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Charles Baden-Fuller Editorial
Leadership
Few topics create so much debate as that of leadership. The influence of leaders
on their organisations is clearly important; they seem able to create a climate
that leads to rapid wealth creation or destruction. But the influence of leaders
in large complex organisations seems disproportionate given the numerous checks
and balances and the many professional staff working to make the organisation
run smoothly. The successes and failures at Dell, Microsoft, Shell and Enron
seem as dependent on their corporate leader’s actions as those of the
much smaller enterprise that has fewer support systems. What is happening
here? What do these leaders of large companies actually do? Do the corporate
histories, often written by leaders about themselves, paint a proper picture?
James Kelly’s article on leadership in large complex organisations provides
insights about what this particular kind of CEOs do and how they do it. James
has been a leader himself, and has made a life’s work examining the
workings of the upper-echelon of corporations that are successful and of those
that fail. He knows the language, the concerns, the hot-buttons, the pressures
and how leaders achieve their influence. He reveals a beguilingly simple agenda
of success that includes: culling standards of performance, values and organisational
design that engage and motivate people, and a clear growth path. James argues
that these are the key select tasks and that they have to be done with energy,
commitment and “deadly intent”. This is not easy, and he documents
failures as well as successes.
Paula Jarzabkowski examines another dimension of leadership: the diversity
of the top management team. It is well known that diversity has the potential
to improve organisational performance in both large and small organisations.
She explains the dimensions of team diversity, why it is much more than ethnic
and gender based and why it has to be linked to collective action. She then
goes on to examine how this diversity should be built up and managed to achieve
its fullest effect; avoiding dysfunctional teams and yielding the development
of a learning culture.
There are few case studies of failure, yet it is from leadership failures
that we can learn the most. Elizabeth Briody, Tamer Cavusgil and Stewart Miller
tell the story of failed leadership within GM. Three successful internal units:
Saturn, International Operations, and the Small Car Group came together to
create the Delta Car Program, a less than successful internal corporate venture.
Perhaps because of the strength of the individual partners, each team seemed
unwilling to mould its culture and to provide the necessary effort to make
the new venture succeed. Whilst the authors politely ascribe the failure to
many factors, to most readers it will be clear that we have a case of the
failure of leadership. In this case, the company’s management was not
able to rise to the challenge.
Business Continuity Management is traditionally seen as a stop-gap response
to leadership crisis caused by accidents. These events could include the death
of the CEO, a terrorist attack, or some hi-tech crime. Brahim Herbane, Dominic
Elliott, Ethné Swartz argue that management practices devoted to recovering
from interruptions are developing procedures and techniques that need to be
considered more widely. Business Continuity Management has found ways to operate
speedily with great resilience, fulfil demanding regulatory situations, and
thereby cement and augment competitive advantages. These are all features
that need to be learned by existing managers and be included in the repertoire
of leaders.
Intellectual Property Management
Our last piece examines how Intellectual Property Rights can be best managed
by firms wishing to sell or source products in countries such as China. Deli
Yang, Mahmut Sonmez and Derek Bosworth offer ten strategies to counter piracy.
These range from sophisticated supply and market monitoring to legal and commercial
challenges, and to working with competitors, governments and public opinion.
They warn that piracy as an issue is not going to go away.
James Kelly Corporate Leadership: Reflections of a CEO and
CEO Advisor jkelly@macpartnership.com
For nearly four decades, James Kelly has been a CEO, and
advised CEO’s as co-founder of the Mac group, Chairman of Gemini Consulting
and in private consulting practice. From this experience, he reminds us that
growth and success are not ‘random events of corporate evolution’,
but depend on the ‘visible hand of leadership that drives, shapes and
evolves businesses in good times and bad.’ His lively article draws
largely on personal acquaintance to review the careers of five men - Pitman
of Lloyds TSB, Welch of General Electric, Bischoff of Schroders’, Watson
of Omnicom and Leahy of Tesco - who ‘view high performance as a life
or death issue’ and who ‘manage with deadly intent’, as
well of two anonymous failures. He identifies unambiguous culling standards
of performance; values and organisation design that engage and motivate people;
and positive strategic growth paths (plus some good luck) the core ingredients
most likely to increase the chances of success for the leaders of large corporate
groups, and suggests modifications to the messages of three leading business
academics.
Paula Jarzabkowski and Rosalind Searle Top Management Team
Strategic Capacity: Harnessing Diversity and Collective Action p.a.jarzabkowski@aston.ac.uk
Academic research has pointed to an important link between
diversity in the top management team (TMT) and corporate performance. However,
the nature of this link remains elusive. This paper seeks to fill this gap
by developing a conceptual framework to explain the relationships between
TMT diversity and TMT collective action. It explains how in some cases diversity
might actually be detrimental, but offers guidelines on how to solve the conflicts
that might arise. The paper also offers six practical suggestions to develop
processes that enable collective action and improve strategic capacity, and
hence the company’s performance.
Elizabeth Briody, S. Tamer Cavusgil & Stewart R.
Miller Turning Three Sides into a Delta at General Motors: Enhancing
Partnership Integration in Corporate Ventures cavusgil@msu.edu
General Motors had enjoyed global operations that were based
on exports, acquisitions, joint ventures and strategic alliances throughout
the 20th century. Its global-programme strategy appeared assured. However,
the carmaker came unstuck when it came to creating a large-scale collaborative
effort involving its own internal units. The Delta Small Car Program, involving
three fully internal GM units, was terminated after its goals failed to materialise.
The carmaker’s long-standing cultural tradition of autonomy for its
units was what made collaboration between them difficult. We examine this
GM global programme, placing it in its historical context. Our primary database
consists of the perceptions and experiences offered to us by a cross-section
of programme participants. By examining partner integration at the working
level, we identify insights and offer recommendations pertaining to venture
structure and dynamics and their role in venture success.
Brahim Herbane, Dominic Elliott and Ethne M. Swartz Business
Continuity Management: Time for a Strategic Role? bhcor@dmu.ac.uk
Business activity is inherently risky – but in today’s
climate terrorist attacks, corporate financial scandals, hi-tech crime and
changing weather patterns can all add to the threats firms face. Against this
background, the authors argue that business continuity management configured
to enhance speed of recovery and deliver resilience against interruption,
to go beyond the basic regulatory obligations and to be fully embedded in
firm management, can play a significant role in preserving competitive advantage,
and advance the case for fully-configured BCM to be seen as strategic rather
than purely functional.
The continuity provisions of six UK-based financial services firms are reviewed
to illustrate both the Crisis Management and Disaster Recovery antecedents
of BC Planning, and the journey towards the standard provision of ‘fully-fledged’
BCM in terms of human resources, business planning, communications/structure
and attitudes/ownership. The reactions of Morgan Stanley to the events of
9/11 underline the point that recovery plans must be flexible and manageable
in the face of unpredictable realities and human responses. The authors offer
practical precepts for BCM implementation and a diagnostic outlining the key
determinants of enhanced value preservation, reminding us that, as the business
world becomes more uncertain, ‘when things go wrong, those better able
to think, act and adapt to business interruptions will have demonstrated the
value of superior business continuity management.’
Deli Yang, Mahmut Sonmez and Derek Bosworth Strategic
Responses for Multinationals to Intellectual Property Abuses D.Yang@bradford.ac.uk
This article examines the prevalence of what the authors
call ‘the inevitable curse of piracy’, common to multinational
IP owners around the world. The authors looks at the experience Manchester
United, Microsoft, DuPont, Budweiserand others operating in China - ‘the
most populous market on earth’ - to elaborate ten corporate strategies
to counter the activities of pirates, be they counterfeiting, licensing overruns
or illegal trademark registration. Strategies are grouped into three strands
– proactive approaches include sophisticated labelling, pricing policies
and monitoring of production/distribution chains and markets; defensive weapons
include embarrassing or acquiring pirates, while networking means involve
co-operative action with other IP owners, agencies, government, legal authorities
and public opinion. Whatever combination of strategies firms choose to employ,
the authors recommend that they treat piracy as a challenge, be corporately
proactive, and remain continuously alert to the dynamic nature of the ‘crime
of the 21st century’.
This issue is currently in press. Scheduled date for publication is 7 October
2004. Shortly, it will also be available on www.sciencedirect.com
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