Abstract

Background

     Strengthening leadership and management competencies among national Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) teams will be critical to achieving global immunization targets and other sustainable developmental goals. However, there is little empirical evidence of the effectiveness of investments in leadership and management capacity in the context of national EPI programs. Therefore, we sought to evaluate the EPI Leadership and Management Programme (EPI LAMP), a nine-month certificate program for EPI teams in national Ministries of Health from Gavi priority countries in Anglophone and Francophone Africa and Asia.

Methods

     We used a mixed-methods longitudinal evaluation to describe EPI LAMP at four levels: (1) participant response to the training experience based on program administration records and satisfaction surveys; (2) change in management and leadership skill based on competency surveys and exit interviews; (3) change in behavior in the workplace based on exit interviews; and (4) impact of the training on EPI program performance based on the results of each delegate’s leadership project.

Results

     In the first three cohorts, the programme engaged 16 countries (63 participants) and achieved an 86% graduation rate (54 alumni). Participants demonstrated significant improvement in management and leadership competencies across eight domains with the largest improvement observed in the domain of governance and leadership. Women showed greater increases than men, especially in the domains of Operations Management and Political Advocacy and Dialogue. We observed no difference in the gains made by French-speaking delegates compared to English-speaking participants. Breakthrough projects developed by each team improved EPI program performance, as measured by metrics specific to each project.

Discussion

     Our results show that team-based leadership programs can foster improvements in management practice, collaboration, and problem-solving, and that engagement the broader policy and organizational context is needed to foster the systems thinking capacity required to address complex challenges and improve system performance.

Introduction

     Immunization is one of the most cost-effective investments in global health [1], and reaching every child with immunization is the major strategic goal of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Despite significant increase in vaccination coverage in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), 14 million children were not reached by routine immunization in 2019 [2]. EPI programs must adapt and evolve to address complexities such as reaching zero- dose children, reaching children in conflict settings and other humanitarian crises, managing an increasingly complex portfolio of routine immunizations, overcoming weaknesses in primary health care systems, and, more recently, ensuring continuity of services in light of COVID-19. Strengthening leadership and management competencies [3], [4] among national EPI teams will be critical to achieving global immunization targets and other sustainable development goals [5], [6], [7].

     In response, Gavi has developed a small but strategic portfolio of investments in leadership and management to support EPI program performance. Drawing on literature from primary health systems strengthening more broadly, leadership and management is associated with better health systems performance in LMIC settings [8], and can be improved through practical approaches to education and mentorship for healthcare professionals at all levels of the health system [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19]. Leadership and management trainings conducted at the facility level have been linked with the reduction of wait times and patient crowdedness in hospitals in Egypt [13] and the increase in the number of women receiving counseling during antenatal care in Cameroon [14]. At the district level, a number of studies [8], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19] reported the impact of management and leadership training on primary care system performance. However, there is little empirical evidence of the effectiveness of investments in leadership and management capacity in the context of national EPI programs.

Conclusion

     Strengthening leadership and management competencies among national EPI teams will be critical to achieving global immunization targets and other sustainable developmental goals, and can be significantly improved through participation in a team-based program customized to meet the needs of immunization professionals across Gavi-eligible countries. Programs that foster development of a cross-country learning community, engage multiple levels of hierarchy, and equip teams to address complex adaptive challenges are likely to be superior to brief training programs focused on individual participants. The results of this study may be useful to educators, practitioners, and government officials seeking to strengthen EPI programme performance, as well as policymakers and global partners seeking to invest in evidence-based management and leadership development models.

Customer incivility toward frontline employees (FLEs) is a widespread phenomenon within tourism and hospitality industries, severely depleting the psychological resources of FLEs and delivered customer service. Drawing on the job demands-resources and conservation of resources frameworks, the current research compares the effects of the two most common forms of customer incivility on FLEs’ psychological responses and behavioral intentions (study 1). Moreover, this work explores the degree to which supervisor leadership style can mitigate the depleting effects of these two forms of customer incivility on FLEs (study 2). Findings demonstrate that FLEs’ responses to customer incivility episodes remain contingent upon supervisor’s leadership style and acknowledge that an empowering (vs. laissez-faire) leadership style can better mitigate the depleting effects of both customer incivility forms on FLEs’ role stress, rumination, retaliation and withdrawal intentions. The implications of these findings for tourism and hospitality theory and practicing managers are discussed.

Introduction

Chick-fil-A restaurant, Washington D. C, September 2018: A customer verbally attacks an order taker in front of other customers and other members of staff; the shift manager intervenes kindly asking the yelling customer to leave the restaurant. In response, the customer escalates into a fight with the employee, with other customers becoming involved, resulting in the shift manager physically attacking the perpetrator. Customer-captured videos of the event go viral, undermining Chick-Fil-A’s long-standing reputation as the most friendly fast-food restaurant chain across the US (The Washington Post, 2018). As the above incident showcases, customer incivility, defined as “the low-quality interpersonal treatment that employees receive from their customers during service interactions” (Koopmann, Wang, Liu, & Song, 2015), can have detrimental effects on employees, customer service experience, and the overall reputation of the brand. Customer incivility is a global phenomenon with a national survey of fast food workers in Australia revealing that 87% of them have been treated uncivilly by their customers (ABC News, 2018). Likewise, the 2017 Gallup survey among employees in the US, places mistreatment in the workplace by managers, coworkers and customers as the number one cause of burnout (Gallup, 2018), whereas Porath and Pearson (2012) report from a sample of thousands of employees surveyed over 14- years, an astonishing 98% has repeatedly experienced uncivil behaviors.

Abstract

1- Introduction

2- Methods

3- Data analysis

4- Ethical approval

5- Results

6- Discussion

7- Strengths and limitations

8- Conclusion

References

Abstract

Background
In healthcare systems, human resources play a strategic role that has a significant impact on the whole caring process. When the wellbeing of professionals is low their performance decreases, counterproductive work behaviours may became more likely, and as a result the quality of care is compromised. Studies have shown that leadership style is particularly relevant in relation to the quality of work environments in healthcare organizations.
Objective
The main purpose of this study is to test a model that investigates the relationships between nurse managers’ leadership style and patients’ perception of the quality of the care provided by the nurses, through the mediation of the quality of the working environment (in terms of burnout, interpersonal strain and counterproductive work behaviour).
Design
A multi-centre cross-sectional study was conducted.
Setting
The study was conducted in five hospitals located two in the north, two in the centre and one in the south of Italy.

Participants

Participants were 479 registered nurses (working as staff nurses, while head nurses and nurse managers were excluded) and 829 patients aged 18 years or older, able to read and write Italian and hospitalized for at least 3 days. Severely ill or mentally disabled patients who were not able to fill in the questionnaire were excluded.
Methods
The data were collected through two different questionnaires, one for the nurses and one for the patients. A multilevel analysis was conducted to examine the hypothesized model.
Results
Results confirmed the hypothesis that, when nurses were satisfied with leadership, they felt less burned-out and strained in interpersonal relationships, they engaged less in misbehaviour, and, in turn, patients were more satisfied with the quality of the care provided by the nurses.
Conclusions
The results of this study showed that the characteristics of the organizational context, the leadership, and the behaviours of nurses, influenced patients’ perceptions of nurses’ care. Therefore, managers of healthcare services should take these results into account seriously in order to improve the quality of care provided to patients.

Introduction

To tackle rapid changes in social care and healthcare, and the growing needs of an aging population, healthcare systems need to find new ways to improve the quality of the care provided (World Health Organization, 2016). In this context, human resources play a strategic role, because they are responsible for the final result of care processes (Dubois et al., 2017), and consequently for the quality of the care provided (Donahue et al., 2008). When healthcare employees, in particular nurses, work in stressful organizations their performance quality decreases (Abualrub and Al-Zaru, 2008; Sili et al., 2010), counterproductive work behaviours increase (Fida et al., 2014) and the quality of care is negatively affected (Shen et al., 2018). In line with Karasek’s (1979) classical job demands model as well as the more recent job demand-resource model of burnout (Demerouti et al., 2001), employees who work in demanding environments, that is those that require sustained physical and/or psychological effort such as high work pressure or emotionally challenging interactions with clients or customers, are more at risk of developing chronic stress and burnout in terms of psychophysical exhaustion, lack of interest in their work and a feeling of inadequacy (Bakker and Heuven, 2006; Consiglio, 2014; Demerouti et al., 2001; Maslach et al., 2001). Burnout is an important problem for modern organizations as its prevalence is continuously growing. It is a syndrome characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment (Maslach et al., 1996). Emotional exhaustion makes the subject feel emotionally overloaded, without the strength to start over, and that they can no longer give anything to others, so they escape involvement. Depersonalization is the tendency to perform tasks mechanically, with standardized and stereotypical procedures. Reduced personal accomplishment refers to individuals feeling that they are inadequate at work, that they are failures, and becoming depressed. Workers suffering burnout present anxiety, depression, apathy, weakness and insomnia, but also deviant behaviours such as aggressiveness (Cañadas-De la Fuente et al., 2015). In particular, healthcare workers could be at risk of ‘interpersonal strain’, that is, stress due to the relationship with a patient, but also with colleagues, line managers or fellow-workers (Borgogni et al., 2005). Interpersonal strain could have negative consequences on nurses’ health and well-being (Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002; Tschan et al., 2005; Zapf and Holz, 2006), but could also cause them to modify their behaviours and performances in ways that have a direct impact on patient safety and the quality of the care provided (Zaghini et al., 2017a). A lack of attention to these phenomena on the part of the organization could have repercussions on nursing sensitive outcomes and therefore on care quality (Stalpers et al., 2015). It is therefore essential for healthcare managers to monitor working conditions, because a “healthy” organization is more effective and productive (Burke, 2016).

1- Introduction

2- Literature review

3- Materials and methods

4- Results

5- Discussion and conclusions

References

Abstract

In hospitality, certain management styles can play a crucial role in achieving positive employee outcomes. This study aims to investigate how different leadership styles can contribute to maximizing hospitality workers’ potential. The proposed theoretical model draws on emerging approaches to leadership (paradoxical, empowering, servant) and is tested with structural equation modeling (SEM) using data from 340 employees in Spanish hotels. The findings may be explained by Self-Determination Theory: empowering and paradoxical leadership styles show positive relationships to psychological empowerment. Contrary to expectations, servant leadership style was not an antecedent of psychological empowerment. Furthermore, this study ascertains the positive relationship of empowering and servant leadership styles to engagement. The findings also demonstrate psychological empowerment to be a clear antecedent of job engagement, extending previous research. Implications for hospitality service managers, educators, and researchers are discussed.

Introduction

The hospitality industry has a unique culture as compared to other industries. It is a sector of frequent interaction between customers and employees, where frontline staff play a crucial role in service delivery (Terglav, Konečnik Ruzzier, & Kaše, 2016). The profitability of hospitality organizations depends on essential employee attitudes and behaviors (Úbeda-García, Claver Cortés, Marco-Lajara, & Zaragoza-Sáez, 2014). Paradoxically, hospitality workers frequently report emotional exhaustion, lack of appreciation, occupational stress, overwork, and low pay (Kim & Agrusa, 2011; Tongchaiprasit & Ariyabuddhiphongs, 2016). In fact, high absenteeism and turnover are also characteristics of these working environments. Further, as Øgaard, Marnburg, and Larsen (2008) highlight, hospitality organizations are conventionally characterized as highly hierarchical, with a predominance of traditional management styles; most hotels follow the classical model of centralized decision making within strict pyramidal organization charts. Nevertheless, in this particular service sector, many unpredicted situations may occur, and if frontline employees are not given responsibility for decision making, they may find it hard to solve problems quickly and provide high-quality customer service (Jha & Nair, 2008). Since every customer and each service experience are different, hospitality employees should have some degree of autonomy and discretion in service delivery – and its recovery, when necessary – to meet customers’ differing needs, demands, and expectations (Ro & Chen, 2011). For this and other reasons, managing people in this special sector involves unique challenges for managers (Bowen & Ford, 2002). On the other hand, several economic and financial variables have pushed companies to new standards, forcing them to redefine business processes in the past decade. Delaying of management structures (in many cases due to downsizing) has been accompanied by a changing balance of power between employer and employee. As a result, new flattened organizational models seem to have emerged in conjunction with changes in the management philosophy. In fact, many organizations have been compelled to shift their traditional pyramidal, top down concept of control towards more flexible and participatory managerial formulas. This change in managers’ roles and responsibilities appears to have required a corresponding regeneration of the types of leadership behavior they employ. Leaders are now required to be more adaptable and people-oriented. New leadership strategies are therefore needed to motivate the 21st-century workforce and to increase their positive psychological capital (Deloitte, 2014).

Introduction

Literature review

Hypotheses development

Research methodology

Data analysis

Results

Discussion

Theoretical implication

Practical implication

Limitations and suggestions

Conclusion

References

Abstract

Purpose: The objective of this study is to see the mediating effect of innovative culture and organizational learning between leadership styles and organizational performance in Malaysian SMEs. Design/methodology/approach: Questionnaires were used to collect data from owners/managers and 950 questionnaires distributed by using postal and email strategy. Out of 950, only 409 questionnaires returned back, 25 questionnaires have missing values and eliminated from a sample, and only 384 questionnaires were used for final analysis.
Findings: Findings reveal that leadership styles have a significant influence on organizational learning, innovative culture, and organizational performance. Innovative culture and organizational learning have a significant influence on organizational performance. Moreover, innovative culture and organizational learning significantly mediate between leadership styles and organizational performance.
Practical implications: In practical term, the current study contributes for managers/ owners in SMEs to focus leadership styles with innovative culture and organizational learning in their decision making if they want to enhance their organizational performance.
Research originality: This study is one of the pioneer studies that test leadership styles at third-order with the combination of two mediating variables innovative culture and organizational learning with organizational performance.

Introduction

Effective leadership plays an important role to determine the success or failure of any kind of organization (Tourish, 2014). In the last few decades, leadership is the most studied area in business as well as in industry. Moreover, leadership has become a compulsory part for organizations (Bryman, 2007; Brymer & Gray, 2006). Despite the wider quantity of studies on leadership, there has been scant research done on small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) (Franco & Matos, 2015). A highly competitive market and rapidly changing strategies enhance the importance of leadership in attaining a competitive edge over their competitor through leaders to enhance organizational performance (Jaramillo, Mulki, & Marshall, 2005). The primary purpose of organizations is to focus financial efficiency but also considers their intangible resources and leadership to maintain competitive advantage (Wang, Chich-Jen, & Mei-Ling, 2010). Literature demonstrates that Malaysian SMEs faces issues regarding leadership styles that reduce organization performance (Aziz, Abdullah, Tajudin, & Mahmood, 2013; Hashim, Ahmad, & Zakaria, 2012; Rahim, Zainal Abidin, Mohtar, & Ramli, 2015). Prior studies suggested that effective leadership can help to improve the organizational performance in that situation where organizations face a lot of new issues and challenges (Franco & Matos, 2015; McGrath, Mac Grath, & MacMillan, 2000). Leadership styles have an influence on both individual and organizational performance (Wang et al., 2010; Windsor, 2009). Sometimes firms do not identify the ineffective or effective leaders until time passed and organizations suffer (Nazarian, Soares, & Lottermoser, 2017). Leadership styles are a vital element that explains organizational performance. Hence, this study focuses on leadership styles to determine SMEs performance.

We address complexities on gender role theory and trait analyses of leadership to explain how sex and gender interrelate to produce asymmetric effects on different leadership outcomes (i.e., positive attitudes vs. evaluations). In three studies across different set-ups, gender traits demonstrated incremental validity over sex on employees’ positive attitudes (e.g., satisfaction, loyalty). For evaluations (e.g., perceived effectiveness), gender traits had generally weaker effects and in some cases predicted effectiveness more for stereotypical leaders, in line with role-congruency predictions. Penalties for counter-stereotypical behavior were weaker for female than male actual leaders, pointing to mitigated effects of role congruity prescriptions on female leaders´ evaluations. Remarkably, agency did not correlate more strongly than communion with any leadership effect. These findings underscore the relevance of (female and male) leaders’ communion to improve followers’ positive attitudes -but not evaluations- and call for an updated perspective about the complex influences of gender on leadership beyond the oversimplified female advantage approach.

Since early “female advantage” proposals over 30 years that women have superior leadership styles than men (Helgesen, 1990; Loden, 1985), the claim that women are better leaders has been gaining momentum both in the popular press (New York Times, 2009; The Daily Mail, 2010) and academic research (e.g., Carter, Simkins, & Simpson, 2003; Krishnan & Park, 2005). Driven by this assumption, theoretical and empirical progress in this field has undergone substantial development, with a rich body of research demonstrating that female leaders display to a greater extent styles that are associated with performance, such as people orientation, emotional intelligence or transformational leadership (see Eagly, Gartzia, & Carli, 2014, for a review). Paying attention to the value of women in leadership constitutes a substantial contribution for gender equality. Yet, its underlying perspective has not questioned sex differences per se and has generally disregarded more complex ways in which gender influence leadership effectiveness. A particularly influential precursor of the female advantage is communion – a set of stereotypically feminine personality traits that have traditionally been more desirable in women than in men (Bem, 1974; Spence & Helmreich, 1978).

Shared leadership has rarely been studied in the project management context, despite its proven performance-enhancing benefits in other management domains. Based on a systematic review of the salient literature from multiple disciplines, this paper develops a new multi-level conceptual model to advance a holistic understanding of how shared leadership develops and how it may impact individual, team, project and wider organisational performance. The conceptual model draws upon the input-mediator-output-input perspective of systems theory, which is wellestablished in the general team literature. The new integrative model identifies the potential multi-level antecedents, proximal team functioning outcomes, and the more distal multi-level outcomes of shared leadership based on findings from the shared leadership literature drawn largely from other domains. Potential boundary conditions of the model are identified. A future research agenda is recommended for empirically testing the new multi-level shared leadership model and its different elements in a diverse range of project contexts.

Introduction

Today’s workplace is becoming increasingly project-centric (Schoper et al., 2018) with projects growing more complex (Bjorvatn and Wald, 2018) and requiring the use of many different team types, including multidisciplinary teams (ScottYoung and Samson, 2008), multiple teams (Gemünden et al., 2018), and sometimes inter-firm teams (Von Danwitz, 2018) to efficiently deliver project objectives. Often these project teams are co-located, but some teams work virtually and are dispersed across time and geographical zones, presenting additional challenges for coordination (Muethel and Hoegl, 2016). It is rare that any single individual will possess all the knowledge and skills necessary to direct or carry the entire project team’s performance (Pearce and Manz, 2005). Effective integrated project teams collaborate to make full use of members’ diverse expertise and contributions (Scott-Young and Samson, 2008), and are able to draw upon the leadership of more than one person to manage and coordinate different tasks (Muethel and Hoegl, 2016).

Through their empathy, care and nurturance, benevolent leaders can help employees with disabilities surmount their disability stigma and smile at their work and work environment. The primary aim of our research is to examine how benevolent leadership contributes to the well-being of employees with disabilities. The participants in our study comprised employees with disabilities from firms located in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Our results revealed the relationships between benevolent leadership and the three components of the well-being among employees with disabilities including perceived discrimination, job satisfaction and need for recovery. Disability inclusive climate was also found to mediate these relationships. Moreover, attachment anxiety acted as an enhancer for the effects of disability inclusive climate on the well-being while attachment avoidance was found to attenuate these effects except for the impact on need for recovery.

Introduction

Employees with disabilities are a ‘largely untapped human resource’ for organizations (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2008, p. 256) albeit the evidence demonstrates no significant performance and productivity differences between people with disabilities and those without disabilities (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2008). People with disabilities still have on average lower levels of employment, job security, income, pay satisfaction, job satisfaction, and overall quality of work life than people without disabilities (Konrad, Moore, Ng, Doherty, & Breward, 2013; Schur et al., 2017; Schur, Kruse, & Blanck, 2013; Shantz, Wang, & Malik, 2018; Wubulihasimu, Brouwer, & Van Baal, 2015). In the Vietnamese context, Disabilities Law 2010 and its clauses on benefits for organizations that hire people with disabilities have had some influence on human resources (HR) policies of organizations (Nguyen, 2016). However, there still have been challenges for many of them to socially include and foster the well-being among employees with disabilities (Nguyen & Thu, 2015; Voice of Vietnam (VOV), 2016). Work-related well-being alludes to “the overall quality of an employee’s experience and functioning at work” (Grant et al., 2007, p. 52). Since well-being is a crucial indicator of the effective social inclusion of employees with disabilities into an organization and its work activities (Cavanagh et al., 2017), there is a need for scholars and practitioners to decipher more antecedents behind the well-being of employees with disabilities (Ababneh, 2016; Cavanagh et al., 2017; Dwertmann & Boehm, 2016).

Participation in business events such as meetings, conventions and exhibitions is costly, and building a highperformance team is vital. This study examines the key influential factors of team performance from the perspective of the “temporary organization”. Using a sample of 516 individuals employed by exhibitors attending trade shows, we demonstrate that “servant leadership” and “swift trust” are the two crucial factors in improving an exhibitor team’s performance. Specifically, two dimensions of servant leadership, namely conceptual skills and commitment to the growth of people, contribute directly to team performance. Swift trust not only has a positive direct influence on team performance but is also a partial mediator between servant leadership and team performance. The results have implications for managers seeking to create a high-performance temporary team.

Introduction

Business events such as meetings, conferences and exhibitions can play an important role in a destination’s economic development, especially in its hospitality and tourism industries (Alberca-Oliver et al., 2015; Hanly, 2012; Jin and Weber, 2013; Jones). According to Jones and Li (2015), business travelers usually spend money more than their leisure counterparts; business events help to extend the utilization period of hospitality facilities outside holiday peaks; and exhibition and conference facilities provide value for residents and enhance the attraction of a destination. There is increasing recognition of this contribution that business events make to a destination’s development, and consequently there has been significant growth of the exhibition industry infrastructure globally in recent years. The Global Association of the Exhibition Industry (UFI, 2018) reported that global venue space reached 34.8 million square meters in 2017, an increase of 7.7% over 2011. The Asia Pacific region has seen a surge in venue projects in recent years, driven primarily by China, which accounts for 70% of exhibition venue space in the region. Globally, China is now the world’s second largest provider of exhibition venues, only behind the USA. Despite the importance of business events for destinations around the world (Getz, 2008; Getz and Page, 2016; Kelly and Fairley, 2018), hospitality research lags behind the growth in the conventions, conferences and exhibitions industry. Participation in business events such as trade shows has significant cost implications, and therefore creating a high-performance team is vital for the exhibitors (Alberca-Oliver et al., 2015). A trade show is a temporary event, and an exhibitor’s team participating in the event is a temporary organization.

This article argues that little is known in public relations (PR) about the experience of leadership and, more specifically, the challenges associated with enacting desired leadership behaviours in the work place. The study focusses on the personal experiences of PR leaders and considers how exploring the interplay between a leader and their context enhances understanding of the conditions under which knowledge is enacted, or rather not enacted, in different leadership situations. The discussion is informed by perspectives from organization and leadership studies which highlight the importance of reflexivity to leadership learning. In addition to applying a reflexive lens to leadership practice in public relations, the study addresses a lack of empirical research focussing on the situated experiences of PR leaders. It considers the reflexive potential of a programme of interviews with PR practitioners providing examples to illustrate the role this form of research can play in leadership studies. The context investigated concerns the work place experiences of senior PR executives who claim to be ‘empowering leaders’. The discussion of the findings focuses on how organizational power relations distort the practitioners’ espoused leadership values and engages in a process of problematization designed to challenge the uncritical promotion of normative and decontextualised approaches to leadership. The article highlights the benefits of a reflexive orientation to PR leadership research and pedagogy, while calling for the promotion of a particular form of contextual intelligence to help practitioners confront the organizational conditions which specifically impact on their ability to lead others.

Introduction

In an article about leadership in this journal more than 30 years ago, Thayer (1986) appropriated a Spanish proverb to make the point that discussing or reading about leadership is not the same as doing it. The proverb he uses warns theatrically that to talk of bulls is not the same as being in the bullring. Four decades on from Thayer’s evocation of the bullring we still know little in public relations (PR) about the experiences practitioners have of leading others and, more specifically, the challenges associated with enacting desired leadership behaviours in the work place. This oversight is not surprising for while there has been a recent upsurge in research, leadership in PR remains an under-developed area of inquiry despite its importance to the impact, development and reputation of the profession (Berger, 2013; McKie & Willis, 2015; Meng, 2014; Petersone & Erzikova, 2016). This article’s interest in the personal experiences of practitioners seeking to enact desired leadership behaviours, in addition to contributing to a nascent area of public relations scholarship, further advances knowledge by connecting PR to relevant research from outside of the field. The study considers how exploring the interplay between a leader and their context enhances understanding of the conditions under which knowledge is enacted, or rather not enacted, in a specific leadership context. In doing so, the discussion introduces perspectives from organization and leadership studies which highlight the importance of reflexivity to leadership learning (Cunliffe & Easterby-Smith, 2004; Cunliffe, 2002).

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to better understand the role that leadership plays in the success of Lean management (LM) implementation, by trying to identify what is the impact of the transactional, transformational, directive and empowering leadership styles on the success of such an implementation in Portuguese companies, and what are the most important leaders’ attributes. Design/methodology/approach – An on-line questionnaire was distributed to 65 manufacturing and services Portuguese organizations that have implemented LM. Findings – The results suggest that the empowering leadership style has a positive impact on the success of LM implementation. Even though results do not allow concluding about the impact of the other styles, several leader’s attributes were identified as having influence: individualized consideration, information sharing, skill development, intellectual stimulation, assigned goals and self-directed decision making. Originality/value – Very few studies have addressed the role of leadership in the success of adopting LM and, to the best knowledge, only one paper studied the critical attributes of leaders in LM implementation. Moreover, the present study focuses in Portugal, country where this topic has rarely been investigated.

Introduction

The successful implementation of LM in some well-known organizations boosted its implementation in many others around the world. In addition, the last economic recession increased the need for competition and therefore the need to implement tools and techniques that improve the competitive level (Alsmadi et al., 2012), with LM practices among those. However, several cases in which the LM implementation has been reported unsuccessful (Sorooshian et al., 2017), justify the increasing concern about implementation aspects (Van Landeghem, 2014). Some studies have identified the critical success factors for the successful Lean implementation, specifying leadership as one of them (Achanga et al., 2006). In effect, leaders’ role in an organization is nowadays recognized as critical to support change (Pamfilie et al., 2012). Surprisingly, only a few studies address the role of this specific factor in LM deployment (Gelei et al., 2015, studied the attributes, not the leadership styles and Tortorella et al., 2018, analyzed specific contextual factors such as the age of the leader). The purpose of our research is to fulfill this gap in the literature. Following this research direction, this study tries to identify what is the impact of leadership style on the success of LM implementation (this is not performed by Gelei et al., 2015 neither by Tortorella et al., 2018), seeking to identify the leadership style that is more conductive to a successful LM implementation, and what are the most important attributes that leaders should have to facilitate this implementation. Our results are expected to help organizations that are already implementing LM or planning to implement it to check whether their leadership has the right attributes to facilitate success. This research was based on a questionnaire distributed to 65 Portuguese companies that have implemented Lean. The data collected from the questionnaire were subsequently statistically analyzed, enabling us the determination of the styles and attributes of leadership associated with success in the procedure of implementing LM. The paper is structured as follows. The subsequent section provides the literature review conducted prior to the research work. The third section provides the information about the research hypotheses. The fourth section presents the results and, the final section provides the concluding remarks of the research work carried out.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship of leadership styles (paternalistic, authentic and democratic) with relationship-based employee governance and open service innovation. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected using a structured questionnaire from 422 medical professionals working in the Malaysian healthcare sector. Findings – Results of several statistical analyses showed that the three leadership styles positively influence relationship-based employee governance and open service innovation. Results also confirmed the mediating role of relationship-based employee governance in the relationships between the three leadership styles and open service innovation. Research limitations/implications – This research used a cross-sectional study design; use of a longitudinal research design in future research can provide a better interpretation of the underlying causality. A policy insight can be drawn from this research to generate awareness about effective leadership styles and the role of relationship-based employee governance in the successful implementation of open service innovation in the Malaysian healthcare sector. Originality/value – This paper contributes to leadership, open innovation, and organizational governance literature by highlighting how leadership styles affect relationship-based employee governance and open innovation. It also offers policy insights to practitioners in the Malaysian healthcare sector on how to enhance open service innovation outcomes.

Introduction

Recent research has shown that majority of the European and American organizations have embraced the open innovation model to build competitive advantage (von Briel and Recker, 2017). In this regard, the extant literature indicates that leadership plays a vital role in building a competitive advantage by creating organizational synergies and overcoming resistance to change when new initiatives are introduced (Lerner and Tirole, 2005). Past research has examined the role of different leadership styles – transformational, transactional and participative – in making organizations innovative (see Engelen et al., 2014; Kang et al., 2015; Lee and Cavusgil, 2006; Sarros et al., 2008). Evidently, leaders stimulate followers’ psychological processes for innovative behavior (Gong et al., 2009; Lee, 2008), knowledge creation and sharing procedures (Goh, 2002; Von Krogh et al., 2012) and intellectual capital (Putri, 2015). These elements are essential attributes of the open service innovation paradigm (Chesbrough, 2011). Many studies show that leaders play a key role in the deployment of open innovation as a source of competitive advantage (Chen et al., 2016; Chesbrough, 2011; Fleming and Waguespack, 2007; Laursen and Salter, 2006). Despite these theoretical developments, the influence of leadership styles on the successful deployment of open service innovation is an area which has not received its due attention (Chesbrough, 2011; Lerner and Tirole, 2001; Perrone et al., 2003). Against this backdrop, this paper aims to examine the role of leadership in open service innovation. A majority of leadership research has focused on generic leadership styles such as transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles (see Engelen et al., 2014; Kang et al., 2015; Lee and Cavusgil, 2006; Sarros et al., 2008). The advances in leadership theory in the last four decades have resulted in the emergence of new leadership styles such as paternalistic, democratic and authentic leadership styles (Aycan, 2006).

Change is crucial for organizations in continuous growing and high competition in business environment. Different theories of change describe the effectiveness of modification of strategies, processes and structures for organizations. The action research model, the positive model and the Lewin’s change model submit the views of the phases for change in organization. This study views the Lewin’s model as three steps process (unfreezing, movement and refreezing) for change in organization. Although this model sets a general steps to be followed, more information is considered to guide these steps in specific situations. This article is critically reviewed for change theories in different phases of organizational change. In this critical review the change management has constructive framework for managing the organizational change through different phases of the process. This review gives theoretical and practical implications and somehow the immunity to change has been discussed.

Introduction and research questions

The purpose of the study is to craft the relation between process model and change, this relation describes the ways of implementing change process by leader’s knowledge sharing, and this sharing identifies the stages of change process, and these stages delineate the functional significance between organizational change and change implementation. The organizational life has been made inevitable feature by global, technological and economic pace, and many models of organizational change have acknowledged the influence of implicit dimensions at one stage or more stages of organizational change process (Burke, 2008; Wilkins & Dyer, 1988), and these models imitate different granular levels affecting the process of organizational change, and each level of them identifies distinctive change implementation stages (By, 2005). A model of organizational change in Kurt Lewin’s three steps change process context was introduced in this study; which reflects momentous stages in change implementation process. Kurt Lewin’s model is the early fundamental planned change models explaining the striving forces to maintain the status quo and pushing for change (Lewin, 1947). To change the “quasistationary equilibrium” stage, one may increase the striving forces for change, or decrease the forces maintaining the status quo, or the combination of both forces for proactive and reactive organizational change through knowledge sharing of individual willingness with the help of stimulating change leadership style. The Lewin’s model was used from an ethnographic study assumed for the investigation of the Lewin’s model for change development, mediates implementation and leadership initiatives for change in complex organizations. The focus of this research on (i) how Lewin’s change model granulates change, (ii) how knowledge sharing affects the change implementation process, (iii) how employees involve in change and willingness to change, and (iv) how leadership style affects the organizational change process in organization.