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This paper aims to explore how leaders can develop value-based leadership for sustainable quality development in Lean manufacturing.

A qualitative meta-analysis was conducted using data from a three-year study of Lean manufacturing in Sweden using the Shingo business excellence model as an analytical framework.

This study demonstrates that leaders can develop value-based leadership to support Lean manufacturing by defining and articulating the organization’s values and accompanying behaviors that are needed to support the strategic direction; creating forums and time for leaders to identify the why behind decisions and reflect on their experiences to be able to lead a transformative process; and using storytelling to create a coaching culture to connect values and behaviors, to the processes and systems of work.

This paper contributes insights for developing value-based leadership to support a systemic approach to sustainable quality development in lean manufacturing. Findings are based on a limited case sample size of three manufacturing companies in Sweden.

The findings were derived using a unique methodological approach combining storytelling, appreciative inquiry and coaching with traditional data collection methods including surveys and interviews to identify, define and shape value-based leadership in Lean manufacturing.

The Women in Leadership Development (WLD) Initiative is a year-long, multifaceted co-curricular leadership development opportunity created to support the unique developmental needs of emerging women leaders. WLD was intentionally designed around the context of second-generation gender bias with a firm grounding of research and theory on gender and leadership.

Organized around three leadership pathways – leadership training, leadership coaching, and leadership support networks – WLD brings together the best practices of leadership development in combination with feminist pedagogy and critical perspectives to foster meaningful and impactful development of women leaders.

This paper describes the design of the initiative and how each leadership pathway supports the leadership development journey for emerging women leaders. It provides a model that is impactful as well as foundational, for undergraduate women’s leadership development.

Women leaders, in particular, can benefit from leadership development that takes gender into account (DeFrank-Cole & Tan, 2022a; Ely et al., 2011).

This study focuses on leadership in organizations where big data analytics (BDA) is an essential component of corporate strategy. While leadership researchers have conducted promising studies in the field of digital transformation, the impact of BDA on leadership is still unexplored.

This study is based on semi-structured interviews with 33 organizational leaders and subject-matter experts from various industries. Using a grounded theory approach, a framework is provided for the emergent field of BDA in leadership research.

The authors present a conceptual model comprising foundational competencies and higher order roles that are data analytical skills, data self-efficacy, problem spotter, influencer, knowledge facilitator, visionary and team leader.

This study focuses on BDA competency research emerging as an intersection between leadership research and information systems research. The authors encourage a longitudinal study to validate the findings.

The authors provide a competency framework for organizational leaders. It serves as a guideline for leaders to best support the BDA initiatives of the organization. The competency framework can support recruiting, selection and leader promotion.

This study provides a novel BDA leadership competency framework with a unique combination of competencies and higher order roles.

This chapter argues that despite the horizontal and self-organizing character of cocreation processes, leadership is essential for initiating and facilitating collaboration and securing the production of effective SDG solutions. Leadership is defined as a two-way street between leaders who guide their followers and enable them to reach their goals and followers who provide valuable input to leaders in a bottom-up process. Five crucial leadership functions are identified and the role of power in leadership is discussed. The chapter also considers the particular strategies for leading cocreation networks and partnerships and the skills and competencies necessary for pursuing these strategies. Finally, the chapter describes the importance of building leadership capacity through the recruitment of leadership teams.

The purpose of this paper is to examine innovation in the resource-constrained context of India’s healthcare industry. It is argued that the process of innovation in addressing healthcare management challenges in such a context occurs through organisational ambidexterity and that human resource management (HRM) plays an important role.

A qualitative research methodology is applied to explore the role of HR practices in facilitating contextual ambidexterity and subsequent innovations in healthcare in India. The unit of analysis is the “case” of healthcare providers in India and in-depth interview and documentary data in two case sites are analysed to reveal the role of HRM in facilitating contextual ambidexterity and innovation. Data analysis was undertaken first at a within-case and then at a cross-case analysis level using interpretive manual coding based on how the data explained the role of HRM in delivering innovative outcomes and supporting organisational ambidexterity.

The authors found evidence of the use of sets of high-involvement HRM practices for exploration of new ideas and efficiency-driven HRM practices for creating contextual ambidexterity in the case organisations. Further, managerial/leadership style was found to play an important role in creating cultures of trust, openness, risk-taking and employee empowerment, supported by an appropriate mix of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Finally, training was also reported as being central to creating an ambidextrous context for delivering on various innovations in these healthcare providers.

This study represents an exploration of innovation in the context of India’s healthcare sector through intersecting literatures of ambidexterity, innovation and HRM practices. In light of the emerging economy research context, an important empirical contribution is palpable. Moreover, through a study design which included collecting data from multiple informants on the role of human resources in facilitating innovative outcomes, the authors reveal the role of HR-related initiatives, beyond formal HR practices in creating contextual ambidexterity. This study also reveals the degree to which contextual idiosyncrasies enhance our understanding of the role of HR in facilitating innovation in emerging economies.

This paper aims to contribute to discussion around the need for improved models for change in a rapidly changing world. It also aims to provide insights for further discussion around how a Nordic management approach can relate to the need for new change ideas. Since Lewin proposed that change requires unfreezing, moving and refreezing, several changes in models have been introduced. Many models include similar factors such as the need for a vision, a clear process and to motivate change. These change factors are investigated in this paper and related to a fast-paced, uncertain and volatile environment

Based on a collaborative research approach, engaging with leaders in five organizations, all headquartered in the Nordic countries, this paper examines problems with traditional change models in a contemporary context as well as how these challenges could be handled.

This paper concludes that leaders still find value in traditional models but see that these models need to be adapted to include elements of more recent research. This paper suggests tweaks in traditional change factors and ends with a proposition with a renewed model for change.

The ideas in this paper could be seen as a bridge between traditional and modern models – a bridge that seems to be needed in practice. It draws on action research and close relationships with top management, as they are working with change – potentially giving the study a unique angle on a practical, widespread problem: succeeding with change

As the global presence of Chinese firms grows, increasing numbers of Chinese managers are working abroad as expatriates. However, little attention has been paid to such Chinese expatriate managers and their leadership challenges in an inter-cultural context, especially across a large cultural distance. To fill the gap in the literature concerning the leadership challenges for expatriate managers in an inter-cultural context, the purpose of this paper is to elucidate the leadership styles of Chinese expatriate managers from the perspectives of three traditional Chinese philosophies (i.e. Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism) in the inter-cultural context of the Netherlands.

The data for this qualitative study were collected via semi-structured, open-ended, narrative interviews with 30 Chinese expatriate managers in the Netherlands.

The results clearly show that the leadership style of Chinese expatriate managers is deeply rooted in the three traditional Chinese philosophies of Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism, even in an inter-cultural context. Specifically, the study reveals two salient aspects of how Chinese expatriate managers frame and interact with a foreign cultural context from the perspectives of traditional Chinese philosophies. First, the Chinese expatriate managers reported an initial cultural shock related to frictions between the foreign cultural context and Confucianism or Taoism, but less so in the case of Legalism. Second, the Chinese expatriate managers also reported that their interactions with the Dutch culture are best described as a balance between partial conflict and partial complementarity (thus, a duality). In this sense, the leadership style of Chinese expatriate managers is influenced jointly by the three traditional Chinese philosophies and certain elements of the foreign cultural context. This is consistent with the Chinese perspective of yin-yang balancing.

This study is among the first to offer a more nuanced and highly contextualized understanding of leadership in the unique case of expatriate managers from an emerging market (e.g. China) in an advanced economy (e.g. the Netherlands). The authors call for more research to apply the unique perspective of yin-yang balancing in an inter-cultural context. The authors posit that this approach represents the most salient implication of this study. For practical implications, the authors argue that expatriate leaders should carefully manage the interplay between their deep-rooted home-country philosophies and their salient host-country culture. Reflecting on traditional philosophies in another culture can facilitate inter-cultural leadership training for Chinese expatriates.

There is compelling evidence that demonstrates that organisations are failing to reap the full benefits of lean initiatives. While much work has been conducted on what factors are critical to the success of lean initiatives, there is a dearth of empirical evidence relating to whether team leaders implement critical success factors (CSFs) in practice. Therefore, this study aims to explore the extent to which functional team leaders implement lean practices focussing on the role of leadership, empowerment and culture.

The research analysed team leaders in a single-site manufacturing organisation. A state-of-the-art analysis was conducted to isolate relevant themes and an instrument was developed to capture data. Empirical data was collected and analysed from 34 team leaders in engineering, quality and manufacturing.

The study found that while many good managerial practices to support lean is implemented, there remain significant challenges relating to cultural issues which must be addressed. The findings illuminate a latent gap in commitment and communication from senior management, as well as an underlying discrepancy in time and resource allocation.

The study’s findings provide new knowledge concerning the extent to which CSFs are implemented by functional team leaders in a real-world environment. The enquiry makes a valuable departure from previous research that focusses on leadership at a senior and middle manager level. It bridges the gap between academia and practice and provides tangible and concise results to management on how CSFs relating to leadership, empowerment and culture impact team leaders to drive lean methodologies.

The purpose of this study is to explore the concept of long-term thinking in a non-business context to gain deeper insights into bridging the gap between the theory of long-term thinking and its application as a management strategy.

To explore the concept of long-thinking further in a non-business setting, a grounded theory study was conducted with preschool leaders in a municipality in Sweden to examine how the leaders describe, define and apply the concept of long-term thinking in their schools. Interviews with school leaders, both written and oral, were used for data collection.

This study illustrates that the concept of long-term thinking can be twofold. First, the description can be as an anchor that reflects a mission. Second, the description can be a steering mechanism that guides decision-making. The findings also reinforce the importance of organisations developing an organisational culture that connect their vision and goals with the values and needs of their customers.

This study was carried out in a single organisation and shows a snapshot of the organisation's status at the time the data were collected. Therefore, the findings are not generalisable to all organisational settings; rather the findings may be transferable to other settings.

The results can be used to help identify areas where preschools in a municipal context can engage with sustainable quality development in order to build systems that support work with quality in a more structured way.

Long-term thinking is seen, within both theory and organisations, as necessary to achieve success in terms of sustainable development and quality, and this study contributes with knowledge about the current gap between theories of long-term thinking and practice in organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how an organization can achieve successful change implementation with Kotter’s eight-step organizational change model and 3-H (heart–head–hand) theory.

With the case study approach, the author recollects his career experience in Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited from 2007 to 2011 to find out why and how the top management can balance 3-H factor to bridge the “knowing” and “doing” gap to engage right talents and motivate them to achieve peak performance and company goal.

To create talent culture, the company implemented two policies including Mini-CEO management and Talent Engagement Department. The former is a vertical management model to empower and enable department heads. The latter is a way to change the role of human resources department from passive to proactive.

The implications of this case study are to encourage public and private organizations to rethink the factors including talent development and empowerment that can have a positive impact on innovative work behavior. Moreover, organizations can rediscover the value of “unique” talent culture as a sustainable competitive advantage.