Kenneth D. Mackenzie and F. Barry Barnes
The purpose of this article is to report on the underlying consensus in the major leadership approaches. This led to an assessment of the comprehensiveness of 11 leadership…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to report on the underlying consensus in the major leadership approaches. This led to an assessment of the comprehensiveness of 11 leadership approaches and the role of place in achieving it.
Design/methodology/approach
Overall, 11 leadership approaches are analyzed and coded according to their emphasis and purpose and their organizational place (organizational content/context and the follower content/context).
Findings
A total of eight consensus items are found which range from “leadership is a good thing and more of its is better” to “leadership is a type of holonomic process”. In addition, ten of the 11 leadership approaches lack comprehensiveness, and that this lack is possibly the reason for their popularity.
Research limitations/implications
This paper does not include all possible leadership approaches. The analysis and coding of those selected leave room for different interpretations and possibly different conclusions.
Practical limitations
The inability of most leadership approaches to incorporate actual content of the work and the context of the group or organizations limits their usefulness to actually improve leadership. Theorists need to consider and incorporate place in their formulations.
Originality/value
This paper uses the philosophical concept of place to analyze leadership approaches. This paper also introduces the LAMPE approach to organizational leadership because it points the way to having more comprehensive leadership approach.
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Mosab I. Tabash, Ashish Kumar, Shikha Sharma, Ritu Vashistha and Ghaleb A. El Refae
The International Journal of Organizational Analysis (IJOA) is a leading journal that has published high-quality research focused on various facets of organizational analysis…
Abstract
Purpose
The International Journal of Organizational Analysis (IJOA) is a leading journal that has published high-quality research focused on various facets of organizational analysis since 1993. This paper aims to conduct a retrospective analysis of the IJOA journey from 2005 to 2020.
Design/methodology/approach
The data used in this study was extracted using the Scopus database. The bibliometric analysis, using several indicators, is adopted to reveal the major trends and themes of the journal. The mapping of bibliographic data is carried using VOSviewer and Biblioshiny.
Findings
The study findings indicate that IJOA has grown for publications and citations since its inception. Five significant research directions emerged, i.e. organizational diagnostics, organization citizenship behaviour, organizational commitment to employee retention, psychological capital and firm performance, based on cluster analysis of IJOA’s publications.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of IJOA. The study presents the key themes and trends emerging from a leading journal, considered a high-quality journal, for researching various facets of organizational functioning by academicians, scholars and practitioners.
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Axel van den Berg and Emre Amasyalı
Since its introduction by Anthony Giddens in the early 1980s, the use of the concept of “agency” as a way to accommodate an irreducible element of voluntarism into sociological…
Abstract
Since its introduction by Anthony Giddens in the early 1980s, the use of the concept of “agency” as a way to accommodate an irreducible element of voluntarism into sociological explanations has grown exponentially in the literature. In this chapter, we examine the most prominent theoretical justifications for adopting the notion of “agency” as an integral part of such explanations. We distinguish three broad sets of justifications: the meaningfulness/intentionality of social action, the need for “agency” to explain change in social structures, and the link between agency, social accountability, and human dignity. We find that none of these provides a convincing rationale for the analytical utility of agency. This raises the question of what work it actually does perform in the sociological literature.
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Holly Barry, Pio Fenton and Rose Leahy
Many industries have witnessed a shift from traditional features and benefits marketing towards creating experiences for their customers (Pathak, 2014), but perhaps none more so…
Abstract
Many industries have witnessed a shift from traditional features and benefits marketing towards creating experiences for their customers (Pathak, 2014), but perhaps none more so than the service industry. The concept of experiences and experiential marketing has garnered much attention in recent years and has evolved to where it now has become more strategic and encompasses
the process of identifying and satisfying customer needs and aspirations profitably, engaging them through authentic two-way communications that bring brand personalities to life and add value to the target audience. (Smilansky, 2018, p. 12)
Despite its popular usage however, experiential marketing has had to contend with a lack of acceptance that was – at least in part – justifiable given its emergent nature and poor measurability properties. Its theoretical underpinnings have been explored but are less codified than many other areas of marketing. Nonetheless, it is an established part of a marketer’s armoury, is innovative in its use of technology such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) and, interestingly, has paved the way for a move to a focus on overall business experience. Where customer experience was limited to the marketing domain, business experience is a priority of the CEO, where customer-centricity becomes the driving force throughout the entire company. In this way, the role of experience is central to the ways that companies will grow and achieve better performance in a fast-changing global market. This is of particular relevance to the service industry, which perhaps has experienced the most upheaval of all, throughout the global Covid pandemic. To succeed in a post-Covid world, this chapter will establish how service companies must examine every aspect of their business to create meaningful experiences for customers, that will in turn translate into brand differentiation, ongoing customer satisfaction and business growth.
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Emre Amasyalı and Axel van den Berg
The use of the concept of “agency,” in the sense of action that is to some extent free of “structural” constraints, has enjoyed enormous and growing popularity in the sociological…
Abstract
The use of the concept of “agency,” in the sense of action that is to some extent free of “structural” constraints, has enjoyed enormous and growing popularity in the sociological literature over the past several decades. In a previous paper, we examined the range of theoretical rationales offered by sociologists for the inclusion of the notion of “agency” in sociological explanations. Having found these rationales seriously wanting, in this paper we attempt to determine empirically what role “agency” actually plays in the recent sociological literature. We examine a random sample of 147 articles in sociology journals that use the concept of “agency” with the aim of identifying the ways in which the term is used and what function the concept serves in the sociological explanations offered. We identify four principal (often overlapping) uses of “agency”: (1) purely descriptive; (2) as a synonym for “power”; (3) as a way to identify resistance to “structural” pressures; and (4) as a way to describe intelligible human actions. We find that in none of these cases the notion of “agency” adds anything of analytical or explanatory value. These different uses have one thing in common, however: they all tend to use the term “agency” in a strongly normative sense to mark the actions the authors approve of. We conclude that “agency” seems to serve the purpose of registering the authors' moral or political preferences under the guise of a seemingly analytical concept.
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Throughout human history and around the world, co-sleeping was the context for human evolutionary development. Currently, most of the world’s peoples continue to practice…
Abstract
Throughout human history and around the world, co-sleeping was the context for human evolutionary development. Currently, most of the world’s peoples continue to practice co-sleeping with infants, but there is increasing pressure on families in the West not to co-sleep. Research from anthropology, family studies, medicine, pediatrics, psychology, and public health is reviewed through the lens of a developmental theory to place co-sleeping within a developmental, theoretical context for understanding it. Viewing co-sleeping as a family choice and a normative, human developmental context changes how experts may provide advice and support to families choosing co-sleeping, especially in families making the transition to parenthood. During this transition, many decisions are made by parents “intuitively” (Ball, Hooker, & Kelly, 1999), making understanding the developmental consequences of some of those choices even more important. In Western culture, families are making “intuitive” decisions that research has shown to be beneficial, but families are not receiving complete messages about benefits and risks of co-sleeping. Co-sleeping can be an important choice for families as they make the life-changing transition to parenthood, if individualized messages about safe infant sleep practices (directed toward their individual family circumstances) are shared with them.
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The purpose of this paper is to unpack the tenuous relationship between medical sociology and disability studies, particularly as it relates to the work of Irving Zola.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to unpack the tenuous relationship between medical sociology and disability studies, particularly as it relates to the work of Irving Zola.
Findings
Many attribute the division between these disciplines to their starkly different and oft competing approaches to disability; however, I argue that a closer examination reveals a number of commonalities between the two.
Implications
I use Irving K. Zola’s extensive body of scholarship to demonstrate the connections between these divergent approaches to disability, and imagine what his legacy has to offer to the advancement of a diverse sociology of disability.
Value
Neither focus is more correct than the other, as considering these bodies of work together presents a number of opportunities to advance a more comprehensive sociological theory – not just of disability – but of ableism and its intersections with other forms of oppression as well.