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Visionary management is a key issue for all organizations. It is a never‐ending journey toward competitive advantage. By making visionary thinking a part of your daily routine, you will integrate it into all aspects of your work. This should become your organization’s way of life. This article introduces a visionary management model, based on an ambiguous mission, vision, core values, smart goals, strategies, critical success factors, and related performance indicators. It is based on the most recent book of the author.

This research paper takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from empirical data, to explore the relationship between organisational change management and strategic leadership to promote growth in value-driven, membership-based organisations through a qualitative multi-case-based analysis and to provide a discussion on the philosophies and practices of leadership teams which underpin successful organisational change within such not-for-profit organisations.

Each participating organisation had 700+ members, had previously experienced prolonged periods of auditable membership growth and employed distinctly different organisational models to facilitate growth. A qualitative multi-case study approach was adopted informed by 32 interviews with eight leadership teams. A thematic analysis provided a comparative review of responses.

All case study organisations emphasised the significance of strategic leadership teams and clearly communicated vision and flexible organisational structures as central to their strategic planning and subsequent growth. This builds on previous research which has explored organisational change in not-for-profit organisations and strategic leadership in not-for-profit organisations, which explores the strong linkages between the roles and functions of strategic leadership, organisational structures designed with the adaptive capacity to manage continuous and convergent change and their impact on sustained growth. Such linkages are more specifically supported by extended tenure of office for those in senior leadership roles, clear delineation of roles and responsibilities, the adoption of an outward growth-oriented focus and adaptable structures that encourage wider participation in leadership and management functions for the fulfilment of the organisation's mission. Most significantly, these organisations plan with change and growth in mind.

The findings of this research have transferable value to other not-for-profit, membership-based, value-driven organisations as well as other faith-based organisations, which will help to provide future linkages between leadership structures, decision-making and organisational design and its impact on the not-for-profit organisations' capacity for sustained growth.

This research challenges previous conceptions on UK church growth trends and observes that all the case organisations presented different organisational structures which were intentionally designed, context specific and developed by leadership teams with sustained growth in mind. Results from psychometric testing of participants confirmed that senior leaders of large value-driven organisations that have demonstrated a capacity for sustained growth are consistently likely to exhibit leadership characteristics which demonstrate a balanced capacity for personal humility and a committed resolve or professional will, which is also reflected in a pragmatic-type leadership style, building on previous psychometric testing research in this context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the current state of mission and vision statements on corporate websites of Malaysian and Singaporean corporations based on Aaker's brand personality dimensions and analyze how the dimensions are effectively used to develop a unique corporate identity.

Content analysis is employed to examine similarities and differences for 300 Malaysian and 214 Singaporean consumer corporations based on Aaker's big five brand personality framework.

Generally most companies tend to publish and communicate their mission and vision statements visibly to general stakeholders. First, both Malaysian and Singaporean companies have weak brand personality dimensions which reflect the projection of corporate identity of companies. Second, there is a significant difference in the brand personality dimensions between Malaysian and Singaporean consumer corporations. Finally, evidence showed that most Malaysian and Singaporean companies rather failed to position themselves in the marketplace using brand personality dimensions in their vision and mission statements. This may affect their overall organizational direction in building a unique corporate identity and gaining competitive advantages within the context of a global business environment.

The study acknowledges the increase in communicating the mission and vision statements on the corporate websites of Malaysian and Singaporean corporations. However, there is a need for corporations in Malaysia and Singapore to orchestrate their core competence in order to develop a unique corporate identity in a global business environment.

The study contributes to the corporate identity literature in providing an insight into how corporations communicate the desired brand personality through their websites for the critical inquiry of the dominant coalition and main stakeholders.

Although organizational visions can guide everyday work, little is known about how visions relating to non-academic goals, such as social justice, might be integrated into educators’ technology practices. The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze one school’s 1:1 iPad initiative, including the potential role played by the school’s social justice mission.

This mixed-methods case study drew upon data collected in a 1:1 school enrolling approximately 1,500 students. In total, approximately 138 educators responded to the online survey, and 18 educators participated in interviews. Social network analysis (SNA) techniques (i.e. faction analysis) and analysis of variance helped to describe educators’ instructional practices and attitudes involving iPads, including the extent to which devices were used in alignment with the school’s mission and vision.

Lacking a centralizing core of actors, the school was found to be divided into nine distinct, cohesive subgroups (i.e. factions). Statistically significant differences were found among these communities of discourse. Leaders’ lack of centrality in school change, especially as it related to helping teachers envision ways to connect mission with practices, may have hindered technology integration and instructional innovation.

Whereas prior research has described the centralizing role leaders may play in 1:1 initiatives, this study demonstrates how a lack of centralized leadership structures may adversely impact a sense of mission, and ultimately, technology integration. Moreover, this study advances the use of SNA methodologies in studies of leadership, especially the use of latent, underlying communities of discourse as categories for further analysis. As such, the authors discuss recommendations for leaders regarding the development of cohesion around issues of mission, vision and technology integration. Further, the authors point toward ways in which scholars might conceptualize about technologically supported educational change.

The European Business Excellence Model (EBEM) is nowadays a familiar framework, used for a spectrum of purposes, with the most frequent aim from its full deployment being the attainment of organizational success. The EBEM's requirements, however, involve abstruse management concepts and thus, there is, frequently, a significant variety within the suggested approaches to face the criteria requirements. Although, such integrated business excellence models should not necessarily be of a very prescriptive nature, allowing for deployment latitude among sectors and types of businesses, a more homogeneous understanding of the suggested approaches to the requirements might be a welcome basis by both academics and business professionals. This paper aims to resolve some of the questionable concepts associated with the practical deployment of EBEM.

Integration of the known literature, stemming from both published articles and best practices already made available, to form a well defined framework of suggested approaches to the EBEM's requirements is the approach taken.

The findings associated with the first requirement of Sub‐Criterion 1a of the EBEM (“leaders developing the Mission, Vision and Culture”) are reported here.

Most of the relevant information describing current, applicable business practices is not yet publicly available, and has to be deduced mainly from responses to questionnaires/interviews.

Specific frameworks of suggested approaches for the well known EBEM's requirements have not, as yet, been made available in the literature.

This chapter proposes that organizational strategy formation should be characterized theoretically as a process that is subject to several interacting forces, rather than represented by separate discrete decision-models or theoretic perspectives, as is commonly done in the strategic management literature. Based on an extensive review of relevant theory and empirical work in strategic decision-making, organizational change theory, cognitive and social psychology, and strategy processes, seven kinds of “forces” – rational, imposed, teleological, learning, political, heuristic, and social – are identified as interacting in and having significant influence on the strategy formation process. It is further argued that by applying a holistic “forces-view” of the significant and interacting influences on strategy formation, we can better understand the dynamics and challenges in managing the process of defining and changing organizational strategies.

Understanding the multifaceted roles and responsibilities of the district superintendent as an instructional leader has proved to be a long‐standing and sometimes elusive endeavor. In spite of the consistency of research findings, instructional leadership remains one of the more controversial characteristics associated with the examination of the district superintendent. The findings reported here are part of a larger study on the role and responsibilities of the superintendent as an instructional leader. Specifically, this investigation examined the covariance between school principals’ and school board members’ views of the instructional leadership of the district superintendent. Results from this correlational and regression analysis empirically illustrate a statistically significant relationship between superintendent vision and the factors of organizational mission, program and personnel evaluation, principal decision‐making and school board/community involvement. The findings also suggest that involvement of professional educators and members of the community in formulating instructional programs significantly affects the success of the district leader.

A new blueprint for creating a learning organization is needed in which personal and organizational performance and learning mutually reinforce each other on a sustainable basis. Traditional business management concepts are insufficiently committed to learning and rarely take the specific personal ambitions of employees into account. In consequence there are many superficial improvements, marked by temporary and cosmetic changes, which are coupled with failing projects that lack sufficient buy‐in by personnel and, in some cases, even have an adverse effect. Sets out to examine this situation.

Building insight from experience.

This paper introduces a new business management concept, called total performance scorecard (TPS). It stresses the importance of and need for developing an organizational structure and philosophy that combine the goals and aspirations of the individual with those of the company. It is a melding process, which results in a corporate culture that is both individually and organizationally driven.

The concepts embodied in this management concept provide solutions to preserving and utilizing individual rights and capabilities while adjusting the organizational structure and philosophy to this new environment. This has been done by expanding and integrating concepts such as the balanced scorecard, total quality management, performance management and competence management into one overall framework.

The resulting framework, TPS, creates a framework and philosophy that combine the goals and aspirations of the individual with those of the organisation. It is a melding process, which results in a corporate culture that is both individually and organizationally driven.

There is a relationship between the organizations’ strategic objectives and their corporate communications. The latter is an important feature of organizational performance. Organizational leaders are continuously facing the challenge of communicating their strategic goals to their stakeholders. Very often, they are adopting performance management tools to meet this challenge. Consequently, this chapter explains that the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) can be used to evaluate and measure the firms’ corporate communications and their organizational performance. This tool has been widely recognized by academics and managers as it is capable of aligning organizational strategies (including their missions and visions), strategic indicators (leading and lagging indicators) and stakeholder management. A review of the relevant literature review suggests that many practitioners are becoming strategic in their corporate communications. In this light, this chapter clarifies that the BSC approach can be used to support them in their stakeholder engagement. This contribution is useful for both academics and practitioners as it aligns the corporate communication practices with organizational strategy and performance management in the digital era.