Leadership in e-business

Inevitably, the adoption of any new technology brings about change, but e-business is significantly different in that it completely shifts global business into a fast-paced electronic environment. The old notions of management are totally ineffective and a new style,focused on 'leadership', is required-but what style of leadership? To determine the most appropriate leadership style, senior managers from the top 250 e-commerce companies in Australia were selected and surveyed. Using a change management matrix, each manager was positioned within this framework. This model consists of a four-by-four matrix encompassing the scales of change and the styles of change management. The model covers the broad spectrum of levels of change that an organisation can go through. The authors found that within the most successful organisations, leaders had a distinctive style that facilitated. The appropriate change and established a conducive e-business environment. The data highlights those qualities such as visionary, consultative, ability to listen to others opinions, inclusive, risk taking, approachable, forward thinking, open to change, committed, determined, and the ability to communicate are required in leaders to lead an e-business transition.

Managing professionals : the emerging leadership role of Victorian Maternal and Child Health coordinators

Drawing on research into cultural and organizational change in the Victorian Maternal and Child Health Service during the 1990s, this paper examines implications for the nursing leadership provided by service coordinators. The project included a quantitative survey of nurses and semistructured interviews with managers and coordinators. Under a strongly neoliberal state government in Victoria, Australia, services were fundamentally restructured through tendering processes. A competitive, productivist culture was introduced that challenged the professional ethos of nurses and a primary health orientation to the care of mothers and infants. This paper focuses on the pressures that the entrepreneurial environment presented to maternal and child health nurses' identity and collegial relations and to the coordination role. It argues that coordinators emerged as a Significant nursing management group at the interface of administrative change and the management of professional practice. Although many nurses skilfully negotiated tensions with peers and management, their leadership role needs further clarification and support.

The serendipity of leadership effectiveness in management and business practices

Purpose – The objective of this paper is to conceptualize the serendipity of leadership effectiveness in management and business practices. The term “serendipity” is defined as the mix of leadership effectiveness by accident and sagacity in management and business practices.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides a conceptual discussion of the serendipity of leadership effectiveness in management and business practices.
Findings – This paper contributes a number of models and a matrix that are introduced to address the underlying criteria of the cause-effect relationship between leadership effectiveness and organizational achievements.
Research limitations/implications – This paper challenges the idealistic picture that flourishes in the management literature and in management practice of the direct, positive impact of leadership on prosperous management and business practices. In fact, it reinforces and underpins the critical or sceptical views of leadership effectiveness raised in the literature.
Practical implications – Normally, views of organizational achievements are based on the assumption that contextual, timely and skilful precisions in leadership effectiveness are high. Shareholders and stakeholders may benefit from a thorough examination of these issues in organizational achievements. It would not be surprising to find that leadership effectiveness in management and business practices to a minor or major extent is derived from pure luck and coincidence in contextual and timely precisions: right place, right time. This means that such leadership effectiveness may be based on serendipity rather than skilfulness in terms of organizational achievements.
Originality/value – The authors contend that the term “serendipity” contributes to enhance the ongoing discussion in the literature of the link between leadership effectiveness and organizational achievements. It also provides a fundament of understanding, explanation and prediction of leadership effectiveness in management and business practices.

Sustainable components of leadership effectiveness in organizational performance

Purpose – The objective is to describe a selection of sustainability components of leadership effectiveness in organizational performance.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a conceptual discussion. Findings – The paper contributes to descriptive models that address sustainability components of leadership effectiveness in organizational performance. The study highlights some common views that exist in the management literature and in prosperous management practice related to the direct impact of the relationship in organizational performance between leadership and effectiveness. In fact, it also highlights the critical or sceptical views of leadership effectiveness in organizational performance raised in the literature. Research limitations/implications – The paper contends that the actual leadership effectiveness in organizational performance varies over time and across contexts. At times, the achievement in organizational performance is the outcome of prosperous and conscious leadership, while it at other times may be the outcome of poor and deficient leadership. The topic at hand is positioned and limited to the interface that may describe and explain the connection between these two views. Furthermore, it is limited to corporate decision making and business behaviour in relation to leadership effectiveness and organizational performance. Practical implications – The leadership of an organization need not only to be successful today, but they also need to be successful tomorrow to stay in control and to flourish. Quality control and quality assurance are no longer enough for most organizations. They need to build an awareness of the sustainability components into processes of their management and business practices (i.e. internal and external ones) in order to be judged as successful in corporate decision-making and business behaviour in organizational performance in the long term. Originality/value – The principal contributions of the study are a model of timely leadership effectiveness, a model of contextual leadership effectiveness, and a typology of leadership effectiveness in corporate decision-making and business behaviour. These contributions provide theoretical and managerial ideas and insights into the sustainability components of leadership effectiveness in organizational performance.

Regional development through the enterprise of arts leadership

The literature in the field suggests that a community without arts-practice risks its future. Contemporaneously, evidence suggests that the future of some communities, specifically regional or rural communities, are at risk because of the withdrawal of essential services, which leads to economic and social decline. There is also evidence that arts practice has revived economic and social activity (and performance measures) in regional cities and towns. In this article, I argue that the arts foster regional sustainability, and I propose that an arts leadership that is collective in nature and associated with vision and creativity is needed if the arts are to achieve regional sustainability.

Students` pedagogical preferences in the delivery of IT capstone courses

Capstone courses are used extensively in teaching information technology to expose students to realistic, work-like situations, though in a controlled environment. The value of the experiences the student engages in, and the skills and knowledge they develop are not questioned, as they are accepted as a beneficial precursor to professional work. The pedagogical methods used to deliver capstone courses vary across academic programme, institution, country and culture. The research explores information technology students’ preferences for the delivery of capstone projects from three different pedagogical delivery approaches and suggests that students want a certain level of anonymity, but at the same time they want direction and assistance when they determine they require it. Emerging from the findings are several recommendations that developers of capstone
 projects and courses may wish to address.

Perceived characteristics and pedagogical efficacy of animated conversational agents

We investigated college students' perceptions of a diverse sample of animated conversational agents. We also examined the pedagogical efficacy of those agents. We found that people perceive differences among the agents on several dimensions, such as likeability, and that the agents differ in pedagogical efficacy. However, none of the characteristics that we measured accounted for differences in pedagogical efficacy across the agents. We discuss implications for the field of agent studies with pmiicular emphasis on the creation of pedagogically effective conversational agents and suggest directions for future research.

Aesthetic dimensions of educational administration and leadership

The Aesthetic Dimensions of Educational Administration and Leadership provides an aesthetic critique of educational administration and leadership. It demonstrates the importance of aesthetics on all aspects of the administrative and leadership world: the ways ideas and ideals are created, how their expression is conveyed, the impact they have on interpersonal relationships and the organizational environment that carries and reinforces them, and the moral boundaries or limits that can be established or exceeded.

The book is divided into three sections.
Section I examines various philosophical traditions in aesthetics as they inform administrative life, focussing on major modern traditions arising from Kant, romanticism and Nietzsche, Collingwood, the pragmatic school, and critical theory.
Section II explores four aesthetic sources for administrative critique - architecture, literature, film, and movement - as they serve both to understand the social construction of administration and leadership and provide a critique of values, roles, power and authority.
Section III examines more topical and applied problems of charisma, heroism, and authority in practice, concluding with a discussion of the aesthetic analysis of politics and power within the context of contemporary educational administration and leadership theory.

While presenting a significant departure from conventional studies in the field, the international contributors reflect a continuity of thought on the creation, use and abuse of administrative and leadership authority from the writings of Plato through to contemporary theory. This book should appeal to school administrators and leaders and those aspiring to these roles.

The perceptions of expert coaches about effective leadership in sport

Research on effective leadership in sport has identified a number of characteristics and situations that impact on coaching effectiveness. These include coach effect on athlete satisfaction and performance, self-esteem and trait anxiety. This research has focused on athletes' perceptions of or preferences for specific leadership behaviors and actual coach behaviors identified by observing coaches. Few studies have recognized the views of the expert coach as a potentially valuable source of information regarding effective leadership and the coaching process. The present study investigated expert coaches' perception and interpretation of the leadership process. Twenty successful coaches working with Australian junior elite sport participants were purposefully sampled to cover a diversity of sports (team and individual) and provide a gender balance across sports. Through in-depth interviews, based on Grounded Theory, the study examined three aspects of coaching, which provided the basis of the interview guide. These were coaching history and influences, effective coaching behaviors, and coach training and accreditation. Eight major themes emerged: (a) influence of history on coaching behaviors, (b) knowledge of the sport, (c) pedagogy skills, (d) coaches' personal qualities, (e) coach-athlete relationships, (f) coaches' evaluation of the athlete, (g) coach and athlete outcomes, and (h) enjoyment of the coaching process. The results highlight the important role coaches play in future coach development, the impact of coach self-efficacy attributed to athlete self-efficacy, and how coach-related outcomes drive the coaching process. These results have noteworthy implications for coach education programs.