Leadership: Current Theories, Research and future Directions

Avolio, B. J., Walumbwa, F. O., & Weber, T. J. (2009)

OVERVIEW AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP

Authentic leadership = a process that draws from both positive psychological capacities and a
highly developed organisational context, which results both is greater self-awareness and
self-regulated positive behaviors on the part of leaders and associates, fostering positive self-
development (Luthans & Avolio, 2003, p. 243)
= a pattern of transparent and ethical leader behavior that encourages
openness in sharing information needed to make decisions while accepting followers’ inputs
- Is multilevel since includes leader, follower and context
 Criticism: relatively few studies in any areas of leadership research have addressed
levels of analysis issues appropriately in theory, measurement, data analysis and
inference drawing ( Yammarino et al., 2005)
 Now there is a general agreement in the literature that there are 4 factors components of
authentic leadership: balanced processing, internalized moral perspective, relational
transparency, and self-awareness.
balanced processing = objectively analyzing relevant data before making a decision
internalized moral perspective = being guided by internal moral standards, used to
regulate one’s behavior
relational transparency = presenting one’s authentic self through openly sharing
information and feelings as appropriate for situationa ( i.e. avoiding inappropriate
displays of emotions)
self-awareness = demonstrated understanding of one’s strengths, weaknesses, and the
way one makes sense of the worls.
 Significant positive predictor of OCB, organisational commitment and satisfaction with
supervisor and performance.
DEVELOPMENT OF AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP
Heritability and leardership:
-Leaders are born or made?
-30% of variation in leadership style was attributed to heritability, the remaining
variation being attributed to differences in environmental factors and early
opportunities for leadership development
 Life context is much more important than heritability in predicting leadership emergence
Examining Evidence for Positive Leadership Interventions:
- Meta-analysis with interventions included in one of six categories: training,
actor/role-play, scenario/vignette, assignments, expectations, others; regardless of
the theory in question, leadership interventions had a positive impact on work
outcomes, even with interventions of less than one day.
COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND LEADERSHIP
- Focus on explaining leaders and followers thinking and information processing
 Emerging cognitive constructs:
- Self-concept literature focus on structure and content. Content – evaluations one
makes on oneself as well as self beliefs. Structure – ways in which self-concept is
organized for processing ( in a study, two measures of pluralism, self-complexity
and self-concept compartimentalization, were not related to each other and that
multiple measures of self-concept unity like self-concept differentiation, clariy and
self-discrepancies were moderately related to each other, each having implications
for leader development.
- Lord & Brown (2001) 2 ways that leaders can influence followers choose to behave
in terms of motivation used to regulate actions:
1. First way relates to values (like achievement) and emphasize making specific
values salient for the follower to motivate him/her to action.
2. Related to followers’ self-concept, leader activates a specific identity to
which follower can relate, creating a collective identity that the follower
ultimately embraces as their own.
 There are more identities, some principal and some peripheral that can be salient at any
point in time, so which identity is activated at any time can be relevant to research on
leadership. The idea of working self-concept refers to the identity (or group of
identities) that is salient in the moment and consist of three types of components: self-
views (current working model or view of oneself), current goals, and possible selves.
So, the working self-concept has potential to provide insight on how salient one’s
identity is and how can leadership enhace its salience.

Schema = a broad organizing framework that helps one understand and make sense of a
given context or experience
Wofford et al., 1998: transformational and transactional leaders use different schemas to
interpret events, which then results in the choice of different leadership behaviors in
response to those events. Transformational leader cognitions were related to the choice
of acting transformationally, for the transactional schemas there was mixed results.
Transformational leadership – leader behaviors that transform and inspire followers to
perform beyond expectations while transcending self-interest for the good of
organisation.
Transactional leadership – leadership largely based on the exchange of rewards
contingent on performance.

Prototypical Abstractions of leadership: Followers may be more drawn to leaders who

are exemplars (prototypes) of groups they belon or they want to belong.

NEW- GENRE LEADERSHIP

- Leadership emphasizing charismatic leader behavior, visionary, inspiring,
ideological and moral values, as well as transformational leadership such as
individualized attention and intellectual simulation.
New-Genre vs Traditional Leadership
- In 1980 most models of leadership accounted for a small part of performance
outcomes and explained leader behavior in terms of leader-follower exchange
 relationship, setting goals, providing direction and support and reinforcement
behavior, what Bass (1985) reffered as being based on economic cost-benefit
assumptions
 New leadership models that emphasized symbolic leader behavior; visionary,
inspirational messages; emotional feelings; ideological and moral values; individualized
attention; and intellectual stimulation.
 The Theory of charismatic/transformational leadership suggests that such leaders raise
followers’ aspirations and activate their higher order values (e.g. altruism) such that
followers identify with the leader and his vision, feel better about their work to perform
beyond simple transactions and base expectations. This leadership is associated with
leadership effectiveness, organisational outcomes, turnover etc.
Boundary Conditiond for New-Genre Leadership:
- Boundary conditions in which transformational leadership is more or less effective
in predicting followers attitudes and behaviors (moderators).
COMPLEXITY LEADERSHIP
- Traditional leadership theories were made for organisations hierarchical structure,
yet nowadays structures are changing
- Leadership is viewed based on the framework of complexity theory as interactive
system of dynamic, unpredictable agents that interact with each other in complex
feedback networks, which can then produce adaptive outcomes such as knowledge
dissemination, learning, innovation, and futher adaptation to change Uhl-Bien et al.,
2007)
 Leadership can be enacted through ANY INTERACTION in an organisation.. leadership
is an emergent phenomenon within complex systems
 To achieve optimal performance, organisations cannot be designed with simple,
rationalized structures that underestimate the complexity of the context in which the
organisation must function and adapt; only investigating leader-follower exchange
process will not explain the full dynamics of leadership

Complexity and Traditional Leadership Theory

- In traditional leadership theory the unit of analysis is often the leader, the leader and
the follower, the leader and the group and so forth
- The fundamental unit of analysis in complex leadership is refered to as a complex
adaptative system (CAS)
- CAS- has roots in physical sciences and is composed of interdependent agents that
can operate simultaneously on the basis of certain rules and localized knowledge
that governs the CAS, while also being able to adapt and emerge based on feedback
from the system
- COMPLEXITY LEADERSHIP THEORY ( CLT; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007) has been
developed as an overarching explanation of how CAS operates within a bureaucratic
organization, and it identifies three leadership roles to explore: adaptive (e.g.
engaging others in brainstorming to overcome a challenge), administrative (e.g.
formal planning according to doctrine), and enabling (e.g, minimizing the
constraints of an organizational bureaucracy to enhace follower potential).
 Future focus required:
- Dooley & Lichtenstein (2008) describe methods for studying complex leadership by
focusing on:
a) Micro, daily interactions using real-time observation
b) Meso interactions (days and weeks) using social network analysis, where one
examines a set of agents and how they are linked over time
c) Macro-interactions (weeks, months, and longer) through event history analysis.
Agent-based modelling simulations ( i.e. computer simulations about how
agents are supposed to operate) are also being used as a mean of studying
complexity leadership.
SHARED, COLLECTIVE, OR DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP
- We see more evidence for shared or collective leadership as hierarchical levels are
deleted and team-based structures are inserted
- Normally shared leadership (process vs a person engaging multiple member of the
team) and team leadership (the role of individual leading the team) are streams of
research but they will be used interchangeably
Shared Leadership Defined
= a dynamic, interactive influence process among individuals in groups for which the
objective is to lead one another to achievement of group or organizational goals or both. This
influence process often involves peer, or lateral, influence an at other times involves upward
or downward hierarchical influence
Shared leadership capacity is an emergent state, something dynamic that develops throughout
a team’s lifespan and it varies based on input, processes, and outcomes of the team. It
produces patterns of reciprocal influence, which reinforce and develop further relationships
between team members.
Highly shared leadership is broadly distributed within a group or a team of individuals rather
that localized in any one individual who serves in the role of supervisor.
- Is defined as a team-level outcome or as “simultaneous, ongoing, mutual influence
process within a team that is characterized by serial emergence of official as well as
unofficial leaders.
- Can be viewed as o property of the whole system as opposed to solely the property
of individuals, effectiveness in leadership becomes more a product of those
connections or relationships among the parts than the results of any one part of that
system.
Research Evidence
Avolio & Bass (1995) report that team-level measures of transactional leadership positively
predicted performance similar to the individual-level measures in previous research.
LEADER-MEMBER EXCHANGE
- Focused on the relationship between leader and follower.
 - Central principle in LMX theory: leaders develop different exchange
relationships with their followers, whereby the quality of the relationship alters the
impact on important leader and member outcomes
 Leadership occurs when leaders and followers are able to develop effective
relationships that result in mutual and incremental influence.
- Literature developed from focusing only on consequences of LMX to focusing on
antecedents and consequences.
e.g. Tekleab & Taylor (2003) assessed leader and follower level of agreement on
their mutual obligations and their psychological contract with each other
Ilies et al., 2007 – higher quality LMX relationship predict high levels of
performance and organizational citizenship behavior
Kacmar et al 2007 – low quality LMX leaders and followers excert more effort,
control theory is used to explain how perceptions of supervisor competence,
centralization and organizational politics influenced their willingness to excert effort
on the job beyond what would be tipically expected in a less-than-effective
exchange relationship – employees low quality relationship with their supervisor,
low supervisor competence, descentralized decision making and low politics
perceptions were related to high individual work effort
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984306001433?
casa_token=IlYmDAojkCEAAAAA:UlEv6bbLWyP54m_8Kg8vBDIzYTr1LTtx7s
xsGvV35ijcvRplFipXymFP8RH9M-ZUObixgMJWmg)
Ingratiation is defined as "a class of behaviors employed by a person to make
himself/herself more attractive to another" . Disability interacts with ingratitation to
influence LMX ratings, in no ingratiation condition, the subordinate with disability
received lower LMX ratings than non disability -> negative bias (Colella & Varma,
2001). So, by ingratiation tactics, individuals with disabilities were able to increase
the quality of LMX.
Extensions to LMX
-original work from Graen & Uhl-Bien (1995) on the role-making and role-taking
processes has been extendes by Uhl-Bien and colleagues (2000) to examine how
leader-follower dyads transforms from individual interest to shared interest based on
the development of treust, respect and obligations to each other
- similar work examined effecte of goal congruence on the quality of LMX
relationship: to the extent that goals are similar or mutually reinforcing, one would
expect to produce a higher-quality LMX relationship
- impact of gender on LMX quality researched had mixed results, with Adebayo &
Udegbe (2004) reporting that followers in opposite-sex dyads perceived a better
LMX quality in comparison with those from same sex dyada.
+ LMX as a moderator or mediator for performance: quality of LMX moderated the
relationship between downward-influence tactics and helping behaviors (Sparrow et
al.,2006), LMX either fully or partially mediated the relationship between locus of
 control and several work-related outcomes such as job satisfaction, work related
well-being and organizational commitment.
- An extension of linkages between social network theory and LMX, came up with a
transformation of LMX theory to LMX-MMX theory of sharing network leadership
(Graen, 2006), by this organizations are viewed as systems of interdependent dyadic
relationships, or dyadic subassemblies, and advocate the importance of both formal
and informal influences on individual, team and network flows of behavior.
FOLLOWERSHIP AND LEADERSHIP
- Leadership research treat follower attributes as outcomes of the leadership process
as opposed to inputs, even though there have been a number of calls over the years
to examine the role that followers play in the leadership process
Romance of Leadership
Meindl et al. (1985) proposed a constructionist theory that describe the relationship
between leadership and followership
- Leadership is signifincantly affected by the way followers construct their
understanding of the leader in terms of their interpretation of his/her personality,
behaviors and effectiveness.
- Mixed findings: modest relationship between the romance of leadership and
perceptions of transformational/charismatic leadership, accounting for 5% of
leadership ratings (if followers have a tendency to romanticize their perceptions of
trasformationa/charismatic leadership, Schyns et al., 2007, meta-analysis);
Kulich et al. (2007) examined the relevance of the romance of leadership theory
thorough an experiment that compared how the performance of a male and a female
leader was viewed by allowing participants to choose how much of a bonus to
allocate to the leader: male CEO’s bonus differed substantially depending on one’s
company performance, while no differentiation for female CEO.
- Followers negative view of work environment are overly attributed to their leaders
(Bligh et al., 2007).
- Group success and failure were overly attributed to the leader (Weber et al., 2001)
 With the failing team that overly attributed failure to the leader, consistently vote to
replace their leader when the situation was more of the couse for the team’s failure.
Updates on Follower-Centric View
- Important theoretical propositions regarding how follower traits and characteristics
might influence leader and follower relationship (Howell & Shamir, 2005):
followers’ self-concept clarity and collective identity are important factors in
determining how followers form charismatic relationships with the leader. They
suggested then that followers who have personalized relationships with the
charismatic leader may be more likely to show blind loyalty, obedience, and
deference.

- Followers can be passive or proactive and be more or less effective based on that
characteristic
SUBTITUTES FOR LEADERSHIP
- The subtitutes for leadership theory focuses on situational factors that enhace,
neutralize and/or totally substitute for leadership.
e.g. a group of people engaged in electronic brainstorming, such as a group decision
support system, may operate as though there was a participative leader who was
leading the group, but in fact, leadership comes from the operating rules for using
the system to engage.
- this theory address some of the romance effects described above, the research
stream focus on a range of situational/organizational and follower characteristics
that might influence the leadership dynamic.
- more authors concluded that evidence is not sufficient to support the main
propositions in the theory
e.g. moderating effects of task variability, organization formulation, organization
inflexibility and lack of control on the relationship between leadership behavior and
group effectiveness have gained little support possible due to problems in measuring
(Dionne et al., 2002)
Future Focus Required
Dionne et al. 2005 suggested that future research testing the five possible conditions linking
leader behavior, leadership effectiveness, and other situational variable which include
a) Leadership main effects model
b) A subtitutes main effect model
c) An interactive or joint effects model
d) A mediation model, wherein the substitutes mediate leadership impact versus
moderate
e) The originally proposed moderated model.
- Samples can be drawn based on cultural background and quality of one’s followers
by sampling professional workers who function in highly independent roles so that
the sample is used for studying the boundary conditions for the effects of substitutes
for leadership
- Longitudinal studies needed
SERVANT LEADERSHIP
- Spears (2004) builed on work of Greenleaf (1991) to list 10 characteristics
representing a servant leader:
1. Listening
2. Empathy
3. Healing
4. Awareness
5. Persuasion
6. Conceptualization
7. Foresight
8. Stewardship
9. Commitment
 10. Building community.
- Russel & Stone (2002) reviewed literature in servant leadership and distinguished in
2 broad categories: functional ( having vision, being honest, trustworthy, service
oriented, a role model, demonstrating appreciation of others’ service and
empowerment) and accompany attributes (good communicators and listeners,
credible, competent, encouraging of others, teachers and delegators).
- Is positively related to: follower satisfaction, their job satisfaction, intrinsic work
satisfaction, caring for the safety of others and organizational commitment.
- Follower perceptions of servant leadership positively related to trust in the leader
and in one’s organization
SPIRITUALITY AND LEADERSHIP
Spiritual leadership = comprising the values, attitudes, and behaviors that are
necessary to intrinsically motivate one’s self and others so they have a sense of spiritual
survival through calling and membership (Fry, 2003)
- The field of study is marked by all of the typical characteristics of paradigm
development including a lack of consensus a definition of workplace spirituality
(Dent et al., 2005)
- From Fry’s perspective, spiritual leadership adds to existing literature of leadership
the missing components such as a sense of calling on the part of leaders and
followers as well as the creation of organizational cultures characterized by
altruistic love whereby leaders express genuine care, concern and appreciation for
self and others
- The ultimate effect of spiritual leadershipis to bring together a sense of fusion
among the four fundamental forces of human existence (body, mind, heart and
spirit) do that people are motivated for high performance, have increased
organizational commitment and personally experience joy, peace and serenity.
CROSS-CULTURAL LEADERSHIP
- Growing interest in research an theory focused on the role of leadership across
cultural contexts, due in part to the globalization of organizations that encourage
and even require leaders to work from and across an increasingly diverse set of
locations.
Project GLOBE
- The work of Project GLOBE (global leadership and organizational behavioural
effectiveness) constitutes one of the more ambitious and influential cross-cultural
leadership studies.
- The study involved more than 160 researchers working in 62 societies; included
both quantitative and qualitative investigations; was designed to address a number
of goals.
- One goal was to develop cultural dimensions at both the organizational and societal
level of analysis
- Second major goal: examine the beliefs that different cultures had about effective
leaders -> certain theories are universal
- Third phase was based on etnographics
Global Leadership
- Goal of identifying leaders who are able to effectively lead across a variety of
cultures
- There are more approaches in conceptualizing global leadership. One of them
primarily focuses on international experience, implying that leaders must spend time
living in different cultures in order to be prepared to lead (Van Dyne & And, 2006).
A second approach emphasize the competencies a leader needs to have for leading
effectivelu and success fully across cultures (Mendenhall, 2001).
- Second approach used in related work of global mindset and cultural intelligence.
Comparative Leadership
- Comparative research on the effectiveness of leadership in different cultures is a
major area of research
- Compares leadership in 2 or more cultures, examining the degree to which a
practice that was developed in one culture applies to others.
- Common approach examines the direct impact of a cultural dimension over
leadership
e.g. impact of cultural values on the selection of sources of guidance for dealing
with work events that managers are likely to face in 47 countries (Smith et al., 2002)
- another common strategy examines the direct influence of culture and it
moderates the relationship between leadership practice and relevant performance
outcomes
e.g. effect of allocentrism (collective orientation) and idiocentrism (individual
orientation) on the relationship among leadership (transformational and
transactional) and both organizational commitment and satisfaction with supervisor:
allocentrics react more positively to transformational leaders while idiocentrics had
a positive reaction to transactional leaders.

E-LEADERSHIP
- Leading virtually involves leading people from different departments,
orgnnizations, countries and sometimes even competitor companies
- In virtual teams, challenges are more likely to occur when distributed work occurs
in different time zones, when local communication and human infrastructures fail,
when team members’ hardware and software platforms are different, or when local
work demands require the immediate attention of collocated managers and workers,
thereby creating pressure to pursue local priorities over the objectives of distant
collaborators.
- Since technology is widely used, traditional theories may not fit. So, most of work
in e-leadership focus on leadership in virtual teamwork or geoups interacting in
“group decisions support systems”
e.g. studies that focus on similarity and differences between face-to-face teams and
e-teams
effects of structural factors such as distance and multiple locations on e-
leadership and virtual team effectiveness
Complexity leadership: Enabling people and organizations for adaptability

Uhl-Bien, M., & Arena, M. (2017). Complexity leadership: Enabling people and
organizations for adaptability. Organizational Dynamics, 46(1), 9–20.

WHAT IS COMPLEXITY?
Complexity is rich interconnectivity. When things interact, they change one another in
unexpected and irreversible ways.
The “Order” Response : in times of complexity organizations tend to incline towards
order (e.g. hierarchial structure, top-down approach), yet it can be not adaptable to do
so.
The Adaptative Response

- In complex environments we need adaptative responses instead of order,

organizations that enable adaptative response, do not turn to a top-down approach,
they engage in networks and emergence.
Emergence – the creation of new order that happens when agents (e.g. people,
technology, information, resources) in a networked system combine together in
an environment poised for change to generate the emergence of something that
did not exist previously.
- In the emergence process, interacting parts of a system network around some kind
of need and begin to link up.
- Adaptative response happens when these networked agents are able to resonate
around a new approach, alternative way of thinking, or adaptative solution that
meets the needs of a complex challenge. These innovations are generated in the
“space between” meaning that no one person can claim or take credit for them;
rather they are a result of richly connected interactions that allow diverse people,
ideas and pressure to collide and combine in ways that generate emergence of
novelty.
- Dynamic measure of emergence -> adaptive responses cannot be managed in the
traditional sense. Leaders enable adaptative responses by engaging in and creating
conditions that feed and fuel emergence.
- One condition is information flows that allows agents to find each other and link
up common need, purpose and perspectives around which they can cohere to
identify an adaptive response. When information flows are obstructed e.g. by silos
or hierarchical decision making processes, they inhibit the ability of organisation to
be adaptive. This is why many organizations are turning to flexible and open office
spaces that are designed to enable collaboration and learning by removing assigned
deskd, increasing traffic flows to promote interaction and providing spaces and
resources for people who come together and create.
- A second condition is pressure. Pressures act to loosen up a system for change.
When a system is loosen up it seeks novelty, creating windows of opportunity not
present at other times. Those who understand the role of pressure and timing can
interact with emergence events in way that shape their form and impact. They can
use tags and attractors to channel energy in desired ways. Tag is a symbol, event,
 person, or information that enables or speeds up (i.e. catalyzes) an aggregation
process. An attractor pulls a dynamic towards it.
e.g. For Trump, “Make America Great Again” was a tag that catalyzed
disillusionment with the status quo and the establishment, and enabled people who
held these views to link up and drive emergence.
- In complex environments, traditional approaches to leadership often make things
worse.
ORGANIZING FOR ADAPTABILITY

A complex adaptative system is a dynamic system that is able to adapt in and evolve
with a changing environment. At macro level, it is a collection of dynamic networks
and interactions, with each network comprised of a collection of many agents acting
in parallel.
- In physical and organical sciences, complex adaptative systems are not having
centralized and fixed order and are self-organizing. In organizational settings this is
not true, they have structures, hierarchies, they don’t self-organize + they value
rationality, efficiency and stability over adaptability (bureaucracy tend toward
order)

The Constraints of Bureaucracy

- Organisations that are able to operate as complex adaptative systems do so by

enabling adaptative space.
- Adaptative space is a network structure not previously recognized in the leadership
literature. It plays is pressures created by complexity challenges and allows agents
to interact in ways that generate emergence and new adaptative order for a system.
- When enabled in organizations, adaptative space represents hierarchical
organizations’ way of coping with the linits of bureaucratic organizing on adaptative
ability. It helps leaders and organizations to resist the pull to equilibrm by enabling
self-organizing in the context of bureaucratic structures.
- Organisations as two primary systems: an operational system (found in formal
bureaucratic organizational structures that push for order and are responsible for
productivity, efficiency and results) and an entrepreneurial system (occur in
informal structures and systems that push for change)
Ex. Cu firma, la inceput e system entrepreneurial si mai apoi devine operational
pentru a-si creste productivitatea

The Need for Adaptive Space

- Leaders in adaptive organizations capitalize on the tension created between the
entrepreneurial system and the operational system to generate innovative new
thinking and productive adaptability for the system, they do so by enabling adaptive
space.
- Adaptive space is context and conditions that enable networked interactions to
foster the generation and linking up of novel ideas, innovation and learning in a
system.
 - Because bureaucratic organizing is designed to shut down the informal system and
its challenges to authority and status quo, adaptive space is needed to open these
channels back up and allow ideas from the informal (entrepreneurial) and formal
(operational) systems to interact and connect in productive ways. The opening of
channels and removal of barriers is not permanent. This is why adaptive space is
called ‘‘space’’ (e.g., temporary, fluid) and not system (e.g., permanent, fixed
structures). Adaptive space works to open up information flows and engage
dynamics of complexity and network structures to enable emergence of novelty and
innovation needed for adaptability.
Network Structure
- Leaders create adaptive space by facilitating the generation and movement of ideas
and information across a system, creating conditions for emergence. They do so by
capitalizing on two network structures associated with idea generation and flow:
brokerage and group cohesion.
- BROKERAGE connects or bridges from one group to another, creates conditions
for generating new ideas and help amplify them for scale across system. + creates
better access for novel insights and enhaces diffusion of these insights.
e.g, pharmaceutical company
- GRUP COHESION is how connected an agent is with others in the group; provides
a safe environment for pressure testing and iterating ideas to make them more
impactful and amenable for scaling. + enables agents to share information under
conditions of high levels of trust. When ideas are introduced in cohesive groups,
they are more linkely to be adopted and enhaced locally
Complexity Dynamics
 Explain how the network structures of brokerage and cohesion create the conditions for
adaptive space. There are 2 key dynamics that make complex systems adaptive:
conflicting and linking up.
 Conflicting is created when agents bring diverse needs, worldviews, preferences or
values to interactions. It motivates and pressure a system or agent to elaborate and
change.
- Provides the thought diversity and exposure to ideological differences needed for
creativity
- Occurs when agents co-create in cohesive groups or when entrepreneurial leaders
try to extend ideas across different networks,
- Can be a benefit for mergers
 Linking up occurs when agents find commonality that allows them to bond in
relationships and networks; are connections that hold bonded agents and aggregates
together.
- Can be made by bringing together “poised” agents (those with ideas and desire to
change) and providing them with resources and opportunity to generate novel
solutions and approaches.
- Can be enabled by using tags and attractors. Tags create attractors for people to
come together and link up to drive change. Ex GM2022 is a tag, his reputation taps
 into the natural capacities of brokerage to help spread an idea quickly and attract
others to an initiative, energizing them to take action.

The Role of Pressures

- Hierarchical organizations can be resistant to change, and proficient at spitting out
those who attempt to initiate it. Pressures may therefore be needed to loosen the
system up for change.
- In organizations, complexity is often experienced as pressures. Complexity
pressures disrupt current patterns of organizing, naturally opening up adaptive
space. Complexity pressures tipically involve:
1) A need for a novel solution (i.e. existing ways of operating will not work)
2) New partnerships (i.e. people have to work together with who have not worked
together before)
3) Conflicting perspectives (i.e. individuals bring different needs and diverse
experiences)
4) Interdependence (i.e. no choice but to work together – adapt or “die”)

e.g. this is what we are seeing in automotive industry today; the industry is
poised for disruption with new services like Uber’s ride sharing and non-
traditional players like Google investing in autonomous mobility. The less clear
is the path forward -> companies like Toyota, Honda, Fors and General Motors
are engaging in new relationships, investing in technology and exploring
alternative business models in attempts to “meet complexity with complexity”
- responding effectively to complexity pressures requires leaders to enable adaptive space,
doing so is not easy, specifically in organizations with traditional bureaucratic organizing
structures. The silos of hierarchical structure works against networking and linking up;
moreover, adaptive space can run counter to the control systems that dominate many
management practices.
e.g. an large engineering firm alliance with external partner to bring new technological ability
to the firm. The partner brought new advancements, but they had their own way of doing
things and managers in the engineering firm almost immediately started to demand that the
partner be more disciplined to yield more outcomes -> many of the practices of the new
partner were ignored and, in the end, the acquired technology didn’t yield the hoped-for
impact.
- Leaders in adaptive organizations resist this temptation (to intervene in the practices of a
new partner). They capitalize on the adaptive space and network structures opened up by
complexity to enable adaptative response.
e.g. organizations like Google, Mayo Clinic and W.L. Gore have the ability to open and
protect adaptive space into the system. At Google, leadership and innovation can be
generated from anywhere, top-down or bottom-up; they work to continually adapt by placing
the user in the center of everything they do and challenging themselves to be ten times
bolder. Mayo developed habits of constantly scanning for broad trends both within
healthcare and across industries, and taking on small experiments to collect evidence and
applying prototypes to crystalize ideas and validate tangible outcomes. W.L. Gore is fanatical
about its people; they believe that if you hire great people and provide them with space to
dabble in the things they are highly passionate about they will excel and the company will
benefit; they openly celebrate both successes and failure. People are often introduced through
stories of things they have worked on in the past, and associates are openly encouraged to
grow their own internal network.
- For innovative and adaptive organizations adaptive space is at the very core of who they are
and what they do. Leaders are central to the creation and sustainability of this place. Enabling
adaptive space requires a new way of thinking about leadership. Complexity Leadershup is a
framework for leadership research and practice that describes how leaders can enable
organizations to operate as complex adaptive systems – networked systems able to adapt in
and evolve with a changing environment.
LEADING FOR ADAPTABILITY
Complexity leadership draws attention to 3 types of leadership needed for adaptability:
operational leadership, entrepreneurial leadership and enabling leadership.
Operational leadership is the formal design and alignment of systems and processes for
efficiently executing on ideas and converting them into productive outcomes (e.g.
exploitation).
Entrpreneurial leadership is the source of new ideas, innovation, learning and growth for
the organization (e.g. exploration).
Enabling leadership is a unique form of leadership introduced by complexity thinking.
When appropriately engaged with operational and entrepreneurial leadership, enabling
leadership helps organisations to be agile in the face of complexity (i.e. operate as complex
adaptative systems).
The 3 functions associated with complexity leadership are not isolated to any one individual
or positions: A single individual could potentially engage in any or none of them. The most
agile leaders would have proficiency in all of them.
Highly agile complexity leaders will be able to transition between entrepreneurial, enabling
and operational thinking to introduce, adapt and advance novel ideas into the system in the
form of new, adaptive order. Tipically is not the case so organisations have leaders for all
three types.
Operational leadership
- They recognize that innovation and adaptability as core to organizational survival as
operating results -> they will protect against the destructive effects of the pull to
ordee that privileges operational decision making at the expense of entrepreneurial
thinking
- They view the formal role as helping to accommodate, rather than stifle, attempts
entrepreneurial and enabling leaders to drive change into the system,
- Innovation is generated in the tension between entrepreneurial and operational
pressures.
- Key role for operational leaders in complexity leadership framework is converting
emergent ideas into organizational systems and structures that produce innovation
and ongoing results.they do so by sponsoring, aligning and executing
- Sponsoring= pulling ideas from adaptive space and positioning them for support
from the formal system. It helps overcome the problem “brick wall”- automatic
reflex of operational system to say no when approached with innovative ideas.
- Aligning and executing – finding new ways to resource and implement the idea or
new approach to enhace organizational performance and fitness.
Entrepreneurial leadership
= creation and development of novelty in ways that help organization adapt to pressures
or capitalize on opportunity.
- It operates in local context. Local – the network of relationships and context actors
engage in to get work done).
- Is often motivated by complexity pressures that challenge individuals and groups to
come up with new ways of working, or new products and services.
- Is consistent with research showing that creativity is often a collective process.
Enabling leadership
= a new way of thinking arising in response to complexity
- Is hard to recognize since is needed understanding, developing and rewarding in
research for enabling leadership.
- Operates at the interference between operational and entrepreneurial system in an
organization
- It works to nurture and enable adaptative space that feeds and fuels for adaptative
responses.
- Effective enabling leadership helps initiate and amplifying support for novelty,
innovation and change by engaging in the principles and practices of complex
adaptive systems described above to leverage network structures and complexity
dynamics in ways that unleash collective intelligence in an organization to
adequately and proactively meet the demands of complexity pressures.
Enabling Leadership Principles and Practices
- Enabling leades work to nurture and protect the adaptive functions and those who
engage in it in an organizational system
Summary
+ possible leadership instrument: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?
doi=10.1037%2Ft03624-000 MLQ
+ possible intervention: leadership development