Marc H. Anderson

The advice and influence networks of transformational leaders.

Existing transformational leadership research has focused primarily on the behaviors of leaders and their effects on followers. The authors extended this research by examining the social networks of managers who exhibit transformational leadership behaviors. Their focus was on the network of relationships that managers develop and whether they hold key positions in the organizations informal social networks. In a field study using data from 39 managers and 130 nonmanagement employees of 6 organizations, the authors found that managers who score higher on transformational leadership tend to hold more central positions in organizational advice and influence networks. Furthermore, the direct reports of these leaders were also more central in informal organizational networks. These results illuminate one of the ways that managers who exhibit transformational leadership behaviors may exert influence in organizations.

An Examination of the Relationship Between Absorptive Capacity and Organizational Learning, and a Proposed Integration

Since its inception, the concept of absorptive capacity has been closely linked with notions of organizational learning. Yet the precise nature of the relationship between these two concepts has never been established. This relationship is examined in a variety of ways, and it is suggested that the literature on these two concepts shares a conceptual affinity which needs to be delineated. It is suggested that absorptive capacity (a dynamic capability) is a concrete example of organizational learning that concerns an organizations relationship with new external knowledge. Using the 4I Model for organizational learning (Crossan, M.M., Lane, H.W. and White, R.E. (1999). An organizational learning framework: from intuition to institution. Academy of Management Review, 24, 522–537) and Zahra and Georges conceptualization of absorptive capacity (Zahra, S.A. and George, G. (2002). Absorptive capacity: a review, reconceptualization, and extension. Academy of Management Review, 27, 185–203), this paper proposes an integration of the two concepts.

Integrating Personality and Social Networks: A Meta-Analysis of Personality, Network Position, and Work Outcomes in Organizations

Using data from 138 independent samples, we meta-analytically examined three research questions concerning the roles of personality and network position in organizations. First, how do different personality characteristics-self-monitoring and the Big Five personality traits-relate to indegree centrality and brokerage, the two most studied structurally advantageous positions in organizational networks? Second, how do indegree centrality and brokerage compare in explaining job performance and career success? Third, how do these personality variables and network positions relate to work outcomes? Our results show that self-monitoring predicted indegree centrality across expressive and instrumental networks and brokerage in expressive networks after controlling for the Big Five traits. Self-monitoring, therefore, was especially relevant for understanding why people differ in their acquisition of advantageous positions in social networks. But the total variance explained by personality ranged between 3% and 5%. Surprisingly, we found that indegree centrality was more strongly related to job performance and career success than brokerage. We also found that personality predicted job performance and career success above and beyond network position and that network position partially mediated the effects of certain personality variables on work outcomes. This paper provides an integrated view of how an individuals personality and network position combine to influence job performance and career success.

How Can We Know What We Think Until We See What We Said?: A Citation and Citation Context Analysis of Karl Weick’s The Social Psychology of Organizing

A substantial portion of Karl Weick’s influence on organization studies is based upon his classic book The Social Psychology of Organizing (abbreviated as Organizing). A citation analysis shows the magnitude of this influence compared to five other organization studies classics, and reveals that Organizing continues to be highly cited. A citation context analysis (i.e. content analysis) of all citations to Weick (1979) in three top organization studies journals (Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Organization Studies) shows that 12 concepts account for 67.6% of citations to Organizing, but that the book is cited for a remarkable diversity of additional content as well. Furthermore, a consideration of differences between the concepts cited in the US journals versus Organization Studies reveals several regional differences. Finally, very few citations are critical of Organizing or involve empirical tests. These results hold a variety of implications for future research.

The combined influence of top and middle management leadership styles on absorptive capacity

Absorptive capacity is an important organizational capability constituted by exploratory, transformative, and exploitative learning processes. Leadership has been shown to affect such processes, but little is known about how the combined leadership styles of top and middle management influence absorptive capacity. This theory-building, exploratory qualitative case study discusses the need for top and middle management to be ambidextrous and to change their styles to better facilitate the three different learning processes. We found that an exploratory learning process was facilitated when both top and middle management used a transformational style, a transformative learning process was facilitated when top management used a transformational style while middle management used a transactional style, and an exploitative learning process was facilitated when both top and middle management used a transactional style. Furthermore, for each of the three learning processes, the leadership styles of top and middle management operated more effectively when certain attributes of the organizational context were emphasized.

Giving Students New Eyes: The Benefits of Having Students Find Media Clips to Illustrate Management Concepts

An extensive literature in management education addresses the pedagogical technique of showing video clips from feature films, animated films, and television shows. The bulk of this literature either asserts the benefits of using video clips or identifies specific clips and discusses how those clips can be effectively used to teach various management and organizational behavior topics. The assumption in all of this work is that the instructor will locate the video clips to be used. The authors present an alternative approach that has students locate video clips in groups, and discuss the numerous advantages of this approach for both instructors and students. In addition to describing the general approach, the authors elaborate on a number of possible variations and reflect on the lessons learned from implementing this approach in two independent courses at two different universities.

Job demands and work-related psychological responses among Malaysian technical workers: The moderating effects of self-efficacy

Abstract Job design has long been found to affect the work-related psychological responses of employees, such as psychological strain, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions, but scholars have begun to question whether established theoretical relations regarding job design continue to hold given the enormous changes in the nature of work during the past two decades. It is also increasingly recognized that individual differences affect work behaviours in substantial ways, but few studies on work design have investigated these differences. We addressed these concerns with a two-wave longitudinal study among 245 technical workers at a telecommunications company in Malaysia, a country that has a collectivist culture and a high power distance between managers and subordinates. We examined the moderating effects of job control and self-efficacy on the relationships between job demands and employee responses. The results failed to support the job demands-control model, as job control variables did not moderate the impact of demands on employee work-related psychological responses. However, self-efficacy moderated their impact on psychological strain (although not on job satisfaction or turnover intentions). Our findings provide insight into the moderating effect of self-efficacy, and suggest that practitioners interested in reducing psychological strain should consider making efforts to increase self-efficacy among employees.

What have scholars retrieved from Walsh and Ungson (1991)? A citation context study

Organizational memory is fundamentally important to organizational learning. The seminal work on organizational memory is Walsh and Ungson’s article published in the Academy of Management Review in 1991. More than 300 articles have cited this classic work, but a simple citation count reveals nothing about the nature of what has been retrieved. We examine this issue through a citation context analysis (i.e. content analysis) of the citations that citing authors have made to this classic article. Our analysis provides a richer understanding of which knowledge claims made by Walsh and Ungson have been retrieved and have had the greatest impact on later work in the area of organizational memory, and also what criticisms have been leveled against their claims. Through this analysis and a review of the citing articles that contain the largest number of citations to Walsh and Ungson, we identify several important directions for future research.

Reviewing Leadership Styles: Overlaps and the Need for a New ‘Full‐Range’ Theory

A central topic in leadership research concerns the impact of leadership style – the pattern of attitudes that leaders hold and behaviors they exhibit. Since the year 2000, several new leadership styles have been proposed to capture important missing aspects beyond the dominant charismatic/transformational and transactional framework. The authors review the emerging literature on these new styles – ideological leadership, pragmatic leadership, authentic leadership, ethical leadership, spiritual leadership, distributed leadership, and integrative public leadership – as well as the recent work on servant leadership. They also comment on the Ohio State studies on leadership, and then discuss the ways in which these many styles overlap with transformational leadership and each other, and issue a call to leadership researchers to collectively develop a new ‘full‐range’ model of leadership that encompasses and distills what is unique about these various styles. The authors argue that such an integrated full‐range model is necessary for research on leadership style to progress.

“Why Are There So Many Theories?” a Classroom Exercise To Help Students Appreciate the Need for Multiple Theories of a Management Domain

Management educators teaching topics such as motivation and leadership face the challenge of clearly explaining why so many diverse theories exist and why each represents a useful tool worth learning. The large number of “core” theories in these and other management domains often frustrates students, who see the lack of a single, comprehensive theory as indicating that academics do not truly understand the topic. Because students generally evaluate theories according to whether the theories match their personal experience, they may appreciate only one or two as being “correct” or “useful” and dismiss the others as invalid. Building on a “conceptual toolbox” metaphor of education, this article presents a classroom exercise that vividly illustrates why each of the many theories in a management domain is valuable and worth learning. The exercise involves the specific topic of work motivation but can be adapted to any domain involving a large number of core theories.