Search results

Findings by leadership researcher Robert J. Thomas suggest that organizations reconsider what they know about how successful leaders actually learn. In an interview Thomas aims to explain what he means by crucible experiences and how leaders learn from them.

The paper takes the form of an interview with leadership researcher Robert J. Thomas.

Thomas believes that organizations can develop more leaders by helping promising employees learn from experience, especially situations he calls “crucibles.” Potential leaders, he says, must then develop and apply a personal learning strategy, and they must practice as they perform. Aspiring leaders must learn from experience, develop and apply a personal learning strategy, and practice their craft as they perform it. The five criteria for experience‐based leadership development are presented.

Thomas found that leaders benefit from difficult experiences that transform their attitudes or behavior. These tests – crucible experiences – can and often do provide rich opportunities to learn leadership lessons and learning perspectives that last a lifetime.

Thomas describes the methods of Toyota and Boeing (with its Waypoint program), two corporate exemplars of experience‐based leader development. These programs prepare people to extract learning from experience. They understand that people have to be supported while they're engaged in experienced‐based learning.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

According to the authors’ research, while top-level executives look forward to the potential of artificial intelligent systems in their firms, line managers are much more skeptical. This article advises on i8mplementation strategy.

Drawing on findings from Accenture’s survey of 1,770 managers in 14 countries and interviews with 37 senior executives responsible for digital transformation, the authors have identified patterns in managers’ attitudes and offer strategies for effective adoption of the new technology.

When managers have a say and involvement in initial training efforts, they gain a sense of ownership throughout the learning process as well as familiarity with intelligent systems.

The introduction of AI will put a premium on “soft” skills such as collaboration, creativity and good judgment, which may be just as important, if not more important, than technical skills in the future.

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) promises to transform the nature of work and the relationship among human beings and machines in organizations. When the authors asked whether leaders would be comfortable with AI monitoring and evaluating their work, 42 percent of the top managers in our survey strongly agreed, while only 15 percent of first-line managers shared the same sentiment.” This research discovered that top executives cannot assume that mid- and lower-level managers will share their appreciation for AI.

Highlights some of the major conceptual and methodological issues involved in organisational buying behaviour. Aims to avoid pitfalls involved in the utilisation of research regarding specified issues — at the same time stimulating research aimed at the resolution of these issues. Reviews the current status of organisational buying behaviour, follows this by identifying five potential groups of users of information on organisational buying behaviour. Goes on to focus on the conceptual and methodological issues involved in organisational buying research. Suggests new research directions which, if implemented, could help advance the relevance and quality of organisational buying research. States that academic studies, directly concerned with a better understanding of organisational buying behaviour can be classified as falling into one of three areas the: buying centre (least studied area); organisational buying centre and process; or factors affecting the organisational buying centre and process. Purports that these three concepts can provide the basis for organising much of the diverse research efforts in organisational buying behaviour and goes on to illustrate findings from each of these areas and discusses them in depth.

Competing in the mid‐to‐late 1990s will require world‐class firms to rely increasingly on their suppliers while at the same time developing more aggressive and executive supported purchasing, supply base and sourcing strategies, because suppliers′ performance is not meeting expectations of purchasers. This finding was one result of a research effort with over 100 different firms over a five‐year period to determine the importance of the supply base, current supplier performance and emerging supply base/sourcing strategies being used by leading firms to contribute to competitive advantage. It was further determined that significant opportunities exist to accelerate development of supplier capabilities and performance. Identifies and discusses continuous improvement and breakthrough supply base and sourcing strategies to achieve supply base improvement.

This paper represents a discussion of transfer pricing (TP). Key factors are identified and propositions developed from tax accounting and other perspectives. Stages of the TP decision process are identified along with the critical factors directly affecting sales and a TP audit. Propositions are derived which show relationships among these variables and tax rates, competition, and TP methodologies. Finally, academic research implications are suggested.

The authors introduce an experience‐based approach offering a comprehensive new way of developing leaders. It knits together on‐the‐job experience, life experience, and specific skill development, rather than presenting employees with a smorgasbord of classes and programs that is tenuously linked (if it is linked at all) to career development, succession planning, or business objectives.

The authors base their conclusions on previous Accenture research and their observations of leadership technology as used by organizations.

Advances in learning models, information technology, and leadership research strongly suggest that new approaches like experience‐based learning hold strong promise in helping companies meet the high performance challenge.

The experience‐based approach bridges the gap between practice and performance through creative uses of information and communication technology. Research to validate and show the impact of the experience‐based approach compared to various alternatives would be welcome.

The experience‐based method can be adapted to the developmental needs and opportunities of leaders and potential leaders at all stages of their careers, and also to the changing needs of organizations operating in complex and uncertain environments. The goal of experience‐based leadership development is to equip employees to mine their experiences – continuously and intensively – for insight into what it takes to lead, what it takes to grow as a leader, and what it takes to cultivate the leader in others (peers and superiors as well as subordinates).

Today's challenge for organizations is to grow more leaders over a larger terrain and faster than ever before. Article explains how a program that uses learning models, information technology, and leadership research to link experience and leadership training can help companies produce higher quality leaders more efficiently.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of identifying market segments in multistage markets and assessing whether their alignment could provide a useful managerial approach to find competitive advantage and better understand market opportunities.

Using data from a pilot project, need-based market segments from different market stages were identified and their potential alignment evaluated. The data were not designed to test hypotheses, nor were they originally intended to be used to align segments. Nevertheless, they provided a unique opportunity to explore multistage segmentation and segment alignment in a business-to-business (B2B) setting.

Overall, the findings of this exploratory study should encourage both academics and practitioners to continue to explore the possibility of studying and aligning multistage market segments. The possibility of aligning segments was demonstrated using visual alignment based on managerial judgment of data and alignment based on a combined cluster analysis of customers across the multistage markets.

First, the market research was not specifically designed to formulate and test hypotheses about the feasibility of aligning segments in multistage markets – it is an exploratory study. The research was based on a pilot project, and the survey-derived databases were conveniently available for analysis. While sample sizes were small, they are typical of many B2B markets. Second, to more effectively study complex relationships in multistage markets, it would have been desirable to include a more comprehensive set of needs. Each market stage has not only a set of their own perceived needs but also a set of perceptions of the needs of other stages. Third, as in many B2B studies, the data used in this pilot project were based on single informants.

A common complaint among firms is that B2B market segmentation does not really work that well for them. An unexplored reason for this may be that true market segmentation does not stop with one’s direct customer, but should also include the customer’s customer and so on, in a multistage market segmentation structure. One implication of the research presented here suggests that better understanding the segmentation structure in a multistage market can enlighten the opportunities and risks of implementing such a strategy. Multistage market segmentation alignment may lead to innovative positioning and message levers for the sales force to use as an argument to gain advantage according to common and unique aligned segment needs.

The process may be applied to social institutions in addition to commercial organizations.

While it is obvious that market segmentation can be applied to any single market of customers, the question of applying it to complex multistage markets needs additional exploration. The original idea in this paper is that the potential for strategically aligning multistage markets and segments can have both conceptual and managerial implications for establishing competitive advantage and more efficient and effective resource allocation. The paper shows that that such alignment is possible; however, research and research methods in this area are nascent and will require continued step-by-step learning about these complex market structures to build up to a more definitive understanding of the processes involved to guide future research and managerial thinking.

This article deals with the difficulty of creating a “leadership team.” Increasingly, organizations are finding it unworkable for a single almighty leader at the top to understand the full complexity of the business, build consensus throughout the business, and call all the shots. Instead, many are arranging for the leadership function to be performed by teams, perhaps of two equals, perhaps of whole, cross‐functional committees. The problem is that, while the idea is excellent in principle, very few companies have actually succeeded in creating effective leadership teams. In this article, the author describes that problem and addresses it with an approach to building leadership teams. Importantly, the approach recognizes and integrates elements of leadership teamwork that can be engineered and elements that must be cultivated and grown over time, and is well positioned in terms of the current scholarship on leadership development and team‐building.

Places have deep-seated meaning and serve to shape our social grouping and practices. Sporting stadia are a highly influential aspect of many people’s lives that drive the inexorable journey towards team affiliation, immersive experiences, intense loyalty and the creation of an enduring, local identity. This paper aims to explore how the nature of a sporting place has been shaped to change the practice of football as a sport, as a business and as entertainment. This paper uncovers how Forest Green Rovers (FGR) differentiates itself from the historical and socio-economic roots of football and uses numerous novel sustainability initiatives to re-imagine a new type of football place, club and fandom.

Over a two-year period, the authors used multiple data collection methods, engaging in participant observation, interviews and focus groups, at FGR and related events. A thematic data analysis was conducted to pinpoint and extract key areas surrounding the unique structures, practices and reinforced behaviours that have developed in FGR.

The findings show that FGR’s place operates as a central location through which stakeholders, ideas, resources and practices have been disrupted and re-imagined around the principles of sustainability. This fundamental shift in FGR’s place, changing its composition, character and reach, means that FGR can be conceptualised as a novel place synonymous with new global social movements.

This study presents unique insights into the world’s first socially and environmentally conscious football club. This study examines the construction and operation of the place that facilitates its actions which go beyond what has been seen and maybe expected from commercial sporting institutions.