Tom Calvard

Leadership as an emergent group process: A social network study of personality and leadership:

A longitudinal study was conducted on the social network of a leaderless group to explore how Big Five personality traits affect leadership emergence, in the form of receiver ties (being nominated as a leader), sender ties (nominating others as leaders), and similarity effects (nominating similar/different others as leaders). Forty one students on a 3-month study abroad program participated in intensive group work, and their perceptions of emergent task- and relationship-oriented leadership within these groups were assessed three times across the life cycle of the group. Results indicated that individuals scoring higher on extraversion, openness to experience, and conscientiousness were nominated more as task- and relationship-oriented leaders, whereas those who were more agreeable were more likely to emerge as relationship-oriented leaders. In terms of emergent followership, group members who were more agreeable and neurotic (and less open to experience) were less likely to follow relationship-oriented leaders, whereas more conscientious individuals were more likely to follow task-oriented leaders. With respect to the effects of complementarity and similarity, both task- and relationship-oriented leader nominations were based on dissimilar levels of agreeableness between leaders and followers, whereas nominated relationship-based leaders tended to have similar levels of openness to experience to followers. Implications of these results are discussed.

Big data, organizational learning, and sensemaking: Theorizing interpretive challenges under conditions of dynamic complexity

In this conceptual article, the relations between sensemaking, learning, and big data in organizations are explored. The availability and usage of big data by organizations is an issue of emerging importance, raising new and old themes for diverse commentators and researchers to investigate. Drawing on sensemaking, learning, and complexity perspectives, this article highlights four key challenges to be addressed if organizations are to engage the phenomenon of big data effectively and reflexively: responding to the dynamic complexity of big data in terms of “simplexity,” analyzing big data using interdisciplinary processes, responsible reflection on ideologies of learning and knowledge production when handling big data, and mutually aligning sensemaking with big data topics to map domains of application. This article concludes with additional implications arising from considering sensemaking in conjunction with big data analytics as a critical way of understanding unique aspects of learning and technology in the 21st century.

Complementing psychological approaches to employee well-being with a socio-structural perspective on violence in the workplace: an alternative research agenda

Abstract Social, political, and economic changes affecting labor markets and human resource management (HRM) practices continue to shape employee well-being into the twenty-first century. In this paper, we argue that much influential work on employee well-being has focused on individualistic, psychological conceptualizations at the expense of a more interdisciplinary approach that takes wider social and contextual realities more fully into account. In particular, we critique the neoliberal emphasis on individual responsibility underpinning work on positive psychology, the psychology of happiness, and resilience in relation to employee well-being. We next draw upon inclusive socio-structural conceptualizations of violence – defined here in terms of the use of power in the employment relationship to implement workplace practices that cause harm – to provide a more contextualized, politicized, and interdisciplinary conceptualization of employee well-being in relation to HRM. Finally, we outline an alternative well-being agenda for research and practice, based on investigating socio-structural types of employee violence transmitted through various HRM practices, types of harm and manifestations of resistance and nonviolence. We argue that such an approach to well-being can, through its greater acknowledgment of types of violence, indignity, and inequality in social systems, complement prevailing psychological approaches and compensate for some of their limitations.

Augustus Melmotte in Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now: characterizing the swindler as an important cultural and organizational figure

ABSTRACT The current paper revisits Anthony Trollopes Victorian novel, The Way We Live Now, focusing on the main character of Augustus Melmotte. The paper analyzes the novel and its literary figure of a corrupt financier or swindler, drawing out theoretical and pedagogical contributions for organizational and management research. Contributions are framed in terms of imaginative organizational role archetypes embodied in swindler characterizations, swindlers’ institutional work across societal elites, and the dark sides and grey areas associated with swindlers’ organizational and financial misconduct. The rise and fall of Augustus Melmotte in Trollopes Victorian English society thus finds its cultural parallels today in outsiders who challenge financial and political elites and the status quo, at high personal risk to themselves and others complicit in their schemes. The conclusions concern the importance of recognizing dynamic figures that seize immense power over organizational, financial and political cultures.

Developing human resource data risk management in the age of big data

Abstract In recent years, a great deal of attention has been devoted to trying to understand the risk challenges that arise in information management, and most recently, challenges that arise due to big data. In this article, the complexities of big data for employers are explored, drawing on a risk management on Human Resources (HR) perspective and normal accident theory (NAT) to illustrate the evolving characteristics of these complexities. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations that focus on education, design in data collection, and risk management, in the hope that these recommendations enable employers to better anticipate and address emerging big data challenges.

Sensemaking and Control at the Limit: The Air France 447 Disaster

Air France 447 (AF447) was lost over the Atlantic in 2009 when, following a brief and transitory loss of speed indications, the crew lost control of the aircraft. Communication and coordination in the cockpit broke down and the crew was unable to comprehend what was happening in time to recover the situation. We analyze events in the final hour of the flight, observing many of the classic symptoms of a collapse of sensemaking. We note that AF447 is classified as a loss of control incident, currently the single biggest cause of airline fatalities. Within the aviation community, loss of control events have been partly attributed to a lack of manual flying and limited exposure of pilots to unusual aircraft behavior as a consequence of flight deck automation. We combine ideas from the literatures on sensemaking, automation and organizational limits to develop a conceptual model that links the ability of actors to make sense of unusual situations to the potentially insulating effect of automation and lack of e...

Global Tensions between Mainstream Economic Discourse and International Humanistic Management Agendas: Investigating the Challenges Facing Organizational Stakeholders in Modern Market Societies

This chapter argues that there is a persistent, growing, unabated global discontent with mainstream, orthodox and excessively liberal or neoliberal economic discourse. This discontent is vague and complex, but it emanates from various populist sources outside the discipline of economics, from various critical quarters across the social sciences and from heterodox voices and associations within the field of economics (e.g., The World Economics Association [WEA]; The New Economics Foundation [NEF]).

Global Tensions between Mainstream Economic Discourse and International Humanistic Management Agendas

Citation for published version: Calvard, T & Hine, J 2014, Global Tensions Between Mainstream Economic Discourse and International Humanistic Management Agendas: Investigating the Challenges Facing Organizational Stakeholders in Modern Market Societies. in Humanistic perspectives on international business and management. . Palgrave Macmillian, pp. 11-24. https://doi.org/20.500.11820/4014072b-3b5c-4b25-be0b-a504b49523f4