Assessment 3: Reflective Learning Journal Report

Summary of Week 4.docx

SUMMARY OF WEEK 4 – Leading Change Journal Articles

1. Predicting Unit Performance by Assessing Transformational and Transactional Leadership

By Bernard M. Bass, Bruce J. Avolio, Dong I. Jung, Yair Berson

Introduction: The pace of change confronting organizations today has resulted in calls for more adaptive, flexible leadership. Adaptive leaders work more effectively in rapidly changing environments by helping to make sense of the challenges confronted by both leaders and followers and then appropriately responding to those challenges. Adaptive leaders work with their followers to generate creative solutions to complex problems, while also developing them to handle a broader range of leadership responsibilities (Bennis, 2001).

Evidence based theory: Exhibiting transactional leadership meant that followers agreed with, accepted, or complied with the leader in exchange for praise, rewards, and resources or the avoidance of disciplinary action. Rewards and recognition were provided contingent on followers successfully carrying out their roles and assignments (Podsakoff, Todor, & Skov, 1982). Transactional contingent reward leadership clarifies expectations and offers recognition when goals are achieved. The clarification of goals and objectives and providing of recognition once goals are achieved should result in individuals and groups achieving expected levels of performance (Bass, 1985). In its more corrective form, labeled active management by exception, the leader specifies the standards for compliance, as well as what constitutes ineffective performance, and may punish followers for being out of compliance with those standards.

Idealized influence - These leaders are admired, respected, and trusted. Followers identify with and want to emulate their leaders. Among the things the leader does to earn credit with followers is to consider followers’ needs over his or her own needs. The leader shares risks with followers and is consistent in conduct with underlying ethics, principles, and values.

Inspirational motivation - Leaders behave in ways that motivate those around them by providing meaning and challenge to their followers’ work. Individual and team spirit is aroused. Enthusiasm and optimism are displayed. The leader encourages followers to envision attractive future states, which they can ultimately envision for themselves.

Intellectual stimulation - Leaders stimulate their followers’ effort to be innovative and creative by questioning assumptions, reframing problems, and approaching old situations in new ways.

There is no ridicule or public criticism of individual members’ mistakes. New ideas and creative solutions to problems are solicited from followers, who are included in the process of addressing problems and finding solutions.

Individualized consideration - Leaders pay attention to each individual’s need for achievement and growth by acting as a coach or mentor. Followers are developed to successively higher levels of potential. New learning opportunities are created along with a supportive climate in which to grow. Individual differences in terms of needs and desires are recognized.

Application: Transformational leadership may build on these initial levels of trust by establishing a deeper sense of identification among followers with respect to the unit’s values, mission, and vision

(Shamir et al., 1998). This internally based trust is associated with the personal identification that Shamir et al. (1993) argued that followers exhibit when working with charismatic–transformational leaders. It may be this level of trust and identification that sustains the performance of units operating over longer periods of time. Indeed, transactional leadership may have been as predictive of performance as transformational leadership, given the short duration of the performance tasks used here, which is consistent with results presented by Geyer and Steyrer (1998). Geyer and Steyrer reported that transactional leadership predicted the short-term financial performance of bank branches, whereas transformational leadership exhibited stronger predictions over a longer period of time.

2. Leadership competencies for implementing planned organizational change

By Julie Battilana, Mattia Gilmartinb, Metin Sengul, Anne-Claire Pache, Jeffrey A. Alexander

Introduction: One of the defining challenges for leaders is to take their organizations into the future by implementing planned organizational changes that correspond to premeditated interventions intended to modify organizational functioning towards more favorable outcomes (Lippit, Watson, & Westley, 1958). Although formal strategic assessment and planning are important elements of this process, a far more challenging task is implementing change in the organization once a direction has been selected. Over the last two decades, research about transformational and charismatic leadership has explored the relationship between leadership characteristics or behaviors and organizational change (for reviews see Bass, 1999; Conger & Kanungo, 1998; House & Aditya, 1997; Yukl, 1999, 2006). There is growing evidence that change agents' leadership characteristics and behaviors influence the success or failure of organizational change initiatives (e.g., Berson & Avolio, 2004; Bommer, Rich, & Rubin, 2005; Eisenbach,

Watson, & Pillai, 1999; Fiol, Harris, & House, 1999; Higgs & Rowland, 2000, 2005; House, Spangler, & Woycke, 1991; Howell & Higgins, 1990; Struckman & Yammarino, 2003; Waldman, Javidan, & Varella, 2004).

Evidence based theory: The task-/person-oriented behaviors model is particularly relevant and suitable for this study, for three main reasons. First and foremost, this model is particularly well suited to the study of leadership in the context of organizational change. Nadler and Tushman (1999) highlighted that task-oriented behaviors and person-oriented behaviors are key to influence organizational change. Similarly, Beer and Nohria (2000) made a distinction between “Theory E” leaders, who are more task-oriented and “Theory O” leaders, who are more person-oriented. They proposed that these different categories of leaders adopt different approaches to change implementation. Second, task-oriented and person-oriented leadership behaviors have been shown to cover a vast majority of the day-to-day leadership activities in which leaders engage at the supervisory level (Casimir, 2001). The task-/person-oriented behaviors model is thus particularly appropriate as we focus, in the context of this study, on change behaviors carried out by managers who were all in a supervisory role. Finally, although the introduction of this model goes back to the 1950s, recent empirical research shows that the task-person-oriented behaviors model remains a powerful model to analyze leadership effectiveness (Judge et al., 2004; Keller,2006).

Application: While the choice of both the leadership and change models used in this study was justified by theoretical considerations that we detailed early on in the paper, it might be interesting to replicate this study using different leadership and/or change models. On leadership competencies, it would also be interesting to examine the relationship between other leadership competencies and change agents' likelihood to emphasize different activities involved in the planned organizational change implementation process. In particular, it would be interesting to explore the influence of transformational leadership—including individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation, idealized influence and inspirationalmotivation (Bass & Avolio, 1990)—and/or charismatic leadership,which

have already been shown to influence change initiatives in general and the communicating activities involved in the change process in particular (Kark & Van Dijk, 2007). A number ofmeasurement instruments, such as theMultifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (Bass & Avolio, 1990; Howell & Avolio, 1993), could be used to do so.10 Similarly, although the choice of the communicating– mobilizing–evaluating model was based on a careful literature review, we recognize that it does not do complete justice to the complexity of the change process that involves amultitude of activities. In future research, it might be interesting to use changemodels comprising more than three sets of activities (e.g., Beer, Eisenstat, & Spector, 1990; Kotter, 1995) and to analyze the relationship between leadership competencies and these different sets of activities

3. Leadership in the Context of Temporary Organizations: A Study on the Effects of Transactional and Transformational Leadership on Followers’ Commitment in Projects

Ana K. Tyssen, Andreas Wald, and Sven Heidenreich

Introduction: Leadership research has accentuated the important role of the organizational context for leadership and has called for more empirical studies on leadership in different contexts (Antonakis, Avolio, & Sivasubramaniam, 2003; Avolio, Walumbwa, & Weber, 2009; Porter & MacLaughlin, 2006).

We follow this call and present a study on the effects of transactional and transformational leadership on followers’ commitment in the context of the temporary organization. This form of organizing is increasing as organizations face growing uncertainties in dynamic environments (Bakker, 2010; Schreyögg & Sydow, 2010). Temporary organizations, such as programs or projects, are chosen for carrying out complex, novel, and knowledge-intensive tasks (Hobday, 2000; Lundin & Midler, 1998).

Evidence based theory: Prior research has also presented evidence suggesting that an individual’s uncertainty exerts a negative influence on commitment (Hui & Lee, 2000). A transactional leadership style that supervises the day-to-day tasks (Bass et al., 2003) will most likely fail to meet the demands that a project’s complexity may impose on the project’s leaders. Previous research has repeatedly confirmed the effectiveness of transformational leadership in times of uncertainty and change (Bass, 1990). Shin and Zhou (2007) showed that transformational leadership positively moderates the impact of team heterogeneity by improving the relation between the participants’ varying educational backgrounds and the team’s creativity. Studies that have analyzed the positive effects of transformational leadership have generally encompassed not only the nature of the tasks to be accomplished but also the conditions under which these actions took place (Atkinson et al., 2006;

Waldman et al., 2001).

Application: With regard to managerial implications, these findings complement the knowledge on the importance of effective administration to projects. Although conventional leadership solemnly focuses on the fulfillment of a project’s goals, transformational leadership focuses on the intentions of the project’s participants to fulfill these project goals. Both leadership foci are essential, as a project’s characteristics and complexity could hinder a leader from having the information necessary to giving the right directives. In these cases, committed subordinates, unlike uncommitted employees, would try to do the right thing. However, committed individuals might at some point fail to recognize what needs to be done because they lack information. Thus, both leadership behaviors seem vital to project managers.

4. Organizational Change: Motivation, Communication, and Leadership Effectiveness

By Ann Gilley, Jerry W. Gilley and Heather S. McMillan

Introduction: rganizational leadership behaviors have a direct influence on actions in the work environment that enable change (Drucker, 1999; Gilley, 2005; Howkins, 2001). Leaders may function

as change agents—those individuals responsible for change strategy and implementation (Kanter, Stein,

&Jick, 1992)—by creating a vision, identifying the need for change, and implementing the change itself.

Evidence based theory: Studies suggest that work groups can be designed to enable members with diverse skills and backgrounds to communicate and interact in ways that constructively challenge each other’s ideas (Williams, 2001). Furthermore, it has been evidenced that social networks have important effects on team performance and viability (Balkundi & Harrison, 2006). Specifically, teams with a dense configuration of connections within their social network tend to attain their goals more frequently and remain intact as a group for a longer period of time (Balkundi & Harrison, 2006). Not surprisingly, the influence of interpersonal skills combines with group processes and structure to create or impede teamwork and collaboration (Fuqua & Kurpius, 1993; Nadler & Tushman, 1989). Teamwork and collaboration suffer under conditions of a hostile environment, unrealistic expectations, poor communications, lack of skills training, and coercive rather than coactive control (Follett, 1924; Longenecker & Neubert, 2000; Rayner, 1996; Zhou & George, 2003). Conversely, teams thrive with open communications, shared leadership, clearly defined roles and work assignments, valued diversity of styles, and a sense of informality (Parker, 1990).

Application: This study highlights employees’ opinions of the linkage between leadership skills and implementing change. Future research would be well served to explore which levels of management are most in need of improvement and in which skill and ability areas. Furthermore,how can organizations foster these skills and abilities within their management teams? Additional investigation may be warranted to reveal effective means by which leaders should be held accountable for change. How should their behaviors should be measured, developed, and rewarded? The types of behaviors identified by this study could be readily incorporated into leader performance evaluations, particularly in 360-degree feedback instruments. Assessment of behaviors associated with change effectiveness would help organizations identify managers who rely on traditional command-and-control techniques and those whose behaviors explicitly promote successful change.

5. Building Employee Commitment to Change Across Organizational Levels: The Influence of Hierarchical Distance and Direct Managers' Transformational Leadership

By N. Sharon Hill, Myeong-Gu Seo, Jae Hyeung Kang, M. Susan Taylor

Introduction: Commitment to organizational change, defined as “a force (mind-set) that binds an individual to a course of action deemed necessary for the successful implementation of a change initiative” (Herscovitch and Meyer 2002, p. 475), has been shown to be an important determinant of employee support for change (Herscovitch and Meyer 2002, Meyer et al. 2007, Neves 2009, Parish et al. 2008). Gaining employees’ commitment is particularly important during radical change because it involves a fundamental, qualitative shift in the firm’s philosophy or core perspective and strategic orientation (Greenwood and Hinings 1996, Nadler and Tushman 1995). Without the support of employees throughout the organization, radical change efforts are likely to fail (Herscovitch and Meyer 2002, Romanelli and Tushman 1994). Furthermore, the disappointing results of many radical change implementations (Attaran 2004, Marks 2006, Paper and Chang 2005) underscore the fact that organizations are frequently unsuccessful in achieving the required levels of commitment to change from employees.

Evidence based theory: Research by Burns (1978) suggests that transformational leaders are able to persuade their followers (employees) to accept a higher vision and to motivate them to support its accomplishment. Although research related to the role of transformational leadership during radical change has primarily focused on the behaviors of senior leaders, there is ample evidence that transformational leadership can also operate effectively at the workgroup level (e.g., Bono and

Judge 2003, Kark et al. 2003, Shamir et al. 2000). In this study, we examine the transformational leadership behaviors of workgroup managers at different levels of the organization. These managers should have a unique opportunity to help shape their direct reports’ reactions to change because of their physical and psychological proximity to the members of their workgroup. We expect that workgroup managers who are generally more transformational in their leadership style will play a particularly important role during radical organizational change because they are likely to have particularly good insights into the needs and concerns of those who report to them and be best positioned to use the transformational leadership behaviors to address these employees’ needs and concerns.

Application: Our findings also have important practical implications for implementing radical change in organizations. First, they suggest that the TMT should not assume that employees at all organizational levels will respond similarly to a radical organizational change initiative. Rather, the organization’s TMT should proactively monitor the perceptions of its change communications held by employees, particularly those who are more hierarchically distant from it, and take action to improve those perceptions, using top-down and bottom-up communication strategies when necessary. Our results show that both types of communication are important, but bottom up strategies are often overlooked and, thus, infrequently used (Lewis 2007). In general, interpersonal communication channels (i.e., involving face-to-face communication) and informal channels (e.g., informational meetings, small discussions) are likely to be more effective in communicating complex change messages and reducing uncertainty, as well as promoting a true dialog and exchange of information and ideas between senior leaders and employees (Fidler and Johnson 1984, Larkin and Larkin 1996, Lewis 2006). However, given the challenge of communicating with a large number of employees, it may be necessary to use different combinations of technology-mediated communication to facilitate two way communication (e.g., video combined with a mechanism for soliciting questions and feedback).

6. Transformational leadership, relationship quality, and employee performance during continuous incremental organizational change

By MIN Z. CARTER, ACHILLES A. ARMENAKIS, HUBERT S. FEILD AND KEVIN W. MOSSHOLDER

Introduction: Organizational change is a necessity for organizations to survive and prosper. In fact, most organizations compete by changing continuously (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1997; Burke, 2002). A continuous incremental change context comprises frequent, purposeful adjustments that are small but ongoing and cumulative in effect (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1997; Weick & Quinn, 1999). Scholars have argued that continuous change requires employees to modify not only work routines but also social practices (e.g., relations with their managers and peers). To cope with the daily challenge of real-time adaptation, employees selectively retain effective elements of their performance routines and integrate them

with new, more efficient ones (Feldman & Pentland, 2003). As a result, these employees often experience difficulties and tensions in maintaining prior levels of performance while adapting to their new job requirements (Kanfer & Ackerman, 1989).

Evidence based theory: Ideally, when a change initiative is implemented, employees modify their old work routines to retain more efficient and socially beneficial approaches in the workflow. However, continuous change can also disrupt attempted modifications, resulting in increased employee apprehension about work procedures and social norms (Ashford, 1988). Rafferty and Griffin (2006) provided evidence that employees experienced higher uncertainty as the number of internal changes

(e.g., ranks of top management, consolidation of human resource functions) increased. Higher change frequency can also make relationships difficult to maintain, raising doubts about the interpersonal support employees might have previously experienced (Shaw, Ashcroft, & Petchey, 2006). Such doubts are likely greater in work teams consisting of members with interdependent work relations. As members’ work routines typically involve social interactions, high change frequency could disrupt their previously shared work responsibilities, as well as negatively affect job performance.

Application: Because change is necessary in environments characterized by economic instabilities, shifting market demands, and technological advances (Burke, 2002), organizations must condition managers to expect and prepare for it. Through training, organizations can encourage managers in turbulent contexts to utilize the energizing aspects of transformational leadership to facilitate the development of high-quality relationships. When managers are initiating in-the-trenches change, the more personal aspects of transformational leadership (e.g., individualized consideration, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation) might have a special value. Simons (1999) noted that transformational leadership theory recognizes the importance of managers walking their talk with respect to change, and maintaining behavioral integrity in the eyes of employees undergoing necessary adaptation. During continuing change at lower levels, it could well be that the relationship quality associated with transformational leadership boosts employee perceptions of managers’ behavioral integrity which, in turn, translates into employee performance improvements.

7. Managing Diversity and Enhancing Team Outcomes: The Promise of Transformational Leadership

By Eric Kearney, Diether Gebert

Introduction: Organizational justice is becoming an increasingly central question in the rapidly

changing work life (e.g. Konovsky 2000; Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter and Ng 2001). Numerous studies have shown that justice predicts essential organizational outcomes, such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, motivation, performance, and organizational citizenship behavior (e.g. Folger and Konovsky 1989; Moorman 1991; McFarlin and Sweeney 1992; Korsgaard and Roberson 1995; Colquitt et al. 2001), and also essential individual mental and physical health outcomes, such as sleeping, smoking and drinking behavior, and emotional and bodily reactions (e.g. Tepper 2001; Kivima¨ki, Elovainio, Vahtera, Virtanen and Stansfeld 2003; Kouvonen et al. 2007; Greenberg 2010).

Thus, justice is important in the organizational context.

Evidence based theory: In organizations, performance appraisal interview may be an important tool to improve the justice judgments of the employees. Research has shown that justice judgments and responses to a decision-making procedure are enhanced when those affected have an opportunity to express their views (Lind and Tyler 1988) and have an opportunity to express their feelings during the interview (Holbrook 1999). Thus, performance appraisal is in agreement with the main principles of high procedural and interactional justice. It has been suggested that organizational justice occurs differently across public and private sectors, because public service organizations have different decision-making procedures, work processes, and multiple and competing goals compared with private sectors (Rainey 2009). Furthermore, public service employees are differently motivated from their private sector counterparts (Khojasteh 1993; Karl and Sutton 1998). Indeed, employees in public sector have been found to perceive lower level of organizational justice than those in private sector (Kurland and Egan 1999; Heponiemi, Kuusio, Sinervo and Elovainio 2010).

Application: As predicted by Van Knippenberg et al. (2004), diversity appears to benefit team performance via the elaboration of task-relevant information. Ultimately, diverse teams are likely to outperform homogeneous teams to the extent that they utilize their greater range of task-relevant resources to create synergies that are beyond those attainable on the basis of a more homogeneous input. Hence, organizations may consider what additional measures they could take to facilitate this elaboration of task relevant information in diverse teams. At the same time, they must prevent dysfunctional social categorization processes from undermining the exchange, discussion, and integration of ideas and perspectives. Although transformational leadership apparently has this beneficial dual effect, top managers could attempt to augment their team leaders’ efforts by shaping their organizational culture with these two goals in mind. Measures that emphasize interdependence, trust, and shared goals may have similar effects as transformational leadership. For example, team-based incentive and reward systems may complement or perhaps even serve as substitutes for transformational leadership in diverse teams. This search for measures that could complement or be used in lieu of transformational leadership may be particularly important for organizations that establish flatter, less hierarchical structures and rely on shared leadership and self-managing teams.

8. Adaptability, Cognitive Flexibility, Personal Need for Structure,

and Rigidity

By Armanda Hamtiaux, Claude Houssemand

Introduction: The question of whether a person is adaptable or not and whether a person is able to adjust to new or changing situations (Morrison & Hall, 2002) is becoming more and more important in our rapidly evolving private and professional world. Consequently, there has been an increase in the number of articles published on this particular issue. Even though the topic has been addressed frequently in the scientific literature, most of the published articles treat a specific aspect of it, such as personal adaptability at work (O’Connell, Mc Neely, & Hall, 2008), career (Savickas et al., 2009), or IA (individual adaptability) (Ployhart & Bliese, 2006); or explore its role in a given context (Tucker, Pleban, & Gunther, 2010).

Evidence based theory: This issue gets at the core of adaptability. If adaptability is to be seen as a trait then probably being more adaptable is a useful characteristic for engaging in education. However, if adaptability is a capacity that can be acquired and developed, then education may have an influence on how adaptable a person is or perceives him/herself to be. Ployhart and Bliese (2006) avoided a concrete answer to this question when positioning IA on a distal-proximal continuum on which IA can be seen as more trait-like (Ployhart & Bliese, 2006, p. 17). Where trait-like is thought to be relatively stable and enduring, not much affected by situations or experience. For example, KSAOs are described to be distal predictors that are fairly stable and trait-like. On the same continuum, IA is neighboring personality, cognitive ability, interest, and other KSAOs, but it is depicted as being closer (e.g., compared to personality) to proximal predictors that are more state-like (i.e., performance) and therefore somewhat more malleable. Based on Ployhart and Bliese’s (2006) configuration, the findings could be interpreted as saying that adaptable subjects tend to attain higher levels of education. However, in the same breath, I-ADAPT theory claims that IA is determined to some degree by KSAOs like personality, cognitive ability, and interests. Thus, it cannot be seen as absolutely stable.

Application: Similar to work stress, it appears that men report higher confidence in their problem-solving capacity than women. Here, again the authors suspect a masculine connotation effect on self-perceived problem-solving capacity, as the literature examples show that boys have higher expectations in regard to their reasoning capacities than girls and that parents tend to expect better mathematical performance from boys than from girls (Eccles & Jacobs, 1986). It is possible that men have a more positive view of their own problem-solving capacities than women, based on their own past experience. Thus, even though differences appear to be significantly different for these dimensions, our findings do not allow us to conclude whether the differences are real objective differences based on accurate judgments or if the evaluations are biased. Regardless of the higher of the scores for men over women, the crucial message is that these scales differentiate between men and women and therefore should not be used to compare adaptability level of men and women in selection procedures. The fact that on average women report lower adaptability competences than men should not be

interpreted as women being less adaptable than men, and thus the scale should not be used to make selection decisions between men and women. Interestingly, however, no gender related differences were detected for rigidity and PNS; again confirming that IA as measured by this scale is different from these two constructs.

9. Effects of leader intelligence, personality and emotional intelligence on transformational leadership and

managerial performance

By Flavia Cavazotte, Valter Moreno, Mateus Hickmann

Introduction: Transformational leadership theory has been an important field of inquiry in the organizational sciences, one that has attracted the attention of a large number of researchers (Gardner, Lowe, Moss, Mahoney, & Cogliser, 2010; Lowe & Gardner, 2001). Various studies have found a relationship between transformational leadership and the efficacy of organizations (Avolio, 1999; Avolio, Bass, & Jung, 1995; Dumdum, Lowe, & Avolio, 2002), and meta-analytic reviews have corroborated positive connections between transformational leadership of superiors and the performance of their subordinates (Judge & Piccolo, 2004; Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramanian, 1996). However, despite the apparent relevance of transformational leadership for organizational outcomes, a smaller number of studies have empirically investigated the antecedents of transformational leadership (Lim & Ployhart, 2004).

Evidence based theory: Transformational leaders, in contrast to transactional leaders, are seen as agents of social and organizational change (Bass, 1985; Bass, Avolio, Jung, & Berson, 2003). They are described as models for conduct and as being able to articulate a new and stimulating vision in their followers. In this way, they raise morale, inspire followers and motivate them toward greater achievements or conquests (Bass, 1985). Theories of transformational leadership (Avolio, 1999; Bass & Avolio, 1994) propose four dimensions inherent to the construct: idealized influence, often referred to as charisma, is related to the role played by the leader as a model for followers, prompting them to emulate the leader, follow the leader in all actions and adopt the leader's values and principles; motivational inspiration, describes leaders who have the ability to convey ambitious expectations to followers, inspiring themto reach objectives that result in important advances for the organization or for society; intellectual stimulation is exhibited by leaders able to question the status quo and appeal to the intelligence of their followers so as to promote thinking processes that favor creativity and innovation; and individualized consideration concerns leaders who develop an environment of personal support for their group, who understand and treat every follower as having distinctive characteristics, needs and desire

Application: Likewise, there are theoretical arguments that support a process model through the mediation of transformational leadership. Because leadership is a rather complex phenomenon, a combination of multiple individual attributes could together promote effective leadership (Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1991; Zaccaro et al., 2004). In this sense, leader differences in intelligence and personality would

operate as distal antecedents with direct effects on outcomes, but would have also indirect effects through their connections to proximal antecedents of outcomes, such as the capacity to inspire, stimulate, motivate and care for followers. As mentioned before, intelligence could facilitate the creation and presentation of convincing visions and facilitate inspirational motivation, since it

promotes problem solving and solution generation capacities (Mumford et al., 2000). Followers could construe the assertiveness of extraversion and serenity of emotional stability as charismatic qualities, and creative and flexible thinking associated with openness could drive intellectual stimulation (Judge & Long, 2012). The greater dependability and tenacity often observed in conscientious individuals could promote their inspirational capabilities,while emotional intelligence could enhance a leader's sensitivity to emotional cues in reading the specific reactions of followers (Ashkanasy & Daus, 2005), thus allowing more effective responses to their individual needs.intrinsic motivation that might be associated with HRO service provision that is less transactional (Ramaswami& Dreher, 2010).

10. All Changes Great and Small: Exploring Approaches to Change and its Leadership

By MALCOLM HIGGS & DEBORAH ROWLAND

Introduction: According to many authors, up to 70 per cent of change initiatives fail (e.g. Kotter, 1990; Hammer and Champny, 1993; Higgs and Rowland, 2000). However, there is a growing need for organizations to implement major changes in order to be able to respond in a business environment that is becoming increasingly volatile and complex. So what are the reasons for consistent failure and what leads to success? This article explores these questions and presents empirical evidence that explores approaches to change, which appear to be successful. In addition it examines the leadership behaviours, which contribute to this success. The authors recognize that in exploring the theoretical underpinnings of change and its leadership that they can only produce a brief overview of a significant and complex literature. However, this is done in the spirit of encouraging further debate and inquiry rather than presenting a definitive picture.

Evidence based theory: It is beyond the scope of this article to attempt to summarize or explore the vast literature on leadership. However, there is clear, and growing evidence that the role of leaders in the change process does impact significantly on the success of change (Kotter, 1990, 1996; Conner, 1992; Higgs and Rowland, 2001; Higgs, 2003). The beliefs and mind-sets of leaders have been shown to influence their orientation of choices and approaches to problem solving (Finklestein and Hambrick, 1996; Hambrick and Brandon, 1988). Thus it may be implied that a leader’s behaviour will influence their approach to change and its implementation. It has been asserted that the role and behaviours of leaders in a change context per se has been an area that is lacking in empirical research (Higgs and Rowland, 2000). However, the transformational leadership model developed by Bass (1995) has been one that has been the subject of much empirical investigation. This stream of research does demonstrate clear linkages between leader behaviours and a variety of ‘follower’ behaviours and performance measures (Alimo-Metcalfe, 1995; Higgs, 2003). This research, which is primarily quantitative, does, however, fail to link directly with the change literature. Furthermore, there have been criticisms that this highly quantitative approach fails to provide insights into the actual behaviours of leaders (Kouzes and Posner, 1998; Kets de Vries, 1995; House, 1995).

Application: It is evident that there is a growing realization that change is a complex process (Senge, 1997; Pascale, 1999; Rumselt, 1991). More recent research has considered the emerging field of complexity theory (e.g. Reynolds, 1987) and the associated development of the new sciences as a source of understanding change. Sammut-Bonnici and Wensley (2002) recognize the difficulties of constructing structured approaches to change and argue that research using evolutionary theory (including complexity theory) may lead to greater insight. This view is supported by others working in the field (Litchenstein, 1997; Metcalfe et al., 2000; Aldrich, 1999; Depew and Weber, 1995). Sammut-Bonnici and Wensley (2002), in applying evolutionary theory to organisational transformation, draw an important distinction between complicated systems and complex systems. They point out that complicated systems are rich in detail whereas complex systems are rich in structure. Building on this distinction, Litchenstein (1996) proposes that the root of much of the failure in change is that managers are trained to solve complicated problems rather than complex ones. Thus managers view change as a problem that can be analysed and then solved in a linear or sequential manner. However, complex problems require managers to cope with dilemmas in the system rather than to arrive at definitive solutions. The application of evolutionary theory as a framework for the understanding of change and transformation, is further developed by Depew and Weber (1995). They identify three models of evolution: natural selection; probability; and complexity.

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