Leadership in Focus (Asynchronous Session)
Organizational Liminality and the Leadership Metamorphosis: New Leadership in Modern Forms of Organizations View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Joerg Krauter
Forced by megatrends such as climate change, sustainability, digitization, and new work, organizations must periodically go through liminal space-time as a phenomenon of floating between the past and future. The latin word “liminality” describes a threshold as a space-time of ‘in-betweenness’ with the circumstances of embarrassment of not knowing ‘what’s next’ and the grief and pain of the disappearance 'what was'. In such wrenching times of organizational transformation, and its duration, leadership have its´ greatest need of metamorphoses. It is like the caterpillar's metamorphosis into a butterfly: leadership is in the process of growing wings, ready to emerge from its´ cocoons, transformed – new leadership! With new leadership, the focus of leadership changes away from hierarchical leadership towards leadership as a team task und function. Teams have the company's vision in mind and take on more responsibility for the entire company. Nevertheless, managers/leaders are not obsolete; their roles are changing. Such a metamorphosis results in the need to question the classic understanding of leadership as well as the current leadership styles and to realign them. This study is based on a conceptual preliminary study on the subject of "Explaining Leadership" and investigate the uncovered mechanisms of leadership within flexible forms of organizations. It is argued that the causal configuration of leadership is best understood as the interplay between the key mechanism of power, along with human agency and collaborative agency, within specific structural and contextual conditions. This paper shows the current results of this empirical study started in 2021.
Measuring Safety Culture: Further Validation of Measurement View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Patrick Sherry
The Safety Culture Assessment Survey (SCAS) was administered to a large regional railroad organization at two separate times. Combining data from two time periods significant differences in observed safe and unsafe behavior for those who scored high versus low on the SCAS scales. Acceptable psychometric properties of reliability and validity were obtained. Criterion validity was observed in that that scores on the SCAS successfully differentiated those who had performed safe versus unsafe behavior as noted by supervisors. Moreover, subscales of the safety SCAS were significantly related to safety performance outcome measures, such as reported injuries, accidents, and near misses. Statistically significant odds ratios of reporting a near miss were obtained when safety culture measures from SCAS subscales were low, which indicated weak safety culture in the areas of senior and front-line management’s commitment to safety, a culture that prioritized productivity over safety, and a culture that underutilized safety practices such as job briefings. Similarly, the odds of reporting an accident were nearly five times greater if a respondent perceived the organizational culture as prioritizing productivity over safety. Overall, this study furthered the development and validation of a measure of corporate safety culture for the transportation industry. Recommendations for activities, based on these measures that can lead to the development of a strong safety culture are discussed.
Leading Through Uncertainty: Managing Conflict in a Virtual Environment View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Desiree Van Campen
Leaders of remote employees are faced with unique challenges as they relate to conflict prevention and management. The Covid-19 pandemic further complicated this issue when, because of social distancing mandates and employee health concerns, a large volume of leaders and their employees were forced to transition to a remote working environment. Leaders had to then develop personal strategies to successfully lead their now-remote workforce. This qualitative Grounded Theory study revealed that intentional communication, engagement, and planning are ways in which managers have been able to minimize the effects that conflict has on their employees. From the research, the Foresight Leadership Theory has emerged. This theory highlights the role of these strategies, with foresight as the guide, in reducing conflict. Using these strategies, healthcare managers are better able to tailor meaningful communication and engagement with their staff, which has shown a decrease in conflict as a whole.
Organizations and New Nuances: An Exploratory Analysis on the Factors of Filipino Organizational Identification View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Marti Rodriguez
Employees are particular when they apply for work and consider the act of identifying with organizations an important part of their career journey. In line with this, many organizations vie to attract the best talents that can thrive and grow in their workplaces through the act of Organizational Identification. Most existing literature regarding Organizational Identification was focused on measuring its effects when paired with other organizational metrics, such as employee satisfaction and performance, and was generally seen as a positive variable for companies. However, specific contributing factors and employee-perceived effects of organizational identification were scarcely discussed. Asian literature also lacked contextual discussions that can explain how this phenomenon is operationalized, particularly in the Philippine setting. The purpose of this study is to 1) to identify the organizational factors that Filipino employees consider in identifying with their organizations, and 2) to analyze other organization-specific traits contributing to Filipino employees’ organizational identification per field. The researcher surveyed 491 participants from 13 different work industries to support the objectives above. The findings show that employees considered both personal and professional factors in Organizational Identification, namely externality, leadership, company values, personal values, communication, interpersonal concerns, and nature of tasks. Their self-reported manifestations were all positive, which included better work outputs and team communication, external representation, alignment, personal transformation, and emotional effects.
Featured An Interview With Leadership Learners View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Fatma Guneri
Regarding leadership skills, in the Catholic University of Lille students with bachelor's degrees in economics and management follow the Leadership classes in the third year of faculty. At the beginning of this class, they’ve introduced the definition and theories of leadership. Afterward, students did many exercises to develop their leadership skills in practice. 19 students who followed this class have answered the questions during a job interview simulation (written Question-Answers) in the classroom. One part of the interview was dedicated to leadership. After collecting all the answers each student made some commentaries about another students’ answer on an excel table. The objective is to see how students evaluate others’ views of the leadership. The research question is what leadership skills students might have or improve after following the leadership classes?
