Leading in the Age of Innovations

Change of Values and Approaches

Lenka Theodoulides, Gabriela Kormancová, David Cole

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781351119405
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Leading in the Age of Innovations centres on the need for a more complex process-relational oriented approach to leadership. The complexity of leadership has grown significantly during the 21st century where the need to adapt to the escalating changes in our society and workplace forms one of the most important prerequisites to succeed. Leading in the Age of Innovations represents the outcomes of the lengthy scientific work that was undertaken for the past 10 years and it is still an ongoing process. This book introduces a new concept of leadership based on the process and relational dimensions which resulted in the development of the Reflective Leadership concept.

The new model of leadership provides a unique concept on how to bring together various disciplines and explains the overlapping relations between them. Moreover, the proposed view on leadership reflects the current evolution around the globe highlighting the importance of change and innovation. In organizations, too much focus is on the end product and the technical details of how a product is made and distributed. Less attention is focused on how people interact, and how the human capacity is effectively supported by leaders who, on the other hand, are expected to support a culture of innovation. This behavioural interaction is governed by a set of predictable values and norms.

These relationships need to be understood for an organization to prosper and is thus far more important to the leadership process. Leading in the Age of Innovations seeks to establish this understanding and will be key reading to researchers, scholars and practitioners alike in the field of leadership, organizational studies and related disciplines.

Part I

Leadership Perspectives

1 Emerging Trends in Leadership

Introduction

This chapter highlights the emerging features of the current leadership approach. Effective leadership is the key to the future success and survival of an organization. Then the question is raised whether the leadership of the 21st century is the same as the leadership of the previous century. We draw attention to theory development spotlighting the importance of rapid and frequent changes, global uncertainty and fast ICT development. The leadership process will revolve around these new challenges. Currently, traditional leadership has to deal with the increasing need for flexibility, diversity of manpower, frequently changing business conditions and pressure on the permanent improvement of all organizational processes. In the broad interdisciplinary context, this chapter attempts to merge the theoretical and empirical knowledge generated from the distinctive social science disciplines. On the basis of the theoretical background of the system and relational theories, this chapter offers a modified view of leadership.

The essential part of this chapter is to provide an overview of the core concepts and summary of key debates. We want to question some of the leaders’ actions since the followers’ performance is a result of their actions. This can have a significant impact on future organizational performance.

Theories, Philosophies and Traditional Approaches in Leadership

The word leadership is one of the world’s oldest concepts. In earlier times, words meaning “head of state”, “military commander”, “principal”, “chief” or “king” were very common in most societies; these words differentiated the ruler from other members of society (Bass, 1997).

Historical management theories of leadership include inspiring, engaging and motivating employees so they would work harder and achieve organizational goals. There are various opinions among researchers as well as many definitions of leadership.

James MacGregor Burns (1978) argues that a study of the definition of the leadership world reveals 130 definitions. Some fundamental definitions originate from his work, where leadership is characterized as collective, causative and a morally purposeful action. It is a notion that a one-person leadership is “a contradiction in terms” because both leaders and followers must exist. Also, an organization may have multiple leaders all acting in correspondence with one another. Leadership is causative. True leadership affects the motives of individuals and groups of people and alters the course of organizational history. It causes positive change. It is goal oriented, with leaders and followers pointing the way to some future state of organization with plans about how those goals might be met.

The earliest approaches to leadership are descriptive and based on providing the personal characteristics and charisma of leaders. A lot of emphasis has been given to the leader’s ability to influence others through his or her personal authority. Bass (1997, p. 131) explains that leadership is a combination of many definitions, such

as a matter of personality, as a matter of including compliance, as the exercise of influence, as a particular behavior, as a form of persuasion, as a power of relation, as an instrument to achieve goals, as an effect of interaction, and as initiation of structure.

There are many other approaches presented in leadership theory. The classification has been provided by Grint (2010), where core leadership concepts are identified:

• Leadership as a position (leaders are defined by the position they are in, usually taking the form of authority based on formal hierarchy).
• Leadership as a person (people become leaders based on their character; it is their personality which makes them a leader).
• Leadership as a result (character is not enough; results make up a leader).
• Leadership as a process (considers relationships between leader and practice; how leaders get things done).

Traditional literature on leadership focuses mainly on “characteristics” of good leaders. These characteristics, however, are often too general to have practical value to someone trying to become a better leader. For instance, to say that good leaders are “gifted optimists” or are “honest” and “inspiring” provides little practical basis for specific skill development or improvement. These are typically judgments about our behavior made by others. In its broadest sense, leadership can be defined as the ability to influence others toward the accomplishment of some goal. That is, a leader leads a collaborator or a group of collaborators toward the desired end.

Much of the early leadership literature was focused on middle managers, but recently the interest has shifted toward strategic leaders. This reflects the understanding of how senior managers are able to cope with globalization, increasing international competition and accelerating innovation and radical change. But the innovation is not created in one person’s head. It results from a collective effort, as a transformation, and that requires an adjustment in people’s behavior.

Few leaders from the interviewed group revealed that the leader is expected to be an initiator of change. Another group of interviewed leaders stated that they just formulate the purpose of innovation, set goals and provide support to staff. People are a valuable source for improvements. We realized that expectations of leadership that have been effective in a particular business, culture or environment may be ineffective in another environment or in a different culture.

Some studies of leadership focus on the outcomes of effective leadership, pointing out that good leaders “create the vision”, “mobilize commitment”, “recognize needs” and so forth (Hamel and Green, 2007). However, simply knowing about these goals is not enough. The key to actually achieving them involves having the mental and behavioral skills required to put them into practice. The process of learning to be a good leader has been suggested by Collins (2001) though the Level Five Leadership Model. It is based on the idea that respect toward people, self-awareness of the leader and strong, powerful commitment to achieve results bring out the best in subordinates. The ability to use leadership skills in everyday work is not an easy task for many leaders. Senge (1990, p. 216) argues that

leadership is about influence when there is a genuine vision; people excel and learn, not because they are told to, but because they want to. Many leaders have personal visions that never get translated into shared visions that galvanize an organization.

The literature on leadership is vast, yet it offers models and theories about leader behavior and different styles, and answers how those skills can be developed or which leadership style to use. A dramatic shift from ego- and personality-centered leadership during the 1980s and 1990s toward contingency approaches has been observed and was later called the post-heroic approach in leadership with an emphasis on the occurrence of emotional intelligence.

A new credo for leadership was presented by Bennis and Nanus (1997), who launched the idea that a primary role of leadership is to create meaning for co-workers. They state that leaders should create and communicate a shared vision and future direction of the company. They point to a new set of tools and techniques that leaders need to master in order to be successful. Leaders need to invent and implement daily the images, metaphors, stories and new business models that provide focus on new intentions.

Our approach to studying leadership with the focus on its processual character was influenced by the point of view presented by Wilson (2010), who states that the research on leadership has been too scientific for this highly interpretative subject matter. Leadership might be considered an art rather than a science, and there are no recipes to guarantee success. This opinion has a certain bias since art cannot be learned; it is something we are born with, and thus leadership skills would be difficult to practice. If no good leader is born, who would come and lead the organization? Then would there be no future vision formed?

Our primary interest in leadership theory analysis is to identify the process feature of leading action and to deconstruct the key attribute of this process with the main focus on developing the relations between all actors in the organizational environment. The process view on leadership provides a better understanding of what has to be done in line with how to conduct leadership actions in order to make an impact on organizational performance.

The process view on leadership started by Blanchard (2009) argues that leadership is defined as an influence process for many years. Evans (2008) adds to the idea of leadership as a process, explaining that this happens as an interaction between all individuals and it can be documented and adapted to any organizational environment.

These two parameters (process and relations) are essential for the leader to understand the organizational ecosystem. The leader needs to consider a different way of communication with the organization and other stakeholders. In the light of fast-changing technology, it is much harder for a leader to decide what information, sources and data are relevant to consider and what are not. The research results indicate the dyadic and somewhat controversial tasks for leaders. On the one hand, the implementation of ICT across all organizational operations is inevitable, thus it reduces costs and simplifies the work. The pacing of the latest digitalization trends and their fast implementation as a process of the change continuum represents one of the key leadership challenges in the digital era. Contrary to this, the understanding of real leadership by respondents is to help people understand and adjust to new conditions, accept changes and actively participate in new processes. They are aware that the speed of change, its implementation and adequate leadership action make a significant impact on the organization’s performance and its competitiveness.

For that, leaders challenge the complexity of the external and internal environment and they should continuously search for new ways to engage with all stakeholders. That is all about joint communication, where the focus of their interactions should be about organizational vision, strategy and goals and how they are communicated with the workforce and external stakeholders. It should not be about the leader’s personal agenda.

This corresponds with another leadership action which has been pointed out by respondents. They understand that the leadership role is to be in contact with employees, customers and other stakeholders and to build relations with them. The respondents perceive these personal contacts and relations to be important sources of innovation.

Studying all those views, shifting from the leaders’ personal characteristics to their actions and relationships that bond leaders to different actors, along with process content of leadership, reveals our view of leadership as a social influencing process in which the leadership seeks the involvement of all stakeholders in an effort to formulate the organizational goals and strategy.

All those mentioned approaches focus on what leaders should do, however they are not able to address the complexity and dynamics of the leadership process. In a number of organizations which emphasize operating and controlling activities, there is a lack of a leading function. The vision and strategy are developed as a single exercise of one individual, usually by the executive manager, without sharing it through the entire organization and with no support of other people. This leadership is called a top-down approach. As such, leadership is performed by giving directions and does not foster any mutual collaboration and active contribution of other members in the organization. Very often people do not understand the purpose and meaning of the leader’s actions. This prevents the acceptance of any change or innovation, and results in a lack of coordinated learning and its adaptations in complex organizational systems.

The role of leadership is to create a shared and jointly discussed vision of where the organization is aiming to go and to formulate strategies to bring about the changes needed to achieve that vision. It is a difficult process nowadays, when the traditional theories of management are not offering expected results, and the new generation of employees born in the digital era is expected to implement more innovative approaches.

Among all the selected ideas and examined theories about leadership, three aspects stand out: people, influence and vision. The contemporary view sees the role of leadership as a need of the organization to seek transformation and continuous change. This can be achieved only by building relationships with people within the entire organization.

Human resources are very much influenced by ICT, both positively and negatively. They need to be developed and guided on how to cope with the digital era. Managers are expected to select the right information and share it with their people, as this is an important condition for following trends and developing innovation.

In the emerging views of leadership, leaders are committed to creating an environment in which employees thrive and perform. This commitment demands a special set of skills and abilities in order to effectively and ecologically manifest the visions which guide those committed to change. It involves communication, interaction and managing relationships within an organization, network or social system to move toward one’s highest aspirations. These aspects are covered in the most recently developed leadership theories which are based on relations. The relational-based theories are built on the social-exchange theory, which states that both leader and followers commit to working together; that is, the followers are willing to be led and the leader is willing to provide ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I Leadership Perspectives
• Part II Complexity View on Leadership
• Part III Focus on Change and Innovation
• Appendices
• List of Contributors
• Index