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The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology to develop responsible leaders through developing their response-ability within the context of their day-to-day lives that addresses the existing disconnect between the knowledge about responsible leadership and its practice.

The responsible leadership development methodology begins by helping individuals increase their awareness of their impact on others based on how they are relating and responding to them. This is facilitated through individuals engaging in self-reflexivity and reflection on relationships for which they want to be responsible. Then individuals experiment with and take responsibility for how they are relating and responding within the relationships. Finally, they engage in self-reflexivity and reflection to make sense of the experience to develop practical wisdom and the response-ability that will allow them to become more responsible leaders.

Students that completed an MBA leadership course that employed the responsible leadership development methodology overwhelmingly reported that their response-ability improved in ways that allowed them to become more responsible for their actions, impact on others, relationships and the reality they co-construct with others, as well as becoming a more responsible person.

The research is based on an MBA class of 24 students, only a few of whom currently occupied organizational leadership positions.

The presented leadership development methodology facilitates the development of responsible leaders through developing their ability and commitment to act responsibly within the context of their day-to-day lives.

The aim of this paper is to give an account of a self‐evaluation process in a change programme within the US Coast Guard.

This is an autoethnographical account as form of reflection on a leadership in position facilitating change within the organization.

Adaptive organizational change is a human endeavor, not a scientific application of techniques and skills.

The authoethnography points mainly only to a change process of the writer and is therefore hardly an abstract model for others.

Meaningful organizational transformation does not occur without a corresponding self‐transformation, most importantly of the individual leading the change.

Changing oneself by managing change process as a leader, one has to become the change process in order to be successful.

This case describes a real family that has been running a labor-intensive business since 1992. The father, Phil Mason, runs the business with the help of his wife and two of his sons in southwestern Rhode Island. The business is a franchisee of ServiceMaster Clean. In 2006, the franchise employed 20 full-time employees and was the 50th largest ServiceMaster Clean franchise among the approximately 1,200 franchises located in the United States. Annual revenue is approximately $2.5 million. In late 2005, one of Phil℉s sons began researching the biodiesel industry. As he was growing weary of the labor-intensive nature of his franchise business, Phil fully researched the industry himself. By the middle of 2006, Phil was convinced that he could profitably manufacture biodiesel in his spare warehouse space. In July 2006, he formed Mason Biodiesel, LLC and financed the $1.5 million start-up costs through a combination of personal savings and bank debt.

This chapter proposes a theory that explains how increased levels of diversity within and among members of teams increase innovation and creativity in team decision making and problem solving. Using the work ofHartmann (1991), Koestler (1964), and Zerubavel (1991), our conceptualization of team diversity is based on the concepts of schemata and mental boundaries. Our model demonstrates that teams composed of individuals with heterogeneous schemata and thin mental boundaries possess greater creative potential than groups composed of individuals with homogeneous schemata and thick mental boundaries. Implications of this model for research and practice in diversity management and organizational creativity are discussed.

Leader-centred teaching has often taken as normal a cyclical pattern of business, which Marques (2014) argues is no longer the appropriate model. The purpose of this paper is to examine the current leadership curriculum paradigm and the case for an alternative pedagogy which better caters for the messy reality – without recurrent patterns or historical certainties – that global organisations and their business leaders currently often have to deal with. In particular, it addresses implications for the “hero” model of leadership.

The empirical findings are elicited through a combination of case studies, qualitative surveys and action research methods which include organisational development which encourages leaders to develop skills and capability to enquire into and work with their own group processes and design. Arts-based methods, such as poetry, music, painting, sculpture or music are offered as a means to help cultivate the leader’s creative potential and reach into those vulnerable places which often remain hidden amongst traditional didactic methods of facilitation.

The empirical findings call for a deconstruction of the hero leader through increasing reflexivity to help leaders understand their own feelings, reactions and motives. It encourages bespoke leadership competencies which can be adapted for individuality. This suggests that contemporary leaders and managers first need to understand what capacities and deficiencies they have as individuals, and second how to build an appropriate mix of skills through understanding and reflecting on their own individual experiences and actions.

The paper introduces an approach to leadership training which takes account of the demand for organisations to serve a social purpose, and the need for effectively leading a workforce where the power of the individual is growing with millennials pushing this and questioning the very premises of corporate behaviour and economic and social principles which guide it. It acknowledges that the demands on leaders are shoulder-buckling at the best of times but proposes that business school teaching on leadership must address the messiness of reality and offer means and ways of thriving in spite of such chaos.