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Veteran managers trained to respect hierarchical systems are daunted by the fundamental changes in thinking and culture that are required to implement the Agile continuous innovation approach to manufacturing. Though widely hailed by software developers it has been slow to catch on in manufacturing. This paper aims to address this issue.

To assuage managers concerns, ten prevalent myths about Agile are addressed along with a description of how the approach really works in practice.

The paper reveals that the Agile outside‐in orientation that maximizes customer value requires a reinvention of management roles, practices, values and communications to implement it.

If research is reported on in the paper this section must be completed and should include suggestions for future research and any identified limitations in the research process.

Agile is a way of forcing either high performance or change because results are apparent so quickly, not years later when the project runs out of money and the product flops in the marketplace.

The article dispels many myths about Agile and shows managers how to overcome resistance to adopting the Agile approach, which addresses the central problem at the very core of a hierarchical bureaucracy, namely, its limited ability to innovate.

A core premise of the paper is that participative, democratic organizational forms have a direct effect on openness. A key proposition is that organizational forms that promote inclusion, transparency and shared decision-making more broadly as part of their structure and culture would enhance greater openness. However, democratic forms are not a panacea when it comes to openness, there are inherent paradoxes, leading to inevitable tradeoffs that democratic organizations must manage.

The theoretical framework in the study explores the interaction between open strategy making and organizational democracy. This paper reviews the literature on open strategy and organizational democracy and presents propositions linking openness and elements of democratic organizations.

Open strategy requires a level of inclusion and transparency not typically associated with hierarchical organizations. This paper proposed that an organizational context where there are institutionalized processes that promote both transparency and inclusiveness, shared decision-making and a supportive organizational culture would promote openness. At the same time, these organizations need to manage key paradoxes associated with organizational democracy to benefit from its positive effect on openness. The idea is not that hierarchies cannot be open; they may simply need to be more creative and work harder at providing the scaffolding for participation.

This is a conceptual paper and we cannot make any claims of causality. It is also possible to refine the framework by adding or eliminating some of the conceptual variables.

Opening up the strategy process to non-traditional stakeholders can improve the strategy formation process. Non-traditional stakeholders can bring new insight, and be motivated and prepared for strategy implementation when they are part of the strategy formation process. Organizations need to focus on creating a climate that supports openness by emphasizing structural forms that promote openness. Sharing decision-making, profits and creating a democratic culture are important for successful openness. In addition, organizations need to manage the tradeoffs that arise as they link organizational democracy to openness.

This paper discusses the link between open strategy and organizational democracy. The research sheds light on how organizational forms, specifically structure affects openness, as well as the limits to structure and openness.

The chapter uses a comparative case study design to address the mutations and trajectories of transparency in two organizations. We chose organizations that are similar in that they favor extensive forms of self-disclosure, but also different in terms of which sector they inhabit, audiences, and organization type: the Pirate Party of Germany and the lobby organization Epsilon. The findings, in close dialog with different threads in the transparency literature, unveil three crucial dimensions in which transparency regimes are likely to trigger unintended consequences: first, organizations have to cope with the tension between the disclosure of internal information on the one hand, and the need to appear consistent in public on the other. Second, transparency strategies can, however, turn into surveillance and trigger new forms of data ordering, sorting, and aggregating practices. Third, disclosure practices create and undermine complex hierarchies and power relations for organizational members. The comparison of the cases demonstrates that it is crucial to observe the practical implications and multiple trajectories of transparency practices.

Colleges of education must do more than expose prospective educators to “best” practices for teaching and leading linguistically, culturally, and ethnically diverse students. Educators need to develop attitudes, knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to become competent in catering to diverse student populations in schools. In this chapter, we seek to extend this conversation using a critical pedagogical lens. We draw specifically on Paulo Freire’s concept of radical love to interrogate our ways of teaching, leading, and opening up spaces for dialogue toward educating pre-service teachers and leaders who are critically conscious. Additionally, we use Paulo Freire’s concept of radical love to explore the similarities and disjunctures in our pedagogy and positionalities as international scholars of color.

This paper aims to show how pioneering organizations can reinvent management practice by simultaneously implementing five fundamental shifts aimed at achieving continuous innovation and disciplined execution.

The paper looks at five transformations that are required, which are: the firm's goal becomes delighting and engaging customers (a shift from an inside‐out to outside‐in perspective); the role of managers changes (from controller to enabler); the mode of managerial coordination switches (from command‐and‐control to dynamic linking); the values practiced shifts (from a single focus on shareholder value to values relevant to all stakeholders); and the communications mode of management changes (from command to conversation).

This Masterclass offers leaders an overview of the practices needed to accomplish and institutionalize the five shifts.

Meshing a client focus with autonomous teams and disciplined execution requires a set of measures called “dynamic linking.” “Dynamic linking” means that: the work is done in short cycles; the management sets priorities in terms of the goals of work in the cycle, based on what is known about what might delight the client; decisions about how the work is to be carried out to achieve those goals are largely the responsibility of those doing the work; and progress is measured (to the extent possible) by direct client feedback at the end of each cycle.

None of the five shifts is new in itself. Success, however, requires putting all five shifts into operation together. This article provides a state‐of‐the‐art primer for leaders managing change.

Because traditional hierarchical management is increasingly counterproductive in an environment of rapid change that requires continuous enterprise‐wide innovation, the paper aims to offer a radical alternative approach to management.

By studying highly effective business practices actually being applied in a variety of industries, the author has identified seven principles of radical management. Implemented together they form a mutually reinforcing system.

What a few firms have discovered is that there is a revolutionary way of organizing and managing that enables an organization to achieve continuous value innovation.

As one manager explains the system's potential for changing the workplace, “Once you introduce this, it affects everything in the organization – the way you plan, the way you manage, the way you work. Everything is different. It changes the game fundamentally.”

The author introduces a radical system of management, based on seven principles, that supports the goal of continuous enterprise‐wide value innovation.

Stakeholder paradigm has been gaining currency over the past few decades and technological breakthroughs have been influential in building its momentum. Hyper-Transparency is emerging as a building block and as an indispensable concomitant of stakeholder paradigm. The crux of a Hyper-Transparent organization is trust. The new paradigm requires substituting translucent and opaque business practices with fully transparent ones under which lasting trust can be built between the organization and its stakeholders. However, the nub of the stakeholder paradigm is the changes inside the organizations as well as changes in relation to their external environment, and transparency is both a driver and a resultant of these changes. Transparency is an integral part of corporate social responsibility debate and an eristic issue for the stakeholders. Moreover, Hyper-Transparency empowers the stakeholders to considerably influence the decision making sphere. In this chapter, transparency, its drivers and tools as well as the power of stakeholders in the new age of Hyper-Transparency alongside a number of case studies are presented.