Search results

Recently, ethical leadership has become a widely studied research topic. Simultaneously, many studies have begun to emphasise the role of interpersonal communication competence (ICC) in successful leadership. However, there has been little discussion on the links between ethical leadership and leaders’ ICC. To address this research gap, this study aims to compare and combine the research traditions of ethical leadership and leaders’ ICC. The study is based on two literature reviews examining (a) ethical leadership (substudy 1; N = 27) and (b) leaders’ ICC (substudy 2; N = 18). The research questions are as follows: (a) How are the requirements of leaders’ ICC noticed in the literature of ethical leadership? (substudy 1) (b) How are the requirements of ethical leadership noticed in the literature of leaders’ ICC? (substudy 2) The findings reveal that (a) studies in ethical leadership rarely pay attention to leaders’ ICC and (b) studies in leaders’ ICC do not often discuss ethical aspects of ICC, at least explicitly. While a larger sample would have been preferred, the study contributes to previous research by addressing a research gap between ethical leadership and leaders’ ICC and suggests integrating these research traditions to better understand the nature of ethics and ICC in leadership. By promoting novel interdisciplinary research perspectives, the study provides a foundation for further research and development of (a) a competence-based approach to ethical leadership and (b) an ethics-focused approach to competent leadership communication.

Purpose –– This chapter shows the connection between the reality of intercultural communication training and its importance to the development of intercultural communication competence, symbolised by the Rainbow Model of Intercultural Communication Competence.

Methodology/approach –– 405 useable questionnaires (response rate=19.4%) were used from 56 German MNEs in a convenience sample of companies in the high-tech industry that are suppliers for the automotive, aviation, optical and chemical industry.

Findings –– German MNCs provide traditional intercultural communication training sparingly to expatriates, but with adjustments depending on the target country. Only 41% of training recipients deemed the training helpful for their mission. Non-traditional training methods are administered more consistently.

Practical implications –– The Rainbow Model of Intercultural Communication Competence should guide the implementation of customised intercultural communication training efforts.

Social implications –– Assisting expatriates in their development of intercultural communication competence via intercultural communication training fulfils the social responsibility of multinational enterprises.

Originality/value of chapter –– This chapter provides guidance to human resource specialists in the international arena to design and implement customisable intercultural communication training programmes for expatriates.

The purpose of this paper is to help clarify the actions of effective emergent leaders in self-managing work teams (SMWTs). Multiple methods were used to test hypotheses that leader's behaviors consistent with the development of emotionally competent team norms (interpersonal understanding, caring behavior, creating an optimistic environment, and proactive problem solving) would be more strongly linked to team trust, open communication, personal task engagement, and team effectiveness than traditional task-focused leader's behaviors (directive statements, using questions). Most hypotheses were supported. Directive leader's behaviors were for the most part negatively associated with team trust, open communication, and personal task engagement. It is argued that in SMWTs that have a history and a future together, emergent leaders who engage in behaviors that build emotional competence in the team are more likely to create team effectiveness than emergent leaders focused on directing team members.

The study this chapter reports focuses on how network theory contributes to the understanding of the internationalization process of SMEs and measures the effect of network capability on performance in international trade and has three research objectives.

The first objective of the study relates to providing new insights into the international market development activities through the application of a network perspective. The chapter reviews the international business literature to ascertain the development of thought, the research gaps, and the shortcomings. This review shows that the network perspective is a useful and popular theoretical domain that researchers can use to understand international activities, particularly of small, high technology, resource-constrained firms.

The second research objective is to gain a deeper understanding of network capability. This chapter presents a model for the impact of network capability on international performance by building on the emerging literature on the dynamic capabilities view of the firm. The model conceptualizes network capability in terms of network characteristics, network operation, and network resources. Network characteristics comprise strong and weak ties (operationalized as foreign-market entry modes), relational capability, and the level of trust between partners. Network operation focuses on network initiation, network coordination, and network learning capabilities. Network resources comprise network human-capital resources, synergy-sensitive resources (resource combinations within the network), and information sharing within the network.

The third research objective is to determine the impact of networking capability on the international performance of SMEs. The study analyzes 11 hypotheses through structural equations modeling using LISREL. The hypotheses relate to strong and weak ties, the relative strength of strong ties over weak ties, and each of the eight remaining constructs of networking capability in the study. The research conducts a cross-sectional study by using a sample of SMEs drawn from the telecommunications industry in Ireland.

The study supports the hypothesis that strong ties are more influential on international performance than weak ties. Similarly, network coordination and human-capital resources have a positive and significant association with international performance. Strong ties, weak ties, trust, network initiation, synergy-sensitive resources, relational capability, network learning, and information sharing do not have a significant association with international performance. The results of this study are strong (R2=0.63 for performance as the outcome) and provide a number of interesting insights into the relations between collaboration or networking capability and performance.

This study provides managers and policy makers with an improved understanding of the contingent effects of networks to highlight situations where networks might have limited, zero, or even negative effects on business outcomes. The study cautions against the tendency to interpret networks as universally beneficial to business development and performance outcomes.

Purpose: The purpose of the present study is to review and specifically examine the untested but common recommendation that leaders should give more effective positive feedback that is specific and mindful of nonverbal delivery. Study Design/Methodology/Approach: We used a dyadic interaction study where designated “leaders” interact with a “subordinate” in an idea generation and evaluation task. Leaders (n = 90) first received brief training in delivering positive feedback, and their subsequent feedback behavior during the dyadic interaction was coded for frequency, specificity, and both verbal and nonverbal affective delivery. Key dependent variables were subordinate affective reactions, perceptions of the leader, and subsequent task motivation. Findings: Frequency of leader positive feedback had significant positive impact on subordinate perceptions of the leader, but no impact on subordinate positive affect or task motivation. Positive feedback specificity and affective delivery, however, had no impact on subordinate affect, perceptions of the leader, or task motivation. Training effects were also observed – leaders were able to increase the specificity of their feedback, but were not able to modulate their affective delivery. Originality/Value: The design of the study allowed us to identify the leader positive feedback behaviors that were trainable and had the most impact on subordinates in terms of positive affect, perceptions of the leader, and subsequent task effort. We discuss the implications of these effects for positive feedback theory and application and commonly assumed “best practices.”

Teams’ emotional skills can be more than the sum of their individual parts. Although theory emphasizes emotion as an interpersonal adaptation, emotion recognition skill has long been conceptualized as an individual-level intelligence. We introduce the construct of team emotion recognition accuracy (TERA) – the ability of members to recognize teammates’ emotions – and present preliminary evidence for its predictive validity. In a field study of public service interns working full-time in randomly assigned teams, taken together positive and negative TERA measured at the time of team formation accounted for 28.1% of the variance in team performance ratings nearly a year later.