Search results

The health service response to COVID-19 provided a unique opportunity to build our understanding of the leadership styles in use in managing a crisis event. Existing literature emphasises command and control leadership; however, there has been less emphasis on relational approaches and the behaviours necessary to ensure the agility of the response and minimise the risk of relational disturbances. The purpose of this paper is to understand leadership styles in use, as part of a health service response to COVID-19.

This paper draws on data from semi-structured interviews with 27 executives and senior leaders from a tertiary health service in Australia. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. Notes and examples were coded according to deductively derived criteria around leadership styles and competencies from the literature, while remaining open to emergent themes.

Health system leaders described examples of both command and control and relational leadership behaviours. This dually provided the discipline (command and control) and agility (relational) required of the crisis response. While some leaders experienced discomfort in enacting these dual behaviours, this discomfort related to discordance with leadership preferences rather than conflict between the styles. Both leadership approaches were considered necessary to effectively manage the health system response.

Crisis management literature has typically focused on defining and measuring the effectiveness of behaviours reflective of a command and control leadership response. Very few studies have considered the relational aspects of crisis management, nor the dual approaches of command and control, and relational leadership.

In recent years, police leadership integrity and standards have been positioned as central to the professionalisation agenda of the police service England and Wales (College of Policing, 2015). The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges for developing innovative, more people-oriented approaches to leadership in a command environment like the police.

A case study approach in one UK police constabulary was adopted. In all, 38 semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior police officers from chief constable to inspector rank. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed.

Police officers drew on managerial and command discourses in their understandings of leadership. Perceptions of the situation, particularly in terms of perceived risk and visibility, influenced leadership practices in the constabulary.

Current research and policy places emphasis on “what works” in police leadership; the meanings of leadership to police officers is overshadowed by a focus on effectiveness. Through the use of semi-structured interviews, this research captures police leaders’ understandings of themselves and their leadership. The findings reveal that, at a time when police leadership needs to become more innovative and people focussed, the pressures and complexities of contemporary policing mean that police officers retreat to leadership that is command-based and driven by the primacy of business needs.

The U.S. Army has been fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for over 10 years and in the process produced a new military doctrine called mission command. Mission command doctrine was conceived from a wartime environment to allow followers in the field to act according to the dictates of the situation on the ground, giving them maximum discretion. The concept of mission command fits nicely into followership research and theory. For a military widely dispersed both by geography and mission, this concept represents an effective way to empower followers and encourage them to take initiative and accept prudent risk. Mission command doctrine expects officers and exemplary followers to be courageous. It requires them to act on their own, be wise in assuming risk, be actively engaged in executing the commander’s intent, and find multiple ways and options to accomplish the mission. Since mission command is a philosophy born of our recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the question remains of how this philosophy will fare in an inter-war period of forced reductions, downsizing, and substantial budget reductions.

To develop a model clarifying the personal factors and behavioural characteristics (competencies) relevant to effective command, leadership and management in the Royal Navy.

A questionnaire study was conducted on a sample of 261 Officers and ratings. Their performance was rated through the organisation's own rigorous appraisal process whilst personality and competency data were gathered through the use of the well‐established occupational personality questionnaire (OPQ) and the relatively new leadership dimensions questionnaire (LDQ).

The results provide support for the RN's current integrated approach to command, leadership and management by identifying four “supra‐competency” clusters – conceptualising, aligning, interacting and creating success – and the related personality and leadership dimensions, which are correlated with high performance. Support for the validity of the LDQ and OPQ questionnaires is also produced by the results found from performance appraisal data.

The research was conducted within one establishment of one of the services (the RN). Further replication studies in other services and private sector companies are planned or underway.

The model produced from this study is now being used by the British Royal Navy as the basis of command, leadership and management training and development and its use by the Admiralty Interview Board for Officer selection is currently under consideration. Some findings are generalisable to other organisations.

This is a rare example of a study of leadership validated against formal performance appraisal data. The fact that conclusions are drawn from an appraisal system which conforms to best practice and from a highly representative sample, with a 97 per cent response rate, supports the value of these findings for both academic researchers and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to explore human issues within subordinate and leader interaction and guide police leaders in how they can achieve success. Although focussed on uniformed services, leaders from all areas will find the arguments presented here useful.

The paper draws on a number of catastrophic case studies, including the collision of two war ships, two Jumbo Jets, the defeat of the Spanish Armarda and the failure of Hitler’s military to respond effectively to the D-Day landings. It will examine work by Rittel and Webber (1973) and Grint (2005), who propose different styles of leadership for different problems.

The paper will find that humans are inherently obedient and reluctant obedient, reluctant to challenge authority and introduces the concept of blind obedience into police leadership. A distinction will be drawn between commanding in critical situations, which are rare, and leading in routine situations; the paper will conclude that to lead the police service through the turbulent times ahead, police leaders must be on guard against blind obedience and create an environment where subordinates have a voice and will be heard. The paper also finds that “micro-management” from a remote location is ineffective and that staff must be afforded time and space to undertake tasks and that strategic leaders must allow their subordinates, at the tactical and operational levels, freedom to act with the overall strategy; the paper recommends leaders adopt a mission command approach.

The paper will contribute to understanding how subordinates and leaders interact and will be of value to all who lead, particularly in structured organisations like the police, where rank plays a factor in establishing a strict hierarchy. It introduces the concept of blind obedience into police leadership and warns that police leaders, and indeed leaders in all hierarchal organisations, must be on constant guard against it.

The transformational leadership concept differentiates between instrumental motivation and normative commitment. The high motivation levels, the relative freedom given to junior officers, and the esprit de corps in infantry units in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have made the concept of transformational leadership highly suitable for junior commanders. Reports on a three‐day transformational leadership workshop for officer cadets designed and conducted by civilian psychologists at the IDF School for Leadership Development. Found qualitative and quantitative attitudinal data collected for six consecutive training cycles over a period of 18 months to be very favourable. A further programme attempts to integrate the transformational leadership model as an ongoing effort throughout the infantry cadets′ six‐month training programme.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of field research carried out within a civil army corps responsible for the security of people and property.

The study deals with e-leadership as it leadership practices related to information and communication technologies (ICTs).

Having initially described the position of ICTs in current workplace contexts, the authors review the question of the role of leadership as well as that of knowledge acquired in e-leadership.

The results reveal variations in the use of ICTs in leadership situations, which find their origins in multiple determinisms related to the types of task, the technological tools and the constraints inherent to customary situations.

These conclusions are discussed in the light of research centered on the predictive variables arising from the adoption of technologies in the context of the workplace.

This paper aims to explore the cultivation of a learning culture in the US Navy (USN). The intent of preparing and sharing this research is to reveal the particular challenges of developing learning organization capability in national security organizations. This paper believes this effort will contribute to the evolution and establishment of learning organization models that are replicable across and adaptable to distinct industrial settings.

Several efforts were explored and assessed by applying relevant research in the learning organization literature to trends in current organizational practice within the USN.

Recent USN learning culture efforts align with the broader, multi-sector, global trend toward building learning organizations to develop people as a source of competitive advantage. This research reveals the trials of enabling learning organizations across large, hierarchical bureaucracies with substantial structural and cultural barriers. The myriad obstacles currently being addressed by the USN, both at an institutional level and at smaller organization and unit levels, can inform the development of learning cultures. In particular, this research highlights the need to align specific efforts to the appropriate level of the organization.

This paper contributes to the learning organization conversation by examining the associated challenges through a multi-level framework – top, middle and bottom.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of interaction in the process of leadership. Interaction has been claimed to be a leadership competence in earlier research into leadership in the Royal Navy. The aim of this research is to define how interaction works within naval teams.

The research uses Grounded Theory. Following a series of leadership discussions in separate focus groups, discussion topics were coded and subjected to recursive qualitative analysis. The grounded approach is used to synthesise and develop existing leadership theory strands as well as to extend the trait-process approach to leadership.

The research discovers the key interaction behaviours of engagement, disengagement and levelling. Our findings support recent developments in follower-centric perceptions of leadership and in interaction specifically. The authors develop engagement theory by combining it with the less well researched area of leadership resistance. The authors then re-frame resistance as social levelling, a more comprehensive interaction mechanism.

The research is highly contextual because of its qualitative approach. Some of the detailed reactions to leadership behaviours may not found in other naval or military teams and are unlikely to be generalisable to non-military environments. However, the mechanism described, that of engagement, disengagement and levelling is considered highly generalisable if not universal. Rather than develop new theory fragments in an already confusing research environment, the authors fuse engagement and resistance theory to extend trait-process theories of leadership. The result is a coherent and integrative model of leadership dynamics which frames leadership in the mundane interaction of leaders and followers.

Interaction as a competence is strongly supported as is the encouragement of cultures which promote interaction. Selection procedures for future leaders should include interaction skills. The use of subtle methods of resistance are highlighted. Such methods may indicate poor interaction long before more overt forms of resistance are apparent.

The continual monitoring of leaders and implied ambivalence towards leadership could be critical to our understanding of leadership. A dynamic feedback circle between leaders and followers may be a more useful paradigm for the characterising of leadership throughout society. A better understanding of the power of followers to frame and re-frame leadership would help to manage the expectations of leaders.

This research uniquely uses Grounded Theory to extend current theories (competence based leadership and trait-process theories of leadership), explaining the complexity of leadership interaction. The research also synthesises and develops engagement and levelling (resistance to leadership) theories for the first time. As such the project suggests a full range model of follower response to leadership including subtle forms of resistance to power. The value of group-level analysis using focus groups is recommended, especially for other collective leader-follower approaches to leadership. The research is of interest to those studying leadership process theories, competencies, leader-follower traditions, engagement and power/resistance research.