SUCCESSFUL LEADERSHIP AND PLANNING

One of the keys to successful leadership, planning, and communication in an organization

One of the keys to successful leadership, planning, and communication in an organization

As competition intensifies and the pace of technological change accelerates, firms need to renew themselves. The challenge is not only offering new products and services, but also changing the nature of management within organizations. This can take place by, for instance, adapting organizational structures, processes, and practices to generate a valuable source of competitive advantage. Hence, scholars have directed their attention towards management as a fertile ground for innovation. Management innovation is having clear planning, communication and leadership. Management innovation is defined as 'the generation and implementation of a management practice, process, structure, or technique that is new to the state of the art and is intended to further organizational goals' (Koene, 2002). Accordingly, in this definition 'newness' is related to management innovation at large, in other words, new to the world. Well known examples of management innovation are lean production (introduced by Toyota) and brand management.

Given its importance for organizational performance, surprisingly little research has gone into explaining antecedents of management innovation. Management innovation entails an encompassing and complex kind of change to the way in which management work is performed. For instance, management innovations typically emerge without a dedicated infrastructure (such as research labs - which aid technical innovation), and are relatively abstract and intangible, which makes them potentially complex and ambiguous. This underscores the relevant role of individuals within the organization (Koene, 2002).

First, we investigate management at the organizational level of analysis by focusing on the pursuit of management innovation that is new to the firm, and investigate CEO leadership behavior as a key antecedent of management innovation. This resonates with the rational perspective on management innovation which sees the actions of key individuals, such as leaders, as a crucial factor driving the pursuit of management innovation. Scholars have proposed that leadership can effectively stimulate innovative thinking, and have shown that it significantly impacts organizational choice. Because management innovation represents a rather encompassing change in the way management work is performed, we see leadership as a preeminent issue in understanding how organizations introduce such a (potentially) complex type of innovation. In this study we draw on the distinction between transformational and transactional leadership and uncover how each type of leadership behavior affects the pursuit of management innovation in organizations. Hence, this study deepens our understanding of the role of human agency by studying how different leadership styles influence the pursuit of management innovation within organizations (Koene, 2002).

Second, we investigate whether the role of human agency is related to organizational complexity. For this, we consider the moderating role of organizational size. Prior studies such as Nahavandi and Malekzadeh (1993) and Koene et al. (2002) have suggested that the impact of leadership behavior may decrease as organizational size increases. Leaders in larger organizations may encounter more difficulty in initiating change in the way management work is performed due to more complex organizational contexts and ...