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The objective of this paper is to conceptualize the serendipity of leadership effectiveness in management and business practices. The term “serendipity” is defined as the mix of leadership effectiveness by accident and sagacity in management and business practices.

The paper provides a conceptual discussion of the serendipity of leadership effectiveness in management and business practices.

This paper contributes a number of models and a matrix that are introduced to address the underlying criteria of the cause‐effect relationship between leadership effectiveness and organizational achievements.

This paper challenges the idealistic picture that flourishes in the management literature and in management practice of the direct, positive impact of leadership on prosperous management and business practices. In fact, it reinforces and underpins the critical or sceptical views of leadership effectiveness raised in the literature.

Normally, views of organizational achievements are based on the assumption that contextual, timely and skilful precisions in leadership effectiveness are high. Shareholders and stakeholders may benefit from a thorough examination of these issues in organizational achievements. It would not be surprising to find that leadership effectiveness in management and business practices to a minor or major extent is derived from pure luck and coincidence in contextual and timely precisions: right place, right time. This means that such leadership effectiveness may be based on serendipity rather than skilfulness in terms of organizational achievements.

The authors contend that the term “serendipity” contributes to enhance the ongoing discussion in the literature of the link between leadership effectiveness and organizational achievements. It also provides a fundament of understanding, explanation and prediction of leadership effectiveness in management and business practices.

The purpose of this study is to test the direct and mediating effects of personality, conflict management style, and leader effectiveness. This was deemed necessary, given the number of studies testing antecedents and outcomes of conflict management – but never within a single research design.

Structural equation modeling was used to test a model linking personality, conflict management, and leader effectiveness for 126 managers and 624 employees from various organizations. Subjects completed the Five‐Factor Personality Inventory, Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory‐II, and selected items from the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire that measure leadership effectiveness.

Findings indicate that an integrating conflict management style fully mediates the relationship between neuroticism and leadership effectiveness and partially mediates the relationship between conscientiousness and leadership effectiveness. Conscientiousness was the best predictor of effectiveness among all variables studied in this research, accounting for 10 percent of the variance.

Future studies should link both antecedents and outcomes to conflict management in the same design – so as not to miss potential mediating effects.

Although the work is preliminary, it appears that conscientious individuals tend to be most effective in organizations.

The work represents the first study linking personality, conflict styles, and effectiveness in a single design.

This paper studies how the concepts of efficiency, effectiveness and efficacy are used in project management literature. The concepts relate to the degree of success or failure of projects and the degree to which the results are achieved. The purpose of this paper is to review the use of the concepts of efficiency, efficacy and effectiveness in project management literature and among practitioners.

The study is based on an extensive literature review, initially from the International Journal of Managing Projects in Business. The first phase involved searching the words “efficiency”, “effectiveness” and “efficacy” in all articles of the journal, and then quantifying the results. This was followed by a qualitative search of the same articles with the aim of understanding how the terms “project efficiency”, “project efficacy” and “project effectiveness” are used. A further intensive literature review was then conducted in other literatures in the field of project management, including, but not limited to, International Journal of Project Management and Project Management Journal. Finally, the authors complemented the review by including theories from deep searches of Google Scholar and Google Books using the parameters “project efficiency”, “project effectiveness” and “project efficacy” and checked how the three concepts are used in other fields.

This research reveals there is wide diversity in interpretations of the three concepts among research scholars and practitioners, which makes it challenging to apply these three concepts appropriately and clearly. As a consequence, the authors propose a model for describing these concepts.

This research is based on an academic and non-academic literature review. It identifies a number of inconsistencies in existing literature regarding the three concepts.

This review enriches understanding of project management. Clarifying the understanding of project efficiency, project effectiveness and project efficacy will help and support organisational improvement. A clear and aligned view of these concepts can also be a basis for measurements based on possible developed indicators.

This paper highlights the gap in the literature concerning the practical use and interpretation of the concepts “project efficiency”, “project effectiveness” and “project efficacy”.

This study analyses the determinants of an effective performance management system (PMS) in the public sector of Mauritius. It develops a theoretical model that has its roots in the resource-based theory and the institutional theory.

The study uses a quantitative approach, making use of a structured questionnaire to collect data from 158 public sector organisations. Both email and postal methods were used for data collection. A hierarchical regression analysis is used to assess the effect of the organisational factors on PMS effectiveness, while controlling for a number of organisational profile variables.

Results indicate that PMS is only moderately effective. Managers’ involvement, senior management involvement and performance feedback are significant predictors of PMSs effectiveness.

Findings of the study may have limited applicability to developed and industrialised countries and even developing countries that have a different public sector culture to that of Mauritius.

The findings demonstrate that the effectiveness of PMSs is strongly reliant on the involvement of senior management. Accordingly, public sector managers should ensure that they are fully committed and engaged in performance management tasks.

The study contributes to the limited research on the effectiveness of PMSs in developing countries that have a different bureaucratic and performance culture to that of developed nations.

This study investigates the link between servant leadership and project management effectiveness in developmental projects in non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Further, this study examined the mediating role of conflict resolution and moderating role of organisational culture.

A three-wave survey of 288 non-governmental organisation (NGO) employees was used to evaluate the hypotheses. Hierarchical regression analysis and Hayes' PROCESS macro technique were used for data analysis.

In this study, servant leadership positively affects employee project management effectiveness in developmental projects in NGOs, and conflict resolution mediates the relationship. Furthermore, the results show that organisational culture moderates the positive relationship between servant leadership and employee project management effectiveness. Moreover, the authors investigated the hypotheses via a moderation mediation model. The strength of the mediated link between servant leadership and project management effectiveness (via conflict resolution) depends on organisational culture strength.

Leaders that practice servant leadership care for their employees genuinely and serve them by allowing them to make their own decisions. Every organisation may benefit from this leadership style since it encourages project effectiveness

New empirical data from this study suggests that servant leadership positively and substantially affects employee project management effectiveness in developmental projects in NGOs.

The purpose of the paper is to develop a conceptual framework for improving the effectiveness of risk management in supply networks following a critical literature review.

A critical review of 91 scholarly journal articles published between 2000 and 2018 supports the development of an integrated conceptual framework.

The findings emphasize that supply chain integration (SCI) can have both a positive and negative impact on the effectiveness of risk management in supply networks. It is possible to have a positive effect when SCI can be used to develop competencies in joint risk planning within the organization and with wider supply network members and, in turn, to develop collaborative risk management capabilities. Supply network characteristics can influence whether and the extent to which SCI has a positive or negative impact on risk management effectiveness.

The conceptual framework can be used to empirically assess the role of SCI for effective risk management. Dynamic evaluation of the effectiveness of risk management and potential redesign of the supply network by considering other contingent factors are some future research avenues.

There is a need for developing specific competencies in risk planning within organizations and joint risk planning with supply network members which, in turn, can help develop collaborative risk management capabilities to improve the effectiveness of risk management in supply networks. Network characteristics will influence whether and the extent to which SCI results in the effectiveness of risk management.

Moving beyond recent (systematic) reviews on supply chain risk management, this study develops a novel conceptual framework interlinking SCI and the effectiveness of risk management while considering network characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to map out managers' understanding of effectiveness and to assess the application of knowledge of effectiveness in secondary healthcare management. Additionally, the study aims to assess the present situation of effectiveness research and the measures used in divisions of treatment.

The study was conducted by interviewing department directors, chief medical officers and directors of nursing (n=38) in the surgical, medical and psychiatric divisions of the five largest hospital districts in Finland.

The concept of effectiveness was complex, and difficult to concretise and understand uniformly. Knowledge of effectiveness supports both clinical and administrative management. Managers have different ways of applying knowledge of effectiveness depending on their managerial role. Effectiveness studies and measurement are still relatively rare in secondary healthcare and rarely identified as such by management.

The concept of effectiveness is not clear in management. Managers have an unclear understanding of knowledge of effectiveness and its application in secondary healthcare management.

The paper addresses the need for a discussion on effectiveness in secondary health care. In addition, managers need knowledge and support for implementing the policy of effectiveness on all levels of management.

This study aims to examine the influence of lean management practices on organizational process effectiveness and maturity. The underlying assumption of this paper is that lean management practices may have a positive relation with the initiation and the adoption of a process management approach and be a first step to process management success.

Through a quantitative perspective, a survey was carried out in the Brazilian Federal Police with a valid sample of 991 participants. Data analysis was executed with confirmatory factor analysis and structural equations modeling.

Lean management practices have a positive influence on the Brazilian Federal Police process maturity and on process effectiveness. Process maturity has a positive impact on process effectiveness. The results extend the applicability of lean management practices in the public service scenario. The results will decrease the high failure rates in process transformation projects.

The main limitation of this study is that the researchers could not maintain full control of the research respondents because the data collection was carried out online.

Considering a scenario of increased pressure to upgrade organizational decisional process in the public sector and to offer better public services, the lean management practices can effectively contribute to the development of strategies and actions that will enhance a more effective public service management reality.

This study may contribute as a source of empirical data for future research in other national public organizations and may assist others to redesigning its strategies and actions to achieve excellence in decision-making, by adopting a more agile quality public service with less costs and waste.

New measurement and structural models were defined to analyze lean management practices in the public service as the predictors of organizational process maturity and effectiveness. The discussion on lean management practices, as a first step in process approach applicability, enhances a new process-based management perspective.

This paper identifies the key relationships of organizational effectiveness and leadership in southeast Asia. Managers from 1,065 multinational companies based in Thailand and representing 31 different nationalities participated in this study. International leader characteristics and organizational culture are found to determine an appropriate multicultural management style. Executive motivation is strongly influenced by this multicultural management style. Different dimensions of organizational effectiveness, including return on assets, most admired, job satisfaction and personal satisfaction are related to specific aspects of leader characteristics, organizational culture and multicultural management style.

Most studies of conflict handling styles in organizations analyze these styles separately. These studies assume that individuals are oriented towards the use of one of the styles of conflict management. As a result, different styles are compared one by one as if they were independent. In contrast, from a more all‐embracing perspective people are seen as adopting configurations of styles. The interest in this alternative perspective lies in exploring the relations between these styles, how they combine and form patterns of conflict styles. This article presents an exploratory study that seeks to identify empirically the specific combinations of conflict handling styles that result in differentiated patterns within groups of managers. By using hierarchical and non‐hierarchical cluster analyses of a sample of managers, different patterns of conflict management were identified. The effectiveness of each of the resulting patterns was analyzed in terms of its influence on the parties' joint substantive outcomes and their mutual relationship. Results show that patterns using multiple conflict handling styles were more effective than patterns based on a single style.