Search results

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the life and works of Alfred Chandler and highlight the impact of his thoughts on organizational theory, strategy and history.

The paper analyzes Alfred Chandler's life and the lasting contributions his works have provided to many disciplines as well as the work of his revisionists. Furthermore, the paper analyzes his contributions to the understanding of US business history and global business history.

Chandler's conceptualization of the growth of large business and management practices have shaped business history by transitioning from an American exceptionalist view to a more global comparative perspective.

The paper provides Chandler's insights as well as those of his revisionists regarding USA and comparative global business history.

The paper highlights Chandler's cross‐disciplinary impact and analyzes Chandlerian and revisionist perspectives in both the American exceptionalist as well as the global comparative eras of Chandler's life.

The purpose of this paper is to juxtapose the contemporary views of industrial relations (IR) and human resource management (HRM) with the ideas expressed by Chester Barnard.

The paper analyzes Chester Barnard's views along the four premises that underlie contemporary perspectives on the fields of IR and HRM.

Barnard's main points: that sincerity and honesty of management is crucial to developing an individual employee's will to collaborate, and that collective cooperation is superior to collective bargaining are found to resonate well with the contemporary views and provide a clear indication for Barnard's preference of human resource perspective to the IR perspective.

This paper provides Barnard's practical insights into why managing IR and HR by policies leads to poor management.

This paper is the first to recognize Barnard's unique contribution to contemporary perspectives on IR and HRM disciplines.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the body of knowledge of authentic leadership in extreme contexts by developing a framework grounded in the Sartrean existentialist perspective on authenticity and illustrating this framework using the works of Xenophon.

The authors use Sartre’s existential view of authenticity to develop a framework of authentic leadership in extreme contexts. They then use this framework to examine Xenophon’s recount of the retreat of the 10,000 in the classic work, Anabasis. For this analysis, the authors iterate between the ideas of the past and the concepts of the present to understand how this classic has influenced and informed the current body of knowledge about leadership.

Using a Sartrean existentialist lens, “in extremis” authentic leaders exhibit an awareness of context extremity, responsibility in leading and following to share risks in extreme contexts and self-determination that inspires mutual trust and loyalty.

A Sartrean existentialist perspective suggests that authentic leaders in extreme contexts reflect authenticity by exhibiting and encouraging freedom of choice. By espousing this perspective, authentic leaders create common goals and interests that appeal to followers' intrinsic motivation which has been found to result in positive individual and organizational outcomes.

This paper contributes to the authentic leadership literature by using an existential conceptualization of authenticity to examine leadership in extreme contexts. This conceptualization might be more appropriate than the Aristotelian virtue-based deterministic philosophy that has dominated authentic leadership research.

The purpose of this paper is to explain why individuals with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) gravitate towards and excel in highly dynamic environments such as those encountered by family business owners.

This conceptual paper draws on extant literature to establish parallels between the executive functions of individuals with AD/HD and entrepreneurial cognition. The authors use previous theoretical and empirical research to suggest that the use of intuition in the decision‐making process may explain the link between individuals with AD/HD and entrepreneurs.

Family members with AD/HD suffer from diminished executive functions that force them to make decisions and act upon information that would be insufficient for the non‐entrepreneur in the family.

The paper presents evidence suggesting a link between executive functions and intuitive decision making in the family business context, however, empirical research is now warranted to advance this line of research.

Establishing the relationship between AD/HD and entrepreneurship may lead family business leaders to identify and integrate family members with AD/HD in to the family firm.

The contribution of this paper is to explain, based on bounded rationality, why individuals with AD/HD gravitate to entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to further fill the void of American slavery within management history and leadership studies by presenting the unique case of Joseph E. Davis's paternalistic leadership.

This case was selected because of Davis's attempt to transplant Robert Owen's utopian practices of social harmony in an industrial, textile‐mill setting to the backdrop of his slavery plantation. The method used is the historical method of analyzing both primary and secondary sources of data about Joseph E. Davis, a Mississippi planter, during the time periods of antebellum and reconstruction.

This analysis indicates that Joseph E. Davis exhibited benevolence, authoritarianism, and, to a degree, moral paternalistic leadership with his slaves. Yet, due to his ideology and the context, he still defended slavery and Southern rights.

Historical knowledge about paternalistic leadership during the antebellum slavery and reconstruction time period will help to end the denial of slavery in management studies, as well as contribute to the understanding of paternalism in many contemporary cultures.

This is the first article to provide primary evidence of paternalistic leadership in management history studies within this erroneously disregarded period.

This paper analyzes Chandler's biography of Henry Varnum Poor to assess Chandler's contribution to management history as a biographer.

Using Winter's content thematic analysis, measure Poor's motivational needs for achievement, affiliation‐intimacy, and power, as they are depicted by Chandler throughout the stages of Poor's career as a business editor, analyst, and reformer.

Our analysis shows that Chandler views Poor's motivation as stable throughout Poor's three professional roles. This paper found that Chandler views Poor as primarily driven by his need for power, followed by a significant need for achievement, and a minor need for affiliation throughout his working life.

This research is unique because it provides the first social‐scientific assessment of Chandler's contribution to management history as a biographer.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how one of Dale Carnegie's historically best selling self‐help books, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, resonates with the contemporary conceptualization of psychological capital (PsyCap).

The authors use a narrative historical interpretation to analyze Dale Carnegie's book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Initially, two of the co‐authors independently identified passages mirroring each of the four PsyCap capacities, while in the final stage a consensus on the interpretation was reached with the remaining co‐authors.

The components of the PsyCap construct resonate well with the prescriptions that Carnegie narrated and outlined in his best selling book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.

The findings of this study should be interpreted with a recognition that an alternative critical approach to narrative analysis could have been conducted based on the narrative logic of social power structure.

This paper is unique in placing an emphasis on the insights researchers and practitioners alike can gain by re‐evaluating the self‐help books from the past.

The purpose of this study is to examine an historical account of an effective leader who was able to draw from multiple styles of leadership, and choose a dominant style based upon contextual constraints and demands context, and subordinate behaviors associated with leadership styles not suited to the context.

To identify his prominent style at each leadership episode, we critically analyzed Nehemiah’s leadership role transitions across 13 chapters of text using sociohistorical method and a quasi-repeated treatment design via qualitative comparative analysis.

We found that Nehemiah adapted his behaviors such that his prominently displayed leadership style varied based on dynamic configurations of demands placed on him during his rebuilding efforts. As Nehemiah progressed through distinct stages of his mission, he differentially emphasized tactics associated with different styles of leadership in response to the contextual demands that were most salient during each stage.

Organizational leaders are presented with evidence that developing a broad repertoire of leadership behaviors is essential to guiding followers within dynamic environments.

This paper uses a novel historical source material to investigate contemporary leadership concepts grounded in established theoretical frameworks. Using this material, we demonstrate the applicability of various leadership styles within different contexts, and use Nehemiah as an illustration of an effective leader capable of fluidly enacting multiple leadership styles.