Ashly Pinnington

Transformational Leadership, Corporate Cultism and the Spirituality Paradigm: An Unholy Trinity in the Workplace?

Leadership is a perennially popular topic in the academic and practitioner literature on management. In particular, the past twenty years have witnessed an explosive growth of interest in what has been termed ‘transformational leadership’ (henceforth, TL). The theory is closely linked to the growth in what has been defined as corporate culturism - an emphasis on the importance of coherent cultures, as a means of securing competitive advantage. This article outlines the central components of TL theory, and subjects the concept to a critical analysis. In particular, similarities are identified between the components concerned and the characteristics of leadership practice in organizations generally defined as cults. This connection has been previously unremarked in the literature. These similarities are comprehensively reviewed. Trends towards what can be defined as corporate cultism in modern management practice are also discussed. We conclude that TL models are overly concerned with the achievement of corporate cohesion to the detriment of internal dissent. Such dissent is a vital ingredient of effective decision-making. It is suggested that more inclusive and participatory models of the leadership process are required.

Professional Competence as Ways of Being: An Existential Ontological Perspective

The Organization Studies Summer Workshop is an annual activity, first launched in June 2005, to facilitate high-quality scholarship in organization studies. Its primary aim is to advance cutting-edge research on important topics in the field by bringing together on a Greek island, in early summer, a small and competitively selected group of scholars, who will have the opportunity to interact and share insights in a stimulating and scenic environment. Following on the tremendous success of the First Organization Studies Workshop on Santorini, we are happy to announce that the Second Workshop will take place at Saint John Hotel (http://www.saintjohn.gr), Mykonos, on 15 and 16 June 2006. Mykonos (http://www.mykonosgreece.com/, http://www.mykonos.net), a worldfamous resort with beautiful sandy beaches, unique Cycladic architecture, and unrivalled night life, will provide an ideal setting for workshop participants to relax and engage in authentic dialogue. With this workshop we aim to create a setting in which the juices of intellectual creativity will naturally flow. Because the aim of the workshop is to generate opportunities for creative interaction and intelligent conversation, the number of participants will be kept intentionally small — up to 50 papers will be accepted. Papers will be circulated in advance and participants will be urged to read them prior to the workshop. More about the practicalities and costs of the workshop will appear later on the Organization Studies website (www.egosnet.org/os).

Archetype Change in Professional Organizations: Survey Evidence from Large Law Firms

This paper examines the proposition that the traditional archetype of the professional partnership is said to have changed into a more ‘business-like’ entity, the managed professional business. It broadens the restricted case sample base on which much of the evidence has been adduced, by developing a survey questionnaire through which 197 large British law firms were sampled. Change, consistent with the notion of a more commercially oriented and consciously managed organization, is concentrated in the market-facing area of the firm but coexists with areas of continuity in the governance of the firm and its strategic management. The findings reveal a more managerial form of organization in which the core elements of the traditional form of professional organization have not been transformed. These results contest the assertion of either transformational or sedimented change found in other, case-based research and suggest that archetype change needs theoretically to be distinguished from the general phenomenon of greater managerialism within the professional service firm.

The influence of financial participation and participation in decision-making on employee job attitudes

This study investigates the direct and indirect effects of financial participation (FP) and participation in decision-making (PDM) on employee job attitudes. The central premise is that both financial participation and participation in decision-making have effects on job attitudes, such as integration, involvement and commitment, perceived pay equity, performance-reward contingencies, satisfaction and motivation. After reviewing the theoretical and empirical literature and testing two theoretical frameworks, developed by Long (1978a) and Florkowski (1989), a new model was constructed to consider a combined effects of both FP and PDM, herein referred to as employee participation (EP). The underpinning of the model is based on the assumption that both (a) the combination of financial participation and participation in decision-making (‘employee participation’), and (b) participation in decision-making produce favourable effects on employee job attitudes. The test of the new model showed that employee partic...

Leadership development: Applying the same leadership theories and development practices to different contexts?

This paper examines leadership development in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors and assesses the extent that they constitute distinctive contexts for leadership approaches and practices. The results of an empirical survey issued in one country provides some evidence for sector differences whereby leadership is conceptualized and practised with a greater emphasis placed on normative, ethical considerations in the public and not-for-profit sectors. Leadership development in the private sector is more strongly motivated by instrumental economic concerns. Whilst this sector difference is not new or surprising, the potential for greater sectoral distinctiveness in leadership approaches and their development warrants more discussion by academics and practitioners in leadership development. This study of leadership development examines five leadership approaches (charismatic, transformational, authentic, servant and spiritual) and six common leadership development practices (360 degree feedback, mentoring, coaching, networks, job assignment and action learning). Leadership development practices are similar across the private, public and not-for-profit sectors. Furthermore, charismatic and transformational approaches do not appear to discriminate effectively between private and public sector leadership. However, interpretation of the data strongly suggests that leadership theories and practices should be more flexible to the sectoral contexts. Private sector models of leadership development superficially appear to be adequate in so far as they share substantial commonality with the public and not-for-profit sectors in their development practices. However, respondents from the public and not-for-profit sectors are less convinced by the importance of some of the private sector s approaches and its dominant values such as preparedness to facilitate the leaders’ confidence and power to create effective leadership. This distinction requires further investigation in future research on theories, practices and contexts for leadership development.

Competence development and career advancement in professional service firms

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to learn about professional employees in the early stage of their careers, particularly, their understanding of competence development and career advancement. Law firms have a relatively low rate of turnover of professional staff when compared with employee flow rates that are standard in other organisations and industries. In law firms, the collective stock of embodied knowledge changes gradually influenced by recruitment cohort phases and employee departures. This paper aims to analyse lawyers employed in a reasonably munificent internal labour market context, seeking to understand their accounts of how their competencies can be developed and how their careers may be advanced.Design/methodology/approach – This paper considers the competences and careers of a group of junior professional knowledge workers employed full‐time in a large law firm and conceptualises their competence development and professional career advancement through an existential ontological conce...

Property in knowledge work: An appropriation-learning perspective

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to understand the competitive and collaborative relations existing between people practising in the same professional occupation, but working within different organisation contexts of employment.Design/methodology/approach – An interview study of 42 in‐house and external lawyers is reported and set within contexts of the knowledge management and internationalisation of legal services. The data are analysed from an appropriation‐learning perspective and then discussed for the extent that these two groups make similar claims to property in work.Findings – The in‐house lawyers give highest priority to the protection of resources and knowledge and aim to achieve it through trust in work relationships and by sharing, diffusing and controlling knowledge. By contrast, issues concerning individual reward and empowerment were seen as lower priority. External lawyers attach similar importance to knowledge sharing, its diffusion and control, but have slightly less concern for prote...

Power and control in professional partnerships

Strategic management controls in professional partnership firms are different from controls in companies. A recently developed model of strategic management controls in the partnership firm was applied in a modified form to a sample of 60 firms in three traditional professions—law, accounting and architecture. Strategic management in the partnerships was broadly consistent with the model but we identified three adaptations in 10 of the sample of firms: corporate planner, corporate monitor and operations monitor. This article explains these adaptations and suggests that the form which strategic control takes in a partnership depends on the distribution of power in the firm.

Managing people ‘spiritually’: a Bourdieusian critique

This article draws from Pierre Bourdieu’s critical sociology to examine how organizational spirituality is being framed as a new way to manage people. The article takes a critical look at the way much of the literature prescribes spiritual values with the subtext that human resource practices infused with spiritual values, inter alia, improve organizational performance. This article demonstrates how ‘symbolic violence’ provides an analytical tool to unravel the theoretical make-up of organizational spirituality. This critique posits that the ‘top-down’ approach to organizational spirituality relies on a Bourdieusian ‘cultural arbitrary’ and the ‘power of pedagogy’ to seek the active consent of organizational members. The article proceeds to identify the ideological underpinnings of this process, thus paving the way for new critical theorizing on organizational spirituality.

Competence regimes in professional service firm internationalization and professional careers

Professional service firms (PSFs) are dependent on the competence of their employees to develop and retain new business. We investigate how PSFs utilize professional competence for strategic goals such as business internationalization and simultaneously facilitate professionals’ career mobility. We examine over a 5-year period the careers of 29 lawyers working in a large corporate law firm and identify four different competence regimes: technicians, project managers, competitive analysts, and global strategists. We argue that these competence regimes enable PSFs to pursue organizational business strategies while advancing or constraining or even undermining professional employees’ career goals and aspirations. Specifically, we show how the four competence regimes facilitate the PSF’s strategy to internationalize its business and support high performing employees’ social mobility goals to develop their professional competence and advance their career. We then give suggestions for future research studies on competence regimes in professional organizations.