Managing Strategic Change

The essay - Managing Strategic Change – by K. Michael Haywood, Associate Professor, School of Hotel and Food Administration, University of Guelph, is initially characterized by Haywood as: “The ability to manage strategic change is critical for hospitality industry executives today. Executives must be capable of creating a vision of the future and implementing its direction. The author gives avenues for that management process.” “The effective management of strategic change is the major challenge confronting hospitality executives,” says Associate Professor Haywood. “Responding to a rapidly changing business environment and constantly evolving competitive threats and opportunities requires executives who can anticipate and plan for change.” According to Professor Haywood, the management of strategic change is a future imperative for hospitality executives. Implementing those changes will be even more difficult. “Survival and growth for many hospitality firms during the next decade will depend on the development of new strategic visions which can provide significant competitive advantages,” he says. “Strategies for managing costs and technology will be central to this task,” Haywood expands the thought. Haywood suggests two primary types of change hospitality executives should be aware of. First, is change that is anticipated, anticipatory change. Second, is the other more crucial type of change, strategic change in the face of crisis, or simply stated, reactive change. Professor Haywood describes the distinction between the two. In describing the approach that should be implemented in responding to an anticipatory change, Haywood says, “If time permits, and change is to be introduced gradually, pilots and trials should be run to assess the impact of the new strategy on the organization. These trials are used to create pockets of commitment throughout the corporation, build comfort levels with the new approach, and neutralize or win over potential opposition.” There are the obvious advantages to using an approach like the one described above, but there are disadvantages as well. Haywood discusses both. In addressing reactive change, Haywood offers that the process is a more - time is of the essence – condition, and that strong leadership and a firm hand on employee control is imperative. “Personal leadership, tough-mindedness, the willingness to ruthlessly abandon the familiar and the past, and the use of informal strategic levers are the hallmarks of sterling executive performance in such periods,” he says. “All these changes involve substantial technical, financial, and human risks,” Haywood wants you to know. “In order to make them, and still remain competitive, hospitality and travel-related corporations require executives capable of creating a vision of the future, able to sell that vision to their employees, and tough-minded enough to implement strategies to make the vision a reality.”

CEO Humility: Development of an Unobtrusive Measure and Strategic Implications

Over the past 30 years, the Upper Echelons perspective of strategic management has sought to explain a given organization’s strategies and effectiveness as a reflection of the differences in personality, background, and other characteristics of the senior executives that guides each organization. An important stream of research within this field has linked a firm’s strategy to the grandiose way that executives are often thought to view themselves – namely through examining the narcissism, core self-evaluations (CSE), and hubris of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs). In this dissertation, I focus on understanding the strategic impact of CEO humility – a trait that has often been erroneously thought of to represent a poor view of oneself. Consistent with ancient writings and recent research, humility is defined herein as a multi-faceted trait that is the common core of four dimensions: self-awareness, developmental orientation/teachability, appreciation of others' strengths and contributions, and low self-focus. In the first essay, I explore the conceptual relevance and various potential implications of executive humility. Drawing on existing empirical research about the humility construct and general behavioral implications of humility, I argue that executive humility is a critical avenue toward a more rich and nuanced understanding of the delicate interplay and implications of executive self-concept. In essay two, I develop and validate an unobtrusive measure of CEO humility. Ten indicators of humility are suggested and then validated using a self-reported survey administered to a sample of 30 U.S. and Canadian CEOs. Two behaviors were found to be significantly positively related to self-reported humility: CEOs who volunteered some of their time for non-profit organizations and CEO’s who reported that part of their own firm’s success was due to the help of the board of directors. In essay three, I examine the relationship between the level of CEO humility and four firm-level outcomes. Employing a sample of 163 CEOs appointed to S&P 500 firms between 2005-2008, I show that firms led by humble CEOs (measured by the unobtrusive indicators) tend to outperform others in regards to corporate social performance, while at the same time showing that their financial performance is generally no better or worse.