Arja Ropo

Role Conflict, Ambiguity, and Overload: A 21-Nation Study

The extent of role conflict, role ambiguity, and role overload reported by middle managers from 21 nations was related to national scores on power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, an...

Entrepreneurial Processes as Virtuous and Vicious Spirals in a Changing Opportunity Structure: A Paradoxical Perspective

We develop the beginnings of a grounded theory of entrepreneurship based on the idea that entrepreneurship, in terms of a changing opportunity structure–-consisting of opportunity detection, opportunity facilitation and motivation to pursue opportunity–-can be viewed through a paradoxical perspective that considers the interplay of organizational and individual capabilities as virtuous and vicious spirals across time. The virtuous spiral led toward successful change because of supportive organizational and individual capabilities across time. The vicious spiral led away from successful change because of countervailing organizational and individual capabilities. Paradoxically, however, we found that entrepreneurship developed in both types of spirals. We discuss these points based on two case studies of Finnish banks and bank managers within the fundamentally changing opportunity structure of the banking business in the late 1980s.

Multi-level leadership: Grounded theory and mainstream theory applied to the case of general motors

Abstract Selected aspects of Hunts (1991) extended multiple-organizational-level leadership model are used in an illustrative analysis of a case narrative emphasizing Roger Smiths almost decade-long tenure as chair and CEO at General Motors. The illustrative analysis compares and contrasts ways in which grounded theory and mainstream perspectives can be applied to help explain what occurred at various hierarchical-organizational levels during Smiths tenure. Propositions based on the case narrative and selected aspects of Hunts model are developed and discussed in terms of grounded theory and mainstream perspectives. Two illustrative propositions are analyzed using levels-of-analysis theory in combination with the hierarchical organizational levels emphasized in Hunts framework.

Leadership and bodily knowledge in expert organizations:: epistemological rethinking

This paper argues that leadership knowledge has a bodily dimension, especially in expert organizations. Different knowledge types in leadership research are analysed and discussed on a basis of two dimensions: the nature of knowledge (tacit and explicit) and the knowledge actors (individual and collective). Bodily leadership knowledge refers to a special type of tacit knowing acquired through experience and social interaction over time. It is concluded that sensitive leadership and shared leadership describe individual and collective tacit leadership knowledge types, in which personal bodies have a central role in knowledge development. The paper suggests, among other things, that the bodily presence and distance of leaders are paradoxical elements in the leadership of expert organizations.

Embodiment of leadership through material place

This paper analyses how material places and leadership are related to each other. We do that by exploring the question: How do spaces and places construct and perform leadership? The notion that material places can lead relies on three concepts of leadership. First, we make a distinction between the leader and leadership. Second, we join the growing number of scholars who view leadership as socially constructed, emerging and as meaning making. Third, we consider leadership as an aesthetic, embodied phenomenon and as sensuous experience. Embodiment of leadership refers here to social, relational constructionism as ontology of leadership and to aesthetic epistemology that legitimizes sense-based data such as emotions, bodily sensations, intuitions and mental representations as a basis for knowledge development. To understand the relationship between leadership and material place, we elaborate on the epistemology of embodied experience. We discuss embodied ways of knowing and point out specific aspects of embodied experience with examples from the art field. Our chapter contributes to the understanding the material nature of leadership by conceptualizing the notion of embodiment as an epistemological issue.

Dances of leadership: Bridging theory and practice through an aesthetic approach

We wish to develop the argument in this paper that through aesthetic and artistic work, practices and their metaphorical use, we have a potential to better understand the relationship between academic leadership theory and practical action. By aesthetic approach we mean the experiential way of knowing that emphasizes human senses and the corporeal nature of social interaction in leadership. In this paper, we discuss how leadership could look, sound and feel like when seen via the artistic metaphor of dance. We use the traditional dance, waltz and the postmodern dance experience of raves to illustrate our argument. By doing so, we challenge traditional, intellectually oriented and positivistic leadership approaches that hardly recognize nor conceptualize aesthetic, bodily aspects of social interaction between people in the workplace. The ballroom dance waltz is used as a metaphorical representation of a hierarchical, logical and rational understanding of leadership. The waltz metaphor describes the leader as a dominant individual who knows where to go and the dance partner as a follower or at least as someone with a lesser role in defining the dance. Raves, on the other hand representparadigmatically different kind of a dance and therefore a different understanding of leadership. There are neither dance steps to learn, nor fixed dance partners where one leads and the other follows. Even the purpose or aim of dancing may not be known at the beginning of the dance, but it is negotiated as the raves go on. We think that raves describe the organizational life as it is often seen and felt today: chaotic, full of unexpected changes, ambiguous and changing collaborators in networks. Here leadership becomes a collective, distributed activity where the work processes and the targeted outcome is continually negotiated. Through the dance metaphors of waltz and raves, we suggest aspects such as gaze, rhythm and space to give an aesthetic description both to a more traditional and an emerging aesthetic paradigm of leadership where the corporeality of leadership is emphasized. We wish to make the point that leadership is aesthetically and corporeally co-constructed both between the leader and the followers as well as between the researcher and the subjects. The metaphor of dance illustrates the corporeal nature of leadership both to practitioners and theoreticians.

Longitudinal Organizational Research and the Third Scientific Discipline

Longitudinal research in organizations has gained momentum to the point where it may now be considered to reflect the tenor of the times, or zeitgeist, for organizational studies. An important part of that longitudinal research is what, borrowing and extending from the work of Ilgen and Hulin, is called the third scientific discipline. That discipline consists of numerous perspectives focusing on various aspects of chaos/complexity, dynamic systems, and processual approaches. These approaches are being increasingly applied across various organizational research fields such as social and industrial/organizational psychology and small-group and leadership studies. A dynamic systems approach is turned on itself to analyze the scientific development of third-discipline approaches. Although the jury is still out, these approaches appear to be making increasingly strong contributions to the longitudinal zeitgeist and to organizational studies in general.

Demographic Effects on the Use of Vertical Sources of Guidance by Managers in Widely Differing Cultural Contexts

Data provided by 7380 middle managers from 60 nations are used to determine whether demographic variables are correlated with managers’ reliance on vertical sources of guidance in different nations and whether these correlations differ depending on national culture characteristics. Significant effects of Hofstede’s national culture scores, age, gender, organization ownership and department function are found. After these main effects have been discounted, significant although weak interactions are found, indicating that demographic effects are stronger in individualist, low power distance nations than elsewhere. Significant non-predicted interaction effects of uncertainty avoidance and masculinity-femininity are also obtained. The implications for theory and practice of the use of demographic attributes in understanding effective management procedures in various parts of the world are discussed.

Leadership in Spaces and Places

A wise person once said, ‘Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.’ The editors of Leadership in Spaces and Places have choreographed a masterpiece. They have assembled a superb collection of scholarship that sheds light on the relationship between humans and their environments, specifically in regard to the socio-materiality between leadership and space. The contributors to this twelve-chapter volume include scholars who are on the cutting edge of thinking about the embodiment of leadership, specifically as it applies to the constructed environment. The book was developed as part of a four-year research project funded by the Academy of Finland, ‘aimed to develop a new understanding of leadership, emphasizing space, embodiment, and ascetics’ (Ropo et al. 2015, p. 2). The authors employ various approaches to understand the intersection between space and leadership. Experts in sociology, organizational studies, cross-cultural management, and architecture are just a few of those represented in this volume that lend their voices to the field of leadership studies. Another notable quality of the book is the painstakingly thorough research employed by the book’s editors and contributors. The bibliographies alone are superb resources for anyone interested in this area of scholarship. The idea that the space in which we interact affects leadership is not entirely new, as the editors point out in their introductory chapter. There is a long history of the study of space as emblems of a leader’s power and status (for example, see Remland 1981). Likewise, scientific management theorists such as Frederick Taylor with his ‘Taylorism,’ and Human Relations theorists such as Elton Mayo and the Hawthorne Studies, explicitly or implicitly studied space and its relationship to leadership. Certainly, newer approaches to space and leadership such as open-plan offices, unique organizational cultures, corporate branding, and virtual environments also provide the impetus for the study of space and leadership. The use of space in these contexts is well represented in Leadership in Spaces and Places, specifically in the early sections of the book – part I, ‘Workspaces in change,’ part II, ‘Open office spaces,’ and part III, ‘Virtual workspaces.’ However, the later sections of the book make a greater attempt to challenge readers’ thinking about the relationship between leadership and space. In these sections, the contributors

Towards Strategic Human Resource Management: A Pilot Study in a Finnish Power Industry Company

Describes a process through which an organization moved from traditional personnel management towards a more strategically oriented human resource management. Focuses on tracking down, periodically, the actions taken by the human resource manager and his/her relationships with the strategic management team within the context of major structural and strategic changes. Suggests that the internal dynamism of the human resource function led by an innovative leader, serves as a critical mechanism to keep the change process going after its start under favourable organizational and strategic circumstances.