Search results

The present study investigates the predicting role of institutional leadership competencies (namely, achieving goals and outcomes, leadership and leading change, and integrity and justice) in influencing job performance. It also seeks to examine whether proactive personality moderates the purported relationship.

Data were collected from 103 institutional leaders in various higher education institutions in Malaysia. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique via Smart PLS 2.0 was used to analyze the data and test the hypotheses.

The findings indicate that competencies of leadership and leading change and integrity and justice significantly and positively influenced job performance. Proactive personality was found to significantly moderate the relationship between leadership and leading change dimension and job performance.

This study contributes to the literature by assessing leadership competencies as the predictors of job performance. The moderating role of proactive personality is also substantiated in the leadership and leading change dimension and job performance linkage.

The significant and positive impact of leadership and leading change as well as integrity and justice on job performance suggests the importance of these leadership competencies in promoting high level of job performance among institutional leaders. Furthermore, in ensuring high job performance among institutional leaders, proactive personality is a crucial attribute that is worth to be given attention by higher education institution (HEI) administrators.

This study aims to provide additional empirical evidence in the leadership competencies domain. The research framework of this study managed to substantiate empirical evidence in partial support on the importance of leadership competencies and proactive personality in predicting job performance.

Leaders are important social actors in organizations, centrally involved in establishing and maintaining institutional values, a view that was articulated by Philip Selznick (1957) nearly a half-century ago, but often overlooked in institutionalists’ accounts. Our objective is to build on Selznick’s seminal work to investigate the value proposition of leadership consistent with institutional theory. We examine public interview transcripts from 52 senior executives and discover that leaders’ conceptualizations of their entities align with the archetypes of organization (i.e., economic, hierarchical, and power oriented) and institution (i.e., ideological, creative and collectivist) and cohere around a set of relevant values. Extrapolating from this, we advance a theoretical framework of the process whereby leaders’ claims function as transformational mechanisms of value infusion in the institutionalization of organizations.

This paper explores how Selznick’s approach to leadership can inform contemporary organizational theory and research. Drawing on Selznick’s writing in Leadership in Administration and related works, we characterize organizations as simultaneously technical entities pursuing economic goals and value-laden entities pursuing non-economic goals arising from their members and their role in society. These two aspects of organizations are deeply intertwined and in continual tension with one another, and the essential task of leadership is to uphold both – protecting and promoting values while also meeting technical imperatives. To do so, leaders establish a common purpose that includes values and ideals not just technical imperatives, they create structures and practices that embody this purpose, and they make organizational decisions and personal behavioral choices that are consistent with this purpose. We consider each task of leadership in turn, showing how Selznick’s ideas enrich and extend contemporary research on competing institutional logics, organizational design, culture, and identity, leadership, and meaningful work.

Selznick (1957) differentiated between institutional leadership, concerned with organizational identity and character, and administrative management, concerned with organizational operations or efficiencies. We investigated the timing and extent of each of these by leaders of new ventures during market emergence. Examining the case of satellite radio, we analyzed 235 executive statements in 244 press releases, 1998–2005, for the start-ups, XM and Sirius. We found that leaders, across the organizational hierarchy and over time, interpreted entrepreneurial action in terms of the venture's identity, but institutional leadership was primarily associated with CEOs and administrative management with lower echelon executives. Institutional leadership was higher during market emergence and commercialization, while administrative management increased with the growth and establishment of satellite radio as a market category.

The paper's aim is to discuss envy as an institutional force that can sap peoples' energy and provoke inner conflicts that may prevent institutional flourishing. This represents a crucial element in the so‐called hidden curriculum of any institution, including higher education ones. The paper also intends to further the analysis of envy, its effects and ways to diminish them in the context of academic and non‐academic organizations, from a multicultural perspective.

The paper's approach is a literature review and a qualitative methodology of story lives in the form of narratives of main actors in high echelons of institutions in Brazil that deal with key areas in higher education institutions (HEI). It discusses how envy has been perceived in their institutional contexts and what possible models of multicultural leaders could emerge from those narratives.

Counteracting forces in relation to the effects of envy in organizational climate could be noted, particularly highlighting the role of multiculturally sensitive leaders in dealing with it.

The role of leaders in enhancing organizational and collective goals and promoting the valuing of plural institutional actors was particularly stressed as a possible path towards minimizing envy at the work place. The role of the curriculum in HEI and even of citizenship education in primary and secondary schooling is highlighted to better equip students to address ethical and multicultural dimensions in their future professional lives.

Productivity and capacity for innovation – issues increasingly addressed in institutional evaluation – should be likely boosted in environments where leaders competently deal proactively in a way that prevents envy to become a destructive force. The paper shows that HEIs have a high potential for contribution, by preparing future professionals in broader, multicultural perspectives that better equip them to become leaders for a better world.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight about the experience of multicultural administrators who oversee bridge program designed to recruit and retain historically underrepresented students of color. The study was also designed to capture the experience of the multicultural administrator as well as what meaning they made of their role as a diversity leader, and the challenges they face as they try to meet diversity goals under the constraints of race neutrality.

This is a descriptive qualitative multi-case study. In order to gain a better understanding of the experience of multicultural administrators as they try to enact diversity leadership under race-neutral policies a qualitative phenomenological multi-case designed was used. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with multicultural administrators from four institutions within a southern state of the USA.

Data reveals that seeking to increase and foster diversity on predominantly white campuses under race neutrality is challenging. Many of the administrators expressed concern about how they would maintain and increase diversity and campus inclusiveness without specifically marketing and targeting to groups that are traditionally marginalized. Overall, they described the experience as one filled with heightened awareness of the social and political environment and how senior-level administrators and other offices on campus perceived them and their work.

Using a qualitative multi-case study limits generalizability. Also, there are many other factors such as institutional type, location, student population, and institutional capacity that may impact the institutional conditions in which each of these administrators work.

The findings of this study can be used to inform institutional policy makers of these struggles as well as provide campus administrators and staff helpful recommendations for dealing with the politics of race neutrality as they continue to fulfill their responsibility to increase diversity on their campuses.

This paper may raise awareness about the challenges of employing race neutrality, particularly for states and institutions concerned with diversifying higher education. It also highlights the challenges leaders face when dealing with reduced funding and policies that do not support their work.

The paper discusses an understudied and under-recognized group of diversity leaders dealing with a current race-neutral policies. It will be of interests to institutional leaders, multicultural administrators, and other types of diversity leaders in higher education.

Wicked problems, cross-sectoral and transregional collaborations, emerging technologies and calls for innovation generate exciting but unpredictable transformations in governance. Emerging research suggests humility, rather than certitude, represents a promising ethos for public leaders working to solve problems in tumultuous times. This study examines the nature, value and practice of humility in public administration (PA) leadership.

This study reviews cross-disciplinary research on the nature and value of humility and emerging findings and debates on humility assessment measures. It analyzes discourse among graduate students in US PA classes and uses ethnographic analysis from workshops with local government leaders to identify institutional dynamics that may influence leaders' willingness to act with humility.

Findings suggest that although PA students and leaders may value humility, they encounter institutional constraints related to public sector legitimacy and narratives about expertise and risk. The author proposes a framework to guide future research and practice in humility and public leadership.

Potential constraints emerged from a modest study of courses and workshops; further research is required to test the prevalence of themes across public leadership environments.

Public leaders, teachers and coaches may apply these practices and assessment measures to cultivate humility in PA classes and organizations.

This study is among the first to explore leadership humility with attention to how PA context may influence practice.

The purpose of this paper is to show that, with demands from a widening range of stakeholders for more democratic approaches to governance, there is an evident need to develop alternative models of organizing. In seeking to understand how to conceptualise this alternative, an analysis of the organizational and political institutional contexts for leadership is provided.

Analyses the main precepts of democracy to establish the basis upon which a comparison between these two contexts might be made. It distinguishes between the value premises of democracy and the structural mechanisms through which those principles are enacted and identifies the significant leadership processes that underpin these values. This analysis is then used as a basis for analyzing the leadership role in organizations.

The paper demonstrates that differences between the two settings are a matter of perspective: the structural mechanisms of democracy are not enacted rationally. In particular, the pre‐eminence of micro‐political activity is highlighted as a vehicle for the enactment of ethical behaviour and civic virtue in both settings.

Applying a political institutional approach to leading suggests the need to reconfigure the role of hierarchy to encourage self‐organization, valuing conflict, protection of weaker stakeholders, the legitimization of political activity and helping groups to forge their own identity.

Most similar analyses are typically constructed within the canons of rational organization. Applying to businesses the principles of institutional leadership implies a significantly different model in which leaders promote and legitimise both the distribution and coalescing of power and the necessary dissent and debate required to reconcile a plurality of interests with the establishment of organizational coherence.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between organizational adaptability, institutional leadership and business process reengineering performance using the tested complexity theory in a developing economy setting.

This study is correlation and cross-sectional and adopts institutional-level data collected via questionnaires from reengineered microfinance institutions in Uganda. Cluster analysis as data mining technique was used to classify cases based on respondents’ opinions into homogeneous clusters. Nvivo was used to understand the perceptions of business process reengineering performance based on qualitative data. The authors used structural equation modeling to derive the predictive model of business process reengineering performance in a developing world setting.

The authors find that organizational adaptability and institutional leadership are key predictors of business process reengineering performance. Results reveal a predictive model of 61 per cent based on structural equation modeling for the study variables. Cluster analysis as data mining approach explored complex patterns of reengineered business processes.

The use of cluster analysis is susceptible to problems associated with sampling error and absence of fit indices. However, the likelihood of these problems is reduced by the interaction with the data, practical implications and use of smart partial least square to generate structural equations based on derived measurement models of each study variable.

Policymakers of Bank of Uganda, Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, should develop sound policies in relation to knowledge management, institutional leadership and adaptive mechanisms to enhance business process reengineering performance to take advantage of new knowledge opportunities for the improvement of their businesses.

Given the results from structural equations generated, managers need to consider institutional leadership and organizational adaptability as key drivers of business process reengineering performance in microfinance institutions. The results confirm the significant role of institutional leadership, organizational adaptability in determining business process reengineering performance outcomes.

Unlike most of the business process reengineering literature, this study contributes to literature by domesticating and testing complexity theory to explain business process reengineering performance in developing economies.

While there is research that has explored how institutions have responded to various crises, these are usually locally or regionally situated. However, no event has impacted higher education globally like COVID-19 and it will certainly alter the way top administrators lead and how institutions move forward. Thus, this chapter will explore how to better understand how presidents and top administrators navigate the (inter)national geopolitics as they move the institution forward. In addition, clear and up-to-date communication has proven to be important in battling this crisis. Thus, how presidents at national universities have communicated with students, faculty, staff, and various off-campus communities members regarding COVID-19 and how they have achieved is important to explore. Our findings suggest that presidents and top administrators need to build support to help them navigate the political roadblocks they may encounter. Findings also suggest that communication is the main role they play as leaders on their campus. On/off-campus community members see the presidents as the face of the university and key communicator as relates to communicating what the institutions is doing and how they are addressing the crisis. This chapter helps in better understanding the roles presidents and top administrators play during a global crisis.