Organisational politics: reconciling leadership's rational-emotional paradox

Purpose – Effective leadership action requires managers to harness power that is intrinsically political. This paper aims to study and characterise the political nature of a manager's behaviour when taking leadership action. Design/methodology/approach – The methodological approach is qualitative and examines three organisations over a three-year period when these entities experienced a major product failure. The paper analyses the actual managerial behaviour of managers and provides insight into the factors that most strongly influence the effectiveness of managers when taking leadership action. Findings – Political behaviour when taking leadership action can be conceptualised in terms of rationality and emotionality. In so doing, it can be clarified how behaviour must be modified to ensure that leadership action is consistently effective. Research limitations/implications – A case study of three multinational engineering companies engaged in the design, development and manufacturing of turbomachinery provides the platform for the research. The concepts presented in the paper will require validating in other organisations of different demographic profiles. Practical implications – The concepts presented and the implications discussed provide insight into the political nature of managerial behaviour when taking leadership action. The paper highlights the practical steps individual managers can embrace to ensure that their behaviour is appropriate to context, even under the most traumatic situations. Thus, the paper provides managers with a model that facilitates effective leadership action. Originality/value – This paper provides insight into how managers behaved in circumstances that mattered to them. Through immersion in events at the time they took place, the authors captured situations in which managers were under real pressure and, in so doing, avoided the bias inherent when interviewing a manager about past events. As such, the paper concludes that the political behaviour in which managers engage when taking leadership action is rooted in the reality of the adversity that the most capable managers have both experienced and overcome. This detailed study reports behaviour in a situation where managers' business and future prospects were in jeopardy. This paper identifies why some managers were able to use the experience positively, helping them to adopt politically intrinsic behaviour to facilitate effective leadership action.

Parliamentarians and corruption in Africa: the challenge of leadership and the practice of politics

This report, compiled on behalf of the African Parliamentary Network Against Corruption (APNAC), surveys the attitudes of African parliamentarians toward corruption. It is the first study of its kind to investigate the manner in which corruption impacts directly upon the political behaviour, practices and attitudes of those elected members sitting in parliaments across the continent. If the problems of corruption are to be tackled in the African continent, then the role of elected members of legislative assemblies will surely be a crucial factor.

Civilian casualties – do we really care? The failure of the revolution in military affairs of non-lethal weapons in the U.S., Russia and Israel

Causing civilian casualties during military operations has become a much politicised topic in international relations since the Second World War. Since the last decade of the 20th century, different scholars and political analysts have claimed that human life is valued more and more among the general international community. This argument has led many researchers to assume that democratic culture and traditions, modern ethical and moral issues have created a desire for a world without war or, at least, a demand that contemporary armed conflicts, if unavoidable, at least have to be far less lethal forcing the military to seek new technologies that can minimise civilian casualties and collateral damage. Non-Lethal Weapons (NLW) – weapons that are intended to minimise civilian casualties and collateral damage – are based on the technology that, during the 1990s, was expected to revolutionise the conduct of warfare making it significantly less deadly. The rapid rise of interest in NLW, ignited by the American military twenty five years ago, sparked off an entirely new military, as well as an academic, discourse concerning their potential contribution to military success on the 21st century battlefields. It seems, however, that except for this debate, very little has been done within the military forces themselves. This research suggests that the roots of this situation are much deeper than the simple professional misconduct of the military establishment, or the poor political behaviour of political leaders, who had sent them to fight. Following the story of NLW in the U.S., Russia and Israel this research focuses on the political and cultural aspects that have been supposed to force the military organisations of these countries to adopt new technologies and operational and organisational concepts regarding NLW in an attempt to minimise enemy civilian casualties during their military operations. This research finds that while American, Russian and Israeli national characters are, undoubtedly, products of the unique historical experience of each one of these nations, all of three pay very little regard to foreigners’ lives. Moreover, while it is generally argued that the international political pressure is a crucial factor that leads to the significant reduction of harmed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure, the findings of this research suggest that the American, Russian and Israeli governments are well prepared and politically equipped to fend off international criticism. As the analyses of the American, Russian and Israeli cases reveal, the political-military leaderships of these countries have very little external or domestic reasons to minimise enemy civilian casualties through fundamental-revolutionary change in their conduct of war. In other words, this research finds that employment of NLW have failed because the political leadership asks the militaries to reduce the enemy civilian casualties to a politically acceptable level, rather than to the technologically possible minimum; as in the socio-cultural-political context of each country, support for the former appears to be significantly higher than for the latter.

Behaviour change in the UK climate debate : an assessment of responsibility, agency and political dimensions

This paper explores the politics around the role of agency in the UK climate change debate. Government interventions on the demand side of consumption have increasingly involved attempts to obtain greater traction with the values, attitudes and beliefs of citizens in relation to climate change and also in terms of influencing consumer behaviour at an individual level. With figures showing that approximately 40% of the UK’s carbon emissions are attributable to household and transport behaviour, policy initiatives have progressively focused on the facilitation of “sustainable behaviours”. Evidence suggests however, that mobilisation of pro-environmental attitudes in addressing the perceived “value-action gap” has so far had limited success. Research in this field suggests that there is a more significant and nuanced “gap” between context and behaviour; a relationship that perhaps provides a more adroit reflection of reasons why people do not necessarily react in the way that policy-makers anticipate. Tracing the development of the UK Government’s behaviour change agenda over the last decade, we posit that a core reason for the limitations of this programme relates to an excessively narrow focus on the individual. This has served to obscure some of the wider political and economic aspects of the debate in favour of a more simplified discussion. The second part of the paper reports findings from a series of focus groups exploring some of the wider political views that people hold around household energy habits, purchase and use of domestic appliances, and transport behaviour-and discusses these insights in relation to the literature on the agenda’s apparent limitations. The paper concludes by considering whether the aims of the Big Society approach (recently established by the UK’s Coalition Government) hold the potential to engage more directly with some of these issues or whether they merely constitute a “repackaging” of the individualism agenda.

The national dialogue on behaviour change in UK climate policy: some observations on responsibility, agency and political dimensions

This chapter explores the politics around the role of agency in the UK climate change debate. Government interventions on the demand side of consumption have increasingly involved attempts to obtain greater traction with the values, attitudes and beliefs of citizens in relation to climate change and also in terms of influencing consumer behaviour at an individual level. With figures showing that approximately 40% of the UK’s carbon emissions are attributable to household and transport behaviour, policy initiatives have progressively focused on the facilitation of “sustainable behaviours”. Evidence suggests however, that mobilisation of pro-environmental attitudes in addressing the perceived “value-action gap” has so far had limited success. Research in this field suggests that there is a more significant and nuanced “gap” between context and behaviour; a relationship that perhaps provides a more adroit reflection of reasons why people do not necessarily react in the way that policy-makers anticipate. Tracing the development of the UK Government’s behaviour change agenda over the last decade, we posit that a core reason for the limitations of this programme relates to an excessively narrow focus on the individual. This has served to obscure some of the wider political and economic aspects of the debate in favour of a more simplified discussion. The second part of the chapter reports findings from a series of focus groups exploring some of the wider political views that people hold around household energy habits, purchase and use of domestic appliances, and transport behaviour-and discusses these insights in relation to the literature on the agenda’s apparent limitations. The chapter concludes by considering whether the aims of the Big Society approach (recently established by the UK’s Coalition Government) hold the potential to engage more directly with some of these issues or whether they merely constitute a “repackaging” of the individualism agenda.

GM food purchase intentions: linking the theory of planned behaviour with consumer trust and stated choice

After the “European” experience of BSE and further food safety crises consumer trust is playing an increasingly important role in political and marketing decision making. This also relates to the area of consumer acceptance of GM food. This paper integrates consumer trust with the theory of planned behavior and a stated choice model to gain a more complete picture of consumer decision making. Preliminary results indicate that when GM products offer practical benefits to consumers acceptance may increase considerably. Furthermore, both trust and perceived benefits contribute significantly to explaining the level of acceptance.