New Leadership in Strategy and Communication

In this chapter, we argue that the current paradigms of regulation are not productive for the growing complexity in society. First we explain why these traditional paradigms leads to problems and what these problems look like. Then we demonstrate how regulators try to cope and struggle on. New approaches are being explored by several scholars and practitioners, but encounter substantial challenges which seem to stem from the traditional black and white thinking of traditionalists. We conclude by arguing that new approaches, although hard to implement, are promising and may have significant social benefits.

Negotiation is an essential skill for business leaders. However, the global, networked economy presents vexing challenges for negotiators who want to reach win-win outcomes. Negotiation involves a delicate balance of two motivations—cooperation that paves the way toward information sharing necessary to increase mutual gain, but also competition in that parties do not share similar incentive structures. We explore obstacles as well as solutions to negotiation on a global stage. Specifically, we examine how 6 factors, including: cultural differences, ethical concerns, political events, information technology, “big data,” and networks affect the process and outcome of effective negotiation.

This concurrence of several change factors can be summed up by the acronym VUCA (for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous). The speed at which globalization and digitalization are proceeding in most industries is adding an urgency dimension to these necessary mutations. Board directors are not just witnessing the acceleration of everything in the company they govern. They are in the midst of it, given their mission to support the company and its management throughout this ongoing metamorphosis. As a consequence, directors are bound to ask whether the CEO and the C-suite are on top of it as a team. Do they have the right leadership profile and the required multi-faceted and complementary competencies, individually as well as collectively?

In this chapter, we demonstrate how open innovation can be applied to sustainability contexts. In this regard, we specifically address the leadership challenges encountered in accessing the wide variety of knowledge from multiple external stakeholders. First, we demonstrate that implementing open innovation for sustainability requires specific organizational capabilities that are different from what a firm might already possess regarding its general innovations. Second, we argue that successfully leading open innovation for sustainability entails broadening the scope of external stakeholder engagement to collaborate with non-conventional stakeholders such as local communities. Some sustainability-oriented innovation initiatives may also benefit from transactional type of stakeholder engagement where frequent interactions assist companies to establish stable search platforms and secure timely access to external knowledge.

Researchers and managers need to better understand how different ideas of ethics shape how artificial intelligence can be effectively applied and leveraged as a source of competitive advantage. More fundamentally, managers need to understand how the competitive use of artificial intelligence cannot be differentiated from the specific ethical claims reflected in the design, operation, management, and maintenance of the technology. We pose how AI can be given dimensions to provide better insight into ethical requirements. We pose, however, that there is no ethical panacea, rather that the effective global management of ethical and unethical AI requires a larger common meta-ethical approach.

The modern corporation—inspired by the success of digital technology companies—aspires toward a flatter structure empowering less senior members with influence and decision making over their direction. Vision has always been important in successful organizations. It unites and gives purpose to the workforce. More traditional, hierarchical, tops-down organizations had only the top management layers to align for strategic decision making. From that, they dictated the tasks, processes and goals for the rest of the organization to follow keeping the organization aligned. Decision making is now pushed out to the edges. Modern firms value intellectual property built by knowledge workers with powerful technology tools. Research and development is critical to remaining competitive. Creativity is stifled by rigid direction and processes. Thus, workers are empowered to build the future of the company. However, uncoordinated work can lead to scattershot product development. A vision—and leaderships ability to effectively communicate it—are critical in today’s fast moving economy. Several techniques for communicating vision in a modern company are discussed.

Innovation clusters continue to be an important focus of economic development policies in many nations. Leading innovation clusters demonstrate that regional concentration strengthens the innovative capability and can lead to successful competitiveness on a global level, as demonstrated by regions such as Silicon Valley (US), Cambridge (UK) and Sophia Antipolis (France). However the successful creation of clusters still presents a challenge to policy makers as efforts to do so regularly fail. The development of innovation clusters has therefore received much academic and policy maker attention. While past research has examined a variety of factors as drivers for clustering effects, the role of communication within the cluster—and, specifically, the role of key individual communicators—in underpinning successful cluster development has received almost no academic attention. In this chapter, we will draw upon the relevant literature to develop a conceptual framework that will underpin research on this important topic by investigating the role of communicators in innovation clusters. Building on communication theories, the framework suggests that there are four influence-levels that shape and impact the role of communications in innovation clusters: the Individual Level, the Organizational Level, the Cluster Level and the Context. The interdisciplinary view on clustering effects contributes valuable insight to both communication studies and cluster theories. The framework developed within this chapter provides a structure to aid future research on the role of communicators within innovation clusters.

In this chapter, we focus on the emerging language used by the contemporary media in their considerations of political leadership and what that language says about the situations leaders face today as they seek to transmit their messages to the public or to specific constituencies. Analysis of media coverage of leadership indicates that these leaders communicate through a combination of “narratives” and “optics” and that a tension exists between the two—to communicate messages/visions through “narratives” that use the words/stories to which we are bound or through images/videos that seek to move beyond words/stories. We conclude that leaders are moving increasingly toward the immediacy of “optics” to communicate messages but must inevitably resort to the more protracted messaging of language-bound “narratives.” Some thoughts are also offered about communication—by leaders but also in general—for the coming decades.

In this chapter, we consider the relationship between effective leadership, communication, innovation and creativity within organizations and teams. In a dynamic business world where innovation is a critical driver for competiveness and growth, we argue that closing the gap between ineffective and effective leadership and communication approaches matters. To assist, we provide two interrelated “tools” that can improve effective leadership communication practices at every stage of the innovation cycle—from ideation through to implementation. These lead to clear, open and compelling communication interactions that underpin innovation and engagement at inter and intra—organizational levels. Our focus is on increasing the chances of successful innovation outcomes by using effective leadership and communication approaches, combined with “communication intelligence” and “fair process”.

The quest for customer-centricity drives top-management relationships with customers in business-to-business (B2B) markets. But the impact of executive engagement varies greatly across supplier-customer relationships. Based on exploratory field research, this paper develops a taxonomy of top-management-customer interaction roles. We also provide suggestions for leveraging senior executives for both supplier and customer benefit.

This chapter, examines the impact of fostering pro-development self-theories on early career success for a cohort of MBA graduates at an international business school in Boston, Massachusetts. Day (Leadersh Q 11:581–613, 2001, p. 601) proposes that “lecture-based, classroom training found in most formal leadership development programs is at best only partially effective,” citing short-lived behavioral change as a source of frustration. The chapter describes the early results of a longitudinal study of lasting change produced by incorporating corporate best practices in leader development identified by Day (Leadersh Q 11:581–613, 2001) in a business school setting. This the chapter includes the research question, theoretical background, research context, methodology, and the high-level findings.

This book chapter claims the outcome of the digital transformation and its implications for leaders in organizations. When organizations change their strategy in accordance to the digital transformation to be not outperformed by the pioneering companies on the market, the inevitable consequence is to translate this shift thoroughly into the leadership levels. The more important it becomes for the organizations to develop initiatives and upskilling measures to contribute to and simplify innovative changes in leadership. I argue that leaders who will not invest in a digital mindset, instead strive for egoism, will cause the company’s digital transformation failure.

In this chapter, we discuss the most debated challenges for Business Schools and management education. If Business Schools want to develop responsible future leaders, they need to rethink their role. Through a structured content analysis of the past 3-years academic research on the role of Business Schools, we describe five major challenges and approaches to them. The first one is innovation (in terms of what and how to teach, and governance). The second one is relevance for practices (in terms of employability and impactful teaching and research). The third one is academic reputation (in terms of accreditation pressure and accessibility). The fourth one is promotion of intercultural differences, while the last one is interdisciplinarity (in terms of contaminating different disciplines).

This chapter describes how executives benefit from exploration when solving business challenges. Similar to the notion of crowdsourcing, exploratory learning is a process, which progresses from problem scoping to executable outcomes. Graduate crowdsourcing can drive innovation and business transformation, and opens opportunities for business, science, and social collaboration. Graduates typically represent a range of competences and cultures, and are typically equipped with a curiosity and eagerness to solve real business challenges. The ultimate challenge for most executives and organizations is to transform or create new business. A business school environment is great for such challenges, as learning takes often place through real-world problems solving with practical implementation in mind.

Organizations are struggling with the development of an executive cadre that is truly competent in engaging subordinates and creating a positive working environment. The traditional leadership style of top down management is too slowly evolving into a collaborative approach that empowers employees and blurs the lines between boss and worker. Still too many leaders have not changed at all and seem to insist undaunted in their approach to managing people. Should we respect the global tendency to do more with less also in training or do we need to respect the real learning needs of our participants? Leadership development is a process of personal transformation. For the leaders we need today we cannot simply add skills to an existing portfolio but rather help them to develop a new Weltanschaung.

Healthcare systems around the globe face the common challenges of rising medical costs, lagging quality and limited access. Improving medical care worldwide will require new leadership and innovative solutions. This article sets forth a brave leadership strategy designed to help clinicians overcome their fears of change and embrace the best solutions for their patients. The A-G model presented in this article gives leaders a powerful tool to help achieve meaningful transformation within a healthcare organization by allowing them to articulate a bold vision, generate the trust of their colleagues and demonstrate the courage needed to overcome the inevitable resistance they will encounter.

This Chapter examines the case of Skin Elements Ltd., a Biotech start-up enterprise that successfully created, manufactured and commercialised an innovative skincare technology into a global market. The principal focus of this case study is on the role played by knowledge management and how this shaped the innovation strategy that saw the technology successfully commercialised and positioned within the global natural skin care market. The chapter examines the process of commercialisation, and demonstrates how knowledge management (KM), open innovation (OI), absorptive capacity (ACAP), and entrepreneurial operations management (EOM) played key roles in evolving the innovation strategy and commercialisation process. The chapter opens with an overview of the case study before introducing the concepts described above, and then enfolding the academic literature into the case to illustrate the relationships found. It then draws conclusions from the findings and lessons for research, policy and practice. The case draws from the personal experience of the lead author, who has provided first hand observations of the company’s foundation and evolution over its first 12 years of operations.

This research deeps and broadens understanding of group work and the effectiveness of achieving learning and performance benefits from collaborative task-based activities. The focus is on the applicability of group work applied to music ensembles of mid- to large sizes. Research shows that in order to achieve working as a group, the group must pass through two phases: one, cooperation (where they agree to disagree) and two, collaboration (where they iron out their differences and disagree to agree). Based upon results and observations thus far, the key to transition from phase one to phase two is emotional intelligence, as this is the most important skill for a conductor-leader.

In this chapter, it is argued that linear approaches have influenced innovation strategies for local development, having limitations for addressing long-standing socio-economic problems in unequal and exclusionary societies such as Peru. However, the facilitation of a broader communication perspective could contribute to configure more inclusive innovation processes for a number of reasons: it can contribute to understand the nature of inclusive innovation processes; it can serve to recognise entry points for inclusive innovation as well as to reorient innovation processes towards inclusivity. This discussion allows a rethinking of the current innovation strategies for local development and proposes a set of recommendations to enable communication with adaptive planning processes for a broad-based inclusive development strategy in the Peruvian context.

In this chapter, the author explains how Allianz Global Investors’ Corporate Values (Excellence, Passion, Integrity, Respect) and related People Attributes (Entrepreneurship, Trust, Collaborative Leadership, Customer and Market Excellence) can be applied in the day-to-day management of an Economics and Strategy research team and how the Values and People Attributes are interrelated. The team manager’s role is very much too lead by example. An appropriate organizational framework set up by the company is required in addition.

In this chapter, we begin by illustrating how leaders in turbulent times demonstrate vision, understanding, creativity, and agility to impact our fraught, fast-moving age. However, we argue that contemporary leaders must go beyond mere capabilities to seek meaning for users, organizations and society. To respond to these acute conditions, we propose an alternative leadership ontology whose purpose is to co-create the meaning required to engage members of a collective to cultivate the conditions to achieve mutual long-term goals. We examine how Creative Leaders can cultivate Creative Leadership, if they establish direction, alignment and commitment across the collective. Our call to action for learning leaders is to develop meaning-makers and innovators who can tackle the wicked, existential problems, facing humanity.

The chapter aims to introduce the importance of cognitive dissonance, a well-established psychological theory. The reduction of the dissonant feeling within an individual has severe negative effects on the organisation. Critical leadership situations, following wrong decisions are not solved but reinterpreted in manipulated, white-washed and ignorant manners. Never the less, academic research and practical leadership training has given little attention to this important relationship. According to author opinion, training and coaching should include the mechanism of cognitive dissonance. Moreover, proposals are provided for ways how to reduce dissonant feelings consistent with the scope of leadership principles.

This chapter focuses on artificial intelligence (AI), drawing from examples of how companies invest in AI, why is has been challenging for established companies to truly unleash the full potential of AI as their core strategy and why the management team must think beyond the process of innovation as well as consider an alternative budgeting approach and capital structure to fuel the critical work surrounding AI.