The purpose of this paper is to determine whether there is historical support for the proposal of Smith, Montagno and Kuzmenko that the specific cultures associated with…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to determine whether there is historical support for the proposal of Smith, Montagno and Kuzmenko that the specific cultures associated with transformational and/or servant leadership would be more or less applicable, based on context. Moreover, its purpose is also to demonstrate that a historical approach can be used effectively to examine such constructs.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper presents a historical examination of the military retreats of Xenophon, a transformational leader, and Chief Joseph, a servant leader, during very similar contextual crises.
Findings
Given similar contexts, the historical record offers support for the proposal of Smith et al.
Research limitations/implications
First, the retreats of Xenophon and Chief Joseph were separated by many hundreds of years and miles. Also inherent with this type of methodology is simple disagreement among readers. Although this author finds great similarity in the retreats of Xenophon and Chief Joseph, there are certainly differences that could be scrutinized as well. Moreover, others might be dissatisfied with the selection of Xenophon and Joseph to represent the leadership styles presented, or with the conclusions regarding their effectiveness. Such debate should be encouraged and could provide additional avenues for future research. Further, the current study considered leader effectiveness only as it related to the achievement of the organizational goal(s). It could be that Joseph's cohorts were more satisfied, committed, etc. than were the followers of Xenophon. This line of inquiry should also be pursued.
Practical implications
This research suggests that transformational leader behavior is likely to be more appropriate during times of significant organizational change.
Originality/value
This is the first study that has examined the speculation of Smith et al. and the first to demonstrate that a historical approach can add to one's understanding of such constructs.
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John Humphreys, Kendra Ingram, Courtney Kernek and Theresa Sadler
This paper aims to show how industrial thinking has led to a myopic focus on individual leadership styles to the potential detriment of a broader understanding of leadership…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to show how industrial thinking has led to a myopic focus on individual leadership styles to the potential detriment of a broader understanding of leadership. Also, to present the Nez Perce leadership council as an exemplar of post‐industrial leadership. Finally, to demonstrate that a historical approach can be used effectively to elucidate such constructs.
Design/methodology/approach
A historical examination of the popular portrayal versus the actual functioning of the non‐treaty Nez Perce leadership council during the conflict of 1877.
Findings
Although Chief Joseph has often been considered the supreme leader of the Nez Perce during the conflict period (industrial view), the group was actually led by a leadership council, which functioned in the manner described by Rost and Smith as post‐industrial leadership.
Research limitations/implications
Although the paper illuminates Rost and Smith's model, it does not attempt to assess the effectiveness of post‐industrial leadership, as the successes and failures of the Nez Perce during the conflict period could be attributed to other variables beyond the authors' scope. It is to be hoped, however, that future researchers will continue the debate concerning leadership and its peripheral elements.
Practical implications
It is suggested that contemporary organizational leaders should be focused on leadership beyond style and might consider the post‐industrial model for mutually satisfying influence, particularly with the team‐based and flattened structures common to the modern firm.
Originality/value
The use of a historical example and method to exemplify the contemporary model of post‐industrial leadership. Further, to demonstrate how industrial thinking has encouraged many to focus on the periphery of leadership.
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Mario Hayek, Milorad M. Novicevic, John H. Humphreys and Nicole Jones
The purpose of this paper is to further fill the void of American slavery within management history and leadership studies by presenting the unique case of Joseph E. Davis's…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to further fill the void of American slavery within management history and leadership studies by presenting the unique case of Joseph E. Davis's paternalistic leadership.
Design/methodology/approach
This case was selected because of Davis's attempt to transplant Robert Owen's utopian practices of social harmony in an industrial, textile‐mill setting to the backdrop of his slavery plantation. The method used is the historical method of analyzing both primary and secondary sources of data about Joseph E. Davis, a Mississippi planter, during the time periods of antebellum and reconstruction.
Findings
This analysis indicates that Joseph E. Davis exhibited benevolence, authoritarianism, and, to a degree, moral paternalistic leadership with his slaves. Yet, due to his ideology and the context, he still defended slavery and Southern rights.
Research limitations/implications
Historical knowledge about paternalistic leadership during the antebellum slavery and reconstruction time period will help to end the denial of slavery in management studies, as well as contribute to the understanding of paternalism in many contemporary cultures.
Originality/value
This is the first article to provide primary evidence of paternalistic leadership in management history studies within this erroneously disregarded period.
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This paper aims to engage with the concept of resilience as theorized by David Chandler in his book Resilience: The Governance of Complexity by drawing from the theory of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to engage with the concept of resilience as theorized by David Chandler in his book Resilience: The Governance of Complexity by drawing from the theory of governmentality presented by Michel Foucault and Jonathan Joseph.
Design/methodology/approach
Evolving from classical liberalism to neoliberalism and from natural sciences to social sciences, the term “resilience” raises many questions about its sustainability in terms of its meaning and complexity. While most scholars tend to underscore the significance and practicality of the term, a few scholars argue that it is a failed dogma with neoliberal characteristics. As this is a theory-based study, its methodology involves close readings of academic texts produced mainly by David Chandler, Michel Foucault and Jonathan Joseph.
Findings
The central argument in this paper is though Chandler convincingly explains the paradigm shift of the term resilience from classical to neoliberal, his theorizing lacks the understanding that the type of power and governmentality involved in individual freedom, autonomy and complexity are actually parts of the neoliberal state. Hence, the buzzword resilience today is actually an extension of the same neoliberal thought.
Originality/value
First, the author attempts to critically engage with the term resilience from a sociological point of view using purposively selected academic literature. Second, the paper attempts to bring Chandler’s conceptualization on resilience into the disaster context and evaluates its practicality within the tenets of neoliberalism by drawing on Joseph’s and Foucault’s theorizations.
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The accounts of moral reform that nineteenth-century convicts offered the officials in charge were frequently characterized by such uniformity that it caused Dickens to mistrust…
Abstract
The accounts of moral reform that nineteenth-century convicts offered the officials in charge were frequently characterized by such uniformity that it caused Dickens to mistrust their sincerity and to brand them scornfully as “pattern penitence.” Unlike Dickens, however, prison officials were more willing to credit the questionable authenticity of “patterned” repentance. The paper argues that rather than an effect of personal gullibility, reformers’ attitudes can be seen as an outcome of specific interpretative strategies which, in turn, constituted a response to several institutional challenges facing the nineteenth-century Penitentiary.
Both the ideals of the European Union (EU) and the EU's recent political difficulties have attracted comparison with the Habsburg empire. In recent years, some of those making…
Abstract
Both the ideals of the European Union (EU) and the EU's recent political difficulties have attracted comparison with the Habsburg empire. In recent years, some of those making comparison have turned to the Austrian Jewish novelists, Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth, who were crucial to the imaginative emergence of the Habsburg Myth. This paper analyses their writings and those of Robert Musil and Gregor von Rezzori in relation to the Habsburg Myth as a story about European unity, about Austria-Hungary as a supranational polity and about Austria-Hungary's self-proclaimed providential purpose in European affairs. It explores the dissonance between the Habsburg Myth and the EU's territorial composition and argues that the Habsburg Myth is, nonetheless, revealing about the EU's internal hierarchies and its geopolitical difficulties in relation to Russia.
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In this article, I answer the call to normalize and discuss how ethnographers navigate failure in the field by sharing my own experiences from long-term fieldwork in Malawi. I…
Abstract
Purpose
In this article, I answer the call to normalize and discuss how ethnographers navigate failure in the field by sharing my own experiences from long-term fieldwork in Malawi. I highlight, particularly, my own struggles with feelings of failure and the role of my interlocutors in helping me navigate and understand these situations.
Design/methodology/approach
My argument is based on more than 18 months of ongoing in-depth ethnographic fieldwork in Malawi, where I study the everyday practices of civil servants active in disaster governance, focusing on those working for the Malawi Government Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DODMA).
Findings
I use ethnographic vignettes to show how my interlocutors tried to teach me what being a Malawian civil servant is all about, which often came most forcefully to the fore in moments where either I or they deemed that I had failed to behave like one.
Originality/value
This adds new empirical data to the discussions on the various manifestations and roles of failure in ethnographic research, underlining how frictions and feelings of failure are a difficult yet productive and central part of fieldwork and ethnographic data creation.
Pauline Joseph and Jenna Hartel
This paper aims to explore the concept of information in records and archives management (RAM) from a fresh, visual perspective by using arts-informed methodology and the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the concept of information in records and archives management (RAM) from a fresh, visual perspective by using arts-informed methodology and the draw-and-write technique.
Design/methodology/approach
Students and practitioners of RAM in Australia were asked to answer the question, “what is information?” in a drawing and then to describe the drawing in words. This produced a data set of 255 drawings of information or “iSquares”, for short. Compositional interpretation and a framework of graphic representations by Engelhardt were applied to determine how participants envision information and what the renderings imply for RAM.
Findings
The images reveal an overwhelming recognition in RAM of the diversity of media formats of information and the hyperconnectivity of information in networked information systems; and illustrate the central place of human beings within these systems. These findings offer striking, accessible illustrations of major concepts in RAM and enable new understandings through the construction of stories.
Practical implications
There are both pedagogical applications and practical implications of this work for students, practitioners and knowledge workers. The graphical representations of information in this research deepen the understanding of textual definitions of information. The data set of iSquares provides opportunities to create new storyboards to explain information definitions, practices and phenomena in RAM disciplines, and, to explain related concepts such as data, information, knowledge and wisdom hierarchy.
Originality/value
This is the first study in RAM disciplines to provide visual illustrations of information using graphical image representations.
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Nicole Jones, Milorad M. Novicevic, Mario Hayek and John H. Humphreys
This paper aims to trace the historical roots of African American management by examining managerial practices and experiences described in the letters of Benjamin Thornton…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to trace the historical roots of African American management by examining managerial practices and experiences described in the letters of Benjamin Thornton Montgomery, a former slave who eventually became manager and, ultimately, owner of the Hurricane plantation.
Design/methodology/approach
The method used is the historical archival method of analysis, primarily the examination of a series of letters written by Montgomery during the 1865‐1870 time periods. These letters, which document the foundation and emergence of African American management during the Emancipation age, are for the first time presented as a source of management history.
Findings
Contrary to traditional thoughts of the insignificance of the plantation era to the history of management, the analysis indicates that Montgomery's management practices were quite sophisticated as they incorporated classical management principles of planning, delegation, leadership, and control.
Practical implications
This paper provides insights concerning the historical roots of management practices during the African American Emancipation period which could provide contemporary managers with a more realistic foundation of management practice.
Originality/value
The principal contribution of this investigation is the historical awareness of the documented roots of African American management represented by Montgomery's competence and perseverance to manage effectively while withstanding impeding racial attacks.
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The paper aims to examine the factors that influence the turnover intention of information system (IS) personnel.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to examine the factors that influence the turnover intention of information system (IS) personnel.
Design/methodology/approach
Anchored in the theory of human capital and the theory of planned behavior, as well as an extensive review of existing turnover literature, the authors propose a novel set of variables based on the three‐level analysis framework suggested by Joseph et al. to examine IS turnover intention. At the individual level, IT certifications, IT experience, and past external and internal turnover behaviors are considered. At the firm level, industry type (IT versus non‐IT firms) and IT human resource practices regarding raise and promotion are included. Finally, at the environmental level, personal concerns about external changes characterized by IT outsourcing and offshoring are studied. The authors investigate the impact of these variables on turnover intention using a large sample of 10,085 IT professionals working in the USA.
Findings
The empirical analysis based on logistic regression indicates significant associations between the variables and turnover intention.
Research limitations/implications
Future research may be directed toward developing multiple‐item measures for better validity and reliability of the study.
Practical implications
The authors derive managerial implications that may help guide firms to formulate effective human resource management and retention policies and strategies. They include the importance of organizational support for certification programs and the retention strategy based on the three phase career life cycle of IT professionals.
Originality/value
The study shows many interesting findings, some of which contrast the existing assertions. For example, the authors cannot find the inverted U‐shaped curvilinear relationship between IT experience and turnover intention shown in previous research.