change issues and have a strong
ecological approach (Philips, 2007). Environmentally sensitive job
previews combined with accurate portrayal of the organization’s
culture can attract talented people with values that match and
promote sustainability (Jabbour, 2011).
Another way to embed ecological values in the workplace is by
selecting people with green-related skills and values. The
selection process may be designed to ensure that ‘employees
committed to the environmental issue have a potential to be hired
more than those who do not show an ability to lead the
environmental management in a company’ (Jabbour and Santos,
2008: 53). Studies also suggest that it may be expedient to start
hiring managers who have a proven track record of environmental
performance and value environmental protection (see e.g. Ramus,
2002). Personality- and competency-based tests provide the tools
that enable managers to find talented individuals who seem to fit
the new culture. Selection tests based on attitudinal and
behavioural profiling can also be used to screen applicants for
green values.
797
Pro-environmental training and learning
Consensus is growing among academics that the issues of
sustainability, organizational change and training and learning are
closely interrelated. Training and workplace learning is a primary
intervention for developing pro-environmental behaviours
(Garavan and McGuire, 2010). Much of company training appears
to be related to improving employees’ health and safety, energy
saving and waste management. For example, the US company
3M has encouraged employees to find creative ways to reduce
pollution through their Pollution Prevention Pays (3Ps)
programme, which has saved the company close to $300 million
(Renwick et al., 2008: 7). Training and learning is a necessary
component of advanced environmental management systems.
The literature suggests that a major factor in a successful EMS is
a comprehensive training programme that provides all employees,
at all levels of the organization, with the tools and understanding
necessary to conduct themselves in an environmentally aware
manner, foster innovation, make environmentally responsible
decisions and contribute to continued environmental
improvements (Daily and Huang, 2001).
Research suggests that the level of employee environmental
awareness is one of the most important predictors of the level of
adoption and success of an organization’s environmental
initiatives. Perron et al. (2006: 553) report, for example, that the
intent of clause 4.4.2 of ISO 14001 is to ‘ensure that employees at
all levels of the organization understand the goals of the EMS and
the ways their job activities impact the environment and the
achievement of EMS goals’ (ISO, 2015). This understanding
allows employees to participate in environmental management
efforts, and could lead to the improved environmental
performance of an organization. Zilahy’s (2003) study of the
factors restricting the implementation of energy efficiency
improvement indicates that perhaps the most salient restrictive
factor was the level of employee environmental awareness.
Research findings support the importance of employees being
well versed in environmental issues, environmental processes and
the overall functioning of environmental management systems to
798
ensure that an organization’s environmental targets and
objectives were achieved (see e.g. Sammalisto and Brorson,
2008).
799
Rewarding pro-environmental behaviours
The organization’s reward system provides a good indication of
the seriousness of its commitment to environmental sustainability
management (Berrone and Gomez-Mejia, 2009). The rewards can
be monetary or non-monetary, and could be tied to individual,
group or organizational actions (see Chapter 11). Monetary
rewards may be one of the strongest motivators for encouraging
employees to participate in environmental improvement activity.
For example, aligning compensation practices with environmental
strategy has been implemented in North American companies
such as Huntsman Corporation (chemicals), Browning-Ferris
Industries (waste management) and Coors Brewing Company
(Milliman and Clair, 1996), where financial rewards are tied to
employees’ environmental performance. In this regard, managers
will need to determine whether environmental responsibilities and
initiatives should be incorporated into managers’ and employees’
performance appraisal. Denton (1999) observes that, even in
some of the best-known companies for encouraging
environmental initiatives, financial rewards are rarely tied to
environmental performance.
Studies suggest that many workplaces are encouraging
environmental activities using non-monetary rewards such as
employee recognition schemes, time off from work, gift certificates
and paid vacations (Govindarajulu and Daily, 2004). For example,
Dow Chemical Company, a leading American multinational
corporation, motivates its employees by awarding plaques to
employees who develop innovative waste-reduction ideas
(Denton, 1999). Some employees may be more motivated by
formal or informal recognition than financial incentives. Empirical
findings from six environmentally proactive European firms have
shown that two of the most important factors for engaging
employees and encouraging creative ideas are management
support and company environmental awards (Ramus, 2002). This
suggests that front-line managers should seek environmental
ideas from all employees, and seek opportunities to provide
feedback to encourage employees’ engagement in environmental
sustainability. Whether rewards are monetary or non-monetary in
800
nature, the reward system has to be supported by an effective
communication plan (Parker and Wright, 2001), rewards must be
tied to the achievement of environmental objectives (Starik and
Rands, 1995), and they must be consistent with other aspects of
the rewards system (May and Flannery, 1995).
801
Performance management and appraisal
Emergent studies in environmental management (Garavan and
McGuire, 2010) suggest that, in those organizations with proactive
environmental sustainability programmes, individual performance
appraisal systems (IPAs) can improve the effectiveness of
environmental management over time by guiding employees’
behaviour and actions toward the environmental performance
outcomes desired by the organization (Milliman and Clair, 1996).
Jabbour et al. (2010) report that Brazilian manufacturing
companies are establishing environmental objectives for their
employees, whose performance is evaluated as one of the criteria
of the performance appraisal. For example, the business services
Xerox Corporation has a reward system that recognizes
employees who meet certain levels of innovation in terms of how
they deal with waste reduction, reuse and recycling (Milliman and
Clair, 1996). Without performance appraisal, pro-environmental
behaviours may come to a standstill. Chinander (2001) highlights
how many environmental management programmes fail to
emphasize the importance of feedback on environmental issues.
Continual feedback ensures that employees are aware of their
responsibilities and communicates the link between their
environmental performance outcomes and rewards (Govindarajulu
and Daily, 2004).
802
Employee Voice in Environmental
Sustainability
Employee voice has been discussed in Chapter 8 covering
relational and distributed leadership. In this section, we extend the
discussion by critically examining how employee and trade union
voice is processed to create a sustainable workplace and improve
environmental management (Hampton, 2015; Markey et al.,
2019). Recent GHRM studies such as Montabon et al. (2016)
have tended to focus on non-union processes, and most only go
so far as to suggest that managers should use various employee
representation arrangements to encourage employee ‘voice’ (Brio
et al., 2007). As Perron et al. (2006: 556) opine, ‘the many small
actions and decisions that all members of an organization can
make in their everyday work can cumulate to large improvements
in the environmental impacts of the organization.’ The research
suggests that when employees are ‘engaged’ through employee
participation processes, they will better understand how they can
contribute toward environmental sustainability. This highlights
further that without the ingenuity and expertise of human capital,
environmental management initiatives may be limited and
superficial.
If pro-environment change is desired, Kelly’s (1992) notion of
effective followers (see Chapter 13) underscores the value of
followers’ engagement and agency. Employee voice mechanisms
such as ‘green teams’ (Daily et al., 2007) and ‘eco-champions’
(Brosse, 2010) are major elements of the GHRM strategy
because they provide followers with an opportunity to use their
intimate knowledge of work and discretion at work to generate
creative, eco-friendly initiatives rather than rely solely on leaders.
Table 16.1 Different concepts of involvement
and participation
Table 16.1 Different concepts of involvement and participation
803
Elements within
management
Employee
involvement Employee participation
Elements within
management
Employee
involvement Employee participation
Decision-making
process
Management
initiated and
controlled
Dialectics between top-
down and bottom-up
managerial tasks
allocated to workers
Level of
competence
Limited to
assignments
and
functions
Involves high-level
decisions
Forms of
consultation
Individual
only
Collective and individual
representation
Strategy for
innovation/change
Management
through
goals and
visions
Dialogue and
cooperation
Views on the
employees’ role in
workplace
changes
Employees
as important
production
factors
Employees as political
actors
Source: adapted from Lund, 2004: 53
Lund’s classification (Table 16.1) shows different levels of
employee participation from the perspective of workplace
democracy. The distinction between ‘employee involvement’ and
‘participation’ may be conceptualized in terms of six categories:
(1) information; (2) practical involvement; (3) consultation; (4)
negotiation; (5) codetermination; and (6) self-management (Lund,
2004: 53). These categories only relate to the question of ‘how’
employees participate, and therefore must also be combined with
categories describing the subject of participation. These subject
categories can be described in terms of increasing levels of
participation in managerial decisions such as: (1) welfare
804
decisions; (2) shop-floor operational decisions; (3) tactical
business decisions; and (4) strategic business decisions (Walters
and Frick, 2000).
Critical Insight: Union action to protect the environment?
By responding to what has been described as one of the ‘big issues
of the day’, unions can influence sustainability in the workplace
(Hampton, 2015). The challenge facing the trade union movement is
that sustainability goals can be in conflict with the perceived interests
of different groups of workers within a single union and between
unions. In the UK, employees and unions have no legal rights of
involvement in workplace environmental issues and, to date, few
employers have signed collective ‘green’ agreements (TUC and
Allan, 2008). This situation is likely to remain while there is no legal
requirement for mandatory union involvement in environmental
issues. Minimal investment in workplace environmental training and
zero government commitments for statutory environmental
representative rights have caused environmentalists and union
leaders to lament the lack of cooperation between unions and green
advocacy groups and political parties. The responsibility for an
absence of ‘gains sharing’ opportunities does not rest entirely with
reluctant employers.
805
Activity
1. Why should unions participate in environmental sustainability
issues in the workplace?
2. What are their interests?
3. What are the potential benefits for employers and employees?
What are the challenges?
806
Further information
Pearce, S. (2012) ‘Tackling climate change: a new role for trade
unions in the workplace?’, Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration
Service. Available at www.acas.org.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?
id=3291andp=0 (accessed 7 October 2018) to explore how trade
unions can contribute to creating an environmental sustainability
workplace.
In the UK, the climate of employment relations has changed
radically over the last three decades (Farnham, 2015b: 231). In
the post-2008 recession, a key question remains: ‘Who gains
what from being involved?’ Leaders and managers have the
power to drive (or not) employee participation (see Chapter 3). It
is plausible therefore to assume that leaders and managers
expect to see some advantage from investing in time-consuming
voice mechanisms, and HR practices which critics might see as
‘an expensive waste of time’ (Wilkinson et al., 2010: 5).
807
Critical Perspectives on Corporate-
oriented Sustainability
Mainstream environmental studies do not tend to engage
sufficiently with conflicts inherent in the employment relationship
(Lund, 2004: 48–49); they also tend to largely neglect the role of
the state (e.g. government legislation) in combating climate
change (Betsill and Rabe, 2009). Critical authors three decades
ago argued that the term sustainability had become a purposeful
distraction, ‘deliberately vague […] so that endless streams of
academics and diplomats could spend many comfortable hours
trying to define it without success’ (O’Riordan, 1988: 37). Later,
others added to this critique, arguing that the sustainability debate
had become too ‘technocratic, mere rhetoric, in-egalitarian, and
for being a smokescreen for perpetuation of the status quo,
vacuous, politically correct sloganeering’ (Buttel, 1998: 262,
emphasis added).
More recently, informed by a social justice perspective (i.e. justice
in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities and privileges
within a society) a number of critical social scientists (e.g. Holden
et al., 2017) and environmental advocacy associations (notably
Friends of the Earth Scotland) are attempting to re-orient the term
‘sustainability’ around concepts of equity, social justice,
participatory democracy and ecological limits. This more inclusive
view of sustainability is captured by Agyeman et al. who argue
that:
Sustainability … cannot be simply a ‘green’, or
‘environmental’ concern, important though
‘environmental’ aspects of sustainability are. A truly
sustainable society is one where wider questions of
social needs and welfare, and economic opportunity are
integrally related to environmental limits imposed by
supporting ecosystems. (2002: 78)
808
There is a requirement to define environmental sustainability that
recognizes the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, in the
present and into the future, in an equitable manner whilst living
within the limits of ecosystems (Agyeman et al., 2016; Schlosberg,
2013); that is, an economy that meets emissions targets and is
environmentally sustainable and socially just. This more inclusive
definition focuses on four core areas: (1) quality of life; (2) present
and future generations; (3) equity and justice in resource
allocation; and (4) living within environmental limits. While
mainstream corporate notions of sustainability have little to say
about contemporary human conditions, this definition includes
notions of both intra-generational and inter-generational equity
(equality within and between different generation groups). This
new, more egalitarian perspective of sustainability draws the
connection between environmentalism, equity and fairness.
Emerging definitions of environmental sustainability are shifting
towards ‘just sustainability’ (the nexus between social justice and
environmentalism), a broader approach that prioritizes social
justice but does not downplay notions of ecological limits. The
‘environmental justice’ definition has more explicit emphasis on
the social conditions of citizens and workers, both locally and
internationally, and also acknowledges that multiple stakeholder
decision making starts to address environmental and social
inequality (see e.g. Agyeman, 2013).
The role of the ‘state’ in the environmental management discourse
should not be downplayed or ignored. Whether through macro-
economic policy, free trade agreements (e.g. NAFTA, TTIP),
labour market reforms (e.g. Information and Consultation of
Employees Regulations 2004), environmental legislation or
investment in renewable technology, the state plays a central role
in the economy. But most environmental studies mirror
mainstream management by neglecting the close relationship of
the state to corporate interests (Kelly, 1998). For example,
governments project an image of neutrality on the issue of
fracking, a drilling process used in the extraction of gas from shale
rock, and down play environmental damage while claiming that
shale gas has the potential to provide greater energy security,
growth and jobs. Those opposed to fracking accuse governments
and fracking companies of providing misinformation and ‘keeping
809
secret the impacts of shale gas extraction’ (BBC, 2014). Heyes
and Nolan observe that
The state is viewed as a benign force composed of
multiple sites of authority none of which is dominant. It
acts to create institutions and networks that facilitate
information sharing, innovative behaviours, coordination
and joint problem solving by social actors … Yet
pluralism lacks a clear theory of the state, certainly lacks
a theory of the capitalist state and therefore fails to
problematize the nature of the state’s relationship to
capital and labour. (2010: 121, emphasis in the original)
The mainstream management approaches fail to engage with the
dynamics of capitalism and the nature of the capitalist state. For
example, mainstream approaches might experience difficulties
accounting for the unwillingness of the state to strengthen the
legal rights of employees and unions (Heyes and Nolan, 2010:
121). Examining sustainability and the workplace from a critical
perspective also requires that researchers recognize macro social
structures (e.g. population changes; social movements like
Greenpeace), climate and environment agreements such as UK
and EU environmental legislation, and distortions of international
free trade.
At the workplace level, a critical environmental studies perspective
recognizes the need for bottom-up, stakeholder-centred input
‘which would, by necessity, involve a process we looked at …:
dialogical communication’ (Sumner, 2005: 91). This, it is argued,
is best developed if deliberative democracy principles are
employed and there is recognition by stakeholders of ‘their
interdependencies and power differences and the development of
a shared will to move beyond the immediate self-interest of the
affected parties’ (Benn et al., 2009: 1572). Such stakeholder-
centred approaches accept the inevitability of change in the
nature of environmental risks or human perceptions of
environmental risks, and assume that organizations have reflexive
capacity to respond to the process of deliberation and ‘mutual
learning’ between a range of stakeholders engaged in decision
810
making (Carlsson and Berkes, 2005). A stakeholder-centred
approach would also give greater prominence to effective
followers. Potentially, follower voice would make every member of
the organization an effective follower for pro-environmental
creativity and innovation. Organizational leaders, senior managers
and other employees are central to facilitating change and
supporting better environmental outcomes. From a pluralist
perspective, for example, employees and their union
representatives could be involved in strategic decision making
with potential for ‘social partnership’ (Johnstone and Ackers,
2015) for better environmental outcomes in the workplace.
811
Conclusion
This chapter has established the role of HRM in enabling and
improving environmental sustainability in the workplace. It has
introduced the concept of sustainability and examined how this
might be integrated within a workplace context to create positive
environmental outcomes for organizations and society. It has
critically evaluated a distinct body of literature illustrating the
connection between environmental sustainability, leadership and
HRM. Given that questions of leadership, culture and managerial
behaviour are increasingly seen to fall within the HRM field, this
chapter brings together distinct streams of literature to focus on
environmental sustainability and HRM in the workplace. The
review of GHRM literature focuses attention on how selective HR
practices can drive change through formal and informal levers. In
this regard, the emerging GHRM literature focuses on a cluster of
HR practices including selection, rewards, appraisal and training
that can influence employees’ attitudes and behaviours.
The literature highlights topics we have examined in previous
chapters, the employment relationship and the process of
employee voice that not only helps to create the leadership
relationship but also enables or constrains environmental
sustainability in organizations. The review of environmental
leadership and organizational culture literature highlights the need
to examine the role of leaders’ influence in creating an
environmentally sustainable workplace. While research
consistently points to the need to examine the personal values
held by leaders toward the environment, leadership scholars need
to examine the socio-political context of a climate emergency,
develop a more comprehensive picture of effective followership,
and monitor the results of pro-environmental leadership.
812
Chapter Review Questions
1. What is your understanding of a low-carbon work system?
2. What is the role of leadership in the creation of an environmentally
sustainable workplace?
3. Why is organizational culture important in transitioning to a
sustainable workplace? How can leaders change the culture of their
organization?
4. What role can HRM play in creating a sustainable workplace? What
are the challenges?
Assignment Task: What motivates pro-environmental leadership?
A significant body of research indicates that government regulation
and legislation are a major driver of organizations’ environmental
activities. Several studies have reported that customers motivate
organizations to adopt environmental management practices. The
UK literature on strategic HRM suggests that general and line
managers play a crucial role in enacting HR policies and practices.
As internal stakeholders, senior managers and line managers are
seen to be key to the adoption and enactment of sustainability
initiatives. External governmental bodies, such as the Carbon Trust,
can reduce information costs, provide technical assistance and
coerce others by requiring adherence to environmental standards.
Local community and the media stakeholders can also exercise
influence on the reputation of organizations that implement
environmental improvements. Despite the research on organizations’
sustainability strategies, it remains unclear why some organizations
adopt sustainability initiatives beyond regulatory compliance.
813
Questions
1. Read Walker, H., Sisto, L. and McBain, D. (2008) ‘Drivers and
barriers to environmental supply chain management practices:
lessons from the public and private sectors’, Journal of
Purchasing and Supply Management, 14 (1): 69–85.
2. Thinking about ‘drivers’ and the momentum around ‘climate
emergency’, what drives public and private sector organizations
to implement environmental sustainability initiatives? Who are
the key stakeholders that influence environmental sustainability
in the workplace? And what are the barriers to workplace
environmental sustainability?
Go Online
Explore the real world of leadership by reading this case study:
The BMW Group’s Journey to Leadership in Sustainable
Development Practice
Further your knowledge and build your bibliography for
assignments by reading the recommended journal articles for this
chapter.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
video
Learn more about leadership in practice by watching the video
conversation for this chapter.
Mollie Painter from Nottingham Trent University discusses her work
on sustainability, the emerging importance of the triple bottom line
and the concept of visionary leadership.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
814
The video can be found at https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
See the inside front cover for the access code and instructions.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
815
Further Reading
Davis, M.C. and Coan, P. (2015) ‘Organizational change’, in J.L.
Robertson and J. Barling (eds), The Psychology of Green
Organizations. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 244–74.
Millar, C., Hind, P. and Magala, S. (2012) ‘Sustainability and the
need for change: organizational change and transformational
vision’, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 25 (4):
489–500.
Robertson, J.L. and Barling, J. (2013) ‘Greening organizations
through leaders’ influence on employees’ pro-environmental
behaviors’, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32: 176–94.
Shin, S.J., Jeong, I. and Bae, J. (2018) ‘Do high-involvement HRM
practices matter for worker creativity? A cross-level approach’,
The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 29
(2): 260–85.
816
Case Study: The green workplace
817
Background
This case study involves a conference centre within NHS Scotland. The
case illustrates how sustainability initiatives have centred on event and
conference planning, which provides an interesting context for the
adoption of workplace pro-environmental behaviours (WPEBs). The
event-planning industry more broadly presents unusual challenges not
faced elsewhere in the economy, most notably that a significant proportion
of the building’s carbon use is consumed by customers rather than
employees. Work teams were assigned primary responsibility for
developing a culture whereby employees felt more confident and
motivated towards the organization’s sustainability strategy.
818
The organization
The conference centre is part of the NHS National Services Scotland
(NSS), a non-departmental public body with an annual budget of roughly
£600 million and a workforce of approximately 3,500 people across
Scotland. Its remit is to provide expert advice and national strategic
support services to the rest of NHS Scotland. The conference centre
employs approximately 25 people, with about 40 per cent of workers
unionized. The centre’s primary clients are the Scottish Government and
NHS health boards in Scotland. The venue offers state-of-the-art
technology and meeting facilities, events management services, and an
in-hours catering service specializing in organic and Fairtrade food and
drink.
819
Thinking greener
To meet the sustainability needs of their clients, the conference centre’s
management developed the Think Greener sustainable conference and
meeting package. The package offers products and services that
incorporate social and environmental considerations, such as providing
recycled paper, an organic buffet lunch, Fairtrade tea and coffee and a
carbon-neutral taxi service. The conference centre’s ‘sustainability
committee’ or green group, a cross-functional employee committee
chaired by the head of the centre, coordinates sustainability activities and
initiatives. For example, the centre’s sustainability initiatives include:
improving indoor air quality by purchasing plants chosen to absorb
chemicals and remove air pollutants; reducing energy, paper and water
through staff awareness campaigns; installing new technology; and
encouraging employees and visitors to use public transportation.
820
Case exercise
On your own or in a study group:
1. Complete an online search for sustainable or green workplaces.
What, in your view, are the key characteristics of an environmentally
sustainable workplace? Think about how leadership, culture and HR
practices influence environmental sustainability in the workplace
(Hint: review Table 16.1).
2. How do leaders support a green or sustainability-oriented culture?
3. How do HR practices influence WPEBs?
4. Does everybody benefit from the outcomes of environmental
sustainability?
821
Source of additional information
Cox, A., Higgins, T., Gloster, R. and Foley, B. (2012) ‘The impact of
workplace initiatives on low carbon behaviours: case study report’,
Scottish Government. Available at
www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2012/03/2237 (accessed 18 September
2019).
823
17 Leadership for Urban and
Regional Innovation
Markku Sotarauta
‘English cities and regions … need to be innovative. But,
local leaders … do not have a strong enough position to
work with, by and through their networks to secure a
smooth transition … Consequently, comprehensive and
systematic local strategies for transition may suffer from
lack of place-based leadership.’
Ayres and Beer, 2018
824
Chapter Outline
Introduction
The nature of place-based leadership for urban and regional
innovation
Regional innovation systems and strategies
Placed-based leadership
Place leaders, knowledge producers and decision makers
Generative leadership – a missing link in transformative
efforts
Criticism and exemplary research for place-based leadership
Conclusion
825
Learning Outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
explain what regional innovation systems are and why they are
important in the economic development of regions;
explain how leaders within regional innovation systems influence
others in places where they have no formal authorization;
define place-based leadership and explain how it differs from
organization-based leadership;
explain the generative nature of place-based leadership, and why in
regional innovation systems, leadership relationships are indirect
and often contested.
video
To learn more about leading across different national and regional
cultures, don’t forget to watch the video conversation for this
chapter online.
826
Introduction
In the first decades of the 21st century, economic globalization
has adversely affected particular regions, towns and social groups
within European and US society. These are the regions and towns
we describe as the ‘unsuccessful’ or ‘left behind’ in modern
Europe or the ‘rust-belt’ cities of North America. Leadership
research has advanced new theories and empirical evidence on
the role of leadership in promoting urban and regional
regeneration. Building on the knowledge of organizational
leadership gained from previous chapters, this chapter introduces
you to the notion of place-based leadership. It is a concept that is
rooted in a conviction that it is crucial to better understand what
type of leadership may serve the many efforts to regenerate
different post-industrial regions and urban conurbations.
Portugal and Yukl (1994) posit that leaders affect their
organization’s performance through two types of relationships:
internal and external. Within this framework, place-based
leadership is often external and generative by nature. It highlights
those processes that are geared to constructing local conditions
for knowledge creation, circulation and valorization. In contrast to
dominant leader-centric approaches, generative leadership calls
for the mobilization of collective action and the pooling of existing
and new knowledge, power and resources of many independent
actors. This calls for better understanding of how key institutional
leaders influence each other in the construction of shared
strategic intentions across complex public-private-higher
education constellations, where no one is in charge alone. Place-
based leadership is therefore concerned with influencing inter-
organizational development strategies and practices across
institutional boundaries.
In this chapter, you have the opportunity to examine the
importance of leadership in urban and regional innovation and
renewal. We then continue by explaining the nature of urban and
regional innovation systems. Next, we proceed to examine the
notion of place-based leadership in a multi-actor context, and
827
examine complex and varied leader–follower relationships. We
conclude the chapter by offering criticism and a summary of
possible research questions for future place-leadership research.
828
The Nature of Place-based
Leadership for Urban and Regional
Innovation
In the early 21st century, economic development is driven by
knowledge-intensive activities and business services that tend to
concentrate in the main urban regions both globally and nationally.
It is the Londons, Shanghais and Silicon Valleys that dominate the
world economy. Post-industrial cities and rural areas often
struggle to find their place in the knowledge economy.
Entrepreneurs, the proximity of knowledge and expertise, venture
capital and world-class universities are typically not in the models
explaining the spatial concentration of the knowledge-based
enterprises (Asheim et al., 2006). Research acknowledges this
view but highlights the need to examine how different regions and
cities generate economic pathways for the future, why some cities
and regions are more successful than others, and what makes
some places transform despite the odds while others are caught
by a downward spiral. While there are many studies searching
answers to these questions, few focus on leadership.
Studies focusing on the economic regeneration of cities and
regions face an interesting double challenge. First, structurally
oriented programmes of research tend to downplay issues related
to human agency, and thus neglect the roles many actors play in
local and regional changes. According to Rodríguez-Pose (2013),
a large share of regional development differences remains
unexplained after taking account of structural preconditions, the
most obvious being industrial structure, the size of the region,
capital and labour characteristics and the quality of infrastructure.
In other words, some regions grow more than could be expected
from their structural preconditions, and conversely, some regions
grow less than could be expected (Grillitsch and Sotarauta, 2019).
Second, structurally oriented programmes of research tend not to
look beyond standard public policy repertoires and neglect what
leaders actually do to influence economic regeneration in their
regions.
829
Image 17.1 Studies on economic regeneration
face a double challenge: a tendency to
downplay human agency and to neglect what
leaders actually do. Place-based leadership
is a concept that seeks to better understand
what type of leadership may serve the many
efforts to regenerate post-industrial cities and
regions.
Since the beginning of modernity in Western Europe, cities have
been an engine driving economic and social change, attracting
intellectuals and entrepreneurs and fostering the myriad
interactions that energize creativity and innovation (Bratton and
Denham, 2019). However, since the 1990s, the ascendency of
neoliberalism (see Chapter 2) has caused economic activity to be
more polarized in Western Europe and North America between
the ‘successful’ and the ‘unsuccessful’ regions due to increased
differentiation in innovation and economic growth. In the UK, it is
argued that such polarization, which has created high levels of
interregional inequality, was an important factor in explaining
voting patterns in the 2016 EU referendum – so-called Brexit. UK
830
levels of interregional inequality are 50 per cent higher than
similar-sized economies such as Germany and France. To
emphasize the point, of Britain’s 63 cities, Mansfield, a post-
industrial city, which has a miniscule private sector in knowledge-
based activity and where average wages are 19 per cent below
the national average, had the highest percentage vote to leave the
EU: 71 per cent. In contrast, the city of Reading, with its university,
highly developed networks into London and upward social
mobility, voted 58 per cent to remain (Hutton and Adonis, 2018:
12). It is argued that Brexit was a vote against an economic order
that seems only to work for the educated and the upper-middle
class, leaving the majority ‘increasingly frustrated and angry, but
also dangerous because they have no voice, and hence they are
vulnerable to the siren calls of extreme political parties’ (Bridle,
2018, cited by Bratton and Denham, 2019: 364).
In the USA, a compelling explanation for why so many white
working-class voters in post-industrial regions – the ‘rust-belt’ –
supported Donald Trump has been linked to job losses and
interregional inequality (Vance, 2016). In this context, addressing
interregional inequality through leadership has resonance and
has, unsurprisingly, been gaining in importance in regional
development spheres. Under such conditions, standard recipes
alone do not produce the desired outcomes. Whether a region is
peripheral or central, innovative or less so, successful efforts to
construct and/or improve urban or regional conditions for
innovation depend both on the ability to exploit existing resources
and to create and attract new ones. All this calls for mobilization of
collective action. This again cries out for an elaborate
understanding of how leaders working to improve regional
conditions for innovation influence a wide spectrum of decision
makers as well as resource and knowledge holders.
Beer and Clower (2014) argue that place-based leadership is the
missing piece in the regional development puzzle, and more
specifically in regional innovation systems and related policy
arenas. Hambleton (2014) describes place-based leadership as
leaders exercising their decision-making power to improve the
quality of life of communities living in a particular place. This
contrasts with organizational or ‘place-less’ leadership in which
831
leaders are unconcerned about the impact their decisions have on
particular external communities. Place-based leadership
addresses some key challenges found in any regional
development effort: how to choose priorities when there are
multiple leaders and numerous multipurpose organizations with
diverse goals; how to collaborate for a locality/region while
simultaneously pursuing one’s own goals; how to combine an
individual leader’s priorities with collective priorities and vice
versa; and how to see beyond formal structural considerations
and policies to identify the ways human interactions between
leaders and followers can be mobilized in a common endeavour,
and by whom.
Nicholds et al. (2017) conclude that it is indeed possible to
cultivate multilevel and shared place-based leadership aimed at
finding third-party solutions among competing vested interests.
The solutions rely upon dialogic communication (see Chapter 13),
negotiation and the coordination of myriad social relationships.
Studies show that place-based leadership as a specific form of
leadership exists, and that it matters to the economic development
of regions and cities (see e.g. Beer et al., 2019; Storper et al.,
2015). However, place-based leadership is not a quick-fix recipe
producing instantaneous impacts on innovation dynamics but is
better framed as a long-term quest to improve regional conditions
for innovation. In this kind of setting, the process of leading entails
the process of following. In short, co-produced leadership with
leaders and followers working together is more important (Grint,
2001).
832
Regional Innovation Systems and
Strategies
Scholars and practitioners involved in regional development are
unanimous in their belief that the innovative capacity of firms and
other organizations is better served by creating regional
innovation systems (RISs). Here, a RIS is an arrangement that
connects the regional economy and its external links that have
systemic connections for business with a second sub-system of
local and global linkages, which support innovation. Also referred
to as regional innovation hubs (RIH), a hub brings leading
university academics together, to coordinate, collaborate and
champion multidisciplinary research that can be shared, applied
and benefit local business entrepreneurs. Studies of RIS have
provided evidence on how regional economies can construct their
own competitiveness by boosting the systems of knowledge
creation and applying the knowledge to produce goods or services
commercially for the national or global market. Many regions
have, with varying success, attempted to formulate and implement
strategies aimed at constructing high-level knowledge pools or
hubs in selected areas of economic activity, and at finding ways to
strengthen mutually supporting internal networks as well as
pipelines to knowledge sources elsewhere in the world (Bathelt et
al., 2004).
Pause and reflect
Go to the regional innovation hub at Cambridge at
www.hotfrog.co.uk/business/cambridgeshire/cambridge/regional-
innovation (accessed 6 October 2019). What programmes does the
hub provide to promote regional innovation and advance knowledge-
based growth in urban and regional economies?
Regions have different preconditions to support innovation and
advance knowledge-based growth in their regions. For example,
833
some regions specialize in dynamically growing new industries
while others specialize in mature industries, and there are also
regions specializing in several industries which are in different
stages of development. Highly knowledge-intensive industries
tend to cluster around universities, while the less knowledge-
intensive industries tend to be located in the peripheral regions,
which may not have developed a critical mass of knowledge
expertise (Storper et al., 2015).
Innovation systems comprise a number of factors that influence
the creation and utilization of economic opportunities. At the core
of a RIS or hub is human interaction, technically called the
systemic interaction to describe meetings of creative and
innovative individuals, university academics and educationalists
from vocational education and training institutions, finance and
representatives from supporting bodies such as incubators and
technology transfer centres (Cooke et al., 1997). Studies suggest
that the many resources crucial for innovation are both co-
constructed and exploited by individuals who are embedded in a
web of regional and extra-regional informal and formal social
networks.
RISs can be separated from national innovation systems. In
addition to the level of resources, both physical and human, the
nature and intensity of the interaction between key individuals
may deviate between regions (Oughton et al., 2002). Innovation
systems may also be inherently more sectoral than regional by
nature, if the actors’ knowledge sources and main innovation
partners are fairly alike, irrespective of location (Isaksen and
Onsager, 2010). In addition to the existing preconditions, the
capacity of regional actors to create new resources and exploit the
existing ones varies. There is now a consensus among regional
development scholars that to make a difference, regional
innovation strategies need to be customized to suit the needs of
the country, region and/or industry in question (Tödtling and Trippl,
2005). First, national innovation strategies have a regional impact
that ought to be acknowledged whether it is intended or not.
Second, regional dissimilarities in the quality and quantity of
innovation activity are not limited to the performance of a RIS or
the activities embedded in it, but also, in those institutions framing
834
and shaping innovation, the patterns of interactions among
individuals may differ (Fritsch and Stephan, 2005). Therefore,
tailor-made strategies and policy instruments are required to serve
regional needs but also to achieve national-level objectives
effectively.
Importantly, a RIS or hub in a vibrant knowledge economy is not
only regionally bounded because it is a global arena for different
academics, policy-makers and entrepreneurs to source
knowledge and collaborate (Crevoisier and Hugues, 2009). Even
though the emphasis is on RISs, innovation processes are often
multi-locational in nature. Therefore, regional systems need to be
understood in wider contexts, which is why place-based leaders
need also to work to establish extra-regional linkages to
complement localized learning and networks.
In sum, the rationale behind regional innovation strategies is to
enhance knowledge-based economic development, and more
specifically, to boost collective learning for economic and social
renewal through innovations. The process of place-based leaders
requires leaders and followers together to create the leadership to
improve a regional innovation and regional economic growth.
Place-based leaders work with others to mobilize and co-ordinate
resources and the competencies of many actors to change
institutions, patterns of leader–follower interactions, and mindsets
for innovation. In so doing, they aim to co-construct a shared
vision to provide heterogeneous groups of actors with a direction.
Pause and reflect
Leadership for regional innovation is about stimulating interaction
between key players, the ‘movers and shakers’ in a city or region.
Thinking of your own city or region where you live or study, who are
the ‘key players’? What interaction patterns exist and how might they
be improved?
835
Place-based Leadership
By definition, a RIS is a multi-actor context, where no leader alone
has the power or resources to change the system to better boost
innovation processes. Place-based leadership is not the concern
of public agencies or elected local/regional government alone
(OECD, 2015). Indeed, the diversity of leaders and the multi-voice
nature of any innovation hub may add significantly to the
resources, innovation capacity and resource powers of local
economies. But, to secure these advantages, place-based leaders
must pool the distributed system of leadership and make it more
coherent to make a difference. Consequently, as we discussed in
Chapter 8 and above, leadership is concerned with marshalling,
coordinating and facilitating inter-organizational development
strategies and practices outside the leader’s boundary of authority
across numerous institutional and organizational boundaries. This
kind of leadership is labelled as place-based leadership (or
regional leadership), as leaders need to have a good sense of
place and its social interconnected fabric to make a difference
(Trickett and Lee, 2010). A growing body of research attests to the
significance of values that extend beyond self-interest in
predicting individual pro-regional growth behaviours, partly
explained by the evidence that place-based leaders are strongly
motivated by their emotional attachment to their sense of ‘place’
and the issues they address.
Critical Insight: Embedding leadership and innovation in the fabric of
place?
Place leadership is a new kid on the block both in the regional
innovation and leadership scholarship. For a long time, its
development was based on individual case studies and under
theorized assumptions. Over the last 15 years or so, theoretical and
empirical rigour as well as sophistication of the scholarship have
grown. In spite of the encouraging developments, we still do not
know much how place leadership is exercised in different regional
836
and/or industrial cultures. Drawing upon a limited number of
empirical studies, we may only assume what the similarities and
differences across the globe are. In many ways, the place leadership
agenda is still in an embryonic stage. Undoubtedly it has a huge
potential, as first, it broadens the standard leadership approaches to
cover issues related to inter-organizational regional development
efforts in all sorts of locations, and second, it provides structurally
oriented regional development studies with more agentic theories
and methodologies. By ‘agentic’ we mean a state of mind in which an
individual allows other people to direct their behaviours and pass
responsibility for the consequences of the behaviours to the
individual telling them what to do. To realize the potential, we need
studies that approach urban and regional innovation as contested
arenas for the search for many futures instead of a single pre-defined
one. In other words, to understand urban and regional innovation, we
need place leadership that is embedded in a deep socio-cultural
understanding of power and influence systems in a specific place. All
this would root regional innovation strategies in the socio-cultural–
political–economic fabric of a place, instead of its administrative
machinery, and a few selected stakeholders only.
837
Activity
Read: A. Beer, S. Ayres, T. Clower, F. Faller, A. Sancino and M.
Sotarauta (2019) ‘Place leadership and regional economic
development: a framework for cross-regional analysis’, Regional
Studies, 53 (2): 171–182, and answer the following question: what
are the similarities and differences in place leadership in the six
countries compared in the article?
Pause and reflect
Why may place-based leadership be constrained in a highly
centralized country? And a decentralized one? Read Mabey, C. and
Freeman, T. (2010) ‘Reflections on leadership and place’, Policy
Studies, 31 (4): 505–22.
Place-based leadership is not the same as local or regional
government’s intervention in local economies. It is about shaping
and influencing activities over which leaders have limited formal
authority, but which affect regional development broadly. Place-
based leaders therefore aim to attract private investment for
innovation; establish innovation agendas influencing a wider set of
organizations beyond short-term political cycles; construct a vision
and joint narrative for the future of a regional economy; find
common ground, negotiate and coordinate with higher tiers of
government for investment; and stimulate demand and create
markets and opportunities for a regional economy (OECD, 2015).
Place-based leaders work for a region’s or post-industrial town’s
future with, by and through its inhabitants and organizations, and
hence they, by definition, work to engage other actors in regional
and urban development efforts. Many actors indeed contribute to
efforts to upgrade RISs, but usually they are not able to move
beyond self-interests, operational logics and paymasters.
Therefore, place leaders are facing a notoriously difficult task in
shepherding all sorts of key people towards a shared common
goal. Place-based leadership can therefore be conceptualized as
838
‘a process of reconciling conflicting and competing interests aimed
at generating collaborative advantage and an understanding of
the challenges associated with transforming places as well as
organisations and capabilities’ (Trickett and Lee, 2010: 434).
Place-based leaders need to understand the opportunities and
restrictions provided by the geographical location as well as the
many social networks shaping its character. They need to be
aware of, and continuously observe, the dominant networks
internal and external to a region, and the nature of relationships
between their core members. To do so means that place leaders
need to identify key leaders in private and/or public sector
organizations (see Chapter 15), their backgrounds, and then
assess the potential for alliances. At their best, place leaders are
masters in identifying what motivates other core leaders and in
what ways they might be able to contribute to regional
development efforts. Importantly, place leaders are supposed to
be better aware of the desirable, imaginable and predictable
futures of their region than anybody else.
As development of RISs is fundamentally concerned with long-
term processes, place-based leadership is better conceptualized
as a force in time rather than a leader–follower relationship in the
here and now, and hence the leadership relationship is ambiguous
(Sotarauta, 2016). In line with the contemporary leadership
literature, place-based leadership is more useful when seen as a
process than as an individual in possession of a formal position.
Consequently, the primary emphasis is to be moved from issues
related to how leaders deliberately coordinate their followers in the
pursuit of a consciously absorbed objective (assigned leadership)
to the in-depth scrutiny of emergent process of leading and the
process of following (see Chapter 13 on the process of following).
In doing so, the first step would be to see beyond assigned
leadership to identify the many manifestations of place-based
leadership.
In essence, assigned leaders are granted the authority to exercise
power – have a formal position – to boost regional innovation.
Some assigned leaders aspire to reach beyond their authorization
to influence individuals and individuals in groups beyond their
839
normal sphere of influence. Assigned leaders may comprise city
mayors and the CEOs of local/regional economic development
agencies, university research centres, and other institutional
leaders whose mission it is to develop, one way or another, the
city and regional economy. Assigned leaders have an
organization, resources and/or a mandate to work for a RIS or
some elements of it, while non-assigned leaders do not, which
may impede their direct influence on others. Non-assigned
leaders earn their leadership position in spite of not having a
formal authority or assigned position because of the way
knowledgeable others perceive their potential contribution and
leadership and thus adjust their response to non-assigned leaders
(Sotarauta, 2016).
In place-based leadership, however, the boundary between
assigned and non-assigned leadership is ambiguous. An assigned
leader may become non-assigned when they aim to reach other
leaders and followers beyond those institutional arrangements
from which the assignment is derived. Conversely, a non-assigned
leader (e.g. a senior civil servant assigned to the hub) may gain
authority if she or he can earn the respect of knowledgeable
others, and/or if the institutional conditions change, thus enabling
the leader to become an assigned leader. All in all, in the world of
regional development and innovation, the tendency is to conflate
leadership with authority and formal positions, and by doing so,
overshadow some important aspects of it. It is fairly common to
focus only influential individuals with authority and formal positions
in the limelight. In addition to assigned leaders, it is also common
to analyse the structures and processes of a city or regional
government instead of processes of influence. The assigned
leaders and related structures are visible, while non-assigned
leaders and emergent forms of leading and following are less
tangible and more difficult to identify.
In sum, a place-based leader is assumed to be more capable than
other key actors in understanding the overall requirements of a
RIS: a key actor’s interests; their motives and resources as well
as anticipating their responses to various initiatives; the ways they
might be induced to contribute to the collaborative efforts; and
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estimating the power bases of crucial actors and the capacity to
influence their behaviour.
Pause and reflect
Why are some leaders willing to work beyond self-interest to spend
time and energy in the effort to influence beyond their normal
operational field?
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Place-based Leaders, Knowledge
Producers and Decision Makers
In order to better differentiate between place-based leadership
and other forms of agency, three generic categories are added to
that of place-based leadership: resource holders, decision makers
and knowledge producers. As you have hopefully seen through
this chapter, a place-based leader is an actor who works to
influence other actors for regional innovation. A resource holder
refers broadly to an individual or group of individuals or an
organization having some kinds of resources that are, or might be,
important from a regional development perspective, but who are
not assigned to work for regional development. In other words, it
is not their mission to shape a selected RIS or some aspects of it.
Similarly, decision maker refers to all those actors having power to
make decisions to influence regional development but without
having a mission to do so.
Decision makers and resource holders may include: (1) influential
individuals (wealthy philanthropists; entrepreneurs; business
owners); (2) representatives of industry (leaders from interest
organizations; cluster project organizations; larger firms with
regional anchorage; local small and medium-sized companies);
(3) representatives of public administration (leading civil servants
at city, regional and national level; publicly owned firms; university
presidents and leading academics); (4) representatives of the
financial world (leaders from both private and public funding
bodies; banks); and (5) elected representatives (politicians; city,
regional, pan-European (e.g. EU) level representatives, etc.).
On their part, knowledge producers are those actors whose
primary work it is to produce new knowledge and its applications
as well as interpretations of current events and future trends. They
are not working to develop a region or make significant decisions,
but they may influence either directly or indirectly the thinking of
others. The most obvious knowledge producers are different types
of investigators and media workers, and may include (6)
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representatives of R&D institutions (universities; renowned
professors; research institutions; knowledge parks; technology
transfer institutions; consultancies; larger R&D projects); (7)
representatives of the media (local, regional and national media
organizations as well as social media); and (8) community groups
(civil society activists).
Of course, the above categorization is a crude simplification, and
the borders between various groups are malleable indeed; an
actor may take on many roles and the roles may change in time.
At all events, almost endless arrays of actors may either directly
or indirectly influence and affect the process of urban and regional
development. Some of the actors listed above may be assigned
place-based leaders and consciously work to boost regional
development or target their action at a selected local/regional
aspect. It is important to keep in mind that actors aiming to
influence are not some external third parties who aim to bear
influence on events from above and outside, but rather they seek
to influence and effect the behaviour of other actors and
themselves through a process of leading and following (see
Figure 17.1).
As indicated above, to improve a RIS, place-based leaders aim to
influence other actors’ choices, decisions and actions by shaping
institutional arrangements, collective perceptions and interaction
patterns where actors assemble and engage. Place-based
leaders aim to pool and direct all sorts of activities and actors to
change institutions (regulations, normative expectations, collective
mindsets) so that core actors behave and act differently than they
would otherwise do. Ideally, place-based leaders are not aiming to
break the resistance of other actors; they are not in a position to
make them do something against their will, but rather to induce
them to willingly do things they would not otherwise do (Sotarauta,
2016).
Figure 17.1 The relationship between place
leaders, other actors and regional
development and innovation
843
In sum, place-based leaders often influence key actors indirectly.
They:
aim at creating a novel context for collective action instead of
trying directly to change the course of actions and events;
induce, or rather ‘seduce’, other actors to do something
differently;
do not aim to challenge the preferences of the other actors
but rather to combine individual aims to form collective
regional objectives;
aim to multiply the opportunities and alternatives for other
actors.
Leadership in Action: Leadership relay in peripheral Finland
South Ostrobothnia in Finland is an example of how a small rural
region may pursue a regional innovation strategy. In the 1990s,
Finland was recovering from an economic recession and South
Ostrobothnia was facing a huge challenge: the entire region and its
centre, Seinäjoki seemed to be unsuitable for the rapidly evolving
Finnish knowledge economy. The collective anxiety was palpable.
The assigned leaders from the Regional Council of South
Ostrobothnia (the region), the Centre for Employment and Economic
Development (the state) and the Town of Seinäjoki (the local
government) met in collectively mobilized networks to discuss the
future options. However, the formal regional development system
was inadequately equipped for a collective strategy to emerge. The
first mobilization phase exposed the fragility of the local innovation
capacity and the introverted nature of it. Step by step, sometimes
844
through heated debates, the key actors started to acknowledge that
their assumptions and ideas reflected the past rather than the future
needs of South Ostrobothnia. Gradually, over time, a collective
consensus emerged that future development strategies could no
longer focus on the traditional strengths of the region (agriculture,
manufacturing machinery, and the metal industry) and that new
strategies were needed to strengthen the innovation capacity of the
region.
The leadership in South Ostrobothnia was like a relay race; it shifted
from assigned leaders to non-assigned leaders and back to assigned
leaders, but these were different individuals from the initial ones. In
the formal planning process, it was agreed to strengthen the
institutional capacity for innovation by establishing ‘a network
university’ in a region, even though there were no research-intensive
universities. However, the assigned leaders were not able to realize
the idea of a network university. The assigned leaders were not able
to persuade the small university filials in the region or other actors to
develop the idea. Moreover, they lacked a view on how the process
ought to be organized and enacted beyond the formal planning
process.
In this context, a handful of young scholars from local university filials
took the lead in framing the thinking and constructing alternative
visions for a network university. Academics and their research
groups tapped into sources of information that were previously
unreachable by local actors. They were able to transfer new ideas
and knowledge into the region in a way that was comprehensible and
aligned to the regional situation. What followed was a collective
agreement on what to focus on and how to do it. The university
network comprised six leading Finnish universities with more than 20
senior academics and their research groups, and included all the
relevant regional organizations (firms, municipalities etc.). The final
mobilization of key actors, formal contracts and relationships of trust
were, and is, coordinated by the South Ostrobothnia University
Association and the University Consortium of Seinäjoki, with support
from local and regional development agencies. By 2010, South
Ostrobothnia was one of the few regions in Finland capable of
upgrading its innovation system to a new level.
845
Reflective questions
1. What is the main leadership lesson from this case that other
regions should learn?
2. Imagine all the obstacles that needed to be crossed to reach a
collective place-based leadership relay.
846
Sources
Sotarauta, M. and Kosonen, K.-J. (2004) ‘Strategic adaptation to the
knowledge economy in less favoured regions: a South-Ostrobothnian
university network as a case in point’, in P. Cooke and A. Piccaluga
(eds), Regional Economies as Knowledge Laboratories. Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar.
Sotarauta, M., Lakso, T. and Kurki, S. (1999) Alueellisen
osaamisympäristön vahvistaminen: Etelä-Pohjanmaan
korkeakouluverkoston toimintamalli (Strengthening the regional
expertise environment). Sente-publications 4/1999. Tampere:
Tampere University.
847
To explore this topic further see:
Sotarauta, M. (2016) Leadership and the City: Power, strategy and
networks in the making of knowledge cities. London: Routledge.
848
Generative Leadership – a Missing
Link in Transformative Efforts
The definition of place-based leadership assumes, at least
implicitly, that it works for transformative changes. However,
place-based leadership literature, while acknowledging the
complexity of leaders influencing others in a multi-actor context,
does not assume that place-based leaders are able to lead a
transformational process in a similar way as leaders based in
individual organizations. The well-known categories of
transactional and transformational leadership we discussed in
Chapter 7 are useful in the effort to understand the gap between
the idealized version of place-based leadership and everyday
practices of it. It also helps us to locate the generative nature of
place-based leadership in wider debates on leadership.
Transactional leadership refers to actors taking the initiative in
making contact with others for the purpose of an exchange of
valued things. It does not connect leaders and followers in a
mutual and continuing pursuit of a higher purpose. It may not be
an exaggeration to argue that, in most countries and regions,
regional innovation strategies and related leadership often follow
the transactional mode. All too often, action is taken and new
strategies formulated only when development efforts turn into
transactional exchanges using public funds. Interestingly, in
regional innovation literature, transformational leadership is not
usually connected conceptually, even though transformational
leadership could easily be seen as an ideal for both assigned and
non-assigned place-based leaders to enhance change. Bass and
Riggio (2006) relate transformational leadership to: (1) leaders’
charisma (idealized influence); (2) the ways leaders use symbols
and images to direct their efforts (inspirational motivation); (3) the
ways leaders direct others to see and think about old problems in
new ways (intellectual stimulation); and (4) the ways leaders
coach others to find their way to contribute to higher purposes
(individualized consideration). These features might prove useful
in regional contexts.
849
The EU’s 2010 regional innovation strategy (smart specialization)
emphasizes identification of the unique characteristics and assets
of each region, underlining their competitive advantages, and the
importance of ‘mobilizing regional stakeholders and resources
around an excellence-driven vision of their future’ (Heimeriks and
Balland, 2016: 562). A pan-European effort to reach beyond
standard domains of the public sector has been launched. It would
seem that smart specialization is calling for place-based
leadership as a catalyst to produce major changes in structures,
interaction patterns and mindsets in order to frame the process of
regional innovation.
Public leadership for innovation is seldom transformational,
however. In spite of the many aspirations to take steps towards
more transformational regional innovation strategies by smart
specialization, it may well be that it does not readily provide
entrepreneurs and regional development practitioners with
renewed transformational capacity (Sotarauta, 2018). Place-
based leadership should not be transactional either, and research
suggests that place-based leadership is more often than not
generative by nature. Often, place-based leadership simply is not
powerful enough to bring about transformative change. Therefore,
in practice, place-based leaders generate such processes that
presumably, in the course of time, lead to transformational
outcomes. Generative leadership, in addition to well-developed
place literacy, calls for sophisticated process literacy. The word
‘generate’ refers to a process of bringing into existence,
originating by a process, or defining or originating by the
application of one or more rules or operations. So, generative
leadership is about setting things to move from giving birth to
something new in a region. In this context, generation is geared to
constructing the context for creativity and innovation, but not to
product- or service-related innovation in itself. Generative
leadership therefore refers to such processes that guide other
actors to construct new development paths and transformation of
a RIS. Drawing on the concept of followership (see Chapter 13), it
seems that generative leadership needs a well-developed
understanding of both the process of leading and the process of
following in order to co-construct the leadership relationship at
urban/regional levels. The core idea is that to achieve truly
850
transformational regional innovation strategies, we need to
investigate how generative leadership may lead to transformative
action and bridge transactional and transformational leadership to
form a coherent whole in the context of RISs.
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Criticism and Exemplary Research
for Place-based Leadership
Place-based leadership is a specific form of agency referring to
actions or interventions to influence a wide spectrum of actors to
produce a particular effect. Place-based leadership therefore is
best studied in its full complexity by situating it in the flow of time.
As such, it is approached as a temporally embedded process of
social engagement that is informed by the past but always
oriented towards open futures (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998). The
main purpose is to identify: (1) what structural conditions affect
transformation processes for regional innovation; (2) what the
main transformational strategies adopted by place-based leaders
are, independently or in collaboration with other actors, in their
efforts to boost regional innovation; and (3) what place-based
leaders do to generate such processes that attract core actors to
contribute to the collective effort.
However, we need to be careful not to stress too much the
importance of place-based leadership and finding causality
between leadership and regional economic development. This
might reinforce the tendency to do reminiscent single-case
studies, introducing more or less imaginary causal links between
improved regional innovation performance and skilful place-based
leadership practices. This again might lead to one-eyed ‘happy
family stories’ embedded in an assumption that local leadership
practices alone might produce better regional economic
development (Benneworth et al., 2017). Indeed, the need to avoid
mystification of place-based leadership and the need to broaden
the methodological toolkit beyond single-case studies are
recognized (Beer et al., 2019). Moreover, it is crucial to keep in
mind that scale of national governance system matters in place-
based leadership, and the capabilities and local/regional
resources required to lead across organizational divides differ
greatly (Bentley et al., 2017). Ayres (2014) also warns us that
place-based leadership scholars should guard against becoming
self-serving, as have several scholars in other disciplines.
852
Quite naturally, most of the actors comply with existing systems,
but the proposition advanced here is that there are actors who
lead generative processes with an ambition to transform the RISs.
The proposition emerging from earlier studies on place-based
leadership shows that it is not a heroic act of top-down influence
but a multi-scalar (both direction and magnitude) and multi-actor
process in time. It is often a collective and at best shared
approach to leadership, but it may also include highly personal
and intuitive, and as such unplanned, forms of agency, which is
more a patchwork of single measures leading in the same
direction than an implementation of a pre-designed coherent
vision. At all events, the earlier observations call for a systemic
approach to the study of leadership that is relational, contextual
and processual by nature. It should allow for locating leadership in
the actions and relationships linking leaders and followers in
transformation processes and, as already said, not in the formal
positions and attributes of individuals only.
Generally speaking, place-based leadership may take three
forms: transformational, generative and transactional. These three
forms of leadership may take specific forms in specific situations
and range from futures-oriented strategic efforts to reactive
adaptation. It is proposed here that there is much variety in the
strategies and related actions that both assigned and non-
assigned leaders may embrace in their efforts to combine and re-
combine, as well as deploy and re-deploy, different competences,
resources and sources of power/influence for regional innovation.
Some basic research questions to explore include the following:
1. What are the main phases and critical junctures of a regional
innovation process under scrutiny? How does the change
process unfold in time (i.e. how the identified critical junctures
are linked to each other in time)?
2. How do institutions facilitate and/or impede development
efforts, and what institutions in particular are influencing
efforts to boost innovation in a specific region? Do they
enable, constrain and/or prevent actors aiming to do
something creative?
3. Who are the key actors influencing the course of events?
What roles do they possess? With whom do they work, and
853
why? What role do followers play in generative leadership?
How do their social positions, educational backgrounds,
and/or work experiences influence the ways they adopt their
roles, operate and learn what to do?
4. What kind of leadership do actors exercise in wider networks
of power and influence? How do they aim to influence other
actors and who are their followers? How do they interact with
other key actors to influence regional development?
854
Conclusion
This chapter has explained that RISs are based on a conviction
that dispersed and disparate knowledge across all sorts of actors
needs to be connected and pooled. The many leadership efforts
to achieve this vary not only between governance systems but
also to some degree within them. Place-based leaders are
expected to generate such a process that pools dispersed
powers, capabilities and knowledge to achieve transformational
changes. The belief is that by marshalling distributed assets to
serve both individual and joint aspirations and goals, it is possible,
through collaborative effort, to advance further than an individual
leader can demonstrate alone.
As place-based leaders are expected to lead heterogenous
groups of individuals and find ways to work beyond their self-
interest, the concept of place-based leadership can be seen as an
ideal. In reality, it may be a scarce resource in many regions. One
of the main paradoxes is that although there is a demonstrable
need for place-based leadership, it is evident that neither
individuals nor organizational actors like to be led by external
leaders (Sydow et al., 2011). Additionally, due to its nature, place-
based leadership is not easy to study because it is often hardly
visible, being shadowed by governance structures, formal
development strategies, and legislations – an opaque form of
leadership.
Place-based leadership is the generative force that causes goals
to be met and identified, and missions to be accomplished in a
place, rather than being a direct influence embedded in a formal
organizational position. Further, a theme we have covered in
several chapters is that we need to understand place-based
leadership in a way that acknowledges the tensions and
contradictions surrounding it in complex social entities. Thus,
critical studies of place-based leadership might serve in the effort
to unravel the secrets of place-specific social relations related to
regional innovation. This might prove important not only in
supporting mobilization or the construction of a shared vision, but
855
also in identifying the covert forms of power and influence in
regional development assemblies.
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Chapter Review Questions
1. Why is placed-based leadership important to urban and regional
development?
2. What are the main characteristics of place-based leadership and
how do they differ from those of organizational leadership?
3. How does assigned leadership differ from non-assigned leadership?
Assignment Task: Cross-culture studies of place-based leadership
Read the following two articles:
Benneworth, P., Pinheiro, R. and Karlsen, J. (2017) ‘Strategic agency
and institutional change: investigating the role of universities in
regional innovation systems (RISs)’, Regional Studies, 51 (2): 235–
48.
Hu, X. and Hassink, R. (2017) ‘Place leadership with Chinese
characteristics? A case study of the Zaozhuang coal-mining region in
transition’, Regional Studies, 51 (2): 224–34.
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Question
1. What are the similarities and differences between Chinese and
North European place-based leadership?
Go Online
Further your knowledge and build your bibliography for
assignments by reading the recommended journal articles for this
chapter.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
video
Learn more about leadership in practice by watching the video
conversation for this chapter.
Paul Stanley, CEO of Global Navigation Solutions, shares his
experience of using the historial regional expertise of a community
fostering a shared organizational culture across a multinational
enterprise.
The video can be found at https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
See the inside front cover for the access code and instructions.
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
https://study.sagepub.com/bratton
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Further Reading
Beer, A. and Clower, T. (2014) ‘Mobilizing leadership in cities and
regions’, Regional Studies, Regional Science, 1 (1): 5–20.
Gibney, J. (2011) ‘Knowledge in a “shared and interdependent
world”: implications for a progressive leadership of cities and
regions’, European Planning Studies, 19 (4): 613–27.
Hambleton, R. (2014) Leading the Inclusive City: Place-based
innovation for a bounded planet. Bristol: Policy Press.
Sotarauta, M., Beer, A. and Gibney, J. (eds) (2017) ‘Special Issue:
Leadership in city and regional development’, Regional Studies,
51 (2).
Sotarauta, M., Beer, A., Ayres, S. Clower, T., Faller, F. and
Sancino, A. (2019) ‘Place leadership and regional economic
development: a framework for cross-regional analysis’, Regional
Studies, 53 (2): 171–82.
Sydow, J., Lerch, F., Huxham, C. and Hibbert, P. (2011) ‘A silent
cry for leadership: organizing for leading (in) clusters’, Leadership
Quarterly, 22: 328–43.
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Case Study: Leading innovation in
Liverpool city region
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Background
In the 2010s, there were 53 firms in the life-science sector alongside
several R&D organizations in Liverpool City Region (LCR). On its part, the
video games industry consisted of 30 firms, with fewer public
organizations supporting its development. It had not been a target of local
policy measures (as the life sciences were) before 2008. LCR, however,
has been seen as a good place for video game firms, and reputable firms
have established themselves in LCR, further drawing major cultural
events and skilled individuals to work in LCR.
861
The problem
Local policymakers had endeavoured to diversify the entire life science
concentration to become more knowledge-intensive with stronger high
value-added activities. In spite of these efforts, LCR has not enjoyed a
reputation as a place to do high-level life science, and consequently, life
science firms have had difficulties in attracting new investment and talent
with the specialist knowledge to relocate to the city.
Recent developments have seen changes in public leadership and in the
two main industries. The most noticeable of the changes was the closure
in 2012 of the North West Regional Development Agency (NWDA), which
directly influenced the actors receiving funding from the agency. With the
closure of the NWDA, the region lost the leading brokerage player.
Changes in the local/regional institutional arrangements meant that new
lead organizations did not have well-networked individuals and social
relationships and mechanisms, which previously acted as ‘brokers’ for
firms to access investment and knowledge flows from outside the LCR,
notably the EU. As one researcher observed, ‘personal contacts were lost
and the new governance structure brought about new ways of engaging
with industry.’
Importantly, the life sciences and video games sectors were affected
differently. In life sciences, the changes in public leadership led to low
levels of connectivity between firms on a product-or-project basis. This
was because government support became more centralized as public
funds were cut. Life sciences previously had benefited from extensive
investments from the public sector. In contrast, the video games industry
did not suffer from the changes in public leadership as life sciences did.
The industry had previously enjoyed limited public leadership and material
support from the public sector, and it had also witnessed post-2010
closures of multinational studios. To complement the local knowledge
ecosystem, leaders from two firms took the lead to develop new ‘tailor-
made’ soft infrastructure platforms. The video games industry was less
dependent on the public leadership than life sciences and was able to
self-organize through business leadership. It was able too to strengthen
well-established local networks and trust among the core organizations,
and also to improve the earlier limited institutional arrangements
supporting video game business.
In sum, place-based leadership is less about one individual leader leading
a development process than a collective process emerging over a long
period of time. Whereas the video game industry demonstrates how non-
assigned business leaders can work collectively to improve local
conditions for innovation, the life sciences, on its part, illustrates how an
862
over-developed reliance on assigned leadership may lead to under-
developed networks among local actors, and thus weaken non-assigned
leadership. Therefore, it is crucial that leaders working to develop and
improve local conditions for knowledge production and its utilization
purposefully create and institutionalize soft infrastructures alongside the
hard ones.
863
Case exercise
Thinking about the importance of brokerage – network leadership – in any
effort to strengthen a RIS, working in a group or alone, write a report
explaining:
1. What effect did changes in place-based leadership have in LCR’s
development of two high-technology sectors?
2. Why did the changes in the governance system lead to two different
trajectories for the two case industries?
864
Source
This case study is based on Dane Anderton (2016) ‘Science in the city
region: establishing Liverpool’s life science ecology’, Regional Studies,
Regional Science, 3 (1): 437–44.
865
Sources of additional information
Liverpool city region (www.liverpoolcityregion-ca.gov.uk)
Combined Authority factsheet for Liverpool City Region
(www.centreforcities.org/combined-authority/liverpool-city-region)
Liverpool city region + a science and innovation audit
(www.liverpoollep.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/LCR-SIA-full-
report-and-appendices-FINAL-September-2017 ).
867
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psychological comparison’, Bulletin of the Meninger Clinic, 38:
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Zaleznik, A. (1977) ‘Managers and leaders: are they different?’,
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1074
Zaleznik, A. (1983) ‘The leadership gap’, Washington Quarterly, 6
(1): 32–9.
Zaleznik, A. (1989) The Managerial Mystique: Restoring
leadership in business. New York: Harper & Row.
Zammuto, R.F. (1982) Assessing Organizational Effectiveness.
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Zand, D.E. (1997) The Leadership Triad. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Zhu, W., May, D. and Avolio, B. (2004) ‘The impact of ethical
leadership behaviour on employee outcomes: the roles of
psychological empowerment and authenticity’, Journal of
Leadership and Organizational Studies, 1 (1): 16–26.
Zilahy, G. (2003) ‘Organizational factors determining the
implementation of cleaner production in the corporate sector’,
Journal of Cleaner Production, 12: 311–19.
Zutshi, A. and Sohal, A. (2004) ‘Environmental management
system adoption by Australian organizations, Part 1: reasons,
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1104
T
talent attraction, 230
talent development, 231–232
talent management
case study: Bluespire Technologic, 145–146
case study: Royal Bank of Scotland, 240–242
collaboration and, 234–236
criticisms of, 236–237
leadership and, 229–234
nature of, 224–229
talent mobilization, 232
talent pools, 226
talented followership, 233–234
tall poppy syndrome (TPS), 323
Tapia, A., 321
task behaviours, 133, 257, 258
task-oriented behaviours, 24
task-oriented leaders, 138–140
task structure, 139–140
Taylor, F.W., 17, 133, 252–253
Taylor, P., 254
Taylor, S., 12, 248
Taylorism, 252–253
team-based leadership, 70–71
team-level strategy, 42, 43
teams and team leadership, 184–186, 185. See also
distributed theories of leadership
technology, 40. See also innovation
Tesco, 69
Thatcher, M., 94, 155
Thayer, L., 181
Thomas, R.R., 319
Thornton, A., 276
Thorpe, R., 277
Thunberg, G., 35
Tidd, J., 46
Time (magazine), 112
Townley, B., 72–73, 254, 261
trade unions, 376–377
traditional authority, 153
1105
training and development, 202–203, 203, 373–374. See also
leadership development
trait activation theory (TAT), 127
trait theories of leadership, 22, 23–24, 126–133, 129
trait theory of personality, 294. See also Big Five personality
framework
transactional leadership, 50, 158–159, 202, 305, 398–399
transformational leadership
case study: Watson Winery, 168–169
criticisms of, 165–166
diversity and, 321
ethical leadership and, 107
human resource management and, 214, 214
innovation and, 50
overview of, 23, 150, 158–165, 161
performance management and, 253, 257
public sector organizations and, 341, 343–346
urban and regional innovation and, 398
See also charismatic leadership
Transparency International, 119
Trompenaars, F., 83, 91–92
Trudeau, J., 331
Trump, D., 126, 323, 327, 328, 388
trust, 108–109, 363
Turnbull, S., 257
Tushman, M., 48
two-factor theory of motivation, 301–302
U
Uber. See Kalanick, T.
Uhl-Bien, M., 175, 182, 291, 292
Ulrich, D., 213
uncertainty avoidance, 81
United Nations (UN), 361, 364
University of Michigan studies, 133–134, 135
urban and regional innovation
case study: Liverpool City Region, 403–404
generative leadership and, 398–399
place-based leadership and, 386–389, 391–397, 396,
399–401
1106
regional innovation systems and, 389–391
utilitarianism (consequentialism), 106
V
validity, 202
Van Hauwermeiren, R., 67
Van Wanrooy, B., 260
van Woerkom, M., 225–226
Varley, J., 127
victimization, 68. See also bullying
Virgin Group, 33
virtue ethics, 106
Volkswagen, 99–100, 363
Vroom, V., 304–305
Vygotsky, L., 180
W
Wackernagel, M., 361
Wajcman, J., 29, 189, 329–330
Walmart, 36
Warren, D.I., 61
Wassenaar, C. L., 189
Watt, P., 267
Watson, S., 207
Watson Winery, 168–169
Weber, M.
charismatic leadership and, 151, 153–155, 156, 157
organizational culture and, 89
on paradox of consequence, 30
on power, 28, 59–60, 65–66, 67, 71–72
WEF (World Economic Forum), 36, 325, 327, 328, 333, 336
Wehrmeyer, W., 371
Weinstein, H., 15, 19
West Yorkshire Police, 279–280
whistleblowing, 116–117, 292–293
White, A.M., 331–332
wicked problems, 347
Wilkinson, M., 345
Wilkinson, R., 188
Williams, J., 108, 114
1107
Williams, R., 65
Williams, R., 80
Winn, G.,, 114
Winstanley, D., 115
Winterkorn, M., 99–100
Winters, M.F., 319, 321
women and gender issues
artificial intelligence and, 328
case study: BRICS countries, 336–337
concept of, 90–91
future challenges for, 329–330
gender pay gap and, 325
glass ceiling and, 29, 322–323
glass cliff and, 29, 322, 323–325, 326–327
glass escalator and, 29
global leadership and, 327–329
leadership theory and research on, 29–30
macro environment and, 40
millennial generation and, 329
performance management and, 261
sexual harassment and, 18–20, 28–29, 44
support for, 331–334
transformational leadership and, 321
Wood, G., 259–260
Woodall, J., 115
work-based learning, 276
work values, 368–369
workforce planning, 201, 230
workplace pro-environmental behaviour (WPEB), 362, 364–
365, 382–383
World Commission on Environment and Development
(WCED; Bruntland Commission), 361
World Economic Forum (WEF), 36, 325, 327, 328, 333, 336
Wratil, P., 331
Wylie, C., 292–293
Y
Yahoo! 326
Yukl, G., 14, 137, 143, 257, 342, 367, 386
1108
Z
Zaccaro, S.J., 130, 131, 185
Zaleznik, A., 20
zero-hour contracts, 217–218
Zilahy, G., 374
Zuckerberg, M., 127
Your Guide to Using this Book
In the book you’ll find
On the website you’ll find
For lecturers
About the Contributors
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Videos
Foreword
Introduction
Objectives of this book
A framework for studying leadership
The organization of this book
Part I Contextualizing Leadership
1 The Nature of Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
Defining leadership
Leadership and management
Mapping the changing study of leadership
Critical leadership studies
The employment relationship
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
2 Strategic Management, Innovation and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
Strategic management
A framework for studying strategy and leadership
The nature of innovation
The external and internal contexts driving innovation
Leaders’ roles in innovation processes
Evaluation and criticism
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
3 Power and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
Conceptualizing power
Different perspectives on power
Power and management
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
4 Culture and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of national cultures
Understanding organizational culture
Perspectives on organizational culture
Organizational culture, climate and leadership
Evaluation and criticism
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
5 Ethics and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of ethical leadership
Philosophical approaches to ethical leadership
Dimensions of ethical leadership
Organizations behaving badly: failures in ethical leadership
Context, the rhetoric and reality
Whistleblowing: is it responsible behaviour?
Millennial leadership, digitization and artificial intelligence
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
Part II Leadership Theories
6 Trait, Behaviour and Contingency Theories of Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
Leader traits and attributes
Leader behaviour and styles
Contingency theories of leadership
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
7 Charismatic and Transformational Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of charismatic leadership
Neo-theories of charismatic leadership
Transformational leadership
Critiquing charismatic and transformational leadership
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
8 Relational and Distributed Theories of Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
Classical relational studies
Contemporary theories of relational leadership
Positivist dyadic relational perspectives
Social constructionist group-level relational perspectives
The growth of distributed leadership
Practising distributed and shared leadership
Evaluation and criticism
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
Part III Managing People and Leadership
9 Human Resource Management and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of human resource management
Scope and functions of human resource management
Theorizing human resource management
Human resource management and leadership
Critiquing the human resource management discourse
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
10 Talent Management and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of talent and talent management
Leading and managing talent
The influence of ‘talented followership’ on co-producing leadership
Collaborative talent management
Critiquing the talent management debate
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
11 Performance Management and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature and purpose of performance management
Determinants of employee and organizational performance
Historical milestones in the development of performance management
The performance management appraisal process
Modelling leadership and performance
Problems of methodology and theory
Criticism of individual performance appraisals
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
12 Leadership Development
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
Leader and leadership development in organizations
Reflection and critical thinking for leadership development
What capabilities should leaders develop?
Approaches to leaders’ development
Approaches to the development of leadership in others
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
Part IV Contemporary Leadership
13 Followers, Communication and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of followership
Follower behaviour and personality
Follower behaviour and motivation
Dialogic conversation and leadership
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
14 Gender and Leadership
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of diversity
The glass ceiling, the labyrinth and the glass cliff
Gender pay gap
Women in global leadership
Millennial women and leadership
Future challenges for practices of gender diversity and inclusion
Supporting women to lead
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
15 Leadership in Public Sector Organizations
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
Problematizing public sector leadership
Distinctive challenges associated with public sector leadership
The new public management and the rise of transformational leadership
Beyond transformational leadership: shared and distributed leadership
Challenges of distributed leadership in public sector organizations
Leadership and performance in public sector organizations
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
16 Leading Pro-Environmental Change
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of environmental sustainability
Employees’ pro-environmental behaviours and environmental management systems
Environmental leadership, organizational change and culture
Creating a sustainable workplace through human resource practices
Employee voice in environmental sustainability
Critical perspectives on corporate-oriented sustainability
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
17 Leadership for Urban and Regional Innovation
Chapter outline
Learning outcomes
Introduction
The nature of place-based leadership for urban and regional innovation
Regional innovation systems and strategies
Placed-based leadership
Place-based leaders, knowledge producers and decision makers
Generative leadership – a missing link in transformative efforts
Criticism and exemplary research for place-based leadership
Conclusion
Chapter review questions
Further reading
Bibliography
Index
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