This paper, based on a narrative of one of the authors, explores management reality where a chosen strategy developed into a different direction than expected. The authors offer an insight in a manager's daily struggle, where power, gossip and conflict can influence the strategising process. The plans and strategic ambitions chosen at the outset…

The continuing failure rates of change initiatives, combined with an increasingly complex business environment, have created significant challenges for the practice of change management. High failure rates suggest that existing change models are not working, or are being incorrectly used. A different mindset to change is required. The BGR…

Multiple contexts shape team activities and how they learn, and group learning is a dynamic construct that reflects a repertoire of potential behaviour. The purpose of this developmental paper is to examine how better learning behaviours in semi-autonomous teams improves the level of team adaptability and performance. The discussion suggests that…

95% of people surveyed say honesty and integrity are extremely important or very important in being a good leader. That there has been a continuing erosion of trust across numerous business sectors in this country. Nearly 70% of the surveyed respondents said, "I don't know whom to trust anymore", and said they will "hold business to a higher…

Using multiple constituencies approach, variances in competencies in human resource leadership have been studied as this is becoming highly significant in India's globalisation efforts. Previous research in leadership orientation focused on localisation of human resource competencies rather than its globalisation. For this, human resource…

The widespread experience of complexity is the experience of radical unpredictability and loss of clear connections between cause and effect. The typical response from leaders and researchers is to suggest that more complex contexts require new ways of management control and that particular ways of organising and leading are better than others in…

One tradition within the complexity paradigm considers organisations as complex adaptive systems in which autonomous individuals interact, often in complex ways with difficult to predict, non-linear outcomes. Building upon this tradition, and more specifically following the complex systems leadership theory approach, we describe the ways in which…

Executive power and status depends on others' belief in the executive's capacity for control via rational decision-making, "by the numbers" and above the fray of day to day minutia. By exploring his own experience in the complex social dynamics of a long, complicated merger process--characterised by misunderstanding, incomplete information,…

All executives strive for better results in their organisations and they are always dependent on others to achieve these results. This article is concerned with the ways in which these better results might be achieved and the role senior management might play in this process. The traditional view is that senior executives design and control the…

Orthodox theories of consultancy address power relations between the consultant and their contractors. However, they can suggest that either the consultant should manipulate those they work with "for the good", or they should give up their power "for the good". This article offers an ethical critique of these points of view and argues for an…

This article discusses sensemaking as a broad framework for understanding organisational learning and its implications for leadership in a global context. Organisational metaphors, the concept of liminality and understanding organisations as interpretation systems are presented as possibilities for enhancing intercultural communication within…

We contend that managers make better decisions when they are better able to tap into their vast storehouses of knowledge than their peers can. More specifically, we contend that accessing their tacit knowledge has the most noticeable and positive impact on their decision quality. Furthermore, techniques for better accessing knowledge can be…

After 30 years of research in mergers and acquisitions and advances in the research of post-merger integration (PMI) processes, the outcome of a merger remains hardly predicable. Traditional leadership and change theories have not succeeded in fully explaining PMI processes and therefore new theories are needed. This article offers new insights…

The innovation space has become more complex and knowledge-intensive. As a result, it is increasingly important to see innovations as knowledge that is embodied in learning and technical and organisational knowledge bases. However, in processes such as innovation development, individuals make sense of it and utilise existing knowledge differently…

Case studies are frequently used in a number of organisational training settings. However, there has been little empirical study of how these cases can be most effective for developing leadership skills. The present study tests the impact of case content and structural features on the acquisition and transfer of leadership skills. Content features…