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Mastering aesthetics is a precious source of competitive advantage in creative industries. In fashion, innovation is reflected by how and how much styles change. Elite designers claim to be the only endogenous force shaping fashion innovation season by season. Yet, each season, fashion critics vet the new collections these designers introduce, assessing what is original as opposed to reworked and uninspired, in this way playing a fundamental role as gatekeepers in setting taste within the industry. In this research, we document how stylistic innovation, vis-à-vis the styles premier design houses introduced each season, is impacted, among the others, by the specific exogenous force of critics' assessments of designers' past work. Our data, which include 61 measures detailing the styles introduced by 38 prestigious Italian and French design houses over a nine-year period, suggest designers move further away from styles reviewed less favourably while adhering more closely to styles reviewed more positively. Additionally, the styles a designer introduces are shown to depend on critical assessments of competing designers' styles, revealing how design houses attend to each other's work. This work documents the strong correlation between style dynamics and critics' feedback. It also has important implications for any company trying to find a balance between independence and conformity in setting its own unique positioning into the market.

The present study is concerned with assessing the factors which affect principals' roles as change facilitators in the area of curricular innovation. It is designed to identify the prevailing modes of principals' change facilitator leadership styles in curricular related activities and to estimate the relative predictive ability of policy, strategy (i.e. values), organizational and background factors in explaining the variance of these leadership styles. A random sample of 69 principals from the school district of one of the largest cities in Israel participated in the study. Three mutually exclusive modes of principals' change facilitator leadership styles — Responder, Manager and Initiator — emerged from the analysis. The totality of the factors in the research model explained 20, 31 and 48 percent of the variance respectively in the three styles. Results indicate that background and organizational factors contribute relatively more in explaining the variance in these modes than policy and strategy factors.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the learner styles of a healthcare institution transition team and its respective members within a change management context. In particular we focus on the role of learner style in the success of change efforts within a team setting.

This paper presents a case study that employs a questionnaire survey, non‐participant observation, and semi‐structured interviews as part of a larger study of healthcare change management.

Findings suggest that a mix of learning styles is ideal for successful healthcare change management. Specifically, this limited study suggests a learner ratio that favors convergers and assimilators over divergers and accommodators may be the most effective staffing strategy for change leadership teams in a healthcare environment.

Managing change in healthcare has been researched from a process perspective but few studies examine the individual team members' learner styles and the impact of these learning styles over time. Implications for human resources and change implementation are discussed.

Extant research suggests that managing strategic change has become a key managerial function and this duty encompasses changes in organizational product-market boundaries and organizational structure among many related organizational activities. The need to achieve strategic change arises because of major shifts in the external environment and the subsequent need for the organization to remain viable and competitive in the changed environment. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate if middle managers are likely to adopt authoritative style while implementing strategic change when they sense organizational survival.

“Sensemaking” literature led to development of the authors’ hypotheses and these were tested using the responses of 117 middle managers. The authors used survey-based instrument to collect data and used regression analysis to explicate the responses of the middle managers.

Results indicate that when middle managers sense that the survival of the organization is at stake, they are likely to choose an authoritative style. The authors also investigated the moderating role of organizational commitment, strategic posture of the top management team, and hostile business environment on the relationship between perception of survival urgency and the choice of authoritative implementation style. Only organizational commitment moderates this relationship.

The authors’ data collection was survey based and the authors used a single source for each questionnaire and this process may lead to possibilities of mono-method bias. However, steps were taken to reduce the resultant mono-method bias. The respondents are from a variety of industries and future research may focus on one specific industry.

The first implication of this study allows us to expand research focus on the adoption of authoritative style, a research area that is not explored very much. The second implication of the study is that middle managers tend to focus on their emotions when it comes to implementing strategic changes. Using arguments from sensemaking the authors show that the perception of need for survival or the perception that business environment is hostile will determine how strategic change could be implemented. Middle managers must be treated as more than just the implementers of the directives/fiats/orders/edicts that originate from the top.

Role of middle managers in strategic change management is critical and the authors suggest that the perception of organizational survival at risk leads to choice managerial style by middle managers.

The authors have combined ideas from both the strategic management and organizational development fields to understand successfully the implementation of strategic change in a survival urgency situation. In the past, the strategic management literature focused primarily on understanding strategy formulation process, and the process of implementation was generally neglected. The respondents are from a variety of industries. The analysis indicate that membership to any one firm was not impacting the results obtained by the authors and as such allows for results to generalized.

The purpose of this paper is to identify processes which may contribute to followers’ positive reactions to change. By focusing on the relationship between change antecedents and explicit reactions, the authors investigate the direct and indirect relationships between leadership styles (transformational and transactional) and followers’ appraisal of change through manager engagement.

Using data from a longitudinal survey among 351 followers in two Danish organizations, the study tracked the planned implementation of team organization at two different times. Data were analyzed using structural equation modelling.

Transformational and transactional leadership styles were positively related to the engagement of managers. Managers’ engagement was associated with followers’ appraisal of change. The two leadership styles also had a direct, long-term effect on followers’ change appraisal; positive for transformational leadership and negative for transactional leadership.

The results have potential implications for change management, as followers’ change appraisal may be improved by developing managers’ leadership style and engagement.

This is the first study to provide longitudinal evidence of the direct and indirect effects of leadership styles on followers’ change appraisal.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how practices influence service systems.

Data across three service contexts (crafts, healthcare and fitness) were collected through depth interviews and netnographic analysis, and analyzed with a two-study multi-method approach focusing first on the micro- (individual) level and then on the macro- (network) level of service systems. Study 1 focused on a micro-level analysis using qualitative techniques (Spiggle, 1994). Study 2 focused on a macro-level analysis using partial least squares regression.

The results illustrate how practices can change service systems. This occurs when a nuanced practice (i.e. a practice style) orders and roots a service system in a specific form of value creation. The findings reveal four practice styles: individual-extant, social-extant, individual-modified and social-modified practice styles. These practice styles shift in response to event triggers and change service systems. These event triggers are: service beneficiary enhancement, service beneficiary failure, service provider failure and social change. Thus, the findings show that practices – when shifting in response to event triggers – change service systems. This transpires in the understudied meta-layer of a service system.

The study identifies four practice styles that can serve as the basis for segmentation and service design.

Service systems are dynamic and ever changing. This study explores how service systems change by proposing a practice approach to service systems.

This study seeks to survey managers of an Australian government‐owned enterprise undergoing organisational change as a result of public sector reform, specifically, National Competition Policy and Corporatisation. The purpose of the study is to examine the extent/type of organisational change and leadership style adopted to implement this change.

To understand the effect of reforms, the researcher explored the extent of change and leadership style through the use of an intra‐organisational survey in a government‐owned Electricity Supply Corporation in Queensland, Australia. The instrument also included qualitative components to enable the researcher to qualify the statistical results.

Within the public sector, there is an uneasy tension between the need for a revolution of outdated bureaucracies in order to enhance flexibility and innovation, on the one hand, and the desire to maintain the standards and procedures that are necessary for quality civic service for a broad range of stakeholders, on the other. The results of this study indicate that there was significant organisational change and, according to responses, a change of leadership style indicative of this dilemma.

The implications suggest the consideration of embedded factors while determining the processes and directions of change. Furthermore, it is necessary to choose a leadership style that is indicative of the type of change to be implemented. Additionally, greater participation by organisational members can increase the success of organisational change. The limitations of the study include the measurement of organisational change and leadership style. This instrument was originally used in structured interviews; however, measures were taken to validate the instrument in its altered setting. Further, the study is confined to a single electricity organisation. Fertile fields for future research projects could include a larger quantitative study conducted with multiple states or nation‐wide electricity distribution companies.

The study provides empirical evidence of the extent of change as a result of public sector reform. In doing so the study utilises organisational change and leadership style models within a public sector environment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the structure of leader communication style in the context of organizational change. In doing so, the authors intend to shed more light on how leaders can effectively communicate change projects to their subordinates, which is viewed as the key to implementing change initiatives.

This paper builds an integrated conceptual model for understanding leader’s communication style and subordinates’ commitment to change. By analyzing subordinates’ different fears of change, the paper further proposes a multidimensional structure of leader communication style in the context of change. The authors then develop a scale to measure these different dimensions and test the relationship between the proposed communication style and subordinates’ affective commitment to change.

Leader communication style in the context of change is found to be composed of five dimensions: hope orientation, reality orientation, subordinate orientation, support orientation, and enforcement orientation. A cross-level field study of 31 teams and 194 members shows that hope orientation, subordinate orientation, and support orientation are positively associated with subordinates’ affective commitment to change.

This paper identifies a new structure of leader communication style that will lead to a richer understanding of how leaders communicate to their subordinates in the context of change. It also contributes to the leadership literature by implying effective ways of communicating change projects.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how misalignments between the organizational climate (measured as information‐processing demand) and the leadership style (measured as information‐processing capability) may result in negative performance consequences.

The empirical part of the paper is based on questionnaire data. Key informant is the CEO and thus there is a focus on the CEO's perception of climate and leadership style. Data are subjected to regression analysis.

The results indicate that misalignments between climate and leadership style are problematic for organizational performance. This is supported by the empirical findings that show partial support for three out of four hypotheses and full support for the fourth hypothesis.

Data cover information on Danish small‐ and medium‐sized firms. These cross‐sectional data and cannot study the effects of misalignments over time.

Because the findings show that misalignments between climate and leadership style are problematic to organizational level of performance, this implies that in case of misfits either the climate or the leadership style must be changed.

The main contribution of the paper is that the framework allows an explicit understanding of which managerial actions are needed to manage particular types of climate. Further, the framework enables an understanding of how misalignments may result in poor performance.

International assignments are becoming more and more typical parts of a managerial career. As an outcome, cross‐cultural leadership competencies are required within international companies. Still, real cross‐cultural leadership interaction between expatriate managers and their local subordinates has not been much studied. In the light of this, the goals of the present study were to analyse whether and how expatriate managers adjust their leadership style due to cross‐cultural differences, and whether and how local subordinates perceive the styles of expatriate managers to differ from the styles of local managers after possible adjustments. The data were collected by interviewing Finnish expatriate managers and their Indonesian subordinates in real cross‐cultural business settings with a bicultural interview team.