Jeff W. Mott,
Emily T. Porschitz,
Kimberly E. Sherman,
& Charles C. Manz
In this paper, we analyze the relationship between an individual's upward career
mobility and the size of his or her mentors' networks. We introduce the concept of
a protégé network and propose that this concept may be important to career
self-managers as they evaluate potential professional relationships with leaders
and mentors. The mentors of 318 recently active Division I basketball head coaches
were analyzed to determine whether the upward career mobility of these coaches was
influenced by the protégé networks of their former mentors. The results of this
study indicate that the protégé network sizes of the first and longest mentors
are related to an individual's upward career mobility. However, it is the aggregate
protégé network size of all mentors that has the strongest relationship with career
advancement.
Jonas Gabrielsson, Morten Huse, & Alessandro Minichilli
Current corporate governance recommendations—rooted in an investor-based shareholder
supremacy model—often narrowly discuss the issue of board leadership as whether or
not there is a separation of the CEO and chairperson positions. In this article, we
employ a team production approach to better understand the leadership role of the
board chairperson. We argue that effective board performance is driven by the extent
to which corporate directors bring relevant knowledge into the boardroom. An important
prerequisite, however, is that the knowledge must be actively used. In line with this
argument, we contend that the competencies and behaviors of the board chairperson are
critical in order to unleash a board's value-creating potential.
Lucia Crevani, Monica Lindgren, & Johann Packendorff
Within the field of leadership practices, there is an emergent movement towards viewing
leadership in terms of collaboration between two or more persons. At the same time,
traditional literature on leadership and organization theory has been dominated almost
exclusively by the perspective that leadership is something that is exercised by a single
person—the idea of unitary command (Pearce & Manz, 2005). This has been challenged by
the theoretical perspective of postheroic leadership, of which one practical consequence
is to view leadership activities as collective rather than individual. In this paper,
we argue that by shifting perspective from viewing leadership as a single-person activity
to viewing it as collective construction processes, we will see new patterns in how
leadership is exercised in practice. Thematic data from four qualitative case studies
of organizations are presented. A discussion towards future research agendas where the
articulation and questioning of the foundations of leadership practices and leadership
research are central to the development of postheroic leadership ideals concludes the
paper.
In this paper, I introduce a model of authentic leadership that rests on a single
explanatory concept—identity—which specifies three interrelated identity systems: the
self-identity system, the leader-identity system, and the spiritual-identity system,
which, in turn, are comprised of multiple subidentities that include cognitive, affective,
and conative elements. I offer a construct definition of authentic leadership that is
explicated in a theoretical model which draws from humanistic psychology, existential
philosophy, and social identity as well as self-categorization theory, leader
prototypicality, and spiritual leadership theory. The fundamental premise of this
paper is that spirituality and spiritual identity are at the core of authentic
leadership. While much work remains to be done in terms of sharpening construct
definitions of authentic leadership and operationalizing it, in the opinion of this
author, authentic leadership is an important and provocative concept that holds promise
for multiparadigmatic and multimethodological theoretical and empirical research.
This paper discusses team-based findings collected from leadership courses in higher
education and pertaining to leaders from various disciplines, time frames, and
backgrounds. Biographies of these leaders were reviewed, after which students listed
the positive and negative traits of each leader. Subsequently, the author of this paper
applied the phenomenological approach in order to find common themes among these
remarkable individuals and draw an overall conclusion. Some similar qualities detected
were confidence, hard work, risk taking, and communication skills. Yet, the greatest
common factor among these leaders was the passion they displayed toward realizing their
purpose. This passion was not only the core of their drive but also the overarching
quality in achieving their purpose. The greatest difference among these leaders was
found in the goals they set out to achieve with their skills.
