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This paper aims to examine the effect of shared leadership on both quantity and quality of team performance, predicting that shared leadership enhances performance by affecting quantity (level of performance) as well as quality (team errors). In addition, this paper also investigates the role of perceived task complexity in moderating the effect of sharing leadership on team performance.

In total, 26 teams (N = 78) were asked to work on an interdependent team-task, where they engaged in a laboratory team decision-making exercise.

Results revealed that teams sharing leadership made fewer errors. They achieved higher levels of quality of performance. As predicted, this effect was stronger when team members perceived the task as highly complex, even though objective task difficulty was constant.

This study extends current literature on shared leadership by documenting that sharing the lead in teams can also improve the quality of team performance and that perceived complexity of tasks is an important moderator of this effect.

Based on the findings, influencing perceptions of task complexity can be considered as an important strategy to stimulate shared leadership in teams.

Using social network approach, the authors showed that shared leadership is an important tool for preventing team errors and offer a new explanation for inconsistent findings from recent meta-analyses by showing that perceived task complexity moderates the effects of shared leadership. Additionally, this study offers an original team task for investigating shared leadership in teams.

What drives this diffusion process? One neo-institutional answer to this question is that new models of nationhood, organization, and social identity exist in the larger world environment (Meyer, 2009, p. 36ff). Because they are external, these “identities” and models can be adopted without huge costs and without necessarily entailing the reorganization of society or actors’ personalities. Thus the models of modern society can spread quickly because they are relatively easy to assume and because they have high legitimacy in the international environment. Conformity produces instrumental rewards as well. And it also signals to significant “other” nations and international bodies that a nation has accepted modernity and its responsibilities (see Boli & Thomas's discussion, 1999). Thus, foreign aid, loans, and credit may flow quickly to those developing countries that enact modern institutional structures like mass education and democratic elections.

Throughout the growth period of Japanese manufactured exports, from the 1960s to the late 1980s, cultural arguments abounded to explain the influence of Japanese management practices and their role in Japan’s competitiveness. The conclusions drawn were that Japanese organisations and management practices would not be transferable to foreign environments, since their cultural advantages could not be maintained. In addressing the question of intercultural transferability, this article presents a theoretical perspective on the issues of management practice as a means of identifying the causes and constraints inherent in the transfer of the Japanese model to the West and in particular to the UK. The theoretical propositions are underpinned with reference to empirical studies and hopefully identify areas for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to report on an investigation into the perceived prevalence of authentic leadership behaviours in Sixth Form College (SFC) Principals. This research compares four different models of institutional leadership and considers which are viewed by teachers as the more common in daily practice. In doing so, the research will also touch upon the relevance of values in contemporary educational leadership.

The research methodology adopted a mixed methods approach that elicited the views of teachers using a structured questionnaire approach together with co-constructed conversations with participants. The research involved 53 teachers from five SFCs spread across England.

The findings generated from this research exercise suggest that college Principals exhibit transactional behaviours far more often than those actions associated with either transformational, distributed or authentic leadership models. This outcome may be explained in terms of the pressures acting on SFCs in an increasingly competitive and uneven education market. In short, Principals act pragmatically and instrumentally to achieve their short-term goals.

This work follows on from previous research into servant leadership in the SFC sector. This is a sector of the English education system that attracts little coverage in the academic literature as research tends to be undertaken in the much larger schools or General Further Education sectors. Given this context, the paper represents an useful starting point for further research.

In contrast to the predictions from the family business and the small- and medium-sized enterprise internationalization literatures, Hidden Champions are world-market leaders exhibiting a high share of exports. The purpose of this study is to analyze their strategy of internationalization of Hidden Champions in Germany and find that the international success and strong, sustained performance emanates from their product type, enabling to successfully pursue a niche strategy for differentiated premium products.

The authors first conceptually explore how Hidden Champions pursue strategic internationalization, and then analyze a sample of N = 2,690 Hidden Champions to examine why Germany has been able to generate the highest per capita share of Hidden Champions in the world.

The study finds that on both a micro and macro level, the strong and sustained performance of Hidden Champions is driven by product type and quality strategies. Niche strategies for a knowledge-intensive, technological product enable the firm to lock-in customers. However, to safeguard the internalization of highly specific quasi-rents, Hidden Champions enter foreign markets through fully owned subsidiaries, retaining control and residual property rights. The second finding of this paper is that Germany has succeeded in deploying its high level of human capital into the Mittelstand through highly skilled workers.

Unfortunately, no micro-level panel data are available. Still macro-level data beginning in the nineteenth century provide strong empirical support for the hypothesized causality.

This is the first paper to link the strong and sustained export performance of Germany to the Hidden Champions by examining the origins of the German Mittelstand model, dating back to the social, political and economic developments of nineteenth century.

In this section I consider different models of nationhood, the diffusion of new multicultural models, and barriers to the spread of new models rooted in nations' pasts and the current fears of immigrants from the Middle East.

Modernism and postmodernism may be thought of as either moments or movements. We argue for thinking of them as moments, essentially related to each other, rather than movements that literally have historical specificity. From this perspective what is modern and what is postmodern is always shifting, such that their nature is problematic, essentially contested and shifting. Rather than use contemporary examples to make these points, we prefer to refer to quite historical examples, because the modalities become much sharper and can be seen in clearer focus. Hence, we discuss Machiavelli and Caravaggio as precursors of the postmodern and Hobbes and Boyle as precursors of the modern. Obviously, there is an irony in our intent: given the claims to currency of the debates with which we frame the paper then reference to some classical sources serves to hose down debate and fix it in a sharper, cleaner form. While it will become evident that our sympathies are not with “modernism”, it should become equally clear that we hold much of the representation of “postmodernism” to be as much at error as we do the fixing of the modern in the frame of the empiricist, the positivist, and the scientific. For us, all these terms are equally problematic, and have been so ever since we began to first think we might be modern – whether in art, social science or science. We conclude by addressing why, in the present, these classical debates should have migrated to the study of organizations.

This paper endeavours to translate Peirce's ideas into paradigmatic sociological theory in general, and praxis linked to that paradigmatic theory. Greater comprehension of the general usefulness of a Peircian Pragmaticist semiotic perspective (and ‘fallibilism’) will enhance social action and collective responsibilities. As a philosopher, C. S. Peirce interpreted the world, but he himself did not attempt to change it. How can we incorporate a unifying ‘perspective’ such as Peirce's theory into ‘method’ (both methodology and techniques)? How does that an emphasis on methodology improves sociology as an empirically based, rigorous discipline (a human ‘science’) and various forms of praxis, especially applied sociology and public sociology? If politics is going to have any long-term impact, there has to be a degree of sophistication about the theories involved (e.g. conservation of fundamental human rights and liberties, reform within liberal parliamentary democracies, transformation within neo-conservative regimes, applied sociology in professions and occupations like social work and criminology, Feminist critique and action, GLTB action, neo-Gramscian critiques and Michael Burawoy's ‘public sociology’ in the narrow, technical sense.) Praxis can include many forms of political activity that are not specifically informed by any well-developed and coherent theory. In terms of Peirce's Pragmaticist semiotics, we can translate theoretical awareness into praxis, to interpret and to change the world. Good theory and methodology is the most practical way to promote useful social action, applied sociology and public sociology. Anything less than Peircian Pragmaticism and semiotics tends to lead to fragmentation of ‘paradigms’ or postmodernist nihilism.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are important strategic actions undertaken by firms to access resources and markets. However, firms face substantial challenges in M&As during deal completion. While prior literature reviews synthesize the studies on the post-merger consequences of M&As, the literature on deal completion is largely fragmented. In this paper, the authors synthesize prior literature on deal completion into the antecedents and consequences framework and map various studies across the international business and management, finance and accounting literature at the macro-, meso- and micro-levels.

The authors adopt a content analysis-based methodology to conduct the review. First, the authors identify existing literature on deal completion based on keyword searches. Next, the authors propose a framework that integrates the extant literature from a multi-theoretic perspective across four broad themes: concepts, antecedents, implications and moderators. In this study, the authors consider not only empirical but also conceptual papers to strengthen the theoretical foundations of M&A literature. Finally, after synthesizing various studies, the authors highlight a future research agenda on deal completion.

Based on the review, this study provides important avenues for future research on M&A deal completion.

This study theoretically integrates multi-disciplinary and multi-country research on acquisition completion.

This study aims to examine the effects of competing influences emanating from firms’ social structural context (i.e. sent and received board of director interlocks and industry peers) on the adoption of an institutionally contested corporate governance code provision.

The corporate governance code provision of interest in this research recommends that German firms listed on German stock exchanges should disclose the individual remuneration arrangements for their board members. This paper uses 945 firm year observations from 2002 to 2006, the time period during which the adoption of this provision was voluntary for firms, to examine the role of firms’ social structural context in the legitimization process of this provision.

The results show that sent board interlocks to firms that defy pressures to adopt this practice have an equally pronounced but opposing effect on its institutionalization process. Received interlocks are inconsequential in this process. The results also provide evidence for the existence of competing influences emanating from firms’ industry peers. In contrast to the effects associated with sent board interlocks, at the industry level, peer acquiescence has a more pronounced effect than peer defiance. Furthermore, the practice’s legitimacy among firms’ peers moderates the effects of sent board interlocks.

The results of this paper suggest that a balanced approach to studying institutional change in corporate governance needs to acknowledge the co-existence of conflicting signals regarding the spread of new institutional models. The findings suggest that firms’ social structural context plays a central role in processes of contested institutional change. Board interlocks and industry peers carry the potential to facilitate institutional change and facilitate institutional continuity and resistance to change. However, not all board interlocks are of equal importance, and industry peers constitute a source of legitimacy to which directors forming the interlocks attend.