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.

The four pillars of corporate responsibility: ethics, leadership, personal responsibility and trust

Purpose – This paper aims to examine how to further embed CSR thinking and practice into corporations, particularly in emerging markets, by reviewing and drawing similarities between key issues faced by all senior managers, namely ethics, leadership, personal responsibility and trust. Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents a conceptual exploration of global CSR practices using social psychology and overlays this concept with strategic and institutional theory in order to encourage new ways of thinking about CSR adoption, especially in emerging markets. Findings – The paper reveals the importance of shareholder needs on global corporate decision making and applies alternative conceptual models to help businesses to devise better CSR practices and individuals to align their actions to their own values. Originality/value – This paper strongly argues for blending different theoretical foundations from the management and organization literature in order to draw comparisons between current global CSR practice and the potential for its further adoption in emerging markets.

Visceral behaviours and leadership: a dark side of boardroom life?

Purpose – Characteristics of leaders whose behaviour is visceral include taking action based on instinct rather than intellect and exhibiting coarse, base and often negative emotions. Despite the challenge of precisely defining the nature of visceral behaviour, the purpose of this paper is to provide insight into this less attractive side of boardroom life. Design/methodology/approach – Following a literature review of the research into the negative behaviour leaders exhibit, the paper highlights four forms of visceral behaviour based on focused and intimate qualitative case studies involving the experiences of those on the receiving end of that behaviour within a boardroom context. Findings – Based on interviews with an international sample of five chief executive officers (CEOs), plus three subordinates with substantial profit and loss responsibility, the study reveals a distinctly human experience from which no one is exempt. The idiosyncratic nature of the visceral behaviour experienced resulted in each study participant's unique experience. The authors conclude that leaders need to adopt specific measures in order to control and reduce the darker human tendencies. Research limitations/implications – The experiences of study participants are presented in four case studies, providing insight into their experiences whilst also protecting their identity. The study participants were drawn from a sample of companies operating globally within a single sector of the manufacturing industry. The concepts the authors present require validating in other organisations with different demographic profiles. Originality/value – The paper presents a model based on two dimensions – choice and level of mastery – that provides the reader with insight into the forms of visceral behaviour to which leaders succumb. Insight enables us to offer managers strategic suggestions to guard against visceral behaviour and assist them in mitigating its worst aspects, in both those with whom they work and themselves.

Destructive behaviours and leadership: the source of the shift from a functional to dysfunctional workplace?

Destructive leadership behaviour often results in damage to the organisations that the individual is entrusted to lead. Although accurately pinpointing the type of destructive behaviour is difficult, this article seeks to offer suggestions as to why leaders spiral into such unattractive behaviour. After reviewing the literature, this paper highlights four drivers for destructive ways that people act based on detailed qualitative scenarios that involve how those who experienced such behaviour reacted and felt. The study reveals a noticeable human experience from which nobody can escape, and offers understanding of the study participants’ experiences. Out of respect to the participants, the authors keep their identity anonomous. We drew our subjects from a cross-section of organisations that function internationally within one area of the manufacturing industry. The article presents a model comprising two dimensions: 1) the leader’s attitude to the organisation he or she leads and 2) adequacy of his or her leadership capabilities. The models offer us understanding of the drivers of the destructive actions that the leader exhibits. Understanding allows us to provide managers with tactical methods to protect them against destructive behaviour and help them lessen the worst aspects of destructive behaviour in both their colleagues and themselves.

Relational pluralism: organizational foresight in practice

This paper examines organizational foresight from a relational perspective. In doing this, we present relational incumbency as a transient conceptual framework to explore how the organizing social relationships and interactions of lower participants may influence organizational foresightfulness. The research employed an exploratory case-based approach with three software organisations and their four new product innovation projects serving as the empirical research sites. Drawing on the case evidence, we provide an account on how normative organizing structures, rights and authority relationships constitutively influence the creative emergence of organizational foresight in practice. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the managerial implications and some directions for future research.

The impact of social and relational contexts on innovation transfer in foreign subsidiaries

It is widely acknowledged that innovation is one of the pillars of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and that technological knowledge from different host locations is a key factor to the MNEs’ competitive advantages development. Concerning these assumptions, in this paper we aim to understand how the social and the relational contexts affect the conventional and reverse transfer of innovation from MNEs’ subsidiaries hosted in emerging markets. We analyzed the social context through the institutional profile (CIP) level and the relational context through trust and integration levels utilizing a survey sent to 172 foreign subsidiaries located in Brazil, as well as secondary data. Through an ordinary least squares regression (OLS) analysis we found that the relational context affects the conventional and reverse innovation transfer in subsidiaries hosted in emerging markets. We however did not find support for the social context effect.

Corporate social responsibility, mining and sustainable development in Namibia: critical reflections through a relational lens

For its advocates, corporate social responsibility (CSR) represents a powerful tool through which business and particularly multinationals can play a more direct role in global sustainable development. For its critics, however, CSR rarely goes beyond business as usual, and is often a cover for business practices with negative implications for communities and the environment. This paper explores the relationship between CSR and sustainable development in the context of mining in Namibia. Drawing upon extant literatures on the geographies of responsibility, and referencing in-country empirical case-study research, a critical relational lens is applied to consider their interaction both historically and in the present.

Exploration of relational factors: Sino-foreign joint-venture partnering

Purpose – Despite recent threats of economic contraction, China still offers attractive opportunities for foreign companies seeking to expand their business activities through joint venturing (JV) partnering entry strategies. Recent research has indicated a growing recognition of the importance of relational factors in JV partnering. The purpose of this paper is to build on recent research findings that identify critical relation success factors in JVs and explores these in the context of a Hong Kong-based civil aviation services company seeking to expand business activities in Greater China. Design/methodology/approach – While the extant management literature focuses primarily on factors relevant to the inter-partner relationship between partners in the formation stage of a joint venture, this research takes a dynamic stakeholder perspective in respect of the relevant relational factors over the evolution of a partnership. The research described in this paper is based on a case-based study that identifies and examines the relevance and importance of uniquely Chinese factors such as guanxi, renqing and mianzi in the specific context of a strategic partnering relationship. Findings – This phenomenological study provides empirical evidence of critical linkages of these to intrinsically Chinese notions of guanxi, mianzi and renqing – it links these to key strategic partnering success factors identified to be trust, conflict resolution, commitment and cooperation. This study thereby reinforces the importance of the uniquely Chinese relational context in cross-border JVs. Moreover, the research findings suggest that these factors underpin the dynamic bi-directional stakeholder relationship in a Sino-foreign strategic partnership. Originality/value – This study conceptually links the uniquely Chinese relational factors (guanxi, mianzi and renqing) to key success factors supporting the establishment of a strategic partnership in a Sino-foreign context; moreover, it contributes empirical evidence substantiating the proposed conceptual linkage.

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.

Higher education engagement in leadership development: using autobiographical narrative to understand potential impact

The paper explores the lived experience of leadership learning and development in a single case study of an entrepreneur participating in a major leadership development programme for owner-managers of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs). Based on autobiographical research, it provides a rich contextual account of the nature and underlying influences of leadership learning throughout the life-course, and as a consequence of participation in the programme. Whilst the paper should interest scholars, policy makers, and those concerned with programme development, it may also resonate with entrepreneurs and help them make sense of their experience of leadership development.

Individual and organisational leadership: the shared approach

Purpose - this paper focuses on reducing the margin for leadership error in meeting strategic aims by forming a more robust approach to developing a broader and more reliable set of leadership skills to provide a greater likelihood of strategic alignment between corporate and individual need, increasing both of their respective shelve lives.